Chapter 281 Fairness
Rachel Birao, who has now stepped down as the director of the Internship Management Office, has been a colleague of Milos for more than ten years. Her eldest son, Brar Birao, has been engaged in dragon research in Lmania after graduation. Although the preparations for the competition were carried out secretly at his workplace, anyone who heard the news knew what was going on. Brar wrote about this in a letter to his sister Aurora a long time ago.
The news passed through several hands, and Della got the first project information from Aryan before the champions for the tournament were selected - taking the golden egg from the most protective dragon.
Dragons are ferocious and dangerous, but Della is no longer intimidated by that level of danger. After all, she has faced Dumbledore and Voldemort in the past, two beings whose power and wisdom far exceed that of dragons.
"Amid protests from many countries, Hogwarts will allow foreign journalists to enter the school", "Public opinion crisis under media monopoly", "Country Y needs more channels for speaking out besides the Daily Prophet"......
At dinner time, Della, who had just returned from Hogsmeade, borrowed a red-covered notebook from Aurora Biraud that contained newspapers from all over the world from the International Newspaper Reading Club. She poked the broccoli in her salad while reading newspapers from countries M, F, and D.
Everything went as they planned. Under the resistance of people from various countries, the Ministry of Magic of Country Y, which had originally relied on the Daily Prophet to maintain its monopoly on public opinion, finally compromised for the sake of its international image. Some reporters from other newspapers were allowed to enter Hogwarts to follow up on the tournament.
The more media outlets report on the competition, the greater the prestige of the tournament.
Della flipped through the notebook and finally forked a piece of broccoli into her mouth. Draco sat on her left, his gray eyes glancing at her from time to time, still immersed in the sweetness of today's date.
Aurora, whose newspaper notebook was borrowed, sat opposite Della. Her fluffy brown hair kept shaking as she couldn't help but look up at Della. Although she nominally provided Della with information about the competition, Aurora had no idea whether this was a flattering move or whether she actually wanted anything. She just did it subconsciously.
Because she is indeed a Slytherin who wants to fight for power?
When Aurora's blushing face was so nervous that it couldn't be wiped away, she didn't understand why she was sorted into Slytherin. She thought so divergently, and then she denied it herself. She really had no interest in power at all.
On Della's right side sat Sadolin, who was rarely seen. Two weeks after Maggie left Hogwarts, she finally tentatively got off the ship, but she didn't dare to look for Demetrius. It's not that they didn't see each other at all. They always looked at each other from a distance, but neither of them took the first firm step towards each other.
"You've been learning Russian by yourself, right, Sadolin?" Della swallowed the broccoli she was chewing and turned the page. Without looking up, she suddenly spoke to Sadolin, who had been absent-mindedly scratching her steak, "How's your learning going? Will there be any problems with the exchange?"
"!" Sadolin was alert, and the knife and fork she had been using well finally left the poor steak that she had cut into pieces. She looked at Della and subconsciously lowered her voice, speaking in the slightly trembling voice she often used in front of Maggie, "Not bad."
"Really? I'm really glad to hear that self-study is a very good habit," Della praised gently, "I need you to do me a favor tonight."
"What to do?" Sadolin asked anxiously.
"It's a simple thing." Della lowered her eyes and casually mixed the salad twice. More green leafy vegetables with salad dressing that looked more attractive under the candlelight were turned on top. "You'll know in a moment. I don't have any other requirements. Just come back before midnight."
"What—" Sadolin opened her mouth, as if she wanted to ask something, but in the end she didn't say it. She fixed her eyes on the poor steak in front of her, but when she looked away, she looked at the person she had been thinking about day and night.
"Senior," after explaining this, Della looked at the news that Aurora had annotated early in the morning and called Aurora, "Can you lend me this notebook for a few days? I also want to read the news from the past few days."
"Yes, you can!" Aurora screamed nervously, and the pupils in her watery eyes trembled. Then she added carefully, "Yes, you need to put a copy of the Daily Prophet in it every day... Wizards in other places also need to read the newspaper of Country Y..."
