Chapter 37: Clown

After running out of lunch, they took a nap for a while and then went to a Transfiguration class.

In various senses, Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration class was one of the most difficult.

Today she asked the students to turn a beetle into a button. Crabbe and Gower behaved like two Muggles, struggling to hold their wands and unable to control the agile beetle.

Pansy, on the other hand, had made a few buttons that were still running around on the table.

Most of the students didn't perform well, as if they were on vacation.

They all seemed to have lost focus and Professor McGonagall had a serious expression.

Only when she passed Draco's desk did her tightly frowned eyebrows slowly spread out, impressed by the delicate and beautiful buttons he had made with no trace of the beetle.

"Well done, Slytherin," Professor McGonagall said approvingly.

"Seriously, I really don't know what the point is of learning this," Pansy complained to Malfoy in the corridor after class.

"Although I don't like Muggles, sometimes it's good to use them. No one will really use a beetle as a button and wear it on their body, right? Just buy it when you need it."

Malfoy frowned, not knowing how to change her mind. No one knew what would happen in the future. Even if he himself had changed so much history, maybe his well-known future development would become unrecognizable.

Maybe anyone could take part in a battle and every basic structure is important for ordinary students.

"Pansy," Malfoy said seriously, preparing to infuse her with a correct concept, but was interrupted again.

"Today's Defense against Dark Magic class actually asked us to go with Gryffindor," Pansy pulled out a piece of paper and said.

"Come on, I don't want to sit with that group of people. Maybe we should choose a good position?" She said, walking quickly to the classroom for the Defense Against Magic Defense class, not giving him the opportunity to speak.

Malfoy could only helplessly follow her.

When they arrived in the classroom, the class hadn't started yet.

As a result, the classroom was almost full, mostly with girls, and the rest of the students slowly came in before the bell rang. The seats were divided, with Gryffindor on one side and Slytherin on the other.

After the class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly, calming everyone down.

He reached out and picked up Neville Longbottom's "Walking with the Monster" and held it in his hand, displaying a picture of himself blinking on the cover.

"I, Gidolo Lohart," he pointed at his picture and blinked, "won the Witcher Weekly's most charming smile award five times and am a third-class Medal of the Order of Merlin and honorary member of the Anti-Dark Arts League. But I don't rely on my smile to get rid of Pixie!"

He waited for everyone to laugh, but only a few people smiled lightly. Malfoy looked at him with a playful smile.

Then he handed out a sheet of paper to everyone. The questions were all about his personal preferences, such as:

What is Gidero Lockhart's favorite color?

What is Gidero Lockhart's secret ambition?

What do you think is Gidero Lockhart's greatest achievement so far?

"Waste of time," Malfoy murmured softly.

After only writing one sentence on the test paper, he started thinking about his own affairs, such as how to make Pansy fall in love with learning or who become prisoner of Knowledge.

Ron and Harry seemed a little dazed. They didn't know much about the teacher, only that he was a bit of a show-off.

Seeing Hermione's pen flying, they could only raise their own pens, but they felt heavy and couldn't get started. Harry even thought he'd rather do a test question on potions.

At least with potions, you could find the answers in books, unlike this test.

Half an hour later, Lockhart took the test papers and looked at them in front of the class.

"Hmm, almost no one remembers my favorite color is lilac. I mentioned it in 'A Year with XC Snowman'," he commented on everyone's test papers.

Male students were bored, but female students were all absorbed, listening intently. Suddenly, Lockhart mentioned Hermione's name, which surprised her.

"...But Miss Hermione Granger knew that my secret ambition is to eliminate evil in the world and sell my own series of haur conditioners - good girl! In fact, she got 100%! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?"

Hermione raised a trembling hand.

"Excellent!" Lockhart said with a smile. "Very good! Add 10 points to Gryffindor!"

"Hmm," Lockhart continued flipping through the test papers and suddenly frowned, as if he saw a blank sheet.

But his brows quickly smoothed out and he smiled loudly. "Slytherin gets 20 points, Mr. Draco's answer is perfect, but it's a secret between me and him. I can't tell you what he wrote," Lockhart said with a smile, winking in Malfoy's direction.

Hermione, still feeling joyous, couldn't help but hear the familiar name and looked in Malfoy's direction. He seemed to be in a daze.

