Chapter 387 The Vicious Beauty Trap

It was as if the Gryffindor's sword was welded to the table, struck by the knight's sword in the armour's hand, yet it did not budge even a bit.

Instead, the quill that was writing on the parchment bounced for a split second in response to such force and left a cloud of black ink on the parchment before it regained its angle and continued writing.

The armour holding the long axe took the opportunity to cleave through the Incarcerous Spell and Freezing Charm effect to restore the first armour's ability to move.

The sword and shield armour also raised its sword and shield, and the three armours formed a triangular formation, surrounding Hermione in the middle!

The only relief for Hermione was that the armour seemed to be aiming at only her, and did not bother with the shorthand quill that was still scribbling away on the desk, and therefore did not interfere with the process of transcribing the magic runes.

Fawkes stood at Hermione's shoulder and made no other move.

The armours, not to mention the fact that all of them are extremely solid and highly resistant to physical attacks, make it very difficult for Fawkes to do any effective damage to them, and if he were to fire a large fire blast at them, it would certainly make the office the most visible presence in the night, and all their efforts to conceal and restrain would then be in vain.

So his task was to keep an eye on Hermione, and as soon as he saw that she was in a desperate situation, he would take her away with him.

This was the task Dumbledore had assigned to him, to prevent Hermione from throwing her life away to complete the task.

Hermione didn't try to fight the armour, her eyes glanced at the progress of the shorthand quill every now and then, according to the time estimation, it would take at least three minutes to copy down all these magic runes on the table, and she would have to hold out for three minutes against the attack of these three suits of armour.

Originally, Hermione had suggested that since only the electronic devices of Muggles could not be used in Hogwarts Castle, she could use a purely mechanical camera, and if she could bring such a camera in, she could copy the runes on the table as quickly as possible.

But Dumbledore said that it was impossible to record such runes in that way, just as there was no way a camera could possibly be used against the eyes of a basilisk, the power of which would be so great that the camera itself would collapse, and the film would be burnt to a crisp.

The only way to copy such runes is to use the most basic form of handwriting, with no other possibility of trickery.

Well, if it was for only three minutes, Hermione took a deep breath as she looked at the three suits of armour, and the hand that wasn't holding her wand reached into the pocket of her robes as she pulled out the Marauder's Map and took a quick look at the location of the closest Aurors visible at close proximity to the Headmaster's office.

Most of the Aurors were on the ground floor, and only one group of Aurors looked like they had just walked down from the third floor to the second and were returning to the great hall on the ground floor.

That meant that with all the stairs that could be moved now stopped, even if those below had spotted any movement in the Headmaster's office, it would take them at least two more minutes to reach the seventh floor at the earliest, which would be enough time for Hermione to take the parchment that had been completed and transcribed.

Then she found Jon's name at a quick glance, he and Lee were now in the garden outside the castle, and not far from them were the names of both Snape and Crouch.

After making sure everyone was in position and also counting the time, Hermione tucked the Marauder's Map back into her coat pocket as the three suits of armour had finished their initial power build-up to increase their speed and charged towards her with weapons in their hands.

And Hermione waved her wand, only this time it was clearly aimed not at any of the armour, but at the wall facing the window!

The garden, on the bench.

Jon and Lee had been sitting on it for a while now, still chatting, only at Lee's behest, the distance between the two had moved closer and closer from a somewhat spaced-out start, to the point where they were almost completely next to each other.

"I mean, I really can't figure out what kind of effect this bracelet you're carrying has to make us need to sit closer?"

Jon couldn't help but grunt after once again making sure there were no ears in the surrounding wall.

Lee's voice had now become exactly like Hermione's, except it was like he was trying to deliberately mimic a girl's speaking accent, yet he was so singularly familiar with girls that he sounded like a green tea bitch (girls who pretend to be sweet and innocent but are dishonest) whenever he opened his mouth.

"Hermione actually didn't tell you about this? Then she probably kept it from you on purpose because she worried that you'd feel uncomfortable."

"What's in there that would make me uncomfortable? What could this bracelet do, anyway it can't be that Crouch used some kind of delayed aphrodisiac on it, right?"

Lee obviously knew exactly what this bracelet was supposed to do, and after hearing Jon's words, he stared at Jon with a suspicious look on his face.

"Did you just tease me on purpose? Did Hermione actually tell you all about what the bracelet does long ago?"

Hearing him ask such a question, Jon just felt like the world was starting to get ridiculous.

