After Slughorn finished speaking, he pushed Hoffa's shoulder and pushed him out of the room without waiting for Hoffa's reply.
After walking out of the office door. Hoffa could not help but look back at the Potions professor's door.
From his attitude, the Potions professor did not seem to approve of Fatir. But to raise it to the level of exterminating humans, that was too much. And … Hoffa felt that some of Fatir's words made sense.
Holding the bottle of Mermaid Potion, Hoffa returned to the shore of the black lake.
There were nearly a hundred young adepts in swimsuits and swimming trunks lying on the ground.
They were dripping wet, some were coughing water, some were hugging their arms and shivering, and some had already started a fire and were warming themselves by the bonfire.
As he watched, a giant octopus tentacle reached out from the lake and threw a soft girl onto the grass by the shore.
Her face was pale and she was shivering, with a few water plants stuck in her mouth. As soon as she landed, she vomited a large amount of lake water.
Without a doubt, these were the students who did not pass Professor Dracath's test.
Hoffa was worried. He looked at the potion in his hand and thought to himself that he did not know how to swim at all. If this potion was not as good as he imagined, then he would have to return to school to continue his mechanical work of making potions and herbs.
He pulled out the cork.
A pungent smell came out of the bottle, smelling like a fish corpse that had been rotting for three days.
Hoffa pinched his nose suspiciously and took a sip of the liquid in the bottle.
He looked at his body, but it did not seem to have changed.
He blinked and realized that something was wrong. His eyelids went from being closed up and down to being opened left and right.
He walked to the lake and looked down.
What he saw almost gave him a fright. His eyes had become at least three times bigger, and there were faint golden lines intertwined around a black vertical pupil. He did not look human at all.
He wanted to close his eyes, but found that he could not. He could only control a thin membrane to rub back and forth on his eyelids.
Changes gradually appeared on Hoffa's body. The hair on his head tangled together, forming soft grey tentacles. A thin webbed palm appeared between his fingers, and a wide membrane appeared under his ribs.
Suddenly, a gaping hole appeared under his neck. He felt suffocated, and his vision quickly blurred.
He could no longer see properly, out of a completely irresistible instinct. With a leap, he jumped into the black lake.
At this moment, he truly felt what it meant to be like a fish in water. Unlike the despair and fear he felt when he entered the water last year, he now felt as warm as amniotic fluid, as if he had returned to the most primitive state of the placenta.
The dissolved oxygen in the water passed through the walls of the capillaries in the gill filaments and exchanged gas with his blood, allowing him to breathe very smoothly.
His eyes, which were unusually blurry on land, could now clearly distinguish any object within a hundred meters of him.
Blue lines appeared on his back and chest, and his skin began to secrete some unknown substance, making him extremely sensitive to his surroundings.
A small yellow croaker slowly swam past Hoffa's eyes. The pupils in Hoffa's eyes moved, but his body remained motionless like a rock.
At this moment, the instinct in his blood made him eager to try. He opened his mouth full of sharp teeth, and his mouth opened to his cheekbones, and swallowed the small fish into his throat.
Then, reason overcame instinct.
No, I'm a human, not a fish!
He opened his mouth again and spat out the fish.
The small yellow croaker was startled and quickly fled from Hoffa's side.
He turned his head and looked ahead. He stomped on the ground and shot out like an arrow, sticking close to the fine white sand on the ground. His spine swayed left and right, and in a flash, he had swum a hundred meters away.
This feeling was amazing!
Hoffa exerted more force.
His speed increased again.
The bubbles and water were left far behind. The purple tentacles on the reef at the bottom of the lake were startled and quickly retracted into the conch shell.
Hoffa was like a torpedo, effortlessly catching up with the large crowd in front of him.
Because his speed was so fast, he even had the leisure to observe the various sceneries around him.
The sunlight shone all the way to the bottom of the lake, thirty feet below the surface. The light was refracted and deformed like a prism. The reefs, sprouts, shells, corals, and some unknown magical creatures at the bottom of the lake changed slightly under the refraction of the light, showing a colorful light. The various combinations of colors intertwined, forming a beautiful picture of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
A hundred meters away, the lake water was dark blue. Hoffa's eyes penetrated the gray and treacherous lake water and looked at the dark shadow in the distance. The lake water there was dark and hazy, and the vague outline of a huge octopus was waving its tentacles in the black lake.
Above him, countless students were swimming with difficulty. They could not reach the depth Hoffa was at. The water pressure was too great.
Seeing the crowd swimming with all kinds of magic, Hoffa suddenly had an idea. He stomped on the ground and rose, stopping less than a meter away from the surface of the water. There happened to be a girl swimming with the company of fish above.
He lay face up, comfortably lying in the water, leisurely admiring the youthful and vigorous bodies in the water.
He was comfortable, but a certain girl who was struggling to swim lowered her head. Seeing the extremely strange mermaid face below her, she was scared out of her wits.
"Ah!!!"
This scream instantly triggered a chain reaction. The students crossing the lake noticed something strange. They all looked down.
The whole black lake was in an uproar.
The school of fish jumped up in fright, and all kinds of spells floated around. The spells entered the water and turned into boiling water columns.
Hoffa deftly dodged all kinds of spells. He touched his face, couldn't help but laugh, and pushed the extremely frightened girl out of the water. Then he disappeared at the bottom of the lake in the blink of an eye and continued his journey of deep diving.
