Archaeologists at Hogwarts

Chapter 161 Tom Riddle?

The password in the principal's office has not changed, it is still Chocolate Frog. Although the stone beast did not see the invisible Toby, it still jumped away honestly and made way for the passage behind it.

"Dong dong dong."

"Please come in."

Toby pushed the door and walked into the office. The situation here was still so familiar. Fox was standing on a perch, seeming to be approaching nirvana and becoming older. As for Principal Dumbledore, huh?

The eyes under the hood were slightly stagnant - why was the principal breathing so hard? There were some signs of excessive consumption of magic power, as if he had performed an extremely distant phantom transformation.

Before Toby could come back to his senses, Dumbledore slowly put down the paper towel to dry his sweat and threw it under his feet. His blue eyes were always watching Toby closely, pretending to be nonchalant.

There was a hint of sarcasm in his calm tone: "Isn't this our Professor Heimer? Why do you have time to come to the principal's office to see me - Oh, by the way, I haven't asked you how you woke up."

Toby sat opposite Dumbledore, and the two looked at each other in silence for a while.

Just like Nick Flamel, although he couldn't see clearly the face under the hood, Dumbledore still found the position of Toby's eyes accurately.

"headmaster?"

"Um?"

"Why are you sweating so much? Don't you need to wipe it again?"

Dumbledore blinked, sweat flowing into his eyes again.

"boom!"

"ah!"

Accompanied by Toby's screams, the spinning top flew around in the air, and finally fell back on the desk, spinning non-stop.

Toby covered the back of his head and looked behind him in surprise - where did this top come from? Why didn't he see anything clearly?

Dumbledore wiped away the sweat slowly and leaned back on the chair, changing to a more comfortable position so that he could rest better.

"Tell me about it." He picked up the topic again: "Tell me about how you came up with the idea of ​​going to Nick and threatening him for a while. You should know what this means. I should tell you this

Do you take this as a sign of war? Or are you ready to leave Hogwarts again? I have to say that you behaved very abnormally with Nick, Toby."

Toby looked at Dumbledore suspiciously for a while. The more he looked, the more he felt something was wrong. He couldn't help but ask: "You have just come back from France, right? Use Apparition? Such a long distance? Or just

To ensure that Nick Flamel is not injured? No, this seems to be a waste of time, and there is no way to predict when I will come back. Could it be that you were already there, when I threatened Flamel?"

"How did you know?"

"About this -" Dumbledore took a deep breath and said: "Since Voldemort can threaten the safety of the Sorcerer's Stone, it stands to reason that you can also do the same. I have no doubt about it."

"You really think highly of me, and you actually compare me with the mysterious man." Toby also leaned back, fiddled with the top twice with his fingers, and after being silent for a while, he said: "In that case

, then you must also know my next purpose, principal, Azkaban. I need to go to Azkaban."

"As a prisoner?" Dumbledore stared at him with a scrutinizing gaze.

"You are really good at joking." Toby fiddled with the top even faster: "Of course not. I need to figure out Mr. Flamel's guess about Extis. That will be extremely useful to me."

"So, how useful is it?" Dumbledore asked.

This time, Toby was silent for longer.

After a long time, he continued to speak: "If it were in the past, it would only be beneficial to my research on ancient magic. But it is different now, Principal. Extis left Flamel a legacy to destroy.

The hint of losing the Philosopher's Stone is related to eternal life, and it is also related to the problems I am facing now."

He slowly took off his hood, revealing a face with black lines and a golden mask. After only a few days, not only were the black lines increasing, but the fit between the mask and Toby's face was also increasing.

, looks as if it is about to merge into one.

The portraits who secretly watched this scene took a breath of air. This didn't look good, it looked exactly like evil black magic research.

Toby continued to speak. At this time, even his voice seemed to have become two. One was spoken from his own mouth, and the other was wearing a thick mask, dull, but it seemed

Extremely sharp.

