Chapter 300 — The Bizarre Sorting, Snape's Gift
Ravenclaw?
A Jia Mingyuan who dared to use Fiendfyre in front of everyone to kill the resident ghosts—shouldn't he belong in Gryffindor?
Besides, Neville Longbottom, no matter how you looked at him, seemed dull and foolish—how could he possibly be associated with "clever and quick-witted"?
Upon hearing this sorting result, whether it was Harry, Hermione, or Ma Xiuyuan, all wore expressions that suggested they had expected it all along.
Back in the Famine Micro-World, the four survivors had constantly hypnotized themselves, instilling in one another a single survival principle...
Knowledge above all.
Ma Xiuyuan's Aguamenti had kept them from dying of thirst in the first three days.
Hermione's Fiendfyre had turned them from prey into hunters, lifting them out of their hunger predicament.
Neville had nearly run himself to death trying to map the Famine Micro-World.
Harry had paid the price in blood countless times to figure out the medicinal properties and toxicology of various plants.
In the hearts of the four survivors, knowledge was the most important thing.
Fearless courage?
Noble bloodline?
The creeds upheld and practiced by Gryffindor and Slytherin seemed, to the four of them, laughably childish!
Courage was nothing but recklessness beautified and repackaged.
Pure blood was merely an excuse for the incompetent to live off the blessings of their ancestors.
Only the essence of wisdom was the true meaning of life and all its significance.
"Harry Potter."
The Sorting Hat was pressed onto Harry's head.
It seemed a little nervous.
From within Harry's body, the Sorting Hat sensed pure dark magic imbued with personal traits.
Purer than a Death Eater's, colder and more merciless.
This had nothing to do with justice or evil.
Before it stood a seeker of knowledge devoid of compassion.
He cared only for his three companions.
If he could trade the lives of other humans for sufficient knowledge, he would not hesitate to kill the vast majority of people on Earth.
"Slytherin? Ravenclaw?"
The Sorting Hat was somewhat conflicted, and said in a questioning tone: "Definitely not Gryffindor..."
"Do you despise 'the brave'?"
"Then..."
"Where do you want to go?"
In the Sorting Hat's view, this fellow Harry Potter was undoubtedly the next Dark Lord in the making.
Tom Marvolo Riddle of years past, the future Dark Lord, had not made the Hat shudder with cold fear when he first entered Hogwarts the way Harry Potter did.
"Ravenclaw, of course."
Harry wiped the fine beads of sweat from his cheek, his emerald eyes glinting with a frost-like eerie light.
He removed the Sorting Hat from his head, the corner of his mouth curling slightly upward into a pale, cold smile: "Or... do you have any objections?"
"No!"
The Sorting Hat immediately announced Harry Potter's house: "Ravenclaw!"
This outcome was clearly not what Dumbledore had wanted to see.
He had assumed that Harry, who inherited the bloodlines of James Potter and Lily Evans, should have been sorted into Gryffindor!
Still, Ravenclaw was an acceptable result.
So long as Harry had not entered Slytherin or Hufflepuff, it was fine.
Although as a headmaster, Albus Dumbledore felt he should not harbor prejudice.
Deep in his heart, however, he had to admit that he had always regarded Slytherin as a warm bed and nest for dark wizards, and Hufflepuff as a gathering place for the mediocre.
The so-called mediocre—in other words, good-for-nothings.
As everyone knew, the Hufflepuff house was best at culinary charms; they had no distinguishing features whatsoever.
The Sorting had barely begun, and already two major events had occurred.
The "Savior" Harry Potter and the "Fiendfyre Controller" Neville Longbottom both entered Ravenclaw!
That's right...
On his very first day at Hogwarts, Neville had earned himself a title.
The shirleyfirespell incantation—even among seventh-year graduates, few could master it proficiently.
Neville had won himself a nickname through his own strength.
As Head of Ravenclaw, Charms Professor Filius Flitwick's facial muscles began to twitch.
He looked as though he were laughing, yet also as though he were crying.
Subsequently, the successive arrivals of Hermione Granger and Draco Ma Xiuyuan improved Professor Flitwick's expression somewhat.
Although after today, he would have to deal with the interrogation of Lucius Ma Xiuyuan, that platinum-blond great nobleman, but...
To hell with it!
The more debts, the less they weigh.
No matter how troublesome Lucius was, he was merely a former—suspected—Death Eater.
Could he compare to a prospective supreme dark wizard who had recklessly cast Fiendfyre the moment he entered school, and a savior who had threatened the Sorting Hat in front of everyone?
Life is like rape—if you can't fight back, you might as well enjoy it.
After the four survivors entered Ravenclaw as they wished, the Sorting Ceremony encountered no further mishaps.
The sumptuous start-of-term feast officially began!
Roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops, ginger with mutton, stinky tofu, herring sauce, Guanyin clay, sausages, steak...
Mustard-soaked potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potato chips, Yorkshire pudding, pea shoots, carrots, gravy, ketchup, mint hard candy...
All sorts of bizarre foods appeared on the gold and silver platters.
Harry, Hermione, Ma Xiuyuan, and Neville, like starving ghosts reincarnated, swept through the food like a whirlwind, clearing out a large swath of the relatively normal dishes on the table in the span of a few breaths.
These four oddballs became the stars of the banquet in the blink of an eye.
No one dared to mock them for their poor table manners.
The twenty resident ghosts who had met tragic deaths had left them a painful lesson with their "lives."
The Gryffindor students stared at them provocatively.
The Slytherin students looked down on them arrogantly.
The Hufflepuff students gazed up at them with envy.
Ravenclaw's own people?
They wanted to join the quartet but dared not approach.
Only a new student named "Luna Lovegood" and a second-year named "Cho Chang" managed to strike up a conversation with the four survivors.
The students enjoyed the banquet, and so did the professors.
Wang Xu had originally been the one being entertained.
Yet he immediately turned the tables and took charge of the conversation.
"Professor Severus Snape, I've brought you a gift."
Snape, the Potions professor.
He was a thin man with a sinister temperament.
He had straight, shoulder-length black hair, sallow skin, and a hooked nose.
He was gloomy, stern, cold, caustic, unfathomable—almost the textbook definition of a villain.
No one had expected Wang Xu to initiate a conversation with Snape.
Snape opened his mouth, as if about to decline his kindness.
But Snape's words were stuck in his throat; he could not utter a single syllable.
A crimson translucent crystal bottle appeared before him.
Inside were some "thin threads" and a coconut-sized heart.
Snape's breathing grew rapid.
He narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, fixing Wang Xu with a searching look, as though he meant to make certain the other was merely joking.
After a long pause, Snape spoke again, his voice low and lingering: "The heart and nerves of a Min-nan Blastfire Dragon..."
"I do not understand. A creature that has been extinct in the East for tens of thousands of years—where on earth did you get it? They..."
"Look remarkably fresh."
With this material in hand, he could push his own mastery of potion-craft a step further.
Many a formula that had until now existed only in fantasy could at last be brewed.
Perhaps, with this specimen as his opportunity, he could truly finish Voldemort off and avenge Lily Evans once and for all.