Archaeologists at Hogwarts

Chapter 161 Tom Riddle?
The password of the principal's office has not changed, it is still the chocolate frog. Although the stone beast did not see the invisible Toby, it still jumped out of the way and let the passage behind it.

"Dong dong dong."

"Please come in."

Toby pushed the door and walked into the office. The situation here is still so familiar, Fox stands on the perch, it seems that the day of nirvana is about to come, and it becomes older and older.As for Headmaster Dumbledore. Huh?
The gaze under the hood froze slightly—why is the principal panting so hard?With some signs of excessive mana consumption, it is like casting an apparition at a very long distance
Before Toby came back to his senses, Dumbledore slowly put down the tissue to wipe off his sweat and threw it under his feet. His blue eyes were fixed on Toby all the time, pretending to be nonchalant.

There was a hint of sarcasm in his calm tone: "Isn't this our Professor Haimer? Why do you have time to come to see me in the principal's office—oh, by the way, I haven't asked how you woke up yet."

Toby sat opposite Dumbledore, and the two stared at each other silently for a while.

Just like Nick Flamel, although he couldn't see the face under the hood clearly, Dumbledore still accurately found the position of Toby's eyes.

"headmaster?"

"Ok?"

"Why are you sweating so much? Don't you need to wipe it off?"

Dumbledore blinked, renewed sweat streaming into his eyes.

"boom!"

"what!"

Accompanied by Toby's screams, the spinning top flew around in the air, and finally landed on the desk again, spinning around non-stop.

Toby covered the back of his head and looked behind him in surprise—where did this spinning top come from?Why didn't he see anything clearly?

Dumbledore wiped off his sweat leisurely, leaned back on the chair, changed to a more comfortable position, and allowed himself to rest better.

"Tell me." He picked up the topic again: "Tell me, how did you think of going to Nick, and threatened him for a while by the way, you should know what it means. I should put this Is it a sign of war? Or are you ready to leave Hogwarts again? I have to say that you behaved abnormally with Nick, Toby."

Toby looked at Dumbledore suspiciously for a while, and the more he looked at it, the more he felt that something was wrong, and he couldn't help asking: "Could it be that you just came back from France? Using Apparition? Such a long distance? Or just To make sure that Nick Flamel is not injured? No, it seems a bit of a waste of time, too much time, and it is impossible to predict when I will come back. Could it be that you were there already, when I threatened Flamel?"

"How did you know?"

"About this point—" Dumbledore said with a long breath: "Since Voldemort can threaten the safety of the Sorcerer's Stone, then of course, you can also do the same. I have no doubts about it."

"You really think highly of me, even comparing me with the mysterious man." Toby also leaned back, fiddled with the top twice with his fingers, and said after a short silence: "In that case , then you must know my next purpose, principal, Azkaban. I need to go to Azkaban."

"As a prisoner?" Dumbledore stared at him scrutinizingly.

"You really know how to joke." Toby fiddled with the top faster: "Of course not, I need to find out Mr. Flamel's guess about Extis, that will be extremely useful to me."

"So, how useful is it?" Dumbledore asked.

This time, Toby was silent for a longer period of time.

After a long time, he continued to speak: "If it was the past, it would only be beneficial to my research on ancient magic. But it is different now. The suggestion of dropping the Philosopher's Stone, which is related to immortality, is also related to the problem I am facing now."

He slowly took off his hood, revealing a face with black lines interlaced with a golden mask.After only a few days, not only were the black lines increasing, but the fit between the mask and Toby's face was also increasing, as if they were about to merge into one.

The portraits who were peeping at this scene gasped in unison. It didn't look good, it was exactly the same as the evil research of black arts.

Toby continued to speak, and at this moment, even his voice seemed to be divided into two, one was speaking from his own mouth, and the other was wearing a thick mask, which was dull but seemed Very sharp.

