Chapter 49: Being confined again

Fish's bedroom was soon back to its original state thanks to the House Elf's skillful spells.

Ron and the others looked at each other, then shrugged and put away their wands, which had been of little use.

They knew Comey, the house elf, who often brought Fish back from his nightly excursions, and who had woken Harry and the others not once but twice with the piercing sound of his 'Apparition'.

"If you need anything, just say Comey's name! I'll listen to you," Comey said after he finished tidying up the room, bowing deeply to Harry Potter and the others, before disappearing from the bedroom.

"Excellent! I've always wanted a house elf," Ron waved his arms excitedly, as the only pureblood in the dormitory, he and Neville would know a little more about house elves.

And unlike the Longbottoms, the Weasleys didn't even have a house elf.

In fact, Ron was quite puzzled at first. Even though his family is poor, he can still afford house elves. After all, these little guys have extremely low demands on themselves and don't consume any resources.

But whenever Ron asked the question, his parents always deflected the subject and talked about other things.

Later, he learned from his siblings why.

Although house elves didn't need to be paid and required very little in the way of food and lodging, there were really only a limited number of them, and they were largely in the hands of the old pureblood pureblood families.

Hogwarts has many house elves, mainly due to the legacy of the Four Founders and the Headmasters and Professors, and some homeless house elves have been taken in by Hogwarts for various reasons.

Arthur and Molly were from old pureblood families, but they had run away from their families and had not inherited their house elves from their own families.

Now Comey wasn't really theirs, but he was good enough that Ron could use a house elf at school from time to time.

"If Mum knew, she'd envy me!" Ron's grin went up to his ears, "She always wished we had a house elf to iron our clothes."

But Ron's mirth was not echoed by the others.

Longbottom, who also belongs to the "honorable twenty-eight pureblood families," naturally has house elves. Although Longbottom's elf was inherited by Neville's uncle, Neville had at least been looked after by a house elf for a while, so it didn't seem like a big deal to him.

On the other hand, Dean, Seamus and Harry have no concept of house elves. In fact, many ordinary wizards have never seen house elves in their lives. Their knowledge of elves comes from books like History of Magic.

What difference does it make to Fish... whether he has a house elf or not?

After a moment of happiness, Ron noticed that everyone else seemed quiet, hurried to hide his embarrassment by pretending to cough, and quickly changed the subject, "Fish, you know what? Harry and I have joined Gryffindor...ouch!"

Ron was halfway through his sentence when Harry cut him off with a stealthy kick, then he realized that Fish had been upset about not being able to ride brooms and owls for the past two days, and wasn't he irritating Fish by now talking about Quidditch?

In fact, Fish had forgotten about it at the time, as there were plenty of fun things to do at school. Even if he can't fly, he can usually climb to a high place, so the flying broom wasn't high on Fish's list of priorities.

"Meow?" (●?ω?●).

Fish, who was sitting cross-legged on his bunk, fiddling with some gobstones, raised his head,

looked at Ron and cocked his head to one side, confused.

"What did you and 'Scarhead' join in on?"

"Well... uh..." gasped Ron, using the only thing he was good at as an excuse, "We joined the Gryffindor magical chess club! Right, Harry?"

"Huh? Oh! Yes, we are," Harry nodded his head.

"Magic chess?" ?ω?

Fish remembered, he still had an impression of this thing, a group of small chess pieces, after being hit by him, became much more obedient.

However, for things like chess, Fish is not good at it, he could not understand the rules, why some pieces could only move diagonally and others in a straight line? And why both players take turns to move their pieces?

It seemed to Fish that it was okay to move as many moves as he wanted, as fast as he wanted, and as many moves as he wanted.

So after listening to Ron's introduction to the rules of magic chess, he quickly lost interest.

"It's no fun," Fish put his head back down and continued to pick up the gobstones that were strewn across the bed.

Of course, he knew nothing of the rules of gobstones, but they were little round balls, and to Fish they were much more interesting than magic chess.

After a few moments of fiddling with the gobstones, Fish transformed back into his cat form, then quickly climbed up the upholstered bedposts to the top of the bed and lay down on it.

All Harry and the others could see were Fish's four little paws sticking out from the edge of the bed, and a tail that wagged from time to time, showing the tip mischievously before quickly retracting.

Lately, Fish has become accustomed to resting and sleeping on top of the bed...although he doesn't spend most of his time sleeping in the bedroom.

Once Fish calmed down, the room naturally quieted down, and Harry and the others, who were exhausted from the day, took advantage of the time to rest as well.

It wasn't until dinnertime that they learned that Fish had spent the day wandering around the other three common rooms.

But this wasn't something too difficult for Fish to understand, so the Gryffindors were surprised for a moment and then thought nothing of it.

Only the twins had been trying to figure out how to get into the Slytherin common room on Fish's behalf after they found out about it.

But, unfortunately, Fish couldn't even remember the password to his own dormitory, let alone Slytherin's.

It had been left on Malfoy and Crabbe's shoulders when he went to the Slytherin common room, and he hadn't left a scent mark along the way, so he couldn't even tell them exactly where it was.

The twins had no choice but to give up when they got no answer.

As George and Fred kept promising to remember the location of the Slytherin common room and the password next time, Professor McGonagall, who had finished dinner, approached them.

Fish was the first to pounce on her, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing her, to the envy of the young wizards, "Minerva!" ?●ω●?

Professor McGonagall patted Fish's little head, a smile creeping onto her face as she kept a straight face and looked at the twins. "Nine o'clock at night, still in the hall, your confinement is not over."

Fish, who didn't quite understand the word "confinement," threw his hands up in the air and cheered, "Great! We can be confined again tonight. "ヽ(??▽?)ノ

George and Fred: "..."