Chapter 695

Felix’s vision suddenly blurred into a trance for a moment as he whispered.

“Jane?”

Hermione froze instantly, feeling a wave of giddiness. She took a step back and tried her best to keep her tone calm, “Professor, I’m Hermione, Hermione Granger.”

“I just called your middle name, isn’t it-”

“Jane!” Hermione blurted out. She smoothed her hair, and her thoughts gradually became clear, “I once heard from someone working at the Ministry of Magic that Umbridge’s middle name is also Jane, and I particularly hated her, so I decided to change it.” She re-emphasised, “Well, for now, I’m Hermione Jane Granger.”

“Oh, uh, that’s cool.”

A sudden, strange emotion welled up inside Felix, the emptiness he once felt after knowing that a certain friend he had kept in touch with for so long would disappear forever since he found out the truth and identity of that friend, filled up by that emotion. He was just about to speak when Sirius, Bones, Dedalus Diggle, the shorter Professor Flitwick, and Sprout, as well as Neville, Harry, Ron, and Seamus, came around.

Sirius threw his arms around Felix’s neck.

“You scared everyone, mate! We almost thought you wouldn’t make it back.” He grinned widely, “Come on, tell us what you saw on the moon. The guys couldn’t wait in vain.”

“Yeah, Professor.” Some students cheered.

Felix glanced at Hermione, who had been squeezed to the back, and he held out his hand and waved it in front of the crowd’s eyes, and the moon soil and two containers appeared out of thin air. With another casual wave of his hand, a huge floating and stretching blue tumbleweed-like flame appeared above his head, allowing the crowd to see what he wielded.

“This?” Ms. Bones said, holding her breath with doubt.

“I brought it back from the moon.” Felix said, and the crowd was quiet for a moment, seemingly trying to understand the meaning of the words, followed by a sudden loud cheer and enthusiastic applause, the noise drew a steady stream of students who had remained in the castle, and they flooded into the courtyard …

Harry clapped along with them, he felt very excited, it turned out to be true, there were really traces of wizard activity on the moon, Neville’s eyes lit up with excitement, “That’s amazing! I want to go to the moon too.”

He was among the many who thought like this. Harry had the same thought, and he even regretted a little that he had failed his O.W.Ls exam in astronomy. The boring star charts and tongue-twisting names of celestial bodies suddenly became vivid and graphic, and they were entrenched by the deep, cold starry sky, and it started to look fascinating.

After the Moon, what will be Professor Hap’s next target?

Mars?

Titan?

Jupiter?

Harry looked around for Hermione to get her opinion, failing to spot her. He turned his head to look behind him and found Luna who handed Hermione a light blue handkerchief with a calm expression, Hermione took it and Luna stroked her back casually like she was tending to a sick little animal. Harry suddenly understood something.

Harry looked back at Professor Hap who was receiving congratulations from the crowd, currently, it is nighttime and the blue tumbleweed flames illuminated the Professor’s face very clearly and brightly, the corners of the Professor’s mouth curled up slightly with a light smile, just as he usually did when giving lessons to his students, a smile Harry had seen countless times in Dumbledore’s Pensieve.

On the contrary, all the people around the professor could only see one side of his body because they were standing around the professor.

“He’s so dazzling, isn’t he?” Luna asked dreamily.

Hermione didn’t say anything and simply handed the handkerchief back to her. So Luna stood quietly next to Hermione, and together they looked at Felix who was surrounded by people, “He looks so calm and brilliant, that’s what the wizarding world needs at the moment.” With that, she hummed softly in a sing-song manner, “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”

“What are you trying to say?” Hermione asked stiffly.

“You look a little upset,” Luna said bluntly, “I think you need some comfort or something.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, she should have expected this, Luna’s reaction wasn’t quite like the average person’s, and she sincerely hoped that Luna’s article wouldn’t infect too many people. But she was suddenly feeling much better, and she asked, somewhat curiously, “Luna, have you never felt upset?”

