Candles were lit up inside Hogwarts, but most of the students had gone home, and the castle was deserted.

The Astronomy Tower is on the west side of the castle, and Hoffa has some impressions of that place, as both the Ravenclaw Tower and the Astronomy Tower are Hogwarts towers, and there are several high-altitude corridors connected in between.

With the help of the magic staircase of the Ravenclaw Tower, Hoffa quickly raised his position.

As you approach the tower, the scene begins to change. The paintings on the walls disappeared and were replaced by rows of speculums and planetariums.

The planetarium rotated slowly from one passage to another, making a regular tick-tock sound, and everything was working in order.

Hoffa slowed his pace, carefully searching for possible locations for the teleportation array.

After searching for a while, Hoffa didn't find the teleportation array, but at the end of the corridor, he saw an oil painting, the only oil painting in the corridor.

It's a strange portrait, and in the other portraits, it's a person, or a group of people chatting and talking.

In this portrait, there are two people, a man and a woman, two adult wizards.

The man and woman are supposed to be lovers or couples, the man has gray hair, a high nose bridge, and a gentle smile on his face.

The witch had chestnut hair and a feminine appearance, and she leaned lazily into the witch's arms, and she seemed to see through Hoffa's stealth state at a glance.

"Merry Christmas, kids. She whispered.

Silence then returned, except for the ticking of planetariums.

Hoffa's brow furrowed, canceling the stealth, and he stared at the man and woman in the portrait.

He saw an inexplicable familiarity in the man in the painting, where he had seen this man.

Finally, a small detail made the hairs on the back of his head stand on end.

He wears a silver earring, the same as himself.

Many, many days ago, a casual word from Indor flashed through his mind.

'My last friend also wore earrings, his name was Nimon.......

Nemo.

When I searched the club in the club classroom, I also saw this man, so in this case, the woman next to him is his wife.

There is no doubt that there must be something behind this portrait.

It could be a secret passage to the top of the observatory, or a prison for dark wizards.

But through this portrait requires a password.

In the Hogwarts portrait, only the Ravenclaw common room can be passed through by solving puzzles. But all other portraits require a password to pass, and the password will be changed regularly.

Hoffa rubbed his head, he wasn't afraid to solve the puzzle.

But he didn't know what to do with a completely unknown password.

However, at this moment, there was the sound of soft footsteps in the passage behind him.

Hoffa quickly turned his head, and the whole person immediately disappeared into thin air and entered a stealth state.

A gray-robed figure slowly emerged from the darkness, slender and thin, with an eerie pale mask.

It was the long-standing target of Hoffa.

What's even more strange is that it walked through the speculum, but its shadow could not be reflected in the speculum.

Hoffa pressed against the wall, his fingers clenching his wand, his heart beating wildly, his palms covered with sweat.

The truth is in front of you, close at hand, but there is a strong sense of unreality in the other party, and Hoffa even feels that he is not seeing a person.

"Order. The masked man stood in front of the portrait and said the password without hesitation.

The man in the portrait smiled slightly.

"Merry Christmas. ”

With that, he slowly slid away, leaking out the corridor hidden behind the portrait.

The masked man burrowed into the portrait, and the portrait closed again.

Nimon, order?

Hoffa shook his head, forcibly calming his beating heart.

He vaguely felt something in his heart, but he was not sure.

Hoffa gritted his teeth and lifted his phantom state.

"Order. He also said to the portrait.

The portrait slowly opens.

Without saying a word, Hoffa got into the corridor, and he had to figure out the reason.

In front of him was a stone spiral staircase, and Hoffa followed the staircase all the way up.

Despite the inner doubts, anxiety, incomprehension. But when Hoffa walked into the room, he was surprised.

He thought it was leading to the top of the Astronomical Tower, or a prison cell for a prisoner, but he didn't expect it to be an office.

Compared to the office of Slughorn, who had just been opulent, this office can only be described as shabby.

It was a ring-shaped room, with no ornaments in it, just an ordinary wooden table, a bookshelf, a revolving escalator, and a few books on the shelves. There are also rows of oil paintings on the walls.

There is nothing else in the office but these things.

If it weren't for the neatly stacked papers on his desk, Hoffa would have almost thought that the office had been ransacked by thieves.

He slowly looked at the oil painting on the wall.

The paintings are arranged chronologically, and each one is marked with a time.

The first painting shows a boy riding on a broomstick. He looks like Adebe Goshak by seven or eight points.

He has more than a dozen oil paintings, from school, to graduation, to marriage.

The boy became a young man, and the oil painting became a moving old-fashioned black and white photograph.

In the next row, there is an extra person next to the young man in the photo, who is the woman on the oil painting at the entrance door.

Hoffa stopped in front of the last photograph of the disappearing man and woman.

Nimon Goshak

（1901---1928）

Alice Goshawk

（1903---1928）

Hoffa looked up palely.

The identity of the owner of this office is very clear, it is none other than the director of Ravenclaw House, Adebe Goshak, and the elf's last partner turned out to be the dean's son.

The school placed the teleportation array in the dean's office.

So the masked man.......

At this moment, above the spiral staircase, there was a crisp sound like a broken iron chain.

Hoffa reacted.

Not good, Miranda!

He rushed up the spiral staircase in three steps, and found that the iron door leading to the outside of the house had now been broken by a spell, and two steel chains were scattered on the ground.

Hoffa slammed the door and rushed out.

In front of him is a huge open-air platform with more than a dozen thick stone pillars for observing the stars.

Under the icy night sky, countless blue runes shone dimly in the moonlight.

