Volume 3: A Tombstone Stained with Sin and Blood Chapter 156 No Way Out
After Sirius was introduced to all the students in the school by Dumbledore at breakfast, he gathered with Lupin and Lily in a professor's lounge.
This was not the first time they had met since escaping from Azkaban. They had met privately last semester when Lupin had just come to the carriage to teach the defense course.
Their hatred is the most sympathetic, as these three people are the most direct victims of the ridiculous savior prophecy.
And now they reunited in the carriage, also for the sake of what happened in the past.
"If the person who sneaked into the carriage from the beginning was Wormtail, then he has only done two things so far. He persuaded the third son of the Weasley family to rebel and reported the location of the carriage to the Dementors."
Lupin was undoubtedly the calmest among them. He knew that if he wanted to find Wormtail smoothly, it would be best to understand his purpose of coming to the carriage first.
Lily said coldly.
"In fact, investigating why he came to the school will not help us at all. These orders must have been given to him by his master. It is very likely that he himself does not know why he did this. If we want to catch him, we can only rely on our previous understanding of him."
She looked at Lupin and Sirius.
"We all know that he is a very timid person. When he was in school, he was the one who dared not to violate the school rules in your small group. Later, he chose to betray, and a large part of the reason was that he succumbed to his fear of Voldemort."
In private, Lily unreservedly called the Dark Lord by his old name that no one dared to mention.
"So coming to this carriage was definitely not his own intention. He must have known that I have always been in this school, and that I wish to kill him with my own hands every day of my life. This was a strict order given to him by Voldemort, forcing him to obey!"
"With a forced mentality, even if he came to the carriage, he couldn't stay with us every day. Seeing me, Lupin and Dumbledore appearing in front of him all the time would scare him to death! If he wants to hide, he will definitely hide in a place where he basically doesn't see us every day."
"Before this, Dumbledore had already led us to conduct three inspections of the entire carriage, during which we also speculated whether the intruder was an Animagus. Dumbledore also performed a complete reverse transfiguration spell in the carriage to determine this possibility, but to no avail. This means that he found a place on the carriage that could be avoided, and this place also meets the previous condition. Normally, we would not notice it, and we would never go there."
Lupin was the calmest of them all, and Lily was undoubtedly the smartest of them all.
She had no idea about the intruder's whereabouts before because she had no information about this person at all. Now that she knew his identity and that he was one of the people she knew best, all her inferences became clear.
Sirius came to the carriage only a few times. He could hear that Lily's analysis made sense, but he still stared.
"So where is this place?"
Lily did not look at Sirius. She had always known that this wizard, who was closer to James than a biological brother, was just like his Animagus form, a stupid guy who was only suitable for receiving orders and then executing them.
Of the three people in the lounge, the only one she could consult with was Lupin.
"We usually have classes . There are many potion materials in the Potions class that I need to cultivate and store myself. After your Defense Against the Dark Arts class started this year, you also applied for permission from Dumbledore and found many empty classrooms to store some dark magic creatures. Therefore, we have been to almost every room in the carriage. Is there a room that we have never entered or rarely entered, and we never think of it on our own initiative?"
Lupin had been listening carefully to Lily's analysis. His eyes were thoughtful and his brows were unconsciously furrowed.
The atmosphere fell silent. Not only was Lupin thinking, but Lily was also recalling with a cold face, wondering if they had missed anything.
Sirius fidgeted in his chair a little anxiously. He couldn't help much at this moment and could only wait for Lily and Lupin to come up with a result after thinking about it.
Just when the lounge was quiet, there was a faint and somewhat messy sound of footsteps suddenly above their heads.
The sound of footsteps stunned Lupin and Lily, who were both lost in thought.
A gleam of light suddenly appeared in the eyes of both of them.
"That doesn't have to be a room!" said Lupin excitedly.
Lily's breathing also became noticeably faster. "You are the professor of Defense and History of Magic, and I am the professor of Potions and other elective courses. We can choose any room in the carriage as a classroom, but we will not use the most special one!"
Hearing the two of them talking like a riddle, Sirius became more and more agitated.
"Okay! Tell me now! Where is this place?"
Lupin and Lily turned to look at him and said in unison.
"Astronomy classroom!"
To be precise, there is no classroom for the astronomy class. This class requires students to observe the stars, and there is definitely no place suitable for this activity in the carriage. So when the carriage was exiled, Dumbledore cleaned up the space on the top of the carriage as the venue for the astronomy class.
Apart from classes, the only place where students are allowed to enter without permission is when Jon applied for permission from Professor McGonagall in his first year. Astronomy classes are basically held at night, and Flitwick, who is in charge of teaching astronomy, rarely goes there except during class. Not to mention Lily and Lupin, who have nothing to do with this course.
Moreover, during the first three searches, although the roof of the carriage was also involved, it was not the focus of the search. It is also possible that Dumbledore's reverse transformation magic did not detect this place!
After figuring out the key, Lily and Lupin didn't stay any longer. They turned around and prepared to leave the common room, but Sirius was faster than them and rushed out of the room as soon as they said the name of the astronomy classroom.
