The guests here were obviously disgraced creatures, the hooded ones were the most common, and the one sitting at the bar even had his entire head wrapped in a dirty grey bandage, and Catherine would have thought she had seen a mummy drinking flaming whiskey if it weren't for the obvious intact hands of his hands.

The barkeeper didn't know how to hide in that corner, and seemed not afraid of being paid or bothering to greet customers, but Catherine sat at the bar for a long time before she saw him flash out of a back door.

It was a grumpy-looking old man, tall and thin, with a large pile of long gray hair and beard, and a pair of dirty eyes, behind which were a pair of bright, sharp blue eyes.

Catherine's fingers tapping on the bar stopped when she saw the visitor's eyes, and she stared at the bar owner with irrepressible surprise on her face.

"Are you the one who waits for a woman who changes her surname as quickly as she changes her clothes?" The barkeeper rushed to Catherine angrily.

"If you're talking about Mrs. Zabini, then yes." Catherine found that her voice did not need to be disguised at all, for it had become unusually bitter.

"Follow me!" The barkeeper left the counter and walked to a corner of the room, where Catherine honestly followed him up a crooked staircase, and at last he stopped in front of a room on the third floor, and pushed open a broken wooden door for her to enter.

"Thank you!" Catherine replied softly, her voice slightly more normal, and the barkeeper stared at her back for a moment, as if perceptively, until the jeweled Madame Zabini stood up, and he slammed the door shut, and then there was an unusually loud sound of going downstairs.

"You may be seated, Miss Catherine, and I am sure you should be able to understand that I cannot be trusted by so many people without absolute reputation." Mrs. Zabini extended her hand and invited Catherine to sit across from her. "In that case, what price are you prepared to pay for me to ruin the reputation I have built up with great difficulty?"

"I'm sure Brace must have misunderstood what I meant, how dare I let you, Madame, destroy your reputation!" Catherine smiled and pulled down her hood, and carefully sat down in the crumbling wooden chair opposite Mrs. Zabini.

"Then Catherine, what do you mean......" Lady Zabini sat down casually, apparently her equally tattered wooden chair, which had been reinforced by her magic.

"Madame, why don't you take a look at the gifts I've been preparing for a long time!" Catherine took out a beautiful crystal bottle and placed it on the table between the two of them with a missing leg, "If Madame is satisfied, we will continue the conversation." ”

"Looks like you're confident!" Mrs. Zabini smiled and picked up the crystal bottle. Slowly opening it, she smelled a familiar scent, "Uh-huh, you're so kind, you even prepared my favorite perfume, this thing-"

Mrs. Zabini suddenly stopped her admiration, and instead brought the crystal bottle to her nose and sniffed it vigorously a few times before she asked in surprise, "Did you add a potion to it?" ”

"Madame's sense of smell is so acute. I can't hide that little trick from you! Catherine smiled and complimented, but Madame Zabini did not accept the compliment.

As her favorite perfume, Madame Zabini naturally had an in-depth understanding of the process of making it, and also tried to add some potions with special purposes to it. But all of them ended in failure, either with a little more odor or troublesome side effects.

But this bottle made by Catherine Zuò obviously has a little aphrodisiac effect. Although the effect is very weak, even if you drink a whole bottle, it will only cause a ripple in people's hearts at most. But there was no superfluous smell, and as for whether there were any side effects, we would have to know later, but this was enough to move Mrs. Zabini.

Since she had done a lot of work, she naturally asked a potions master who was good at it, and the answer was that at least someone with an extremely deep knowledge of the relevant potion materials could successfully make a special perfume that met her requirements.

But the thought of Catherine, who was younger than her son, and who had only been studying potions with Snape for two years, was able to reach heights that ordinary potions masters could not match, and Lady Zabini immediately changed her name to her.

"I heard Brace say that Your Excellency is an introductory disciple of Mr. Snape, but I didn't expect Your Excellency to be so good at it." Madame Zabini chuckled and put the lid on the bottle back on the table, before she looked directly at Catherine and asked seriously, "I wonder what Your Excellency wants from me?" ”

"Madame should know that I am an orphan, and I am a rootless duckweed in the wizarding world, although I have also received the help of many elders, but my understanding of the entire wizarding world is still too one-sided and limited, so after learning that Madame is a well-informed person," Catherine stretched out her hand and pointed to the crystal bottle on the table, and the helplessness on her face suddenly turned into an unusually kind smile, "I want to use these gadgets I made to exchange words with Madame, so that the next time I see some VIPs, I can know how to please each other at the first time." ”

