Chapter 459 - 10: The Broom

Chapter 459: Chapter 10: The Broom

McGonagall thought there had to be some sort of magic on this tiny thing. Otherwise, why was it that every time Yimi caused some new incident, McGonagall found herself completely unable to stay angry?

What was a lonely old woman supposed to do when a well-behaved, sensible little child buried her face against her and sobbed her heart out? McGonagall never went easy even when punishing students from her own House, yet she simply could not bear to see this.

She gently patted Yimi’s back and successfully coaxed the little cat to sleep in her lap. She had clearly never done this before, yet it came as naturally as instinct.

This time, Yimi truly was devastated. She had been very fond of that silly little pet. After absorbing divinity, the part of her that moved toward "happiness" had meant she had never experienced death among those around her.

The World, her Stand, could bring the dead back with a single punch. But long ago, in the world where Beatrice lived, the saint had reached out and warned her to respect death, which also meant respecting life. The saint himself had once performed miracles that brought the dead back, but Yimi was not him. Though Yimi had absorbed divinity, she did not possess that sort of "divine nature," nor did she have any mission to shoulder.

Feeling the little girl asleep on her lap breathing heavily, McGonagall gently removed the diadem from her head. The silver, eagle-shaped diadem was unquestionably the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw.

A crack ran through the gemstone that had once glittered at its center. Within the crack, one could even faintly make out the shape of tooth marks. McGonagall could not help feeling a little exasperated.

She had long since discovered that this child liked biting things, but damaging something so precious was another matter. Even Dumbledore ought to lose his temper over this, she thought, although the object had in fact been missing for many years already.

Setting the diadem aside for the moment, McGonagall picked up the corpse of the "magical creature" Yimi had spoken of.

It had a hard outer shell. She could not recognize what it was and thought it looked somewhat like a Muggle object, but the little girl had insisted it was her pet.

Perhaps Hagrid would know what this was? McGonagall had absolutely no idea where the child had pulled it from. If it was a pet, Yimi must have kept it for some time. Perhaps she had lost it after arriving at Hogwarts, only to suddenly find it dead now. A second-year Gryffindor named Neville Longbottom was forever losing his pet toad too.

They would simply have to wait until the little girl woke up, then find somewhere to bury her pet. Hopefully it would not begin to smell while lying here.

McGonagall gently removed Yimi’s shoes and laid her comfortably on the bed. Then she took Ravenclaw’s Diadem and went to find Dumbledore.

* * *

Malfoy’s father had come to visit his son, who had been hospitalized after getting clubbed in the head—or perhaps it would be clearer to say Draco’s father.

"Malfoy" was their family surname. The Slytherin student in Ron’s year who had been sent to the hospital was Draco Malfoy, and his father was Lucius Malfoy.

"You are telling me my son was struck in the head and has spent all these days in the school hospital, yet all you gave that Weasley brat was detention, Albus?" Lucius stared coldly at Dumbledore while privately puzzling over something else.

Before the start of term, he had met the Weasley family at the bookshop in Diagon Alley. The Weasleys had always been friendly toward and curious about Muggles, so Lucius, who believed in pure-blood supremacy, had never gotten along with them.

Then Lucius had come up with a rather good idea. He secretly slipped that diary into Ginny’s cauldron.

He did not actually know what the diary was. His master, Voldemort, had only told him long ago that it contained magic capable of reopening Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets. Lucius intended to use it to smear the Weasley family while seeing whether he could get Dumbledore removed from his post, and at the same time neatly dispose of a piece of evidence proving that he was still a Death Eater at heart.

Yet after arriving at the school this time, he had not heard a single rumor about the Chamber of Secrets being opened. Lucius was starting to suspect Voldemort had fooled him.

"Draco could have left the hospital the very next day. I have already said this twice." Madam Pomfrey, the school matron, repeated herself yet again.

At that, Draco, who had been lingering in his hospital bed, hurriedly clutched his head and groaned twice to demonstrate how much pain he was in.

Lucius was genuinely confused about why the Chamber had not opened, so in his confusion he ordered his house-elf Dobby to investigate what was happening at the school. How Dobby went about it was not something Lucius, as the master, felt he needed to concern himself with.

