Chapter 195 - 195 Professor Dracula, no less.

Chapter 195: Chapter 195 Professor Dracula, no less.

The carriages of the Hogwarts Express had been plunged into darkness, even all the lights had gone out, and there was nothing but blackness all over the sight.

The young wizards became disorganized all of a sudden, an emotion called panic rising up in everyone's mind.

"What happened?" Ron's voice with some tension came from behind Harry in one of the cubicles.

"Ouch!" Hermione screamed in pain, "Ron, you stepped on my foot!"

Harry held onto the wall next to him and fumbled his way back to his seat, "What do you guys say ... is the train broken?"

"I don't know ..."

There was a cackling, short, piercing sound in his ears, and Harry vaguely saw the unmistakable black outline of Ron's molded lake in the darkness.

Ron's whole face was on the windowpane, doing his best to blot out a clean spot, trying to find some light from the window.

"There seems to be something moving there," Ron said, "Is someone getting off the train? They're probably heading out ..."

The door to the compartment burst open and someone fell painfully into Harry's lap.

"Ah, sorry!" A familiar voice rang out, "Do you know what happened? Ouch! I'm so sorry-"

He bumped into the corner of the table again.

"Slow down, Neville, just sit down." Harry said as he touched Neville's coat in the darkness and pulled him up so he could sit in the empty seat next to himself.

"Harry? Is that you? Do you know what happened?" Neville managed to find a seat and sat down on his butt.

"I don't know ...," Harry hadn't finished his sentence when he was interrupted by another piercing bark.

"Meow-"

A loud catcall and a yelp from negative pain sounded at the same time, it turned out that Neville had mistakenly sat on a cat and then been bitten by it.

"Crookshanks, how are you doing? Come to me!" Hermione's voice came through the darkness as well.

The cat was a ginger hybrid cat-beaver named Crookshanks that she had bought with the money she had originally used to buy an owl.

Ron was very upset that Hermione had bought a cat that he felt was a danger to his pet mouse, Spotty. Spotty had been scared and shivering all day lately, and it seemed that even his health was deteriorating.

"Crookshanks, come up here." Hermione touched the fluffy cat in the darkness and picked him up, "I was just about to ask the driver what was going on, but it's so dark in here ..."

"Unfortunately my wand is in my trunk and I can't find it right now or I could still use my wand lighting spell. Doesn't anyone have their wand around?" She asked.

The truth was that most young wizards probably didn't have their wands with them, but were caught off guard by a split second of unexpected circumstances and forgot that they had magic to fall back on.

Harry reached into his pocket and his face sank slightly. He had just casually left his wand on the table while he was snacking, and it would be hard to find it again now in the darkness.

Hermione walked past Harry with her cat in her arms and he heard the compartment door open again. Hermione must have gone to the cab to ask the driver for specifics, as she had said.

After the noise, the compartment gradually became quiet again.

In the midst of this eerie atmosphere, there was no one willing to be the first to open their mouths to break the silence.

A few moments later, there was suddenly a dull ringing sound, followed by two more cackling and creaking eerie sounds.

"What is that sound?" Ron asked in a whisper as he turned his face away from the window.

But it was still dark around him and he saw nothing.

"Is that Ginny coming over?" Harry asked.

"Is it Hermione back again?" Ron asked as well.

No one answered, only a puff of cold wind blew in slowly, carrying with it some of the smell of rotting and festering.

A sense of foreboding grew in Harry's mind.

He turned his head menacingly to Ron and asked, "Ron, where's your wand?"

He remembered that the only reason Ron had used his old wand for a year before at the Dueling Club was because his family didn't have the extra money to replace it, but after Mr. Weasley won the Grand Prize of the Daily Prophet, that problem had been solved.

"Don't expect this to make me spare you." Dracula's tone was still icy cold, "Since you came to my territory to spread your wildness, you have to be prepared to pay the price."

He raised his hand and waved his wand.

A silver-white light flew out from the wand, drilling through the large hole in the ceiling smashed by Dracula, like throwing a bright meteor against the current into the dark night.

When the meteor reached its highest point, it burst into flames like a brilliant silver-white firework, dispersing the thick darkness.

Every inch of the firework's sparks never went out, but instead fell towards each car of the train, landing on a different Dementor.

If one looked closely, one could see that each tiny spark was a bat, staring down each dementor, forcing the little wizards' joy back from the dementors with an extremely assertive stance.

The effect of the dementors on the little wizards faded as the black, sticky sky showed a slight aura.

A starlight pierced through the deep blackness and hung over the deep curtain that was the night sky.

The lights in the carriage also lit up, and gradually, innocent, happy smiles appeared on the faces of the little wizards once again.

...

"Harry! Harry! Are you okay?" Harry lay on the ground, disoriented, feeling someone punching him in the face.

"How ... what's wrong?" Harry struggled to open his eyes.

There were lights on above him and the floor was vibrating rhythmically - it looked like the Hogwarts Express was traveling again and the lights were back on.

He seemed to slide out of his seat and onto the floor. Ron and Hermione were half-kneeling beside him, and he could see Neville and Ginny leaning down and looking at him with great concern.

Feeling hard, Harry reached up and pushed his glasses upwards, feeling the thin, cold sweat on his face.

Ron and Hermione joined him in both arms and helped him back to his seat.

"Are you okay?" Ron asked nervously.

"Fine," Harry said, while subconsciously looking over toward the door, but not noticing the scary monster from earlier, "What just happened? Where did that ... monster go? Who was screaming just now?"

"No one was screaming." Ron said blankly, touching Harry's forehead in passing to see if he had a fever.

Harry looked around the brightly lit compartment and saw Ginny and Neville looking at him as well, both pale.

"But I did hear screams ..."

"You could be hallucinating Harry." Hermione said, "Dementors are said to suck the joy out of people's hearts, and in more serious cases can cause mental problems."

"That was a Dementor just now?" He asked in surprise.

"Yes, Dementors, the monsters that watch over Azkaban." Hermione said, handing him a piece of chocolate on one side, "Have some chocolate, your spirits might be better."

Harry took the chocolate and stuffed it in his mouth, rubbing the back of his head in bewilderment, always feeling as if he had just had a hallucination somewhere.

"Are you sure you're okay, Harry?" Hermione asked anxiously once again, seeing Harry's distracted expression.

"I'm fine ... What just happened?" Harry wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and tugged at his soaked clothes to wring them out again, "Well ... what was that Dementor doing just now in our compartment? And why am I on the ground?"

"I think you were scared or something," Ron said, still looking a little aftershocked, "You just got really scary, your whole body froze up, you fell out of your seat, and you started convulsing ... "

"Luckily Professor Dracula swooped in and got in front of the dementor." Hermione picked up on that, "Look above our heads, well, it's rather obvious ..."

Harry looked up in disbelief and then saw a large hole in the ceiling, the darkening sky and a few stars dotting the sky were clearly visible through it.

"Eh ... Professor Dracula came in by smashing right through the ceiling?" Harry couldn't stop the corner of his eye from twitching, "That's really ... very much his style."

"And that's not all!" Ginny added from the sidelines, "Harry, you'll never guess where all those Dementors that stopped the train went ..."

"Professor Dracula used a spell that strung up all the dementors in the area with a large piece of silver filament, wrapped them into a good-sized ball, and then cast an unmarked stretching spell on one of the trash cans in our compartment."

"By now those dementors should still be in the trash can in good shape!"

Harry: "..."

True to form, Professor Dracula.