Chapter 70 Christmas present

"This thought is feasible." Felix saw more possibilities in this simple attempt, and he felt he could do something like sleeping gargoyle in the castle if he tried hard enough.

However, he did not think he could accomplish a magical creation similar to the Sorting Hat or the Diary.

The latter is fine, after all, it is a Horcrux, which hides a piece of Voldemort's soul, but the Sorting Hat? It's originally was merely a Gryffindor's hat, not something built specifically for the sorting.

According to Felix's visualization, the four founders may have shared an afternoon tea and questioned each other's "talent selection plan", and in order to resolve their differences, they decided to use " wise magical creation" to carry out the sorting.

Thus, the birth of the Sorting Hat occurred. And the Sorting Hat has been around for thousands of years. It can communicate with people, which means that it has its own memory and nature, and in a sense, it is not too much to say that it is real life.

It reminded him of a portrait that could also communicate with people in a sense.

In some simple portraits, such as Sir Cadogan in the castle, his intelligence is extremely simple, unable to carry on a complex and structured dialogue.

The result of Felix's probing during school was that the bragging Sir could only engage in seven effective feedbacks, such as bragging about his glorious battles or extending an invitation to a duel.

And some portraits behaved miraculously enough - they were able to interact with the outside world in complex ways and retained a considerable amount of memory themselves.

As far as he knows, the portraits of past Heads of Hogwarts in the Headmaster's office, as well as the portraits of the ancestors of some pure-blood families, are in this category.

This is a result of the owners of the portraits injecting a lot of memory and magic for this purpose, thus making the portraits they left behind still maintain a similar personality to the original owners, but they are only similar to the extent, but they are not a real being.

The biggest difference is that the character of the portraits will not change with the passage of time, always fixed at the moment they were made, like a complex set of interactive programs.

This is fundamentally different from the Sorting Hat ...

"The Sorting Hat absolutely hides a bigger secret!"

...

The dawn of Christmas came, and Felix emerged from his bedroom fully dressed. Under the small Christmas tree in one corner of the office, numerous Christmas gifts of various shapes and sizes were piled up.

Roughly counted, almost hundreds of pieces.

Moreover, there were quite a few more packages on their way, and in the time it took him to make tea, three owls flew into the room through the window he had deliberately left open last night. One of them had obviously flown a significant distance, with a palm-sized delicate gift box in its beak, and collapsed in exhaustion on the table in front of him.

Felix had to feed it a few drops of potion, it is in a far better state now.

The brown owl ate a few small cookies before jumping in front of him and pecking his fingers with its pointed beak, "Are you asking me to open the package?"

The owl looked at him, cocked its head, and held out a talon to him where a small metal cylinder was tied.

Felix opened the cylinder and pulled out a rolled-up letter from inside -

"Dear Mr. Felix Hap, my wolfsbane potion has been finalized. Just as the 'White Fresh' flew to you, I have submitted the official formula to the Ministry of Magic. If there are no surprises, I will soon be awarded a medal of the Order of Merlin - at least second class! I hope you will be able to come and observe the ceremony at that time. Enclosed with this letter is a bottle of the latest wolfsbane potion, so please taste it."

It's addressed and signed by Damocles Belby O.M.

Felix quickly wrote on it, "I am honored, please let me know as soon as the date is set, and I will attend on time. Also: your Merlin medal is well deserved."

He placed the note back in the metal cylinder, "Good work, White Fresh." The owl drank some water and spread its wings and left.

Felix opened the delicate gift box, that contained a bottle of potion, he opened the lid and sniffed it gently, "Well, it smells as bad as ever, couldn't he ever consider adding some sugar? Or is it a quirk of all Master Wizards to make their potions so awful?"

He placed the potion in the ring with emeralds on his left hand, and then began to open the gifts with great interest.

A good portion of them came from his book fans and pen-pals, mainly greeting cards. Felix sorted through them and set them aside for now, the rest were gifts from Hogwarts' professors and students.

Dumbledore gave a private alchemy manuscript, his personal insights on alchemy. And Felix gave the principal a muggle book called "99 Inventions That Changed the World", paired with a pair of long wool socks embroidered with red lions.

Professor McGonagall gave a book called "Quidditch Teams in Great Britain and Ireland", which is an introduction to the Quidditch teams in Britain and the various honours they have won, and it contains a lot of illustrations of Quidditch technical moves.

It seemed as if she wanted to draw Felix into the circle of fellow Quidditch enthusiasts.

Hagrid gave him a short home-made dagger, rather crudely made, albeit out of a very unusual material - the horn of a unicorn.

"Tch." Felix smacked his lips, not knowing what to say.

Professor Flitwick sent him a copy of ancient magic and invited him to discuss the contents with him sometime, and Felix gladly responded.

Professor Snape's gift is a thumb-sized clear bottle containing about a millilitre of clear unknown liquid.

"It's a strong spiteful agent, how very kind of you, Professor." He said cheerfully, "I hope you'll like my gift too." What he gave Snape was a set of experimental equipment for Muggle schoolchildren, including measuring cups, scales, and droppers.

He also thoughtfully put together a "Code of Conduct for Chemical Experiments (Children's Edition)," which had plenty of accompanying pictures, so he wasn't afraid that the professor wouldn't be able to understand it.

A number of young wizards at Hogwarts also gave him gifts; his assistant Miss Granger gave him a dark green knitted scarf, Potter gave him a large box of chocolates, and Ron Weasley gave him a box of Zizzy Bee candy.

The most interesting gift came from the twins' collaboration, which was two wooden couple dolls hugging each other, looking rougher than Hagrid's short dagger - the features on the face were painted in. Felix knocked the male doll's head according to the instructions, which caused it to scream in pain, and then the two dolls shuddered and did a zombie dance.

Although the twins said that this is a small African country's " dance track ", but Felix directly ignored it.

In addition, some little wizards who he hasn't met a few times also sent gifts, such as Justin Finch-Fletchley, who sent a luxurious quill with a variety of functions.

It took Felix an hour to finish writing the letters and returning gifts.

He entered the Great Hall, where four long tables were occupied by a few scattered little wizards.

A dozen Christmas trees covered with silver frost were hung with all sorts of new and interesting trinkets, ribbons of sprinkles of mistletoe and holly were draped from the ceiling, and enchanted snow was sprinkling down.

Professor McGonagall and several professors were busy decorating the Great Hall.

"Do you need some help?" He asked.

Professor McGonagall straightened up, "Oh, no, it's almost done." She waved her wand, hung a long coloured ribbon on the Christmas tree, as she turned to him, and said, "I really like your gift, Felix."

Felix flashed a smile as he gave Professor McGonagall a half-human-sized golem with a dozen or so complex circuits built in it, which enabled it to take two forms - in addition to the human form itself, it could transfigure into a majestic lion.

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