"Speaking more carefully, I would also like to thank the last attack. If it hadn't been for that attack, I might not have been able to make up my mind so quickly and study the Pharaoh Mask in such a risky way. As you can see, even though I

The curse of petrification has been lifted, but it is not without cost. There is also a curse that is difficult to lift on the Pharaoh's mask. You can understand this special curse like this - in the pyramid I explored before,

There once was an unkillable mummy. As far as I know, the mummy is still trapped in Gringotts in Egypt. It is not completely dead. I don’t know how long it will take to completely destroy it. This is because the mummy has already died.

With the mask removed.”

"That is eternal life, and it is also a curse."

"Now, the curse has been transferred to me. It has a wonderful effect on the petrification curse, accelerating the speed at which the mask corrodes me. Maybe it won't be long before you really want to lock me in a pharaoh's coffin and bury me in some special place.

The secret chamber belonging to Toby Highmore is trapped and can never be opened or restored."

Dumbledore stared at Toby with heavy eyes. He looked at it for a long time and said sadly: "Do you have to do this? It's only now that I understand what you have been hiding from me in your letters.

The risks in the ruins, you have been using yourself to do experiments related to ancient magic. Is this the change that Lily brought to you? Is this how she affected you after you completely broke up? "

"Lily?" Toby said in a long voice: "It's hard to say whether she influenced me - well, I admit, principal, at least in this process, she did play a big role, especially in -

- You know - after my plan to kill Penny failed, she affected me in a big way. It was a complete tragedy, no matter who it was. Before that,

I have been deliberately ignoring the dark side of ancient magic, but fortunately I have found the ultimate solution-that is to use myself to experiment, so that no one will be harmed by it, which is great

,Is not it?"

Dumbledore said nothing, he just looked at Toby with pity.

"Don't look at me like that, Principal." Toby shook his head and said, "I don't need to be pitied by other people, I. I don't even care if I am pitied, I really don't care, Principal. But, of course, I don’t think I’m bringing it on myself. I didn’t do it because of guilt, I just didn’t care anymore. After a long time, I discovered that the things I care about are not as many as I thought. Well, it might be. Because there are so many things I care about, but it’s just hard to satisfy them all.”

"I don't know, principal, I really don't know. Don't ask me. I don't know how to answer you. It's difficult, it's really difficult."

There was a brief silence.

Toby fiddled with the top unconsciously, making it spin very fast.

"How long do you have left?"

"Maybe it was a year, maybe it was six months, I don't know, it's hard to tell. But what I can tell you is that this was not my most dangerous moment. Once I was left with nothing but It’s been a week since I last lived, and it was in the Ghost Castle, together with the armor, and it was really weird inside. In short, I wanted to go find Frank and Alice, after all, they were former Aurors. But then I thought After thinking about it, how can it be as effective to ask them for help as to ask you for help? Of course, the premise is that you still recognize me as an ancient magic professor."

"I understand. Also, did you send Angela away?"

"I guess so. There are not many people I can trust, so she is the most suitable. We can't let a goblin teach the students, right?"

"What?"

"Fairy, Fairy Wych, the owner of the Veil Bar, you should know him, right?"

"I'm referring to class."

"Oh, so that's it. This is because I can't leave too many vacancies in the ancient magic class. Otherwise, when I become the principal, there will definitely be objections, especially from Severus. That guy will definitely He won't stop and will fight against me at all costs. I'm still waiting to see the expression on his face. What's wrong with you, principal? Yes, there are many things I can't figure out clearly, but this does not include studying ancient magic. , and becoming the principal of Hogwarts, on the contrary, I am very confident about it! After all, this is Hogwarts, and Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets alone is attractive enough. Who knows what other secret places are hidden there? If you can’t dig them all out and take a look——"

"boom!"

"ah!"

Almost at the same time, the college magazines in the common rooms of the four colleges published a piece of shocking news - your Professor Heimer is back!

"Merlin"

As the Gryffindor common room was packed with people, Fred sighed: "How on earth did he do it? Wasn't he petrified?"

