Chapter 499: Working Hard to Distract (Edited)

"Coo... Coo..."

"Uh, uh, uh, Fish understands nya, thank you, Katherine."

(??ˇ?ˇ??)

Fish was standing in front of Hermione's owl, listening to her with a serious face and nodding occasionally.

"What is it, Fish?"

Hermione asked curiously, it was the first time an owl had ever returned a letter to her, whether it had been delivered or not was secondary, she was more interested in satisfying her desire to know.

"Katherine said she couldn't find Rita's exact location, and she wasn't sure where Rita's house was, so she had to fly back after a couple of laps around nya."

Fish answered Hermione's question as he fed Katherine nuts, the owl had been flying aimlessly for days without much food.

"How did that happen?" muttered Hermione in amazement as she wiggled her cat ears.

It wasn't in Miss Know-it-all's knowledge base, she hadn't read much about owls as a mail system, and Hermione herself hadn't taken it seriously.

Come to think of it...

The fact that owls could deliver mail exactly to each wizard was remarkable in itself.

Since wizards didn't have to write their addresses on them like Muggles did, they only had to tell the owl who the recipient was, and the owl could find them wherever they were.

So it made sense that wizards would have a countermeasure, just like Hogwarts couldn't be plotted on a map, and Rita Skeeter would have used a similar spell to keep the owls from finding her.

Hermione could probably guess why Skeeter did it, as she had offended a lot of people with her news, it was natural for her to hide her whereabouts, and it wasn't unlikely that someone would catch her with a bad spell or something if she was ever left alone.

And since Skeeter usually took the form of a beetle and eavesdropped, if an owl revealed her whereabouts, she'd be in a lot of trouble.

What if an owl came and ate Rita Skeeter in the form of a beetle?

Hermione scratched her head in anguish at having guessed, but that didn't stop Skeeter from continuing to report on Hagrid.

"You don't know where he lives?" asked Hermione.

"I don't know," Fish shook his head, "The owl that delivered the feather to Fish doesn't live at the school, and flew away after nya."

(`ω′′≡`ω′)

Hermione hesitated and decided she'd better go see if she could find out Rita Skeeter's address... although she was tempted by the idea of replacing Hagrid as a teacher, she really couldn't ignore it.

Rita Skeeter seemed ready for it, presumably to receive letters from readers or to find out from others where there was news worth having, and she left a special address at the main office of the Daily Prophet, where she worked, and Hermione sent Katherine on another trip.

It was not for Hermione to decide whether or not Rita Skeeter would see the letter before the news broke, she had done all she could, in fact, Hermione occasionally had the expectation of "if only Skeeter hadn't received it."

After all, in all honesty, Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class, apart from the first few moments when she was preparing properly with Harry's help, had become more and more of a pitched battle, especially this year, when the students had complained about the Blast-Ended Skrewt from start to finish.

Hermione was relieved, and a little saddened, to see that no news of Hagrid was appearing as the vacations progressed.

Fish had forgotten all about him,

Hermione and Gabrielle, who had been a frequent visitor, were spending their days at Hogwarts.

Apart from Fish and Hermione, there were many couples at Hogwarts because of the Yule Ball, and the rose garden at the entrance to the castle, which Dumbledore had never torn down, was a place where couples hung out from time to time, and the whole atmosphere of the school was suddenly ambiguous.

Of course, there were winners and losers, and Harry and Ron were among them.

No need to talk about Harry, he was so preoccupied with Cho Chang that, after the first dance, Parvati ran off in a huff because her partner wasn't paying attention to her.

And Ron's situation wasn't much better, Padma wasn't very happy with Ron as a dance partner from the beginning, instead of saying that she was invited by Ron, it was better to say that she was doing her sister a favor.

But Ron was quite attached to his partner, so the two got along quite well, except for the fact that Ron had been affected by Fleur's Charm at the dance, which had annoyed Padma, and Ron didn't bother to apologize to her, so the two became strangers.

Of course, Ron was better off than Harry, as he had no feelings for Padma, so he broke up with her, while Harry was in the doldrums, watching Cedric and Cho Chang walk past him arm in arm from time to time.

This resulted in Harry spending the vacations in the dormitory or hiding in the Room of Requirement to practice the bubble head spell and other spells that could be used in the tournament, and only coming out at mealtimes....

With this hard work, Harry had not only mastered the bubblehead spell, but also several underwater spells before the start of the course, which gave him a lot of confidence for the second test.

The other two champions were also preparing for the second test, as Harry had heard from Ron that Krum had jumped into the Black Lake more than once in this cold, and Fleur, who had gone into the water several times, with a crowd of boys watching her every time she went in.

With the two of them in action, it became clear to everyone that the second test involved diving, especially in the Black Lake.

Harry had gone in the water a couple of times after using the bubblehead spell, but he didn't feel comfortable doing it in front of the others, or rather, he didn't want Cho Chang to see him, so he stuck to just slipping into his invisibility cloak and going out at night.

The results were not very promising, his swimming speed was not very good and the bubble head spell only kept him from drowning, so Harry now practiced swimming in the Black Lake basically every night, he even got a cold from it, but still, Harry didn't stop practicing....

Still, Harry didn't stop practicing because it helped him forget about Cho Chang for a while, and he figured if he did well enough in the competition, Cho Chang might fall in love with him.

The only one who gave a damn about him was Fish....

Fish isn't dumb enough to get in the water on such a cold day.