Chapter 194: Hello, Tom
Melvin looked at the turbid liquid in the cup. As he withdrew his hands and stopped channeling magic power, the gray-tin-colored surface rapidly darkened, like oxidized blackened metal. Amid the complex rotten stench was a faint sweet fishy smell. He knew without tasting it that it was highly poisonous.
He stared at the unidentified liquid in the golden goblet, sorting through his thoughts.
The Hufflepuff golden goblet recognizes pure and bright magic power and can transform water into a certain milky-white liquid with healing properties. But inside, besides Lady Hufflepuff’s magic power, there lurks Voldemort’s soul fragment and ominous magic power.
The transformed liquid is contaminated by foreign magic power. It is uncertain whether it is the will of Voldemort’s remnant soul or damage caused during the initial creation of the horcrux, making the golden goblet unable to function normally.
“Hiss…” Yurm coiled on the table and poked its head out to comfort him.
“It’s okay, at least we found the correct way to use the golden goblet.” Melvin casually stroked the young snake’s smooth scales. “But we need to figure out how to remove the contaminants inside first.”
While observing carefully and waiting silently, the golden goblet and liquid showed no further changes. It seemed Voldemort had no intention of appearing proactively.
Melvin raised his hand and tapped on the golden goblet, pouring out spells and magic power.
【Appear quickly】
【Original form manifest】
Ripples appeared on the liquid’s surface, with fine bubbles rising from the bottom. The fishy stench grew stronger, but that was it—no black mist with scarlet eyes rose up, no ferocious terrifying face emerged on the outer wall, and the other parts of the golden goblet showed no changes.
Melvin sat back in the chair, frowning in thought.
It had been several days since retrieving the golden goblet from Gringotts underground vault and returning to Hogwarts. If the Voldemort remnant soul attached to the golden goblet could truly sense the outside environment, even if cautious, it should not be able to hold back by now and would definitely try to contact him, attempting to manipulate him through inducement or deception to resurrect or cause trouble.
But Voldemort had not shown himself until now. It should not be that he did not want to, but that he could not.
The method of communication was probably wrong, Melvin thought.
He found a glass bottle, poured out the unidentified highly poisonous liquid from the golden goblet, opened the window to whip up a whirlwind to clear the fishy stench from the room, cleaned the golden goblet thoroughly, held it in his hands, and pondered how to communicate with the golden goblet.
“Hey? Anyone there? Can you hear me? This is Hogwarts.”
Melvin spoke to the bottom of the cup, then pressed his ear against it, trying to hear some magical response from the conch-like vessel.
“…”
Melvin received no reply. A faint echo returned from the bottom of the cup, sounding slightly muffled after transmission through the metal vibrations—only his own echo, no eerie whispers that could drive one mad.
After a moment’s thought, Melvin tore off several sheets of parchment, shredded them into pieces and threw them into the golden goblet, then lit them, staring intently at the rising mist with full anticipation.
Both the centaur tribe and African wizards have similar divination methods, burning different spices and firewood to divine prophecies through smoke shapes and spark trajectories. Egyptian priests also throw spices into bonfires, said to illuminate souls lingering in the human world through the smoke.
Melvin thought this was probably a legitimate divination method. The divination classroom in the north tower was perpetually filled with spice smoke, which he found pungent and choking several times passing by.
Only a few wisps of gray smoke rose, with a faint smoky smell and some bizarre shapes, but notably absent was his long-lost pen friend.
Yurm tilted its head and watched from the side. Over the next half hour, it watched Melvin pour ink, juice, champagne, and milk into the golden goblet—even trying veritaserum—but no noseless face ever reflected on the liquid’s surface.
Melvin slumped in the chair with a sigh. “It can’t be human blood, can it?”
…
Monday morning.
Today’s classes were not too packed. Dumbledore rarely attended breakfast, sitting at the high table with the other professors, discussing recent interesting anecdotes at the school.
Only Professor McGonagall did not join in, quietly listening to them chat while spreading jam on a bread slice, biting into it expressionlessly, chewing and swallowing. Unable to hold back, she turned to the white-bearded headmaster and complained:
“Albus, can you discuss any extra school expenses with me first in the future?”
