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Chapter 215: Chapter 215 Long-lived rats

"Which," Professor McGonagall said in a shaky voice, "which throwaway fool wrote down all of this week's passwords and left them lying around?"

A silence fell upon the common room.

After a few moments the silence was broken by a very weak, frightened voice in the heavy air.

Neville Longbottom, his entire body, shaking from his head to his slipper-clad feet, slowly raised his hands.

"Lombardton, why did you write the password down on a slip of paper?" Professor McGonagall, exasperated, pursed her lips and questioned, "Don't you realize that this could easily lead to an unsuspecting person finding a loophole in the Gryffindor common room?"

"I-I know, but I can't remember ..." Neville was so anxious that he was close to tears, "I've had a bad memory since I was a child ... Sir Cadogan has to change it several times a day several passwords, I can't remember them at all."

Professor McGonagall shifted her gaze to the portrait in the doorway again.

"Don't look at me like that, ma'am." Sir Cadogan tapped his chest with his knight's sword and gave an odd salute, "As a knight, I of course have to do everything I can to keep the territory safe! I think changing the muzzle at any time will better guard this territory!"

"But, but why would you let in someone who is clearly not a student?" Professor McGonagall puzzled.

"Ah, as a knight, principles are important." Sir Cadogan said rightfully, "Since he was able to answer my password, it would be against the principles of being a knight not to let him in."

"What's more, how am I supposed to tell if he's a new professor?"

Hearing Sir Cadogan's argument, Professor McGonagall and the young wizards fell silent.

He said it as if it made sense, and they surprisingly had no way to refute it ...

...

Soon, Dumbledore also arrived in the Gryffindor common room that had been attacked.

Dracula, who was not in the habit of sleeping at night, was also quick to hear the commotion and came together to fly up.

He startled the young wizards present by entering the common room through the window where the owls had been delivering mail.

"There you are, Professor Dracula." Seeing Dracula's arrival, Dumbledore, dressed in a purple cotton nightgown, walked over and asked with a grave expression on his face, "Any sign of Sirius Black?"

Dracula cooperatively took out the deeds from his pocket and searched the entire castle inside and out, but did not find any suspicious figure.

"Not much to find." He shook his head.

Dumbledore also patrolled around the castle with a daemon and a tracing spell, then shook his head as well.

"I've searched all around the castle for miles, and there's no sign of Blake anywhere including the Black Lake and around the Quidditch pitch." He said.

"Strange ...," Dracula said with a slight frown of confusion, "It shouldn't have been that long since Blake left here, and with no way to use Phantom Transfiguration within the confines of Hogwarts there shouldn't have been any way for him to get out of our sight in such a short time to get out of our sight."

"Exactly, so I think he must have some way of being able to block our senses." Dumbledore nodded, "Or maybe he has a way to get out of Hogwarts range in a short amount of time."

"How about asking Professor Lupin?" Dracula asked tentatively, "He was friends with Sirius Black when he was at school, he might be able to tell something."

Dumbledore paled slightly and before he could say anything, another greasy voice came through the doorway of the common room.

"I'm afraid you won't get to see him today!"

The greasy voice appeared alongside the long, greasy hair at Dracula's side as Snape nonchalantly stepped into the Gryffindor common room, grinning disdainfully.

This Dean Slytherin's entry made the young Gryffindor wizards very unhappy, but seeing that both professors, the Headmaster and the Deputy Headmaster, had no comment, these students could only show some indignation on their faces and did not dare to express their direct opposition.

Snape looked condescendingly at those indignant little wizards, snorted, and continued:

"Headmaster, I remember telling you that this newly recruited colleague isn't very trustworthy. That wanted man could still butchered his way inside the castle, and might have even come close to getting it!"

"It was an oversight on my part to overlook the fact that Blake knew about Professor Lupin's weakness." Dumbledore said, then turned his head towards Professor McGonagall, "Minerva, it would be better if I trouble you to take the other professors and carefully inspect the entire castle."

Professor McGonagall nodded, and breezed away from the few people.

Dracula looked at Dumbledore and Snape in wonder, not quite understanding what these two were playing dumb, why he couldn't go to Professor Lupin today to ask about things, and what exactly Professor Lupin's weaknesses were.

Just then, he suddenly caught a glimpse of the sky outside the window.

In the middle of the night, a full full moon was peeking out from a mass of piled up clouds, shedding an empty moonlight.

Today is much more than Halloween ...

Full Moon Night.

Dracula suddenly remembered what kind of person he had been when he first met Lupin.

He was the werewolf who had been brought to Dracula's castle meeting room by several high-ranking vampires after that war with the werewolves and the shades in Romania.

A werewolf on the night of a full moon would transform into a wolf and lose his mind, and only a wolfsbane potion could keep a werewolf in his senses through the brutal night.

And Snape was afraid that he was the only wizard inside the whole castle who could refine the wolfsbane potion, plus he seemed to have some quarrels with Lupin back then, so there was nothing strange about this professor of magic potion knowing Lupin's real identity.

Sirius Black likewise knew that tonight was the night of the full moon, so he took this opportunity that Lupin would inevitably be unable to discover him to sneak into the Gryffindor common room.

But the question now was, after Sirius Black had gone through the trouble of sneaking into the Gryffindor common room, why was it Ron Weasley who attacked instead of Harry Potter?

Dracula turned his attention to Ron.

"Wait a minute, Weasley."

He called out to Ron, who was in shock and had wanted to go back to his dormitory to get a good night's sleep.

"What is it, Professor?"

"I'm here, Professor!"

"What's the matter, Professor?"

"Professor ..."

Fred, George, Percy, Ron and even Ginny Weiss came, all five fiery red-haired students turned back to Dracula at the same time.

Dracula: "..."

