Ch.28: Dumbledore
2.4k 27 83
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

Marple Staircase Tower, or Grand Staircase Tower as people have come to call it, is the tallest of Hogwarts castle’s towers. It contains the moving staircases that have become a symbol of sorts for Hogwarts. On top of this tower there are three smaller turrets, together forming the Headmaster’s Tower, inside of which is the Headmaster’s Office, a large and beautiful circular room with all kinds of instruments adorning spindle-legged tables, whirring and puffing out small clouds of smoke. The walls were covered with portraits of old headmaster and mistresses, all whom were snoozing gently in their frames, and on the back of the room a shelf, atop which sits shabby, dirty, wizard’s hat – the Sorting Hat of Hogwarts. In front of this shelf was an enormous, claw-footed desk, and sitting behind it was Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the current headmaster of Hogwarts.

Dumbledore was a tall and thin old man, with silver hair and beard, both long enough to tuck into his belt. His eyes were light blue, and he had a long, crooked nose, which looked like it had been broken more than once.

*caw*

Dumbledore lifts his gaze from the fist-sized red stone in his hand towards the bird stand in the middle of the room, and onto the scarlet bird perched on top of it. “Hmm? Oh, has our new problem student calmed down?”

The bird was the size of a full-grown swan, with scarlet and gold plumage, golden beak and talons, black eyes, and tailfeathers as long as a peacock’s and seemingly on fire.

*caw*

“Haha, yes, that child really did a number to your tailfeathers didn’t she.”

*Caw!*

“Now now, you know she isn’t the one to blame. Besides, your burning day is coming closer, so you’ll get them back soon.”

*caw*

Letting his feathery friend have the last word, Dumbledore stands up from behind the desk and puts the stone in his hand inside the Sorting Hat, before walking towards the middle of the room.

“Well then, old friend. I believe we have a child to console, don’t you?” Dumbledore says as he raises his forearm over his head, prompting the bird, though still looking slightly unwilling, to fly from its stand. As the bird landed on Dumbledore’s arm, it fluttered its wings, and with a melodious shriek, they both disappeared from the room in a burst of fire.

In but a moment, and accompanied by another burst of fire, Dumbledore found himself in the midst of towering trees, which seemed to reach over hundred meter high. Over him, the sun’s gentle rays pierced the canopy danced in the air, and under him, grew a field green grass full of vibrant flowers. The only details giving away the illusion of a beautiful forest were the door standing behind him and the outline of the stonewalls, almost seamlessly blending into the background.

The bird took flight from Dumbledore’s arm and perched on the sole branch growing from one of these ‘trees’, but Dumbledore paid it no mind, as his attention was on the not so small mountain of pillows that was in front of him.

“An idyllic forestscape and a mountain of pillows enchanted to be resistant to both ripping and burning. Aah, indeed, it’s a perfect place to clear one’s mind, is it not?” Dumbledore said as he looked into a pair of golden eyes, gazing back at him from the middle of the pillowmountain, with a grandfatherly smile on his face.

*GOURRR*

“Well, maybe one more thing could be added.” Dumbledore added with a laugh upon hearing the loud sound of a stomach growling and claps his hands, making a table full of food appear between him and the owner of a very hungry stomach.

Suddenly the mountain of pillows starts to move, as from underneath the pillows comes a beast that usually on sighting would spark the magical community to evacuate everyone with even the slightest possibility of ending in this disasters path, the saving grace being the beast highly territorial habits, with them never leaving their territory. It had a feline head close to a lion’s, a goat’s body covered in dark violet fur, and a dark red reptilian tail that resembled a dragon’s and was longer than the rest of its body.

Indeed, this beast was a chimaera, the greatest nightmare of Greece’s magical community.

This particular individual could, however, be called a young’un, with its fiery red mane yet to have fully grown and its height reaching only two and a half meters, where as a fully grown chimaera could reach up to eight meters while standing on four legs.

As the chimaera moved away from the pillows and towards the table of food, its form started to shrink. It stood to walk on two legs, with front hooves changing to hands and hind hooves to feet. Its body came to be hidden by a Hogwarts’ student uniform with Hufflepuff’s colours, under which its tail also disappeared. The yellow fur on its face receded together with the lion’s maw, making way for a pointy nose and red lips. The golden irises shrunk to let the whites of the eyes to show, and the pupils changed from slits to round ones. Its ears lowered from the top of its head down to the sides, turning into those of a human, and finally, its red mane elongated into hair reaching the small of its new forms back.

Dumbledore didn’t say anything as Almira sat down to the table and started eating, opting to just watch silently.

83