At this moment, Malfoy had already taken the initiative to grasp the disgusting, slimy hand of the Dementor. Just a glance would send shivers down one's spine and cause incessant nausea.
At this moment, a thin, dazzling tongue of fire shot out from Dumbledore's wand, like a red-hot metal wire, entwining their clasped hands.
"Then, in exchange, after I successfully accomplish the first condition, when I need it, will you and your kind heed my commands and obey completely?"
"I... am willing."
Its voice clearly didn't reveal a trace of emotion, but Dumbledore, standing to the side, keenly sensed a hint of anticipation.
The Dementor was trying its best to speed up its speech; it hoped to reach this agreement even faster than Malfoy did.
The Dementor's food?
Dumbledore's clear blue eyes looked towards Malfoy. He would never allow these Dementors to harm Muggles or ordinary wizards. Without restrictions, this would be another disaster.
Malfoy felt this gaze, and so he winked at Dumbledore.
"Please trust me."
Malfoy could completely guess Dumbledore's suspicion and worry, but his worries were unnecessary.
This oath would not have any victims.
Except for the Death Eaters who would face the Dementor army in the future.
The second tongue of fire shot out from the wand, intertwining with the first, forming a thin, red-glowing chain.
"One last thing, may our cooperation be pleasant," Malfoy said expressionlessly.
He used all his strength, pushing his Occlumency skills to the extreme, trying to prevent the Dementor from drawing nourishment from him. Only in this way could he have the strength to continue completing this oath.
"I am willing," the Dementor voiced.
The last tongue of fire suddenly shot out from Dumbledore's wand, intertwining with the previous two, tightly wrapping around their clasped hands, like a rope, like a fire-breathing snake.
"The oath is sealed," Dumbledore announced.
"Be gone, take your kind to where you should be."
Malfoy's face was pale, his calves trembling incessantly. Even though Occlumency tried its best to conceal his emotions, his contact with the Dementor was simply too deep.
The happiness that was sucked away was unavoidable, leaving him somewhat drained.
Dumbledore simply watched as the creature, which should have been the leader of the Dementors, floated away from the window. In the past, he would not have allowed such a creature to wander before his eyes, let alone witness an oath being completed.
"I will give you a reasonable explanation," Malfoy said, taking out a bar of chocolate from his pocket and biting into it fiercely, relieving the uncomfortable feelings caused by the Dementor just now.
"But now your destination should be Azkaban, because soon the Dementors will collectively go on strike. With the Aurors' meager defenses, they can't prevent certain wizards from wanting to escape."
"If there's one Black, there will be a second, a third, won't there?"
"I will give you a sufficiently satisfactory explanation," Malfoy repeated the previous words again: "If, after you finish dealing with the trivial matters of Azkaban in a moment, you are not satisfied with my methods, you can also help me break the oath."
"After all, you didn't make an oath with that group of Dementors, did you?"
Dumbledore gave Malfoy a deep look, said nothing, his body gradually becoming transparent, and finally disappearing into the void.
He chose to believe, and now he had to rush to Azkaban.
Suppressing the riot in Azkaban didn't take him too much time. Most of the wizards inside had already lost their fighting power, living in a daze all day long. The few wizards who still remained conscious were no match for him.
He only cast one spell, dispelling any possibility of the prisoners taking this opportunity to escape.
After Dumbledore finished dealing with the affairs of Azkaban, he hurriedly rushed to the agreed location. This student told him that everything could be understood as long as he saw it with his own eyes.
So, what did he see?
When he used a spell to open this rusty iron door that had been unused for a long time, what did he see?
Hundreds of Dementors were crammed into this small room, cloaks pressing against cloaks, the black cloth wrapping around their bodies twisting back and forth, making the whole room a mess. The characteristic of being hollow and formless allowed them to gather together even in such a cramped environment.
However, a gap was left in the very center of the room. Dumbledore used his amazing eyesight to see the situation in the gap.
There sat a person, who should be an ordinary Muggle. Dumbledore didn't feel any magic from him.
Dumbledore's first reaction was to summon his Patronus, eliminate these Dementors, rescue this Muggle, and then question his student: "Is this what you call food?"
But just as he raised his wand to cast a spell, he suddenly stopped.
He saw this person smiling.
Smiling?
In his long wizarding life, he had seen countless wizards and Muggles after their happiness and courage had been sucked away by Dementors. There was crying, regret, fear, despair.
But he had never seen anyone smile in the face of Dementors without a Patronus.
No, it wasn't just a smile.
It was rapture.
This made him feel extremely abnormal, and hundreds of Dementors were surrounding him. If he remembered correctly, Malfoy's promise not long ago was "high-quality and endless" food.
How could one person feed these sinful creatures?
Dumbledore gradually approached, but found that the Dementors discarded him like worn shoes. These creatures had no eyes, they relied on their unique talent to find food, using their sense of smell to capture people's happiness, but these creatures were now turning a blind eye to him. An absurd guess floated in his mind.
In order to verify, he took faster steps, and the robes on his body couldn't help but rustle.
"Legilimency!" His eyes were sharply piercing, his gaze fixed on the Muggle in front of him.
A chaos, yet filled with bizarre colors and intertwined scenes.
"I said, let there be light."
So a glimmer of light was born in the chaos.
"I will separate light from darkness."
So light and darkness were separated.
"Light for day, darkness for night. There was evening and there was morning, the first day."
So time was defined.
.....
An indescribable sense of weirdness surged into his heart. Intuition told him that he could no longer continue to probe this person's memory, otherwise something irreversible would happen.
Even making himself doomed!
He immediately stopped casting the spell, withdrew from that person's mind, and chose to wait.
The absurd guess was verified, but the deeper reasons could not be explored.
