After that, Harry had been trying to get more clues out of Hagrid's mouth with side knocks, but the latter seemed to have (finally) learned his lesson. Every time he saw his figure near the hut from a distance, he hurriedly pretended to be in a hurry and was about to go home, ran away, fled home as fast as he could, and then smashed the door to death.

Harry had reason to believe that for someone like Hagrid who couldn't hide a secret in his heart, as long as he didn't give up, he would be able to pry something out of his mouth sooner or later. So far, however, no substantial progress has been made on this plan.

Now, the only clue is the name Nicol Lemay.

Rarely, Hermione was not able to recite the person's age, origin, life deeds, and major accomplishments the moment she heard the name, which seemed to make her very unhappy. For half a month, she spent almost all of her time in the library except for class, trying to find out the mysterious Mr. Lemay.

For some reason, Harry always felt that he had an extremely thin but real impression of the name Nicol Lemay, but he couldn't imagine how he had covered Hermione's blind spots.

……

As the Christmas holidays approach, Hogwarts has its first heavy snowfall of the year. With the snow in the courtyard several feet deep and the lake covered in a thick layer of ice, shivering students chose to stay by the fireplace in the common room, unable to worry about their friendly mermaid neighbors running out of oxygen in the weather.

The sudden heavy snowfall had left Neil a little scrambling, and many of the golden lanterns that had been planted last month and were intended to be harvested before Christmas had withered. I thought that the fertile soil in the Forbidden Forest would be enough for them to grow before the real cold arrived, but unfortunately it fell short.

If the three elders saw this scene, they might brush their beards and comment that it was the will of heaven...... Fuck providence, if this thing does exist, the first thing to do is to take you out of the gossip furnace and throw you to the bottom of the eighteenth layer of hell.

If there is anything more heart-wrenching than a loss, it is to be forced to continue to do unprofitable work after just experiencing a loss.

Neil glanced listlessly up at the steps listed on the blackboard before proceeding to pour powder from the liontail vertebrae onto one end of the scale.

The Potions classroom on the ground floor was one of the hottest rooms in the entire castle, not to mention that Snape had disabled all warmth under the pretext of keeping the herbs fresh, so that he could admire the students who were constantly shivering.

Shaking hands often lead to mistakes, which in turn lead to more excuses for deducting points – and for Snape, that's the best Christmas present. The only one who could affect his mood at this wonderful time was Neil Wan.

It's not that his heart has been twisted to the point that he can't see even a student play normally under the cold, and he will feel uneasy if he deducts even one less point. What really made him feel uncomfortable was the gloomy, trance-like and somewhat condemning gaze that the other party cast from time to time.

Snape didn't want to waste any energy trying to remember when he had something to do with the kid again, and he vaguely guessed that it might have something to do with the thing in the restricted area, but he didn't have any intention of confirming it - after all, what could he do if he knew about it? We are just a non-interference relationship based on the premise of common interests in the general direction, so do we need to share information as if we were true allies? If you feel betrayed, it is just wishful thinking and credulity in the retribution that others have incurred.

Snape thought with a malicious pleasure.

But he was mistaken, and Neil didn't hold a grudge against his deception and lies...... Or rather, we have passed the stage of holding grudges. At a terrible cost, Hagrid finally learned his lesson, at least for a short time, without worrying about him revealing more secrets. But the water is hard to recover, judging from the frequency of Hermione coming and going in and out of the library in the past half a month, it is only a matter of time before they find Nicol Lemay.

The best Neil could think of in order to delay this progress as much as possible was to deliberately spread false rumors about Professor Snape to distract Harry and try to shift the focus of their actions to investigating Snape's suspicious actions.

This is the "courtesy exchange" that Oriental people pay attention to.

—and the thought of Snape's own expression when he found out about it made it seem as if all of a sudden it had become insignificant. But in order not to expose the plan too soon, Neil still has to pretend that he is at a loss, and with the loss caused by the sudden cold weather, it is not challenging to put on a melancholy face.

……

To put it simply, this plan ended up being only halfway through, because the day after the snow, the school's Christmas break began. Hermione, the only one of the three to keep her fighting spirit and scavenging through the library, decided to go home for Christmas with her family, leaving the two unmotivated boys at school, and the investigation was severely slowed down.

Neil was relieved that important clues hadn't been revealed too quickly, but it was less gratifying that Snape had escaped. On the day of the holiday, as he sat at the sparsely populated breakfast table and pondered how to adjust his plans, he caught a glimpse of Harry and Ron.

"Hey, Neil! Do you stay on school for Christmas too? ”

The school was deserted during the holidays, and at breakfast time, the four tables in the auditorium seemed empty, and even if you sat in front of the tables in other colleges, there was no longer any psychological burden. Neil nodded, reaching out to invite the two to sit down.

"Kunlun Mountain is too far away, Mr. Potter, it's really not cost-effective to go back for these few days' vacation." He shrugged his shoulders and said, "And add to that the quarantine time when you come back - your Ministry of Magic is scary to take responsibility for this matter alone, you know?" They seem to be very obsessed with the belief that anyone who comes from abroad must be infected with some deadly plague. ”

Ron laughed, as if mistaken for a joke.

"At the end of the day, we don't have a tradition of celebrating Christmas there...... Well, if they're willing to take a vacation for that, I don't really have a problem with that. But the elders may feel that this is contrary to the ancestral system. Neil didn't explain, pretending not to notice, and continued, "What about the two of you?" Mr. Porter...... Ah, yes, with all due respect, you probably wouldn't want to go back. Mr. Weasley, why are you? ”

"Mom and Dad went to visit Charlie in Romania." Ron replied, "I, Fred, and George will all have to stay at school for the holidays this year. Malfoy was going to make a joke about us yesterday, but the silver snake around his neck suddenly jumped up and bit him, and he deserved it—and I even got your Christmas present, so don't forget mine, okay? ”

"I will." Neil said with a smile, a flash of intoxication in his eyes, "Christmas present!" "The Gift of the Magi" is such a good story, I sometimes wish I could make a bottle of hair growth potion and send it to the lady, but unfortunately the silver bracelet is so powerless...... Wait, is that story about Christmas or Thanksgiving? No, no, it should be Christmas ......"

The two of them had become accustomed to his dream-like gibberish, and when they saw that he was immersed in his own world, they sat down to eat breakfast.

Fifteen minutes later, Ron, who had swallowed the last slice of bacon, wiped his mouth contentedly: "We're going back to the dorm to play wizarding chess - let's do it together?" ”

"I'm grateful for your invitation, but ......," Neil instinctively tried to push off, but a brilliant idea suddenly caught him, "Wait, I mean, I'm happy to go along—but until then, let's go around and eat and eat, and there's no truth to the nonsense that sound digestion is the backbone of England...... In the meantime, can you both tell me how the investigation is going? ”