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Chapter 205: Dumbledore's Way

Under the professors' very forceful and urgent arrangements, the young wizards who had never seen this kind of battle before acted very quickly and were very cooperative with the professors.

After only ten minutes, the students of Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin colleges also arrived in the auditorium along with the Gryffindor students.

The auditorium immediately became noisy, even more so than during the opening dinner, and many of the young wizards looked puzzled.

"The professors and myself will be conducting a thorough search of the castle," Dumbledore said to the students as he stood on the raised platform at the front of the auditorium.

At that moment, Professors McGonagall and Flivvy closed all the doors to the auditorium, even the magic that reflected the sky from the auditorium ceiling was turned off, and a depressing atmosphere lingered throughout the auditorium.

"For the safety of all students, tomorrow's classes are temporarily suspended." Professor McGonagall informed, "I've requested that the rank and file stand guard at the various entrances to the auditorium, and that the boys' and girls' student council presidents stay in the auditorium to take charge."

"Report anything that goes wrong to me immediately," she added this as she looked to Percy, who had long since followed her, who in turn looked proud of being an important person, "and can get a ghost to bring me a message."

The other young wizards had nothing better to do and began eagerly discussing the means by which Sirius Black had gotten to Hogwarts Castle.

"Who was it that guessed earlier that a wanted man had run inside the castle?" Ron said to Harry and Hermione, "We thought that guess was the furthest thing from the truth before, but it turned out to be true!"

"Do you guys think Blake is still in the castle?" Hermione asked anxiously and quietly, unable to think about such questions.

"Dumbledore obviously thinks so." Ron said.

"It's really lucky for Harry that he picked today to come over, you know?" Hermione said in an afterthought, "Today just so happens to be the day we were getting ready to go out and practice magic, all away from the tower ..."

She wasn't just rear-ended at Harry, she was equally glad that her time converter had been taken away by Professor Dracula.

If not, there would have been a good chance that there would have been two Hermione's present inside the castle by the time the professors ordered the young wizards to the auditorium.

Hermione was terrified just thinking about it.

What would happen if both Hermione's were dragged into the auditorium by the Heads and Professors; what would happen if she wasn't discovered by the Professors and Heads, but instead still chose to stay where she was, and then was discovered by Sirius Black ...

Luckily, Professor Dracula had taken away her Time-Turner and avoided this one worst-case scenario.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione finished listening to the professors and went straight to the corner of the long Gryffindor table, pulling up a couple chairs and sitting down, propping their upper bodies up on the table for a little heart-to-heart talk.

Harry's face looked a little unnatural.

He knew that Sirius Black had sneaked inside Hogwarts Castle in order to kill himself to please Voldemort.

In a sense, he was the one who had dragged the Hogwarts students back to the common room, even causing tomorrow's classes to be stopped.

Harry had vaguely heard some trivial talk from next door at the Ravenclaw's long table, and it seemed that some of the younger Ravenclaw wizards were already complaining about the fact that he had caused Hogwarts to stop classes.

Even Ravenclaw, a house that usually got along quite well, had people thinking that way, so the kind of house like Slytherin, which was already at great odds with him, must have already uttered more than a few snide remarks about him ...

"Don't worry about what they say, Harry." Hermione saw how upset Harry was and spoke up to comfort him, "It's not your fault, it's all that Sirius Black's fault!"

"Yeah, Harry, Blake must have been mad from being tortured by dementors in Azkaban to have the nerve to sneak into Hogwarts." Ron nodded approvingly, "It's a good thing I was on top of things today and dragged Harry out to practice his spells, or I don't know what would have happened!"

Speaking of which, Ron's expression became a little proud again, as if he had done something great to save the world.

Of course, after discussing other issues, the topic of the three young wizards still couldn't help but return to the same question by tacit agreement - how on earth did Sirius Black get in?

"Maybe he knows how to submerge," said a Ravenclaw House student a few feet away, "just manifest from thin air, if you know what I mean."

"Most likely came in wearing makeup." A student in Hufflepuff house robes said from the side.

Harry whipped his head around, only to realize that it was Rolf and Luna who had somehow come along to join the conversation while looking at Harry with a concerned expression.

They all knew that Sirius Black had come to Hogwarts for one purpose, and that was to find Harry!

Therefore, Harry's friends were worried about him.

Harry snorted at them, indicating that there was nothing wrong with him and that there was no need to worry about him.

"Otherwise ... maybe he flew in." Dean Thomas, who was seated not far from the long Gryffindor table, chimed in and gave his guess.

"Honestly, am I the only one who isn't afraid to go through the trouble of reading Hogwarts, A School History?" Hermione said to the small group of wizards around her in a no-nonsense manner.

"Quite possibly." Ron nodded in a serious manner, "Why did you mention that all of a sudden though? We all know you're good, Hermione, there's really no need to show it again."

"It's not about that!" Hermione shot Ron an evil glare, "There's a reference to Hogwarts' protective magic in Hogwarts, A History of the School, and if you'd read it properly you wouldn't have come up with so many unsupported guesses!"

"The castle isn't just protected by hardware like walls," she went on to explain, "it's also enchanted with all sorts of magic to prevent outsiders from sneaking in. You can't get in just by sneaking in."

"And I'd like to see what kind of make-up could fool those dementors outside the door. Those guys guard every entrance ... Even if he flew in on a broom, the dementors would easily see it."

"Not only that, Filch knows all the secret passages in the castle, which the dementors would have blocked up ..."

Under Hermione's explanation, the young wizards quickly lost interest in discussing further.

After all, the various defenses of Hogwarts had already targeted and defended every possible method of infiltration that could be thought of, and with the small wizards' shallow understanding of magic, it was hard to guess any more reliable solutions.

