Influence

The next day, Hoffa was awakened by scratching claws.

He had a harder time getting up than yesterday. He had overdrawn his magic twice in a row yesterday and was utterly exhausted.

The moment he opened his eyes, Hoffa saw the silver badger Yinduo had transformed into shoving him with all its strength.

Yinduo whispered, "If you don't get up, I'm going to starve to death."

Hoffa froze for a second, staring at the ceiling, then at the badger beside him. He had yet to shake off his sleepiness and dreams.

Then he shot upright.

"Why the hell are you still here?"

The moment the words left his mouth, he hurriedly covered it and looked around. Fortunately, it was nearly noon, and the dormitory was empty. Everyone had gone.

Yinduo said, "I'm hungry."

At that, Hoffa realized his own stomach was growling too. Only then did he remember that yesterday had been the most eventful day of his life, yet he had not eaten anything.

"Hungry? Let's go have lunch—wait a minute!"

Hoffa suddenly threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. He grabbed the badger by the head, carried it to the Ravenclaw window, and held it out over three hundred meters above the ground.

A fierce gust of wind sent it swaying wildly.

Yinduo froze, looked down, and let out a miserable howl. "What are you doing?! Are you trying to murder me?!"

With his hands on his hips, Hoffa pointed at the badger and cursed, "Didn't you say you'd leave at dawn? Didn't you say I definitely wouldn't see you when I woke up? Can you ever tell the truth?"

"Y-you put me down! I-I'm afraid of heights!"

"You lied to me."

Dangling high in the air, Yinduo frantically scratched his head with his claws.

"Your roommates were too noisy. They kept running around all morning and never stopped. I didn't dare come out from under your blanket at all."

With a dark expression, Hoffa pulled the badger back through the window and threw it onto the floor. "But they're gone now."

Yinduo landed on the floor and curled up in the corner.

"I'm hungry. Hey, you little brat, is this how you treat a friend? You're throwing me out without even giving me a meal?"

Hoffa took a deep breath. "Heh. I've never seen anyone shamelessly insist on staying at someone else's place for a meal."

Though he said that, he still picked Yinduo up, stuffed him into his robes, changed clothes, washed up, and went downstairs. It was daytime now, unlike at night, so he did not dare let Yinduo sit on his shoulder. Instead, he tucked him inside the front of his school robes.

It was Sunday. When Hoffa entered the common room, he saw the first-years gathered together, chatting and laughing. A few older boys were unusually holding their wands in the common room, controlling two books as they dueled and tore at each other in the air.

A crowd of new students around them clapped and cheered.

Yinduo poked his head out of Hoffa's robes. "These are your classmates? They really are young and lively. Except for you. Why do you act like some old man just muddling through life?"

Hoffa jumped at his sudden appearance and quickly tapped him with his wand. "Shut up. Who said you could talk? Once you've eaten, get the hell out of here."

Seeing Miranda glance in his direction through the crowd, Hoffa hurriedly pushed open the common room door and headed for the Great Hall.

Now, how to get rid of this goblin elegantly and without losing face had become Hoffa's most urgent problem.

This fellow did not have Peter Pettigrew's talent for undercover work, staying silent for years on end. Whenever he saw anything interesting, he wanted to join in, and he could not resist commenting on everything he saw.

Hoffa was worried about what would happen if people discovered he had a talking badger. He was even more worried that his secret trip to Hogsmeade would be exposed.

He had a feeling that what happened yesterday would draw no small amount of attention.

At noon in the Great Hall, the food prepared by the house-elves had just appeared on the plates. Yinduo, starving like a ghost reborn, tried to leap out and eat. Hoffa rapped him on the head several times with his wand before he finally calmed down.

The moment Miranda saw Hoffa, she asked curiously, "Where did you go yesterday? I didn't see you all day."

Hoffa had already prepared an answer. "I got lost in the school. Some of the corridors kept changing around, and I wandered all day without finding my way out. By the time I did, it was already dark."

