Chapter 479
Hunger
Chapter 479 Hunger
The morning sun was warm but not scorching, and accompanied by a gentle breeze, it made the small garden particularly pleasant. Pink, white, purple, and red roses were blooming in all their splendor, with layers of petals spreading freely, showing a vibrant vitality.
The young man in hospital gown sat on a bench in the garden, looking at the scenery in front of him with a hint of nostalgia and confusion in his eyes.
The gray-haired father stood beside him and leaned over to ask with concern: "How do you feel? Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere?"
The young man smiled and said weakly, "Dad, I'm fine. I'm just a little tired."
"Let's go back to the ward if we are tired." The mother, who also looked tired, tried to smile and said, "These flowers will bloom for several days. Let's come back to see them tomorrow."
"Then let's go back." The young man stood up with the support of his parents, slowly walked out of the garden, and suddenly said, "I feel like eating hot pot."
"Okay." The mother choked up, wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and said, "When you get better, we'll go eat hot pot, barbecue, and everything you want to eat."
"Okay, let's eat them all!" The young man took two steps and suddenly said, "If I... I don't have the chance, then you guys go eat all the delicacies for me, that's fine too."
"What nonsense are you talking about?" The father said sternly, "The doctor said your condition is not serious. As long as you cooperate with the treatment, you will gradually get better. You must hold on. Do you hear me?"
"I heard it, I heard it..." The young man dragged out the tone and said helplessly: "It's just talk! Dad, you are so serious. Why are you so serious?"
"Mr. Grey! Mr. Weed Grey!"
——What’s your name?
Oh, you're calling me...
Wade, who was leaning against the garden pillar, moved a little. He knew someone was calling him outside, but he didn't want to leave just like that.
He pretended not to hear and followed the three people for a while, listening to them talking about the young man's travel plans after his recovery. They looked so hopeful, as if their dreams could really come true.
Suddenly, Wade heard a vague voice that seemed to come from across a wall.
"I'm sorry, Master." The Rubik's Cube puppet said, "If this doesn't work, we can only call Dumbledore."
——Dumbledore?
This name dispelled Wade's idea of dawdling any longer. Just as he was about to walk out the door, he suddenly felt as if he had been electrocuted. His whole body twitched and he instantly sat up from the bed, gasping for breath.
"Great, it really works!" Zoe cheered. "Zoe thought Mr. Gray had been knocked unconscious by some dark magic! It's great that he woke up!"
Vader: “…”
Seeing that his master was exuding the low pressure of being forcibly awakened, the Rubik's Cube did not dare to take credit for it. It stretched out its mechanical claws, grabbed the other puppets with a few "clicks", and quickly jumped back to the closet space.
Wade stared at their backs silently, his teeth chattering.
"Mr. Grey, hurry up and pack." Zoe tugged at Wade's sleeve and said, "Otherwise we'll miss the train."
Vader exhaled slowly and said, "Thank you, Zoe. I'll be fine soon."
By the time Wade finished washing up, the hardworking house-elves had already helped him send all the boxes to the train. Wade was too lazy to catch the carriage outside the castle. He said goodbye to Zoe and the other house-elves, then folded up the wardrobe space, opened the window, and turned into a peregrine falcon and flew out.
The Hogwarts Express stopped at the platform. Many students had already boarded the train, and carriages were also arriving from the school.
Wade flew around and was about to find a secluded place to transform back into human form when he saw the window of a compartment was open. Michael was lying by the window, waving at him.
Wade folded his wings and swooped over. Michael quickly dodged to the side, and the next moment, the peregrine falcon flew through the window and turned into a familiar classmate.
"If I had known, I would have called you when I left."
Michael couldn't help laughing when he saw the tufts of hair sticking out of Wade's head. He said, "I thought you were studying alchemy somewhere, or you were going to see Dumbledore for something. It turns out you just overslept."
Wade scratched his hair twice, sighed and said, "I had a very long dream last night."
"It seems like it was a super good dream that made you reluctant to wake up?" Michael said casually while sitting in his seat and taking out his pet puppet to pass the time.
Wade was stunned for a moment, feeling melancholy and forgetting to speak.
The door of the box was pushed open with a bang. Before Theo came in, a voice came over: "Harry didn't see Wade this morning. He has to go back to his Muggle aunt's house for the summer vacation. I think Wade is still in school. Should I tell the professor..."
