Chapter 194 - 194 Dementors invade Hogwarts.
Chapter 194: Dementors invade Hogwarts.
The sky was tantalizingly white and tantalizingly purple in the distance, with a few clouds drifting in and out, gradually rising into a few thin shades of twilight.
The imposing castle stood against the tantalizing purple sky, with a row of smaller towers stretching out from the middle of the spires of the main tower's upper floors at its highest point; the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts.
The windows of the Headmaster's office were open, and a fresh breeze blew into the room, causing the candles on several candlesticks to sway slightly.
At some point, a figure suddenly surfaced by the window, a head of silver hair fluttering with the breeze precisely like the flames on the candles.
"It's like you knew I was coming and actually left the window open?" Dracula looked over to Dumbledore, who was sitting behind his desk looking through his papers, and laughed softly.
It sounded odd, after all, everyone else who wanted to receive guests also left a door open for them, but for Dracula, receiving him was leaving a window open was enough.
Of course, Dumbledore was quite used to this rather odd conversation.
"That's not true, it's just that it's a nice day to open a window and get some air." He put the paper in his hand down and looked up to Dracula and snickered, "Speaking of which, I did leave the window open for you all day two weeks ago, and I didn't see you come over as a guest, Professor Dracula, until I caught a cold from the cool night air."
Dumbledore shook his head, "So then I didn't bother to leave a window open for you. That is, today just happened to see the sky color is good only on a whim to open the window for a while, I did not expect you to come at the right time."
It occurred to Dracula that his visit to Azkaban had been two weeks ago.
After he left Azkaban, he had wandered along the path from the Azkaban islands to the mainland of England, wanting to see if he could find some traces of Sirius Black by chance, and maybe if he was lucky, he could capture him back to the Black family and give him to Regulus, and then he could watch a big emotional scene between brothers in the meantime.
Unfortunately, Sirius didn't seem to use much magic at all along the way, as if he simply swam back to the mainland of England by using his physical body to swim, and he didn't find any traces of magic.
Dracula was so depressed that he went back to Azkaban and abused the Dementors for a while, and didn't return to Hogwarts until the day the opening dinner was to begin.
"Professor Dracula, tell me honestly, did you make a trip to Azkaban two weeks ago?" Dumbledore asked as he crossed his arms and stared hard into Dracula's eyes.
"Huh, you know all this?" Dracula raised an eyebrow absently, "News comes pretty fast."
While saying that, he casually pulled open one of Dumbledore's drawers and pulled out a handful of blood-flavored lollipops and blood pudding from it.
His movements were extremely skillful, and there was absolutely no embarrassment about taking other people's things, just like returning to his own home.
"It's been two weeks since this happened, Professor Dracula ... " Dumbledore's eyes twitched a little at the corner of his eye as he watched his treasured sweets being hocked by Dracula, "Also, you don't seem to be hiding yourself at all. "
"Two weeks ago, there was a mass protest on the seventh floor of Azkaban Prison, accusing the Ministry of Magic of lax supervision and allowing strangers into the cages to torture prisoners. The Death Eaters there all seem to have been tossed around by the Dementors."
"Not only that, but they also gave an accurate description of the person who came - long silver hair, handsome features, burgundy eyes ... If I can't deduce that it's you based on that information, then I'm done as a principal. "
Dumbledore rubbed his brow and gave Dracula a somewhat helpless look.
"I thought they were all hardcore people who would rather die than give in, but I didn't realize that they couldn't even carry a few Dementors, thanks to which I was thinking about finding something else for them to do." Dracula bristled, obviously very dissatisfied with the performance of those Death Eaters.
"That wasn't 'a few' Dementors, Professor Dracula." The corner of Dumbledore's mouth twitched, "While other floors have up to three or four dementors entering at once to feed, the seventh floor has twenty-seven going in at once! Who can top that?"
Dracula shrugged, not commenting.
