Chapter 228 Department of Mysteries, Hall of Death

"After being tried by the Wizengamot Court, Peter Pedillo violated thirteen laws and regulations including the Strict Restrictions on the Use of Dark Arts, the British Wizarding Criminal Code and the International Statute of Secrecy, and was sentenced to Azkaban. Life imprisonment!”

The verdict of Amelia Bones, Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is actually quite fair, and in theory no one should have any doubts about it.

But Sirius was still worried.

Because he knew that Animagus could easily escape from the many Dementors in Azkaban.

The big black dog he transformed into was no longer a small animal, but it didn't attract anyone's attention. A more stealthy mouse would have escaped more easily.

After Sirius raised this issue in court, Amelia Bones promised to use a tighter cell to imprison Peter in order to prevent Peter from escaping Azkaban through Animagus transformation.

Before Sirius could raise any further objections, she coldly declared the trial over.

"Bones didn't even realize that this problem can't be solved by changing cells!" Sirius said with a gloomy expression after leaving the trial room, "Creatures like rats are the most annoying, and they will run away if they are not careful. .”

"Even if Peter is locked up in a fully enclosed cell, don't we have to deliver food to him? That dead rat can get out of the window while the food is being delivered. The person who delivers the food cannot think of it and stare at it every day. That window!”

Sirius clenched his fists, "If you ask me, this coward who betrayed his friends should be killed directly to prevent him from doing any bad things again."

"It's okay, he can no longer transform." Dracula waved his hand nonchalantly.

"What?" Sirius looked at him in shock.

"Before I left, I cut off the source of magic in his blood. He will just be a squib for the rest of his life." Dracula smiled languidly, but his smile looked extremely cold.

"If that rat really escapes, he will definitely look for Voldemort to be his backer, and then it will be a bit troublesome to deal with it. Thinking about it this way, it is better to solve it once and for all."

"Well done, Professor Dracula!" Sirius waved his fist ecstatically, "Hahahaha, Peter, the traitor, this is what he deserves!"

"Professor, can a wizard who was able to cast spells turn into a squib again?" Harry blinked and asked curiously.

"Of course." Dracula said, "In fact, there are some magic contracts or black magic that can achieve this, but it is a bit cruel, so few people will do it."

"So... Professor, did you use magic contract or black magic?" Ron also leaned over and asked.

"The magic contract will take effect very slowly and the conditions are relatively harsh." Dracula slowly raised the corners of his mouth.

"What do you think?"

…

Dumbledore took Harry and Ron back to Hogwarts through the fireplace in the main hall of the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius also returned to 12 Grimmauld Place through the fireplace.

Dracula ostensibly stepped into the fireplace with Dumbledore and the others, but he had no intention of returning to Hogwarts so soon.

He threw a handful of floo powder into the fireplace, without saying any destination, and allowed the green flames to engulf him directly.

Floo powder travel without announcing a location will often connect to a random fireplace.

For example, in the middle of the last century, there was a witch named Violet Diliman. After a quarrel with her husband, she got into the fireplace without naming any location, and then fell in love at first sight with the man at the randomly teleported location. Escaped from her original husband...

However, Dracula's floo trip was different.

Before the fireplace randomly selected its destination, Dracula forcibly reversed the direction of the space, causing the fireplace to instantly connect to an ordinary torch.

The next moment, with a burst of green sparks, Dracula's figure leaped out of the flames of a torch, and then landed lightly on the ground.

"Huh, it should be almost here." Dracula patted some ashes on his body and looked around with interest.

This is a deep corridor covered with dark tiles. Two rows of torches are inserted into the dark tiles on the wall, flashing blue and white light, adding a bit of mystery to the entire space.

At the end of the corridor is a lone, black door...

This is the corridor on the ninth floor underground of the Ministry of Magic.

The lonely door in the Department of Mysteries aroused Dracula's curiosity before today's trial began, and the familiar power inside the door also gave Dracula the idea of ​​coming to investigate.

As for Fudge and other officials from the Ministry of Magic, they had just finished the trial of Peter and had not long passed by this corridor. They would never have thought that Dracula would come back and blatantly appear in the heart of the Ministry of Magic!

Dracula stood in the corridor and carefully looked at the black door in front of him.

There is no handle or keyhole on the door, just a completely flat plate, most likely driven by magic.

Dracula looked at it for a long time without any clue, so he shrugged, took a step forward, and appeared behind the door in an instant.

Since he could disapparate anyway, it wasn't necessary for him to open the door.

Behind the door is a circular enclosed room. The room was covered with dark marble floors, and the floor was polished so clean that it reflected light, making its color almost like it was covered with a layer of empty standing water.

There were many candles in the room emitting cold blue light, reflecting the twelve handleless doors on the circular wall.

The twelve doors will swap positions from time to time, and the walls will rotate rapidly. Without the correct magic key, no one can be sure which door is the correct door they are looking for.

Not only that, there are only five research rooms in the Department of Mysteries, namely "Brain", "Prophecy", "Time", "Death" and "Love".

Among the twelve doors, after excluding five research rooms, the remaining seven doors are extremely dangerous institutions.

However, Dracula will naturally not be troubled by this method.

None of the mechanisms behind the door posed any threat to him, and he had no intention of finding a specific door—

He wanted to go in and have a look at what was behind every door, to have fun, and to find the familiar power became a secondary thing...

Dracula pushed open one of the doors.

