Harry's New "Tagalong" (Happy New Year's Day)

Harry noticed that Hogwarts had suddenly gained a lot of strange new people recently. Most of them were young people in their twenties, always dressed in well-tailored black formal robes and speaking english with peculiar rolled-r accents.

They did not need to attend classes or complete any assignments, yet they constantly hurried back and forth between the Room of Requirement, the Potions Classroom, the Transfiguration Classroom, and the new Dark Magic Classroom. Sometimes, as they walked, they discussed something at a rapid pace.

According to Tierra, they were experimental assistants he had invited from the German Ministry of Magic. Supposedly, they were among the most outstanding young talents in the German Wizarding World. Following the signing of the Anglo-German magical friendship alliance treaty, Tierra had specifically invited them to Hogwarts for exchanges and study. While injecting fresh blood into Hogwarts, they would work with him to further and more deeply analyze the principles of magic, thereby advancing magical technology and alchemy in hopes of sparking the First Magical Revolution.

Hermione was excited by their arrival, but Harry had neither the time nor the energy to think about it.

Harry had been very irritated lately. He had Quidditch training to attend, and he also had to complete the increasingly tedious homework brought about by Tierra's Educational Reform. But his real trouble was that, wherever he went now, McLaren and Brown followed him.

Meanwhile, Hermione was so excited by those newly arrived so-called "young German scholars" that she stayed out all night, exploring knowledge he could only half understand with a dedication and enthusiasm Harry could not comprehend.

And Ron.

Ever since waking from the control of the Love Potion, he had kept Lavender Brown at arm's length. It looked as though the potion's effects had not entirely faded, but from the