Chapter 54: Chapter 54, Dark Souls

Bright candles were burning inside Hogwarts, but most of the students had gone home, and the castle was very deserted.

The Astronomical Tower is on the west side of the castle, and Hoffa has some impressions of that place, because the towers of Ravenclaw and the Astronomical Tower are both tall towers of Hogwarts, and there are several high-altitude corridors connecting them together.

With the help of the magic ladder in the Ravenclaw tower, Hoffa quickly raised his position one by one.

After approaching the Astronomy Tower, the scene here began to change. The oil paintings on the walls disappeared, replaced by rows of looking glasses and planetariums.

These planetariums rotate slowly among the passages, making a regular ticking sound, and everything is operating in an orderly manner.

Hoffa slowed down his pace, carefully searching for the possible location of the teleportation array.

After searching for a while, Hoffa failed to find the teleportation array, but at the end of the corridor, he saw an oil painting, the only oil painting in the corridor.

This is a weird portrait. In other portraits, there is only one person, or a group of people chatting.

In this portrait, there are two people, a man and a woman, two adult wizards.

This pair of men and women should be lovers or couples. The man has gray hair, a high nose bridge, and a gentle smile on his face.

The witch has chestnut hair and a soft appearance. She leans lazily in the arms of the wizard. She seems to have seen through Hoffa's stealth state at a glance.

"Merry Christmas, child," she said softly.

Then the surroundings returned to silence, leaving only the tick-tock sound of the planetarium turning.

Hoffa frowned, canceled the stealth, and stared at the men and women in the portrait.

He saw an inexplicable familiarity in the man in the painting, where he had seen this man before.

Finally, a small detail made the hairs on the back of his head stand up.

He wears a silver earring, just like himself.

Many, many days ago, Indra's casual words flashed across his mind like lightning.

‘My last friend also wore earrings, his name was Nemo.’

Nimon.

I also saw this man when I searched the clubs in the club classroom, so the woman next to him is his wife.

There is no doubt that there must be something behind this portrait.

It could be a secret passage leading to the top of an observatory, or a prison where dark wizards are held.

But passing this portrait requires a password.

In the portrait of Hogwarts, only Ravenclaw's lounge can be passed through by solving puzzles. But other portraits require a password to pass, and the password will be changed regularly.

Hoffa rubbed his head. He wasn't afraid to solve puzzles.

But he doesn't know what to do with completely unknown passwords.

However, at this moment, soft footsteps came from the passage behind him.

Hoffa turned his head quickly, and the whole person disappeared into the air immediately, entering a stealth state.

A figure in a gray robe slowly emerged from the darkness, slender and thin, wearing a strange pale mask.

It was what Hoffa had been chasing for a long time.

What's even more weird is that it walked through the looking glass, but its shadow couldn't be seen in the looking glass.

Hoffa was pressed against the wall, his fingers clenched around his wand, his heart beating wildly, his palms covered with sweat.

The reality is right in front of your eyes, close at hand, but there is a strong sense of unreality in the other person, and Hoffa even feels that what he sees is not alone.

"Order." The masked man stood in front of the portrait and said the password without hesitation.

The man in the portrait smiled.

"Merry Christmas."

After speaking, he slowly slid away, revealing the tunnel hidden behind the portrait.

The masked man got into the portrait, and the portrait closed again.

Nimon, order?

Hoffa shook his head, forcing his beating heart to calm down.

He had a vague feeling in his heart, but he couldn't be sure.

Hoffa gritted his teeth and lifted the phantom state.

"Order." He also said to the portrait.

The portrait opens slowly.

Hoffa got into the tunnel without saying a word, he must find out why.

In front of him was a stone spiral staircase, and Hoffa went all the way up the stairs.

Despite the inner doubts, anxiety, and incomprehension. But when Hoffa walked into the room, he was still taken aback.

He thought it was directly connected to the top of the Astronomy Tower, or a prison cell for prisoners, but he never thought that this place was actually an office.

Compared with the magnificent Slughorn's office just now, this office can only be described as shabby.

This is a ring-shaped room. There are no decorations in the room, only an ordinary wooden table, a bookshelf, a rotating escalator, and some books on the bookshelf. There are also rows of oil paintings on the walls.

Apart from these things, there is nothing else in the office.

If it weren't for the neatly stacked documents on the desk, Hoffa would almost have thought that the office had been ransacked by thieves.

He slowly looked over the oil paintings on the wall.

These oil paintings are arranged in chronological order, and the time is marked under each oil painting.

The first oil painting is a boy riding on a broomstick. He looks a lot like Adbe Goshak.

There are more than a dozen of his oil paintings, from going to school, to graduation, to getting married.

The boy turned into a youth, and the oil painting turned into a moving old-fashioned black and white photo.

In the next row, there is another person next to the young man in the photo, which is the woman on the oil painting at the entrance.

Hoffa stopped before the last photo of the man and woman disappearing.

Nimon Gorshack

(1901-1928)

Alice Goshawk

(1903-1928)

Hoffa looked up pale.

The identity of the owner of this office is very clear. It is the head of the Ravenclaw house, Adebe Gorshack, and the goblin's previous partner turned out to be the head's son.

The school put the teleportation array in the dean's office.

Then mask man.

At this time, above the spiral staircase, there was a crisp sound of ding dong, like a broken chain.

Hoffa reacted.

Not good, Miranda!

He rushed up the spiral staircase in three steps and two steps, and found that the iron door leading to the outside of the house had been cut by the spell, and two steel chains were scattered on the ground.

Hoffa slammed the door open and rushed out.

In front of him was a huge open-air platform with more than a dozen thick stone pillars for observing astrology.

