Christmas and the Marauder's Map

Christmas was nothing special for Ezio, but the Christmas spent at Hogwarts this year seemed truly different.

It was the first time he had received so many Christmas presents. When the students left the school and the Christmas holidays arrived, Ezio opened his eyes in the morning to see a massive pile of gifts that the house-elves had silently delivered during the night.

This made him instantly vigilant.

If these weren't gifts delivered by house-elves, but a ticking time bomb, wouldn't I be dead already?

Possessing a keen sense of crisis, Ezio immediately thought of ten thousand ways to kill a person. While magic brought convenience, it also forced him to constantly re-evaluate his knowledge.

Standard assassin techniques were, indeed, becoming a bit insufficient after he embraced magic.

"Anti-Apparition" and "Anti-Summoning Charms" were immediately added to Ezio's list of must-learn content. He had originally planned to get around to these types of magic later, but now it seemed things needed to be moved up.

"So many presents!"

Harry's exclamation rang out from nearby. He had gone to sleep early last night and woke up earlier than he had in recent days. Upon seeing the mountain of gifts at Ezio's bedside, he couldn't help but cry out in surprise.

"It looks like I have a few, too." Harry leaned over to peek at the foot of his own bed, where a small pile of gifts sat.

"This is the first time I've received so much stuff for Christmas!" Although it couldn't compare to Ezio's small mountain, Harry was very satisfied. "Draco and Blaise, their packages are the biggest, and there are friends from the Dueling Club, Hermione and Hagrid, and even Professor Snape!"

Harry sat there happily for a long while. He truly felt very blessed; back at the Dursleys', he had never received any decent Christmas presents.

"They actually... well, a fifty-pence coin." Upon seeing the gift from his aunt and uncle, Harry wasn't surprised by the result. "But Ezio, this thing you sent is... a broomstick?"

"This way you won't have to buy one next year."

Ezio shrugged. It just so happened that the Nimbus 2001 had been released, so he had picked one up as a gift for Harry.

"That's awesome! Since it's the holidays and the professors are mostly away, I can go outside and try it out. There shouldn't be any problems."

Harry, instantly excited, clenched his fists. The old, broken brooms in the school's flying lessons couldn't satisfy his appetite.

"Hurry up and check yours now. There are at least fifty or sixty packages here." After unwrapping his own gifts, Harry turned to Ezio, still feeling quite curious.

"I'll give myself a day off today. It is Christmas, after all."

Ezio threw off his covers and got out of bed, but the very first gift he unwrapped made him lose his composure.

"What kind of trashy wizarding world is this? Who gives Amortentia-laced chocolate as a Christmas present?!"

Ezio rolled his eyes. If the culprit hadn't left the gift unsigned, he would have definitely sent a cursed letter back to let them experience what cruelty was.

He was all too familiar with Amortentia. As for this "love potion," Ezio knew full well how powerful it was. To put it bluntly, it was an Imperius Curse that could not be resisted by willpower. After drinking the Amortentia someone sent, you would fall madly in love with them without reservation and become a slave to their "love."

If capitalists knew about this stuff, they would be dying to pour it down everyone's throat.

"I really don't get it. This stuff is clearly far more evil than the Imperius Curse, so why doesn't the Ministry of Magic ban it? Are wizards all brain-damaged?"

Harry, standing to the side, twitched his mouth. He really hadn't expected such a tactic to exist.

"Maybe it's because you're too popular among the witches?"

"So they'll stop at nothing to get my 'love'?" Ezio tossed the poisoned chocolate aside. There were surely more similar products among these gifts, and he would just destroy them all at once later. "It's truly barbaric. I feel like I'm looking at cavemen dragging people away after knocking them out with clubs."

"And fake gifts rigged with curses? Too bad those tricks don't work on me."

The mountain of gifts was quickly sorted by Ezio. Those with malicious intent or hidden agendas were tossed to the side. However, to his disappointment, no idiot had chosen to sign their name. Although he could likely trace the clues and drag the culprit out if he put in the effort to investigate and verify with the house-elves, Ezio couldn't be bothered. He wouldn't waste his time on such things; until they posed a real threat to him, he chose to ignore these little tricks.

There were sixty-seven gifts in total, and forty-three of them were either ill-intentioned or contained some private agenda. However, the remaining packages were genuine gifts, mostly sent by Slytherin students. Although some people in the house didn't like him, there were also those who held goodwill toward him.

"A magical tent? Harry, how did you think of sending this?"

After unwrapping Harry's large package, Ezio was a bit stunned.

"You like practical things, right? I thought, just in case you offend too many people one day and have to run off to the wilderness to hide, this thing should be very useful."

Harry had spent a great deal of effort choosing a gift for Ezio, and he believed this tent was the most suitable.

