Chapter 32: The Carving on the Oak Tree

Things took a drastic turn for the worse. In an instant, Hoffa had gone from being just an ordinary student to one under official warning from the school administration.

One more offense, and he would be expelled.

Gorshak's stern expression made it clear he wasn't joking. He truly meant it. Hoffa knew he had no room to resist. Despite having learned the Disillusionment Charm and even advanced ghost-walking magic, his reality as a weak and powerless first-year student remained unchanged.

It was at this moment Hoffa realized he was no savior. He had no fame, no aura of heroism. He was just an 11-year-old boy—lacking experience, resources, and the power to defy the rules meaningfully.

As for who reported him, Hoffa didn't even have to think hard to figure it out. But strangely, he wasn't angry. He just felt numb. His hatred for Aglaia had already reached its peak. If she had been a boy, Hoffa might have skipped the magic altogether and gone straight to using his fists.

Unfortunately, Hoffa had to swallow this bitter pill because of gender constraints.

As for the school's punishment, he had no choice but to accept it and treat it as an indispensable lesson.

He spent the entire day in class with a blank expression, speaking to no one.

He was thinking about his next steps. First, he needed to complete all the tasks assigned by the school, erasing the negative impression left by the Hogsmeade incident and regaining his status as an unremarkable, low-profile student. Second, he couldn't let anyone catch him breaking the rules again. He would have to suspend all "gray area" plans—no more exploring forbidden areas or studying knowledge from restricted books, at least for now.

Caution was now his top priority.

Expulsion?

Hoffa couldn't let that happen. At only 11 years old, with no relatives on the European continent, he had to rely on Hogwarts for survival, at least for the time being.

By dinnertime, Hoffa had returned to his usual demeanor.

He chatted and laughed with his classmates as if nothing had happened.

Midway through dinner, a senior student approached him with a letter.

Opening it, Hoffa found two pieces of parchment. The first read:

"Every day at 5:30, the gamekeeper will meet you at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. I hope you can reflect on your shortcomings during your work." —Adbe Gorshak

It was a notice about his labor punishment.

The second piece of parchment made Hoffa's heart sink.

It was a performance evaluation form for the gamekeeper to grade him.

The grading options were:

Excellent

Good

Ordinary (with a note: under probation)

Poor (with a note: expulsion)

One extra goal: Behave well for one month.

Hoffa sighed. This was both his target and his hurdle. He had to overcome it before he could think about his future plans.

Looking at the clock, it was already 5:00. There were only 30 minutes left until the assigned time. He abandoned the rest of his dinner, stuffed two chicken legs into his pocket, bid farewell to Miranda, and hurried off.

Outside the castle, a faint crescent moon had risen in the dim sky. A light breeze tousled Hoffa's hair, and the persistent drizzle soaked his robes.

The rain was lighter at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Towering trees grew densely here, and the air carried the damp, earthy smell of decaying leaves.

As Hoffa approached the forest's edge, a sudden flurry of crows burst from the dark woods, their caws piercing the silence as they flew past the moon, as if they'd seen something ominous.

The hunting grounds were empty. Hoffa paused at the entrance of the forest, waiting until the crows' cries faded into the distance. Only then did he notice faint carvings on a tree, illuminated by the last light of day.

The markings read:

"The House of Joey Dargo—Do Not Disturb."

Joey Dargo?

It seemed that this was the current gamekeeper.

The only gamekeeper Hoffa knew of was Rubeus Hagrid, but Hagrid wouldn't start attending Hogwarts for another two years. Naturally, his famous hut was nowhere to be found yet.

Hoffa had encountered the current gamekeeper once—a one-eyed, gruff-looking older man who rode a horse. This man had ferried Hoffa to the boats during the opening ceremony and was responsible for posting various school notices, but Hoffa didn't know him at all.

"Since I'm here, might as well settle in," Hoffa thought to himself, reassuringly.

"Lumos."

With a soft incantation, a silver glow illuminated the dark surroundings.

