The conversation inside the bedroom grew quieter and quieter until it fell into silence, while the knocking outside only grew louder and more urgent.
Dumbledore composed his expression and yanked the door open!
"Ow—!"
Accompanied by a chorus of shrieks, three people came tumbling in like dominoes!
Jane stared in stunned disbelief at Dumbledore buried at the bottom with the Gryffindor trio stacked on top of him.
Human Jenga...?
But the trio were even more shocked than she was—they scrambled up in panic, rolling and crawling away from their headmaster's body.
"P-P-Professor D-Dumbledore...!"
A second later, all three stood in a neat row against the wall.
Each hung their head guiltily, hands pressed to their robe seams, wishing they could burn two holes through the floor with their stares.
"Such boundless youth," Dumbledore remarked, rubbing his aching back as he sat on Jane's bed.
"Sorry!" Ron stammered with his eyes squeezed shut. "But... but... we had a reason for looking for Jane! It's urgent!"
"So what happened?" Jane asked.
"We ran into Malfoy," Harry said quickly, lifting his head. "Not long after you left this morning, Sirius took us to Diagon Alley for school supplies, and we saw him and his mother go into Knockturn Alley!"
Jane immediately realized this was likely the mother and son's deliberate move.
They'd intentionally led the trio into Knockturn Alley, hoping they'd go searching for clues about the assassination gift package.
"They must be plotting something!" Hermione said urgently. "We watched them enter Borgin and Burkes and overheard them talking about repairing a black cabinet just like one in the shop, and telling the shopkeeper to hold onto a necklace!"
A black cabinet... Jane thought she understood what Draco had meant by "wardrobe."
For some reason, she felt like she'd seen something similar before in her memories.
"I already know about this," Dumbledore replied calmly, clearly confident in his plans. "I'll make arrangements."
He glanced at Harry—that particularly juicy target the Death Eaters loved to focus on...
"So you snuck into Knockturn Alley?" he asked pointedly. "Three children... following them on your own?"
Ron stared up at the ceiling, Hermione studied the wooden floor, and Harry... Harry turned to face the wall in silent reflection.
Dumbledore's brow furrowed!
He truly hadn't expected these three children to be so recklessly bold, risking their lives like this!
"What if they'd done it deliberately, luring you in to take as hostages?" he began his earnest lecture. "Did you consider the consequences?"
"...Er... we had the Invisibility Cloak," Ron tried to defend them. "And we kept our distance, used Extendable Ears... Sirius was there too...!"
He suddenly clapped his hand over his mouth, which had been running away with his nerves, but it continued uncontrollably:
"He turned into his Animagus form—mmph mmph—"
For some reason, Dumbledore felt a resigned sense of "of course" alongside his helplessness:
"So Sirius also went into Knockturn Alley."
Successfully betrayed by Ron, Sirius was immediately arrested by Dumbledore.
When everyone appeared in his bedroom, the brave warrior was lying quietly on his bed, resting.
This was very un-Sirius-like, because normally he should have burst into Jane's bedroom with the other three to report intelligence.
The moment he saw Dumbledore and Jane appear, he quickly pulled himself under the tiny blanket Kreacher had thrown in, desperately trying to cover his large frame.
This sneaky, guilty posture immediately made Dumbledore raise an eyebrow.
Honestly, he was somewhat puzzled why every time he discovered these utterly outrageous incidents—
Sirius Black was invariably involved?
But considering this man was one of the Marauders who'd once turned the school upside down... he suddenly felt resigned to it.
At least this time it was just crashing into Jane's bedroom door before taking three kids on a brave expedition to Knockturn Alley—no one was hanging upside down with their underwear showing, no one was cursing each other into neat rows... compared to his school days, he'd grown considerably.
So Dumbledore thought to himself.
—Only to be startled by Sirius's bruised and battered face, revealed because the blanket was too small to cover both head and rear.
He studied Sirius carefully—despite his colorful face, his expression still radiated the defiant energy of his youth—and couldn't help but sigh deeply.
"You didn't end up casting Levicorpus on each other, did you, Harry?" he asked hopefully.
The scene fell silent.
The Gryffindor trio turned in unison to stare at Sirius.
Dumbledore completely lost his composure.
"So... whose... underwear was showing?" he asked with difficulty.
"No one's underwear was showing!" Sirius protested loudly. "I'm not that childish anymore! Even though I despise that family—she can't even be considered my cousin—but I wouldn't stoop to that level!"
"I just wanted to scare them a bit as they left the shop, but that Malfoy brat immediately hit me with several nasty little hexes without saying a word. I was caught off guard... honestly, I don't understand why he was so angry—"
Jane recalled Narcissa's comparison and mockery of her son versus Sirius at Madam Malkin's robe shop...
She suddenly felt no surprise whatsoever that Sirius had gotten hexed.
Dumbledore nodded:
"So Sirius, you still went into Knockturn Alley—full of dark wizards and Dark Magic—with three children."
Sirius was left speechless.
So now there were four people standing at attention against the wall.
Dumbledore felt he appeared calm on the surface, but his soul seemed to have wandered off for a while.
He took a deep breath and redirected the conversation:
"Courage taken too far becomes recklessness. Why would you disregard your own safety? If they'd set a trap, deliberately luring you in, could Sirius really have protected three people?"
All four uniformly lowered their heads and began boring holes in the floor with their stares.
"Don't blame them—I only planned to go in alone as an Animagus, but they were worried and followed!" Sirius lifted his head again, indignant. "Anyone appearing in Knockturn Alley at this time can't be up to any good! They must have been buying Dark Magic items to harm people!"
"Besides, I'm not an idiot—I had arrangements. Even if I got caught going in, I told Moony to get them out—"
This time it was Jane who felt her soul slightly leave her body.
"Very good, very thorough arrangements. So there was also one of my excellent employees, Remus, in Knockturn Alley."
The successfully betrayed working man Remus Lupin crept in half-bent from the doorway, looking thoroughly guilty.
Bathed in Jane's "let's see how you explain this" gaze, his spine curved slightly, his expression evasive, his eyelids blinking nervously, his whole person instinctively sliding along the wall from the doorway, embodying the phrase "guilty conscience" to perfection.
His face turned slightly toward Sirius, his eyes full of accusation toward his friend, while he dared not glance once in Jane's direction—he knew without thinking that it wouldn't be a kind look—
Because today was a workday.
And he hadn't requested leave.
So now there were five people standing neatly against the wall, eyes on nose, nose on heart.
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