Chapter 98: Defending Buckbeak

Looking at the pitiful look on Hagrid's face, Ivan sighed.

He didn't know much about politics, but he knew exactly what he had to do. He couldn't keep watching while Buckbeak was going to be decapitated. Hagrid would collapse.

"Listen Hagrid!" said Ivan. "You can't give up. You have to prepare your speech for the defense. Harry, Ron and Hermione can prove Buckbeak is innocent. I can help you advertise it in the paper."

"Ivan is right; I've definitely read a case of a Hippogriff attack." Hermione muses. "In that case, the Hippogriff had nothing to do with it. We might find something useful if we go back on the subject and do some good research."

"Yeah, we'll help too." Harry and Ron hurriedly followed them.

Although everyone said so, the job eventually fell to Ivan and Hermione alone.

After a while, Harry and Ron seemed to have completely forgotten about that matter.

However, they were not to blame. For one thing, Harry had been very busy lately.

At the end of November, Ravenclaw had defeated the Hufflepuff team. This had reinvigorated Wood, and the Gryffindors had a chance to play after all, though they couldn't afford to lose another match.

He then asked the players to train day and night. Ivan saw Harry several times training in the biting cold December snow.

Fortunately, since the last incident, no Dementors had been seen on campus. The lesson they had been given last time and Dumbledore's wrath seemed to have confined them completely to their posts at the entrance to the school.

In addition to the busy Quidditch training, Harry needed to learn the Patronus Charm with Professor Lupin.

He needed to be able to release his Full Guardian as soon as possible to ensure that no more accidents would occur in the upcoming match.

As for Ron, his condition had become more and more abnormal lately.

He was barely communicating with most people and was nowhere near either Ivan or Hermione.

When Harry was training, he wandered the castle alone.

To protect Scabbers from Crookshanks, he put it in his shirt pocket wherever he went.

On several occasions, they were out of range of the Tracking Potion, so Ivan couldn't figure out where they went.

Ivan didn't care about Ron and Peter Pettigrew, he and Hermione spent most of their time in the library and couldn't worry about anything else.

He let Peter Pettigrew have his way for a few days, and in twenty days, it would be Christmas. At that time, the castle would have the least number of people in it, so Ivan would be able to look for Sirius Black and solve this whole dilemma.

Now what was more urgent was to think of ways to save Buckbeak. He and Hermione found a lot of information and files in the library concerning the famous case cited above. He prepared defense arguments for Buckbeak. The titles of these files were "Summary of Courts Against Magical Animals", "Handbook of Hippogriff Psychology", "Hippogriffs Fowl " and "A Study in Griffin's Barbarism". Each of them was very thick.....

"Ivan, you should see this!" Hermione put a dusty volume in front of Ivan and whispered, "This is the case of a Manticore in 1926. He killed a human being, but was eventually acquitted."

"That was because everyone was scared and no one dared to come close." Ivan frowned and looked at the small number of words in the file.

"Yes, you're right," Hermione said disappointedly and tossed the thick volume aside.

Ivan picked up the file and continued reading it. Next was a brief introduction to the magical creature: the Manticore.

The Manticore is an incredibly dangerous animal with a human head, a lion's body and a scorpion's tail, and is so rare that it is famous for the soft buzzing sound it makes when it devours its prey.

According to reliable documents, the Manticore's skin repels almost all known spells.

Anyone stung by its tail will die immediately.

This horrible creature was created by wizards and goblins. They were used to guard important property or forbidden places and were once all the rage. However, since the "Ban on Experimental Creatures" decree was enacted, the number of Manticore had gradually reduced.

In recent decades, it had even disappeared.

Ivan put the file aside. From the text above, the danger level of a Hippogriff is nothing compared to that of a Manticore.

If Buckbeak had half the power of the Manticore, they wouldn't have to sit there and worry about it.

Over the next two weeks, in addition to helping Hermione perfect the defense speech, Ivan also wrote several articles in defense of Buckbeak.

His intention was to put pressure on Lucius Malfoy and the Committee for the Elimination of Dangerous Creatures through public opinion, but things did not go as smoothly as originally planned.

The newspaper 'The Prophet' refused to publish these articles written by Ivan. They considered the matter to be of little importance. The whole incident was, at best, a minor event at Hogwarts that could not arouse people's interest in reading about it.

Although Ivan eventually published these articles in 'The Magic of Hogwarts' newspaper, their effect was limited.

Mr. Barnabas Cuffe, editor-in-chief of 'The Prophet' newspaper, was right. Most readers did not care about the life or death of a hippogriff, and young wizards already knew that.

In contrast, they were more interested in Black's connection to the Dementors.

Ivan was not completely without supporters. Colin, Ginny and Luna expressed support for his point of view. Luna even persuaded her father to publish the articles written by Ivan in "The Quizzical" instead of the original headline about the Wrinkly Horned Snorkacks.

However, that didn't make much difference. The actual copies of "The Quislug" did not sell nearly as well as those of 'The Magic of Hogwarts'.

As time went on, Christmas approached, but Ivan and Hermione did not make much progress.

Although they wrote ten scrolls of defenses, Ivan was very skeptical about the effect it could have, besides being drowsiness inducing and lethargic.

Not to mention whether the officials dealing with the Committee for the Elimination of Dangerous Creatures would accept such a defense. It was doubtful Hagrid could write all these things down. With his skill, it might be difficult for him to read the arguments as a whole. The whole thing was exhausting.

"It's no use, Hermione!" looking at Hermione sitting across from him, Ivan sighed heavily.

Hermione was still struggling with the boring files. She was often the last to leave the common room at night. She was the first to go to the library the next morning. She was loaded down with heavy schoolwork, Ron's intangible pressure, and preparing for Buckbeak's defense argument. Those things were overlapping each other, which had caused her to have dark shadows under her eyes like Lupin.

"What did you say?!" Hermione lifted her head from the data.

"Our thinking seems to be wrong. Whatever the reason, Buckbeak really hurt Draco Malfoy, didn't he?" Ivan said slowly. "We can't defend Buckbeak's innocence, as long as Lucius Malfoy focuses on this fact, Hagrid's hope of winning is minimal."

"So, what do we do? nothing? like Harry and Ron?!" Hermione looked annoyed. "Do we watch Buckbeak get beheaded and wait for Hagrid to collapse?!"

"No, what I mean is that we should think differently" Ivan's eyes fell on Newt Scamander's book entitled "Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find Them", and the author's experiences gave him great inspiration.