“Yes, I have.” Luna said.

Hermione pricked up her ears to listen, but after ten seconds or so there was still no follow-up, and she blinked, realising that in Luna’s perception, the question had already been answered. “I mean, how do you work through life’s troubles?” Hermione asked patiently, and she gave her own solution, “I usually look for answers from books, but right now I don’t think it would work.”

“Think about happy things.” Luna said shaking her head, the little Dirigible Plum earrings dangling from her ears almost hurling at Hermione, “You can only do one thing at a time, when your mind is occupied with other things, your worries won’t come to bother you. I like to draw, and lately, I’ve got hooked on writing.” She nodded affirmatively after saying that.

“But the problem still isn’t solved!” Hermione exclaimed. She actually wanted to retort to Luna that her greatest hobby is to laze around alone, completely immersed in her own little world, but she had a feeling ahead of time that if she said that the conversation might immediately go off track and divert to some creature that existed only in Luna’s fantasies.

She didn’t want to spend the rest of the day arguing about whether bubble snot monsters and black leopard army existed, Hermione glanced at Felix, and oh yes, the moon frog! She bet Luna would definitely be looking for an opportunity to ask about it.

Luna’s light-coloured eyes gazed at her unblinkingly, her large, bulging eyes dripping with a calm craziness. “It’ll always work out in the end, though it might not happen in a way we’d expect-”

“Like what?” Hermione raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do after I graduate,” Luna said with a straight face, “a normal job might not be quite suitable for me -”

Hermione covered her mouth and laughed lightly, it became difficult for her to imagine Luna’s future job, compared to her, Fred and George were both considered mature, stable, and in line.

“So you’ve found it now?”

“I think I’m going to be a Magizoologist, running around the world.” Luna said calmly, “I could spend my free time searching for undiscovered magical creatures in the local area, drawing them and documenting their discovery in writing. I already have my first target.”

“Where is it?” Hermione asked, in surprise.

“The North Pole.” Luna said perkily, “Felix told me that there is a miraculous ferret-like magical creature there that likes to eat hot dogs.”

“That can’t be right!” Hermione said flatly, “How could there be magical creatures that like to eat human food?”

“Nothing is impossible.” Luna asked unexpectedly and rhetorically, “Well, Valen could right?”

“That’s different, Valen was raised by the Professor.” Hermione said subconsciously, with a sudden urge to immediately drag the Professor over and question him about what exactly he had said to Luna.

Luna froze and said vaguely, “I’ll prove it to you.” Then she became dazed as if wondering what kind of hot dog to prepare, and then she snapped out of it and asked, “What about you?”

“I – what?”

“I heard you want to be Minister of Magic.”

“Oh, oh, yeah.”

“I hope you succeed.” Luna said seriously, and she seemed to think of something and asked, “You don’t like goblin pies, do you?”

“Luna,” Hermione said softly, “there’s just no such food.”

The conversation plunged back into an awkward silence. Hermione decided to change the subject before Luna brought up Auror’s tooth-rotting conspiracy; perhaps she could make some small chat about that issue? Hermione considered herself to be something akin to an expert on gum disease, but she refrained from the tempting idea.

“Haven’t you ever thought about joining the Ministry of Magic? To work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? If Ms. Bones hadn’t started a new department, I’d have chosen it after graduation – and you would be able to see a lot of old friends, Harry, Ron, Neville … though they would be in different departments.”

“I am already friends with them.” Luna said.

Hermione knew that Luna would only talk to people on topics that interested her, and when she wasn’t interested she would get lost in her own world, appearing to be in a trance from the outside, or just like now, the conversation went off somewhere else – Hermione gave up on convincing Luna and stared at her as she excitedly snapped her fingers and named a string of club members. “… and Firenze, Hagrid, Grawp, Cloudber, Owo-”

“Who’s Owo?” Hermione asked reflexively, “I know the others, I’m really surprised you and Grawp have met too, is it through Hagrid? And Cloudbur, I’ve seen him when I went to the school kitchen, he likes to work on recipes.” She said under her breath like she was answering a question in class.

