Chapter 033: Flames

"Catherine!" Harry was dumbfounded and exclaimed, "You're amazing. ”

"As long as you pay attention to the details, you can do it." Catherine smiled, and Harry stroked his hair in embarrassment.

"What about the two horses?" Ron asked.

"I don't know if there are any golden horses in the wizarding world." Catherine told the truth.

Ron twitched the corners of his mouth and cursed in a low voice, "Sassy bag"!

The carriage soon stopped in front of them, and then came a glittering man - Gilderoy Lockhart.

"Ahh Headmaster Dumbledore! Lockhart took three steps and two steps, and went straight to the silver-haired principal to hold his hand tightly, and exclaimed excitedly, "I didn't expect you to come out to pick me up in person, it's such an honor!" Although I was greeted by their headmasters as I traveled past Durmstrang and Babston, how could I compare to you, the greatest White Wizard leader of the century! Honestly, I've always fantasized about this day being appreciated by you, and when I first set foot at Hogwarts, I was looking forward to one day becoming a professor and teaching what I've learned all my life to the little ones who are waiting to be fed, how cute and charming they are,......"

Lockhart's saliva spurted out like a reservoir that opened the floodgates, and like a flooding river, quickly flooding both banks, he was gushing about his studies at Hogwarts, the adventures of his youth, and his excitement about returning to his alma mater.

Even though they had seen Mrs. Weasley's caustic language without repetitive discipline and Snape's swear without swearing, Catherine, Harry, and Ron still had unparalleled admiration for Lockhart's ability to speak nonsense, and Dumbledore had discovered for the first time that his student had such a strong ability.

"I'll pick up my three students." Taking advantage of Lockhart's breath, Dumbledore hurriedly stated his original purpose, "They didn't catch the train. ”

"Uh-" Lockhart immediately understood that he had made a mistake, but then he found another target, "Ah! Harry Potter! You didn't catch the train! Oh! I understand! He suddenly leaned in front of Harry and lowered his voice, but still heard it clearly for the people next to him, "I gave you a taste of fame, and I made you addicted. You and I were on the first page of the newspaper and couldn't wait to do it again. ”

"Huh?" Harry hurriedly explained, "No, sir, I ......"

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Loha grabbed the boy by the shoulder, "I understand, it's natural to taste it once and think a second time—I blame myself for giving you a taste of the sweetness, and it's bound to get you carried away—but, young man, you can't try to get attention right now. Calm down, okay? When you grow up, you'll have time......" He began to impart his experience, his voice flowing like a mountain.

The three children were all dumbfounded, they had never seen such a shameless guy, only the experienced Dumbledore could keep his mind clear, but Harry and Ron would not want him to say the next words if they had the foresight.

"Professor Lockhart!" Dumbledore interrupted the conversation with a smirk, "Since you and Harry know each other—"

"Oh, yes, of course I do," Lockhart quickly snatched back the right to speak, "we met during the summer, ah! He suddenly exclaimed, grabbing Ron's arm, "And this young man, his mom happens to be the lucky guest at my autograph session to sell Me Who Can Magic!" ”

"That's great!" Dumbledore hurriedly interjected again, "I still have some things to do, so I can only entrust the two of them to take you to your office. ”

Harry and Ron looked at their headmaster dumbfounded, they didn't expect him to push them both into the fire pit, and Lockhart replied with great joy.

"What a heart! I'm about to ask the headmaster for both of them! I have so much to say to the two of them, after all, as a professor, I have a responsibility to persuade people to do good! ”

Lockhart looked impassioned, Harry and Ron looked grief-stricken, Catherine couldn't help but laugh, and Dumbledore looked awe-inspiring.

"Then I'll go first!" Without waiting for Lockhart to speak, Dumbledore immediately grabbed Catherine's hand.

"Whew!" A burst of red flames burst from beneath his feet, enveloping Dumbledore and Catherine in an instant, and when the flames burned out, they both disappeared.

"Wow! That's cool! The two boys couldn't help but exclaim.

"It's nothing!" Lockhart opened his chatterbox again, "When I'm traveling, I've seen more magical things than this......"

Harry and Ron glanced at each other, their heads hanging and listening helplessly to Lockhart's boasting.

The Headmaster's office at Hogwarts was very quiet, the Sorting Hat was snoring, the portraits were closing their eyes and recuperating, and the frustrated Fawkes was lazily dreaming in its nest, even the sudden flames could not disturb their rest, but the screams that followed made them open their eyes curiously, looking at the two people who suddenly appeared in the center of the office, Dumbledore with a blank face and Catherine who was looking at him in horror.

