Herman recognized the outline of the red head and instinctively called out, " Neville? Ron? Hugo?"
Before he could even react after shouting, the bushes exploded like a firecracker had been thrown at him.
The three of them turned around abruptly at the same time, their movements so fast it was as if they had been stung on the butt. The focused expressions on their faces hadn't even had time to fade before they turned into pure shock.
Ron shrank back, slipped, and almost fell to the ground. She hurriedly grabbed Hugo's sleeve to steady herself, her face already half red.
Hugo stumbled forward as she was pulled, her glasses slipping halfway off her nose, dangling from the tip before being pushed back.
Neville's reaction was slightly better, but only slightly better. After straightening up, he stood there for several seconds before managing a smile that looked more like a grimace.
Seeing the three of them like this, Herman's curiosity surged to its peak. He took another step forward, then stopped.
I couldn't see them clearly from a distance, but now that I'm closer, I realize they look like they were dug out of the ground.
The original red Gryffindor robes were now almost entirely devoid of color, covered from top to bottom in a layer of dusty gray, their color a shade somewhere between grayish-brown and dark brown.
The edges and cuffs of the robe were worn rough by something, and several threads were curling up.
Neville's collar was askew, revealing a small section of his shirt below his collarbone, which was also covered in mud, but the mud had dried and cracked into fine, gritty lines.
Hugo's glasses had several grayish-white fingerprints on them, and there was a small patch of mud on the edge of the lens that he hadn't wiped off. He had rubbed that mud onto the bridge of his nose when he pushed up his glasses earlier.
Of the three, Ron was in the worst condition. A dried leaf clung to her hair, and there was a noticeable friction mark on her left sleeve from her elbow to her wrist. The fabric fibers were frayed and the color was darker than the surrounding area, as if it had been rubbed with a layer of wet mud and then dried completely.
The three of them standing together looked like three terracotta figurines just dug out of a cellar, except they were about to crack.
Herman looked at the three of them again, finally swallowing back the guess in his mind that "did you fall into a mud pit?" and replacing it with a more direct question, "What have you been doing? Did you go through a tunnel?"
Although he said "drilling tunnels" casually, his mind had already automatically begun to recall the various secret passages of Hogwarts.
Hugo hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Pretty much. We didn't have the professor's permission, so we sneaked out through a tunnel in the garden."
Herman blinked. "There's a secret passage in the garden."
He said this with genuine surprise in his voice.
He knew some of the secret passages or locations at Hogwarts, after all, a few were mentioned in the original books, such as the Shrieking Shack passage under the Whomping Willow, and the Room of Requirement he visited last time.
But he had no recollection of the secret passage in the garden; it seemed to have never been mentioned in the original text.
Herman silently sighed to himself, "There really is a need for tradition."
Look at Harry. Sirius has been going in and out of the castle for so many years, passing on all his knowledge to her. Now Harry is at school as if she were in her own backyard.
Neville and Ron both come from wizarding families; their siblings or elders attended Hogwarts. This kind of gossip has been passed down from generation to generation, more complete than any textbook.
Even I, who have read the original work, only know a few of the things mentioned in the original text. I'm still not as good as the locals; I'm ultimately an outsider.
Harry suddenly spoke up, her tone flat, as if stating a fact from a geography textbook. "The secret passage in the garden, you mean the dog hole, right? The one Professor Kettleburn dug when he had his dog, hasn't it been sealed up yet?"
When Herman heard the words "dog hole," the sentiment he had been holding onto vanished instantly.
He glanced at Harry, then at the three people opposite him, and noticed that the already flushed skin on their faces was visibly darkening.
Hugo's face glowed red against her grayish-brown skin, as if someone had brushed a layer of cinnabar onto the adobe bricks.
Neville's neck turned red first, and the redness spread upwards from his ears, quickly covering his entire ear.
Ron's face was already red, but now it turned even redder, like a ripe Apple, the color burning from her cheeks to her neck, and then disappearing from sight.
Herman looked at Ron's appearance and couldn't help but wonder if she was red from head to toe. In Muggle medicine, this would probably be considered some kind of strange allergic reaction, but at Hogwarts, it was probably just a normal physiological phenomenon after being teased by Harry.
Ron blushed, her voice barely audible. "It's a dog hole, no, my brother said the school hasn't had a dog in a long time, so it can't be considered a dog hole."
After she finished speaking, she knew that her reason was untenable, and her voice grew weaker and weaker until it was almost inaudible.
Harry nodded, her gesture as perfunctory as a teacher grading a homework assignment riddled with errors but too lazy to correct them all. "Right, it's not exactly a dog hole, but it's really not big. Only a small dog can easily go in and out; it would be a bit difficult for a person to pass through."
As she spoke, her gaze swept from the three people's faces to their bodies, from the dirt on their collars to the wear and tear on their cuffs, from the darker patch of Neville's robe at his knees to the mud spots on Hugo's trousers, finally settling on Ron's frayed sleeve for a moment.
There was no surprise or curiosity in his gaze, as if he were examining something whose answer he already knew, and not even the slight curve of his lips changed.
Harry's sharp remark made Ron's face turn even redder, as if someone had poured a pot of hot water on her head.
Her lips moved as if she wanted to explain something, but she opened her mouth and then closed it again. She unconsciously clutched the frayed sleeve in her hand, making the fabric fibers even more tangled.
Seeing that Ron looked like she was about to cry at any moment, Herman's interest in watching the drama faded considerably, and he wondered if he should say something to ease the tension.
Just as he was considering whether to offer some words of comfort, Draco, who was standing next to him, suddenly moved.
She took a step forward, her movements swift and decisive, and walked directly to Ron. Then she put her arm around Ron's shoulder and pulled Ron closer to her.
The movement was so natural that Herman didn't react for a moment.
Draco and Ron don't get along, and they almost got into a fight in Hagrid's Hut over the topic of Pure-blood. After the Rock Cakes incident, Draco made no attempt to hide her schadenfreude.
Herman even mentally categorized them as "enemies from a past life," the kind of people who were lucky if they didn't argue when they met.
Now Draco actually took the initiative to hug Ron and even pulled her closer to herself. The action was so practiced, as if she had done it a thousand times, as if there had never been any unpleasantness between the two of them.
Herman's mind went blank for two seconds before it started working again. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Draco put her arm around Ron's shoulder, her tone so gentle that Herman wondered if he'd misheard, "It's okay, Harry's just like that, she easily offends people with her words. Here, I brought you some food, eat something and you'll be fine."
As she spoke, she gently patted Ron's back, a gesture that Herman had never seen in Draco before.
Looking at her like that, Herman had only one thought in his mind: When did this person learn to comfort people? Has the sun risen in the west?
It wasn't until Draco mentioned "bringing food" that Herman's mind seemed to be reconnected.
His gaze abruptly shifted from Draco's gentle face to her other hand, where she was still holding the cloth bag she had retrieved from Hagrid.
The cloth bundle flashed in his sight for a moment, then Draco opened it, revealing a grayish-brown Rock Cakes inside.
Herman's mind raced at that moment, but his body was too slow to react.