"Snape..." Quirrell rubbed his hands together as he answered, "He said he wanted to help the Dark Lord get the Philosopher's Stone..."
"?"
Cohen feigned ignorance, pretending confusion, because he truly knew Snape had no intention of helping Voldemort get the Philosopher's Stone.
"Then why aren't you cooperating with him?"
"Because... the Dark Lord doesn't quite trust him..." Quirrell hesitated, "He used to be the Dark Lord's follower, but now he's with Dumbledore—last time when we were planning to kill Harry Potter, he was even casting a counter-spell."
Actually, Cohen had done it too.
But Cohen didn't say it aloud—after all, Quirrell couldn't figure out which spell was the Disruptive Charm and which was the Counter-Spell that were tangled up on the broom.
"Pah, traitor!"
Cohen pretended to be angry and joined in criticizing Snape, "Serving two masters, a fence-sitter!"
"What does 'two-five boy' mean?" Quirrell asked.
"It's a local dialect, used to curse an insider," Cohen explained.
"Don't worry, I hate traitors more than anything in my life, I definitely won't betray you."
Quirrell trusted Cohen completely—after all, Cohen had first brought trolls into the school to cause chaos this school year, and then helped them backstab unicorns to draw blood.
If he didn't truly yearn for the Dark Lord, how could a newly enrolled wizard dare to do such things?
Not to mention how skillfully he played with dark magic in his office, throwing Avada Kedavra curses around like they were free—Quirrell even suspected that the kid had suffered some kind of childhood abuse, causing him to harbor an extremely strong murderous intent towards everything in the world, to the point that every Avada Kedavra curse he casually cast could cause devastating damage.
But actually, this was only because the "teaching aids" Quirrell provided for Cohen were all corpses and small animals—if he had actually brought an innocent living person, Cohen might not have been able to use the Killing Curse.
After all, Cohen felt he still had some conscience left, because the system had acknowledged that he had regained a little, not much, but enough.
After joining Quirrell and Voldemort in berating Snape for half an hour, Cohen left happily.
Who told Snape to deduct points every time he saw Cohen this year! The rest of his first year passed quickly, and Cohen found himself unknowingly falling into a lazy, monotonous routine.
Classes, meals, sleep—he rarely even went to the Forbidden Forest anymore.
The spiders in the Forbidden Forest had all retreated into their burrows, and their numbers were scarce—it seemed these spiders had realized the more offspring Cohen spawned, the more he would eat, so they stopped breeding.
Cohen didn't dare go back to check on the unicorn colony, because he could smell a strong stench of alcohol as soon as he got close.
Cohen asked Hagrid, who said that Ari often came over asking for alcohol, and he hadn't seen any other unicorns—but Cohen suspected the actual situation was that the other unicorns were already drunk, and only Ari, the less "unicorn" "nightmare," wasn't affected by alcohol.
Hagrid's construction in the box was nearing completion. Because Hagrid's magic was unstable, he preferred to use his hands rather than the umbrella containing the broken wand.
With only a month left before the Philosopher's Stone theft plot, Harry and Ron were unusually well-behaved, thanks to Hermione's successful spread of anxiety.
They were now caught in a terrible cycle: "Exams are coming, I haven't studied, I'm so anxious!" → "But studying is so tiring, let me play a little longer!" → "Exams are coming, I haven't studied, I'm so anxious!"
This resulted in them neither studying nor enjoying their play.
"I take back what I said before, homework isn't the most evil invention in the world, exams are!"
Cohen fled back to the Room of Requirement for refuge, lest Hermione in the common room transmit his anxiety to him.
"The students are going crazy—there's no way they can self-study a year's worth of material in a month. I guess only Hermione and the Ravenclaw students are actually reviewing and preparing every day."
"I noticed you're not worried about the exams," the Count said in a sly tone. "Have you finished studying? Or are you planning to work in Azkaban after being expelled?"
"I noticed the egg you were incubating is missing," Cohen retorted with the same phrasing. "Did it fail to hatch? Or did you find the little owl inside was a yellowish-brown color?"
"You!" the Count gritted his teeth—even though he had no teeth.
The Count turned away angrily and curled up in the owl bed. He had been frustrated about this for a long time, like a resentful woman who had been abandoned.
The egg wasn't the Count's—or rather, Hedwig had ultimately chosen to stay with the little yellow owl because the Count was too enthusiastic.
Cohen, meanwhile, turned back to play the Dungeons & Dragons sandbox that Edward had given him.
It was clearly not an ordinary decorative item; Cohen didn't realize until April, when he took it out of the cupboard, that Edward had given him a magical game console.
By simply pointing the wand at the interface of this display case, you can control the clay figures inside.
You can customize the protagonist's race and class, and then embark on an adventure with other NPC figures in the sandbox, fighting monsters and leveling up along the way.
Edward must have spent a lot of time making this. Considering he doesn't have to work, he probably started working on it after Cohen started school, and finished it before Christmas, then gave it to Cohen as a Christmas present.
He's a good person.
Good people should have 108 children.
But it's a pity that Edward doesn't seem to have any biological children. Rose and Cohen are somewhat related by blood, but Edward seems to be a pure deer-man?
Actually, Cohen could understand if Edward and Rose had several children now—although he doesn't understand why they haven't had any romantic relationships or had any siblings yet.
A single man and woman living together for ten years without any results, could it be that Edward is impotent…
Considering his ten-point soul strength, Cohen guessed that he might have suffered some kind of dark magic damage—it shouldn't be Cohen himself, as Cohen doesn't remember actually consuming Edward's soul.
Although this sandbox would keep Cohen entertained for a long time, a single-player game would likely require hundreds of hours of play to complete all achievements—Cohen finally defeated the dragon in the cave in May, after dying and reloading countless times, his arduous journey yielding the treasure within.
Cohen planned to freeze his progress here, proving he had finished the game.
It was late at night, raindrops pattering outside the window, when a drenched chicken burst through the window and into the room.
"Did God lose control of his bladder?!"
The count was hostile towards God from the moment he entered.
"This sudden downpour—I almost fell into the lake!"
"Don't make the rain sound so disgusting..." Cohen noticed a letter the count was clutching, soaked by the rain. "A letter?"
"From Quirrell."
The count tossed the wet letter to Cohen and then, like a free-range chicken, ran towards the fireplace to dry his feathers.
Cohen opened the envelope. The writing inside was blurred by the rain, but the contents were still legible:
[Meet at the entrance tomorrow night at 11 PM.]
Chapter 67 was not available from author.
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(End of Chapter)