Tom led Hermione through the corridor in front and walked into the real secret room. At this time, the fire that had been lit had long been extinguished, but there was still a faint fragrance left in the secret room. Tom noticed that the snake-shaped reliefs on the pillars were again
It became shiny and shiny, and it seemed that the oil here was being replenished automatically.
"Is this the basilisk?" Looking at the basilisk's body, Hermione didn't feel afraid, but rather curious. She squatted down and carefully looked at the basilisk's green scales and its thin, long fangs like daggers.
.
"I didn't expect there to be such a creature underground in Hogwarts. What does it usually eat?"
"You'll find out when you come here." Tom led Hermione into the tunnel in the mouth of the Slytherin stone sculpture.
"Hurry up!" Tom transformed into a phoenix again and led Hermione to fly outside the tunnel.
"These transformations of yours are quite practical." After landing on the ground, Hermione let go of the phoenix's claws and said with some envy. The journey just now would have taken two to three hours on foot.
But after turning into a phoenix, even if I brought one person with me, it only took less than ten minutes to fly there.
She looked around, the tip of her nose twitched twice, and she breathed in some fresh and moist mountain air. She realized something very bad. "Are we leaving Hogwarts?" she said carefully.
judge.
After receiving a positive answer, Hermione panicked like a frightened deer: "How can we leave Hogwarts? Oh my God, this is definitely against school rules - starting from the time we stepped into the Chamber of Secrets.
, we may have violated hundreds of school rules, let’s go back quickly——”
"What are you worried about? Only when you are discovered is it considered a violation of school rules." Seeing that Hermione was about to be outraged by what he said, Tom used his trump card, "If we go back now, Filch and the others will be patrolling, so they will be caught instead.
.We’re all here, why don’t we just take a rest outside?”
Hermione calmed down a little. Although she was extremely reluctant, she still realized that it was not a good time to go back at this time. Tom was right, even if she wanted to go back, she would have to wait until Filch and the professors on night watch had rested in the middle of the night.
Just fine.
So she and Tom found a rock and sat down together.
Being blown by the cool breeze in the mountains, Hermione seemed to be relieved: thinking about it carefully, this was actually quite good. At least it was a wonderful adventure and a new experience for her.
However, the breeze in the mountains is a bit cold. It is already autumn in the Scottish Highlands in September, and it is still a bit cool at night.
Thinking that she might have to stay here for a few more hours, Hermione moved closer to Tom.
"What is that?" She was attracted by a flash of light nearby. She got closer and saw that the source of the flash was actually a hair crown wrapped with a necklace.
She stretched out her hand, but stopped again when she thought of the stories in the book that were related to curses.
But Tom was one step ahead of her, picked up the hair crown and handed it to her hand. The moment the necklace on the hair crown came into contact with the two of them, a white light enveloped them, and after the white light passed, both of them disappeared.
…
When Hermione came back to her senses from the dazzling white light, she found that she was in a small wooden cabin. In Hermione's opinion, the furniture around her was a bit crude, or shabby, and the environment in the wooden cabin was also poor.
How good.
Hermione's first reaction was: Could that necklace just be the legendary portkey?
She had read in books that some common ways for wizards to travel, including portkeys, magical items that can travel through space. Hermione thought about it for a moment, and realized that the current situation should involve encountering portkeys. She felt that the top priority was
Find Tom.
"It stands to reason that after the portkey is transmitted, all users should be in the same position." Hermione was a little confused, but she suppressed the uneasiness in her heart and the weird and awkward feeling deep in her heart, and held it with one hand.
With the wand, the other hand pushed open the door.
Outside is a medieval-style town, with many houses arranged together, with red tiles on the roofs, and walls that are either gray bricks or a combination of wood and white mud walls.
Hermione walked down the stairs outside the house and came to a path paved with compacted dirt.
Although such a small town is not common, it is not "the only one in a thousand miles". There are many similar small towns in Europe, which still retain the medieval style - of course, they are much cleaner.
There were a few old hens on the roadside cooing and eating from the grass beside the fence. They were not afraid when people came over and were still pacing there leisurely.
Hermione took a few steps and finally noticed something strange: She felt like she had gotten taller? She gestured twice, and it seemed like she had gotten bigger too.