That was why Harry, who was practicing Quidditch on the pitch at this very moment, was having such a miserable time. Lucius had never ordered the house-elf not to do anything extra.

As mentioned before, Harry and Ron had been unable to board the train for an inexplicable reason, forcing them to fly a modified car to school. They crashed it into the Whomping Willow, and Ron’s wand broke in the process. Dobby had been responsible for all of that.

House-elves were unable to disobey their masters because of their magical bond, but Dobby happened to be a rare house-elf with quite a mind of his own.

Harry had a very good reputation in the wizarding world. As an infant, he had defeated Voldemort, who had terrorized everyone. Nobody knew how Harry had done it. In any case, Voldemort’s Killing Curse had rebounded, buying the wizarding world more than ten years of peace.

When Dobby learned that his master intended to cause trouble at Hogwarts, he tried every possible way to stop Harry from attending school and getting caught up in it. Yet today, after following his master to Hogwarts, Dobby discovered that Harry had made it to school after all.

"Hey! Does anyone else think this Bludger is acting strange?" Harry shouted toward the captain of the Gryffindor team.

"Focus, Harry!" Wood initially assumed he was making excuses.

"No! That Bludger keeps chasing him. Stop practice!" Angelina, one of the Chasers, noticed something was wrong. Bludgers were meant to strike and interfere with players, but this one was moving faster than normal and pursuing Harry alone.

"Harry, fly over here... Damn it! I said stop practice, not ignore the other Bludgers!" Wood, who had tried to help, was struck squarely by another Bludger.

Dobby was clever enough to realize that because this was only practice rather than an official match, everyone would stop and help Harry. So he had tampered with more than one ball.

"Dodge, Harry! Dodge!"

...

"How did practice go, Harry?" Ron had successfully gotten his wand back and was about to share the good news with his best friend when he saw Harry approaching covered in dirt, holding a broomstick snapped into two pieces.

Harry glared at Ron.

Ron immediately covered his mouth. "That was a stupid question. What happened, mate?"

"A Bludger went out of control. Maybe more than one. I’m lucky I wasn’t crippled." Harry answered irritably.

The broomstick in his hands had been the newest model the previous year and the best one available then: a Nimbus 2000. Professor McGonagall had given it to him so he could win glory for Gryffindor. It was far from cheap, and Harry had no idea how he was supposed to tell Professor McGonagall that it was broken.

"A Bludger went out of control? Who’d do that? Malfoy, right? He’d be happier than anyone that your broom broke." Ron began guessing wildly.

Harry did not dismiss the possibility. It was not entirely a wild guess. Students could apply to join a Quidditch team starting in second year; Harry had only been allowed to join in first year because Professor McGonagall granted him special permission. Malfoy had joined this year, and his father had even sponsored the other Slytherin players with a brand-new Nimbus 2001 each, the newest model this year.

The destroyed broom put Harry in an awful mood. He did not dare imagine the coming match, with every Slytherin player riding the finest brooms while he was stuck on one of Madam Hooch’s practice models for first-years. Perhaps he ought to take some money from the vault his parents had left him and buy a new Nimbus 2001, but Malfoy would definitely mock him for being a copycat.

"I’ve had nothing but rotten luck since this term started... No, even before it started," Harry complained. "Back at home, some house-elf appeared out of nowhere and threatened me into staying away from school, and then I had to endure your terrible driving..."

"You can’t blame me for that!"

Ron hurriedly changed the subject before a pointless argument could begin. "Maybe the house-elf did all of it. He threatened you not to go to school, and then we really couldn’t get onto the platform. Didn’t you also say he’d been intercepting all the letters I sent you?"

"Right. I should’ve given you my telephone number." Harry regretted it for a moment, his attention somehow wandering to an odd place.

"What’s a telephone?" Ron, a pure-blood wizard, had never heard of one.

"A Muggle device for communication. You dial a number and can talk directly to someone far away." Hermione, who had been silent behind them, quickened her pace until she was walking alongside the boys.

