The Prisoners of Hogwarts

Chapter 250 Encirclement Under the Moonlight

Chapter 250 Encirclement Under the Moonlight (4.6K) (2/2)

During the second week of Hogwarts' Magical Creatures Protection class, an accident occurred when the newly appointed professor Hagrid was introducing the hippogriff to the students.

During their interaction, Draco Malfoy failed to show sufficient respect for these proud creatures and was attacked by one of the hippogriffs named Buckbeak, resulting in an arm injury.

In fact, Hagrid originally planned to show these magical creatures, which he considered "cute little things," to his beloved students during the first week of school.

However, on the second day of school, he received direct instructions from Headmaster Dumbledore.

The previous day, a serious incident occurred on the Hogwarts Express train departing from London, in which Dementors attacked students, particularly targeting Harry Potter.

This overstepping of boundaries drew strong protests from Hogwarts.

Headmaster Dumbledore strongly demanded that the Ministry of Magic immediately and strictly control all Dementors stationed around the school, clearly define and narrow their boundaries of activity, and never allow similar incidents threatening student safety to happen again.

Given that Hagrid was the most experienced and trustworthy person in Hogwarts in dealing with all kinds of strange and dangerous creatures, Dumbledore personally appointed him to represent the school to liaise with Ministry of Magic officials and the Dementor team to ensure that the new boundary agreement was implemented.

This work was crucial and took several days, directly causing Hagrid's Magical Creatures Conservation class to be postponed until the following week.

One can imagine that Hagrid, feeling a sense of responsibility after completing an important mission and excited to show his students the "cute little ones," eagerly introduced the hippogriffs to them in the second week of class.

His intention was to showcase the beauty and nobility of these creatures and teach students how to interact with them properly. Unfortunately, Malfoy's dismissive attitude and Hagrid's potential negligence in security management led to this accident.

On the evening of the day the accident occurred, as dusk deepened, Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked through the fading light to Hagrid's small hut, where a faint light shone through.

When they knocked on the door, they saw Hagrid slumped over his huge wooden table, his massive figure looking unusually listless in the dim light.

His eyes were red and swollen, and on the table lay several crumpled letters of explanation to Dumbledore, soaked with tears, next to a bucket of almost untouched rock cakes and a pot of cold tea.

"It's over—it's all over—" His voice was hoarse and nasal. "They—they're definitely going to fire me! I've really made history—there's probably never been a teacher who's been fired after just one class—"

"Hagrid, this isn't your fault!" Harry said urgently, trying to comfort him. "It's Malfoy's own fault for not listening to you! You repeatedly emphasized respecting them!"

"Yes, Hagrid," Hermione added softly, "we can testify that it was Malfoy who provoked us."

"But he's still a child! He's injured!" Hagrid suddenly rubbed his nose with his filthy handkerchief and made a loud, horn-like sound. "Headmaster Dumbledore trusted me and made me a professor—but I messed it up—I always wanted to show you the best and the rarest things—" His voice choked up again.

The three men surrounded him, trying to offer words of comfort, but Hagrid was so consumed by self-blame and grief that he could barely listen.

Hagrid was only awakened by the darkness outside the window when it was completely dark and there was only the twinkling light of the distant castle windows.

He suddenly raised his head, a hint of alertness flashing in his red and swollen eyes, his previous dejection replaced by a more urgent feeling.

"Merlin's Beard! It's so late!" he grumbled, leaping from his chair with a gust of wind from his massive frame. "You three! Get back to the castle now! Quickly!"

He flung open the door of the hut without a word, and a blast of cold night air rushed in. Hagrid pointed to the thick darkness outside, his tone stern and unyielding: "After dark, the area outside the castle becomes the patrol zone for those Dementors! They don't care who you are, and they don't listen to reason! Go back immediately, and don't linger outside! Do you hear me?!"

He wanted to say something more, but his gaze warily swept over the possible shadows lurking in the distance. In the end, he simply gave Harry and the others a heavy shove and urged, "Hurry up! Head straight back to the Gryffindor tower! Don't make me worry anymore!"

The three of them were practically driven out of the cabin by Hagrid. Behind them, the door of Hagrid's cabin slammed shut, and they could still faintly hear his heavy sigh.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood outside Hagrid's hut, and the damp, cold night wind made them all shiver.

They glanced at each other, seeing helplessness and worry in each other's eyes, but there was really no better way at the moment, so they could only return to the castle.