"Speaking carefully, I would also like to thank the attack I received last time. If it weren't for that attack, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to make up my mind so quickly to study the pharaoh's mask in such a risky way. As you can see, although I The curse of petrification has been lifted, but it is not free, and there is also a curse that is difficult to lift on the pharaoh's mask. Regarding this special curse, you can understand it this way-in the pyramids I explored before, There was once an unkillable mummy. As far as I know, the other party is still trapped in Gringotts in Egypt. He has not died completely. I don’t know how long it will take to completely destroy it—this is still after the mummy With the mask removed."

"That's eternal life, and it's also a curse."

"Now, the curse has been transferred to me. It has a wonderful effect on the curse of petrification, which accelerates the rate at which the mask corrodes me. Maybe it won't be long before you really want to lock me in the pharaoh's coffin and bury me in some special place. The Chamber of Secrets belonging to Toby Highmore is in it, and it will never be opened, and it will never be recovered."

Dumbledore stared at Toby with serious eyes. He looked at Toby for a long time, and said sadly, "Do you have to do this? I didn't realize until now that what you have been hiding from me in your letters is not only ancient The risk in the ruins, you have been using yourself to do experiments related to ancient magic. Is this the change Lily brought to you? After you broke up completely, is this how she affected you?"

"Lily?" Toby said with a long voice, "it's hard to say whether she influenced me—well, I admit, principal, at least in this process, she did play a big role, especially in— —you know—after my plan to kill Penny failed, she affected me to a large extent. It was a complete tragedy, and it was the same for everyone. Before that, I've been purposely ignoring the dark side of ancient magic, but luckily I've found the ultimate solution - and that's experimenting with myself so that no one else gets hurt by it, nice ,Is not it?"

Dumbledore didn't speak, he just looked at Toby with pity.

"Don't look at me like that, Headmaster." Toby shook his head and said, "I don't need to be pitied by other people, I... I don't even care if I'm pitied, I really don't, Headmaster. But, of course, I I don't think I did it myself, I didn't do it out of guilt, I just didn't care. It took me a while to realize that I didn't care as much as I thought. Well, maybe it was because There are so many things I care about, it’s just that I can’t satisfy them all.”

"I don't know, principal, I really don't know, don't ask me, I don't know how to answer you, it's hard, really hard"

There was a brief silence.

Toby fiddled with the top unconsciously, making it spin fast.

"How long do you have left?"

"Maybe a year, maybe six months, I don't know, it's hard to tell. But what I can tell you is that this is not the most dangerous time for me. Once I only had a few It's a week's lifespan, and it's in the ghost castle, together with the armor, it's really weird in there-in short, I thought about going to Frank and Alice, after all, they were former Aurors. But then I thought After thinking about it, how can it be effective to ask them for help? Of course, the premise is that you still recognize me as a professor of ancient magic."

"I see. Besides, you sent Angela away?"

"It shouldn't be. There are not many people I can trust, and she is the most suitable one. I can't let a goblin teach the students, right?"

"what?"

"Goblin, Goblin Witch, the owner of the Veil Bar, you should know him, right?"

"I mean the class thing."

"Oh, it turned out to be this matter. This is because I can't allow too many vacancies in the ancient magic class, otherwise, when I become the principal, there will definitely be objections, especially Severus, that guy must Won't stop, trying to fight against me. I'm still waiting to see the look on his face. What's wrong with you, Headmaster? Yeah, there are a lot of things I can't figure out, but that doesn't include studying ancient magic , and becoming the headmaster of Hogwarts, on the contrary, I am very confident about it! After all, this is Hogwarts, and the Slytherin Chamber of Secrets alone is enough to attract people. Who knows where there are hidden places? If you can't dig them all out and see—”

"boom!"

"what!"

Almost at the same time, the college magazines in the common rooms of the four colleges published an astonishing news—your Professor Haimer is back!
"Merlin"

In the Gryffindor common room, which was packed with people, Fred exclaimed: "How on earth did he do it, isn't he petrified?"

