The Pacifist Necromancer of Hogwarts

Chapter 358 In the Albanian Forest
The midday sun trudged through the layers of tree canopy and stopped in a small clearing, shining a few dead branches. It was almost dark under the dense bushes. The hare lay under the bushes, blinking slowly, enjoying a rare moment of rest.

Suddenly, its ears stood up and its nose twitched nervously.

Crack! A leather boot broke a dry branch under the sun. The hare lay on the ground, staring at the boot without moving. One step, two steps, getting closer and closer - the hare stood up suddenly and ran swiftly into the depths of the bushes -

"The flames are blazing! Petrify everyone! Come here!"

Suddenly, flames burst out from the bushes where it was hiding. The hare leaped out of the bushes with all its might, jumping over the dancing flames, the rolling black smoke, and the burning hay. It barely found a place to stand in this inexplicable fire and continued to run forward. Suddenly, its strong hind legs froze in mid-air, and then, as if it was caught by an invisible bird of prey, it suddenly flew up. The next second, it found that its ears were grasped by a hand.

"A hare." The owner of the boots put something back into the pocket hanging from the bottom of the backpack strap, while examining the hare. "Do you think it could be Voldemort's Animagus, Henry?"

"Water like a spring." The young man, called Henry, who had just emerged from the woods, pointed at the burning bush with what looked like a bare branch. Water appeared out of nowhere and extinguished the flames.

"Henry?"

"You are the expert on Animagus, Sirius. You tell me."

Sirius put his face close to the hare and stared at it carefully. The hare instinctively wanted to kick him, but it was still stiff and unable to move.

"It's hard to say," said Sirius thoughtfully. "I think it's a rabbit, but that's Voldemort after all. Maybe we should eat it?" He grinned, revealing a row of teeth.

"If you want."

Sirius looked at the rabbit again, then shrugged and threw it back into the scorched, wet bushes. The rabbit rolled over on the ground and immediately ran away in a panic.

……

"How many rabbits did we catch? Three? Four?" Sirius stopped beside a pine tree and tapped the trunk with his wand, examining the marks on it. A shadow flashed across his face. "No signs of magic. I hope Dumbledore has expected all this." He laughed briefly, trying to cover the irritation in his tone.

"Don't get discouraged, Sirius. It's only the second day," said his companion, without looking up from his backpack, also fiddling with some kind of compass. "It points to a triangle... that represents... the horns of a goat? We'll find a lot of things?"

"Let me see." Sirius walked over and took the compass. "Oh, no, this triangle is wider than the ram's horn triangle. This is a shortened version of the runespoor, which means that our luck compass thinks we... uh, I'm about to forget all these things... probably something like quarreling and fighting. One point for Gryffindor, Professor Anthony?"

He pressed the compass back into Anthony's hand and continued walking deeper into the forest.

"If I were a divination professor," said Anthony.

"Divination class?" Sirius stopped and turned around, looking a little surprised. "They teach this stuff in Divination class?"

Anthony shrugged: "I don't know, probably. The luck compass sounds very much like a divination tool. Why do you carry a luck compass, Sirius?" He walked to Sirius, held the tree trunk, and used the necromancy magic to feel the forest near him.

Points of light belonging to death spread out in his mind - hares, foxes - his cat, following them not far behind - deer, gray wolves, bears, maybe - Anthony soon had no time to distinguish their identities, because as various fish, rodents and birds began to respond to him, the death that had occurred in the forest became so dense that Anthony almost felt that he was drifting on a sea of ​​light.

"Just a random purchase. Thought Harry might be interested," said Sirius. "When I was at school, we used to use the compass to decide - Henry, how are you?"

Anthony blinked, coming back to his senses from the light.

"I'm fine, I was just distracted." He shook his head, "What did you just say?"

Sirius frowned, "Nothing." He glanced at Anthony again, "Let's take a break, Henry. You've been walking all morning. You should eat something."

They walked for a few more minutes towards lower ground and found an open space. Sirius sat cross-legged on the ground, unzipped his backpack, put his whole arm inside, and began to take things out one by one: a huge stack of maps that were automatically unfolding, with detailed topography and roads throughout Europe; very fine lines that could be used to mark the paths, assassinations of Voldemort, and fishing; a can of butter beer; two packets of potato chips; a box of fruit pies...

Anthony took out two sandwiches from his bag. Although they were a little squashed, with the help of the ghost chicken and the ghost mouse, the sandwiches were as cold as if they had just been taken out of the supermarket refrigerator. "I remember I also brought a chair." Sirius muttered, almost half of his body was stuck in the backpack, "Ha, this should be it!"