And the guy with the mask was standing in the middle of the platform at the moment.

In the sky, black-green swirls were dense, and there were strange flashes of light in the middle from time to time.

The Masked Man raised his wand in the air, the tip of which shone with a blinding green glow.

The flow of magic in the air was almost suffocating to Hoffa, a sensation he had only experienced once, outside Ollivander's wand shop, and he had felt a similar magic on Tom Riddle's body. But this time is even more terrifying than the last.

Hoffa finished his stealth, and he jerked up his wand. Yelled, "Miranda, stop!"

Hearing the shout, the light on the Masked Man's wand faded out, and it slowly turned around, the strange pale mask on its face as sarcastic as ever.

"Who are you looking for?"

The other party asked lightly.

"I'm looking for you!"

Hoffa exclaimed, "Miranda, do you know what you're doing?"

"You've mistaken someone. ”

The masked man tilted his head and interrupted Hoffa.

When you hear that Charles Crouch has left the team, the first thing that comes to mind is to go to the snow to check out the teleportation array. When you hear from Albert that Hogwarts is in the Teleportation Circle in the Astronomy Tower, you leave the banquet immediately. ”

Hoffa suppressed the anger in his chest:

"Miranda, did you let the Dark Wizard kill me?"

"It's me, but you're still mistaken for someone. ”

With that, the masked man waved his wand like lightning.

A flash of purple light came in an instant, and it didn't say a word, but went straight to it.

Hoffa, who had been vigilant, immediately rolled on the spot.

"Disler Falcon!"

Hoffa entered the phantom state and ran wildly towards the masked man.

Phantom Spell...... The masked man squinted.

"Pointless. ”

It waved its wand again at great speed.

"Blazing scorched earth!"

Large flames appeared on the ground, and they spewed high into the air, forming walls of orange-red fire.

The temperature in the air rises rapidly, and the ice on the roof dissolves rapidly.

Hoffa had never seen such a spell before, so he could only quickly jump onto the stone pillar, leap over the wall of fire in the air, and then raise his hand and slam the stun spell.

"Faint!"

The other side didn't move, and raised his wand.

"Forbidden Demon Shield!"

The red light of the Unconscious Spell struck an invisible ripple and vanished.

Hoffa's idea of stealthily stealing chickens was shattered.

The masked man stood behind the transparent shield and smiled, "Do you only know the spells in the textbook? ”

The other party was trickier than he imagined, Hoffa didn't give up, he stretched out his palm in the wild run, and the magic power quickly poured into the wand, and his wand turned into a huge broadsword in an instant.

He slashed at the other with his great sword. ”

The Masked Man took a step back.

"Transfiguration, interesting, Triple Iron Guard. ”

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

With three muffled sounds, three ghost knights in ice-blue steel armor fell from the sky and slammed into the ground of the observatory.

Drink!

Then they roared, and they closed their shields, firmly protecting the masked man in all directions.

Hoffa dragged his broadsword and smashed it on the armor.

Rumble!

Swords and shields intersected, and a long spark appeared.

This shock, Hoffa's arm was numb, and he almost vomited blood.

The defense of those three ghost iron armors is not covered at first glance, this is not an ordinary iron armor spell at all.

"It's really Dumbledore's protégé, something. ”

The masked man's indifferent voice came from within the armor.

"Shut up!"

Hoffa continued to retreat, increasing the input of mana, and the giant sword changed rapidly in his hand, turning into a heavy giant hammer.

Then, with three steps in a row, he rushed forward again, picked up the hammer, and slammed it into the armor with a thud.

Boom!

There was a loud thunderous bang.

One of the ironclad knights was smashed and flew out.

The masked man behind the armor didn't expect such a thing at all, and it took a step back very decisively, and another armored knight quickly stepped forward to fill the gap.

But still a step too slow, Hoffa withdrew his wand and began the ghost walk. Rushing through the gap in three steps and two steps, he grabbed its cold wrist and pulled its wand off with a twist and a twist.

Then Hoffa swung his right hand rapidly, and the wand instantly turned into metal, wrapping around his right arm, turning into a huge silver lion-head fist.

Rumble!!

The lion struck the masked man in the jaw with a hook in the head.

Hoffa was afraid that the other party was Miranda, so he only used seventy percent of his strength this time.

But even then, it was like a piece of paper, and the mask shattered. The whole person flew upside down, flipped three or four times in the sky, smashed to the ground, and rolled a few times. The neck is bent off.

The situation was reversed, and at the cost of half the mana, Hoffa seized the opponent's weapon and knocked it down on the spot.

Hofa's eyes widened, and he quickly backed away, distancing himself from the other party. He didn't expect the other party to be so vulnerable and fall so exaggeratedly.

However, he was also uncomfortable, and the continuous running made him physically exhausted.

In the midst of the Christmas Eve snowstorm, the observatory fell into a state of silence.

After a long time, Hoffa saw the other party collapse to the ground, motionless, thinking that he had crippled it.

"Miranda!?"

He frowned and walked slowly closer with a sideways step.

However, the other party was not as weak as it thought, it propped up its arms, staggered up from the ground, and turned to look at Hoffa.

"Rice...... I'm cao!"

Hoffa was startled the moment he saw it.

Beneath the mask, it was a completely unfamiliar face, or rather, not a face at all.

That face has no facial features, only a mouth, and it is a bit similar to the monsters I saw in Helheim in the underworld!!

Hoffa looked at the monster in front of him dumbfounded, feeling like he was crazy.

"You....... Who the is it?" Hoffa cried out in shock.

The Facelings got to their feet.

"Guess. ”