Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

At the bottom of the newspaper, Betty Braithwaite wrote: There can be no doubt that Skeeter has quilled an instant bestseller. Dumbledore’s legions of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.

After reading the article, Evan stared at the photograph of Rita Skeeter for a while.

For a moment, he even wondered if this woman had turned into a beetle again and sneaked into Hogwarts to record everything that happened that night.

But this was impossible. Based on Evan’s understanding of her, Skeeter might have found some clues, and the rest was all her own fabrication.

It must be said that she found a very accurate entry point.

These were the things the public was interested in and wanted to know. How much of it was true was hard to say — but who cared?!

What people wanted to hear wasn’t necessarily the truth.

There was no doubt that her book would be a bestseller.

Rita Skeeter had exposed secrets about Dumbledore’s past, satisfying people’s curiosity about the great wizard. But she shouldn’t have foolishly touched on the sensitive topic of Dumbledore’s death — especially making claims about a deep and complex kind of magic. And the worst part was, she got it right. That was going to cause her serious trouble. Hopefully, the next time the Death Eaters invited her for tea, she could remain as calm as she was now.

As Evan’s partner and close friend, she certainly knew all the secrets. If her explanation about Dumbledore’s body disappearing couldn’t satisfy Voldemort…

Just then, Hermione’s voice came from downstairs, asking him to go downstairs for dinner.

“Got it, I’m coming!”

Evan crumpled the newspaper into a ball and threw it back into the wastebasket. Rather than worry about Rita Skeeter, he might as well look forward to Hermione’s cooking.

At the dinner table, Hermione handed Evan a letter that had just arrived. It was sent from the Burrow, and judging by the handwriting, it had been written jointly by Ginny, Elaine, and Gabrielle. They talked about some recent happenings and hoped that Evan and Hermione could come to the Burrow soon. There was also a piece of news: Lupin and Tonks had gotten married.

Everyone had been looking forward to their wedding, even hoping it could be held together with Bill and Fleur’s. But Lupin and Tonks hadn’t made any announcement — they hadn’t told anyone. It was said that after lunch yesterday, they went out for a walk and came back with rings on their fingers.

Under Ginny, Elaine, and Gabrielle’s intense “interrogation,” Tonks later told them that she and Lupin had gone to visit his parents’ grave to pay tribute, and then held a wedding in a small Muggle church nearby. A sunset wedding. Lupin had prepared the rings in advance. It was sudden, simple, and rushed, but Tonks said it was very happy. …

One could easily imagine the scene: the setting sun, warm light, a colorful sky, a gentle breeze brushing their cheeks, the two of them gazing into each other’s eyes with love and tenderness.

Anyone would be enchanted by such a scene, quietly savoring the beauty of the world.

This was the image Hermione described to Evan before they went to bed that night.

She felt that it hadn’t been easy for Lupin and Tonks to end up together. Even though their wedding wasn’t grand, even though there weren’t many witnesses, as long as they truly loved each other, that was enough. The moment Lupin placed the ring on Tonks’s finger, she must have been the happiest person in the world.

The beauty of love does not lie in how long it lasts, but in the brief moments of having it at all.

The fact that Lupin and Tonks could get to this point was the best portrayal of this idea.

If she could be like them, she would be satisfied!

Hermione talked a lot, and at first Evan was a little dazed, but eventually he understood.

In short, she was touched and suddenly, she wanted to get married too!

Just like Mrs. Weasley said, in times like these when nothing was guaranteed, many people made lifelong commitments privately. If two people were truly in love, then what were they waiting for?

Yeah, then what were they waiting for?

Well, for this question, Evan felt at the very least, he had to wait until he came of age. …

…………………………………………………………………………

In the darkness, Harry was bleeding.

Clutching his right hand in his left and swearing under his breath, he shouldered open his bedroom door. There was a crunch of breaking china: He had trodden on a cup of cold tea that had been sitting on the floor outside his bedroom door.

““What the — ?”

He looked around; the landing of number four, Privet Drive, was deserted.

Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley’s idea of a clever booby trap.

Keeping his bleeding hand elevated, Harry scraped the fragments of cup together with the other hand and threw them into the already crammed bin just visible inside his bedroom door. Then he tramped across to the bathroom to run his finger under the tap.

It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief that he still had four days left of being unable to perform magic … Evan wasn’t of age either, but he could use magic outside of school. Why not him? How did Sirius explain that last time again…?

However, Harry had to admit to himself that this jagged cut in his finger would have defeated him.

He never learned how to repair wounds, and now he came to think of it — particularly in light of his immediate plans — this seemed a serious flaw in his magical education.

Making a mental note to ask Evan or Hermione how it was done, he used a large wad of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as he could, before returning to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

Just now, Harry had completely emptied his school trunk for the first time since he had packed it six years ago.

At the start of the intervening school years, he had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom — old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fit.

Minutes previously, Harry had plunged his hand into this mulch, experienced a stabbing pain in the fourth finger of his right hand, and withdrawn it to see a lot of blood.

He now proceeded a little more cautiously. Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge, a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and an empty bottle, he finally discovered the sharp edge that had cut his finger.

He recognized it at once. It was a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that Sirius had given him.

This mirror could be used to contact Sirius, just like a Muggle phone, but Harry had never used it before it was shattered into pieces.

Aside from dropping him off at the Dursleys’ at the start of the holidays, Sirius hadn’t shown up again this summer. But even that one visit had been enough to intimidate the Dursleys. Harry knew that Sirius was very busy. After Dumbledore left, the entire Order of the Phoenix had been in a bad situation. He couldn’t act like a child and demand more.

The only thing he could do now was to stay quietly in this house, just like he had done in the past sixteen years, stranded and silent.

Keeping himself safe and not causing trouble was the best help Harry could offer the Order of the Phoenix. What a disheartening thought. …

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