"I'll try my best not to end up homeless." Ezio was between laughter and tears, but he had to admit that Harry's tent was indeed quite practical. "Thanks. I think I'll be able to use it, though I hope it's for a vacation or something, not hiding in the mountains."

He set up the single-person tent and poked his head inside. Good heavens, Harry was truly generous. After inheriting his parents' estate, Harry was definitely a wealthy man in the wizarding world. This tent was worth at least a thousand Galleons, featuring four rooms and a living area, with an equipped kitchen. It could fully serve as his mobile base in the future. It was much more comfortable than sleeping in a hotel, though it still needed some defensive charms. Once he finished learning runes and could start delving into alchemy, he could begin modifying the tent.

"By the way, Ezio, Professor Snape sent me a bottle of potion. Do you know what kind of potion this is?"

As they prepared to change clothes and head out, Harry held up a potion bottle containing about a hundred milliliters and asked Ezio.

"Felix Felicis." Ezio's mouth twitched slightly; this was among the things he had traded with Snape previously. "Professor Snape is truly generous. A small bottle like this costs at least ten thousand Galleons just in materials. Even if you gather the sky-high cost of ingredients, there are very few potioneers who can successfully brew it. As far as I know, there are only two people in England who can brew it: one is Snape, and the other is the former Head of Slytherin, Snape's teacher, the Potions Master Horace Slughorn."

"It's that valuable?" Harry asked, surprised. "Then shouldn't I..."

"Just accept it with peace of mind. I wouldn't be surprised if he sent you a bottle of Felix Felicis every year; he's practically treating you like a son."

"I don't think so." Harry pondered for a moment. "But Professor Snape is quite good to me. It seems he really was a good friend of my mother's."

"Do you want me to share some with you? I've read the books; you can't drink too much Felix Felicis. Ten milliliters at most at a time, and the interval between doses must be at least a year. I don't think I'll even be able to use that much in my lifetime."

"Besides, this stuff doesn't have an expiration date. Worst case, I'll just keep it as a family heirloom." Ezio rummaged through his pocket and pulled out an almost identical small gold bottle. "I traded with Snape once before, and it's enough. I even paid for the materials myself—he took two large gold bars from me. Snape is truly a bastard."

Seeing Snape's practiced move of "borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha," even with Ezio's calm mindset, he couldn't help but feel a bit annoyed. But there was nothing he could do; when it came to brewing top-tier potions, Snape could indeed manipulate Ezio at will, because those things were top-shelf goods that money couldn't buy.

Harry stuck out his tongue upon hearing this. He also felt that Snape's "empty-handed white wolf" tactic was a bit excessive; ten thousand Galleons was not a small sum, even for a wealthy man like him who had a vault full of gold.

"I'm not short on money. If I wanted to, I could easily get my hands on a million Galleons or so." Ezio waved his hand. If all the money in his anonymous accounts were converted into gold, he could probably buy two cubic meters of solid gold bars. He was a bona fide billionaire. Even if Giovanni hadn't left an inheritance, as an assassin, Ezio had ways to acquire a large sum of money quickly.

"I don't care how much commission Snape made off me, as long as he's willing to provide me with these potions."

"Maybe I can help out when the time comes?" Harry understood what Ezio meant and gave a cheeky grin.

Snape, completely unaware of all this, had also woken up early. He unlocked his heavily guarded wardrobe and gazed at the half-photograph taped to the inside of the door, a flash of deep, lingering longing crossing his eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Lily."

He spoke silently, remembering that Christmas from over a decade ago once more, but this time, he hadn't been able to unwrap that special gift at the foot of his bed.

#

Not many people stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas, and even fewer were students from pure-blood wizarding families, but unexpectedly, they ran into the Weasley brothers in the Great Hall.

"You didn't go home?" Harry was quite familiar with the Weasley twins; firstly, because they had helped him on the train at the start of the term, and secondly, because the Weasley twins had also joined the Gryffindor dueling club. However, their motives for joining weren't exactly pure—the two were there to make money, often setting up betting pools on the outcomes whenever Slytherin and Gryffindor students dueled on stage, earning quite a bit.

"Mom and Dad went to Romania to see Charlie. He's working as a dragon keeper there; it's a dangerous profession." Fred shrugged, and George continued, "They were worried Charlie couldn't handle it, so they went over to check on him, which is why we're stuck at school."

The four house tables, usually separated, were gone. Because there were so few people, only one long table remained in the Great Hall, yet even then, it wasn't full. Fred sat opposite Harry, with George and Percy beside him, while their youngest brother, Ron, sat at the far end, happily eating a large chicken leg in each hand.

