Everything changed after all.
On Saturday morning, having just finished his morning run, Tris thought this as he watched a crowd of young wizards gathered together and muttering endlessly, completely ignoring house divisions.
During last night's Halloween Feast, the troll appeared as usual.
However, lacking the plot of outsmarting a troll, all the young wizards were led back to their common rooms by the prefects. Even Tris obediently returned to the Slytherin Common Room.
His magical power and spellcasting had made great progress during this period, but he still lacked absolute confidence to deal with a troll.
That thing had far too high of a magic resistance.
There was still a gap between a transmigrator and a child of prophecy; if he didn't believe it, he could look at Wang Mang.
He had originally thought Harry and Ron, and perhaps even Hermione, would still end up sneaking over for an intimate encounter with the troll due to various bizarre reasons.
Yet they did not.
Harry, Ron, and the others all obediently followed Percy back to the common room yesterday, and he hadn't heard of anyone being left behind.
As for the troll, the seventh-year prefects said last night that when it was wandering around the basement, it ran into Professor McGonagall who went looking for it. She turned floor tiles into steel cables and bound it like a rice dumpling, taking it God knows where.
"How do you suppose the troll got into the castle?" Ron asked with a puzzled expression. "I heard Hogwarts has magical defense wards; things like that shouldn't be able to get in, right? Besides, I've never heard of trolls being in the Forbidden Forest."
"There are no trolls in the Forbidden Forest," Tris nodded quite firmly. "As for how the troll got in, someone brought it in, of course."
"Brought in? Who would bring a troll in, and who could bring a troll into the castle without anyone noticing?" Harry didn't believe it.
"That troll first appeared in the dungeons, but the only way through to the troll's door should be the main front entrance, right?"
There were, of course, multiple entrances to Hogwarts Castle.
Yet just as Harry said, the only way to let a troll in was through that front entrance, which was spacious enough for a genuine giant to enter with ease.
Otherwise, unless the troll entered lying down.
"We already have a Three-Headed Dog; what's so strange about having another troll?" Tris said indifferently.
"Huh? You mean that troll was also guarding that thing?" Harry asked with fresh curiosity, thinking of something.
"I didn't say that." Tris shrugged.
He didn't remember trolls being among the obstacles protected by the Philosopher's Stone in the movie, but the movie's plot had been heavily abridged. Whether one was there originally, he truly didn't know.
Yet with a troll appearing inside the castle, it seemed only Quirrell's defensive measures making an effort could explain it.
Saturday passed without incident, and during Sunday morning training, Tris was once again intercepted by Harry and Ron.
"Tris, I've got something to tell you!" After dragging Tris off to a deserted spot, Harry lowered his voice and said, "Did you see Snape yesterday?"
"Our Head of House? No, I didn't." Tris shook his head.
Yesterday morning he wrote his homework in the library, and in the afternoon he used returning to the common room to read as an excuse, but actually hid in a corner to practice the Samadhi True Fire.
After finishing dinner, he returned to the dorm to cultivate the Astral Meditation Method, leaving almost no free time in between. As for Snape, when not holding classes, he was mostly in the Potions Classroom and office, wandering around the castle the rest of the time.
He rarely went to the common room, so it was completely normal for Tris not to see him.
"Then you wouldn't know," Ron chimed in. "Last night we got back to the common room a bit late because we were writing an essay in the library, and we actually saw Snape go to the library."
"What's so strange about our Head of House going to the library?" Tris spread his hands. "He's a Potions Master, you know, the kind with an official title.
"For people like them, studying and researching on ordinary days is completely normal. Do you take them for being as lazy as you lot on normal days?"
"Are we still lazy lately?" Ron wore a look of utter grievance. "My exercise volume this month has already exceeded my past year.
"Even Professor McGonagall said our year of students really knows how to work hard."
Tris clicked his tongue. For a teacher to say your year of students was decent was really quite difficult.
He had to remember that the phrase appearing more often in teachers' mouths was still: you are the worst batch I have ever taught.
Though thinking that internally, Tris wouldn't say it out of his mouth. Instead, he looked at Ron with a face full of disgust. "You still have the nerve to talk? Hermione joined later than you and is a girl, yet her training volume is about to catch up to yours now. Furthermore, doesn't she read more than you? Doesn't she practice more than you? You wouldn't happen to think your magical talent is superior to Hermione's, would you?"
"This..." Ron's eyeballs rolled around frantically.
Though he felt fairly satisfied with his academic performance at school, especially in the fields of Transfiguration and Charms, he certainly didn't dare claim his talent surpassed Hermione's.
He needed to remember Hermione was the student praised most and awarded the most house points by professors in Charms and Transfiguration classes-Slytherin's Charms class wasn't held together with theirs, so they didn't know the situation on Tris's side.
"How come you stopped talking?" Seeing Ron fall silent, Tris delivered a follow-up blow. "You need to know there are always people in this world who are more talented than you, and she still works harder than you."
"Yes, yes, not just Hermione, aren't you also such a monster?" Ron let out a huff, and even Harry on the side couldn't help sheepishly grimacing.
"Fine, you saw our Head of House appear in the library, and then?" Tris asked with some helplessness.
People really were different from one another.