George shook his head and said: "It seems that the winner has been decided, between black magic and ancient magic."

"Stop talking nonsense!" Percy immediately accused: "If I hear you say bad things behind Professor Hemmer's back again, I will immediately request that the professor come to the Burrow to give you extra lessons every holiday!"

Ron, who was squeezed in the back of the crowd, heard this and murmured in a low voice: "What he thinks is so beautiful."

Hermione noticed something was wrong with Harry: "What's wrong with you? Oh, I know, now that Professor Hemmer has woken up, he must know who the murderer who attacked him is!"

Harry did think so, but in the next second, another line of words appeared on the tall college magazine -

[Admit defeat, heir of Slytherin, beg for mercy, and maybe I will spare your life.]

There was an eerie silence in the common room, followed by louder conversations.

"I am not wrong, right?"

"Is this a provocation?"

"This really looks like something Professor Heimer would do."

"This is so cool!"

However, Harry's face suddenly turned pale.

Of course he knew that Professor Highmore was not referring to him, but the real murderer, but Harry had gradually felt that he was the heir of Slytherin, otherwise how could he explain that voice?

At this moment, he saw a figure flash across the crowd and hurried away. Harry only saw the familiar red hair of the other person. Was that Ginny?

Ginny returned to the dormitory in fear. She quickly opened Pandora's notebook and tremblingly wrote down everything that had just happened.

"What should I do? Professor Heimer is back. He is here to punish the murderer! What should I do, Pandora?"

[Calm down, you must calm down at this time, Ginny. You already said that he is a professor, so how can he really harm the students? I believe he will understand you.]

"But Professor Heimer is different from other professors. I heard Ron say-"

Ginny re-described the story Ron had told during the holiday bit by bit, filling a whole page, and even some of it was not enough.

The handwriting disappeared extremely slowly this time, and it seemed that even Pandora needed to digest this fact.

[Okay, Ginny, although Professor Highmore is a very interesting person in my eyes, but since you are so worried, let's wait until after the first Quidditch match. This is our original plan anyway.

, isn’t it?】

very interesting?

Ginny read it several times before making sure she saw it right.

How did Pandora come to this conclusion?

On the other side, Toby has returned to the ancient magic office. He looked like he was facing a formidable enemy. He sat behind the work and asked solemnly: "What happened?"

Al narrowed his eyes and scanned the new version of "The Quibbler." He read it over and over again, then the third time, and then the fourth time, and his head almost sunk in.

"Huh?" Toby felt bad: "You don't need to look at the first few, just look at the entire list."

Al hesitated and said: "Yeah"

"What about looking from the back to the front?"

"ah"

"Well"

Al quietly poked his head out from the edge of the magazine and met Toby's heartbroken gaze.

"Yeah!" It jumped over quickly, trying to cheer Toby up again.

"Stop talking, Al." Toby shook his head and sighed: "No matter how much gold I make, what's the use? The Magic Circle still failed to enter the bestseller list, alas."

At this moment, there was a knock on the office door.

Toby was stunned. He sat down again and put on his hood so as not to scare the students who wanted to increase his qualifications to become the principal.

"Please come in."

Luna pushed the door open and walked in. She was still dressed in her usual weird outfit, and her eyes were a little dazed. Especially when she saw Professor Heimer, whose entire body was shrouded in black mist, she obviously stopped in her tracks.

"Is this a side effect of the Snorlax, Professor?"

"What? Forget it, Miss Lovegood, do you come to me if you have something to do? I don't remember asking you to continue interviewing other students."

"I do have something to come to see you for, Professor."

Luna walked to the opposite side of the desk, took out her black notebook and put it on the table.

"This notebook seems to be broken." Luna said worriedly: "Mom suddenly turned into a person named Tom Riddle, and she never tired of pretending to be him. Can you help me fix the notebook, Professor?"

Toby's outstretched arm stopped in mid-air, and Al tilted his body and fell from the flying carpet onto the desk, rolling along twice.

Tom Riddle?