Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures
Chapter 1303: Tradition, and a Visit to Hagrid

At Hogwarts, writing love letters to Evan had somehow become a tradition.

This peculiar custom dated back to Valentine’s Day during Lockhart’s year as a professor.

That term was packed with events, but what stood out most in Evan’s memory wasn’t the Basilisk or Riddle’s diary — it was the chaotic scene of dwarves rampaging through the castle, delivering love letters and loudly reciting them, creating an atmosphere of unparalleled awkwardness.

He remembered being kicked out of Professor McGonagall’s class when a dwarf tried to break into the classroom for the twelfth time.

After Valentine’s Day, Lockhart announced the number of love letters each boy had received.

Evan, a newly enrolled first-year, couldn’t recall doing anything remarkable to attract attention. He thought he’d been particularly low-profile and, logically, shouldn’t have drawn any notice from the girls.

But in the end, he actually received the largest number of love letters and became the most popular boy among girls in the school recognized by Lockhart.

In Lockhart’s words, Evan had the potential to become as famous as him someday.

It was terrifying. None of the letters were from Hermione, but many came from older girls Evan had never even spoken to.

Apparently, with the castle gripped by fear that year, these older students didn’t dare confess their feelings to their actual crushes. Instead, they came together and decided it would be a waste to let the opportunity for Valentine’s fun slip by. So they decided to choose a boy to write a love letter and create a big spectacle…

And so they chose first-year Evan and started a strange tradition.

This was the possibility that Evan thought of when he later analyzed the reasons why they did what they did.

Otherwise, there was no other reason over a hundred upper-year girls would write to him simultaneously.

In the end, the number of love letters and greeting cards that Evan had received reached a terrifying two hundred, almost half of the number of girls in the school.

In any case, Lockhart’s bizarre idea and this incident eventually made Evan famous.

After that, Evan’s fame grew, and the tradition of writing love letters to him was maintained at Hogwarts.

Until now, many single girls would write love letters to Evan and publicize it as a way of showing off.

The atmosphere was such that it almost felt strange if a girl didn’t write him a letter. Every year, when new students learned the school rules, the girls were unofficially taught one additional rule: they had to write a love letter to Senior Evan as a declaration….

This trend, along with the number of love letters Evan received, reached its peak after the events Hermione had just mentioned.

Harry might have gained widespread admiration, but Evan was now the target of collective teasing by nearly all the girls in school.

Yes, teasing!

Although the contents of the love letters seemed very bold, in fact, most of the girls were not really in love with Evan.

To make matters worse, some boys had recently started secretly slipping him love letters as well — what was that all about?!

In the end, Evan handed these things over to the house-elf Dobby to deal with.

The house-elf would typically find and destroy the letters — tossing them into the fireplace — before Evan could even notice.

As for the more daring girls who handed their letters to Evan directly, those letters always ended up in Hermione’s hands.

Hermione, who understood the actual situation, didn’t say much, but expecting her to be pleased about it was entirely out of the question.

The more love letters Evan received, the more irritable Hermione became, especially since she was already annoyed about the Half-Blood Prince’s textbook situation.

Her attitude said it all. Across from Evan, Harry seemed eager to ask more about the love letters. Judging by his expression, it was clear he hadn’t received any.

But Hermione didn’t pause to dwell on the subject of love letters. Instead, she moved straight to another reason why Harry was so popular.

“And you’ve been through all that persecution from the Ministry — being attacked by Dementors, put on trial at the Ministry. They were also trying to make out you were unstable and a liar. That evil woman forced you to carve words into your own hand with your blood, but you stuck to your story anyway. All of this was reported in the newspapers. …”

“Hogwarts Magic had an exclusive on that. Those issues sold really well,” Evan interjected. To be precise, it was part of Rita Skeeter’s series of articles, which highlighted the Ministry’s incompetence and Umbridge’s so-called popularity at Hogwarts.

“And, Harry, you grew nearly an inch taller over the summer. People are taking notice of that too,” Hermione added as a final point.

“That counts?” Ron blurted out inconsequentially. “I grew that much too.”

Evan had also grown a lot taller, but Ron seemed to miss the subtle jab in Hermione’s remark — that Harry’s height barely changed at all.

Indeed, for boys their age, growing nearly an inch taller in a year was hardly impressive, and Hermione’s sarcasm sailed right over Ron’s head. She ignored him entirely, turned her gaze toward the staff table, and changed the subject.

“He didn’t come again today, did he?” she said with some concern.

“Nope!” Harry also forgot about Hermione’s theory and the love letters.

He looked up worriedly at Hagrid’s huge empty chair at the staff table.

After Monday was over, Hagrid no longer came to the staff table to eat, which was an ominous sign.

And he hadn’t invited them to his cabin for the first time in all those years, and on the few occasions when they had passed him in the corridors or out in the grounds, he had mysteriously failed to notice them or hear their greetings.

Elaine and Colin had also told them that Hagrid had become listless and depressed in class.

Thinking it over, that wasn’t actually that surprising at all.

It would be strange if Hagrid was in a good mood when the four students he thought he had the best relationship with and the most supportive of him all dropped out of his class at the same time.

“We all know why,” said Evan, feeling the need to explain.

Hagrid could be careless sometimes, but he had very delicate feelings about things like this and was prone to overthinking things.

It was not his fault, his identity made him lack confidence.

“Yes, we all know why!” Hermione repeated Evan’s words and then added, “We’ve got to go and explain — today.”

“We’ve got Quidditch tryouts in a bit,” said Ron immediately.

“It’s not like tryouts will last all day!”

“But we still have to finish the assignments for Charms and Transfiguration. Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall don’t exactly go easy on homework, do they? Anyway, explain what? How are we going to tell him we hated his stupid subject?”

“We didn’t hate it!” said Hermione.

“Speak for yourself, I haven’t forgotten the skrewts,” said Ron darkly. “And I’m telling you now, we’ve had a narrow escape. You were busy maintaining order at the start of term, so you didn’t hear him going on about his gormless brother — we’d have been teaching Grawp how to tie his shoelaces if we’d stayed.”

Hey there! Translating_Wizard here! Chapter 1527 just dropped on Patreon! If you've enjoyed reading and want to read more, I'd greatly appreciate your support ♡