In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 361: Killing the Castle (2 in 1)

Hermione thought Jon was joking, and her face still had a paleness from overstress and fear.

"Blowing up Hogwarts? Well, that's certainly something worth discussing, but it's a good thing I managed to escape from the castle, there was a new version of Anti-Apparition Charm set up in that chamber by the Dark Lord, it took time for Fawkes to decipher it, and it's a good thing we didn't get caught by him in time at the last minute."

Hermione felt her whole body turn cold, her back was soaked in sweat, if Fawkes hadn't brought her back at the last second then she really would have been caught by the dark lord.

She hadn't forgotten what was important either and took the pouch she was carrying off her shoulder after that palpitation had eased over.

"I did it, Professor, I found that Slytherin Chamber of Secrets, only its entrance isn't in the location Mr Slytherin and you guessed it would be."

Jon and Dumbledore had sat back down, both of them silently not explaining to Hermione that the comment they had just made was no joke, but instead seriously trying to listen to what had happened to her in the castle.

"Oh? Not on the ground floor or in the Headmaster's office? Where was it then?"

"It's the Room of Requirement, Professor!" Hermione's eyes glowed as she looked over at Jon, "When we were at sea earlier, Jon told me about how when he was playing Randy's role in Hogwarts castle, he had initially made polyjuice potions in a room on the seventh floor of the castle, the Room of Requirement, a magical room hidden on the opposite side of a tapestry. That room was so magical that it could satisfy almost every personal requirement, so after a fruitless search of having Fawkes search through the Headmaster's office, I thought of this room, thinking that if it truly could be that magical, it would surely help me find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets as well."

Jon guessed by this time what Hermione was trying to say later.

"It turned out that even the Dark Lord himself was actually using the Room of Requirement to get into the Chamber of Secrets!"

"Right! I later learned from looking at the Marauder's Map that he had used this same method to get in. As you had analysed before, Professor Dumbledore, the Dark Lord was aware of Mr. Slytherin's willingness to help us, and he must have had to shift the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets from its original location, but since whoever built it must have known better than anyone else where it might possibly be shifted, the Room of Requirement must have become his target of shifting!"

Dumbledore mused in response.

"It's certainly a good choice, the Room of Requirement is very well hidden and while there's no guarantee that no one will know about it, it's almost impossible for anyone to associate that Room with the Slytherin Chamber of Secrets."

Even Dumbledore himself only learned about the Room of Requirement after Jon returned from Hogwarts Castle in his second year, and the wonders of the castle were not fully explored even by Dumbledore himself (going by the original Harry Potter, Dumbledore would have learned about the Room of Requirement only later during the Triwizard Tournament because he went to the lavatory).

"I found a lot of Ancient Runes in the Chamber of Secrets."

Hermione spoke of her haul, taking the piece of parchment she had used to take notes out of her pouch and handing it to Dumbledore.

"Time was very pressing, so that's all I could transcribe. Apart from that, there was a somewhat ghost-like dwarf tied underneath the statue of Mr Slytherin, although it was unconscious, and I was unable to wake him up no matter what I did. When the Dark Lord first came into the chamber, I hid in the secret passage that Mr. Slytherin had told me about, and by the time he left, and I came back out, the dwarf had disappeared."

Dumbledore's brow furrowed at some point as he looked at those ancient runes recorded on that parchment while listening to Hermione's accounts.

After Hermione had finished recounting all of her encounters in the castle, a silence fell over the Headmaster's office and only after a long time did a sigh from Dumbledore break the silence.

"We were correct in our guess, Salazar, he is planning to kill that castle, or rather, is already carrying it out."

Dumbledore's words sent an uproar through the wall that was filled with portraits of previous Headmasters!

"How dare he! To do so would be to erase thousands of years of British wizardry history!"

"And if he did, what would he gain?"

"Why does he try to kill Hogwarts by any means possible like this! Why not just rebuild a new school instead, why does he keep occupying the position of headmaster in name only like a clown?"

"Maybe he knows he can't get it, so he's about to simply destroy it? Leaving us with no chance of reclaiming the school at all?"

"That would just leave us completely without any hope or worries! The castle is dead, so what's the difference between using the Castle as a school and wagon as a school forever in the future!"

The Headmasters engaged in some heated condemnation and discussion, none of them apparently expecting Voldemort to actually dare to do this, even though there had been a certain amount of speculation amongst them beforehand.

Jon and Hermione, on the other hand, looked at each other in confusion.

Jon hadn't known at first what exactly Dumbledore was doing by asking Hermione to sneak into the castle at this time, and Hermione herself only knew what she was going to do, but had no idea what the point of doing so was.

Dumbledore clapped his hands gently, restraining the headmasters from making a ruckus.

"Don't get emotional just yet, he is indeed doing that right now, but that's good news as well isn't it? The fact that he still can't stay inside the castle for long now means that his plan hasn't succeeded and that the supposed killing of Hogwarts castle is just a futile attempt."

Yet Salazar, who had only recently been hung up on the wall, said with a serious look on his face.

"But we're not sure if he's trying to kill the castle itself while also establishing an authority of his own over this school."

"He wants to kill Hogwarts and rebuild it!" A shrill old man screamed up, and the other Headmasters looked furious.

"To kill and re-establish is to cut this castle completely away from us and make Hogwarts into something else!"

Dumbledore's fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop as if he was thinking about something, wavering over a certain issue.

And by this time, Jon could almost probably make out something that these Headmasters were talking about.

He remembered what Firenze had said to him in the Forbidden Forest, that after the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort, Hogwarts Castle had been constantly usurped, but that man's purpose had never been achieved, and the star that represented Hogwarts always shone brightly right above the castle in the sky.

