Chapter 68 Are You the Infamous Little Prince of Azkaban?

After the Sorting Ceremony, Headmaster Dippet did not deliver any long-winded speech.

Instead, he stood up directly and said in a clear voice, "Welcome! Let the feast begin!"

Such a crisp and decisive speech earned him thunderous applause from everyone.

The welcome banquet looked extremely sumptuous.

However, after tasting the food, Leander still felt somewhat disappointed.

The craftsmanship of the Hogwarts house-elves was actually quite decent, but unfortunately, their menu left a bit to be desired...

Chatting while eating, everyone was soon well-fed and satisfied.

Headmaster Dippet was as concise as ever.

As soon as the tableware on the long tables magically gleamed like new again, he crisply announced, "Dismissed! Go back and rest! Follow your respective prefects and do not get lost."

Leander and a dazed Tom followed the line of Slytherin students forward.

Soon, they realized they were heading down toward the dungeons of the castle.

A few minutes later, the first-year students followed the prefect to a stone wall carved with snake-shaped reliefs.

"Pure-blood!" the male prefect said as he approached the stone wall.

The two snake-shaped reliefs on the stone wall immediately came to life.

As the snake sculptures slithered aside, the stone wall split apart abruptly in both directions, revealing a doorway...

"Everyone remember, the password for this week is 'Pure-blood'. Don't forget it. If you forget, you won't be able to get in."

Pure-blood? Hearing this password, Leander couldn't help but think it was truly fitting for Slytherin.

People in Slytherin always possessed a special obsession with power and supremacy.

Therefore, after entering the common room, the arrogant male prefect delivered a lecture to the first-years that lasted for a full half-hour...

Only when many of the new students were so exhausted they were nearly falling asleep on their feet did he finally wave his hand in satisfaction, telling the first-years to go find their rooms and rest. Then, he leisurely strolled off toward his own dormitory.

"Tch... That guy's speech was longer than the headmaster's, and it was completely devoid of any substance," Annie said impatiently.

She was extremely displeased that the prefect had delayed her bedtime.

"Alright, we should go find our rooms too. See you tomorrow..."

After saying goodnight to one another, the group parted ways.

Annie walked toward the direction of the girls' dormitories, while Leander and the others headed toward the boys' dormitories.

Soon, Leander found his room.

The dormitory was a hexagonal room with four beds placed against the walls, each accompanied by a wardrobe and a bedside table.

In the middle of the room stood a large round table, seemingly just large enough to provide space for four people to do their homework at the same time.

Their luggage had already been neatly placed at the foot of their respective beds.

Very fortunately, Leander and Tom had been assigned to the same dormitory.

Aside from Leander and Tom, their other two roommates were Alphard Black and a boy named Henry Avery.

As soon as Alphard found his bed, he collapsed straight onto it without even managing to take off his coat, instantly falling into a deep sleep.

For some reason, he looked exceptionally exhausted.

"Ha! You must be the infamous little prince of Azkaban! I never expected to share a dorm with you! My name is Henry Avery." Seeing Tom, Henry Avery reached out his right hand with great enthusiasm.

Hearing the moniker "little prince of Azkaban," Tom gave Henry a murderous glare and showed zero intention of shaking his hand.

Leander reached out and shook hands with Henry, rescuing him from the awkward situation.

"I am this little prince of Azkaban's friend, my name is Leander. Oh, by the way, his name is..."

Henry laughed and said, "I know, his name is Tom Riddle! By now, there can hardly be any students or ghosts in the school who don't know his name."

Hearing the conversation between Henry and Tom, Tom's face turned green.

The social death experience that he had managed to forget a little bit was now brought back in full vividness by these two jerks!

"I'm going to sleep!" Tom turned around and threw himself onto his bed, then pulled the duvet over his entire head, burying himself completely.

Leander and Henry silently watched as Tom curled up into a tight ball beneath the blanket...

"Well, I suppose I can understand the feeling... Gotta say, it doesn't feel great, um... extremely awkward." Henry shrugged. "Back then I was only eight years old, and my mom caught me peeking at my sister taking a bath..."

Leander looked at Henry in shock. There were truly experts everywhere!

...

Deep into the night.

However, because the Slytherin dormitory was situated right at the bottom of the Black Lake, Leander could only see swimming fish through the window rather than the moonlight in the sky.

Even so, the scenery at the bottom of the Black Lake possessed a unique charm of its own.

After admiring the underwater view for a while longer, Leander pulled over his quilt and lay down.

Having ridden the train all day, he also felt rather tired.

Moreover, since he was not yet very familiar with the layout of Hogwarts Castle, he had no intention of embarking on a midnight excursion tonight to hunt for the senior student's notebook.

Before entering the dream realm to visit his senior, Leander glanced at the system interface, planning to check on routine whether any good items had refreshed tonight.

"Ding! Detected that the host has accumulated a certain level of merit points. System upgrade function triggered. The host may now upgrade the system at any time."

