After what felt like an eternity of tense silence, the Azkaban guard finally found his voice. His Adam's apple worked frantically as he swallowed hard. Beads of sweat had ford on his temple despite the supernatural cold that still lingered in the air, and his hands trembled slightly as he struggled to maintain his composure.
The man knew he was trapped between two terrible forces—the terrifying professor who could manhandle Dentors like wayward children, and the Ministry officials who had given him his orders.
"I'm... I'm just following orders," He managed to scrape out, his voice sounding soft and rough with fear. The words ca out in a rush, as if he was afraid that hesitation would rob him of his courage. "Every corner must be carefully searched. The criminal could be hiding anywhere—"
Adrian's expression didn't change, but sothing in his gray eyes seed to sharpen.
"Did Minister Fudge specifically instruct you to do this?"
The guard's mouth opened and closed several tis, but no sound ca. His face had gone pale, and his eyes darted nervously between Adrian's face and the Dentor still dangling from his grasp.
"I'll take your silence as confirmation," Adrian said with a smile that held no warmth whatsoever. His tone shifted, becoming more serious, more authoritative. "But what I need to make absolutely clear is this: Dentors cannot and will not approach any students on this train. This is Albus Dumbledore's direct order. If even one student collapses from Dentor exposure, I will hold you personally responsible."
Adrian spoke sowhat sternly, but the guard, perhaps encouraged by desperation or simply too frightened to think clearly was more stubborn than Adrian had anticipated.
He shook his head with jerky, nervous movents. "There's no helping it, Professor Westeros,"
He said, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. "Sirius Black might very well be hiding in one of these compartnts. Everything we're doing is for the students' safety—surely you can understand that."
Adrian's smile widened.
"You don't need to worry about Black; I can guarantee that he is not on this train. And furthermore..." He paused, observing the guard's face with a half-smile. "I want to emphasize once more: control your Dentors. This is not a discussion or a negotiation—it's a notification."
Without another word, Adrian opened his fingers and let the Dentor casually drop to the floor like a discarded piece of waste and turned back and strode away down the corridor.
There was no point in continuing the conversation. He had given them fair warning, clear instructions, and reasonable explanations. If they chose to ignore his words, well... Adrian had never been one to shy away from more forceful thods when the situation called for it.
Behind him, the Dentor remained lying on the floor, not daring to move. Only after Adrian's footsteps had faded completely into the distance did it begin to stir, floating upward with the hesitant movents of a beaten animal.
The guard looked at this ridiculous scene, and his face imdiately turned ugly. This was the most disgraceful Dentor he had ever seen.
At this ti, another guard hurried over from the distance. Obviously, he had also heard what Adrian had said.
"What should we do?" He asked uneasily. "Should we continue searching the compartnts?"
The first guard's face toughened with stubborn resolve.
"Continue," He said coldly. "He's just a professor. We don't need to listen to him."
Adrian hadn't gone far when he saw those two guards starting to interfere with the compartnts again.
This was exactly the kind of willful stupidity that made his blood boil.
"Really," he murmured to himself. "So people simply refuse to take the easy path."
His fingers moved to caress the wood of his wand. It looked like he would have to resort to more direct thods of persuasion.
He turned around and walked back, his dark green robes curling in the corridor.
The two guards were in the process of roughly jerking open another compartnt door. Inside, a group of first-year students were pressed against the far wall of their compartnt, their faces white with terror as they stared at the approaching Dentors.
"Final warning."
Adrian's voice ca through the chaos.
Adrian's voice suddenly rang out behind the guards, startling them into turning around abruptly.
However, the lead guard still only said. "We're just performing our duties..."
"No," Adrian interrupted, his voice still perfectly calm. "You're terrorizing children."
The guards instinctively stepped back, and one of them had already placed his hand on his own wand.
"Oh, don't be nervous," Adrian said with a smile that was all teeth and no warmth. "This isn't aid at you. Not directly, anyway."
And then, Adrian raised his wand high above his head.
"Expecto Patronum!"
In an instant, a dazzling silver light burst forth from the tip of Adrian's wand. It was not in the common animal form, but as an overwhelming silver mist. The silver mist surged through the corridor.
Within seconds, the silvery-white fog had filled the entire length of the train car.
The Dentors in the corridor let out piercing shrieks, fleeing in panic like scalded by boiling water. Their rotting cloaks emitted wisps of black smoke in the silver mist as they scrambled to squeeze out through the nearest window cracks.
Within monts, every single Dentor had vanished from the train, leaving behind only the lingering scent of burnt tar and the mory of their terrified screams.
The entire scene lasted perhaps thirty seconds. When the silver mist finally began to dissipate, the guards were staring at Adrian with expressions of absolute bewildernt and terror.
"What did you do?" one of the guards asked, his voice hoarse with shock. His face had gone pale, and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold his wand steady.
This was obviously not a proper Patronus Charm—at least, not like any they had ever seen or heard described. A normal Patronus was supposed to drive away Dentors, not cause them visible pain and distress. But the spell Adrian had just cast seed to have actually hard the creatures, possibly even considerably damaged them.