"It was Ronald Weasley I called, the other Weasleys can go back." The corners of his mouth twitch a little as he waves his hand at the other Weasleys except Ron, "Ron Weasley stay, I have some questions I need to ask you."

Ron pointed a finger at himself in surprise, and only after receiving an affirmative reply from Dracula did he come over the side of the stairs.

"Professor, you wanted to see me?" He asked in a raspy voice, his face still a little pale.

"Yes, Potter stay with us as well." Dracula pointed again to Harry who was not far away.

Ron came with Harry to Dracula's side, and seeing this, Hermione quietly followed suit and stood in front of the fireplace with her two best friends.

"Wes come on, think carefully about what happened." Looking at the three young wizards in their pajamas and looking dazed, Dracula asked Ron, "Did you see what Sirius Black looked like or what he was doing when you woke up?"

Upon hearing Dracula's question, the other young wizards, no longer sleepy, pricked up their ears and either sat on the couch in the common room pretending to study or stood on the steps in front of their dormitory doors eavesdropping.

They all wanted to know the details of this shocking event.

Ron also seemed to enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by people, his fearful face washed away quite a bit as he joyfully recounted:

"I was still asleep, and then I vaguely heard the sound of something being torn up, and thinking I was dreaming, I ignored him. But then there was another gust of wind through me, and then I woke up and saw that one side of the curtain by the bed had been torn off ..."

"Then I rolled over and saw him standing before me ... like a skeleton, with a great mass of dirty hair, and a great long knife in his hand, which must have been twelve inches long by my eyeballing ... He looked at me, and I looked at him. Then I screamed, and he got away."

"Got away?" Dracula raised an eyebrow, "He's a dangerous Death Eater, why would he flee because you screamed?"

"Yeah, Blake went to the wrong bed, why didn't he kill Ron to silence him and then move on to me?" Harry was confused about this as well, "What Blake did twelve years ago shows that he doesn't care about killing innocent people, and this time there were only five unarmed little wizards right in front of him, and four of them were still asleep!"

"Yeah, he clearly could have killed all five of us, how would that have left Harry out?" Ron chimed in.

Dracula fell silent, thinking silently.

Harry, on his end, was still racking his brain with reasoning.

"Blake must have known that if you called up and woke everyone up, he'd have a hard time getting out of the castle." He thought properly for a while, then said, "To get back through the hole in that portrait, he'd have to kill the whole house, and then he might also run into the professors ..."

"Wait, did Wes say before he came that ... your bed was turned upside down and several holes were punctured in the mattress?" Dracula asked, suddenly interrupting Harry and opening his mouth.

"Yeah, what's the problem?" Ron froze.

"I was wondering if it could be that it wasn't Potter that Blake himself was after, but something on Weasley?" Dracula guessed, "Wesley, do you have anything valuable or special?"

"No ... no I don't think so." Ron was filled with doubt, "My family never lets me carry anything valuable, I even have to wait until my dad hits the jackpot to change my wand."

He then suddenly exclaimed, "Oh yeah, my Spotty is missing, he must be freaking out ... By the way, Hermione, keep an eye on your cat, don't let it sneak butting into the men's dormitory and taking Spotty happen again!"

"Ron, it's in a cat's nature to catch mice, you can't be so selfish as to stifle Crookshanks' freedom!" Hermione disliked back defiantly.

"You're not the one who had to buy a cat over at the pet store!" Ron exclaimed, "I've had Bamm-Bamm for three years now, and it's only the semester you got a cat that he seems so shriveled up!"

"..."

Dracula subconsciously looked over at the ginger hybrid cat, Beaver, in Hermione's arms, and suddenly noticed something incongruous in the conversation the two had just had-

"Wes come on, are you saying ... you've had your mouse for three years?" He asked with a frown.

The lifespan of a rat was usually between one and three years, while most pet rats lived for two years.

A pet rat that had lived for three years was already considered quite long-lived.

"Yeah, before that Spotty was Percy's pet, but then when I came to school at Hogwarts Percy became Head of Grade and mom bought him a new owl ..." Ron sounded a little jealous, "and then Percy then gave Bamm-Bamm to me."

"Wait, you're saying that mouse was Percy's pet before?" Dracula's frown tightened.

"Yeah, I've always only been able to use my brothers' stuff, whether it's clothes, wands, textbooks, or pets ...," Ron said without rancor.

At this point, Dumbledore, who was also next to him, acutely realized the problem and came to Dracula's side.

"Professor Dracula, what do you mean ..." Dumbledore asked softly.

"Whether or not I'm overreacting, in any case, it shouldn't be too difficult to find a mouse." Dracula shook his head gently.

He lifted his own wand and nodded at Ron before reciting:

"Trace to Source (Avensegium)."

A tantalizingly yellow line appeared on the ground, connecting Ron's body at one end and extending all the way to the doorway of the common room at the other.

Ron looked at the tantalizingly yellow line uncertainly, thinking that Professor Dracula, who had never been much of a talker, was willing to personally help him retrieve his pet, and had a rather excited look on his face.

Unbeknownst to him, Dracula did want to find his pet, but had no intention of returning it to him ...

Burgundy light flowed through his eyes as Dracula's gaze traveled infinitely along the line, and then saw the end of its connection-

It was the path to the northeast of Hogwarts Castle, and a gray mouse was trying its best to crawl quickly towards the Forbidden Forest.

It wasn't fleeing aimlessly like a normal pet rat, but rather, as if it had a clear goal in mind, it was crawling straight towards the thickest bushes and the most suitable location for hiding.

"Interesting."

Dracula withdrew his gaze and slowly quirked the corner of his mouth.

He and Dumbledore looked at each other and nodded.

With that, both of them simultaneously disappeared from the Gryffindor common room and reappeared instantly on the path that the gray mouse had been advancing on.