So he recounted his encounter in the Forbidden Forest.

"Hagrid asked me to help look after his friends from his former job as a gamekeeper in the Forbidden Forest before I entered it for the tournament, and in the midst of this I met several Bowtruckle, a unicorn flock and a Granian named 'Hoss', and it was with their help that I was able to survive in the forbidden forest and solve the problems caused by the dragon's rampage. It was also during that time I met one other student from Hogwarts Castle."

Dumbledore repeated Jon's last words softly.

"A student from Hogwarts castle?"

"Yes, his name is Cedric Diggory, and he is one of the students in the Half-Blood House in the castle."

When they heard Jon mention the name, Hermione and Dumbledore looked at each other, surprise evident in their eyes.

Jon noticed their reactions as well and asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Have you guys heard this name before?"

Hermione explained to him.

"I had seen this person creep into the secret passageway on the fourth floor of Hogwarts and leave the school grounds on the Marauder's Map when I sneaked into Hogwarts castle in the middle of the night, and it was reported to Professor Dumbledore, who thought that this student could possibly be pulled to our side."

Jon nodded very seriously at this.

"He has indeed been unable to accept the oppression of the policies practised by the Dark Lord in Britain, yet has been unable to resist. A year ago, he inadvertently met the current chief of the Centaur tribe - Firenze - while they were still struggling to survive in the Forbidden Forest, and after learning about their difficult situation and the imminent danger of being driven to extinction, he willingly risked his life to help them and try to get them out of the Forbidden Forest, but they never found the right opportunity to do so. It was not until this Triwizard Tournament that the only Centaurs left were trapped in the valley by three dragons and nearly starved to death Cedric risked his life again to help them get out of the forbidden forest and meet me at that time."

"Hagrid had told me that there was a friend of his amongst the Centaur, so I agreed to Cedric's request and helped him to get the Centaurs out of that valley together. Firenze then made a plea to me to help with the dozen or so Centaurs who remained alive, and he hoped I could find Hagrid and convince Professor Dumbledore to get them out of the Forbidden Forest and relocate their youngs' out of Britain."

Jon then told them everything about that star representing Hogwarts Castle as well, leaving Dumbledore and the others in the portrait to fall into a moment of silence.

"The Centaur do have their unique way of astrological divination." The Headmaster, whose name was Dilys who had once been a St. Mungo's healer, said, "If they really did see this a dozen years ago."

Sirius' great-great-grandfather said with a dismissive look on his face.

"They were the ones who said they wanted to stay out of the filth between the wizards in the first place, Albus had already gone to the Forbidden Forest personally to persuade them that they should better leave from there even if they didn't want to offer help to either side, but what did the Centaurs say that time 'If any wizards do come to invade our lands, we'll show them who we are! You can't understand our courage, Dumbledore.' Haven't they said these? These are their own words, and now why are they changing their tune? Let us help them, won't that Firenze be ashamed when he says that?"

Dumbledore waved his hand.

"The Centaurs are a tribe, Phineas, not a community with a single consciousness, just as we and Riddle are both wizards, but we have equally different ideas. The Centaurs who decided to stay in the Forbidden Forest were a group who ruled that time, and Firenze, who is now asking for our help, is not from the same group as those Centaurs, he has always been friendly to the wizards. He also approached me specifically because he had divined that danger was coming, informing me even before Riddle had attacked the castle, so he is a friend of ours."

"So you're going to help them?" Phineas asked.

Dumbledore nodded.

"Of course, we're going to help them, Riddle removed the human rights of almost all half-human creatures to enforce the rule of the bloodline, all of them can become our friends too, and even without that, don't forget I said we were friends."

He made a point of emphasising the last sentence, finally concluding the matter.

Jon was not surprised by this, he had known from the start that Dumbledore would not give up on these Centaurs, no matter which direction he looked at it from.

Since Jon had brought the subject of the Forbidden Forest, it was natural for Dumbledore to ask about his condition in the tournament.

Jon told all about his experience.

"Thanks to Hoss being there, I was safe; if Hagrid hadn't asked me to look for him in the Forbidden Forest at the beginning, then maybe something would have happened to me at the start of the dragon riots."

Hearing him say Hoss's name, Dumbledore smiled.

"I know that Granian Pegasus, I was the one who handed him over to Hagrid in the first place. It was just a foal then, captured as a foal by a dark wizard who wanted to study the secrets about its speed magic from it, and later rescued by me. The physical irregularities you see in his body are the aftermath of being subjected to torment, and Hagrid educated him well, but at the time of our escape from Hogwarts Castle, Hagrid searched the entire Forbidden Forest but failed to find him, so in the end, he was not able to bring him out of the Forbidden Forest. I'm also glad he was able to give you all this help."

Jon also spoke about his own arrangements regarding Hoss.

"I sent him off to Hogsmeade's Hog's Head Inn to find Percival after I let him drop something in the castle, Hagrid will die of joy to see him afterwards."

Dumbledore crossed his arms in front of him, the look in his eyes becoming slightly puzzled.

"So we can actually be sure that it was Riddle and the group who were responsible for the riot of the dragons in this first task?"

Jon, however, became a little hesitant at this point.

"I was certain he did it without any other suspicion at all in the Forbidden Forest, but after he came up to me at the end of the first task and made those comments, I was a little unsure again, he really didn't seem the least bit disappointed, like he didn't care if I was dead or alive, which is unusual."

Dumbledore said softly.

"His thoughts are indeed elusive, but let's not forget the few purposes we listed for him at the beginning, what was the most crucial of them?"

Jon didn't hesitate; he remembered all along.

"His soul state is still unstable, and he needs some special means to bring himself back to full strength!"

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