Moreover, what he had summoned wasn't even a ford Patronus in the traditional sense. Instead of the silver animal that most skillful wizards managed to produce, he had conjured just a mass of silver mist.
And even more peculiar was that the mist seed too abundant, it was almost covering the entire train.
"Well," Adrian said with satisfaction, lowering his wand and smoothing out his robes. "Now the matter is resolved. If you have any complaints about my thods, I suggest you take them up with Albus Dumbledore. I've simply done what needed to be done to protect the students under my care."
The two guards looked at each other in stunned silence, neither knowing how to respond to what they had just witnessed.
However, now that all the Dentors had fled, the guards realized they faced a new and potentially more serious problem. They were supposed to return to the Ministry with their creatures intact and accounted for.
"We need to find those Dentors," one of them muttered, his voice heavy with the realization of how much trouble they were likely to be in. "We can't just let them wander around the countryside forever."
But that was a problem for later. Right now, they had to figure out how to explain to their superiors that a single professor had single-handedly neutralized an entire squad of Dentors with what appeared to be an impossibly powerful version of a spell that most wizards couldn't even cast.
After ensuring that the younger students were properly comforted and no longer in distress, Adrian made his way back to the staff compartnt with the quiet satisfaction of a job well done.
Remus looked up from his book as Adrian entered, his face showing curiosity about the commotion he had undoubtedly heard.
"Have the Dentors finished their search?"
"Not exactly," Adrian replied with a slight wave of his hand, settling into his seat. "I drove all the Dentors away from the train."
Remus blinked, processing this information. "Oh, well that's probably for the best. The students don't need to be exposed to..." He paused mid-sentence, his expression shifting to one of complete incredulity. "Wait, what do you an you drove them all away?"
"Literally what I said," Adrian replied with a casual shrug, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocent explanation. "Those creatures entered the student compartnts and began affecting my students. I simply couldn't stand by and watch their happiness and hope being drained away by Ministry-sanctioned monsters, so I used the Patronus Charm to send them packing."
"Incredible," Remus breathed, his voice filled with genuine awe. He knew exactly how difficult it was to drive away even a single Dentor. The idea that Adrian had banished an entire squad of them was almost beyond his understanding.
It seed that Adrian's Patronus Charm was much stronger than he had imagined.
anwhile, in the trio's compartnt, the aftermath of their terrifying encounter was still being felt. Harry sat slumped in his seat, his face pale and drawn, looking like soone who had just survived a serious illness. In his hands, he clutched a bar of chocolate that he had purchased from the trolley witch earlier in the journey, taking small, careful bites as if each piece required enormous effort to eat.
The chocolate was helping—he could feel so of his strength returning with each bite, and the cold that had settled into his limbs was gradually beginning to withdraw. But the mory of what he had experienced lingered like a poison in his mind.
"I really didn't expect they would actually send Dentors," Hermione said, her voice tight with anger and concern as she watched Harry's slow recovery. Her composure had been badly shaken by the encounter, and her hands were still trembling slightly as she spoke.
"The Ministry of Magic has absolutely overstepped their bounds. Dentors are punishnt creatures—they're ant for hardened criminals in maximum security prisons, not for children on a school train. Harry, when we reach Hogwarts, you need to go straight to the hospital wing and let Madam Pomfrey examine you."
Harry managed to show a weak smile. "I'll be fine," he said, his voice still hoarse from the tornt. "Just need so ti to recover."
But even as he spoke, he couldn't shake the feeling that sothing was wrong with his reaction to the Dentor.
All three of them had been in closeness to the creature, exposed to its presence for the sa amount of ti. Yet while Ron and Hermione seed to have recovered relatively quickly, they were pale and shaken, certainly, but basically were unhard, while Harry felt like he had been put through a dieval torture device.
Oh, and perhaps Scabbers too. Scabbers also seed greatly affected, spinning in circles on the table while Ron tried to comfort it, but seemingly to little effect.
This made Harry sowhat puzzled.
Do animals also get affected by Dentors?
"Is there any way to defend against Dentors?" Harry asked, turning to Hermione.
Hermione's face brightened slightly at the opportunity to share useful information.
"The Patronus Charm," She said imdiately. "When I researched Dentors after hearing about them from Hagrid last year, I discovered that they can be repelled using a properly cast Patronus. The spell creates a guardian of positive energy that Dentors cannot approach."
She paused, her expression growing duller. "However, it's an extrely difficult spell to master. The magical theory behind it is complex, and it requires the caster to focus on their happiest mory while maintaining perfect concentration. I've tried to learn it several tis, but I've never managed to produce so much as a wisp of silver mist."
The Patronus Charm, then.
Harry silently morized the na of this spell.
When he had ti, he would definitely learn this spell.
He never wanted to experience that feeling of falling into an ice cave and being swallowed by despair again.
"Oh, Scabbers." Ron said with a mournful face. "Poor Scabbers, when will you return to normal?"
"Here," Harry said, pulling a small vial from his trunk and handing it to Ron. "I have so calming draught left over. I'm not sure if it works on mice, but it's worth trying."
"Sothing is better than nothing."
Ron took the small bottle and forcefully poured the potion into Scabbers' mouth.
Scabbers' eyes imdiately beca clear.
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