Dumbledore was telling a cold joke. Hearing the deputy headmaster’s complaint, he paused, thought for a moment, and asked, “You mean the matter of paying the house-elves?”
“I’m not against paying salaries to house-elves, but you should have notified me first. Otherwise, the financial reports and accounts won’t match up. By the end of the school year, the board of governors wizards will nitpick again.”
“Very sorry, Minerva…”
Dumbledore apologized repeatedly. The headmaster of Hogwarts showed no temper at all.
Melvin stayed silent. Upon hearing it was trouble he caused, he turned sideways away from her, not wanting to catch the deputy headmaster’s ire.
Professor Sprout next to him happened to be complaining too, and Melvin ran right into it.
“Last time you went to the Ravenclaw common room, they wouldn’t let you in, and you left a philosophy puzzle. When you went to the Hufflepuff common room, the children invited you for lunch and took you to tour the orchard, but after the tour, you left without leaving anything.”
Professor Flitwick showed a look of enjoying the show.
Melvin could not refute and could only promise it would happen next time, his tone and expression somewhat similar to the headmaster’s.
After chatting and laughing through breakfast, the professors left for their classrooms. Melvin seized the chance to call out to Snape, pulling a glass bottle from his pocket and showing it to him:
“Professor Snape, I got a potion from outside over the weekend. I’m not sure what its effects are—quite mysterious. I’d like to ask you to test it for me.”
Snape stared at the glass bottle. Inside was a gray-black unidentified liquid. His brows furrowed slightly. Generally, one does not judge a potion’s nature by color, but this one gave a bad first impression—clearly a highly poisonous malignant potion.
Moreover, it was a poison he had never seen before. He was certain there was no similar potion recorded in books.
“If it’s inconvenient, I’ll have to go to the hospital wing and ask Madam Pomfrey for help.”
“…”
Snape took the glass bottle, looked up at Melvin with a cold, expressionless face. “The testing timeline is uncertain. I’ll tell you if there are results.”
Melvin watched his back as he walked away, shaking his head. Before he could sigh, he heard the old headmaster’s voice from beside him.
“Severus is a dedicated potions professor.”
“I think so too.” Melvin was not surprised and walked upstairs with him.
“I actually wanted to ask him for some wolfsbane potion, but Severus doesn’t like people mentioning wolfsbane potion in front of him. It reminds him of your hypothesis about narcissus.”
Dumbledore sighed a little. “I just wanted some sleep-aid potion. You know, it’s easy to have insomnia at my age. Last night I forgot to get hot chocolate from the kitchen and couldn’t sleep at one a.m., so I got up to look through the pensieve and relive old memories.”
“Pensieve… developing potion…” Melvin’s mind stirred slightly.
…
Melvin entered the office, set down the textbook, and casually summoned the golden goblet from the shelf.
Yurm was lazily coiled inside, curled in loops.
He picked up the young snake and tossed it onto the sofa, wiped the golden goblet clean with a tissue. Inspired by Dumbledore, he decided to try developing potion.
Not the developing potion for magical moving pictures, but the potion poured into the projection mirror—Wright’s potion imitating the pensieve’s clouds, capable of visualizing and playing memories.
For a soul fragment containing memories, what could be more suitable than developing potion.
“Tom, my dear pen friend, we can finally meet.” Melvin unscrewed the glass bottle stopper and poured in the silver mist-like potion.
Light clouds overflowed, like a dry ice stage effect. Amid the swirling silver-white vapor, a young man’s handsome face emerged—
Dark hair, pale skin, and a pair of strikingly light-colored eyes.
By timeline, Voldemort obtained the Hufflepuff golden goblet shortly after graduation, lurking as a shop assistant at Borgin and Burkes, under 20 years old. His face had not yet been eroded by dark magic, but signs were already showing—eyes slightly reddened with vertical pupils, and the drifting silver mist mixed with some black.
This was the wizard whose name could not be mentioned.
“Hello, Tom.”
Melvin nodded in greeting to him.