In fact, he didn't expect that his casual command to have the dementors take extra care of the seventh floor would be so conscientiously complied with and exceeded!
"What does the Ministry of Magic think?" Dracula asked casually, "Can they guess that I did this?"
Actually, Dracula didn't care much about what the Ministry of Magic thought right now. Because he hadn't appeared much inside the Ministry of Magic's field of vision, very few officials knew a black magic defense arts professor like him.
Plus, the oral testimonies of Azkaban's inmates were supposed to be of little use, so even if they were really suspected, very few people would really have nothing to do but come over to find trouble with him.
"Fudge refuses to admit that Azkaban was secretly infiltrated." Dumbledore presented it succinctly, "He thinks it was the prisoners who were under the influence of the Dementors and developed mental problems at the same time."
"True enough," Dracula snorted, "quite the style for the current Minister of Magic."
Dumbledore smiled without saying a word.
After Fudge's "efforts" to get rid of Dumbledore's influence in the past two years, even the old principal, as wise as he was, could not find any reasons to whitewash the Minister of Magic at this moment. ...
"Let's not mention those uninteresting ones, the main thing I came here this time is to ask you something." Dracula stuffed a piece of blood pudding into his mouth and smoothly sat down on the soft sofa of the principal's office.
"What do you think ... Sirius Black is doing with this prison break?" He asked softly.
"How would I know such a thing?" Dumbledore shook his head slightly, "There is speculation out there that he went to attack Harry in order to bring Voldemort back."
"But there's a big mystery here," Dracula said, "He's spent the last ten years or so in Azkaban, so why did he break out of prison during this time? He had to have a definite motive for this breakout, didn't he?"
"Maybe Sirius simply just finally couldn't take the Dementors anymore after all the days and months?" Dumbledore shrugged, a tantalizing smile on his face.
"Headmaster Dumbledore!" Dracula aggravated, "I'm seriously discussing a problem with you and you're actually lakeing me here? Do you take me for a fool like Fudge?"
The smile on Dumbledore's face tantalized, and his face gradually became a bit sullen.
"Professor Dracula, I don't know where you got the information that you have about Sirius Black, or where you got your suspicions about his deeds ..." he sighed and said softly, "but in the information that I information that I have learned, he is indeed a sinner who betrayed his friends and defected to the Death Eaters."
"Tell me about it?" Dracula's expression also became calmer as he said softly.
"It started with a prophecy," Dumbledore took his half-moon spectacles off the bridge of his nose and slowly wiped them, "Because of that prophecy, Voldemort selected Harry as his fated enemy and hit upon the idea of killing Harry's family ahead of time ..."
Dumbledore's voice was soft, laced with a tantalizingly mournful emotion as he told the story.
"... In the end, the Potters chose to have Sirius act as their keeper of secrets and set up home in Godric's Hollow, hoping to escape Voldemort's trail."
"As you should already know from the events that followed, the day they established their secret keeper, even without any preparation, the address of the safe house was revealed and Voldemort came to the door that night."
"The story ends with James and Lily being killed, Voldemort turned into a wandering spirit, and Harry surviving ... After that, Sirius went on to kill one of his best friends, Peter Pediru, and twelve Muggles, and then was imprisoned in Azkaban for twelve years until just over two weeks ago, when he escaped from Azkaban to break out of prison."
The story was told and Dumbledore had finally cleaned his glasses, putting them back on the bridge of his nose and looking at Dracula in front of him with deep blue eyes.
"Is Sirius Black such a classless one? It shouldn't be ..." Dracula frowned.
He couldn't help but think of Sirius' own brother, Regulus Blake.
Even though Regulus went astray under the influence of his parents and joined the ranks of the Death Eaters, he was able to come to his senses later on and parted ways with Voldemort.
He stole Voldemort's Horcruxes with extreme perseverance and action. He was willing to risk his life just so that Voldemort would be nothing more than a flesh and blood mortal when he met his hit opponent.