It was morning and most students were in class. There were only three of them in the corridor. They hurriedly walked towards the end of the carriage, then pushed open the door marked with an astronomy class sign, went up a spiral staircase inside, and finally reached the top of the carriage.
Although students are usually not allowed to come in here at will, Mag still has to arrange for routine cleaning work. The noise on the roof of the carriage that Lily and the others heard in the lounge just now was the sound made by the cleaning students walking on it.
The sixth-grade students who had no classes in the morning all looked at the two professors and the new security guard in surprise.
Lily said to them after she stepped onto the roof of the carriage.
"You don't need to do the cleaning work today, go back and have a rest."
The sixth grade students had no objections to this, even if they were confused. After they left the carriage, Lily and the others each drew their wands.
"Be careful. If you find him, don't let him get away."
They were standing on the top of a carriage as it traveled on a suburban road. Muggle cars were overtaken from time to time, but the drivers seemed to turn a blind eye to the fact that these vehicles should not have appeared on the roads in the late twentieth century.
The villages, towns and fields in the distance were constantly receding. Lily and the other two split into three directions and conducted a comprehensive search of the entire astronomy classroom.
Soon, an important clue was found at Lupin's location, and he called both Sirius and Lily over.
In front of him, there was a palm-sized piece of lifted floor, and under the floor was a recessed space that was less than half a square in size.
Judging from the marks on the edge of the broken wooden board, this place was obviously dug out not long ago. There was a layer of cashmere-like cushion at the bottom, and the cushion was covered with a lot of gray hair that was exactly the same as the one Jon found in the Charms classroom before. There were also a lot of dried chicken bones and nut shells around it.
After seeing this place, Lily and Sirius both held their breath involuntarily.
"He's been hiding here all along!" Sirius said through gritted teeth.
Lupin picked up the gray hairs from the cushions, muttering to himself.
"That's him... That's what he left behind..."
The closer it got to this point, the calmer Lily became. She stared at the dry chicken bones and other food residues, and spoke in a calm voice that was obviously deliberately suppressed.
"This is just the place where he used to hide. It looks like the garbage hasn't been cleaned up for at least a month. He hasn't been back here during this time!"
"But we can't rule out the possibility that he has completely abandoned this place." Lupin said as he cast a spell on the movable floor. "This can help us know whether he will come back later."
Then he restored the flap to its original state.
They found new evidence that Wormtail was in the carriage, but they still hadn't found out exactly where he was.
Lily's guesses were all correct, but Wormtail was obviously more cautious. This place in the astronomy classroom was probably just one of his three burrows.
Afterwards, they conducted a large-scale inspection of the entire roof of the carriage, but found nothing more, and finally had no choice but to return to the carriage.
The new clues found in the astronomy classroom gave Lily and her friends greater motivation. During the remaining days of October, they conducted a thorough inspection of other suspicious places on the carriage, but did not find any new clues.
This made them feel extremely uneasy, and none of them expressed the most likely guess - that Wormtail was most likely no longer in the carriage!
The search by Lily and the other two did not have any impact on the students in the school. During this time, Jon had been working hard to study the Patronus Charm. For some reason, he had a very bad premonition in his heart.
Even though the school is peaceful now and no other accidents have happened since the Dementor attack at the beginning of the school year, Jon always feels a little uneasy.
This uneasiness has its source. In this carriage, Jon can be said to be the person who is most familiar with Voldemort, who is now in a high position, except for Dumbledore. Even if he has become more rational, a person's personality rarely changes.
He is vindictive and scheming. In the first half of the year, he suffered the humiliation of having a piece of meat cut off from his own base. It is impossible for Voldemort to do only this.
It seemed that the weaker his counterattack was, the more Jon felt that there was a huge storm hidden behind it.
In the last week of October, five days before Halloween, Dumbledore suddenly called Jon to the headmaster's office in the evening.
The principal's office remained the same as before, but Jon sensed a different atmosphere. This unusual feeling came from the portraits of past principals on the walls.
When he came here before, most of the portraits would pretend to snore and secretly open their eyes a little to look at him, but now all the portraits are empty.
None of the people inside were left in the portraits, leaving only empty frames, and the entire wall looked like a picture frame store displaying its wares.
"Perhaps the current situation is the most critical since the fall of Hogwarts Castle seven years ago, Jon."
Dumbledore looked at John deeply. Without any extra words, he went straight to the point and told John a piece of news that was like thunder in his ear.
Even though he had been warned in his heart, Jon still looked at him in a daze.
"Professor... I don't understand... Have we been surrounded by the Dark Lord's men without knowing it?"
Dumbledore's voice was calm, but it was precisely because of this difference from usual, this inexplicable calmness made people feel more uneasy.
"If we are surrounded, we just need to find a way to break out of the encirclement. Even if the Dark Lord comes in person, I am confident that I can contain him and let the Order of the Phoenix take them to continue to escape. But the current situation is that we have nowhere to go."
He pulled out a newspaper full of French from the side of his desk and placed it in front of Jon. On the newspaper, there was a determined witch raising her fist towards the camera.
Knowing that John couldn't understand the French, Dumbledore directly read out the headline of the newspaper.
"[The temporary parliamentary meeting is held ahead of schedule and will decide the future of the French magic world on October 25th]"