The more she spoke, the lower her voice became, and she was relieved when Della nodded with a normal expression.
"What are you going to do again?" Draco, who had been keeping an eye on Della, moved towards her and asked in a low voice. He couldn't help being curious, but also had a desire to show off. He always wanted to appear useful in front of Della.
"Rather than saying what to do," Della's eyes briefly slid across Karkaroff and Madame Maxime, who both looked thoughtful tonight, on the wooden platform. She remembered what Aurora had written in the notebook, 'My brother said Charlie Weasley promised Hagrid to come see the dragon tonight.' Harry's invisibility cloak then emerged in her mind. "It's better to return things to square one."
Since four out of the five people already know the first project, the remaining one should not be left behind. Della can still give her some fairness, and it can also be a favor.
So when the night was deep, Sadolin, with her hood drawn up, carried the feather pen, ink and notebook that Della had bought at the Feather Shop in Wenrenju today, and knocked on the door of the small tower at Hogwarts where Kodostoritz lived temporarily.
The person who opened the door was Mikhail in silk pajamas. He looked at Sadolin in surprise, who seemed to have come quietly. His first reaction was that someone was trying to get him.
"I'm looking for Natasha," Sadolin pulled down her hood, letting her seaweed-like black hair fall loose. She looked at Dmitri, who was staring at her blankly as he walked over to Mikhail, as if he didn't expect them to meet so closely, and said softly, "I'm going to take her to a place."
"If you are worried," Sadolin passed by Mikhail in front of her and raised her hand holding stationery to Dmitri. The muscles on her face kept shaking, as if she was crying and laughing, and finally it was fixed on a smile with tears. She looked at Dmitri intently and took a slight breath while speaking, "You can - let someone accompany her and me - to go together."
Soon, the figures of the two adults and the small merged into the boundless night. After a while, when Harry was wearing an invisibility cloak and following Hagrid, who was courting Madame Maxime, and walking slowly around the edge of the Forbidden Forest, he happened to meet the three people walking back from the night.
Harry, who was originally thinking about meeting Sirius, immediately put aside his anxiety about not being able to keep the appointment and looked at this strange combination in surprise.
For more than half a month, Demetrius, the warrior of Kodostoris, had shown the same pro-Muggle traits in Hogwarts as in the newspapers. Harry could sometimes hear people talking about him. Although he had only greeted Demetrius, he was still familiar with this person.
The beautiful girl next to Dmitri also caused a sensation, because someone learned from the conversation of Durmstrang students that her last name was Slytherin. However, this so-called Miss Slytherin was very low-key, and the students of Durmstrang all had a secretive expression on their faces when mentioning this reclusive classmate, so no one knew her specific situation yet.
But the mismatch between the two is obvious, and people related to Slytherin and relatives...
Harry saw the two people's tightly clasped hands in the moonlight, and his eyes almost popped out of his head. Coming from the Muggle world, he had never discriminated against Muggles, but being accustomed to the worldview of wizarding society, he still found the closeness between the two people very strange.
Harry, who was concentrating on paying attention to Sadolin and Dmitri, ignored the little girl jumping between them. Natasha was holding a new sketchbook and was excited about her painting of five fire dragons.
The painting then came to Della's hands. She didn't ask too many questions. Even though she looked nervous, it couldn't cover up the excitement of Sadolin underneath. She just looked at the painting in her hand with satisfaction. The five fire dragons with different postures were drawn in the childish style of a child.
"Natasha's painting is really good," Della showed the painting to Sadolin, "Have you asked her how she learned it?"
"Her aunt taught her. Her aunt used to be a teacher." Then Sadolin added, "A teacher in a Muggle elementary school."
"There's no need to emphasize Muggles and wizards so much. From what I've seen with my own eyes, the two seemingly different worlds are very similar, both in good and bad aspects," Della said with a smile on her face. "And this painting by an innocent child, no matter it was taught by a Muggle teacher or a wizard professor, everyone will like it."