Chapter 237
Thus ended the first Magic Rune Club gathering, and the young wizards came out in a line with an excited look on their faces, walking some distance away before the murmurs broke out like a surging tide.
“That was wonderful!”
“Did you see the flames? It’s like a toy in Professor Hap’s hands!”
“Spellcasting instinct …”
“I wonder what the next gathering is about?”
Harry and Ron stood in the corridor while Hermione stayed to ask a few questions, and after five minutes, she finally appeared.
“I asked a question about Professor Lupin’s little issue.” Hermione looked relieved, as if she had solved a question that had been buried in her heart for a long time, “Professor Hap, indeed aware of it.”
“What are you talking about?” Ron asked in bewilderment.
“Oh, I promised the professor I wouldn’t tell anyone.” Hermione paused for a moment, ” to avoid unnecessary controversy.”
It looked like Harry and Ron getting even more curious, but Hermione quickly mentioned something else, “Professor Hap recommended a set of books to me that would be useful for our dueling self-study group.”
“A set?” Ron smacked his tongue.
“Chadwick’s Charms, a set of teaching books written by Chadwick Boot, one of the four co-founders of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We can read it together with the textbook for the Defense Against the Dark Arts class – The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. Also, Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts is very good, plus Curses and Counter-Curses by Professor Vindictus Viridian …”
Hermione then said with some regret, “I shouldn’t have wasted my time reading some miscellaneous books before.”
Harry recalled, “It was the book Corruption, Defeat of Virtue …”
“It’s Lupine Lawlessness: Why Lycanthropes Don’t Deserve to Live.” Hermione blurted out a lengthy title, “It declares that werewolves are all a bunch of morally corrupt and lawless guys.”
“Sounds a bit subjective, maybe there are some good werewolves out there.” Ron shrugged, “But Hermione, Professor Lupin has cancelled the assignment regarding the werewolf.”
“I know, I just–”
A cold wind swept through the corridor, “Let’s hurry back to the common room, I’m freezing.” Ron said, and they discussed it along the way back.
In the classroom, the firewood in the fireplace struggled a few times as it burned to the end and finally died out.
Felix extended his right hand, and the serpent in the midair jerked a little, shrinking down and then finally condensed into an Ouroboros ring around his right pinky finger. He looked at it calmly, then wiggled his finger, and the little serpent swam, coiled up, and turned back into a coin.
“So that’s what you intended, Severus.” Felix said softly, Snape during Lupin’s “sick” period substituted a few defences against the dark arts class, and taught about the werewolf chapter in advance, ignoring the students’ learning pace, he originally thought it was just to disgust Lupin.
But now it seems that Snape is expecting some young wizard to discover Lupin’s werewolf identity and drive him out of school as a matter of course.
“Unfortunately, Professor, only Miss Granger has done her homework seriously.”
…
Back in his office, Felix read the Evening Prophet for that day, and in the sub-page, saw an article published by a self-proclaimed retired old St. Mungo’s healer, who mentioned his previous dissertation regarding treatment for memory damage.
‘Purely in terms of theory, I can’t pick any problems. Mr. Felix Hap’s understanding of memory magic is mind-blowing, and I look forward to more research on that theory and experimental data to emerge, and in my opinion, there are more than two real difficulties, and here are my thoughts –
…
…
Finally, I hope that I can meet with Mr. Hap, whose theories, if they become reality, will benefit countless wizards who struggle with memory damage, but I also want to point out that the process will be very difficult, and I hope to live to see that day …’
“Finally, a healer with some weight has arrived.” Felix rejoiced, adding that many of her views in the article coincided with his, which he did not disclose.
As early as half a month ago, there appeared some critical opinions one after another, trying to point out the errors in Felix’s theory, but they probably didn’t even pass a certain threshold in memory magic, and the points they expressed were very naive, and they got refuted back by Felix one by one.
But this time it’s different, with Rita Skeeter tipping him off in advance, he learned the identity of the old healer in no time – Dorothea Bonham.
She is the ex-dean of St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and she has a distinguished record in several fields of treatment, and her last name is ” Bonham “, the same as Mungo Bonham who founded St Mungo’s.
She was nominated twice for the post of Dean, but the first time, she refused to give up her front-line work and declined the post.
After that twenty years had passed, her prestige was simply too high, and more than half of the healers were brought up by her. She had to take the name of dean of St. Mungo’s, though she never completely abandoned her work in treating patients until she retired.