He had already seen Wade, but the inertia of language still made the last word float out of his mouth: "... one sound."
Then Theo responded, "Ved? You left early this morning?"
"No, this guy overslept and just flew here in a hurry." Michael laughed.
Vader raised his hand in greeting.
"Fortunately, we didn't miss the train." Ryan closed the door of the compartment, sat down with Theo, and said, "Otherwise, we might have alarmed the professor."
"Why would I be afraid of disturbing the professor?" Michael said proudly, "Which professor doesn't like my Wade?"
Several people laughed.
The train blew a long whistle, then slowly started to move away from the station, and the Hogwarts castle gradually disappeared from sight.
"I heard that Professor Troca also resigned. Is that true?" Leitch asked.
"It's true," Michael said. "I overheard him telling Professor Flitwick this morning that he was only going to take over Professor Abigail's job temporarily, and that he was only going to teach for half a term."
"Will Professor Abigail come back next semester?" Theo asked hopefully.
"Probably not." Michael shrugged. "It is said that Professor Dumbledore has already decided on the candidate for the new professor, and he will be a very powerful wizard."
"I just hope he stays longer," Theo said wistfully. "It feels like our Defense Against the Dark Arts professors are changing faster and faster."
"But it's getting better, isn't it?" Michael said optimistically, "Don't worry, Dumbledore will definitely make arrangements."
Suddenly, he noticed that someone in the cubicle was unusually silent, so he took the initiative to ask, "Ved, what are your plans for the holiday? Do you want to watch the World Cup together?"
Wade came back to his senses and said, "I have to visit someone first... and then if there is time, I will probably watch the World Cup final." "If possible, I don't want to miss a single game." Michael said, "My dad bought a whole set of tickets! This summer, I basically live around the stadium!"
Theo and Ryan were both a little envious, as they each had other plans at home and wouldn't be able to go to the game until the end of June.
Several people talked about each participating team in detail, discussed the famous players and past records, and speculated which team would win the final championship.
Recently, the Daily Prophet has been reporting on the World Cup, and intelligence on all the teams has been listed. Several people took out newspapers from their bags and pointed at the text on them to strengthen their arguments.
The excited discussions around him seemed to gradually fade into a noisy background. The stone necklace in his pocket felt heavy. Wade looked at the distant mountains, and somehow his eyes became slightly moist.
He resisted the urge to take out the necklace and enter the corridor again. Instead, he opened a candy and threw it into his mouth. He crunched the candy into pieces. The sweetness slowly spread in his mouth, stimulating his brain to release a thin layer of dopamine.
……
In the cold sea, a tall fortress stood on an isolated island. From time to time, creepy voices could be heard from the heavy iron walls.
Whispering, groaning, screaming, crazy laughter, sobbing and crying, the prisoners' voices intertwined together, mixed with the shrill sound of the wind, forming a noise that was almost maddening.
Bullock is an official of the Ministry of Magic who is responsible for prison management and maintaining the magic barrier. He can leave after three years. Now he only has one and a half years left on the island, but Bullock already feels like he is going crazy.
The man shoveled two shovels of coal into the fireplace, then huddled in front of the fireplace with his coat tightly drawn up, staring blankly at the jumping flames.
In such an environment, time seemed to have lost its meaning. After an unknown amount of time, a flash of lightning suddenly broke through the darkness, followed by a rumbling thunder.
Bullock shuddered and looked outside through a palm-sized hole in the wall. He saw densely packed black figures dancing ghostly in the sky illuminated by lightning, bringing a chilling chill even from a long distance.
"Dementors... Why did these Dementors come back so soon?"
Bullock's heart began to beat wildly unconsciously. He rushed to the wall quickly, grabbed a joystick, and stared nervously at the Dementors flying in the sky.
Thunder rumbled, lightning snakes flashed, and the figures that appeared and disappeared in the sky that was sometimes bright and sometimes dark seemed even more terrifying.
The joystick in Bullock's hand was the most powerful guarantee for him to stay in this place - a long time ago, when the Dementors became the guards of Azkaban, the Ministry of Magic set up a powerful magical mechanism here.