Miranda suddenly understood. "So it was one of the magical corridors. If you can't get through, you can just jump. Hogwarts won't let students fall to their deaths."

Hoffa gave an awkward laugh, and the two chatted casually for a bit.

At that moment, a skylight in one corner of the Great Hall opened. A flock of owls flew in. They circled above the tables until they found their respective owners, then dropped letters or parcels into their laps.

Owls usually arrived in the morning or at noon. Hoffa did not have an owl, nor did he think anyone would send him a letter.

Miranda had an owl of her own, a beautiful chestnut-colored spotted owl. Its forehead was dotted with tiny blue-and-white specks.

A newspaper landed in front of Miranda. It was the Daily Prophet.

Hoffa could not afford a newspaper subscription either. He was poor. It cost ten Silver Sickles a month, which amounted to a Galleon after a few months.

After delivering the mail, the owls all begged their owners for food. Miranda's owl politely opened its beak, and Miranda fed it a slice of jam toast.

Hoffa had always felt that pets sometimes resembled their owners. Take Argeleia, for example.

Her white owl was as self-centered as she was. After delivering its item, it immediately plunged its head into the communal nut dish and began crunching away.

Taking advantage of the confusion caused by the arriving owls, Hoffa quickly set Yinduo on the table.

Yinduo was starving. He grabbed several chicken legs from the table in quick succession and stuffed them into his mouth, his cheeks puffed out enormously.

Miranda was unfolding her newspaper when she suddenly noticed a badger on the table and immediately became playful.

"Hoffa, where did you buy a badger? Hardly anyone keeps one of those."

A pet badger?

All at once, the Ravenclaw students turned to look.

Even the Hufflepuffs at the neighboring table gathered around curiously, shouting, "What a strange badger! It's silver and black!"

"Wow, it really is adorable."

"Look at the markings on its body. Don't they look like a suit?"

The badger was Hufflepuff's symbol, and they were especially sensitive to such animals.

Hoffa was startled. He hurriedly stuffed the gluttonous Yinduo back into his robes and said with a forced smile, "I found it... by the Black Lake."

"Wow! You're so lucky."

Several Hufflepuff girls immediately had stars in their eyes.

"Can I pet it?"

Before Hoffa could speak, several soft, pale hands reached into his robes and began stroking Yinduo's head.

Yinduo looked as though he was enjoying it. Hoffa could only yank hard on his tail to pull him down. This idiot—did he have any idea what would happen if he was exposed?

"Wait a moment!"

A cool voice rang out. The Hufflepuff girls froze and turned their heads.

A girl with an owl perched on her shoulder slowly parted the crowd and walked over, proud as a queen. It was Argeleia.

Narrowing her blue eyes, Argeleia asked sharply, "A badger you found by the Black Lake? Hmph! Why would a found badger be wearing earrings, Bach? Did you steal someone else's pet?"

Damn it! Her again? Her again?

How sharp were this girl's eyes? And she insisted on judging him with the most malicious assumptions. If she learned this badger's true identity, she would definitely report him first without a second thought.

Without Hoffa needing to say anything, Yinduo tucked his head back into his robes and trembled in his arms.

Hoffa held Yinduo down and said fiercely despite his lack of confidence, "What a load of slander. Which eye saw me steal it?"

"Hmph! If you didn't steal it, why did you only dare let it out when the owls arrived?"

"You—!"

"What about me? If you didn't steal it, why are you holding it in your robes and refusing to let it out?"

Hoffa was going mad. He finally understood what it meant to accuse someone of a crime when one was determined to do so. This person was pure poison. She clung to him like a ghost, like maggots on a bone—impossible to shake off. Ignoring her was not an option either. She was no different from the internet trolls from his previous life.

He stood up, ready to leave. If he could not provoke her, could he not at least avoid her?

Argeleia said to the people beside her, "See? I guessed right. He's feeling guilty."

Faced with her relentless pressure, Hoffa gritted his teeth and turned around...

But just as a conflict was about to erupt, Miranda, who had been reading the newspaper nearby, suddenly cried out.