The door opened silently, revealing a long, rectangular room filled with dancing lights that shone like a gem.

A variety of watches completely filled the room, with various pendulum clocks, quartz clocks, pocket watches, wristwatches and other clocks displayed everywhere. The sound of "tick-tock" and "tick-tock" hands sounded from all directions.

There were several silent men in pure black wizard robes standing in front of various experimental equipment, working silently, with expressionless faces and no words.

When they saw Dracula suddenly walking in, they just flinched and showed almost no surprise. They raised their wands and pointed them at Dracula, who was looking around with interest.

These silent people don't know how long they have been working here. Now they seem to have completely fallen into numbness. They seem to have lost such luxury things as joy, anger, sorrow and joy... Working in the Department of Mysteries has gradually made them lose their sanity and even lose their consciousness. Lost humanity!

"Strange." Dracula frowned slightly, "What are you studying every day? You actually made yourself look like this."

However, those silent men seemed to have not heard what Dracula said at all, and just cast attack spells with little lethality on him expressionlessly.

"It's really annoying."

Dracula sneered and raised his hand to grasp all the incoming spells.

Immediately afterwards, he recited a spell——

"Obliviate."

All the silent people's movements suddenly froze, and their eyes became blank.

"Supefy." Then came the second spell.

The silent people fell to the ground in a daze.

"It's boring. It has no fighting power at all." Dracula curled his lips and looked up at the furnishings in this room.

There is a huge crystal jar shaped like a clock, with bright light emanating from it from time to time.

This clock-shaped jar is constantly producing a dancing bright light, and in the crystal water inside it floats a small, jewel-like bright egg.

And when the egg was held up by the bright water in the bell jar, it suddenly broke apart, and then a tiny hummingbird flew out of the eggshell.

Once the hummingbird emerges, it is lifted to the top of the jar so that it can fly high above the liquid.

But every time it wants to land on the water and drink water, its feathers get wet again, and then the whole bird is brought back to the bottom of the jar, and is enclosed in its egg again. Also restored to wholeness.

This process repeats and cycles over and over again.

The hummingbird in the jar also keeps getting older and older, until it falls into the water, and then is reborn and becomes older, and the cycle continues endlessly...

Dracula looked at this room for a long time and finally determined that this was the Time Hall of the Department of Mysteries.

Not only are the many clocks around and countless objects here related to "time", but the clock-shaped jar also has a strong aura of time energy.

Dracula once felt this aura in the time turner he took from Hermione.

"That is to say..." Dracula's eyes lit up.

His eyes glanced around the Time Hall, and sure enough he saw a whole cabinet of pendants neatly placed in a glass cabinet. There was a golden ring and a rotating hourglass on the pendant——

A cabinet full of time turners!

Dracula suddenly remembered that after Dumbledore discovered that he had taken away Hermione's time turner, he told him that the Ministry of Magic did not have enough time and energy, only enough for internal research and a few samples for students to use. .

"I really believed Dumbledore..." Dracula said through gritted teeth as he looked at the cabinet of time turners in front of him.

As a matter of course, he took a time turner from the cabinet, then woke up the silent people and added a confusion spell.

After doing all this, Dracula left the Time Hall and walked towards the next door.

Time energy was not the familiar aura Dracula had sensed before. He could feel that the aura was closer and more mysterious to him.

…

In the next three rooms, Dracula saw a brain soaked in green solution, rows of crystal balls filled with high shelves, and fountains spraying liquid similar to love potions.

These three rooms represent "brain", "prophecy" and "love" respectively.

Coupled with the first room that Dracula entered, "Time", the last room is also the research room that represents "Death".

I don’t know if it’s because it’s too empty, but the Death Hall seems larger than the previous research rooms.

The interior of the room was dark, square, and sunken in the center, forming a huge stone pit, perhaps twenty feet deep.

Stone steps surround the entire room, like stone benches, gradually descending step by step. Each step is very steep, like a lecture theater or the Wizengamot trial chamber that I just visited not long ago.

In the center of the stone pit is a raised stone platform, with an arch of no visible material standing on it. It has a sense of historical vicissitudes and is also dilapidated, giving the impression that it is about to collapse at any time. Down, but in fact it is as motionless as a mountain.

There is no wall support around the arch, and a tattered black curtain or curtain hangs on it. Although the air here is cold and there is no wind, it is swaying gently, as if there is an unknown force. It's flapping.

When he saw this curtain, Dracula's heart, which had not beaten in thousands of years, suddenly twitched.

"That's... the power of death?" Dracula murmured, but then he shook his head, "But this is death, not darkness... Then how can this power bring such a familiar feeling? ?”

He took a deep breath and slowly raised a hand. The crimson magic power gathered in his hand, gradually condensing into a bloody river.

Then, Dracula followed the surrounding stone steps step by step, towards the arch in the middle of the room, and towards the curtain that was constantly swaying without wind.

With every step he took, the familiar feeling became stronger, and the crimson magic power gathered in Dracula's palm also fluctuated more and more vividly, as if he wanted to meet the curtain at any time.

It seemed like another thousand years had passed, and finally Dracula walked to the arch, only one step away from the curtain.

He stretched out his hand and slowly touched the curtain.

However, the crimson magic power in his hand surged out first and merged with the curtain like a river flowing into the sea.

The curtain is black, and Dracula's magic is crimson. However, after the two are intertwined, it is suddenly difficult to distinguish each other, as if they come from the same source!

…

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