"Why can't I always find a chance to ask him clearly?" She thought about a previous incident and asked herself this, but she also knew there was no chance. She was afraid of the answer.

The joy she had felt earlier seemed to have been diluted a lot.

"Now, let's get started..." Lockhart stooped down and picked up a large cage with a drape from behind the podium and placed it on the table.

"Now - be careful! My task is to teach you how to defend against the most evil things known to the magic world! You will face the most horrible things in this classroom. But remember, as long as I am here, you will not suffer any harm. I only ask you to remain calm."

Harry unconsciously leaned over from behind a pile of books to get a better look at the cage.

Lockhart placed a hand on the hood and Neville in the first row shrank back, while Pansy moved a few steps closer to Malfoy's seat.

"I must ask you not to scream," Lockhart said in a low voice, "That would irritate them!"

The entire class held their breath, except for Malfoy. Lockhart then lifted the cover.

"Not bad," he said playfully, "I just caught a Pixie."

A male student couldn't help but chuckle, and even Lockhart couldn't have predicted the terrified scream that followed.

"Be serious, students!" Lockhart shook his fingers annoyed at the student, "They are also little destroyers as cunning as the devil!"

Draco looked at the elves in the cage. These elves were a pale blue color, about eight inches tall, with small pointed faces and very sharp throats, as if many budgerigars were arguing.

As soon as the covers were removed, they started chattering, jumping up and down, shaking the cage, and making all sorts of weird faces at the people nearby.

"Alright," Lockhart said loudly, "Watch how I deal with them!"

He opened the cage door.

It was chaos.

The elves flew around like rockets. Two of them grabbed Neville's ear and lifted him up. A few more rushed out the window, shattering the broken glass at the back of the classroom.

The rest wreaked havoc in the classroom, worse than a rampaging rhinoceros. They grabbed ink bottles and splattered the entire class, ripped books and paper into pieces, pulled down the pictures on the wall, flipped the waste bin upside down, and threw schoolbags and textbooks out the broken window.

They climbed on the girls' heads and started pulling their hair.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Draco fixed a few elves who rushed towards him and helped Pansy, then watched the drama unfold from the side.

"Come, get them together, get them together, they're just a few Pixie..." Lockhart shouted.

He rolled up his sleeves and waved his wand, shouting: "Pepsi Picxi Pestnomy!"

But it was completely ineffective. An elf grabbed Lockhart's wand and threw it out the window.

Lockhart took a deep breath and ducked under the podium table, almost crushed by Neville as the chandelier fell with difficulty at almost the same time.

"This is the Defense Against Dark Magic could do with this kind of strength?" Pansy asked suspiciously, an expression shared by almost all the students.

They were also suspicious - the teachers couldn't solve problems that the students could barely solve, which made them have to be suspicious.

"Maybe his wand is broken," Hermione explained to him.

"Like Ron's." She added, "You all read his book - think about the amazing things he did..."

Some classmates agreed with Hermione's claim and the discoloration on their faces gradually faded away, but Ron muttered: "It's just that he said he did it..."

Eventually, the students managed to grab all the elves and put them back in the cage, even though it was very laborious.

"It seems that your practical results are very good," Lockhart, who had emerged from under the table at some point, smiled like his usual self, as if nothing had happened.

Malfoy could only cast a disgusted look at him.

"Well, let me see, every time you catch a little pixie, you can add five points to your house. Please have the students register," realizing the awkward atmosphere, Lockhart changed the topic, clearly succeeding.

Almost all the students forgot about his incompetence and scrambled to get more points.

"Is this enough?" Draco was dumbfounded. He had never seen someone so brazen.

After a while, the school bell finally rang, bringing the farce to an end.

"What did you write on the paper just now? I saw that you didn't write a few words at all," Pansy asked Malfoy immediately as they left the classroom.

She was one of the few girls who wasn't interested in the teacher, but that didn't stop her curiosity.

Malfoy shrugged. "I just wrote: My mother accidentally put a big bottle of Ogden's aged hot whiskey in my luggage before school started, you know, minors can't drink alcohol, so I would like to ask you to help me deal with it."

"Blatant bribery?" Pansy stared at him with wide eyes.

"No, it's just that the students have a little heart for the teacher," Malfoy glanced at Lockhart and said sarcastically.

Lockhart's ethics are really too easy to compliment...