Dracula, though he kept his mouth shut, actually appreciated Regulus' actions inwardly.
If Regulus, who was his younger brother, could be so brave and so sentimental towards the house elf, then Sirius Black, who had been raised to not want to be part of a corrupt family, should have been a little more sentimental, right?
Why would such a person suddenly betray his friends and turn to Voldemort's camp?
"Actually, you're not the only one who doesn't believe it, many of us don't believe that Sirius would betray James." Dumbledore sighed softly, somewhat forlornly.
"At that time, the precious friendship of the four of them, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, could be called a unique scenery of Gryffindor. The few of them were inseparable, attending classes together, eating together, having fun together, teasing Severus together, breaking school rules together, and being locked up together ..."
'Is there a strange thing mixed in here?' Dracula's mouth twitched.
Dumbledore continued, "None of us wanted to believe that these four would ever be separated, let alone go so far as to believe that one of them would betray their best friend."
"But the truth was not for us to disbelieve, for under the spell of abject loyalty, the only way to disable the spell was for the secreter to voluntarily reveal the location of the safe house!"
Dracula nodded softly, his curiosity about that Sirius Black even stronger in his mind.
And this time, the curiosity was not only for the novelty of him being the first wizard to escape Azkaban, but also for the desire to know the truth of that incident back then.
"Speaking of which, there's always a name inside those four little friends that feels familiar." Dracula supported his chin with two fingers and murmured thoughtfully, "Lemus Lupin, why does it feel like I've seen that name somewhere?"
"Lames?" Dumbledore gave Dracula a curious look, "I think it's a rename? Lemus is usually too low key because of his status."
"I was going to set him up with a post at Hogwarts this year to keep an eye on Harry a little more in the time since Sirius' prison break, but couldn't get in touch with him."
Dracula frowned and was about to rummage through his memories when he suddenly felt the sky darken menacingly.
He turned around and frowned at the high sky in the distance.
The tantalizing purple sky had already disappeared, and it was raining outside at some point.
The sky outside the window took on the gray color of a dense, sticky lake, and it gradually deepened, and the distant sky at the end of the black lake had nearly thickened into a piece of pure black like ink dye.
"It's not supposed to be dark yet, is it?" Dracula asked, "And even if it was completely dark, how could such thick clouds suddenly form that there isn't even a single star left?"
Dumbledore also looked into the distance and opened his mouth to speak.
"Professor Dracula, actually over there is ... well, there are some employees sent by the Ministry of Magic to check if any of the trains the students are in have been infiltrated by Sirius." He explained.
"Employees?" Dracula raised a slight hint of interest, "What kind of employees are so powerful that they can cause changes in the sky?"
Saying that, he looked towards the distant sky, light flowing from his burgundy-eyed child.
In the next moment, Dracula's rakish expression clouded over.
"Headmaster Dumbledore, is this what you call an employee?" He asked coldly, the word 'Headmaster' pronounced heavily.
"The Ministry of Magic's directive an issued, I have little reason to refute it even as Headmaster." Dumbledore spread his hands helplessly, "Don't worry Professor Dracula, Fudge promised me those Dementors wouldn't bother the students."
"But this is my territory!" Dracula said heavily, "I'm not one of those great and good people like you who would subject themselves to the Ministry of Magic to allow that disgusting species to invade the vicinity of Hogwarts!"
With that, and without waiting for Dumbledore's reaction, Dracula stepped fiercely on the window frame of the Headmaster's office and leapt lightly into the air spreading his wings and flying straight to the end of the Black Lake where the darkness was at its thickest.
There a train was trudging along, going slower and slower.
With a sudden jolt, the Hogwarts Express came to a halt, all the lights suddenly went out and everything on the train was plunged into complete darkness.
Countless monsters in tattered cloaks circled around and flew towards the train, carrying with them an extremely frightening aura!