"A dragon keeper? That sounds like a cool job. Hagrid dreams of raising a dragon, but it seems like those don't grow in the forests of Hogwarts."

"That's probably one of Hagrid's biggest regrets." The twins were also very familiar with Hagrid, though this familiarity was built on the premise of them being chased out of the Forbidden Forest by him, running for their lives.

"Maybe they'll grow there one day; dragons aren't exactly rare in the wizarding world."

Ezio knew full well that if nothing went wrong, Hagrid would be raising a dragon in his hut before long. However, the Harry and Hagrid in the original story handled the dragon far too clumsily. Ezio was actually looking forward to that day; after all, he and Hagrid were friends, and he had received quite a bit of care from him. Hagrid had even managed to get him some magical materials from the Forbidden Forest, and in quantities measured by the sack—something a dozen barrels of whiskey couldn't buy.

"Wow, isn't this our Slytherin King—the esteemed Lord Ezio?"

The twins spoke with a touch of exaggeration, their faces beaming with smiles.

"If you two transferred to Slytherin, Professor McGonagall would probably give her full approval."

"Let's skip that." The two shook their heads in unison. "If we actually did that, we'd be torn to pieces when we got home. But honestly, the current Slytherin isn't bad. At least you replaced that gorilla Marcus. Playing Quidditch against your Slytherin house now feels much more like a real game than it used to."

As the best Beater duo on the Gryffindor team, the Weasley twins felt the changes on the Quidditch pitch more deeply and understood the shifts in Slytherin over the past few months better than anyone. Although the Slytherin team was slightly weaker than before, regardless of whether they won or lost, they played with a sense of integrity.

"I heard you two are a bit short on cash?"

Since he had run into the twins, Ezio decided to resolve the matter he hadn't had time for earlier. He had a decent impression of the twins; they were the type who were very bright but not particularly fond of studying, preferring instead to delve into things they were actually interested in.

Hearing this, the twins looked at Ezio with slight surprise. They were indeed short on money; to pursue something they were truly passionate about, they needed a large sum of capital.

"I've heard you two are the most well-informed people at Hogwarts, so I have a trade proposal. I wonder if you'd be willing to accept."

"How big of a deal?" the twins asked calmly.

"That depends on how much valuable information you can provide."

"Perhaps we can talk about it in a moment."

The taciturn twins didn't need to exchange glances to guess each other's thoughts, so they nodded readily.

After finishing their meal, they followed Ezio to an empty classroom in the corridor outside the Great Hall.

"Speak up. What do you want to know? Hogwarts has many secrets. We wouldn't dare say we know them all, but we know plenty of things others aren't aware of."

"For instance, secret passages?"

"Of course!" the twins said confidently. "We know quite a few secret passages that even Filch doesn't know about, including ones leading to Hogsmeade. If you want to order some Hogsmeade specialties, we'd be happy to do it for you."

"However, I prefer to get things done in one go."

Ezio reached into his bag, felt around, and then set down several heavy gold bars.

"Each one is a standard five-hundred-gram bar, which can be exchanged for five hundred Galleons at Gringotts. Goblins are cunning, but they take money very seriously."

"How much you can take—or rather, whether you take it all—depends on the value you can provide me."

These heavy little gold bricks, reflecting a mesmerizing golden glow, instantly transfixed the twins. They had only intended to make a little pocket money to further their own ventures, but they hadn't expected the temptation placed before them to be this massive.

It's not that we aren't loyal to Gryffindor, but Ezio is paying too much!

"We need to discuss this."

They suppressed the excitement in their hearts, tore their eyes away with great reluctance, and ran to a corner to whisper to each other. After about thirty seconds, the twins reached their decision.

"A map of Hogwarts. And not just any map—it shows the location and name of everyone, and it contains records of many secret passages and chambers."

"If you have this, there's nowhere in Hogwarts you can't go. Except, of course, the Headmaster's office; the passwords there aren't displayed on the map."

"I need to inspect the goods."

"Of course, no problem at all." The two pulled an old, folded piece of parchment from their robes and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Black ink spread rapidly across the old parchment. Within moments, a panoramic map of Hogwarts was drawn out; the castle, the Black Lake, and a portion of the Forbidden Forest were all displayed on the map.

"With this, everything in Hogwarts will be no secret to you, we guarantee."

Ezio took the Marauder's Map from them and, after confirming its function, nodded with satisfaction.

"Then, a pleasure doing business with you."

"These are all for us?" The twins were so surprised their jaws dropped. There were six gold bars on the table, totaling three thousand Galleons.

"Unless you think your goods aren't worth the price."

"We swear it's worth every bit!"

The twins patted their chests in assurance, watched Ezio push the door open and leave, then lowered their voices to cheer, diving onto the dusty table for fear that their windfall might be exposed.