"Oh my God, come and look! A dark wizard broke into Hogsmeade Village last night and used a highly poisonous mist in Hogsmeade."

A dark wizard?

This news was far more shocking than a badger. Everyone gathered around Miranda, and Argeleia's attention was diverted as well.

Hoffa let out a breath of relief.

Miranda continued, "Forty-seven people fell unconscious. Two died after inhaling too much poison gas, even after being sent to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. One of them was the owner of Two Brooms!"

The students around them all sucked in a breath, their faces turning pale.

At the other tables in the Great Hall, students from every year who had received the Daily Prophet saw the news as well.

Miranda turned another page of the newspaper in shock.

"The remaining forty-five victims are all in deep comas. The Ministry of Magic found extensive signs of combat at the scene and discovered the corpse of a Swooping Evil. It has been tentatively determined that the perpetrator was the German dark wizard Schmidt Ruterov.

"Ruterov was expelled from Durmstrang in 1901 for recklessly keeping dangerous creatures. He has killed numerous Muggles in Romania, possesses a large number of magical creatures, and is extremely dangerous!

"The British Ministry of Magic's Minister, Hector Fawley, has issued a strong protest. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has dispatched a large number of Aurors to seal off Hogsmeade Village and issued an A-level dangerous wanted notice."

When Miranda finished reading, the crowd was horrified.

After several seconds of silence, fierce arguments erupted throughout the Great Hall.

"Why would a German dark wizard come to Hogsmeade?"

"Are the Ministry people blind?"

"That useless old fool Fawley can do nothing but protest?"

"He should be thrown out of office sooner or later!"

"Wait a moment!" Argeleia suddenly interrupted the arguing crowd.

"You said the Ministry found extensive signs of combat at the scene?"

Miranda nodded. "That's right, but they didn't find either side involved in the fight."

Argeleia asked, "Did anyone report it to the Ministry?"

Miranda said, "No. A trading caravan delivering goods to Hogsmeade discovered it in the morning."

"There's something wrong here."

Argeleia said decisively.

The students at the Ravenclaw table all looked over.

Argeleia pulled over a chair and sat down, crossing her legs as she began to speak with confidence.

"Everything that happens has a reason. Why did the dark wizard come to Hogsmeade? Why did they clash in Hogsmeade? More importantly—why did no one take the initiative to report it to the Ministry?"

"I mean, what would normal people do if they encountered a dark wizard? They would definitely run away, then report it to the Ministry."

Miranda immediately retorted, "Perhaps the victims were taken away."

"Impossible!" Argeleia sneered. "Didn't you read what the paper said? Signs of an intense battle, and a Swooping Evil was killed. Judging from the surface alone, the two sides should have been evenly matched. Yet based on the outcome, the dark wizard suffered greater losses."

Miranda fell silent. A crowd of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs from the next table gathered around. Even students from Slytherin and Gryffindor came over and listened carefully to Argeleia's analysis.

Argeleia raised two fingers.

"There are two possibilities. First, the other party involved in the fight does not want anyone to know their identity. Second, neither side involved in the fight belongs to the British wizarding world, so neither side cares.

"But since it happened in Hogsmeade, I think the first possibility is more likely.

"As for who might be in Hogsmeade yet not want their identity discovered: one, fugitives; two, dark wizards; three, lower-year students. Of course, lower-year students can be ruled out first. That's impossible.

"So this was most likely a case of dark wizards fighting each other. A clash between a British dark wizard and a foreign dark wizard... and the British wizard may be even more dangerous..."

The surrounding students were stunned for several seconds before launching into another heated debate.

The discussion turned to the identity of that dark wizard. They listed every possibility, naming every known criminal wizard in Britain. Then the Gryffindor students somehow began using the incident to fiercely attack Slytherin, convinced that this had to be the work of another Slytherin.

The Slytherin students fiercely refuted them. They believed that anyone capable of fighting Schmidt Ruterov without falling behind would be the pride of their house even if that person had graduated from Slytherin...

Of course, no one noticed that while they argued and discussed, a figure quietly slipped out the door.