Batches of students passed the inspection outside the castle and, escorted by the professors, headed off to Hogsmeade. Harry Potter stood at the castle gates, gazing after them with deep longing, his heart full of envy.
"Hey, Harry, did Ron and Hermione ditch you?" Eda suddenly jumped out behind Harry and said with a grin.
Right in the heart, my friend.
"No, of course not!" Harry's rebuttal instinctively rose in volume. "I was just looking at the scenery… yeah, looking at the scenery!"
As everyone knows, people who are bad at lying tend to deliberately emphasize that they aren't lying, and when someone challenges them, they instinctively respond more loudly. Harry stepped on two classic tells at once—anyone could tell he was lying.
Standing behind Harry, Eda followed his line of sight and saw his overwhelming longing for Hogsmeade. Without any hesitation, Eda slung an arm around Harry's shoulder and said seriously, "Actually, Hogsmeade isn't as interesting as you imagine."
"You've been so many times, of course you'd say that. But I haven't even been once," Harry said in a muffled voice. Having lived in the Muggle world for eleven years, Harry longed to understand everything about the magical world. He wanted to visit Hogsmeade together with Ron and Hermione.
Nothing hurts more than comparison. Everyone around him could go to Hogsmeade, while Harry alone was left behind at school. Naturally, he was filled with yearning for the little village beyond the castle.
Outside, students clustered together, waiting for the professors' inspections. From Eda and Harry's perspective, they could only see the students' backs, but it wasn't hard to imagine the smiles on their faces. Snatches of conversation drifted over from time to time, about where they planned to go and sit later.
Harry lowered his head, unwilling to look at the students outside. If he could choose, Harry would rather line up in the biting cold wind than stay alone in the warm castle.
"I should head back. I still have a lot of homework to do," Harry made up an excuse. He didn't want to keep standing there suffering anymore, and he felt that once the twins showed up, things would only get worse.
What you fear most is what happens—on his way back, Harry ran straight into the twins coming downstairs. Faced with their enthusiastic greetings, Harry muttered an indistinct response and then bolted away like the wind, leaving Fred and George utterly confused.
The twins were baffled. Harry's behavior just now was impossible to understand—did they smell or something? Why did Harry run off as if he'd seen a ghost, faster than a rabbit?
Fred asked with a face full of confusion, "What's wrong with Harry? Did you do something shady to him?"
"Well I'll be," George said solemnly. "You, with those thick eyebrows and honest-looking eyes, have gone bad just like Cedric. And you've gone even further—Harry's a year younger than Cho Chang!"
Eda clenched her fist and made a threatening gesture in front of the twins as she explained, "Harry's just feeling a bit down because he can't go to Hogsmeade. As a big sister, I comforted him a little. That's all."
As she spoke, Eda walked toward the line of students outside the castle. The twins hurried to follow, and the three of them stood together at the end of the queue, waiting for Filch's inspection.
"Comforted?" Fred was highly skeptical of Eda's explanation. "I don't buy that at all. Looked more like you stabbed him right in the heart."
George strongly agreed. He said to his twin brother, "Fred, since Harry's 'big sister' here is so unreliable, we big brothers need to be more dependable. I think we should give Harry some help."
"You know, George, you're thinking exactly what I'm thinking," Fred said, fully approving of the idea. "Harry will definitely be very grateful for our timely assistance."
Eda had already guessed what the twins were planning to do, and she warned them, "You'd better not mess around. Black might be hiding somewhere near the school—this would not be a good sign for Harry."
"You don't believe Trelawney's ominous nonsense too, do you?" the twins said in unison. "You used to call her 'that glowing old fraud'!"
Logically speaking, since something as subjective as magic exists, things like prophecy and divination ought to have a huge market. Yet people who can make accurate prophecies are extremely rare.
As for dear Professor Trelawney, the students all regarded her as the biggest slacker in Hogwarts.
Some students took Divination because they were genuinely interested in this mysterious field of study; others did so simply because the exams were very easy to pass.
All you had to do was predict that your fate was full of hardships and that you would suffer all kinds of misfortunes in the coming month, and your paper would earn an "E."
At first, Eda herself didn't believe in prophecies. While she wasn't so melodramatic as to shout things like "My fate is mine alone, not heaven's," she had always disliked so-called seers, thinking they were all frauds.
However, as she read more books and gained a deeper understanding of the magical world, Eda also developed a new perspective on the arcane study of prophecy.
For example, back in first year, Eda and the others had encountered the centaur Firenze in the Forbidden Forest. At the time, the centaur had said many strange things. Looking back now, those odd remarks all matched up perfectly with what happened afterward.
Although it felt very much like the tricks of those swindlers who roam public squares, all the signs pointed to the fact that prophecy truly existed. It was only because there were so many half-baked frauds deceiving people that this infinitely mysterious branch of magic ended up looking more like a con.
"I still think Trelawney is at the school because Dumbledore couldn't find a more suitable candidate," Eda said. "But we can't gamble with Harry. We don't have that right."
Eda had always been full of doubts about Black's escape. If he really was after Harry, why choose this moment?
When Harry hadn't started school yet, when he was living with the Dursleys—wouldn't it have been much easier to act then?
Or at the very least, Harry's first year at Hogwarts would have been more appropriate than now. Could it be that the sunless years in Azkaban had made Black lose his sense of time?
The twins were silent for a long while. It wasn't until the three of them passed the inspection and were walking along the path to Hogsmeade that George finally spoke. "We can let Harry choose for himself. Don't forget—he has an Invisibility Cloak."
Although Eda's words made a certain amount of sense, the twins still felt that the professors' approach was unfair to Harry. The matter of Black had always been kept from him, just like with the Philosopher's Stone. Harry didn't know at all what his relationship to Black was.
Right now, Harry had no idea that he was in danger. He might very well sneak off to Hogsmeade on his own, and the existence of the Invisibility Cloak gave him that opportunity.
"Harry's mind is completely filled with wanting to go to Hogsmeade. He doesn't know about the dangers outside and is very likely to run around on his own under the Invisibility Cloak," George continued. "Rather than letting him do that, we should give him some proper help—at least it would be safer."
Eda thought about it. Given what she knew of Harry, he really might do something like that. Running around blindly on his own would indeed put him in even greater danger, but…
"Stop dithering. It's settled," Fred said, waving his hand decisively. "We're just giving Harry an option. How he chooses is his own business."
"This is a matter between men, so don't get involved," Fred continued.
Fred's words sounded a bit chauvinistic and were easy to get flak for. But in reality, Fred was reminding Eda that Harry was growing up day by day. He was no longer the little kid who had just arrived at school—this year, he was thirteen.
Kids entering puberty have a lot of their own ideas. Simply hiding things from them or overprotecting them would hurt Harry's self-esteem. At this age, it wouldn't be strange for him to do something rebellious.
Blocking was worse than guiding. At least this way, things would still happen within a controllable range. If Harry really did sneak off to Hogsmeade behind everyone's backs, it would be too late to regret it.
Eda nodded, acknowledging the twins' seemingly reckless behavior. Perhaps the Marauder's Map would indeed be more useful to Harry right now. Still, what did "a matter between men" even mean?
Eda shot a disdainful glance at the fluff on the twins' chins and said scornfully, "You're not even done growing hair yet, and you're calling yourselves men? Pah!"
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