Chapter 646
How do you know
Chapter 646 How do you know
"wake?"
Such common words, striking my eardrums, made Wade feel a slight chill in his fingertips. The toads in the cage had fallen completely silent at some point.
After a moment, Vader asked, "What is this ancient thing?"
This time, Ms. Grey didn't answer. She just glanced at Wade quietly and said, "Be careful... those things are much more dangerous than the basilisk in the secret chamber."
The ghost turned its head and walked straight through the tall oak trees and thick bushes, its pearly white figure quickly disappearing from sight.
Wade didn't chase after them. He looked down at the toad in the birdcage.
Perhaps because his brain capacity was not yet sufficient to support complex thinking, the toad remained crouched in the cage, lost in thought. After a long while, he suddenly snapped out of it, raised his eyes, and secretly looked at Wade's reaction.
Two pairs of gray eyes suddenly met. The toad's pupils contracted, its belly bulged, and it made a "croak" sound.
Wade's gaze suddenly became meaningful.
He glanced at the nervous-looking toad, but didn't reveal his identity. Instead, he calmly carried the cage and walked out of the dark forest.
The "toad" in the birdcage breathed a sigh of relief, quietly curled up in the corner, and looked at the castle that was getting bigger and bigger in its field of vision, unable to hold back its tears.
Heaven knows how many hardships he endured on his journey to finally arrive at this place, as a weak, ugly, and helpless toad!
……
In fact, Lucius Malfoy's first choice was to seek Narcissa's help to break the spell. But unfortunately, the Malfoy Manor's security system had been repaired or strengthened by his family for generations, and even though he was the owner of the manor, he could no longer sneak in as a toad.
He caught insects and drank dew, waiting outside the manor, hoping to see his wife. Lucius believed that once Narcissa knew who he was, she would certainly do everything in her power to help him.
But Narcissa was preoccupied with her husband's disappearance and had no interest in taking her usual walks around the estate.
She was always in a hurry, entering and leaving the manor using Floo Powder or Apparition. Lucius waited for two whole weeks before finally getting a chance to catch Narcissa walking out of the manor gates.
The results of it?
Before he could even leap to his wife and raise the leaf that revealed his identity (which read "Lucius Malfoy"), he saw his wife give the toad a disgusted and indifferent look, and then lash out with her wand like a whip!
Lucius: "..."
He didn't want to recall that day.
In short, he survived—heartbreakingly, tearfully, and trembling with lingering fear.
The leaves that he had painstakingly written on were blown to shreds, and the toad's body was covered with several wounds that were difficult to heal.
After that, he knew it was best not to appear in front of Narcissa for the time being, and tried his best to send her messages directly—
Using the insects they caught to form the words they wanted to say, before they could even finish spelling a single word, the insects they had caught had already been carried away by the hardworking ants.
Abandoning insects and using brightly colored berries instead attracted a flock of birds. Not only that, he was also mocked by two nosy crows for a long time. Their "caw caw caw" laughter echoed in his mind for many days without completely disappearing.
If it were a leaf, it would be blown away by the wind.
If you replace it with a tree branch, it won't be very noticeable.
He painstakingly gathered a pile of pebbles and finally managed to spell out what he wanted to say, but after waiting day and night, he never saw Narcissa leave the manor again.
The closest they ever came was over a hundred meters.
Through the gaps between the fence and the bushes, Lucius saw his wife sitting in the gazebo, pale-faced, with vacant eyes and a thin figure, as if she had lost all her vitality.
He was both heartbroken and anxious, and he jumped and hopped outside the fence, making "coo coo coo" sounds.
"Look at me! Look at me! I'm right here!"
As a result, he did not attract Narcissa's attention, but his cries instead attracted a starling—a bird that grabs a toad by its hind legs, beats it repeatedly, and eats it when the toad is too weak to struggle!
Using his human wisdom and combat experience, Lucius finally managed to shake off the wretched predator after much trouble. When he returned, exhausted, to the spot where he had placed the words on the stones, a chilling cold suddenly shot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, making it difficult to even breathe.
Finally, someone noticed the message he left behind, but it wasn't Narcissa, whom Malfoy had been eagerly anticipating, but rather two emaciated house-elves. —The Malfoy family's house-elves.
The two little elves discovered the writing on the ground and whispered to each other. One of them suddenly squatted down, touched the small stones on the ground, and then looked down at its fingertips.
Malfoy's heart suddenly began to pound wildly, as if a cold, venomous snake were crawling down his spine.
He knew what the elf was looking at—while fiddling with the pebbles, he inevitably rubbed some of his own slime onto it.
This viscous substance is frequently used in potion-making, so it is very familiar to the residents of the magical world.
Therefore, they must know that the one who laid the stones... was a toad!
The house-elf held the pebble, looked around, and Lucius quickly shrank behind a bush, hiding himself completely.
In the past, Lucius, knowing the loyalty of house-elves, would have swaggered out and ordered them to fetch his mistress.
But at this moment, he held his breath, his body trembling slightly, as if he were frozen in place by an invisible force, and dared not show himself at all.
Having witnessed Dobby's betrayal, Lucius, looking at the two house-elves' intertwined old and new wounds and their tattered pillowcases, couldn't help but feel suspicious—
When they find themselves transformed into a weak and powerless toad, will they still obey his orders and treat him with kindness and respect?
One house-elf returned to the manor, while the other searched the surrounding area.
Lucius couldn't help but feel a glimmer of hope—if they could bring Narcissa to him, perhaps that meant…
But he did not see Narcissa.
In the blink of an eye, almost all the house-elves in the manor had come out. They looked at the names on the ground, discussed for a moment, and then dispersed, searching in all directions!
……
"Dong dong dong..."
A series of hurried footsteps approached, and the ground around them seemed to tremble. Lucius Malfoy recalled the tension and fear he felt when he was almost found by the house-elves.
That was the moment he felt closest to death in his entire life!
The toad shuddered, waking from its reverie, and saw an enormous human figure emerge from the shadows of the trees, blotting out the sky and terrifying beyond belief!
His mind went blank for two seconds before he realized that the person running towards him was none other than Rupert Hagrid!
"Wade, it's you?"
Dewdrops clung to Hagrid's thick beard as he carried an axe, explaining, "I heard some students ran into the Forbidden Forest, and I thought it was those twins again. Merlin, they never stop causing trouble!"
"So?" Wade joked, "You're planning to chop them up?"
“What? Oh, of course not! This is just for self-defense.” Hagrid tucked the axe into his belt, gesturing for Wade to come back with him, and said, “You shouldn’t have gone into the Forbidden Forest, Wade! You know the school rules!”
"Sorry." Wade subconsciously moved the cage containing the toad behind him and made up an excuse: "I just felt... this was a good place to think about the third competition item."
The league is the school's top priority right now, and using that as an excuse, like a Wallfacer saying "it's part of the plan," easily gains leniency.
However, Hagrid's reaction surprised Wade. The half-giant stared in astonishment, his thick eyebrows almost furrowing, and blurted out:
"How—how did you know? Who told you about the details of the third project?"
One update tonight
(End of this chapter)