336 Chapter 335 Breaking In (2 in 1)

In some cases, the night would not be the best time to cover one's tracks.

Even when Voldemort was not in Hogwarts Castle, he still kept the place well guarded, with Aurors guarding the entrances almost 24 hours a day.

Especially after dark, when a curfew was enforced throughout the castle, the strictest security measures were enforced by the Aurors and Professors stationed inside the castle at Voldemort's behest.

Anyone found suspicious during the night patrols could be directly dealt with, regardless of whether they would stay alive or dead.

The secret passage that led from the Honeydukes sweet shop cellar to the one-eyed hump-backed old witch statue on the third floor of the castle, a passage that had been discovered by Barty Jr. as well as Snape and others when Jon had fled with Hanton and the group last year, had now also been completely demolished.

In addition to this secret passage, there are of course several other secret passages marked on the Marauder's Map which is still available, such as the one that leads off-campus behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy.

But no one could be sure that it is safe to use them, and so for the sake of safety, Fawkes simply followed Hermione's side.

Moreover, darkness is not a very good cover for a phoenix.

Hermione stared at the top of one of the towers on the easternmost side of the castle on the Marauder's Map, one of the three tallest towers at Hogwarts, the others being the one on the westernmost side of the castle, the tower that had once been the Ravenclaw House common room, and the tower that had formerly been occupied by Gryffindor House.

The other two towers were now abandoned and used as sundry storage rooms, and only the Astronomy Tower is still in use, only it is still mid-afternoon, so no astronomy classes would be held at this time, so the Tower is quite empty and there is no one up there.

And there were hardly any other classrooms in the area where it was situated, so it would take at least five minutes for the nearest group of students in the class to get to the tower at the quickest possible speed, and even if there was an accident, five minutes would be more than enough for Hermione to deal with the trouble.

"Why don't you let me come with you? I'm a ghost, and I've been a part of this castle for thousands of years, no one knows more about it than I do, I could be of a lot of help to you!" Lady Grey said with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

Hermione made sure she hadn't missed anything and finally looked through the entire Hogwarts castle again to see if the dark lord really no longer was inside by looking at all the names.

"I don't need any of your help ma'am, if you really want me to do you a favour then it would be best for both of us if you agreed to what I want."

It was only at this point that Lady Grey finally caught the implication behind Hermione's words and she gasped incredulously.

"You think I would be a burden to you!"

Hermione in the end wasn't that stone-hearted, and she looked up from the Marauder's Map.

"Not a burden, Lady Grey, but if we both do enter this castle, then we would have conflicting goals and standards of action, and it would be difficult to solve problems if disagreements or difficulty in reaching a consensus arose, which is why I made the request."

Her tone was much more tactful, but her refusal to allow Lady Grey to enter the castle with her remained firm.

Hermione was well aware of how important this mission is and was also well aware that Lady Grey would definitely keep instigating her to find that Ravenclaw diadem as long as she followed her, and that she might even force herself to make a choice under certain extreme circumstances.

So Hermione had actually agreed to her request in the beginning, partly because she wanted to stall her first.

Lady Grey wasn't fooled into believing Hermione's words that sounded just a little bit better than "stalling"; even if she had spent thousands of years in vain, she was still an adult when she died.

But she ended up hesitating for a few seconds with a difficult look on her face and agreed to Hermione's request.

"I can agree not to enter the castle, but you must also keep your word and try to help me with real intent, not just a perfunctory try!"

Hermione looked at her and nodded seriously, perhaps at first she had meant to be perfunctory when she agreed, but from the moment Lady Grey was willing to place this trust in her, Hermione did straighten her attitude.

No matter how much she had changed in the past two years, her original goodness had remained the same.

After receiving such an affirmative response from Hermione, Lady Grey did not remain in her room, and Hermione, who had completed all the preparations and solved Lady Grey's biggest worry, extended her arm to Fawkes.

"Can you see this place, Fawkes, we need to go here."

Looking at the Marauder's Map, Hermione pointed out the location of the Astronomy Tower to Fawkes.

Fawkes just glanced at it and jumped right up on Hermione's shoulder, spreading his golden red feathers.

A golden light bubbled and spread over his body, soon enveloping Hermione's entire body, but instead of being transported away immediately, their bodies were merging with that light bit by bit as the golden light flickered.

In Hogwarts Castle, on top of the original Anti-Apparition Charm, Voldemort had reinforced it to specifically target the Phoenix's Apparition magic.

But even if his magical attainment had reached the highest level in the magical world, magical creatures themselves, especially those as advanced as the phoenix, would use magic and powers that differed greatly from those of wizards.

Even if he tried to limit it, he could only limit the speed of Fawkes' instantaneous teleportation, but the ability to restrict it was out of his reach.

So after a delay of about a minute or so, Hermione and Fawkes disappeared together from the wagon's bed-chamber, while at the same time, the figures of the one human and the bird reappeared on the castle's astronomy tower.

The first moment her feet touched the ground, Hermione raised the invisibility cloak, enveloping both herself and Fawkes under the cloak, only then she began to look around warily.

The afternoon sun shone into the tower, allowing the movement caused by Fawkes' Apparition to be less blinding than it would have been in the dark, and there was no one but Hermione on the Astronomy Tower.

Hermione then took out the Marauder's Map and after finally making sure that she hadn't alerted anyone due to the 'break-in' that had broken Dumbledore and Voldemort's agreement of not entering the castle privately; she then arched her back and carefully made her way to the stairway.