"Ding! System upgrading requires twenty thousand merit points. Upon completion, the number of store items will increase to four, and the probability of refreshing high-quality items will be greatly enhanced."

Leander instantly perked up.

A system upgrade! The store, which normally only refreshed two items a day, would now refresh four items after the upgrade.

Most crucially, the probability of high-quality items appearing would be dramatically increased!

This was something Leander simply could not refuse!

One had to know, he had endured the rubbish materials in the store for quite a long time!

However, the requirement of twenty thousand merit points was indeed a bit too steep.

Aside from the five thousand merit points rewarded from Nagini, Leander had only managed to scrape together a few odds and ends here and there.

He probably only had around six thousand merit points, which was nowhere near enough for the upgrade.

Still, Leander was not in a hurry.

After all, he had already infiltrated the stronghold of the future Death Eaters.

If he wanted to farm merit points, there would be plenty of opportunities ahead!

Leander turned over happily in bed, and without even bothering to look at the newly refreshed items, he went off to continue his studies with his senior...

...

Early the next morning, Leander was the first to wake up, and he cheerfully roused Tom and the others.

After all, according to the class schedule distributed last night, there were two periods of Transfiguration classes this morning.

Once the four of them had tidied themselves up, they prepared to head to the Great Hall together for breakfast.

In the common room, they bumped into Annie, who had also just gotten up not long ago.

"Good morning, shall we walk together?" Annie said to Leander.

"Sure," Leander replied with a smile.

By now, Annie's intentions were quite obvious; her target seemed to be him rather than Tom.

This realization prompted Leander to raise his guard once again in secret.

After all, Leander had no way of knowing whether she had been given orders to do something to him, or perhaps to probe into some secrets regarding him.

The morning Transfiguration class turned out to be somewhat dry and tedious.

Since it was the first Transfiguration lesson for the new students, the young Professor McGonagall spent most of the time explaining the basic theories of Transfiguration.

Perhaps because she had not long been a professor and lacked sufficient experience, she wasn't quite precise in managing her classroom time.

Therefore, by the time the two periods of Transfiguration ended, she still hadn't finished explaining all the key points she had planned to cover.

Originally, she had intended to leave some time for everyone to practice according to the theory, but she had no choice but to abandon that idea.

Because of this unexpected situation, the Transfiguration homework changed from practicing spells to submitting an essay...

After class, Tom intended to head straight to the library after lunch to finish his Transfiguration essay.

Since there were no classes scheduled for that afternoon, it was an optimal study time for Tom!

As for Henry and Alphard, both had matters to attend to in the afternoon and had no intention of going to the library.

"Are you going?" Tom asked Leander.

Leander replied, "I won't be going. I want to walk around the castle and get familiar with it. Those moving staircases are quite troublesome, and I need to spend some time figuring out their patterns."

He intended to master the routes of Hogwarts during the day so that when he went out for night excursions later, he wouldn't be completely in the dark.

After all, he didn't possess anything like the Marauder's Map—or even a static map of Hogwarts, for that matter.

True to form, Annie actively proposed joining Leander.

Clearly, she really had her sights set on him.

Leander didn't mind this too much; since he was only scouting locations during the day anyway, he wasn't afraid of having her tag along.

Tom gave Annie a deep look, then glanced at Leander, noticing that he seemed entirely confident, before turning around and walking away briskly.

Following that, the three parties parted ways in the corridor.

...

Tom walked briskly toward the library, his eyes full of anticipation.

He had heard that the library at Hogwarts was the largest library in the entire European magical world!

No one, absolutely no one, was going to stop him from studying—not even Leander!

The events of the previous night had indeed made Tom famous.

As he walked down the corridors, passing students—and even ghosts—pointed and whispered at him.

Who could blame them when he was the first student in Hogwarts history to make the Sorting Hat joke about him?

However, along the way, Tom turned a deaf ear to all the pointing and gossiping, his gaze reflecting only a burning thirst for knowledge.

Just as he stepped into a corridor not far from the library, however...

"Well, well! If it isn't the infamous little prince of Azkaban! Where is your good friend?"

A taunting voice came from ahead.

Tom stopped dead in his tracks, his face turning ashen as he glared at the seven or eight Slytherin students blocking his path.

Leading them was none other than Abraxas Malfoy.

After being frightened off by Leander the day before, they had thought more and more about it, and something felt deeply wrong.

Eventually, seeing Leander and Tom chatting and laughing at the Slytherin table, they realized that the fellow who had strongly persuaded them to go cause trouble for Leander was actually in cahoots with him all along!

Abraxas felt as though he had been played like a toy in some game between them...

Furious, Abraxas had decided he needed to salvage his dignity.

Having received a tip from a classmate that Tom and Leander were heading to the library, Abraxas had waited for quite a while along the route to intercept them.

Out of lingering wariness toward Leander, he had even specially invited several upper-year students to help!

Tom calmly drew his wand and tossed his schoolbag aside.

"I started this mess, and there's no need to drag anyone else into it. Just deal with me!"