A Professor of Magic at Hogwarts

Chapter 146: Practical Lesson Two

A faint flush spread across Penelope's face, while Percy stood beside her, grinning foolishly.

The Gryffindors cheered enthusiastically, while a few Ravenclaws shot unfriendly glances at Percy, as if he had snatched some precious treasure. A couple of girls whispered among themselves.

"Wood, what is this?" a Gryffindor student pointed at the wobbling, struggling little skeleton on the ground. It was anything but menacing.

"The 'surprise' Professor Harp mentioned," Wood replied, somewhat frustrated. He had been thoroughly frightened just now.

The freckled wizard next to him added, "They don't have any attacking power. They're just a bit unsettling in the way they appear..."

As they spoke, a Ravenclaw girl looked down and saw a pallid hand bone brushing against her shoe. "Aaaah!" she let out an exaggerated scream. Wood stepped forward and crushed the bone with his foot, then shrugged, addressing the others, "See, it's just this sort of thing."

He then looked at the girl, "You're standing a bit close to the edge there, seems that spot hasn't been cleared."

Blushing, the girl thanked him.

"Besides these amusing little skeletons, have you discovered anything else?" someone asked.

"Tombstones," Percy stated, feigning calmness, "the tombstones have magical inscriptions. I believe they're important clues."

"Shall we decipher the magical inscriptions here?" a suggestion was made.

"Good idea!"

Several young wizards spread out, each responsible for two or three tombstones. They took parchment from their bags and copied down the inscriptions.

During this time, the buried skeletons sensed the presence of the living and reached out from the earth, attempting to intimidate them. However, this time the students were mentally prepared and easily evaded their attacks.

A few bold ones even let the skeletons crawl out, letting them use their delicate bone fingers to scratch at their legs, while they focused on transcribing the tombstone inscriptions.

Throughout this process, every minute or so, a spark of bright red light would rise in the distance.

Percy, Penelope, and the others finished their task early, examining each other's transcribed texts and comparing them to the patterns on the tombstones.

"Look here—" Penelope pointed to the numbers on two adjacent black stone tombstones, one in front of the other. "These two have consecutive numbers. The first one says, 'Visitors discover a safe house protected by four powerful magical barriers.' And this one says, 'To the south lies a multitude of shadowy corpses.'"

Excitedly, she continued, "Shadowy corpses correspond to the tombstones in our group. All we have to do is head north, and we'll find the safe house!"

"Penelope, you're always so clever," Percy praised.

Penelope hummed, "It seems Professor Harp has taken a complete story and split it among each tombstone. Our task is to piece them together."

"Hey, folks! Don't forget to copy down the tombstone numbers, they'll be useful." Percy turned around and shouted.

Finally, after a while, a green spark appeared in the distance.

"We're retracing our steps now. Have you all finished transcribing?" Getting affirmative responses, they hurried back.

This time, they returned to their starting point in about two minutes.

The wizard who had stayed behind looked somewhat pale, "You finally came back. I've felt like someone's been breathing down my neck the whole time..."

"Thank you for holding down the fort, Dilys."

Half a minute later, students from Slytherin and Hufflepuff returned. The Slytherin prefect stood tall, "We've found the safe house. If not for the time limit, we would have unraveled the magic on top..."

"We've made important discoveries too," Percy argued.

"But those are inconsequential, aren't they?"

Percy's face turned red, about to retort, but Penelope quickly held him back. Percy said angrily, "Look at what he's saying!"

Wood motioned a Hufflepuff student over, "Glover, what happened?"

Glover lowered his voice, "We found the safe house in about three minutes, but it's blocked by a magical puzzle on the wall."

"What kind of puzzle?"

"A jigsaw puzzle!" Glover said, "The Slytherin students were staring at it, completely clueless about how to play."

So the group relocated to a new location, arriving at the safe house—

It was a somewhat peculiar square hut, painted in a dark brownish-black color. From afar, it resembled a large stone, easily overlooked. However, the most crucial aspect was that the hut had no door.

Wizards and witches from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw approached, drawing a nine-square grid on each of the hut's four walls. The final position was left empty.

"As long as you point your wands at it, like this, the square will move," Glover explained to the others. "Each square contains a runic inscription. It seems we have to arrange them in the correct order to form a sentence."

"Isn't that quite simple, just eight runes in total?" Percy commented.

"No, Percy, take a look for yourself." The Hufflepuff student responded.

Percy scrutinized them, only to realize that he didn't recognize any of them...

For a moment, he felt dazed—Who am I? Where am I? And these runes I don't recognize?

One could be understandable, but not a single one of them?

Wood muttered under his breath, "Isn't it just guessing? Look at this one, I bet it has something to do with 'radiance'."

The bright students present reconsidered, "Right, this difficulty is beyond our capability in the first place. The professor must want us to identify and deduce the meanings of the words."

Having grasped the true purpose of the puzzle, the students exchanged glances. "Each house is responsible for one wall?"

Percy glanced at the Slytherin prefect, "Sounds good."

Twenty minutes passed...

The young wizards huddled together, looking frustrated. "This isn't working! It's too hard!"

"Let's cooperate, Jeffrey," Penelope said calmly, looking at the Slytherin prefect. "This is what the professor intended."

The Slytherin prefect grumbled something, too indistinct for others to hear, and everyone took it as agreement.

Students from all four houses sat beneath the nine-square puzzle, staring at the runic inscriptions and engaging in fervent discussions—

"Doesn't the first word look a bit like 'Peorth'?" a wizard suggested.

"I actually think the shape is more like 'Wyn,' see the angles at its edges?"

"Wait, I feel like I've seen similar runes somewhere before, very much like..." an excited Hufflepuff witch exclaimed, "Yes, in our fourth-year textbook, there's a mention of this rune in a reference book, and I just happened to have notes."

"Found it!" She quickly flipped through her notes, then raised her head, dramatically declaring in front of everyone's gaze, "This word is quite ancient, it's a representation of 'wisdom'."

Even though they had only decoded one eighth of the first nine-square grid, they couldn't help but feel excited.

Following similar lines of thought, they successively deciphered all eight runes—

Penelope counted on her fingers, "Wisdom, excellence unmatched, equivalent or similar, extreme and ultimate, exaggeration, richness or abundance, possession or restraint, gathering or assembly."

She looked up, "What do you all think?"

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