They wrapped their robes tighter around themselves and almost ran towards the brightly lit entrance hall of the castle.

The gravel path underfoot rustled softly in the silence, further emphasizing the surrounding darkness and emptiness.

Just then, Harry's gaze inadvertently swept over the edge of the woodland, its eerie outline etched by the rising moonlight, and as he saw the stone path leading into the Forbidden Forest, a thought flashed through his mind like a match struck in the darkness.

"Wait!" Harry stopped abruptly, lowering his voice, his tone tinged with a sudden, excited relief. "Uncle Lynch! We can go find Uncle Lynch! He—he always has a way, and he knows a lot of influential people at the Ministry of Magic and even—and elsewhere. He might be able to help Hagrid!"

Ron and Hermione also stopped.

Hermione's eyes lit up in the darkness, clearly finding the offer far more reliable than Hagrid's brooding state.

"This—this might be a solution, Harry. Asking Professor Lynch for help is indeed a good idea."

"That's right!" Ron immediately agreed, as if grasping at a lifeline. "My mother said Professor Lynch himself is a big shot! His intervention can definitely help Hagrid get through this crisis!"

However, before their nascent plan could be broken down into concrete steps, Hermione's gaze was suddenly drawn to something in the distance above the Forbidden Forest, and her face instantly paled: "But this isn't the time to talk about this! We have to go back immediately!"

Her voice was hurried.

Harry was puzzled by Hermione's sudden strong reaction: "What's wrong?"

"She's right, Harry," Ron's voice trembled slightly as he pointed to the sky above the Forbidden Forest, illuminated by the pale moon. "Look—look over there!"

Harry looked in the direction he was pointing, and his heart sank. In the night sky at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, several blurry figures draped in tattered black robes were silently gliding by, like a flock of ominous black birds, circling and dancing in the moonlight, their presence making even the moonlight seem colder.

A familiar, bone-chilling cold seemed to emanate faintly even from this distance.

"Go!" Harry shouted without hesitation.

The three immediately turned around and sprinted towards the warm, bright, and safe entrance to the castle at an even faster pace than before, leaving the cold night and the dark shadows patrolling the air far behind.

As they rushed breathlessly through the castle's heavy gates, the warm air and familiar scent instantly enveloped them, dispelling some of the chill from outside.

They then bent over, panting, and looked back at the area shrouded in night, still shaken.

"Merlin's beard! They didn't follow!" Ron patted his chest, panting heavily. "Thank goodness—thank goodness they're still guarding the line—"

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief, smoothing her wind-blown hair, her tone filled with the relief of surviving a close call: "It seems that Headmaster Dumbledore's negotiations with Hagrid, and the ancient magic of the castle itself, really worked. They currently dare not, or cannot, cross the boundary into the castle grounds. This is truly a stroke of luck amidst misfortune."

However, Harry's gaze was fixed on a few blurry, moving black dots in the distant night sky.

He noticed that the Dementors didn't linger around the castle's perimeter; instead, they seemed to be drawn by something unseen, drifting silently in groups towards the depths of the Forbidden Forest.

That direction ————

"Look," Harry frowned, his voice tinged with uncertainty, "the direction they went—doesn't it look familiar?"

Ron squinted at them: "The Forbidden Forest is so big, who knows where they'll go looking for fun."

But a doubt crossed Harry's mind.

That direction, if he remembered correctly, seemed to be roughly the location of Uncle Lynch's white stone house.

This thought made his heart tighten slightly.

However, he immediately remembered that Ron and Hermione were still around, and they were already very scared. Making this unfounded guess would only increase their panic.

"Maybe I'm just seeing things," he said to himself.

Moreover, even if it were true—Uncle Lynch wasn't afraid of Dementors at all.

Although he was unconscious at the time and did not witness it firsthand, a scene was deeply imprinted in his mind afterward from Ron and Hermione's excited recounting: Uncle Lynch and Professor Lupin standing side by side, silver and invisible forces intertwined, driving away the monsters that brought despair.

"That's right," Harry thought. "If those Dementors really dare to mess with him, then he won't be the one who suffers."

Thinking of this, the slight unease that had just arisen in Harry's heart vanished.

"Maybe," he ultimately didn't voice his guess, but simply echoed Ron, turning and leaving the doorway. "Let's go, hurry back to the common room, I'm freezing."

The three of them didn't linger. They walked briskly along the familiar corridor toward the warm and safe sanctuary of the Gryffindor Tower, leaving behind the unsettling shadows above the Forbidden Forest and the chill of the night.