Luna waited for her to finish before saying, “Owo is a Thestral, Hagrid calls him Uwu.”

Hermione mused for a while, “That seems to be the case, Hagrid mentioned it in class … Oh yeah, did you find the king of the Thestral?”

“Found it.” Luna said.

This was a really strange feeling. Hermione never thought she’d open up to talk to Luna one day (she felt inwardly that all the topics Luna focused on were too fictional), but when it did happen, she found it wasn’t so bad, like whispering to a Halloween pumpkin.

Luna left and wandered off around the corner of the yard, at which point the crowd gradually dispersed, and Professor Hap handed Ms. Bones the Moon Soil and the two containers. “I’ll take them to the Gringotts for identification first, as it happens Bill came to me during the day about the Pan-Magical Alliance, goblins are being ambiguous.” She shook her head.

The Pan-Magical Alliance?

Hermione’s eyes lit up. She chased after Ms. Bones in the direction she had left.

Felix stopped her cautiously and hesitantly said, “Granger-” “I figured it out, Professor!” Hermione said, and she ran off in a huff. Felix froze a little, what was going on, could he have got it wrong?

He stared at Hermione’s back as the moon in the sky and the torches in the yard created two shadows, which overlapped and then separated quite apart. Hermione made her way into Hogwarts Castle next.

A few moments later. Harry sneakily pulled Ron along to look out in the entrance hall.

“What is it?” Ron looked towards the door, “Neville has gone to the kitchens with Dean and the others to get food, they said they were going to celebrate.”

“Later.” Harry said without much certainty. “By the way, are you and Collins still in touch?”

“Yes, I guess?” Ron said after careful thought, “I saw her at the Ministry of Magic just two days ago, she’s now become a junior team leader …”

“Hmm.”

A few minutes later, Hermione returned.

“Ms. Bones promised!” She announced gleefully.

“Promise – what -” Harry asked, in surprise.

“I checked with Ms. Bones, and she said that the establishment of the Pan-Magical Alliance was going slowly, so I asked if I could help, and she said yes!” Hermione said as she headed towards the stairs, “The Ministry of Magic employees are caught in a deadlock in their negotiations with the Centaur and goblins. The former has no interest in an alliance, you know, they like to live their own little lives behind closed doors and don’t treat anyone well, and they prefer not to be in an alliance with wizards and vampires …”

“But the biggest problem is with the goblins. They want to remain neutral, but Bill has heard more than one voice within the goblins, and they could change their attitude at any time. This stems from many centuries-long histories of goblins and wizards getting along with each other full of conflict, it dates back to the earliest period of the school’s establishment-”

“Why didn’t I know that?” Ron interrupted.

“Gryffindor’s sword.” Hermione said briefly, so Harry and Ron immediately understood that it stems from goblins’ sick view of ownership, and their insistence on believing that as long as something is created by a goblin, the ownership is theirs, even if the wizard paid for it. The goblins wanted to claim ownership of the item when the wizard died.

The Gryffindor sword, on the other hand, was crafted by the goblin king of that time. Would Hogwarts hand over the Gryffindor sword to the goblins? There is absolutely no chance of it happening.

“The Ministry of Magic would not approve of goblins claiming neutrality, because it actually means that they are detached from the wizarding world. This is especially necessary because they are responsible for our economy and has the right to mint money! We must prioritise an agreement with the goblins before we start negotiating with the muggle government.”

“Okay, I almost understand,” Ron said slowly, “but what does this have to do with you?”

“I wrote and drafted the earliest thesis!” Hermione shouted as if her tail had been stepped on, “I also spent a lot of time researching the cultures of the different races and their taboos, now all I have to do is find a set of statements that are acceptable to both sides …”

“That’s not easy.” Ron muttered, “And it’s not like I have any say in this, so take it easy.”

