Mysterious Journey

Chapter 956 Cognitive Rigidity and the Freezing Charm

"Are you saying the Ministry of Magic and the school are very tense? Because of those curriculum changes?"

"Well, it's obvious," said Elena. "Every era has its conservatives. People are often afraid of change, right? The integration of magic and science is indeed the trend of the future, and it's a way to revitalize magic. The Ministry of Magic officials will worry about being eliminated because of this. New things and new knowledge are emerging too fast. Next year, the first batch of wizards with professional titles will enter various industries."

"But they can also learn and understand new knowledge together, right? And they have even less to memorize."

Hermione asked, somewhat puzzled. By this time, they had separated from Hannah, Ginny, and others, and were leaving the Great Hall, heading towards the Charms classroom.

"In theory, yes," Elena said slowly, "provided that... well..."

She glanced around at the magical portraits, a playful smile appearing on her lips.

"What?" Hermione urged.

"Well, they have to not be in a state of cognitive entrenchment."

"Cognitive entrenchment?" Hermione repeated softly, thoughtfully.

"New things that appear when you're ten years old are all novel and interesting; new things that appear when you're twenty are all fashionable and trendy; new things that appear when you're thirty, you have to carefully filter out the impurities; after forty, what appears may be garbage..."

"As time goes by, most people inevitably experience cognitive entrenchment, decline in learning ability, and an aging mindset."

Elena meaningfully pointed to the portraits on the wall. She had conducted an interesting Turing test in the school last year.

The results proved that most portraits did not have the ability to "record and understand"—their cognition was forever frozen in the past.

Elena looked around at the corridors and staircases that were always in a "brand new" state, and raised her eyebrows.

"It's not hard to understand, right? For example, when you firmly believe that the world should be a certain way, but something new tells you that the world is not what you believe, do you choose to doubt first, or believe first?"

"...I don't know." Hermione shook her head. "I will try not to prejudge and make judgments from an objective perspective."

"Perfect answer!" said Elena.

"But, but that's just a hypothetical ideal..."

Hermione nodded in a daze, muttering softly to herself, "If it were Hannah, she would definitely not be willing to try another path to the same result after learning one problem-solving approach—not to mention if these two methods conflict."

Achoo—

At the same time, on the other side of Hogwarts Castle.

Hannah suddenly sneezed, startling Luna out of her dreamy state.

"Strange, didn't I drink a pick-me-up potion this morning? What's going on."

The honest girl rubbed her nose, muttering softly as she pushed open the door to the Potions classroom.

In Professor Snape's class, colds and sneezes were arguably the worst possible conditions. Whether it was accidentally adding a few extra drops of the wrong potion ingredient due to shaky hands, or accidentally dropping snot and saliva into the cauldron, disastrous consequences could occur.

Starting this semester, the most common treatment was to become the test subject for Professor Snape's "specially enhanced pick-me-up potion."

After all, Hogwarts now had three top-notch Potions Masters.

The "potion supply rights" of Hogwarts Hospital Wing had changed from a tedious and trivial obligation to a secret battlefield full of undercurrents. The professors' potions became weapons to measure each other's levels. Hannah didn't want to get involved in the professors' war and become a "Steam Ji."

However, as she pushed open the wooden door to the dungeon classroom, Hannah's worries quickly dissipated.

"On your right, everyone, first take two masks and a hairnet—"

Snape stood beside the lecture table in the dungeon classroom, coldly glancing at the young wizards who were entering the classroom one after another.

"From today onwards, during the practical phase of the Potions class, I hope everyone remembers to wear a mask. I don't want a second occurrence of someone fainting from smelling their own potion, or dropping something that shouldn't be dropped into the pot, understand?!"

"Alright, Miss Abbott, Miss Lovegood, as usual, please hand out everyone's homework from last week..."

It had to be said that since Dumbledore broke up the lower grades and reassigned classes, and established class representatives, Snape had become a lot more relaxed.

Simple tasks such as collecting and distributing homework, distributing potion ingredients, and maintaining small-scale order were mostly left to the students to complete on their own. He could focus more of his energy and time on teaching, and observing whether students made dangerous or incorrect operations during potion brewing.

