Chapter 196

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Yeah! Here's the new chapter!

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-February 14 - Sunday - Valentine's Day-

Today is another new day, but different from all the others, this day will decide the fate of a certain man. Whether he will live or die is a matter for another time.

All drama aside, I was heading to the Great Hall already knowing a certainty…a certainty that I was going to hate Lockhart even more.

But who knows, maybe he's gained a little conscience, and thanks to that I'll have a calm and relaxing day.

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...

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"Err, thanks, but no..." I said after walking through the big doors of the Great Hall, seeing something that caused pain to my eyes.

In front of me was a pink world, with hearts and flowers, along with many feelings of love, heartbreak, hate, and depression in the air.

Glancing at the Ravenclaw table, I saw my friends eating, with none of them wanting to lift their heads to avoid looking at the pink decorations of the Great Hall.

'I should have drowned him in the Black Lake a long time ago' I thought, my right eye twitching.

Not wanting to waste my time on the speech I knew Lockhart was going to give, I turned around and walked out of the Great Hall, with some prank ideas coming to my mind, luckily having someone 'willing' to serve as a subject for my tests.

Leaving the Great Hall and walking the corridors, planning to go to the kitchens, I felt some strange emotions coming from an abandoned classroom, and to satiate my curiosity I decided to go there.

Arriving in front of the door, I opened it slightly, and peering through the slot, what I saw will probably give me nightmares for a few days.

In the classroom, there were 12 dwarves wearing diapers, angel wings, and holding harps or bows and arrows, with the arrowheads shaped like a heart.

"Bad day to have the gift of sight," I said, closing the door in disgust.

I then stopped and started looking out of one of the corridor windows with a blank stare.

"I... I can't forget that image... Damn occlumency!" I said, clenching my fists.

With my head down, my eyes took on a resolute gleam.

"I already know, I can cast [Obliviate] on myself!" I muttered, looking down at my wrist that held the holster with my wand.

I continued to reflect for a while, until I heard the dwarves' footsteps leaving the room behind me. Deciding I could try to put that memory to the back of my mind with occlumency, I continued down the corridor, not wanting to see those damn dwarves ever again.

'If someone sends me a love letter or a romantic poem through one of these dwarves, I'll feed the three of them to the acromantulas of the Forbidden Forest, the damn dwarf, the idiot Lockhart, and the person who sent the letter.' I thought.

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-Room of Requirement-

*Sounds of a rooster crowing*

"Urgh!" I groaned, keeping myself upright as I felt like my eardrums were going to burst.

As soon as the rooster's crow under the sonorous spell stopped, I took a deep breath, but right away I cast a compulsion spell on the rooster that was standing on the other side of the room, and he started to crow again.

"Come on Ethan... Concentrate and calm down... Take a deep breath" I muttered to myself, ignoring the headache I was feeling.

The reason I'm doing this is because I realized a flaw in my plan to face Basilisk.

I knew that in order to confront the Basilisk I would have to use all my senses to the fullest, as I couldn't use my eyes because I might unintentionally look into his mortal eyes, or into some reflection, and in either case I basically would be dead.

But in order for me to defeat Basilisk, I'll have to use a crowing of a rooster under a sonorus spell to increase the potency and range of the crowing, but that's the problem.

Both the Basilisk and I will have to hear the rooster crow, and while crowing is a weakness for the basilisk, only one of us has super-enhanced hearing.

It's going to be impossible for me to fight the damn giant snake if I can't even concentrate because of a pain in my ears and a headache.

"Huff!" sitting down on the living room floor, I took the time to take a deep breath, "At least I've finished my resistance training to the 'Curse of the Evil Queen' potion"

Yes, I also trained my resistance to my potion for the same reason I was training my resistance to the high pitched sound of a crowing of a rooster.

Since I would have to use my senses to the fullest, I would also have to put up with the potion's powerful scent and effect, which would probably put me to sleep quickly unless I kept my magic moving through my body continuously and unconsciously, which I still can't do for a long time as it's very difficult and tiring.

My training to resist the effects of this potion wasn't that difficult, as my body has a natural resistance to certain things.

"If in the end os all this I find out that the crowing of a rooster really doesn't have any effect on this damn basilisk, I'm going to find the one who spread this rumor and I'm going to throw him into a tank with hundreds of venomous, hungry snakes," I muttered with a frown on my face, rubbing my ears.

With that said, a new disposition and possible hatred began to rise within me, and I stood up resolutely, bracing myself for yet another wave of pain and suffering that might or might not cause me a new trauma at the crowing of a rooster.

