Chapter 52: The Bad Old Man (Edited)

Fish peeked over the edge of Dumbledore's pocket, poking his little head out.

Professor McGonagall was finally persuaded by Dumbledore.

In fact, had she not been at the school, Professor McGonagall would have been more lenient with Fish, but once he became a Hogwarts student, she, as vice-principal and head of Gryffindor, became a little more eager to educate him.

So, after being persuaded by Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall quickly changed her mind and, after returning Fish's wand to him, did not give him any more lessons, but left the prize room.

Fish followed Dumbledore to find out where the Sorting Hat was and to see what kind of animal the Phoenix he was talking about was.

As he prepared for the theft of the Sorting Hat, Fish took a good look at the bad old man's route, and from the direction he was heading, he must have been headed for the third floor.

Fish's guess was correct, as Dumbledore descended the stairs to the third floor of Hogwarts. As he passed the Defense of the Dark Arts professor's office, Fish couldn't help but hold his nose with his little paws.

Even through a doorway, he could smell the unpleasant odor emanating from inside that was repugnant to cats.

"Quirinus..." Dumbledore noticed Fish's movement, paused, looked at the closed door of Professor Quirrell's office and sighed softly, "I should never have granted your request in the first place, I hope I was wrong..."

"Meow?"

"Oh, sorry, it was just the rantings of an old man, no need to pay much attention," Dumbledore chuckled and resumed his walk, reaching into his pocket to pat Fish's little head at the same time.

Fish was not as patient with the mean old man as he was with Minerva, and he opened his mouth and bit Dumbledore's finger.

"Oh... naughty little man." Dumbledore withdrew his hand, looked at the teeth marks on his hand, and then praised, "But you're much more sensible than when we first met, at least my hand doesn't bleed."

Fish ignored him, licked his teeth and continued to look around.

"Haha," Dumbledore laughed and shook his head, carrying Fish in his pocket, he turned a corner and came to a stone statue of a strange looking monster.

It was a stone statue Fish remembered, he had slept on it.

"Chocolate frog," Dumbledore said to the stone statue, which caught Fish's attention.

Before Fish could find the chocolate frog, however, the statue came to life, hunching over and jumping aside to make way for the wall behind it.

At the same time, the wall behind the statue split in half, revealing a spiral staircase hidden inside, slowly spinning upwards.

"Meow~ ?(=ΦωΦ=)?"

Fish immediately jumped out of Dumbledore's pocket, leapt to the top of the spiral staircase, and then hopped down, one step at a time, at about the same speed at which the staircase was spinning, as if he were walking in place.

Dumbledore didn't bother Fish, and watched with a smile on his face as he played.

But Fish soon became bored with the game and dropped down on the steps, with his little head on the outside of the ladder, and was carried upwards.

The experience of turning upward was novel, and Fish lay on his back on the steps, watching with interest as the wall continued downward to the right in front of him.

"Interesting staircase, isn't it?" Dumbledore walked up the stairs as well, stopped four or five steps away from Fish, and sat down on them,

His head was at the same height as the step Fish was lying on.

"Meow!" replied Fish, wagging his tail twice before returning his gaze to the moving wall.

"I don't understand anything you're saying, cat language is very hard to learn," Dumbledore said.

Fish wiggled His ears and ignored him.

Dumbledore didn't seem to notice Fish's indifference as he wiggled his hips and moved his head closer to Fish's, then lifted his half-moon glasses and followed Fish's gaze to the wall.

"Is there something on the wall? It looks very attractive to you," Dumbledore said.

(=﹁ω﹁=)

Fish looked sideways at Dumbledore and said nothing, because he didn't want to answer that boring question.

Dumbledore blinked his blue eyes and spoke again.

Only this time it wasn't English, but a strange string of gibberish.

"Meow?", The strange gibberish eventually caught Fish's attention, who tilted his head to look at Dumbledore; his green eyes blinked, separated by the crescent-shaped glasses, meeting Dumbledore's blue eyes.

Dumbledore had a slight smile on his face and continued to spit out a series of words in the goblin language.

After seeing no reaction from Fish, he switched to a sharp, piercing siren language.

This time Fish reacted ...

"Meow!" He waved his paw and slapped Dumbledore across the face.

The slap was different from the one he had received at the Three Broomsticks, Fish had not applied the spell: Brute Force of the Bull, so Dumbledore was able to continue his unpleasant screaming unaffected.

So Fish straightened up and, with both front paws on the ground, threw a series of cat punches at the evil old man's head, knocking aside the half-moon glasses he had on the bridge of his nose, and succeeded in silencing Dumbledore.

In fact, Dumbledore was testing to see if Fish could understand his mermaid and goblin language, or if he could understand Fish's meowing.

But, as far as he could tell, his test had failed.

Dumbledore had considered asking Fish directly, but with Fish's current state of ignorance, he supposed it would be useless to ask him.

'Let's see if Fish can communicate with Fawkes smoothly later,' Dumbledore straightened his glasses and thought to himself.

He certainly wasn't inviting Fish into his office at random, after all this time he had doubted his initial suspicions about the natural animagus, and out of personal habit and duty as headmaster, Dumbledore couldn't resist the urge to find out what was really going on with Fish.

Not knowing what the evil old man next to him was up to, Fish grew tired of staring at the walls and began tugging at Dumbledore's long white beard again.

"Don't torment my poor beard," Dumbledore, whose jaw was sore from the tugging, hurriedly shielded his beard and pulled a piece of candy out of his pocket and handed it to him, "I'll treat you to some sweets."

Fish looked at the slightly worn candy in the bad old man's hand and suddenly remembered that he had a bag of dried fish in his pocket that Big Eyes had given him.

So he returned to his human form, sat down on the steps like the old bad guy and pulled a small bag out of his pocket.

"I got my own meow food!" (*￣ω￣*) Fish cheerfully showed Dumbledore the dried little fish in the bag, "Big Eyes gave it to me!".

"Argus?" He makes fried fish for Lady Norris all the time..." Dumbledore nodded, then approached Fish with a sheepish face, "So, can I have some?"

"Meow?" meowed Fish disdainfully.