George shook his head and said, "It seems that the winner has been decided, between black magic and ancient magic."

"Don't talk nonsense!" Percy immediately accused: "If I hear you talking bad things behind Professor Highmore's back, I will immediately apply for the professor to come to the Burrow every holiday to give you extra lessons!"

Ron, who was huddled at the back of the crowd, heard this, and he muttered in a low voice, "He thinks so beautifully."

Hermione noticed that something was wrong with Harry: "What's wrong with you? Oh, I see, since Professor Highmore woke up, he must know who the murderer who attacked him is!"

Harry really thought so, but in the next second, another line of words appeared in the tall college magazine——

[Admit defeat, heir of Slytherin, beg for mercy obediently, maybe I will spare your life. 】

There was an eerie silence in the common room, followed by louder conversations.

"I am not wrong, right?"

"Is this a provocation?"

"This really looks like something Professor Highmore would do."

"This is so cool!"

Harry, however, turned pale all of a sudden.

Of course he knew that Professor Highmore was not referring to himself, but the real murderer, but Harry gradually felt that he was the heir of Slytherin, otherwise how could he explain that voice?

At this moment, he saw a figure flashing across the crowd, and hurried away. Harry only saw the familiar red hair of the other person. Is that Ginny?

Ginny returned to the dormitory in fear, she quickly opened Pandora's notebook, and tremblingly wrote down everything that had just happened.

"What should I do? Professor Haimer is back. He came to punish the murderer! What should I do, Pandora."

[Calm down, you must be calm at this time, Ginny.You said that he is a professor, so how could he really harm the students?I believe he will understand you. 】

"But Professor Highmore is different from other professors, I heard Ron say—"

Bit by bit, Ginny recounted the story Ron had told during the holidays, and it filled a whole page, and it wasn't even enough.

This time, the handwriting disappeared extremely slowly, and it seemed that even Pandora needed to digest this fact.

[Okay, Ginny, although Professor Highmore is a very interesting person in my eyes, since you are so worried, let’s wait until the first Quidditch match to discuss it, anyway, this is our original plan , isn't it? 】

very interesting?

Ginny read it several times before she was sure she was right.

How did Pandora come to this conclusion?
On the other side, Toby had already returned to the ancient magic office. He looked like he was facing a formidable enemy. He sat behind the work and asked solemnly, "What happened?"

Al squinted his eyes and scanned the new version of "The Quibbler", watching it over and over again, then the third time, and the fourth time, his head was about to sink in.

"Huh?" Toby felt bad: "You don't need to look at the first few names, you just need to look at the whole list."

Al hesitated and said: "Yeah"

"Looking from the back to the front?"

"ah"

"Well"

Al quietly poked his head out from the edge of the magazine, and met Toby's ashen gaze.

"Yeah!" It jumped over quickly, trying to cheer Toby up again.

"Don't talk about it, Al." Toby shook his head and sighed, "What's the use of earning more gold? The magic circle still hasn't made it to the bestseller list, alas."

At this moment, there was a knock on the door of the office.

Toby was taken aback, he sat down again, and put on the hood by the way, so as not to scare the students who added his successor qualifications to the principal.

"Please come in."

Luna opened the door and walked in. She was still dressed in the usual weird way, her eyes were a little dazed, especially when she saw Professor Haimer who was shrouded in black mist, she obviously stopped in her tracks.

"Is this a hangover from the Crooked Snork, Professor?"

"What? Forget it, Miss Lovegood, do you have something to come to me? I don't remember asking you to continue interviewing other students."

"I did come to see you on something, Professor."

Luna walked across the desk, took out her black notebook, and put it on the table.

"This notebook seems to be broken." Luna said worriedly: "Mom suddenly became a person named Tom Riddle, and she still played him happily. Can you fix the notebook for me, Professor?"

Toby's outstretched arm stopped in mid-air, Al tilted his body, fell from the flying carpet onto the desk, and rolled twice.

Tom Riddle?
(End of this chapter)