After he finished saying those exact same words to the blockheads in Slytherin, every last one of them breathed heavily and clenched their teeth to transform into hard-working beasts.
Displaying the attitude of grind-dogs who would either grind each other to death or grind themselves to death.
Yet looking back at these two darlings, Ron and Harry, it didn't register in their hearts at all.
Harry was slightly better, showing at least a bit of embarrassment, but Ron didn't take it to heart whatsoever.
Tris already considered himself immune to pressure, but compared to his own twin brother, he paled in comparison.
Ron and Harry pulled themselves back and continued, "We found out that Snape has a limp!"
"Oh?" Tris feigned bewilderment. "It shouldn't be strange for our Head of House to have an injured leg, right? He might have sprained his ankle, or perhaps his leg went numb from sitting too long for all we know."
"If it were just a limp leg, that's possible, but we saw him borrow a book from the library!" Ron said in a low voice.
"It was about fantastic beasts, seemed to be called something like... The Dangers and Prevention of Dangerous Fantastic Beasts!"
"Huh? So what? What are you trying to say?" Tris acted blank, while laughing his head off inside.
There was such a twist?
Tris naturally knew the matter of Snape being bitten by the Three-Headed Dog, but he actually ran to the library to borrow books and check how to treat it?
Wasn't that far too abstract?
Well, thinking about it, it wasn't impossible. Although Hagrid's Three-Headed Dog wasn't the legendary Hell Three-Headed Dog capable of breathing hellfire, it was still a powerful magical creature.
Just as a fire-drake's teeth were almost entirely venomous, the teeth of many magical creatures also carried magic. Tris didn't know too much about Three-Headed Dogs, but possessing magic was extremely probable.
Ordinary wounds would naturally recover with absolute ease for a brilliant wizard and potions master like Snape.
However, if it were special trauma caused by the teeth of a magical creature carrying powerful magic, it might genuinely take some effort to deal with.
Well, speaking of which, he would need to find time later to thoroughly understand the knowledge related to fantastic beasts.
Before the start of term, Tris had already completely cataloged the contents inside "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" through his memory palace.
Yet this book by Sir Newt mostly took the route of popular science and guiding people to protect fantastic beasts; many dangerous fantastic beasts were not introduced, let alone instructions on how to deal with them.
Tris would have to find a few other related works to properly understand them anyway. Since he possessed the Thought Maze, he now only needed to read through them rapidly to input the information and recall it when needed, which wouldn't waste too much time.
Ron was unaware of Tris's thoughts in that instant. Seeing Tris be so dense, he wore a look of utter scorn. "Why is your reaction so slow?
"Isn't this obvious as day? Snape must have been bitten by that three-headed dog."
"Oh?" Tris thought about it and nodded. "That's certainly possible, so?"
"Why are you so dull today?" Ron had a rare chance to mock Tris, and he did so sparing no effort. "What's wrong, didn't sleep well last night and left your brain in the dormitory this morning?
"Isn't this self-evident? Snape definitely wanted to steal that thing-the thing Hagrid took out of Gringotts and hid beneath that trapdoor."
"That's right!" Harry nodded affirmatively. "He must have taken advantage of yesterday's chaos to run to the fourth floor, wanting to get beneath that trapdoor.
"He was stopped by the Three-Headed Dog, though; he definitely wanted to steal that thing."
Although the three inquiries of Snape from the first class were gone, Snape's treatment of Harry remainedvile to a ridiculous degree.
If during the first week, when Harry and the lot went to Hagrid's, Harry merely suspected Snape hated him, after these two months that had been firmly hammered down as fact.
Snape didn't just dislike him simply; he practically loathed him.
One could say Snape wasn't friendly to any Gryffindors, but his aversion to Harry clearly exceeded everyone else's by a tier.
Harry didn't even know where he had offended Snape to make him feel such disgust toward him.
"What, do you reckon Snape couldn't handle a single Three-Headed Dog?" Tris asked amusedly.
"That's a Three-Headed Dog, a creature even a dragon might not necessarily beat if it didn't fly." Ron spread his arms, seeming to want to gesture at how massive the Three-Headed Dog was. After all, when they saw the Three-Headed Dog, Tris wasn't at the scene, and Ron felt Tris hadn't experienced that shock.
His words weren't entirely wrong.
Mammals possessed an advantage over reptiles in physical structure; this was indisputable.
Unless it could fly and breathe fire, a fire-drake might not necessarily win against a Three-Headed Dog. Furthermore, the magic resistance of a Three-Headed Dog was only higher, not lower, than a dragon's. Even skilled wizards would likely suffer heavily if they confronted it head-on.
Yet...
"What? You think Snape couldn't handle a fire-drake?" Tris asked with a playful smile.
"Ah?" This question left Ron and Harry stunned; that genuinely was what they had thought.
That was a fire-drake.
Seeing their expressions, Tris more or less understood their thoughts, shaking his head with a smile. "Then you two are somewhat underestimating the professors of our school. At least any one of the four heads of house would have no difficulty dealing with a fire-drake.
"Alright, don't dwell on this matter. With this energy, you'd be better off worrying about next week's Quidditch Match..."
The moment those words left his mouth, Tris noticed Harry and Ron's gazes darting away evasively.