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BFH# Chapter 32: Hogsmeade and Shrieking Shack
🕑 Added 2024-12-27 02:19:52 +0000 UTCOn the other side, Victor quickly put Quirrell out of his mind—mainly because Quirrell had nothing valuable enough to offer. At this point, Victor wasn’t inclined to negotiate and certainly wasn’t willing to waste his time persuading someone like Quirrell.
After a quick cost-benefit analysis, Victor decisively abandoned him.
Stepping off the carriage, Victor arrived at Hogsmeade Village.
Professor McGonagall was still waiting at the station for the remaining students to arrive. It would be a while before she would take everyone to the Three Broomsticks for drinks. To kill some time, Victor decided to wander around Hogsmeade with the chattering students surrounding him.
Hogsmeade's atmosphere was vastly different from Diagon Alley’s.
Being close to Hogwarts, this wizarding village was filled with shops specifically designed to attract students: Honeydukes was brimming with an assortment of candies and juices, Zonko's Joke Shop sold all kinds of prank items, and along the street were the Owl Post and a boutique offering fashionable cloaks.
At the moment, every store was packed with excited students gleefully spending their Galleons.
As Victor walked along, he could hear the students' animated conversations:
“Honeydukes, Zonko's Joke Shop, and the Three Broomsticks… I want to visit all of them!”
“But I heard the stuff sold at Zonko’s is pretty useless—just flashy and novel.”
“Useless? Have you forgotten about Fred and George? I just saw them head in there. Want to bet how many new dung bombs they’ll be throwing into the corridors next week?”
It wasn’t hard to imagine the effect of a dung bomb, given its name.
As the students walked further away, their chatter fading into the distance, Victor fell silent. He began pondering whether he should perform a divination next week before leaving the castle—to avoid accidentally encountering a dung bomb.
Hogsmeade wasn’t just a shopping destination for students and professors; it was also a supply hub for troublemakers!
If he had his way, Fred and George Weasley’s school robes would have mandatory embroidery on the back:
“This student is prohibited from purchasing dung bombs!”
Victor immediately decided to locate Fred and George, at least to stop them from buying dung bombs and turning the school into a cesspit—something that wasn’t entirely unprecedented. He’d heard Professor McGonagall mention such an incident before.
However, Victor didn’t find the Weasley twins near Zonko's Joke Shop. Walking further along the street, he instead spotted an unusual building.
It was a small house on the edge of Hogsmeade, its yard overgrown with weeds, and the windows boarded up with wooden planks. The place looked peculiar and dilapidated.
But the strangest thing was the furtive figure skulking around the building.
As Victor approached, the figure crouched by a drafty gap in the wooden boards, not turning his head but shouting earnestly into the house:
“...Have you found it yet? Hurry up, or we’ll miss our trip to Honeydukes!”
“What are you doing?”
A deep voice sounded from behind, startling the figure so much he almost jumped. Turning stiffly, he revealed a familiar face—Lee Jordan.
Lee stammered as he spoke:
“P-Professor?!”
“Whew... It’s just the professor. You scared me!”
Victor raised an eyebrow. “What are you afraid of?”
“...Nothing, Professor. It’s just that this is the Shrieking Shack, Hogsmeade’s famous haunted house,” Lee explained.
“They say you can hear a banshee’s screams here at midnight. For a moment, I thought you might really be a ghost.”
Who wouldn’t be scared? Investigating a haunted house and suddenly hearing, “What are you looking at?” from behind felt like something straight out of a horror story!
Especially when the speaker was Professor Victor—with his demeanor, it wouldn’t be surprising if someone wrote an entire horror story about him.
But as his panic subsided, Lee suddenly remembered something equally important.
Wait, wasn’t he here to keep watch for the Weasleys?!
By this time, Victor had already moved to the spot where Lee had been standing.
It didn’t take much effort for Victor to find a gap in the wooden boards leading into the Shrieking Shack. Around the gap, the wood was unevenly broken, as if clawed apart by some wild creature.
Through the dark interior, Victor could make out two figures crawling around on the floor, searching.
It was unmistakably Fred and George.
Victor: "..."
The twins were so focused they hadn’t even noticed the earlier conversation outside. Without looking back, one of them shouted:
“Just wait a bit longer, Lee! We haven’t found the secret passage yet! The Marauder’s Map clearly says it’s here... Ow! Cough, cough, this dust is terrible...”
Lee Jordan’s face turned desperate. He tried to explain weakly, “Professor, let me explain! They’re actually—”
But Victor wasn’t interested. He waved a hand dismissively.
He took a deliberate step toward the wall.
As he stepped, silver light flickered over his black leather boots, forming a web of strange patterns that glowed with magical energy.
Before Lee could get a good look at the intricate designs, Victor suddenly vanished into thin air, dissolving into a cascade of silver light!
All that remained was a patch of flattened grass, proof someone had been standing there moments ago.
“Huh?”
Lee Jordan was stunned.
Inside the Shrieking Shack, Fred and George were still rummaging through the dusty, dilapidated room, making an even bigger mess of the already ruined furniture.
“This doesn’t make sense...” Fred muttered as he searched. “The Marauder’s Map clearly shows there’s a passage to Hogwarts here. Why can’t we find it?”
“Maybe we should ask the map?” George suggested.
“No way. If we need the map to tell us where the passage entrance is, what’s the point of exploring?”
They continued their search.
The Shrieking Shack was chaotic and filthy, clearly abandoned for at least a decade. The wallpaper on the walls was peeling, crumbling at the slightest touch, and every movement sent dust cascading through the air.
Their rummaging naturally stirred up more dust, causing them to cough uncontrollably.
As they worked, silver sparks suddenly appeared on the floor in front of them, floating in midair and shimmering brightly for a moment before coalescing into the outline of a person.
Victor materialized there.
Click.
The light sound of his boot hitting the floor broke the silence. The silver patterns on his boots gleamed for an instant before fading back into darkness.
Fred and George froze, staring at the suddenly appeared Victor. They glanced at him, then at the untouched gap in the boards.
“Professor?”
“How are you here? How did you get in?”
Victor glanced disdainfully at the dusty surroundings. Pulling out his wand from his pocket, he murmured:
“Scourgify.”
Much of the room’s dust vanished instantly.
After finishing the spell, he turned to the stunned Weasley twins, who were still reeling from the large-scale cleaning charm, and countered their questions with one of his own:
“What do you think?”
