The Admiral of Hogwarts

Summer quietly arrived on the grounds surrounding the castle; the sky and the lake mirrored each other, both turning a light, purplish-blue. In the newly repaired greenhouse, blossoms as large as cabbages unfolded.

Due to the destruction of the Mandrakes and the attack by the Fiendfyre, the school board finally stopped bickering and agreed to allocate funds to purchase Mandrakes or petrification reversal potions.

Unfortunately, the school placed its order far too late. Consequently, there were no Mandrakes or prepared potions available on the market. To obtain these items, they would have to wait until the Mandrakes matured in late summer.

While Hugo peacefully directed the ship girls in searching the suspicious areas and methodically studying ancient runes, the interior of the castle had descended into chaos.

Every faculty member strictly enforced the previously established rules for the students' behavior. For example, all students were forbidden from acting independently; even going to the restroom required a group of at least three.

For the majority of students, being together and escorted from place to place by professors was a welcome experience, but for Hugo, it clearly hampered his movements.

At this time, only a small number of pure-blood family supporters of blood purity seemed very excited, and among these people, Malfoy's performance was the most prominent.

He strutted around the school as if he had just been appointed Head Boy. However, he had reason to be so arrogant at this time.

After all, as a pure-blood, Malfoy faced basically no risk in the attacks. His father was a school governor who could decide the final selection of the headmaster. More importantly, the headmaster he hated, Dumbledore, had been driven out of the school by his father.

"Why do you think the school governors were willing to let Professor Dumbledore leave?" Hermione asked Hugo and the others, wearing an expression as if she had swallowed a fly while watching Malfoy swagger past.

"Clearly, the school is already in a dangerous situation. Why would the governors choose a plan that is obviously detrimental to the school and their own interests?"

"Most of the people who can be school governors at Hogwarts are old pure-blood families, so they don't really approve of Headmaster Dumbledore's teaching philosophy, and they've wanted to drive him out of the school for more than a day or two," Venetia said softly, staring at Malfoy's retreating figure. "Now they can use this attack as an excuse to drive the headmaster out of the school."

"And although a small number of them support Headmaster Dumbledore in their hearts, with the connections that the Malfoy family made when they were Death Eaters, they naturally have ways to force them to support their opinions."

"This is just terrible," Hugo said, shaking his head subconsciously. "Even if it's a power struggle, this is not a good idea at this time. At least I think life should be more important—"

However, before he could finish his sentence, a smile suddenly appeared on his face because Retribution and Unicorn, who had been searching in the Black Lake, had successfully found their target.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked anxiously, seeing the sudden smile on Hugo's face. "I know the Basilisk is scary. Some people in Hufflepuff have even been hospitalized from fright, but you shouldn't be—"

"Of course. Of course not, my dear sister," Hugo quickly reassured his sister, realizing that the smile he had just shown was indeed a little frightening. "Your brother is not that fragile. I just thought of something interesting."

After saying that, Hugo told a joke from later years to make Hermione laugh, finally avoiding her series of concerned questions.

And when everyone arrived in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, their mood suddenly became even worse. Because at this time, when everyone was more serious than usual, Lockhart's relaxed and cheerful demeanor was particularly jarring.

Watching Lockhart continue to brag incessantly, Hugo sighed helplessly and then began to monitor the ship girls' exploration of the pipes below the Black Lake through the Admiral Network.

The exit of this pipe was located underwater, more than three hundred meters away from Hogwarts Castle, surrounded by rocks and aquatic plants for cover. If you didn't look carefully, it could easily be mistaken for an underwater reef.

In addition, the castle also had a purification system to prevent sewage from being discharged into the Black Lake. This also prevented the ship girls from finding the drain outlet by tracking the sewage.

This wasn't to say that these wizards had a strong environmental awareness, but rather that wizards often poured items with magical properties, such as various potion remnants or failed potions, into the sewer.

When this drainage system was first built more than a hundred years ago, there was no purification system, which resulted in a serious ecological disaster in the lake. So, since then, a purification system had been installed here and has been operating to this day.

Through the Admiral Network, Hugo saw Audacious, who had come from London, quickly deploy a magic array underwater to control the warning magic array at the sewer outlet. Then, Retribution and Unicorn immediately destroyed the fence at the sewer outlet and crawled inside.

What followed was a winding underwater sewer pipe, more than a kilometer long. Many parts of this pipe were within the magical alert circle of Hogwarts Castle, and any magical presence other than the Basilisk would activate the castle's alert system.

"I think if wizards were to come here, perhaps only someone wearing the Invisibility Cloak, one of the Deathly Hallows, would be able to reach here without alarming anyone," Audacious said to Firefly and Retribution, looking at the surrounding situation after landing on a platform surrounded by pipes.

Obviously, the pure-blood wizards who designed this section of the pipe back then did not consider the possibility of crossing this kilometer without using magic at all, so the ship girls were able to reach here smoothly.

After quickly changing into dry clothes using the ship equipment space, the three ship girls began to walk forward along a wide tunnel with snake-shaped reliefs all over the opening.

It could be seen that this tunnel had been carefully repaired before. The surroundings of the tunnel were full of reliefs that highlighted the greatness of pure-blood wizards and belittled all creatures other than non-pure-blood wizards.

It's just that because it had never been maintained for a long time, and because the Basilisk often passed through here, many parts of these sculptures had become blurred due to wear and tear.

Following the ground, which was much smoother than other places because the Basilisk often passed through it, Indomitable and the others jogged upwards, while three pairs of eyes vigilantly stared at their surroundings.

From time to time, a ship girl would stop and take a piece of Basilisk scale the size of a palm from the cracks in the bricks of the corridor and put it into her ship equipment space.

Along the way, some slime-like soft-bodied animals crawled out of the cracks around the tunnel and tried to attack Indomitable and the others.

At first, the ship girls were a little flustered when facing these monsters that were difficult to kill with physical attacks. Especially since they would also spray a highly acidic mucus that could stick to the enemy and corrode them.

But after discovering that each slime had a core inside that could be fatally struck with one blow, the ship girls with powerful vision easily shattered those cores, which were not much different from the surroundings, with their pistols and eliminated them.