Raising his wand high, Hoffa lit up a narrow dirt path that led deeper into the shadowy forest. Peering into the dense woods, he couldn't see anything clearly.

Pulling his cloak tighter around himself, he stepped into the familiar yet alien Forbidden Forest.

Hoffa expected to find Joey Dargo simply by following the trail.

However, as he walked, something began to feel off. When he reached an old oak tree, the path abruptly split into three forks, each heading in a different direction.

"What the hell is this?"

Hoffa muttered, pulling out the note Gorshak had given him. He glanced at it, hoping for a map of the forest, but there was none.

With no other choice, Hoffa reminded himself that a task was a task. He needed to reach the gamekeeper before 5:30, or he'd be late. Stuffing the note back into his pocket, he approached the fork and shouted a few times.

"Mr. Dargo?"

"Are you there?"

His voice echoed through the empty forest, but there was no response.

Frowning, Hoffa realized he'd have to choose one path. Yet, all three paths looked indistinguishable.

Approaching the oak tree in the center of the fork, Hoffa noticed carvings etched into the bark. They were crude but vivid illustrations, each corresponding to one of the three paths.

The left path was marked by a tower beneath a lightning storm.

The middle path showed a robed woman holding scales.

The right path depicted a figure hanging upside down from a tree.

Hoffa studied the carvings. They seemed vaguely familiar—perhaps something he'd seen in the divination textbook? But Hoffa wasn't particularly skilled at divination. To be honest, he didn't even believe in it.

The cryptic phrases of the divination teacher had always seemed like the ramblings of a lunatic to him—each word made sense individually, but together, they were incomprehensible.

Faced with this peculiar fork in the road, Hoffa had no brilliant solution.

He put his wand away and crouched down, using his finger to "choose" in a childlike rhyme:

"Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, Snow White marries so-and-so."

Left.

Hoffa set off down the path marked by the lightning-struck tower.

The moment he stepped into the forest, his figure shimmered faintly before vanishing into the Forbidden Forest entirely.

The mist swallowed the path behind him.

Sensing the mist thickening in the forest night, Hoffa squinted and raised his wand.

The wand's silver light illuminated the path ahead. Around the damp trail, moss and vividly colored tiny fungi thrived. Unknown glowing insects flitted through the darkness, scattering as Hoffa's presence disturbed them.

He hadn't walked far before a massive tree, large enough for two people to wrap their arms around, appeared in the middle of the path, completely blocking his way.

"Damn it!"

Seeing his path blocked again, a flicker of impatience rose in Hoffa's heart.

What was going on? Wasn't he supposed to find the gamekeeper in the Forbidden Forest? Why were the paths constantly blocked or diverging? What kind of nonsense was this?

In Hoffa's impression, the Hogwarts staff of this era seemed normal enough. Why would anyone set up something so absurd?

Irritated, he approached the large tree, intending to bypass it.

But as he reached the side, he noticed three identical carvings etched into the tree's bark.

A tower beneath a lightning storm.

A robed woman holding scales.

A figure hanging upside down from a tree.

Hoffa's frustration gradually gave way to a cold unease. Something wasn't right.

A faint sense of being watched prickled at his senses. Meanwhile, the glowing insects that had scattered earlier began drifting back toward him, their numbers steadily increasing.

Drawing his wand, Hoffa started to retreat cautiously, deciding to return to the entrance and regroup.

But as soon as he stepped back, he found his foot unable to move. Looking down, he saw a black, shriveled hand gripping his ankle from the ground.

Hoffa's hairs stood on end.

He reacted instantly, kicking hard to break free from the hand's grasp. Without hesitation, he turned and bolted back toward where he'd come from.

That's when the mist thickened even further.

"La~ La~ La~"

A soft, eerie laughter echoed around him.

Hoffa glanced back and saw the mushrooms growing along the damp, decaying ground suddenly ballooning in size. Like parasites, they crept up tree trunks and the forest floor in dense clusters.