As for the plan to seek Lynch's help, that can only be left for tomorrow, to be discussed in the open.

As Harry and his friends disappeared through the castle gates, the scene deep within the Forbidden Forest was a stark contrast to the warmth and tranquility of the castle.

Lynch's simple, white stone house stood quietly under the cool moonlight.

At the ridge of the stone house roof, a tall figure stands against the wind.

Lynch had shed his usual suit jacket, wearing only a well-fitting white shirt, a silver-gray vest, and a tie that was meticulously tied.

He rolled up his shirt sleeves, casually put his left hand in his suit trouser pocket, and let his right hand hang naturally at his side, his posture as relaxed as if he were simply admiring the night view.

However, in stark contrast to his composure was the "visitor" directly in front of him.

—A Dementor, exceptionally tall and dressed in tattered black robes, was hovering silently.

Its face, completely hidden in the shadow of its hood, was facing Lynch, its rotting, scabbed hands hanging limply at its sides, motionless.

There seemed to be an invisible boundary between the two, and even the air seemed to have stopped flowing.

Even more unsettling was the night sky above the stone house—where thirteen or four Dementors were slowly circling.

Their tattered black robes, under the moonlight, resembled a torn curtain of night. As they slowly and rhythmically swirled, the cloth-like sleeves fluttered silently.

Their tracks intertwine and overlap, like an ominous black roulette wheel slowly turning.

Lynch raised his gaze, looking past the nearby "visitors" and towards the distant horizon.

There, the moonlight barely penetrated the gaps in the clouds, illuminating more blurry figures in black robes—they were converging from all directions, passing through the treetops and over the hills, like a flock of vultures drawn by carrion, silently and persistently gathering towards the stone house.

The surrounding temperature had dropped to freezing point, and the chirping of insects and the vitality that a summer night should have completely disappeared, replaced by a bone-chilling cold and an absolute silence that pressed against the eardrums.

The dark shadows hovering in the night sky made no sound, but their very existence was enough to turn the sky into an invisible prison.

Lin Qi stood at the center of this silent vortex, seemingly oblivious to the chill that could freeze one's soul.

His gaze calmly swept over the slowly moving shadows in the air, finally settling back on the Dementor standing motionless in front of him.

A faint smile seemed to curve at the corners of Lin Qi's mouth, as if confirming some expectation, or as if silently mocking the whole bizarre scene.

He calmly gazed at the Dementor hovering in front of him, a scrutinizing look in his deep eyes.

Under the protection of the Soul Armor, he could not feel the despair unique to Dementors, only a slight chill from them.

What was deadly to other wizards was nothing more than a magical creation with a special form in his eyes, posing no threat whatsoever. In fact, he had sensed the Dementor's unusual approach the moment the sun sank below the horizon.

Unlike its kin who lingered on the border, it crossed the forbidden forest with a clear purpose, heading straight for the stone house.

This unusual behavior piqued his interest, so he went to the rooftop ahead of time to wait for this unexpected guest.

To his surprise, the Dementor did not show any aggression upon arrival.

It neither tried to absorb his emotions—a futile attempt—nor did it do anything else; it simply hovered there silently, "watching" him with the nothingness hidden beneath its hood.

Even more strangely, as time went on, other Dementors began to gather from all directions, slowly circling above the stone house, as if waiting for something.

The Dementor in front of them remained in its original still posture, like a black sculpture under a levitation spell.

Lynch waited patiently.

He was very curious about the purpose of this strange creature, which was described in many records as being almost dominated by instinctual desires, coming here.

Is it merely an attraction drawn by the alluring scent within one's own soul?

I'm afraid not...

Just then, the strange Dementor in front of him moved, slowly drifting towards Lin Qi.

Lin Qi stood still, motionless, letting the strange creature approach to a distance where he could almost feel the aura of death emanating from it.

At this extremely close distance, he could clearly see that the cloak was not completely empty; there was something deeper than darkness surging within, like solidified shadows, or like the embodiment of countless whispers, appearing and disappearing beneath the tattered black robe.

The moment the Dementor made the inhalation motion, Lynch keenly sensed something amiss.

This is not the kind of greedy, predatory ability that devours happiness and hope; rather, it is more like a cautious act of confirmation, like a sommelier gently inhaling the aroma of a fine vintage wine, careful and restrained.

The sound of his inhalation carried a certain tentative quality, as if he were searching for some specific trace.

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