After the start-of-term feast, Professor Dumbledore stood up once again, and the hall returned to silence.
He addressed the students with a few reminders, advising them not to venture into the Forbidden Forest or cast spells in the corridors.
Dumbledore's expression was not very serious, and these reminders probably wouldn't have much effect.
At least when Dracula glanced at the students from his seat at the professor's table, he could clearly see many Gryffindor students eager to test their limits.
After mentioning the reminders and a notice, Dumbledore's expression suddenly became solemn.
"Finally, I must tell everyone, for those who do not wish to encounter accidents or a painful death, please do not enter the corridor on the right side of the fourth floor," he said earnestly.
There seemed to be a few laughs from the audience, as if they thought Dumbledore was joking.
Dracula curiously turned to the short Professor Flitwick beside him and asked, "He doesn't look like he's joking."
"Oh! Indeed, he isn't," Professor Flitwick replied in his characteristic high-pitched voice. "It seems Albus is protecting something. A while ago, he had us main course professors set up some interesting obstacles to prevent that thing from being stolen."
"Oh? I wasn't aware of this. Isn't Dark Arts Defense a main course?" Dracula inquired.
"Of course, Dark Arts Defense is a main course! Ahem, though it hasn't enjoyed the treatment of a main course in decades…" Professor Flitwick stroked his small mustache and said awkwardly. "But it's normal for you not to know, Professor Dracula, since you were away when Albus was setting up the obstacles, so Chilo did it for you."
"I see," Dracula nodded.
In the next moment, he saw Professor Flitwick's smile freeze.
Standing in the center of the professor's table, Dumbledore waved his wand, and a long golden ribbon flew out, twisting and curling like a serpent in mid-air, forming lines of text above the dining tables.
"Choose your preferred tune," Dumbledore said. "Ready, sing!"
Upon hearing the "singing" of the entire staff and students, Dracula's expression also froze.
"Wait, a thousand years have passed, and Hogwarts still hasn't found someone to compose a tune for the school song?!"
Amid the noisy, almost quarrelsome "singing," Dracula loudly asked Professor Flitwick beside him.
Professor Flitwick, enjoying not having to sing along, stood on his chair and said loudly, "Every headmaster has considered this to be Hogwarts' tradition, and no one wants to break it!"
Dracula was left speechless, unsure of what expression to make.
He still vaguely remembered that a thousand years ago, Ravenclaw had written the lyrics for the Hogwarts school song. However, given the state of music in England at the time, people were only familiar with playing bagpipes or single-stringed instruments.
The four founders, not wanting the song's tune to lower Hogwarts' prestige, decided to preserve only the lyrics, hoping that future talented witches and wizards would compose a captivating melody for the Hogwarts school song.
Who would have thought that later headmasters would interpret the founders' intent as a deep-seated tradition, continuously adhering to the free-tune tradition, even up to today, a thousand years later...
---
After enduring the school song, Dracula returned to his office.
The Dark Arts Defense professor's office was located on the third floor, connected to the Dark Arts Defense classroom on the second floor. Every time he had a class, the Dark Arts Defense professor could easily reach the classroom by opening the office's side door and descending a short flight of stairs.
Dracula couldn't be sure if this layout had always been this way, or if Dumbledore had specially arranged it to guard against his habit of jumping out of windows...
In his darkly aesthetic office, Dracula met with his teaching assistant, Chilo.
"So your way of masking the garlic smell is by covering it up with a more intense stench??"
Before Chilo could enter, Dracula frowned and set up a dark barrier, sealing him firmly behind it.
"Pr... Professor Dracula, you must understand... understand me," Chilo stammered from behind the barrier. "Because I encountered a vampire in Romania, to prevent it from coming after me... I had to do this."
Hearing Chilo's reason, Dracula's eyes shifted slightly.
"You've seen Romanian vampires?" he asked curiously.
"Y... yes."
"And how are they now?" Dracula's tone became more serious as he sat up straight and looked at Chilo.
"Wh... what situation?" Chilo looked at him blankly.
"Their behavior, way of doing things, mental state, the extent of their population, and so on." Dracula put on a smile he considered reasonably friendly, even tolerating the stench to let Chilo into the office from behind the barrier. "Don't worry too much, just speak freely."
"Uh…" Chilo was somewhat stunned and stammered, "Well… it's no different from usual, vampires are still as brutal as before, with pale faces, ugly looks, and thin bodies…"
"When he saw me, he jumped at me wanting to drink my blood, and I, of course, didn't want that, so we fought. We fought for a long time, and I used a spell to drive him away…"
"Enough, that's all nonsense!"
Dracula's face darkened as he listened, until he couldn't take it anymore and slapped him out of the room.
"I don't care what reason you find, either get rid of the smell or be dismissed, choose one!"
Chilo tumbled out of the door, hitting the back of his head hard against a pillar in the corridor.
He reached up to rub his aching head, but halfway through, he vaguely heard a malicious curse in his mind.
Chilo hurriedly withdrew his hand from where it almost pressed against his head and left Dracula's office, looking dejected.
However, just a few steps away, he was suddenly pulled back by an invisible hand.
"There's one more thing." Dracula set up another barrier to isolate the smell and asked from behind it, "I heard you set up obstacles for something Dumbledore wants to protect? Do you know what that thing is?"
Upon hearing Dracula's question, Chilo's whole body tensed up.
"I… I don't know much. I only set up the obstacles," he said cautiously.
"I guess you don't know." Dracula sneered, "So what was set up in the obstacles?"
"A… a giant."
Chilo was thrown out of the office once more, hitting his head against the same pillar.
"So that's why you smell so bad; it's the giant's odor," Dracula said with disgust.
"Go immediately and get rid of your giant, I'll handle the obstacles!"