” A highly respected healer, I have to be careful in the phrasing in my reply.”
Felix reread her article, smiled slightly, and took out his quill.
During the following week, Felix and the self-proclaimed “retired old healer” communicated with each other, and he revealed a small portion of additional content, and soon their discussions attracted many of the top healers.
The name Felix Hap has also gained a lot of attention among the healer community.
On the weekend, at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
Felix met Dorothea Bonham, who is surrounded by a group of healers. That lady looked quite old, her face is covered with wrinkles, but her eyes were bright.
Upon returning to the hospital, she changed herself into her healer’s gown.
“Mr. Hap, it’s not that easy to see you.” Dorothea said with a smile, her teeth pretty much gone.
“Ms. Bonham, it’s nice to communicate through letters, isn’t it?”
Dorothea said kindly: “I learned that you are a professor at Hogwarts, usually busy with work, using letters is indeed a good way to … quickly tell me, how did you solve those difficulties? Lately, I’ve been getting headaches thinking about it.”
Felix got it, his secret treatment on the Longbottoms is already known, he had anticipated it, and even single-handedly planned the progress of things.
By looking at the eyes of the surrounding healers, there is absolutely no intention of looking for trouble with him.
Even if they did, they could only keep it to themselves. Over time, he added the title of “memory magic expert” on himself, if the Longbottoms fully recovered, he is the unquestionable “memory magic master”, the most outstanding memory damage healer of his generation, without exception.
Felix smiled and said, “Ms. Bonham, it’s very complicated talk, let’s check the Longbottom couple’s condition first.”
“That’s fine. It’s better to talk about it after treating the patient. I’ve seen the Longbottoms, and they’re in far better shape!”
The ward on the fourth floor, Janus Thickey Ward, is always locked, and most of the patients inside have sustained lasting spell damage. The healer in charge of this ward, Miriam, opened the ward by saying “Alohomora”.
Felix and a group of healers came to the Longbottoms’ bed, “Frank, Alice.” He greeted.
The Longbottoms were playing a kind of rope-flipping game and looked up at him at the sound of his voice.
Frank muttered something that no one could hear, but it’s encouraging enough.
With a snap of his fingers, Felix drew the two of them together into the thinking room. In the world of thinking, opposite to him is two buildings that looked very much like a crumbling library.
Rows of bookshelves lined on the floor, with a few books scattered inside, some of them broken.
‘Another day of hard work.’ Felix thought to himself, the job of piecing together memories is easy to describe, but quite boring to do.
The group of healers outside watched him dumbfounded as Felix snapped his fingers and the Longbottoms became blank-eyed, followed by three motionless people.
“Mr. Hap?” A young healer tried to tap Felix on the shoulder, and the old Lady Longbottom said sternly, “Don’t touch him!” But the next second, the healer got bounced off by light, rolling over his heels, flying a dozen meters, and bumped against the wall.
“August! Oh, my God! Are you okay?” Miriam walked over and patted the reckless healer on the head, before she turned to the crowd and said, “Fainted.”
“Miriam, please do me a favour and take him away.”
The old lady Longbottom said angrily, “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you guys in advance!” She glanced carefully at Felix as well as her son and daughter-in-law and felt relieved that they did not react abnormally.
Dorothea Bonham said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Longbottom.” She turned her head to the current dean of St. Mungo’s, “I had no idea that a healer would be able to make such a low-level mistake these days?”
The current dean said awkwardly, “It was an accident. August he … is lively by nature and has lots of novel ideas, but this time he was really too rash and really shouldn’t … I will criticize him severely.”
Dorothea Bonham nodded authoritatively, the current dean is her student, hand-taught by her forty years ago. She looked around the room, “Do not disturb Mr. Hap by any means, understood?”
The St. Mungo’s healers nodded obediently.
There is no further accident happened during the following treatment.
In fact, Felix is fully aware of what is happening outside, he could have left it alone, but felt that he still had to do something, just now there were a few hidden magic probed him, is this something that can be just probed?
So he deliberately activated a protective magic item …
After this episode, Felix returned his attention to the thinking room, today’s healing had gone exceptionally well, to the point that even as he was piecing together the memories and gathering them into a book, bits of light had been spontaneously drawn over and integrated into the bookshelf.
‘Maybe one or two more treatments, and they will be able to stimulate their self-healing abilities.’ Felix thought to himself.
When he opened his eyes at noon, he received looks of awe.