In this room that Dementors cannot enter, as long as the jailer drops the joystick, extremely powerful magical energy will instantly erupt around Azkaban, and even if the Dementors do not die, they will be seriously injured.
As Bullock swallowed nervously, he suddenly saw a carriage approaching from the sky, with the familiar flag and emblem of the British Ministry of Magic hanging on it.
Bullock breathed a sigh of relief and quietly let go of the joystick in his hand. He waited until the carriage landed on a nearby platform and a wizard jumped out of the carriage before he opened the door of the management office.
The wizard rushed into the management office in the rain, then patted the water droplets on his body and complained: "This damn weather, these damn Dementors! Thank Merlin, my hard work is finally over!"
He pulled a roll of parchment from his pocket, handed it to Bullock, and said, "Hand it over! According to the Ministry of Magic's orders, the search for these monsters is over, and they are to return to Azkaban."
Bullock unfolded the parchment, carefully examined the seals and magic on it, and asked casually, "Has the escaped prisoner been caught?"
"No! We didn't find any of the three mice! These Dementors are totally useless! They even attacked passers-by several times, causing us a lot of trouble."
Speaking of this, officials from the Ministry of Magic complained: "If you ask me, this decision is simply stupid! It requires the prisoner to be caught, but also requires that he cannot get close to the crowd - is the prisoner standing in the open field waiting for us to catch him? Peter Pettigrew's Animagus transformation is so convenient, he must be hiding in the city's sewers!"
His resentment was so thick that it almost became tangible, making Bullock, who had been suppressed all day, feel a little bit of superiority.
He said, "Aren't you looking for that Mo Mo Ran? You've finally found this one, right?"
"No, they made a false alarm once, and then they just drifted all over England. For a while, they even wanted to go across the sea! Fortunately, I stopped them quickly! I think they just wanted to escape!"
The Ministry official cursed for a while and asked, "Are you done? Send these monsters in, and I should leave!"
Hearing that he was leaving, Bullock, who had just felt better, felt uncomfortable again. He hesitated and checked the handover order three or four times, and asked again: "Since nothing was caught, how can the mission be over?"
"Of course it's because of the World Cup! Wizards from all over the world are coming to watch the game, so how can we allow a bunch of happiness-sucking monsters to run around? The game started on the 15th, and the Ministry of Magic didn't drive the Dementors out of the island until the 14th. It was already very late!"
The official urged him several times, and Bullock finally completed the handover and watched the grumpy official get into the carriage as if escaping. The Pegasus let out a long neigh, pulled the carriage and ran into the sky.
Bullock stood in front of the small window, watched the carriage leave, and sighed deeply.
He waved his wand, sealing off the management room, then shuffled back to the fireplace, wrapped in a black sheepskin blanket like a large coal.
……
The number of Dementors in the prison suddenly doubled. After a few months of "good days", the prisoners began to wail. Then, with the creaking and sucking sounds of the Dementors, the huge prison gradually became quiet, and in the end, only faint groans and cries were left.
The Dementor wearing the ring floated past one prison after another, and finally stopped in front of the deepest prison.
Inside the iron bars, a disheveled woman looked over with a sinister and crazy gaze. She was squatting on the ground, swaying from side to side, as if she had gone completely crazy. When she saw the Dementors, she was not terrified like the other prisoners, but instead grinned with a hideous smile.
The Dementors stood in silence for a moment.
It remembered that it had come to find this woman - Bellatrix Lestrange... but why her?
After thinking for a while with his not-so-bright head, the Dementor came to the conclusion: Maybe it was to prevent her from escaping from prison?
After all, there are only a few prisoners who have not gone crazy after being locked up for more than ten years, and they are all highly dangerous elements in the magical world.
The Dementor opened his mouth and took a slow, long breath. Something extremely subtle and invisible flowed into his mouth along with the air.
Bella made a gurgling sound in her throat, and she struggled to hold on to the floor, as if trying to stop something. After a moment, she rolled her eyes and fainted.
The Dementor thought that the prisoners in the next cell should not be ignored, so it floated to each cell one by one, and soon everyone was quiet.
The Dementor stood blankly in the middle of the corridor, its body still seemingly filled with intense hunger, desire, and resentment. It did not get satisfaction from the feeding just now.
It can never be satisfied.
(End of this chapter)