"It's actually really an aphrodisiac drug? What the hell? What would Crouch be able to do by using Hermione to drug me with an aphrodisiac? Does he want me to become a slave to sex and then go brain-dead?"

Lee could see by this time that Jon had guessed it purely on his own, and he couldn't help but spit it out.

"How would I know that villain's brain circuit, I acted more surprised than you when I first found out about the effects of the bracelet from Professor Dumbledore, not only does it have an aphrodisiac effect on it, but it's also been infused with a very strange potion."

"A strange potion? How strange?"

Jon asked with a slightly collapsing look in his eyes, he thought that the trick of using Hermione to give him an aphrodisiac was strange enough, there couldn't possibly be a trick that could be even stranger than that.

"It was on one of the beads of the bracelet, Professor Dumbledore found some sort of potion hidden in it, and the person who wears it will be constantly being infiltrated by this potion. The potion itself is not harmful to the person, but after the potion is absorbed into the person's body, it will assimilate into the bodily fluids in that person's body, allowing the potion to mix with them. The aphrodisiac effect that turns on from the bracelet when it activated tonight, would then blend with this potion to create a new potion that would also have no effect or harm on the person who carries it, but"

It was as if Jon had thought of some image that was extremely contrary to public order and social morality, he stared at Lee with horror in his eyes.

"But what?"

"But this new potion created after mixing with aphrodisiac effect has no effect on women only, but for men, it is tantamount to the most deadly poison."

Lee was blushing strangely even as he said this like he was somewhat unable to imagine what kind of brain circuit the person who had devised this poisonous scheme had.

Jon's whole being was in a strange daze as he was rationalising the logic of this potion with his confused mind.

The potion itself was harmless, but it could be incorporated into a person's bodily fluids and later fused with an aphrodisiac effect to become a new kind of potion.

The new potion was harmless to women, but highly toxic to men, and the person wearing the bracelet was Hermione, which meant that the potion on the bracelet would have no effect on her.

But Crouch's real target was him, and the potion itself would only work on men, but the point is that it was Hermione's bodily fluids that would become poison after the bracelet was put on her hand.

The target was him, the poison was Hermione's bodily fluids, the aphrodisiac effect was the trigger, and there was a quiet, and undisturbed environment provided.

After thinking this through, Jon's entire face instantly turned incomparably gloomy and ugly, and he could only grit his teeth and squeeze the words out of his mouth.

"Damn you, Crouch!"

This plan sounded odd, but after Crouch had already completed all the pre-conditions and delivered the bracelet to Hermione in a logical manner, it actually had a surprisingly high success rate!

Jon wouldn't have guarded against Hermione at the Ball at all, and the aphrodisiac wasn't a common poison, or even a poison at all, so even if Jon had been exposed to the chemical he wouldn't have felt anything wrong himself.

If he actually held a small crush on Hermione in his heart, his subconscious mind might even have contributed positively to the effects of the drug.

If he and Hermione kissed in the fit of passion created due to aphrodisiac, he'd be dead for sure!

If it wasn't for the Marauder's Map and the fact that Hermione herself was alert enough, then maybe he would have fallen for it by now.

Crouch had definitely studied him well enough to at least understand his relationships on the wagon, to know that he was a little closer to Hermione among the girls, and to know full well that it would be extremely difficult to deal with Jon himself directly, so he was forced to work in a roundabout way.

A normal fifteen or sixteen-year-old student would hardly be able to withstand this, and at a time when youthful hormones are on the rise, such a plan would be incredibly sinister.

If Jon had fallen for it, Hermione would have been doomed even if she had lived, and it hadn't cost anyone on Voldemort's side at all, just a small half-blood student's life and a special bracelet.

It was no wonder Jon was so angry, the chain of events was truly disgusting and poisonous, but with Crouch being so ruthless that he would even be able to get his own father and mother killed, it was no surprise that he could come up with such a poisonous scheme.

"So what are we going to do next?"

Soon Jon calmed himself down, it was now clear that Crouch's plan was no longer going to work, all they needed to do now was to stall Crouch's attention and facilitate Hermione's movements in the castle.

Lee gave Jon a look and indicated a window on the seventh floor of the castle.

"See there? We need to wait for Hermione's signal up here, if a signal comes we need to keep this charade going, if no signal comes then later Hermione herself will come and call us back to the wagon."

And just as Lee's words fell, a flash of red suddenly flashed through the window of the Headmaster's room he had signalled!

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