Hogwarts: This professor is too Muggle.

Chapter 280 Someone Upstairs
The Phoenix Guardian flapped its wings and went back.

Melvin and Hagrid walked around the Forbidden Forest cabin, packed up their farm tools, closed the doors and windows, called to Tooth and Jolm, and together they walked along the path toward the castle.

Hagrid's hard-soled leather boots rustled on the woodland as he glanced at Melvin beside him.

The young professor wore a gray-brown trench coat, the collar slightly turned up to block the wind. He carried a kerosene lamp in his hand and had his wand in his coat pocket. He looked neat and composed, and his dark eyes gleamed in the night, ready to deal with any unexpected situation.

The experienced hunter, with decades of experience, nodded in satisfaction.

“I’ve already informed the centaur tribe and the unicorns. We don’t need to worry about the Forbidden Forest. If Blake wanders into the forest, the centaurs’ arrows and the unicorns’ horns will give him a good beating.”

"Professor McGonagall mentioned that since Quirrell hunted the unicorn, the centaur tribe has been patrolling at night and has not let their guard down for the past two years."

"Is such that……"

Hagrid continued walking and soon arrived at the shore of Black Lake. The mud on the shore was damp, and he waded through it, his feet sinking deep into the mud. The deep lake surface rippled gently, reflecting the moonlight.

Melvin, carrying a kerosene lamp, trailed behind Hagrid at a leisurely pace. The two walked on the lakeside ground, the moonlight casting long shadows of their different builds.

Melvin's attention was slightly diverted as he sensed the magic wafting from a distant direction. It was from wizards from all over the world who were reading news and chanting his name at night.

It's there during the day too, but there's too much noise during the day, so it's not as clear as at night.

Melvin couldn't actually pinpoint the source of each wisp of magic.

It's an ethereal feeling, drawing on overflowing emotions to grow magic. This process is slow and lengthy, like the height and weight of a student during puberty. Looking back after a few months, you might perceive obvious changes, but after ten days or half a month, there's almost no difference.

Yulm seemed to sense something, whispering in Yaya's ear, urging it to come closer to his trouser leg, unwinding the snake tail that was wrapped around the dog's neck, and then slithering up Melvin's trench coat, curling up into a ball, and shrinking into his pocket.

Its dark eyes narrowed slightly; after two months of roaming freely in the forbidden forest, it especially missed that feeling.

"...Black Lake may not seem as impressive as those rivers, but its depths are unfathomable, and the abyss even connects to the ocean." Hagrid continued surveying the lakeshore, his brow furrowing slightly as his gaze fell upon the reflections on the water's surface.

Dementors are inherently dark and inconspicuous, and even less so when they move through the clouds at night. The magic senses that they are above, but they cannot see them clearly. Only when their shadows pass by can the two notice these dark creatures.

Melvin thought for a moment, then tried to summon the Obscurial's magic to make the wisp of gray mist appear in his pupils.

Looking up again, the Dementors that had been floating and moving through the clouds immediately appeared.

In the vast expanse of night, sparse stars and the moon shone brightly, their light reflecting off the clouds and refracting to create a grayish-white hue with a faint fluorescent glow upon closer inspection.

His gaze locked onto the nearest Dementor, and he could vaguely glimpse its expressionless, empty face through the hood of its cloak.

His face was ashen and wrinkled, his dark eyes were empty, and he looked dazed and confused, like a slightly rotting corpse soaked in a stagnant pool.

Seemingly sensing their gaze, the cloaked, long-limbed Dementor turned its head and swooped down, floating directly toward Melvin and Hagrid.

As the distance closed and the view became clearer, the monster looked extremely thin, with only a few bits of flesh around its joints, like a tattered skin hanging on a skeleton. Its limbs and neck were thin and long, and it had no nose, only two empty holes, sniffing forward.

Melvin astutely noticed that the Dementors' target wasn't the more emotionally charged Hagrid, but rather they were focusing their attention on him, seemingly searching for the source of the Obscurial magic.

There seems to be a hidden connection between Boggart and Obscurus.

The cold mist clinging to the Dementors drew closer, and the temperature dropped rapidly. Hagrid shivered and tightened his mole-skin coat: "These Dementors have been guarding the door for so long, sniffing out the children's joyful mood all day long. They can never get a full meal. A starving beast is bound to lose control sooner or later."

Melvin nodded in agreement: "That's also why Dumbledore didn't want them in the school."

"Get out of here, you scum from the gutter!"

Hagrid cursed at the Dementors, but the Dementors remained unmoved, still floating on the lake, observing them from a distance.

Melvin narrowed his eyes slightly.

If he were alone, he would have simply packed it up and taken it back to his office to keep the Dementor company. Unfortunately, Hagrid is watching over it now.

It wasn't that they didn't trust Hagrid, but rather that half-giants weren't good at lying, and if the Aurors pressed them for details, they would easily reveal their secrets.

He sighed with some regret, waved his wand to release a silver mist, and drove the Dementors away.