Hermione quickly determined that she had grown older. Now, her body shape was more like a girl of seventeen or eighteen years old. This made her nervous, and the fairy tales she had read when she was a child gradually came to mind.
At this time, she heard the church bells, so she subconsciously walked in the direction of the church.
Approaching the church, the number of people gradually increased. Hermione passed the crowd and quickly determined that the place she was in was definitely not the twentieth century Earth. The clothes of the people around her had a medieval style, and the items they used were not at all
Modern shadow.
She walked slowly, looking around at the small market around her. There was a small stone prison inside, and two people were locking a drunkard in. On the side of the street was a bakery selling bread, and the baker was holding his arms.
A drawer of freshly baked bread came over.
Hermione took a look at the bread. She felt that even the worst bakery in Britain made more exquisite bread than these. And these breads, even if they were freshly baked, did not have the aroma that a street bakery should have.
——This is for sure. The aroma of modern roadside bakeries comes from the large amounts of milk, butter, sugar and refined flour in the raw materials. How could a brown bread shop in a small town have such an aroma?
Ordinary bread in modern society could only be seen on the dining table of a marquis' house in the Middle Ages. Feeding pigeons with such bread in the square would have been considered an inhumane act hundreds of years ago.
Hermione walked through the dirty streets. There were several beautiful and docile horses and donkeys tied up on the streets. It was they who made the streets smell bad all the time.
People were coming and going, choosing fresh vegetables and freshly baked bread at the stalls. There was a seafood shop not far away, and flies were flying around on the oysters, shrimps, and fish.
"Good morning, Hermione." A voice came from behind Hermione.
Hermione immediately turned her head, and what she saw was a black-haired young man who was about eighteen years old. Although he was a little more mature, Hermione was still extremely sure: this young man was Tom.
Tom wore very simple clothes, a linen jacket and a pair of coarse cloth trousers. The jacket was tied into the trousers with a cloth belt, a straw hat on his head, and a pair of sandals on his feet.
In contrast, Hermione was dressed much more decently: a white dress with blue stripes seemingly printed on it, a blue apron-style skirt on the outside, a storage bag around her waist, and feet.
Wearing a pair of shoes that looked more like shoes. Compared to the clothes, what Hermione noticed first was that her hair was finally tied back and combed into a smooth braid.
"It seems that your financial situation is much better than mine." Tom joked.
"Do you still care about this?" Hermione choked him, "What's our situation now?"
"If my guess is correct, we may have been taken to a certain historical node by that necklace." Tom told Hermione his guess about the copy. In Tom's perception, the copy is more like what happened in history.
These afterimages are like the photos left by a running carriage. Tom and the others walked into the photos, and although they changed the content of the photos, they had no impact on the real carriage.
"Then how should we get out?" Hermione didn't want to live in this remnant of history for the rest of her life. There wasn't such exquisite food and interesting books here.
"Complete something, or a long-cherished wish."
"A long-cherished wish..." Hermione chewed on the word.
The two decided to take a walk around the neighborhood first.
The market in the town is not big. There are only a few old farmers selling vegetables and fruits picked from the vegetable garden. In addition, there is a bakery, a butcher shop, a fish stall, and shops selling groceries.
At the door of the church, a well-dressed man was reading an official document, and a group of people gathered to watch.
Tom and Hermione also listened for a while. It turned out that they were talking about the lord of this land, a viscount, who was going to fight at the summons of a certain big shot. Tom and Hermione listened for a while and then left.
——They are all talking meaningless nonsense.
Tom and Hermione were stopped by a young woman wearing a long black dress at the edge of town.
"Are you going to Scarborough Market?" The woman's brown hair was braided into many small braids and looked messy.
"Yes, we are going there." Tom nodded without waiting for Hermione to respond.
"Great, can you guys buy me a parsley, a sage, a rosemary and a thyme for Ben who lives on the beach south of Scarborough?"
"No problem." Tom agreed very readily.
Just when they were about to leave, the girl hesitated for a long time and then said: "If he has a reply, please send it back to me, please!"
Tom naturally agreed.
Tom and Hermione left town.
"Did you notice the tiara on her head? That hair crown is exactly the same as the one we picked up." After they walked away, Hermione couldn't wait to share her discovery with Tom.
"I saw it. She should be the key to us getting rid of this afterimage." Tom agreed.