"Dylan, you're not the least bit shocked? That was a three-headed dog!" Ron pouted at him.
Dylan paused with his milk halfway to his lips, blinked twice. "Huh? Of course I'm shocked. I'm very shocked."
Glug, glug, glug—
He tipped his head back and took several big swallows.
When he set the cup down, a faint ring of milk clung to his upper lip.
Dylan ran the tip of his tongue lightly along his lips, then picked up his fork to spear a fried egg.
Watching how relaxed he looked, Ron planted both hands on the table and sat bolt upright.
"Merlin, Dylan!"
His suddenly raised voice made quite a few students nearby turn to look.
Ron froze, then hunched back down, lowering his head and leaning in toward Dylan as much as possible.
"A three-headed dog! I mean, a three-headed dog! Aren't you the least bit curious how powerful it is?"
Dylan gave the silly boy a look and smacked his lips twice.
"The Headmaster already said those places are absolutely off-limits. Go there and you really can die. Even a Dementor being locked up in there wouldn't be impossible… you know what a Dementor is, right?"
"And even if there aren't Dementors, you said there's a three-headed dog. There could easily be other things—Basilisks, trolls, whatever."
"The fact that you managed to come back in one piece actually does surprise me. A lot."
Afraid Ron would not believe him, he tacked that on at the end.
Ron's expression froze for a second, like someone had hit the pause button. Then he blinked rapidly.
He curled his lip, reached up to scratch the back of his head, scuffed his shoes on the floor, and dropped his gaze. "But last night really was exciting…"
Dylan smiled. "You know what's even more exciting?"
Ron, a crispy sausage hanging from his mouth, looked over. "What?"
"The three-headed dog has immense strength. Even an iron door would be smashed to pieces if it charged it."
"It also has powerful resistance to magic—practically immune to most spells. And its bite force is incredible."
"Even a Hungarian Horntail's scales, it could chomp straight through. If you really want a comparison…"
Dylan's half-smiling eyes dropped to the sausage dangling from Ron's mouth.
"Is it nice and crunchy? That's exactly what you'll sound like when it eats you."
"When it has you in its jaws, the first thing you'll hear is a pop—that's your body getting punctured like a balloon, the sound of you being bitten through."
"Of course, while the middle head is holding you, the other two aren't just going to sit there."
"The left head will bite your own head off, and the right one will shove both your legs into its mouth."
"In just a few moments, the three chunks of what used to be you will meet again somewhere down its throats and then drop together into its stomach."
Ron stared at Dylan's opening and closing mouth, eyes bulging, the color draining from his face in an instant. His lips trembled uncontrollably.
"Urgh…"
He gagged, spat out the half sausage in his mouth, but bits of it still clung to the corner of his lips.
Seeing those crumbs, Harry swallowed hard and quietly pulled his hand back from the platter of sausages.
"Honestly, I don't think Hermione's as bad as Ron says. Last night she could've just left us, but in the end she helped a lot. Getting that locked door open was basically all her; she really is clever."
Harry tried to steer the topic away from the three-headed dog.
Ron quickly set his sausage down.
He glanced sideways at Hermione, his mouth twisting up to the ceiling.
He clearly disagreed with Harry. Face flushing, neck straining, he said, "Actually, if she hadn't opened that door, we wouldn't have run into that monster in the first place!"
"That three-headed dog was really dangerous! Dylan just said it would chew us up like sausages!"
Hermione narrowed her eyes, fighting the urge to grab her thickest book and smash it over Ron's head.
"Too bad we don't have History today, or History of Magic would feel just right in my hand."
She snorted and glared at him. "Actually, if it weren't for me, you would've been caught by a professor and tossed out on your ears!"
Ron clicked his tongue and was about to argue again.
Noticing that Dylan clearly had no desire to keep involving himself, he hurriedly switched topics.
"I remember when Hagrid took me to Diagon Alley, he took out this little bundle from Gringotts. That was the same day Gringotts got broken into."
After last night, Harry could not help thinking that the three-headed dog must be guarding something in that forbidden corridor—and that it was probably whatever Hagrid had taken out.
"But what is that thing?"
Ron was hooked and muttered along with him.
The two of them thought and thought, but still could not figure out what it might be.
In the end, both pairs of eyes turned toward Dylan.
Dylan, of course, knew exactly what Hagrid had taken: the Philosopher's Stone—something he did not consider all that useful.
The Stone's greatest wonder was supposedly the Elixir of Life.
But even drinking that, and living long enough, within three to five hundred years a body would rot to the point where a simple handshake might crack a bone.
He had no interest in that kind of miserable existence.
In his mind, it was absolutely possible to brew a more stable and perfect Elixir of Life with potions alone, without relying on the Stone.
The only reason it had not been done yet was that today's wizards had not figured out how.
Dylan believed that if he brewed enough potions—felt the way they rolled and changed colors in the cauldron, tasted the bitterness of success or failure, smelled the harsh or strange scents that rose—
then with the ever-increasing talent his achievement system gave him, he would surely carve out a new path to longevity.
For now, though, he was only ten. Absorbing as much magical knowledge as possible was his first priority.
As for immortality?
Voldemort above, he was nowhere near the point of worrying about that.
If anyone needed to start thinking about it, it was Dumbledore.
"Dylan, what do you think it could be?"
The two of them looked up at him like a pair of eager puppies, eyes big and shining.
Dylan resisted the urge to reach over and pat them on the head, set his fork down, and said,
"If you think Hagrid put that thing in the forbidden corridor and had a three-headed dog guarding it, then it must be something very precious indeed."
(End of Chapter)
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