"Remember not to make any noise, Fawkes, and don't come out of the cloak suddenly, if anything happens, we'll leave the castle immediately. Professor Dumbledore said that the Dark Lord men won't do anything to us as long as they don't just catch us on the spot."

She implored Fawkes with these words that had been repeated countless times on the wagon, and Fawkes touched the side of Hermione's face with his pointed beak with some displeasure as if he was upset that she treated him like a silly bird that couldn't understand human speech.

Receiving Fawkes' response, Hermione gripped the invisibility cloak with one hand and the Marauder's Map with the other, and after making sure there was no one else below the tower, she began to make her way down the steep staircase.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, an hour before the last class of the day in the castle would end, which meant that this hour would be the time when the least number of students would be loitering in the castle, apart from the start of the curfew.

Hermione didn't delay for a minute, she kept watching the Marauder's Map and kept choosing those stairs that were unoccupied to start going down, among which she also noticed something strange, all those movable stairs that used to help her find Jon quickly in the castle a year ago had now become ordinary.

It no longer moved in a tricky way and didn't provide Hermione with any more help, it was as if it had died.

This caused some unease in Hermione's mind, but she pursed her lips to suppress some of the speculation rising from within and instead focused all her attention on the task Dumbledore had given her.

It took her about ten minutes to finally make her way cautiously to the First Floor.

And as she walked down the stairs, the sound of a voice made her subconsciously shrink into the cloak of invisibility and hide in a corner.

"If you ask me, our Lord should really find a way to tear up that so-called pact and take advantage of the moment to wipe out Dumbledore's gang, this is on our own turf, what else can they possibly do?"

An unattractive witch with a fat face whispered with a fierce expression.

She was followed by a similar, but thin as a twig, pockmarked male wizard, and they walked side by side, walking past Hermione.

"Don't try to question our lord's decision, and keep this kind of talk only to me, don't let anyone else hear it, especially Snape, he loves to report such news to our lord."

Hermione eyed their backs coldly as they made their way up the stairs, she certainly hadn't forgotten about the Carrow siblings.

In the past the 'slaves' who had made most mistakes had been taken away by them and used as classroom props for Muggle Studies classes.

The fear they brought to the Muggle students was even greater than Dolohov because if Dolohov had taken them, the chances that they would have been tortured and left alive were higher, but no student who was taken by the Carrow siblings ever came back alive.

Hermione watched as they disappeared before her eyes. She pressed herself against the wall of the ground floor corridor of the castle and proceeded to scout every room on the ground floor.

There were very few classrooms on the ground floor, as most of the rooms served as functional rooms like the great hall, storerooms and lavatories, and Hermione's goal lay in one of these rooms.

The ground floor of the castle itself seemed quite vast and was essentially where most of the student activity took place at meal times, making her movements very restricted, but luckily a portrait in Dumbledore's Headmaster's office provided her with a general location to trace her target.

This made Hermione's task less difficult than she had thought it would be.

...

Jon's lunch was treated by this herd of unicorns.

After he rode the lead unicorn and found fresh Dittany in the forbidden forest, the little unicorn was no longer in danger of dying.

The whole herd became much closer to Jon for this reason, and even the ones that were clearly hostile to his presence at first became less repulsed by his presence.

The unicorns found a water source nearby and found a lot of wild fruit to share with Jon.

Even Jon's picky tastes found the fruit, which he couldn't recognise, to be good, but instead of joining the unicorns at the river, he used his magic to conjure up some clean water.

The meal was just the right time to talk about the main business, and Jon held up the wooden tag in his hand as he nibbled on the wild fruit, and asked the leader of the unicorns who had recognised it first.

"Do you know if there are any other creatures in the Forbidden Forest that recognise this wooden tag? If there are, can you take me to meet them when the afternoon comes?"

This unicorn could obviously understand human speech, and after hearing Jon's words, it instantly nodded its head, which immediately made Jon feel much more comfortable.

The trip to the Forbidden Forest, which he had thought might bring him a lot of trouble in the middle, now seemed to be going smoothly.

Of course, he hadn't forgotten the main contributor to all this - the Bowtruckle who had led him to this herd of unicorns. Jon had used his knife to help him cut off the flesh of some wild fruits, but the little fellow didn't seem interested.

Instead, after seeing that the little unicorn was no longer in danger, it bounced off.

Jon was able to understand why Hagrid was so fond of these magical creatures at that moment because compared to people, there were times when animals' feelings were extremely pure.

While helping Hagrid out with his obsession, Jon certainly hadn't forgotten about the tournament task yet and continued to ask the unicorn.

"How far away the dragon that attacked you guys roughly was from our current location? At the speed you took me running up in the morning, would you be able to reach it by the time from sun rises to the zenith or by sunset?"

The unicorn, even if it could understand human speech, it was not possible to understand every term in human language, so instead of saying a few hours, Jon simply used the analogy of the amount of time that the sun was in the sky.

Even then the unicorn seemed to have some difficulty in understanding his words, and the action of nibbling the fruit with its head down paused visibly for a moment, as if it was thinking in those bright eyes.

It nodded in comprehension as if it could barely understand Jon's words.

Jon blinked and began to narrow down the time frame again.

"So if it's until the sun is halfway down in this time, is that still enough too?"

This time the unicorn didn't think about it for much longer but nodded straight away.

"Which direction is it in then, just point it out with your horn a little for me."

Quickly, it turned its head and pointed its one-horn on its head in the southwest direction.

Jon didn't ask any further questions as he looked down in contemplation, estimating speed and time, but because of the lack of precise parameters, he had no way of devising a specific value.

But one thing was certain, the dragon that had fought with the entire unicorn herd would be very close to him.

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