Chapter 10: Scabbers! What's Wrong With You, Scabbers?
"***Fear is coming!***" Ivan waved his wand and tapped it on Scabbers's head.
"Squeak! Squeak... squeak... squeak..."
As soon as the spell took effect, the grey-black mouse immediately went crazy. Its tightly closed eyes widened in an instant, and a blood-red scream came out of its mouth.
Then, it kicked the table with its powerful claws, and the whole mouse rolled down from the table like flying, knocking over many cups and decorations along the way, and ran around the dormitory.
Seeing the good results, Ivan finally felt relieved.
Unexpectedly, the principles of the Fear Spell and the Patronus Charm are exactly opposite. The latter requires the caster to recall beautiful and happy things, while the former requires the caster to imagine a horrible thing or experience and project it into the mind of the person being cast upon.
It's like Legilimency in reverse, but with a horror twist...
When casting the spell on Scabbers, Ivan conceived a scene in which Scabbers was chased by a black dog.
Perhaps because Scabbers was asleep before the spell was cast, the power of the Fear Spell combined with sleep, and the effect of this Dark magic was much stronger than Ivan had imagined.
While Ivan was still happy about successfully casting the Fear Charm, Ron and Harry, who had heard the noise in the common room, rushed in.
Looking at the messy dormitory, Harry almost thought he had come to the wrong place. Just as he was about to ask a question, Ron saw a grey-black rat running around in the dormitory...
"Oh, no! Scabbers... Scabbers! What's wrong with you? Scabbers..." Ron shouted in despair, rushed into the dormitory in a few quick steps, threw himself on Neville's bed, trying to catch the grey-black mouse that had just run past.
But at this time, Scabbers was frightened by Ivan's magic and mistook Ron for the black dog in his dream. With a "whoosh" sound, he slipped under the bed through the gap at the edge of the bed, making Ron look for it for a while...
"Ivan, what happened here?" Harry said to Ivan who was standing in front of the table.
"I'm just practicing a spell here." Ivan shrugged, then said with a guilty conscience, "Just like you saw, there may be a small accident..."
Harry looked at Ron, who had crawled under the table and was covered in dirt by the mouse but got nothing. He felt that this was a big accident and finally sighed helplessly.
"Then we may have to catch rats all night."
Fortunately, the final situation was not as bad as Harry thought.
After the three of them struggled for a while, Ivan, who remembered that he was a wizard, seized the opportunity and used the Levitation Charm to float up Scabbers, who was trying to hide under a book, along with the book and the mouse. The farce was finally settled.
In the next few days, Ron was sulking for several days. Since Ivan was in the wrong, he naturally had to apologize. He also bought some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans for Scabbers as backup food. With Harry's persuasion, Ron finally stopped holding onto the matter of Scabbers.
It is worth mentioning that Hermione, who heard about this, mocked Ron for considering a mouse more important than a friend. The two even had a quarrel, and Ron almost went crazy...
Ron began to care more and more about Scabbers, and even took him with him to class. He always felt that someone wanted to harm his mouse.
Ivan continued to live a life of classroom, library, and dormitory. He read some basic books and barely managed to use the academic experience card again. With the accumulation of the past few days, Ivan's proficiency in magic spells has improved a lot.
This resulted in the professors giving grades during class being a level higher than before!
Except for Professor Binns, who taught the history class and always gave him average evaluations, Ivan had excellent records in other classes.
Especially in the Charms and Transfiguration classes, because Ivan's Transfiguration and Levitation Charms had successfully broken through to the second level.
At one point he transfigured a piece of wood even faster than Hermione, shocking both Harry and Ron.
However, it is not so easy to upgrade again, because every time the level of a spell increases, the proficiency required for the next upgrade will double.
In addition to studying, Ivan is also looking for the location of the Room of Requirement as a place to test the power of spells in the future.
It was always a little inconvenient in the Gryffindor common room.
Unfortunately, after so many years since reading the original novel, Ivan had long forgotten where it was. He only remembered that it was opposite a tapestry, and he couldn't find it for several days.
As for the tasks at the two application points, except for the task with Professor McGonagall, which was probably due to the improvement of Professor McGonagall's favorability, there was no movement on the tasks in the library.
Come to think of it, how could the library's secrets appear during the time period when students are using the library?
Ivan's regular life was not disrupted until the Friday of the second week when Harry received an invitation letter from Hagrid.
Of course, with good news comes bad news.
The bad news was that they had to attend two Potions classes with Slytherin this Friday.
"It would be nice if we could skip this morning. Snape, the Potions Professor, is the Head of Slytherin. George told me to be careful..."
In the corridor, Ron and Ivan were talking about the gossip they had heard from their two brothers, while feeding Scabbers, who was on Ron's right hand.
"Not really. Professor McGonagall is also a Head of House. I've never seen her show favoritism." Hermione couldn't help but retort.
"But I'm not the only one who thinks so... many senior Gryffindors say so!" Ron was very disdainful of Hermione's words, and turned to Harry and Ivan and said,
"You think so too, right? Professor Snape is always gloomy, and there are even rumors in the school that Professor Snape was once a Dark wizard..."
When talking about the rumors, Ron obviously lowered his voice so that others wouldn't hear him.
"Impossible, Professor Dumbledore will never allow a Dark wizard to come to the college." Harry shook his head.
Although Harry felt that Professor Snape, who taught Potions, seemed to dislike him at the opening banquet, the professors of various subjects at school were all very good.
Snape couldn't be that bad...
Hermione also nodded repeatedly, and Ron had no choice but to turn and look at Ivan.
Ivan was teasing Scabbers with a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean at this time. When he heard the conversation, he looked at Harry and said,
"I don't know if Professor Snape is targeting Gryffindor, but he is definitely targeting us."
At this point, Ivan was a little depressed. It seemed impossible for him to get an excellent grade in Snape's class.
After all, if you love someone, you will love his dog, and if you hate someone, you will hate his dog too. Ivan would not be surprised even if Snape gave him a bad review after class.
Harry felt a little confused by Ivan's look and didn't really understand what Ivan meant.
"Are you saying that Professor Snape hates Harry?" Hermione frowned, having guessed what Ivan was thinking from the way he looked at Harry before.
Ivan admired Hermione's cleverness in his heart, but he certainly couldn't tell the truth, so he shook his head and said, "I'm just suspicious. Don't you think there's something wrong with the way Professor Snape looks at Harry?"