Just as Dumbledore was about to fall into contemplation, this person suddenly fell straight down, lying on the floor, losing consciousness.
Dumbledore didn't summon his Patronus. In the eyes of the Dementors, he should be no different from ordinary food. Losing one food source and hunting for a new one should be commonplace.
However, the expected attack didn't arrive. The Dementors stood motionless, as if a Body-Bind Curse had been cast upon them.
After that, there was endless silence.
Until the meeting between Malfoy and him earlier.
"Don't worry about those prisoners. Now, we need to have a good talk. Unfortunately, even though I saw it with my own eyes, I still don't understand everything," Dumbledore said seriously, no longer with his usual amiable demeanor.
"I need your explanation firsthand." Dumbledore's bright blue eyes shone with sharp, piercing light, fixed intently on Malfoy.
"You must have already guessed some things, just missing that one little condition to connect the clues, right?"
Dumbledore nodded slightly.
"Actually, it's just a kind of illegal activity in Muggle society," Malfoy shrugged, saying it casually.
"I don't understand," Dumbledore still shook his head.
"Simply put, he ingested something special. For example, it's like the effects of Felix Felicis amplified countless times, allowing people to feel endless joy, but without changing the user's luck."
"In Muggle society, this kind of thing is called—drugs."
"Drugs?" Dumbledore repeated the word earnestly, chewing on its meaning, his bright blue eyes flashing with a thoughtful look.
"Yes, this may be more cruel than the most evil Dark Magic," Malfoy said, nodding, and with a flick of his wand, he reopened the iron door that had been closed earlier.
"Why are these Dementors indifferent to us, Professor?" Afterwards, the two stepped back into the room. After standing still, Malfoy raised his wand, pointed it at the petrified Dementors, and posed this question to Dumbledore.
Dumbledore slowly took a breath, then exhaled heavily, his gaze deepening. After a moment of silence, he tentatively said, "Because they're full?"
"Conversations with intelligent people are always so pleasant," Malfoy clapped his hands, admitting Dumbledore's guess.
The wand in his hand suddenly tightened, and bone-chilling coldness couldn't help but surge from Dumbledore's heart. He had dedicated his life to combating Dark Magic. Even if he had never personally dabbled in it, he had seen a lot. Facing the ruthless Cruciatus Curse, the soul-snatching Dementors, and the Avada Kedavra curse symbolizing the Grim Reaper's scythe, he had never felt fear.
But in these short few minutes today, everything he had witnessed, this Muggle-produced drug, was enough to make him feel cold all over.
There are many ways to solve a problem. For example, when facing Dementors, some wizards understand the Patronus Charm, and the power brought by strong, surging emotions and magic can make them retreat. But Dumbledore also remembered that some people had taken a different approach, choosing another path. Some wizards tried to cast happiness charms on themselves, hoping to offset the Dementors' erosion of their emotions.
Of course, facts proved that his experiment failed. If the wizards nearby hadn't noticed something was wrong and hurriedly used the Patronus Charm, perhaps that unlucky fellow would have become a walking corpse by now.
This experiment was even featured in The Daily Prophet, also sounding the alarm for other wizards.
Similar methods had already been considered, and had been proven ineffective, but today it was broken through by brute force, and still using Muggle means. How could it not shock him?
"This isn't a good thing, is it?" Dumbledore's voice was a little dry, his brow still furrowed, as if in thought.
"I just said that this behavior is considered a crime in Muggle society."
"Then is there a way to quit?" he asked. How could people not become addicted to such an easy way to obtain pleasure? He asked himself, if he could get the Resurrection Stone, he wouldn't do any better.
He was suddenly a little distracted, and thought of his poor sister—Ariana.
"Truly a commendable heart of compassion," Malfoy sighed inwardly, then said with a meaningful tone, "A person can live in darkness forever, provided they have never seen the sunlight."
Dumbledore was silent. He fell into thought. The wizarding way of thinking allowed him to quickly and easily come up with a way to solve this problem. Just as he was about to speak, Malfoy continued, "But we are wizards. We have magic and spells beyond ordinary people, and can do things that Muggles cannot, such as making them forget their memories with the Obliviate Charm."
Dumbledore was about to nod in agreement, but was changed by a single sentence.
"Is that really the case?" Malfoy looked at the man who had collapsed on the ground because he was too "high", and said playfully.
"Now is a good opportunity for an experiment. If you can get him to quit, then I will give up this method, to satisfy your unnecessary pity, how about it?" Malfoy said. Even if he agreed in his heart, Malfoy still seemed to mock his compassion in his words.
"Oh, right, students are not allowed to use magic off-campus, and besides, I sneaked out today. I don't want to get points deducted by the headmaster, and your magic is much better than mine. I think it would be best if you do this experiment." Then he reached out and made a gesture of invitation.
Dumbledore didn't hesitate. With a wave of his hand, two beams of light shot out from the tip of his wand.
"Ennervate!"
"Obliviate!"
The skinny man was knocked down again the moment he woke up, lying on the cold floor again.
"Let's go. We can wait for his drug addiction to flare up again. Maybe this can subvert your understanding of Muggles," Malfoy said, seemingly guessing, but actually with certainty.
The two quickly left the room.
After a while, the man woke up.
He looked around blankly, as if wondering why he was in this place. The room was empty, with nothing in it.
The Dementors had been temporarily driven elsewhere, and his previous utensils, such as needles and drugs, had also been taken to other places.
A sense of emptiness suddenly struck his heart. He didn't know what he should do now, what he could do. He began to pace back and forth in the house anxiously, his body sweating profusely. Although the bright, flawless silver moonlight was pouring through the window onto the floor, this beautiful scene, which should have made people feel relaxed, could not calm his mind.
He was inexplicably anxious, his lips dry, and he beat restlessly on the locked door, but to no avail.
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