"That’s incredibly convenient. Why doesn’t Hogwarts have them? That’s much better than owls... I mean, in some ways it’s better than owls." The first half of Ron’s sentence seemed to have faintly offended Harry, who actually owned an owl.

"Do you really not know? Hogwarts is protected by magic. Some Muggle devices don’t work here." Hermione, who was genuinely Muggle-born, gave pure-blood Ron a sideways look.

Her sideways glance happened to fall on the distant edge of the Forbidden Forest, where Professor McGonagall was leading Yimi by the hand while Hagrid followed behind carrying a shovel. Hermione had no idea what they were doing.

"Look, it’s that child. What happened to her? She looks like she’s been crying." Hermione pointed in that direction.

"Spare some of that sympathy for me first. Come up with an idea, Miss Know-It-All. Is there any chance this broom can be repaired?" Harry’s worries left him little room to concern himself with anything else. More accurately, he did not particularly want Professor McGonagall to see that he had accidentally broken the gift she gave him.

"Maybe we should go take a look. She really does look upset." Ron was genuinely a little worried.

"Fine. That piece of rebar has completely won you over. Hermione already told you it’s suspicious." Harry said that, but he did not carry his irritation through to the end. His feet honestly started walking in that direction.

...

"You need to put it down now, dear." McGonagall looked pityingly at the poor little thing before her.

Hagrid had already dug the hole, but Yimi simply refused to put Xiaobai into it.

Yimi still did not want to let go. She clearly possessed the ability to make Xiaobai wake up again, and the old geezer had not appeared to voice any objection this time. Surely just once in a while...

But she had spent a precious System gacha draw in hope of finding a solution, only for the item she received to seem as though it was hinting that she should hurry up and replace Xiaobai.

She always put Xiaobai back into its nest—the charging dock—to rest at regular intervals. She also regularly fed it things, then cleaned up the droppings it produced, which looked exactly the same as what it had eaten. Could it be that the food she had secretly fed Xiaobai in the previous world—the food from the Queen—had poisoned it to death?

The kitty was an incompetent owner.

This was the only creature so far that could accompany her as she traveled between worlds—even if it was not actually a creature.

"Professor McGonagall." Harry, who had run over, steeled himself and greeted her.

"Harry... Oh, Merlin’s beard! What happened to your broom?" McGonagall had no choice but to turn her attention to him.

"It had a little accident..."

"Harry was attacked by an out-of-control Bludger!" Ron supplied the truth for him.

McGonagall looked distressed. "There isn’t much time left before the first match."

She was Head of Gryffindor House. Of course she would be anxious about that.

"Professor, what are you doing?" Hermione hurriedly changed the subject before Harry’s mood could get any worse.

"Little Yimi’s pet died. We were going to bury it in the Forbidden Forest," Hagrid answered. He could sympathize with how Yimi felt about losing a beloved pet.

"Pet?" Harry finally found an excuse to escape Professor McGonagall’s gaze and walked up to Yimi. "Can I take a look at it?"

He had noticed its unmistakably plastic texture.

"Mm." Yimi handed Xiaobai to him.

Harry turned it over a couple of times.

He had no idea what the thing was, but he could at least recognize the little wheels and screw holes underneath it.

"I’m afraid this isn’t really a pet... I mean, I think it may be a Muggle device." Harry looked at the pitiful little girl and decided there was no need to shatter her fantasy.

"Muggle device?" Yimi did not even properly understand the word Muggle.

"I mean, Hogwarts has magic on it. This thing isn’t dead. It just can’t move while it’s inside Hogwarts." Harry tried his best to explain using Hermione’s earlier words without destroying Yimi’s fantasy.

"Really?" Yimi’s eyes finally lit up.

"I think so... No. That’s exactly what it is." Harry nodded. Perhaps Professor McGonagall would overlook him breaking his broom at such a crucial time if he cheered up her granddaughter, wouldn’t she?

He watched Yimi happily hug the unidentified machine and bounce once in place.

Then the little girl turned her eyes toward Harry’s broom. "Your broom is broken? Here, this is for you."

Under everyone’s bewildered gaze, she took out another heavy object—the item she had drawn from the gacha.

[A Certain Video Blogger’s Steel-Wire Broom]