He pulled out a black motorcycle.

"Oh, no." He pulled the backpack open a little further and looked inside. "I think I threw them away at the port."

"That's all right," Anthony said, handing the unwrapped sandwich to Sirius, who mumbled a thank you and took a large absent-minded bite of the sandwich, still peering into his backpack.

Thanks to the frequent exchanges between Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, they traveled from England to France without much effort. They rented a Pegasus carriage from a very small bird-watching association. The other party could hardly speak English, and they could hardly speak French, but miraculously, the transaction was completed quite happily in a few minutes, which might be related to the emerald ring, silver cup and gold coins that Sirius dumped on the table. Then they drove to Italy, where Sirius threw away most of his luggage ("I brought them just to pretend that I was going on a trip." He explained to Anthony, and stuffed the printed shirt, sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat into the trash can under the attention of passers-by around him, and threw the beach chair with a parasol next to the trash can at the bus station), leaving only a medium-sized backpack and a few pockets that could be hung on the backpack. This trip to Italy ended with a big black dog biting the bag and jumping into the sea, and a strange-shaped figure following behind it (Anthony cast a bubble head charm on himself because he didn't like his nostrils soaked in water).

So yes, stowaway. That's what happens when you don't have proper identification.

"I think I threw away the jam, too," said Sirius, "but I kept the salt and the chocolate."

Anthony sat down beside him, chewing a sandwich and watching a squirrel run across the map of Europe. He took out the luck compass again. It was made up of three layers of rings and seven pointers, and each layer of rings was engraved with more than a hundred small symbols. When Sirius was at the port, he was going to throw it away, but Anthony curiously asked what it was used for, so he became the new owner of the compass and got half of an instruction manual that smelled like it was dug out from a pile of moldy bricks in the corner of the basement. He found that this compass could help him learn various wizard magic symbols.

"What does this mean, this oval?" Anthony compared the manual with the compass. "Mirror?"

Sirius took a moment to look at it from his backpack, "An egg, which means new life."

"Thanks, you're really good at this," Anthony praised.

"It's nothing, really," said Sirius. "Have you seen the Book of Admission, Henry?"

"The book with all the names of people who are suitable to be admitted as students to Hogwarts? I haven't seen it in person. What's wrong?"

"I have seen it. We...we once wanted to know who were the people in Hogwarts, so we planned to look for the sorting list in Minerva's office, and found that the list was actually placed in a tower. The tower was locked, but we found a way to get in anyway." Sirius sighed, lying on the ground, looking at the small piece of sky exposed between the branches, "The book is in the center of the tower, but we can't touch it, so I just saw it."

"Where's the house list?" Anthony asked.

"The Sorting List was charmed to be uncopyable, so we had to actually steal one," said Sirius. "Your professor knew that it was actually connected to the Book of Admission, right? We tried to Apparition it, but the result was a bunch of incomprehensible symbols. It took us a while to figure out what each symbol meant." He had a nostalgic smile on his face.

Anthony was about to ask why they wanted to understand the magical symbols of the Book of Admission when he heard a voice from Sirius' backpack: "Sirius?"

Sirius sat up abruptly and fished a mirror from the front pocket of his backpack.

"Harry?" he said to the mirror. "What's wrong?"

"Sirius," said Harry's voice through the mirror, "Uh, nothing much. I just remembered you said I could talk to you."

"Oh, of course!" Sirius said, raising his voice cheerfully. "Look, Harry, a picnic!" He held the sandwich up to the mirror.

"Looks good," Harry said, sounding pleased. He was soon sharing with Sirius the funny stories of Dean spilling hopping beans on the floor in Herbology, and the fight between the owl Sirius had sent Ron (which they had named Piggy) and Draco Malfoy's owl. Malfoy was furious that Dobby hadn't been allowed into the castle, and told Harry that they wouldn't be so proud for long, and neither would Sirius, as if he knew something, but Hermione had glued his lips shut with a powerful spell.

"By the way, Sirius, are you with Professor Anthony?" Harry asked casually, "I heard that Professor Anthony is missing."

"He's right next to me." Sirius turned the mirror, and Anthony felt a flash of sunlight in front of his eyes. The next second, he saw Harry Potter's green eyes in the mirror.

"Hello, Mr. Potter," Anthony said calmly, eerily recalling how his grandparents would sometimes put the phone to his ear without him noticing.

(End of this chapter)