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-Ravenclaw Common Room – After Lunch-

"Hey Ethan, some dwarves were looking for you. Looks like some girls sent you love letters" Sue said the moment she saw me coming through the common room passage.

"If they didn't find me, it means I'm doing a good work" I said dryly, plopping down on the couch wearily.

Resting comfortably on the couch, I looked to the side and saw Terry and Anthony smiling happily as they proudly lavished two pink letters.

"I still can't understand how just the two of you got love letters" Michael, who was looking at the two of them frowning, said with envy.

"For me, the big question and mystery is not the fact that they received love letters, but knowing that there are two girls crazy enough to send these letters to them" Stephen said, adopting a contemplative look, reflecting on his choices in life.

Looking between the boys strangely, I paid attention to the letters in Terry and Anthony's hands.

"Hey, weren't those the letters I saw you writing yesterday before Luna's party?" I asked, realizing that I had seen these letters before.

As soon as I said that, the two boys stiffened, and a silence ensued between us.

"Err, hehe... I don't know what you're talking about Ethan" Anthony said, laughing nervously.

"Hmm, I'm sure these are the letters you guys were writing on Saturday... I had thought you guys were writing some letter for Luna's birthday, so I thought it was weird that you guys just gave her the figurines as a present" I said, frowning, moving out of my comfortable position on the couch to look at the boys curiously.

"No, these letters were delivered to us by two beautiful fourth years girls, right Anthony?" Terry asked, a forced smile on his face.

"Uhum" Anthony nodded quickly, but I could feel the nervousness coming from both of them.

"Now that Ethan has brought it up, I actually remember seeing you guys with two pink letter envelopes before," Michael said, looking intently at the pink letters in the boys' hands.

"Err…" Anthony started to say, nervously looking anywhere but at us.

"Wait... So you wrote these letters yourself?" Stephen asked looking at the boys with narrowed eyes.

"Hmph! I knew no girl would have been interested in you two…especially two fourth year girls" Michael said, looking at Terry and Anthony with contempt.

"Hey, it's not like that. This was all part of our strategy" Terry defended himself.

"What strategy?" Stephen asked confused.

"Well... You know that girls like to compete with other girls, right?" Terry asked, and the boys nodded.

"Girls like to feel superior to each other, and when a new trend emerges among girls, they all follow that trend so as not to be left behind in the competition" Anthony said.

"So we thought... What if other girls saw that we got love letters from older girls? They would start questioning what is so amazing about us, and with these girls paying attention to us, other girls would start paying attention to us too." Terry said.

"And with all these girls paying attention to us, at some point some of them would start to see us differently, maybe even romantically" Anthony continued for Terry, "And it's like a cycle, and in that cycle the girls would be so busy looking for our good qualities that caught the attention of the supposed 'fourth years girls' that they wouldn't see our flaws"

"And at the end of it all, we'd have a lot of girls seeing our positive sides" Terry said, and I don't think he noticed the weird look they were getting from the girls in our group who were in the common room.

"And then it would only be a matter of time before one of them decided to approach us," Anthony said.

"And just like that, our single life would probably end" When Terry finished speaking, he received two impressed and surprised looks from Stephen and Michael, who began to look at them in a new light.

...

...

...

"This is the first time I've seen you guys using your brains for something, and was it just to do that?!" I asked breaking the silence, looking at them with disgust and disbelief.

"Ethan, you use your brain to figure out the best ways to torture someone or how to commit murder and get away with it, so why can't we use our brains to figure out how to flirt with girls?" Terry asked me, and I stopped to look at him.

"..."

"..."

"Okay, fair" I shrugged.

'Everyone has their own hobby' I thought.

Stephen and Michael who were listening to our conversation looked at each other before approaching Terry and Anthony.

"Hey, do you guys still have any pink envelopes left?" Stephen asked.

"Yes, but why do you want to know?" Anthony asked curiously.

"Well... We were just thinking..." Michael started to say.

"We'll use your strategy and send love letters to ourselves" Stephen interrupted Michael, getting right to the point.

Terry and Anthony then looked at each other, and with a nod, the two turned to the two boys in front of them.

"Come with us" Terry said in a deep, mysterious voice.

Terry and Anthony then got up from the couch, and with Stephen and Michael following them, they went upstairs to the boys' dorms.

And I, who was watching this, could only shake my head helplessly.

'I think in war and in love everyone uses the weapons they've been given... Not everyone can be as nice and beautiful as I am' I thought, looking into space with a serene gaze.

End.

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(End AN: Hmm, at the moment I'm posting this chapter here where I live it's raining.

I think this is a sign that tomorrow I will wake up with the flu... Maybe this is a divine sign?)