“Yeah, Hermione, you’ve been a bit emotional lately,” Harry interjected, saying half truthfully, “I thought you had fallen in love.”

Ron was taken aback, then he looked at Hermione with wide eyes, “Really? With who?”

Hermione gave Harry a vicious glare.

“It doesn’t matter.” She retorted fiercely, “If you think I spent all my childhood, reading, learning magic, and enduring so much hardship just to fall in love with someone, you’re wrong! The situation at hand is far more complicated than what Voldemort brought us, and the slightest mistake could ruin everything we value. This is a change that hasn’t been seen in a thousand years since Hogwarts was founded, and we can’t expect the Professor to do everything by himself.”

“I talked to Luna, and she plans to become a Magizoologist in the future to search for hot dog-loving ferrets in the Arctic.” Hermione said, Harry and Ron’s eyes widened, did they hear correctly? Hermione raised her volume, “Will that wish still be granted if the world is at war everywhere? Would she be forced to join the Ministry of Magic and raise her wand to fight muggles? And eventually, die in one of the conflicts?”

Harry’s heart sank, he couldn’t visualise that scenario.

Crazy, quirky, yet intelligent and kind, Luna Lovegood was always at peace with herself and nothing seemed to faze her, but if Mr. Xenophilius Lovegood died in a conflict … he shook his head violently, not wanting to think about it any deeper than he did, he didn’t want to know exactly what would become of Luna.

“Luna wants to be a Magizoologist, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I want to be Minister of Magic and be a part of the series of major changes in the wizarding world that will inevitably happen as we move towards peace, and you two want to be Aurors – it just so happens that we can protect the dreams of others while still fulfilling our own – ”

She suddenly turned her aim and looked at Ron. “Didn’t you once ask if we would be included in Professor Hap’s legend?” Ron froze, desperately trying to remember, “Well … there is such a thing, and Neville said that there is more than one person featured in the storybook.”

“Actually there is another way.” Hermione said.

“What is it?” Harry asked in a rush.

“Everyone -” Hermione pointed to Harry and Ron and then to herself, “You, me, everyone in the wizarding world, we’re all a part of this legendary story! ”

She said a few words from her heart.

————-

[Author:]

As the book draws to its conclusion, there is no way to turn a blind eye to the female lead issue, it has to be addressed in order to write a complete story. It’s either a single female lead or no CP. It is now confirmed that Hermione is the female lead.

Some readers will remember that until near the end of the fourth-year storyline, it was uncertain who the time traveller was, and both Harry and Hermione were given the same amount of coverage as to who it could be. Because the author himself was not sure, it was not finalised until the last minute (if it was settled on Harry then the subsequent Lady Jane route would be scrapped).

The whole sixth-year plot was an improvised addition, it wasn’t in the outline, and originally it was intended for Dumbledore to die in the battle with Voldemort before Grindelwald’s prison break and stirring up a storm in the world. Then why did it turn out this way? Because I couldn’t bear it and I didn’t want Dumbledore to die with his regrets.

Hence, the sixth-year plot.

This plot is actually slightly thin, so the retrieval of the previous foreshadowing, the intersection of wizarding society with muggle society, and the coming of age (growth) of the trio is a vital part of the plot.

Because of some qualms, Hermione’s coming of age has been moved to the present.

The author had previously commented that he would not write an ambiguous plot, and I certainly don’t think the last plot will be considered ambiguous, like writing about Ron’s character flaws in order to write about his growth.

Of course, there is another reason, because with the confirmation of Hermione being the main female lead, it’s essential to structure some memorable points without hastily mentioning at the very end where it contradicts the previous story.

Why did you choose the single female lead over no CP? It is because I couldn’t bear it. The protagonist is expected to live for many years, and everyone can predict him becoming a Headmaster, hiding behind the scenes, and exploring the stars, and overlooking the changes in the world; it would be too lonely to be alone.

——-

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