After leaving the frightened crowd, he came to the center of the black lake. Here, the scenery in the black lake began to change. It began to turn black, and the lake became deeper and deeper.
Here, Hoffa saw some relics of the shipwrecked ship. There were iron kitchen utensils, anchors, chain rings on pulleys, mortar cannons, fragments of astronomical instruments, and a section of railing at the stern of the ship. Dark green lake plants grew on them.
Not only that, but among the towering algae at the bottom of the lake like a forest, Hoffa also saw some rusty and deformed cages. They were floating among the algae, and there were some bones that had long decayed inside.
Some of the bones had their limbs chained up. They seemed to be human.
This scene made him feel ominous.
At this moment, he was already close to the huge octopus in the black lake. It waved its tentacles like a dense forest at the bottom of the lake.
At this moment, a student in the distance, probably exhausted and cramped, sank straight to the bottom of the lake. Immediately, a long tentacle swept past Hoffa's face.
Although there was not much sound, he still saw the dense suction cups and barbs on the tentacle.
How did this scene make him feel? Panicked, he nimbly stepped aside and quickly twisted his body to swim forward. But the huge octopus did not look at Hoffa. Its eyes were closed, and countless tentacles floated in the water.
If it sensed that a student was drowning, the tentacles would extend out, roll up the student, and push him back to the shore.
As he swam directly above it, Hoffa saw that the majestic creature was bottomless, with layers of sharp mouthparts. It was like a black hole. Even in the mermaid form, the mouthparts made Hoffa panic.
This creature had an almost endless surge of magic. It should not be here. It should live in the sea. Perhaps the black lake was just a pond to it.
After passing through the forest of octopus tentacles, Hoffa's speed gradually increased. He caught up with one student after another. Finally, like a torpedo, he flashed through the bottom of the lake, leaving a series of bubbles.
Half an hour later, he swam more than fifty kilometers and reached the other end of the black lake. At this time, the effect of the magic potion on his body gradually disappeared.
The shore of the lake was close at hand. He climbed onto the grass wet, and his body gradually disappeared due to the mutation of the magic potion.
Here, a few senior students were panting as they rested on the grass. A few students were very professional as they exercised their muscles and adjusted their state. They were the best of the best among this batch of Hogwarts students.
Miranda and Aglaia were on the grass tidying up their hair, talking casually. When they saw Hoffa come out of the water, they were startled.
At this moment, Hoffa had not fully recovered his human form, and his body surface carried a lot of characteristics of cartilaginous fish.
After a moment of shock, Miranda asked, "Is that your new transformation?"
"No." Aglaia glanced at Hoffa, "Mermaid Potion."
"Oh." Miranda immediately showed a smile, "What is the Mermaid Potion? Tell me."
Aglaia reflexively wanted to give a long speech to show off her rich knowledge of magic potions. But when she saw Hoffa looking at her, she forcibly suppressed her desire to speak. She turned to look at the lake.
Miranda made a face at Hoffa and shook her head helplessly.
At this moment, the changes of the potion on Hoffa's body had almost disappeared. His eyes had returned to normal, and the surrounding scenery gradually became clear.
This side of the lake was very, very far away from Hogwarts. He could barely see the castle, but here, he could see huge boulders. There were also the endless Scottish mountains.
Hoffa often looked at this place when he was in the Ravenclaw common room, but it was his first time actually coming here.
On the grass not far from the lake, there were two tables covered with large canvas. The surface of the tables was slightly protruding, and there was no telling what was under it.
On the grass next to the tables, the young Professor Fatir Dracath was leaning on a boulder and smoking. He was not chatting with his daughter, nor with the students who had successfully crossed the lake.
He looked at the sky, and his whole person showed an extremely negative and empty state, as if his spirit had been swallowed by something.
After about thirty minutes, another group of wizards who had successfully crossed the lake climbed out of the black lake, panting. There were about ten of them, and as soon as they reached the shore, they collapsed to the ground, their chests heaving up and down violently.
At this time, Professor Dracath stood up, walked through the crowd, and came to the shore of the lake. He looked straight at the lake.
The sky gradually darkened, and no one came to the lake.
The lake crossing ceremony had eliminated 90% of the participants, leaving less than 10% of the participants.
Looking at the shore of the lake, Dracath sighed deeply. He put out his cigarette and rubbed his temples with a pained expression. Finally, he turned around and clapped his hands.
At this moment, the moonlight had just risen, and the lines of Professor Dracath's face seemed to soften under the moonlight. Hoffa realized that his face was surprisingly similar to Aglaia's. Except for the different color of his eyes, he almost looked like his daughter's twin brother.
"Tired?" His voice was hoarse but gentle.
The crowd did not answer. They just stared at him, wondering what kind of lesson he would give them.
"You're all very good. You must've found some unusual pleasure in crossing the lake just now. In every lesson from now on, you will learn how to deal with the chaos and the unknown. "
He waved his wand, and spots of light danced around, illuminating the grass by the lake. Everyone's shadows could be seen on the ground, like the shadows of the old elders. A rustling sound came from the wooden table behind him, and the magic curtain slowly opened.
Following the student's exclamation, Hoffa's pupils shrank. That's right, he saw about ten young Fire Dragons curled up on a row of wooden tables, smoke coming out of their noses and mouths.
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