"Never mind." Harry plopped down on the table somewhat bored, "Instead of discussing this, let's talk about what we can do while we're cooped up in the auditorium ... If we don't have classes for the entirety of tomorrow, we're going to get bored pretty quickly."

"Look on the bright side, at least we got to the auditorium without anything," Ron recoiled with a bit of cheer, "We don't even have any parchment, and any homework that hasn't been turned in yet is an excuse not to write!"

However things were clearly not going to go the way he thought they would.

Dumbledore stayed in the auditorium for a while, seeing that there were no problems here, and was about to leave the auditorium when he suddenly remembered something.

"Oh yes, you might need these ..." With a casual wave of his wand, countless sheets of parchment flew in from nowhere and were stacked one by one on the table in front of each of the young wizards.

With another wave, corresponding quills and ink also appeared next to the parchments.

"Study hard!" Dumbledore said with a grin, "The more stressful times like this the more you can't forget to study ah! Having these papers and pens will also help you kill some of your boredom."

Looking at the parchment and quill neatly placed in front of him, Ron's eyes widened and his expression fell into complete numbness.

...

Under Dumbledore's command, all the faculty members moved.

They carefully searched the entire Hogwarts Castle, not sparing a single corner, yet Sirius Black completely disappeared as if he had vanished into thin air.

"Actually, you didn't need to make the professors run around."

After Dumbledore personally searched the entire eighth floor, Dracula's figure suddenly appeared behind him.

Dumbledore turned to him with a searching gaze.

"Why do you want the professors to patrol back and forth when you know I can view the entire castle through the Hogwarts deeds?" Dracula asked with a frown.

"There are times when the work that needs to be done has to be done, even if you know that Sirius Black cannot be found." Dumbledore turned and smiled softly.

"The staff of the Ministry of Magic and those Dementors, but they're just waiting for us to slip up in our work so they can come in and take over Hogwarts!"

"If we don't do anything, not to mention that the Ministry of Magic will think that I'm not doing a good job as Headmaster, there's a good chance that there'll even be murmurs from the staff community. So with that said, Professor Dracula, this round of searches is quite necessary, whether or not they come to fruition." Dumbledore said.

"Tch, that's why I told you, people like you are a real pain in the ass, always getting hamstrung by a department like the Ministry of Magic that doesn't have much power at all." Dracula snorted, "So much bending and twisting, it's annoying to hear!"

"Sometimes it's not such a bad thing for a person to suffer from having some constraints." Dumbledore looked a little wistful and smiled, "Better leave it at that and tell us what you found on the deeds, Professor Dracula."

"If I had found something, would I still be idly flirting with you here?" Dracula bristled, "It's not just that I didn't find any useful information this time that I just looked up, I also checked the land deed once before using the time converter, and I didn't find any suspicious figure at all either ..."

"I roughly estimated that that time should almost coincide with the time when Sirius Black destroyed that portrait!"

"In that case, this Blake is really an interesting person, able to escape the heavily guarded Azkaban and sneak into the heavily protected Hogwarts Castle without being detected."

Dracula quirked a corner of his mouth with interest, not sure what he was thinking.

"Sirius did used to be quite a good wizard." Dumbledore nodded, "But I never thought he was capable of infiltrating Hogwarts and escaping Azkaban ... Perhaps I still know too little about him."

He sighed, holding his hands on the marble railing next to him, deep in thought.

"Actually, it's not as if we don't have a way to capture Sirius Black ..." Dracula said softly as he gave Dumbledore a thoughtful look in his eyes, "You do understand what I mean, don't you, Dumbledore? "

Dumbledore looked back in consternation and saw Dracula's thoughtful look.

"No!" He refused decisively, "That's not how the time converter is meant for us to use it!"

"But the time converter will allow us to find Sirius Black easily-" Dracula said tantalizingly, "just by hiding in front of the Gryffindor common room and waiting for the rabbit. "

"Don't you want to catch him and ask questions about what happened back then? Or ... don't you want the little wizards to return to the common room to sleep peacefully?"

Dracula's two questions hammered at Dumbledore's heart in succession.

There was no doubt that both questions were things that the old principal desperately needed to address right now.

His pale hand rested in his coat pocket, gently rubbing the time converter that Dracula had handed him only a short while ago, his mind hesitating.

"Don't hesitate, Dumbledore, do you want to wait until the five hours of maximum rewind time has passed and you have no chance to use it at all before you catch up with yourself?" Dracula urged.

Dumbledore unconsciously clutched the necklace of metal on the Time-Turner.

The cold temperature of the necklace gradually caused his eyes to drift a little, as if he had gone back to decades ago, clutching the cold Blood League tightly.

Dumbledore sobered abruptly at the thought of the Blood League.

"It's still not necessary, Professor Dracula." He smiled forlornly, "The rules are like a perilous wall holding me back from my fall, once broken, there's no way to put them back up."

He looked into Dracula's eyes and said softly, "Actually, there is no need to feel sorry. After all, the energy remaining amongst this time converter is also simply not enough for a great sorcerer to perform another time regression."

"Never mind, I should have thought of that." Dracula walked over to Dumbledore and similarly leaned on the railing next to the corridor, "You're a guy who seems casual, but is actually stubborn to the bone."

"Tell me, what are you going to do about the threat that is Sirius Black?" He asked, "Don't tell me something irresponsible like 'take one step at a time', I can't believe you don't have a backup plan."

"There's really no hiding it from you, Professor Dracula." Dumbledore said with a smirk, "I'm going to get James and Sirius' best friend from back in the day to help out, he's the one person who knows Sirius the best nowadays."

"I finally got in touch with him a while ago, he should be in Romania right now. It's quite a coincidence, it still seems to be your home turf there Professor Dracula!"