Of course, such a smooth teaching model did not only exist in Snape's Potions class.

…………

Charms was a course widely recognized in the wizarding world as the most important.

In a sense, Charms was the most primitive and purest "magic" course in wizarding civilization.

At Hogwarts, students learned how to control their magic, and cast spells that had been researched by generations of Charms Masters, according to certain fixed gestures and syllables. This was also the basic foundation for most wizards to survive in the future.

When Elena and Hermione arrived at the Charms classroom, they saw Umbridge walking over from the other end of the corridor with a handbag.

"Looks like the Ministry of Magic has changed its strategy?" Hermione raised her eyebrows and winked at Elena.

"That's smart, first choose some subjects she understands that have relatively few changes."

Elena said softly, not surprised, and pulled Hermione towards the front row of the classroom.

Undoubtedly, after hitting a wall with Muggle Studies, Dolores Umbridge obviously realized her limitations. She chose to complete some basic tasks steadily first, fill in her "High Inquisitor" work resume, and then make plans.

In Umbridge's view, Charms was undoubtedly the most suitable pure land to serve as a backdrop.

After all, this was "magic" in the true sense, and it seemed incompatible with "science" from the day it was born.

"Good morning, Professor Flitwick," Professor Umbridge said with a smile on her face, standing at the door, leaning slightly, looking at Professor Flitwick standing on the pile of books, and said in a light tone, "I believe you should have received my notice? It states the time and date to inspect your class."

"Good morning, Professor Umbridge. Your seat—"

Professor Flitwick frowned slightly and waved his wand casually.

Immediately afterwards, an armchair appeared out of thin air in the corner, falling lightly in front of Umbridge.

"Well, Miss Caslana, Miss Granger, this is last week's homework, please hand it out to everyone."

After simply settling Umbridge, Professor Flitwick did not continue to pay attention to her. Instead, he turned to look at Elena and Hermione, smiling warmly. Two stacks of parchment homework floated from his podium into the hands of the second-year A class representatives.

Faced with Professor Flitwick's indifference, Professor Umbridge still smiled. She grabbed the back of the armchair floating in mid-air, pulled the chair to the front of the classroom, placed it a few inches from Professor Flitwick's podium, then she sat down leisurely, took out a clipboard from her gaudy handbag, and looked up expectantly, waiting for class to begin.

Flitwick, as usual, stood on a pile of thick book steps, smiling at the students in the classroom.

"Alright, in the last class we initially mastered the fire-making spell..."

He didn't pay any attention to the extra listener behind him, and quickly entered teaching mode as the class bell rang.

"Today, we will learn another spell that sounds opposite—the freezing charm. But before that, we will still divide into groups of two for spell review, taking turns to say the fire-making spell and perform the corresponding spell reversal, as before."

As Professor Flitwick spoke, he tapped the lecture table lightly with his wand, and a large, light golden hourglass phantom appeared in mid-air.

"Review time, fifteen minutes. Let's begin now."

He walked down from the podium and patrolled back and forth among the students in the class, checking their casting situations.

On the other side, Professor Umbridge simply wrote a few strokes in her notebook, then stood up and wandered around the Charms classroom in Professor Flitwick's manner, listening to Professor Flitwick's conversations with the students, and occasionally asking a question or two.

Soon, she wandered to Elena and Hermione's desk.

"Incendio—"

"Finite Incantatem."

Elena flicked her wand lightly, easily extinguishing the small flame that Hermione had finally conjured.

"You're not doing it right! Professor Flitwick said to use the counter-curse." Hermione puffed out her cheeks and said matter-of-factly.

"Mine is a counter-curse, a universal counter-curse in most situations—it's like a broad-spectrum antidote in potion making. Since you can directly end the spell process from the root of magic, why not master this practical counter-curse method?"

Elena watched Hermione's angry look with interest, and shrugged.

"How about this, if you can extinguish my fire, then I'll reluctantly practice the fire-making spell's termination spell."

"Okay, you said it yourself?!" Hermione snorted and pulled down her sleeves, preparing to cast the counter-curse.