"What's going on?" The Sorting Hat was the first to ask.

Dumbledore shrugged, and Catherine didn't answer, just opened her right hand, and the palm that was once as smooth as jade was now charred and blistered, like a pig's trotter that had been roasted over the fire.

"O Merlin! Dumbledore, you've gone too far! Delis Devonte, who had worked as a therapist at St. Mungo, exclaimed in shock, "This is a second-degree burn, and even if Severus plucks your bird naked, you can't roast Catherine!" ”

"Delith, I swore to protect every student when I took office, so how could I hurt Catherine?" Dumbledore said helplessly, "I just came back here as much as I could, using my special powers—" He stopped talking abruptly, staring at Catherine in shock.

"Isn't—" Catherine also noticed that something seemed wrong, "wouldn't ordinary wizards be burned by your flames?" ”

"Yes-" Dumbledore replied hesitantly, "never, unless-" He suddenly opened his right hand, and a red flame appeared out of thin air in his hand.

"Ahh Catherine clenched her head and screamed back, "What the hell have you done to me?" She cried out in horror in a trembling voice, "Why were you at the scene when my adoptive parents had an accident?" ”

Although Catherine remembered the old man's hair and beard as a tinsel gray, his glasses with dirty round lenses, and his nose showing no signs of being broken, his bright, piercing blue eyes were exactly the same as the man in front of him.

"That's not me!" Dumbledore blurted out a defense, and then realized his mistake, he could only put away the flame in his hand and said helplessly, "That's my brother - Aberforth." ”

"You came to me that night?" Catherine gasped and asked, though she didn't know what was going on with Mr. Aberforth Dumbledore, but the old Headmaster's behavior over the past year showed how much he cared about his own affairs.

Dumbledore nodded.

"Is it necessary for me to forget you?" Catherine's eyes were fixed on Dumbledore, and if it weren't for the sight of those eyes that could see through people's hearts, she wouldn't have known what she had forgotten.

"I don't want you—" Dumbledore hesitated for a moment before continuing, "distracted, after all, your situation required concentration. ”

Catherine was silent, she knew that Dumbledore had not told the truth, and she was tempted to use Tracey to make him speak, but she had aroused his alarm more than two months ago, and she did not dare to probe further now, lest it be a failure, so she brought up the original topic again.

"What did you just want to say, 'unless'?"

"Unless—" Dumbledore pushed his half-moon eyes, "someone with the opposite power of mine." ”

Catherine suddenly remembered a strange dream on Ben Nevis, looked into her miserable right hand, and tried to pronounce a word: "Water!"

The small bead of blood immediately appeared in the palm of her hand, and when the injury to her right hand was discovered, it slowly spread out until it enveloped the entire right hand, Catherine felt as if her right hand was in the water, and the hot burning sensation was completely driven away by the clear moist feeling, and when the blood bead retracted back into her palm, her right hand returned to its original state.

"Merlin!" The portraits exclaimed in unison, and Dumbledore sat directly in his chair.

As a child of an ordinary family, before the age of eighteen, he won a series of awards such as the Barnabus Finckley Award for Outstanding Spell Casting Techniques, the British Youth Representative of the Wizengamot, the Gold Medal for Pioneering Contributions to the Cairo International Alchemy Congress, and was recognized by the most famous magic masters of the time, including the famous alchemist Nick Lemay, the famous historian Bathilda Baghat, and the magic theorist Adbay Wolft, etc., Dumbledore was definitely a genius.

But after he learned of the sage's existence, it still took nearly half a century to sign a blood contract with the phoenix by chance, and he initially mastered the power of the flame, but now there is a girl who has just turned twelve years old who has mastered the power of the complete opposite.

Dumbledore's mixed emotions and all the portraits and the Sorting Hat were lost in thought, and Fawkes burrowed into its nest, hiding and shivering, the shadow of that night still looming over it.

Seeing this, Catherine simply found a chair and sat down by herself, and re-studied the blood bead in the palm of her right hand, blood can indeed be regarded as a kind of water source in general, but why can it become a force just by a dream?

The headmaster's office became quiet again, until a loud slamming of the door suddenly sounded, interrupting the train of thought of the "people" present.

"I've already taken Weasley to get his stuff." Snape strode in, "I saw this slippery fish when I arrived. He waved his wand, and a gargoyle appeared out of thin air.