Chapter 452
: Boggart and the Fish Tank
Chapter 452: Boggart and the Fish Tank
The students scattered and ran around the classroom screaming.
After all, Bogut is not a real "female ghost". Whenever the person closest to it changes, it will be stunned for a while.
So the "female ghost" was like having poor signal contact. Sometimes she was ferocious and terrifying, and sometimes she was at a loss. Her status switched very frequently. This poor guy seemed to be completely confused by the students.
But because its appearance had not changed fundamentally, the frightened students hardly noticed it.
Only Wade had been standing there without moving. He looked at Boggart, then at Professor Troca who had no control over the situation at all, and then he noticed that the new professor's expression was also a little dull, as if he had never expected such a situation to occur in the classroom, so that his CPU short-circuited and was temporarily unable to react.
After everyone ran around like headless flies for a while, the crowd in the classroom was basically divided into two parts.
Most of the people hid behind Professor Trocca, and a small number huddled behind Vader.
Vader: “…”
He sighed softly and took two steps forward.
Wade was actually very curious and wanted to know what he was most afraid of. At the same time, he felt that even if Voldemort or a dead body of a relative suddenly appeared in the classroom the next moment, he knew very well that it was the effect of magic and would not lose his composure because of it.
The female ghost approached quickly.
Snapped!
With a crisp sound, the terrifying centipede ghost disappeared in an instant, and was replaced by something that no one had expected.
"Ah... ah ah ah..."
Daphne's face turned pale, and she hid in the corner with her eyes tightly closed, as if she wanted to squeeze herself into the gap in the corner from the bottom of her heart.
After shouting for a while, she suddenly realized that the screams around her had disappeared. She suddenly closed her mouth and then quietly opened one eye.
The imagined scene - the terrifying female ghost right in front of her with her bloody mouth exposed did not exist. Daphne bravely looked around and found that there was no female ghost in the classroom, but there was an extra...
"Fish tank?" Malfoy expressed the question on everyone's mind. He raised his eyebrows and asked in surprise: "Gray, what you are most afraid of is a fish tank?"
He deliberately pretended to be relaxed, as if he was not the first person to run behind Professor Troca after the female ghost transformed.
At this moment, Malfoy burst into laughter and looked around, as if he thought everyone would laugh at Wade with him, but even Goyle just looked ahead blankly, with nothing but confusion on his face.
Malfoy looked towards the center of the classroom again.
Well, take a closer look, that fish tank is indeed a bit weird——
There is only one small fish swimming very slowly in the transparent crystal fish tank. The water is very clear, which is nothing.
But there is a dense circle of pink fleshy nerves extending above the fish tank. At first glance, they look like petal-shaped decorations, but a closer look reveals that there are round eyeballs hanging on the tips, and those eyeballs are all staring at the fish tank below.
This Cthulhu scene gave Malfoy goosebumps, as if he had sensed some invisible, huge and terrifying existence.
He rubbed his arms and whispered to Pansy beside him: "Which movie is this scene from? Have you seen it?"
Pansy shook her head and muttered quietly, "How weird... What does Gray usually read?"
The confused and surprised whispers of the crowd seemed to wake up the stunned Wade. He stepped forward, pointed his wand at the Boggart, and said slowly: "Funny!"
"Snapped!"
The fish tank disappeared and was replaced by a man in black with an old-fashioned camera on his neck. He took a step forward, then fell down with a "bang", and his limbs were scraping on the ground as if he was swimming on dry land.
Malfoy's sharp eyesight allowed him to notice that the corners of Wade's mouth were slightly raised, as if he really found the scene ridiculous.
He couldn't help but say to the people around him: "Is there something wrong with that Gray guy?"
"What? No?"
Goldstein, who was also hiding behind Professor Trocca, said that he had thought of an excuse for his classmates:
"You think this picture is strange, but maybe it's because he watched some weird cartoons when he was a child, so it left a psychological trauma."
"That's great."