"The Patronus Charm, how cool is that..." Hagrid looked up at the Dementors fleeing in disarray and clicked his tongue in admiration.

He was expelled from school in the third grade after his wand was broken. Although Dumbledore helped him repair the wand and disguised it as a pink umbrella, he never received formal magical education and only knew standard magic for lower grades.

The hunter's view of advanced spells like the Guardian Charm is like a farmer's view of knowledge from a university textbook—something the hunter greatly admires.

“Harry and the others have also been learning the Patronus Charm recently, you can practice with them.”

Hagrid was tempted, but then waved his hand, "No, I'm too stupid, I can't learn it." "Don't underestimate yourself, Hagrid," Melvin said. "Learning the Patronus Charm doesn't require extensive knowledge or a brilliant mind. This magic favors kind and righteous wizards; it requires happy and positive memories, which you have."

"Really?" Hagrid scratched his head.

"You might even be able to summon a giant Patronus. There's a precedent in the history of magic. Andros of ancient Greece was a master of the Patronus Charm, and his Patronus was a giant who repeatedly repelled attacks from swarms of groundbats and protected the city-state."

"I want to learn this!"

Hagrid grinned, his face full of surprise.

……

The path to the grounds was flanked by willows and greenhouses, and Melvin and Hagrid inspected the area from both sides.

On a late autumn night in November, water droplets condense on the tips of the willow branches. As the temperature drops, these dews freeze layer by layer, and you can see white frost when you wake up in the morning. However, the willow is not an ordinary tree; it will shake its branches to clear itself.

The greenhouse has several chambers. The first greenhouse for freshmen usually grows safe and harmless plants, while the greenhouse for older students has dangerous plants such as mandrakes, bubble pods, and poison tentacles, which make noise when bathed in moonlight at night.

It sounds a bit scary at first.

As Melvin passed the Whomping Willow, he noticed the knots on the roots. The Bowtruckle also lived on the tree, its leaves swaying as it slept, making the secret passage beneath the roots completely invisible.

Ya Ya stopped at a safe distance, glanced at the tree roots, and circled back and forth, seemingly struggling with whether or not to call them back.

Yulm also poked his head out.

“Let’s go, Mr. Filch is still waiting for us at the castle.” Melvin patted Tooth’s belly with his foot to calm the hound’s keen sense of smell, and casually asked, “Hagrid, do you know the secret passage in the school?”

"You're worried that Blake will sneak into the school through the secret passage, right?"

Hagrid spoke casually, completely unconcerned, "There are some secret passages in the school, all left over from before, but the exploration records of previous administrators have been kept quite comprehensive. Filch filled them in long ago, so there's no need to worry."

Melvin glanced back at the knots on the tree roots.

Come to think of it, Filch didn't know about this tunnel, but didn't Dumbledore and the others know? Why didn't anyone remind Filch when they were sealing up the secret passage?

……

"Mr. Filch, we've finished our patrol outside!"

In the quiet of the castle at night, Hagrid's rough voice carried far; it could be heard from the corridor in the courtyard before he even entered the foyer.

Melvin followed behind him, casually waving his wand to close the two outer doors, keeping the night and cold wind out.

Next to the foyer, turning right in the corridor, is Filch's office. The door is half-open, but when you push it open, there's no one inside; he seems to have left temporarily.

"He probably went to the bathroom..." Hagrid muttered to himself, and sat down in the chair.

Melvin looked around. The room was very small, with only a kerosene lamp that couldn't illuminate the whole room. There were no windows, and a faint smell of fried fish filled the air. The fireplace that connected to the kitchen made it fairly warm.

There were many wooden filing cabinets lining the walls, and a poster on the desk. Melvin glanced at it; it was an enrollment form for a fast-paced incantation correspondence course, targeting scammers who use duds to rip people off.

On the wall behind, there hung a set of shiny hinges and shackles.

"That was left behind by the previous administrator, Mr. Pring. In the past, when the administrator punished students, he would hang them upside down from the ceiling by their ankles or big toes. Arthur and Molly were punished like that when they were caught on a date at night..."

Hagrid chuckled. "Dumbledore forbade it after he became headmaster."

"This was the worst decision Dumbledore ever made!"

Filch came in from outside, carrying a kerosene lamp. "I just heard some noises on the stairs. I suspect some students came down from upstairs and Mrs. Lorris went after them."

He walked around the two of them and returned to the back of the desk. His gaze swept over the pink umbrella at Hagrid's waist, revealing a hint of envy. He sat down and saw the poster on the table, then immediately looked up at Melvin.

Melvin nodded in response, displaying a simple greeting between colleagues, seemingly unaware of anything amiss.

"Gentlemen, you should also begin your inspection of the castle immediately."

Filch calmly covered the poster. "If we can't catch Blake, at least we can catch a few troublemakers and make them clean all the school's washrooms!"

"Don't worry, once we catch Black, Dumbledore will never stop you from hanging him upside down from the ceiling." Hagrid downed his hot tea in one gulp, patted his behind, and got up.

(End of this chapter)