"Incendio, kenza—"

Boom, a bright light burst from the tip of Elena's wand.

"...You're so shameless."

Hermione glanced at the light that looked similar to the flames summoned by the students around her, and squeezed the words out from between her teeth.

As the best friend of this white-haired fluffball, she had long known that Elena's skill library had been updated with "Flame Runes". This method of casting spells derived from ancient runes was from the beginning a "higher-level magic" of the fire-making spell, and could not be dealt with by the corresponding counter-curse.

"Don't be so serious, the flame is just an appearance. The core is the key. It's like Fiendfyre and the fire-making spell are two different spells—"

Elena said helplessly. Since Hermione had not yet been exposed to molecular physics, this content was still beyond her knowledge.

Perhaps Elena could not complete the analysis and reconstruction of black-box spells like "Alohomora" and "Reparo", but she could easily control and play with fun materialized small knowledge like flames and high temperatures, which the scientific community in later generations had come up with.

"Cough, cough—"

Just then, she suddenly heard a pretentious cough in her ear.

"Excuse me, Miss Caslana, I thought I just heard you mention... Fiendfyre?"

Umbridge asked softly, the toad-like mouth gradually grinned into a smile. "This is a Dark Art registered with the Ministry of Magic, even upper-year students should study it carefully. Where did you hear this term? Well, I'm just asking out of curiosity."

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"Learned it in Defence Against the Dark Arts, professor, last semester."

Elena blinked her eyes, turned around, and answered seriously and obediently.

"Last semester? Oh, I see."

Umbridge raised her eyebrows slightly, took out her clipboard and quickly made a few notes, her expression becoming more gentle.

"Professor Quirinus Quirrell was teaching at the time, right? Well, he must have described the power of Fiendfyre in detail?"

"No—"

Elena shook her head and said seriously.

"Apocalis said it, but he said there's nothing to be afraid of with Fiendfyre. It's just a crude and easily broken spell. As long as you master Finite Incantatem skillfully, you can counter this seemingly tricky Dark Art."

Apocalis?!

Umbridge's pen stopped on the notebook, and the smile on her face suddenly stiffened.

She thought she had just found important evidence that Quirinus Quirrell was researching and worshiping Dark Arts, but who knew it would involve that immortal old castle caretaker again. And the most important thing was that kind of hundreds-year-old monster really had the confidence to say that...

"Professor? Professor, what's wrong?"

"Uh, oh, nothing... I understand, thank you."

Dolores Umbridge twitched the corners of her mouth and answered somewhat unnaturally.

Forget it, it's better not to provoke that moody, psychologically abnormal old monster "Paracelsus" for the time being.

This was something Cornelius Fudge had specifically instructed. Alchemists who had come all the way from the Middle Ages might seem gentle, knowledgeable, and easy to communicate with, but they would never fear any government authority—after all, they were the ones who built the prototype of the Ministry of Magic back then.

As one of the early reliance forces behind the Ministry of Magic, "Paracelsus" would not care about Aurors.

The most urgent task now was to use some conventional and simple courses to let the authority of the "High Inquisitor" settle down.

As for the follow-up matters, such as those troublemakers Transfiguration, Potions, and Muggle Studies, she could wait until she had reviewed and approved some basic and harmless subjects, raised a banner, and then slowly challenged and tossed them one by one. By then, Hogwarts would automatically split apart.

Umbridge calmed down slightly and returned to her seat, waiting for Professor Flitwick to continue teaching.

Judging from the students' feedback and the results of the Ministry of Magic's exams, Professor Flitwick was undoubtedly a top professor at Hogwarts. The pass rate and praise rate for Charms were completely consistent with her previous estimates—Charms was the fulcrum for the Ministry of Magic to pry open Hogwarts's transformation.

Just then, Professor Flitwick's calm lecture voice came to Umbridge's ears.

"The freezing charm is a spell that stops people and things from moving."

"Please note! It's not about getting colder, it's important that it freeze—stops movement."

"Therefore, before learning this freezing charm, we must first understand what movement is..."

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