Under the icy night sky, countless blue runes shone dimly in the moonlight.

And the guy with the mask is standing in the center of the platform at the moment.

In the sky, black and green swirls are densely covered, with strange lights flashing in the middle from time to time.

The masked man raised his wand high, and the tip of the wand shone with a dazzling green light.

Hoffa was suffocated by the flow of magic in the air, a feeling he had only experienced once, outside Ollivander's wand shop, when he felt something similar in Tom Riddle. But this time it was even scarier than the last.

Hoffa ended his stealth, jerking his wand up. Shouted, "Miranda, stop!"

Hearing the shout, the light on the masked man's wand gradually extinguished, and it turned around slowly, the strange pale mask on its face was as sneering as ever.

"Who are you looking for?"

The other party asked lightly.

"I find you!"

Hoffa called out, "Miranda, do you know what you're doing?"

"You got the wrong person."

The masked man interrupted Hoffa by tilting his head.

"Admit it wrong? After you heard that Charles Crouch left the team, the first thing you thought of was to check the teleportation array in the snow. When you heard from Albert that the teleportation array at Hogwarts was When you were in the Astronomy Tower, you immediately left the banquet."

Hoffa suppressed the anger in his chest:

"Miranda, did you let the dark wizard kill me?"

"It's me, but you still have the wrong person."

After speaking, the masked man waved his wand like lightning.

A flash of purple light came in an instant, and it did not say a word, and directly struck.

Hoffa, who had been vigilant all the time, immediately rolled on the spot.

"Disler Falconment!"

Hoffa entered a phantom state and ran towards the masked man.

Illusion Curse? The masked man squinted his eyes.

"Meaningless."

It swung its wand again extremely fast.

"Fiery scorched earth!"

Large swaths of flames appeared on the ground, and they spewed up high, forming walls of orange-red flames.

The temperature in the air rose rapidly, and the ice on the roof quickly melted.

Hoffa had never seen such a spell before, he could only quickly jump onto the stone pillar, jump over the wall of fire from the air, and then raised his hand for a stun spell.

"Damned!"

The opponent didn't move, and raised his wand horizontally.

"Forbidden Shield!"

The red light of the stun spell hit an invisible ripple and disappeared invisible.

Hoffa's idea of ​​stealing chickens was instantly shattered.

The masked man stood behind the transparent shield and said with a smile: "Do you only know the spells in the textbook? You can't beat me just by doing this."

The opponent was more difficult than imagined, and Hoffa did not give up. He stretched out his palm while running wildly, and the magic power was quickly poured into the wand, and his wand turned into a huge broadsword in an instant.

He raised the big sword and slashed at the opponent. "

The masked man took a step back.

"Transfiguration, interesting, triple armor guard."

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

With three muffled sounds, three ghost knights in ice-blue steel armor fell from the sky and hit the ground of the observatory heavily.

drink!

Then roared, they joined the shield, firmly protecting the masked man in all directions.

Hoffa slammed his broadsword against the armor.

boom!

The sword and shield intersected, and a long line of sparks appeared.

The shock made Hoffa's arms numb and he almost vomited blood.

The defensive power of the three ghost armors is not covered at first glance, this is not an ordinary iron armor spell at all.

"As expected of Dumbledore's favorite student, there is something."

The indifferent voice of the masked man came from inside the armor.

"Shut up!"

Hoffa retreated continuously, increasing the input of magic power, and the giant sword changed rapidly in his hand, turning into a heavy hammer.

Then, he took three steps in a row, rushed forward again, swung the heavy hammer, and smashed it on the armor with a bang.

Boom!

There was a loud noise like thunder.

One of the armored knights was thrown into the air abruptly.

The masked man behind the armor did not expect such an appearance at all, it took a step back decisively, and another armored knight quickly stepped forward to fill in the gap.

But still a step too late, Hoffa withdrew his wand and started the ghost walk. He rushed in through the gap in three steps and two steps, grabbed its icy wrist, twisted it wrongly, and pulled off its wand.

Then Hoffa swung his right hand rapidly, and the wand instantly turned into metal, wrapped around his right arm, and turned into a huge silver lion's head glove.

boom! !

The uppercut of the lion's head hit the masked man's chin.

Hoffa was afraid that the opponent was Miranda, so he only used 70% of his strength this time.

But even so, it was like a piece of paper, and the mask shattered. The whole person flew upside down, flipped three or four times in the sky, hit the ground heavily, and rolled a few times. The neck is bent.

Between the ups and downs of the rabbit, the situation was reversed. With half the magic power as the price, Hoffa captured the opponent's weapon and knocked it down on the spot.

Hoffa's eyes widened, and he backed away quickly, distanced himself from the opponent. He himself didn't expect the opponent to be so vulnerable and fall so exaggeratedly.

But he didn't feel well either, and the continuous running exhausted him a lot.

During the snowstorm on Christmas Eve, the observatory fell into a state of silence.

After a long time, Hoffa saw the other party collapsed on the ground, motionless, thinking that he had crippled it.

"Miranda!?"

He frowned and walked slowly sideways.

However, the other party was not as weak as he thought. It propped up its arms, staggered up from the ground, and turned to look at Hoffa.

"Mi Cao!"

Hoffa was startled when he saw it.

Under the mask, it was a completely unfamiliar face, or rather, it was not a face at all.

There were no facial features on that face, only a mouth, and it looked a bit like the stele-carrying monsters I saw in Helheim, the underworld! !

Hoffa stared dumbfounded at the monster in front of him, feeling crazy.

"Who the hell are you?" Hoffa cried out in shock.

The Faceless Man stood up.

"you guess."