A day at Hogwarts

Today, many students turned around and left without hesitation as soon as they entered the Pig's Head Bar. Aberforth was very depressed.

"After you finish drinking, leave quickly!" A Deng put a glass of wine in front of Lao Deng angrily.

It stands to reason that today's main consumers are senior students. However, there are less than five people in the bar at this time, and the people sitting next to the door are still residents here. Compared with expectations, the turnover has been cut in half.

The brothers are settling accounts, and the brother is hindering the younger brother from making money, so the younger brother is naturally very unhappy.

Lao Deng was studying the advertising menu of Dancing Grass Restaurant on the table, regardless of his brother's bad attitude.

Charles provides the lobby of the Pig Head Bar with fast food from the Dancing Grass Restaurant on the first floor, and higher-end meals in the private rooms and guest rooms at the same price.

Lao Deng picked up the wine and took a sip, and asked his brother at the same time: "I heard that the house elves brought by Charles will come here to drink at night?"

Aden immediately shook his head and said: "It's not a house elf, it's a working elf. If you say something wrong, they will be angry."

Lao Deng nodded thoughtfully and asked, "How much are their salaries?"

"I don't know." A Deng shook his head. "They didn't tell me. I only know that they have money to drink and buy candies."

Lao Deng didn't ask any more questions, thinking that the salary given by Charles would not be low.

It is not a question of whether the salary is large or small. The question is whether there is a salary or not. This is the essential difference.

Recently, Charles's working elves had some conflict with the Hogwarts house elves, and they had a fight, but luckily they didn't get into a fight.

Lao Deng didn't know much about Dobby and the others recently. After this conflict, he noticed that some changes seemed to have occurred in these elves.

He came here today to wait for Charles, and wanted to know about Dobby and the others. This matter was not serious, so there was no need to talk about it in the principal's office, just a casual chat.

Charles arrived at the Pig Head Bar in the afternoon. Before Lao Deng could speak, he handed an old roll of parchment to the principal and said with great expectation: "Principal, please help me see if this magic can really be realized. "

Lao Deng couldn't figure out what he was going to do again, so when he took it, he asked, "What are you going to do again?"

Charles replied a little excitedly: "I met someone in the alley just now. She said that her family had no money to buy bread, so she sold me this family magic."

Old Deng didn't think much after hearing this. Wizards would also do things like selling their father's land. He just reminded him: "You have to be careful. From time to time, wizards will come to Hogsmeade to sell fake goods, specifically to deceive you three or four people." grade students.”

The thirteen or fourteen-year-old wizard knew a lot of magic knowledge, but he was not proficient in it. It was easy for an experienced person to fool him.

Charles said confidently: "Don't worry, I'm not that easy to deceive."

As soon as he went out after taking measurements, he met a wizard who was selling magic. He looked very depressed and had several patches on his robe. The price of this magic was 10 galleons. Even if he was deceived, it would be treated as charity.

The parchment is not big, about the size of A4 paper, and it is full of Latin writing.

Lao Deng looked at it carefully, and his expression suddenly became serious.

"This is a password." He said while looking at it. "It's a very ancient method. It hides an important method of casting a spell in a relatively common spell record."

"Ah?!" Charles was shocked, "Isn't this a magic spell used to control objects?"

When he was in first grade, he planned to make some fully automatic magic items, such as making magic artificial intelligence weapons based on the portrait of the fat lady watching the door in the Gryffindor common room. For this purpose, he joined the Oil Painting Association and is still studying. .

The function of the spell recorded on the parchment is to allow the wizard to control magic items from a distance, which is somewhat similar to Moody's control of his magic eye, but the effect is better and the operation is simpler and more flexible.

According to his idea, if this magic spell is combined with magical artificial intelligence, he can control the general direction and the artificial intelligence can control the details, so the efficiency will be much higher.

It's like he planned a route for a car from Hogwarts to No. 3 Privet Drive. The car follows the route on its own, and the magical artificial intelligence is responsible for avoiding pedestrians and vehicles on the road.

That's why he spent money to buy this spell.

Now Lao Deng said that there was actually another mystery to this, which made him feel a little weird.

Lao Deng said: "There is no problem with this curse, and it does not prevent it from being used as a cover."

He asked his brother to get some paper and pen and start deciphering. Charles watched for a while and gained some insights.

In the first line of words at the beginning of the parchment, each word has a letter that is slightly different from the other letters. Some of the first strokes are thicker, and some of the last strokes have an inconspicuous hook at the end.

These letters are the key to decryption. Lao Deng used this to select the corresponding letters from the following content and reconstruct the new content.

"It's very old." At the side, A Deng saw some clues. "It's written in the early Middle Ages."

Charles nodded. Classical Latin only has 23 letters, not yet j, u, and w. These three letters appeared in the 11th century. i differentiated into i and j, and v differentiated into u, v, and w.

Lao Deng said while writing: "The letters and words are very old, but the grammar is much later. It is probably an ancient family. They always like to show their heritage in some places."

Charles thought it made sense, just like someone who liked Kong Yiji's speech.

It didn't take long for Lao Deng to finish deciphering the contents on the parchment. He pinched his brows and had a dumbfounded expression on his face.

"It seems that your joy is in vain." He said to Charles, "This is a prank, or a deeper decryption key is needed."

Charles took a look at the content that Lao Deng had deciphered, and frowned. This is so weird.

The cracked content is just one sentence: Excvse me.Can yov tell me hov mvch the shirt is?

Charles curled his lips, thinking that the old man was causing trouble again.

He took a step back, took out the magic spell, lit it on the parchment, and said in English: "Yes, it's nine fifteen."

The two Dumbledores looked at him curiously, what kind of spell was this?

"It's moving!" A Deng found that the letters on the parchment actually moved.

The letters stood up from the paper, grew two legs, and began to run to their new positions.

But the letters seemed to be in a mess. Here, L crawled through the middle of V, but got into C and was carried by two of them; over there, B fell, and it happened to be caught on the tail of S, and was dragged. Along the way; l and n collided and fell, and turned into h after standing up; two o collided, one broke into c, and the other and the fragments formed g...

After five minutes, the letters were in place and arranged into new content.

"This is..." Lao Deng's eyes suddenly widened, as if he saw something incredible.

A Deng sighed: "I didn't expect you to be so lucky."

Charles was speechless. He really didn't know what to say. This was the way to make the core part of the Sorting Hat.

Lao Deng frowned and asked Charles: "Do you still remember what that person looks like?"

The method of making the Sorting Hat has been lost for a long time. For thousands of years, some people have tried to imitate it but have failed. Many people have even forgotten that it was originally the scabbard of Gryffindor.

Now this method has appeared again. Maybe the holder is a family related to the four founders of Hogwarts. He may be a wizard who is a direct disciple. This was still important in that era.

Charles thought for a while, his expression suddenly became serious, and said, "I can't remember what he looks like."

The two Dumbledores looked at each other, and Aden asked him: "Remember, is that person a boy or a girl?"

Charles didn't react for a while, and then recalled what he had just said, and found that he used "she" to describe that person.

Lao Deng shook his head and said, "The other party may have used a confusion spell to prevent others from knowing who he is."

He then said to Charles: "These magics are very difficult. You can study them when you have time, but you cannot study the Sorting Hat."

What Dumbledore is most worried about now is that Charles will take the Sorting Hat apart and study it directly after he doesn't understand it. If it is broken, it will be over.

Naturally, Charles promised that he would not take action against the Sorting Hat. Why bother with the broken hat? It would be better to use it to build a ship girl.