Terry said enviously: "He had countless cartoons and movies to watch when he was young, but when I was young I only had the mud puddle outside my house to play in."
——Since when did being a mudblood become something to be envied?
Malfoy rolled his eyes and wanted to say so, but after looking at the Ravenclaws beside him and then at the tall figure of Professor Trocca in front of him, he finally swallowed the words in his heart.
Professor Trocca finally reacted at this time. He flicked his wand and threw the Boggart, who was lying on the ground and unable to get up, back into the box. Then he coughed dryly and looked at everyone.
"Except for Vide Grey, I am very dissatisfied with the performance of all of you just now!"
Professor Troca slightly emphasized his tone, and when he saw the students who had just fled in panic lower their heads under his gaze, he slowly breathed a sigh of relief, pretending that the chaotic class just now was exactly what he wanted to achieve.
Professor Trocca waved his wand, causing the wands, books, crystal balls and other objects thrown by their owners to fly back, and then said:
"I think you have realized that running away is the most useless thing to do, and throwing away your wand is extremely stupid!"
"The way to deal with a Boggart is with a funny spell, but if you're confused and weak-willed, then standing with the others is also a way to deal with it!"
Professor Troka walked around the classroom, repeatedly emphasizing the way to deal with Boggart in a cold tone, and asked everyone to review the spell several times. When most of the class time had passed, they started practicing again.
This time, the students lined up in neat rows and went up to challenge one by one, and things finally became much more orderly.
However, every time the centipede ghost appears, it still causes a small exclamation.
……
As Wade expected, the news about the fish tank quickly spread in a small area.
During dinner, everyone in SSC sat near Wade, and they were hesitant to speak while eating. Their expressions of wanting to ask questions but not daring to do so all looked a little painful.
The Weasley twins didn't care about other people's possible "fragile hearts" at all. They walked over with a fish tank in their hands. There was even a small fish in it, which was probably taken from the Black Lake.
"Look, Wade! The scariest thing in the world!" Fred grinned.
"Overcome your psychological trauma! If you are afraid, we will help you overcome it together!"
George patted the fish tank with a wicked smile and placed it on the long table in front of Wade. Theo and Ryan, who were sitting opposite him, quickly moved away several plates.
"Hey, you guys!" Hermione ran over angrily. Before she could reprimand them, Wade poked the fish tank and said:
"Who said I'm afraid of this thing? You should put this pike back into the lake. It has very strict requirements for its living environment and it's easy to kill it."
The twins looked at each other and said in confusion, "Huh? But we heard that... the Boggart turned into a fish tank in front of you?"
Seeing that many people around him pricked up their ears curiously, Wade also wanted to explain, so he said patiently:
"In the vast starry sky, every star could be a sun or even a galaxy. We live in the solar system, and the world outside is huge, so huge that it can be said to have no boundaries."
"Oh..." Harry asked blankly, "What does this have to do with the fish tank?"
Wade said: "A Muggle scientist once asked a question - if there are a lot of alien civilizations in the universe, why haven't we found any signs of alien life so far?"
"It's like in such a large body of water, how could there be only one fish?"
"Either there was a great danger in the waters, and the other fish died, but this fish survived by sheer luck."
"Either -"
Wade knocked on the transparent fish tank and said:
“The world seems so big, but it’s actually just a small fish tank. This fish is kept here by someone—and the keeper only wants to keep a fish.”
"The little fish seems to be swimming freely in the water, but in fact, it is trapped in this fish tank for its entire life and can never leave. It doesn't even know that there are eyes outside the fish tank observing it."
He spoke calmly, but perhaps because of his rich associative ability or his overly sensitive emotions, several people suddenly shuddered.
"I think I understand why you're afraid of that kind of thing..." Harry muttered.
He imagined himself as the "only fish in the fish tank" and suddenly felt that even staying with the Dursleys was better than that.
"Why can't it be that the ocean is so big and the fish is so small and swims so slowly that it doesn't run into other fish?"