As the mushrooms swelled, they began splitting apart, revealing unsettling patterns that resembled tiny faces. Some were smiling, others were fierce, while a few wore pitiful, sorrowful expressions.

The grotesque faces surrounded him from all sides, pressing in closer. Hoffa's heart pounded wildly. The unexpected changes were far beyond anything he had anticipated, the sudden crisis sending cold sweat trickling down his back.

Forcing himself to stay calm, he pivoted and ran in a different direction.

He hadn't made it far when the ballooning mushrooms suddenly burst apart with loud pops, sending sticky liquid flying everywhere. From the ruptures emerged countless black hands, writhing and clawing, gripping Hoffa tightly.

Meanwhile, the glowing insects swarmed toward him, latching onto his face and attempting to burrow into his skin.

Without hesitation, Hoffa activated his Ghost Walk ability.

In an instant, Hoffa detached from the material world and entered a shadowy realm of only gray and white.

But the black hands didn't disappear; instead, they grew more rampant, rising from the ground. Through the perspective of the shadow world, the entire forest seemed to shift, as though it were a living creature wriggling and twisting.

The black hands seized Hoffa in the shadows, the mushrooms still fixated on him, and countless insects burrowed into his cheeks, distorting his features into a grotesque, twisted form.

"Damn it!"

Hoffa's mind raced.

Being in the shadow realm didn't seem to mean escaping this strange magic. It appeared this was not a spell targeting the body but one aimed at the mind.

Realizing this, Hoffa's expression grew solemn.

He didn't waste any more magic and immediately exited Ghost Walk.

The black hands were nearly swallowing him whole, dragging him deeper into the earth, as strange, excited voices echoed between them.

Hoffa closed his eyes, fully focusing on his meditation technique, purifying his mind. At the same time, he thought quickly, trying to devise a countermeasure.

Spells involving illusions and affecting the mind were mostly tied to Dark Magic, as Professor Melis from Gryffindor House had taught during class.

This could be a defensive charm, or it might be pure Dark Magic—there was only a fine line between the two.

Hoffa didn't believe that anyone could be casting advanced Dark Magic so close to Hogwarts, less than a few hundred meters away. It must have been some kind of bizarre defensive spell.

As he concentrated on his meditation, Hoffa's mind began to sharpen, and the surrounding scenery and black hands began to blur. Some of the hands gripping his arms even began to scream, emitting white smoke.

It was as if they weren't holding a person, but a heated iron.

The insects clinging to Hoffa's face cracked open with popping sounds.

However, Hoffa's resistance didn't make them retreat. The black hands surged like a tidal wave from the underground darkness, overwhelming him.

Eyes still closed, Hoffa's mind spread out like a spider's web. Every thread of his mental touch transformed into a steel needle, each one piercing a black hand or a monstrous insect.

The entire mental world turned into a battlefield.

A battlefield between him and the unknown magic.

Just as the situation grew more desperate, with no clear winner, a powerful force came from an unknown source. A man's hand reached through the boundary between the illusory and the real, gripping Hoffa's shoulder and forcibly pulling him out of the grasp of the black hands.

Hiss!

It felt as though he had fallen off his bed while asleep.

Hoffa jolted awake, his eyes snapping open. His body swayed for a moment.

He was completely awake now. The mushrooms, black hands, wriggling forest, and flying creepy insects had all disappeared.

It was still drizzling cold rain, and Hoffa found himself standing before an old oak tree at the entrance of the Forbidden Forest, his face nearly pressed against the trunk. In front of him was the same carving of a tower struck by lightning.

Hoffa's face was pale, his fingers cold.

He had traveled so far in his mind, yet his body hadn't moved an inch.

When did he fall into this illusion? Hoffa hadn't noticed at all.

"You're early."

A rough but calm voice came from beside him.

"The agreed time was five-thirty. Why'd you come early?"

Hoffa turned his head and saw a weathered face. It was an old man, around fifty years old, with one eye missing. He had his arms crossed and was sizing Hoffa up from head to toe.

(End of Chapter)

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