Harris Raymons lay on the hospital bed, watching the boys leave with a complicated expression.
He was seriously considering one question. Could today's miserable experience really have been caused by the so-called curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?
"Hiss..." Harris Raymons suddenly sucked in a breath and glanced at Madam Pomfrey, who was pressing on his arm.
"The bone in your arm is slightly out of place," Madam Pomfrey sighed. "And your clothes are soaked too. It looks like... you've been taught another lesson by the giant squid, Harris."
"Sorry to trouble you, Madam Pomfrey," Harris Raymons said through gritted teeth, sounding a little embarrassed.
Back when he had been a student at Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey had already been the healer in the Hospital Wing, and she had treated Harris Raymons's injuries plenty of times.
"Hmph. I thought you'd have grown steadier after graduating, but you're still just as reckless. Why on earth did you go and provoke the giant squid again?" Madam Pomfrey shook her head.
"It was an accident," Harris Raymons said helplessly.
If those two Weasleys had not fed him false information and lured him into delivering himself right to it, he never would have ended up like this.
The giant squid might only have been playing around, but its strength was not something to underestimate. One light squeeze from it could crack bones.
Just like Harris Raymons now, with a fractured forearm and broken ribs.
"All right, all right. An accident." Madam Pomfrey humored him the way one might soothe a child. "Lie still for a while. I'll go prepare your medicine."
With that, she turned and left.
Harris Raymons lay there staring at the ceiling of the Hospital Wing and let out a long sigh, feeling that nothing had gone right today.
Not only had he crawled through the pipes for nothing, he had also been messed around with by the giant squid for quite a while.
"But the most important thing is still Leonard William. That guy..." Harris Raymons's eyes flickered.
When it came to the Chamber of Secrets, Harris Raymons did not want any unnecessary complications.
It was not that he wanted to keep whatever was inside the Chamber for himself. It was simply too dangerous.
After all, even when he had been a student at Hogwarts, he had already heard rumors about that place. There was supposed to be some extremely dangerous monster inside.
According to Hogwarts's internal records, the Chamber of Secrets problem had already been resolved, and even the monster inside had been driven out of Hogwarts.
But by a remarkable coincidence, the person said to have resolved the Chamber and driven out the monster was Tom Riddle, that is, Voldemort. And the monster that had supposedly been driven out was said to be an Acromantula.
What a joke. How could there possibly be an Acromantula in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets? Saying there was an Occamy in there would have sounded more believable.
And besides, the Gaunt family were the legendary heirs of Slytherin. How could Tom Riddle, who carried the Gaunt bloodline, possibly have been the one to solve the Chamber's problem?
It sounded like an arsonist putting out his own fire.
So Harris Raymons believed the Chamber of Secrets problem had never truly been resolved. Even after Tom Riddle entered it and took Slytherin's legacy, there was still danger lurking inside. Some unknown and terrifying monster.
Leonard William absolutely could not be allowed to learn about something like that, or he would only make trouble for Harris Raymons.
Still, Harris Raymons could not help feeling uneasy. If the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor really was effective, then the danger facing him would most likely come from the Chamber of Secrets and the monster inside it.
After all, judging from past examples, the curse itself was not directly lethal. It merely made accidents more likely to happen, or made conspiracies easier to expose...
"I don't have any conspiracy going on, so I suppose I just need to watch out for accidents..." Harris Raymons lay on the bed staring blankly for two seconds.
"Which means my current state was caused by an accident, wasn't it? Damn it... Looks like I really need to stay away from the Black Lake and that giant squid."
...
Meanwhile, Leonard took George and Fred to an empty classroom to talk about the problems with the flying dress robe.
"Overall, this flying dress robe is still an immature half-finished product," Leonard said bluntly.
"Half-finished?" Fred immediately sounded displeased. "It's already pretty good. If it can fly, doesn't that already count for something?"
George did not argue right away. He thought for a moment, then asked, "What's your opinion?"
"It's simple. Flight speed. That's the most important issue." Leonard raised one finger. "It flies too slowly. I'm not asking for it to match the Nimbus 2000 or the Firebolt, but it should at least be roughly on par with the common Cleansweep models. At its current speed, it's just a live target."
"Flight speed..." George and Fred exchanged a helpless look. "We already did our best. This is the fastest flight magic we can manage."
"The main problem is that we don't even know how to improve the speed," Fred said. "If only we had a template to work from."
"Aren't ready-made templates all over the place?" Leonard raised a brow. "Wouldn't flying brooms be the best templates?"
"Merlin's beard, Leonard, you really think too highly of us." George shook his head. "We can't even afford a Cleansweep Five, never mind a Nimbus 2000 or a Firebolt."
A Cleansweep Five cost roughly seventy to a hundred Galleons. The Weasleys were not so poor that they absolutely could not buy one, but buying a flying broom was clearly not part of the family budget.
And more importantly, if they wanted to study the magic built into a flying broom, they would have to completely dismantle the broom's internal structure, which would ruin it entirely.
Every broom also had protective magic against reverse engineering, meaning that even after taking one apart, they still might end up learning nothing.
Spending hundreds of Galleons on an experiment that might yield no result whatsoever was not something George and Fred even dared think about.
"Obviously I'm not asking you to pay for it yourselves. Consider this additional investment," Leonard said.
"Really? You're going to keep investing in us?" George and Fred's eyes lit up at once. "How much are you thinking? I don't think a Cleansweep Seven will be enough. A Cleansweep Ten might be enough though."
The two rubbed their hands together, faces full of anticipation.
"If we're going to research it, then let's do it properly." Leonard narrowed his eyes. "Let's go straight for the best. I think a Firebolt would do nicely."
"A F Firebolt!"
George and Fred were stunned. The two of them seemed to forget how to breathe as they sucked in a sharp breath and looked at each other, both seeing the same mix of shock and excitement in the other's eyes.
It took George a long while before he remembered to exhale. Breathing hard, he turned back to Leonard.
"But a Firebolt is incredibly expensive!"
That thing did not even have a fixed listed price. You had to order one directly through a Quidditch shop and negotiate the price in person.
And even then, a Firebolt would cost at least five hundred Galleons.