A hazy voice came from behind. Wade turned around and saw Luna standing behind him. After listening for a while, she suddenly interrupted and said seriously:
"And what you just said is wrong - life is not only found on Earth! Someone once flew to the moon and brought back a bag of glittering moon frogs. If we can fly to Mars or the sun, we might find even more amazing life!"
"Oh, Luna! Stop saying those crazy things of yours! You'll be laughed at."
The girl who lived in the same dormitory with Luna covered her face with one hand and reached out to pull Luna away.
Wade smiled and said, "Perhaps you are right... I have not seen the world outside the earth with my own eyes, so I cannot be sure that there are no other life forms outside the earth. But if one day..."
He paused and said, "One day, if this small, slow fish really encounters other fish, will the other fish live in peace with it? Or will it immediately become prey to the predator?"
Luna blinked and said slowly: "...How can I know this?"
"Yeah..." Vader looked at her and said, "That's the problem."
It was quiet for a while.
Many Ravenclaw students, in particular, frowned and pondered unanswered questions such as "What if the universe was desolate?", "Observing the fish breeders?", and "Why do we exist?"
Luna was pulled away by her friend, looking thoughtful. Her eyes looked even more dazed, as if she was in a state of half sleep and half wakefulness.
When Wade turned around, he found that the huge fish tank in front of him had been moved away by someone, and Theo had put a lot of food on his plate. When Wade looked over, a piece of thick toast had just fallen.
"Theo, what are you doing?" Wade asked in confusion.
"I heard that being hungry can make people pessimistic and prone to negative emotions." Theo said with a tangled expression: "Wade...you should eat more for dinner."
Vader looked from him to the plate.
He turned to Ryan and said, "Is he ying-ying me?"
Ryan suppressed his laughter and put another potato on Wade's plate, silently expressing his support for Theo.
When everyone else was silent, the only thing the two Hufflepuffs were thinking about was - why are they thinking about this? They're just scaring themselves.
……
Malfoy was angry to find that the topic he had spread with great difficulty - "Vade Grey is actually afraid of fish tanks" - was quickly forgotten, and was replaced by some grand and empty propositions.
Even during the astronomy class, Professor Sinstra added a white fishbowl pattern to the hat, and while everyone was observing the stars, he gave a whole class on the legends of the various constellations, and finally said that these were all made up by people.
During the History of Magic class, Pansy suddenly said with emotion: "If our world is just a huge fish tank, I will always like you, Draco. I don't care if anyone observes our feelings."
The confession that would have seemed sweet to Malfoy in the past now made him frown.
——Why do you have to think so seriously about the few words that Weed Grey said casually? That guy was so obsessed with this kind of question that he even turned Boggart into a fish tank. Do you want to do the same?
——Speaking of which, why did the Boggart really become a fish tank with eyeballs? After all, compared to a conjecture, a centipede ghost is scarier, right?
Malfoy felt something was a little strange, but he couldn't tell why.
But he didn't really want to delve into Wade Grey's thoughts, so after thinking about it for a while, he let it go and looked forward to the arrival of the afternoon.
Last semester, when Hagrid first taught Care of Magical Creatures, he brought in some hippogriffs. Malfoy angered one of them, and both Harry Potter and Malfoy were scratched by the monster.
Later, because of the threat of "some people", Malfoy had to swallow his anger and did not instigate his father to find a way to expel Hagrid. In exchange, Hagrid promised to take him to see the dragon.
But every day after that, Malfoy had to be detained by the professor because he almost killed Crabbe earlier, and he had no chance to see the dragon at all.
Just recently, under Malfoy's repeated urging, Hagrid finally made an effort and "snatched" an opportunity from Professor Snape to put Malfoy in detention.
Seeing that it was almost time, Malfoy walked happily towards Hagrid's hut, trying hard to control his pace and not jump up, but when he approached the hut, his face suddenly turned gloomy.
——Why are all those guys I hate the most here?
(End of this chapter)