Chapter 231：

At this time, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

This was the third Horcrux they destroyed—the fourth one, including Harry himself.

Next, there are three Horcruxes waiting for them.

In fact, when Ye Ting, Hermione and Furong destroyed two Horcruxes in succession, Zhang Qiu and Penello gained a lot.

Their task is to find Hufflepuff's golden cup, which is not a simple task.

For a long time, the four relics of the four founders of Hogwarts are legendary items. They occasionally appear in history, but they will soon disappear again. This makes people have to think that these relics exist. It's just rumors.

However, just like Ye Ting’s search for Slytherin’s relics started with Slytherin’s descendants, Zhang Qiu and Penello also quickly determined the direction of their search: first, they were looking for Hufflepuff’s descendants. .

Although the relics are passed down from generation to generation, the possibility of loss is quite high, but compared to finding a needle in a haystack, the descendants of Hufflepuff can be regarded as a safer direction.

Through Ye Ting's relationship, the two girls were able to search the descendants of Hufflepuff in the archives of the Ministry of Magic.

Unfortunately, the archives of the Ministry of Magic are no more convenient than searching the archives on a computer by Muggles in the future.

It took several days for Zhang Qiu and Penello to find relevant information in the pile of old papers.

In the early twentieth century, there was indeed a witch named Hepziba Smith, who claimed to be a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff.

What makes them even more excited is that this witch is very rich and an avid collector of magical antiques.

Compared to ordinary people, a wealthy wizard—especially an antique collector—is more likely to possess Hufflepuff’s relics, and the collector himself is Hufflepuff’s heir (even if claimed) The possibilities are greatly increased.

After all, ordinary wizards may be deprived of poverty and sell the antiques left by their ancestors. Many pure-blooded families who have fallen are not doing things like this.

Even now, there are still many pure-blood families who have become antique sellers in order to maintain a luxurious life.

But a wealthy collector would never do this.

On the contrary, such a wealthy collector would try his best to collect antiques, and this witch who claims to be a descendant of Hufflepuff is especially true.

Even if she doesn't have Hufflepuff's relics herself, as a descendant of Hufflepuff, she will do her best to find the relics.

Then, starting from her, it is most likely to find Hufflepuff's golden cup.

At worst, clues to the gold cup can also be found.

However, when they prepared to go a step further and wanted to start from Hepzibah Smith himself or her descendants, they were disappointed to discover that Hepzibah Smith had passed away in 1946.

According to documents from the Ministry of Magic, the cause of Hepziba Smith’s death was that her house elf Hao Qi was dim-eyed and accidentally put a rare and deadly poison in the hostess’s cocoa instead of sugar. This That led to the death of Hepziba Smith.

Even the house elf himself admitted it.

Fortunately, although Ms. Hepziba Smith has no descendants, she does have a family, and her siblings and descendants of siblings inherited her property.

So they began to look for Hepziba Smith's surviving relatives.

If there is news of the Hufflepuff Golden Cup, then the news must be in the hands of these people.

Soon, they decided on one goal, which was Hepzibah Smith's sister, Manasseh Smith.

The Smith family is indeed a big family. Hepziba has four siblings in total, and she is the second child of the family.

Manasseh Smith is much younger than Hepziba Smith. She is the youngest of the five siblings, but has the best relationship with Hepziba. Therefore, Hepziba’s manor and A considerable part of the property was inherited by Manasseh Smith.

Fortunately, Manasseh Smith himself is still alive.

So, under the recommendation of Bones, Zhang Qiu and Penello came to visit Manasseh himself.

Manasseh's home is on the outskirts of London. It is a large Victorian manor, and Manasseh himself has always lived in the manor.

After arriving at the manor, it was a house elf who opened the door for the two girls.

This is probably the thinnest and oldest house-elf that Penello and Zhang Qiu have ever seen. Their heads reached the waists of the two girls. The paper-like skin hung on the skeleton, like the thin piece of her body. The linen robe is the same.

Led by the house elves, the girls walked into the manor.

Chapter 0318-Manasse Smith

In the center of the manor is a three-story villa, where Manasseh Smith lives.

The house elf walked ahead and opened the door of the villa for the two girls.

When the two girls walked into the villa and came to the entrance hall for the first time, they found that the villa was indeed a fanatical collector, the property left by Hepzibah Smith.

All kinds of antiques and collectibles are placed in every corner of this villa.

On the way the elves led them to meet Manasseh, they saw many dazzling collections.

Vases of different styles were placed in every corner, and there was a pair of knight armor in the hallway, which looked like a product of a fairy. Zhang Qiu suspected that they could move freely just like Hogwarts armor.

When passing by the fireplace, they saw many animal heads hanging on the fireplace, just as the Muggle nobles showed their harvest from hunting, but the difference was that these heads came from magical creatures.

Among these first levels, the magical creatures that Penello recognizes include fire gray snakes, big-headed hairy monsters, soft-clawed land shrimps, Riem cattle, etc. There are also some that Penello does not recognize. One of them is like A leopard head grows on a large durian or a large balloon full of thorns. This specimen makes her feel the most dangerous.

In addition, they also saw many copper vessels of all kinds, and many lush plants grew vigorously from these vessels. The plants looked neat and tidy, and it was obvious that the house elves were pruning very frequently.

Finally, after crossing the living room and up the stairs, the house elf opened a thick wooden door for them.

Behind the wooden door was a study room. On the recliner in the middle of the study room, they saw a very fat old lady who was wearing a green floral robe and a pair of tight satin shoes on her fat feet.

Obviously, this old lady is the owner of the manor, Hepziba Smith's sister, Manasseh Smith.

The house elf received the letter of introduction from Ms. Bones from Penello and handed it to the old lady. After reading the letter for a while, the old lady rudely drove the house elf away.

There are only three of them in the room now.

The old man seemed to have a bad temper. She looked at the two visiting girls and spoke first: "Amelia told me that there are two girls who are doing investigations for the Ministry of Magic, wanting to learn something about what happened in the past. Things, are you the one who did the investigation?"

"Yes, Granny Smith," Penello replied first, "we want to find out with you about the whereabouts of an antique, which is involved in..."

"Ah, antiques," Manasseh interjected impatiently, "I knew it was antiques. There are antiques everywhere. How would I know the whereabouts of all the antiques? I don't like them. If it weren't for my sister, I I've lost all these nasty things a long time ago."

"I promise, you must be impressed with this antique!" Zhang Qiu said quickly, "this antique involves very important things, so you must help!"

"A very important thing?" Manasseh squinted at them for a while, and suddenly said, "You look very young. Are you really sent by the Ministry of Magic?"

The old man's suspicion made Zhang Qiu a little flustered, but Penello took the conversation calmly.

"In fact, this matter was originally not our turn to be responsible." The girl explained solemnly, "We have just graduated from Hogwarts and have not been in the Ministry of Magic for long, but recently due to the news of the resurrection of the Dark Lord, The Ministry of Magic has always been very busy. In order to cope with the possible future crises, Ms. Bones has deployed a large number of manpower, so the current Ministry of Magic is tight, and the safer tasks are taken care of by us who have just joined the Ministry. "

When a lie is true and false, it is actually the most deceptive.

Penello’s words are mostly true. Amelia Bones herself was really busy during this time. On the one hand, she had to fight for power with Fudge, who was dragging her feet in the Ministry of Magic. On the other hand, she needed Responsible for their own opinions, dispatch troops to detect the movements of the Death Eaters, and prepare for Voldemort's emergence.