"Actually, Your Excellency doesn't need to be so polite at all!" Mrs. Zabini's somewhat uneasy heart suddenly relaxed, the expression on her face became more and more charming, and the hand that put away the crystal bottle couldn't help but draw a few tricks, "Even if I don't have this gift, how can I, as an elder, ignore Your Excellency's confusion!" ”

"Then thank you Madame for your kindness!" Catherine's smile became brighter and brighter, "If I come up with something similar in the future, I will definitely send it to Madame as soon as possible, but I will have to bother Madame to write some experiences so that I can improve it in time." ”

"Your Excellency is so thoughtful!" Mrs. Zabini opened the fan in her hand and said with a smile, "Why don't we go and sit down at Madame Pardiff's teahouse and have a chat?" ”

"No, there's still something going on at school, and I have to go back early." Catherine stood up and said apologetically.

"Let's go!" Lady Zabini also stood up immediately, and glanced around with a look of disgust, "The Dumbledore brothers are really weird, the older one wears strange clothes and eats sweets every day, and the younger one actually sits in such a dirty and shabby place as the boss. ”

"Madame's meaning is that Headmaster Dumbledore's brother is the owner of the Hog's Head Bar, right?" Catherine asked, with a look of surprise on her face.

"Yes! Aberforth. Dumbledore, Albus. Dumbledore's own brother, I don't know when he settled here, but I've heard that this place wasn't that bad before. Madame Zabini waited for Catherine to open the door before leaving the room after her, "Perhaps the people in his house are so eccentric." ”

"Why?" Catherine's hand pulling up the hood couldn't help but stop, and the person didn't happen to be in the way at the top of the stairs.

"I've heard from some old people, too," whispered Mrs. Zabini, covering her mouth with a fan, into Catherine's ear, "and it is said that the father of the two brothers was imprisoned in Azkaban for wounding three Muggle children with magic; It is said that their mother, ashamed to admit that her daughter was a squib, lied that she was sick and locked her up in the house for the rest of her life; It is said that their mother and sister died less than two months after each other, and then the brothers actually fought in front of their graves. ”

Catherine's mouth opened wider and wider, and her eyes widened and rounded.

"Of course, these are just rumors, after all, it's been a hundred years—" Lady Zabini propped her chin with a closed fan, "it must have been almost a hundred years ago, and our Headmaster Dumbledore had just graduated when their mother died. ”

"If it had been the year the headmaster had just graduated," Catherine had quickly mentally calculated, "it would have been 95 years ago, less than a century." ”

Mrs. Zabini couldn't help but stare at Catherine for a while, until the red-haired girl embarrassedly pulled up her hood to cover her face, and then she opened her fan and said with a smile: "Forget these things, it is a thankless task to be serious, at least no one will want to listen to it while our esteemed old headmaster is still alive." ”

So saying, Mrs. Zabini bypassed Catherine and went straight down the still crooked staircase.

Catherine looked at her back and pondered for a moment before following her downstairs.

The bar downstairs was still full of strange customers, the owner was still nowhere to be seen, Mrs. Zabini swaggered away, and no one stopped her, and when Catherine walked to the door of the bar in a low-key manner, no one came to collect money from her.

Seeing this, Catherine didn't bother to do much, just put a confusion charm on herself, walked briskly back to Hogsmeade Village Street, pulled down her hood and blended in with the shopping students, sneaked back to the cellar of Duke Honey's candy store, and slipped back to the medical wing before Snape noticed.

Unfortunately, Snape didn't come to check the hill, so Catherine could only regret that she hadn't spent more time in Hogsmeade, but when the Halloween dinner began, she happily went to the Great Hall with Madam Pomfrey.

"Why didn't you attend the afternoon hunting party?" As soon as Catherine arrived, Draco immediately approached her and asked, "Is it because the godfather doesn't approve of you going?" ”

"Maybe something will happen later!" Catherine frowned slightly and whispered back, "Inform everyone, be vigilant." ”

"The first grade is a troll, the second grade is a basilisk, if there is an abnormal event this year, then I really have to go to someone and ask, is it our level of students, and Halloween is the same?"

"Maybe Merlin will know." Catherine smiled and walked straight to her seat.

The auditorium was filled with hundreds of jack-o'-lanterns, as well as a swarm of bats fluttering and many flame-spitting orange streamers that floated lazily beneath the ceiling like brilliant water snakes.

But what is more strange is that the night sky presented from the ceiling, always from time to time with a flash of light, or violently shaken once or twice, obviously damaged by Percy, Ixissi, and Catherine's combined blow, no one has fixed it, but it does add a bit of festive horror to the Halloween dinner. (To be continued......)