Hearing that Professor Lupin didn't seem to intend to help them, the young friends immediately became anxious.
Everyone habitually turned their gaze to Sherlock.
Noticing their looks, Remus also looked at Sherlock with interest, as if wanting to see what he would say.
At this moment, Sherlock stepped forward and asked, "Professor, I assume you can't directly tell us how to get past the dragon, right?"
"Oh, I won't tell you," Remus said stiffly. "I can't show favoritism, can I?"
Sherlock smiled slightly. "But as far as I know, cheating has always been a traditional component of the Triwizard Tournament."
"Oh?"
Hearing Sherlock's words, Remus immediately became more interested. "Why do you say that?"
"Of course, through observation and reasonable deduction."
Sherlock directly recounted in brief what he and Harry had experienced that Saturday night.
"I absolutely believe that Mr. Dumbledore will uphold noble standards—after all, that's the kind of person he is. However, Professor Karkaroff and Madame Maxime are definitely not as detached as he is.
This is obvious. Just from my observations of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang this morning, they've already told their champions everything. Even earlier, when they first came to the school, I had already noticed this."
Sherlock said word by word. "They want to win."
Hearing this, Professor Lupin couldn't help but feel somewhat emotional.
"Yes, since they've already entered the competition, who doesn't want to win? Never mind them, even the teachers and students at our school probably all hope you can win this competition."
However, after his emotional response, he immediately became serious. "Sherlock, you're absolutely right. They want to defeat Dumbledore, they want to prove he's just a mortal, especially... Karkaroff."
The others were one thing, but Sherlock immediately understood the implication. "Excellent—it seems there's another past event we don't know about. Does it stem from a conflict with Moody?"
Remus looked at Sherlock in surprise.
It seemed that his statement about "observation and reasonable deduction" really wasn't modest at all.
"How did you discover that?"
"The day they came to school, Karkaroff had a brief conversation with Moody."
Sherlock said this while looking at Harry.
Harry suddenly understood.
At that time, Karkaroff was surprised by his appearance, and then Moody came forward to help him out of the situation.
Because of this incident, his impression of Moody was quite good.
"Now that you've said this, I can further confirm that Karkaroff had connections with Voldemort in the past."
"You've guessed right again."
Remus seemed somewhat helpless. "Karkaroff was once a Death Eater. It was Moody who personally caught him and then locked him in Azkaban."
Except for Sherlock, who had already anticipated this, Harry, Hermione, and Ron were all stunned.
A Death Eater had actually become the headmaster of Durmstrang, one of the three largest magic schools in Europe!
Was the wizarding world so short of people?
"Yes, this does sound somewhat absurd, but it happened."
Taking in the shocked looks of the young ones, Remus said slowly. "To get himself out, Karkaroff cooperated with the Ministry of Magic... mainly with Barty Crouch, doing quite a bit of work. He said he had recognized his mistakes and decided to turn over a new leaf, so he gave up many names. The final result was that he threw a large batch of people into Azkaban to take his place, thus obtaining his release."
Hearing this, Harry was completely speechless.
Previously, he had thought it was a bit excessive for someone like Snape, a wizard with a Death Eater background, to become a Hogwarts professor and even a head of one of the four houses.
But compared to Karkaroff, who had risen directly to headmaster, it was nothing.
A simple horizontal comparison showed there was no comparison.
Anyway, he couldn't imagine what Hogwarts would be like now if Dumbledore had once been a Death Eater.
Moreover, from Remus's description, Karkaroff was quite different from Snape.
Snape had defected before Voldemort fell.
Karkaroff, however, waited until after Voldemort fell, and seeing his downfall was certain, only then began to repent.
In other words, he didn't know he was wrong, he knew he was done for.
Sherlock chuckled lightly.
He hadn't expected this person to actually be a cooperating witness.
"Yesterday when I went to Hogsmeade to meet with Sirius, I mentioned this point. He originally didn't plan to tell you about this, but you ran into him that night..."
Remus's expression became serious. "Fortunately, you weren't discovered by him. Although he wouldn't dare do anything to you openly, if you had encountered him in that situation, he might have made some small moves. You should know that since leaving Azkaban, he's been teaching Durmstrang students the Dark Arts."
"So Sherlock and Harry should also be wary of Durmstrang's champion, right?"
"Hermione, Krum isn't that kind of person!"
"Ronald, you talk as if you know him very well—you've only watched him play one match, you haven't even spoken to him!"
"You don't understand Quidditch! How could someone like that be a bad person!"
"Come on, if he hadn't done that sneaky fake thing—"
"It's the Wronski Feint."
Even in this situation, Harry still didn't want people to misstate Quidditch terminology, so he interjected.
When Ron heard Hermione talking about the sneaky fake thing, his face looked like he had eaten a Bezoar.
Remus interrupted their dispute with a smile. "You only need to watch out for Karkaroff, it has little to do with Durmstrang's students. Also, Dumbledore's suggestion this time to have Moody serve as a member of the judging panel is related to this matter."
"Is Moody very strong?" Sherlock suddenly asked.
"Yes, very strong. He's the best Auror the Ministry of Magic has ever had, completely different from that person who got ambushed and had young Crouch taken away. Although since his retirement he's always hearing about people trespassing against him, this doesn't mean he can't identify when there's a real abnormal situation."
Sherlock nodded, then pulled the topic back. "This gives me another reason. Professor Lupin, you don't want someone like that to win the Triwizard Tournament championship, do you?"
"Sherlock, why would you say that—"
"Of course, even though the Triwizard Tournament has such traditions, we still haven't been thinking of having you tell us the answer directly. But what if we've already formulated a preliminary response strategy, an embryonic team cooperation plan?
Specifically, what we want to know is—given our current magical knowledge and ability boundaries, is the direction of this approach feasible? And are there any fundamental obstacles at the magical practice level that we haven't realized and cannot overcome?"
Remus smiled, smiling very happily.
"All right, Sherlock, I admit you've convinced me. As a responsible teacher, it's quite reasonable to eliminate some wrong answers for students, and it's normal to give some well-meaning, general advice. So, my first suggestion is, don't be tempted to use a Stunning Spell.
Dragons are enormously powerful and possess very strong magic. It's impossible for a dragon to be defeated by a single Stunning Spell. It takes nearly ten adult wizards casting spells simultaneously to subdue a dragon. So, tell me your plan first?"
Harry, Hermione, and Ron all stared intently at Sherlock.
Previously, Sherlock had only said he had a plan, but hadn't told them the specific content of the plan.
Now the answer was finally about to be revealed.
"Although from the current situation, the specific details of the task are not completely clear, the core of the problem is still how to get past the dragon. The key difficulty of this project lies in the enormous gap in strength between us and the dragon. There's also the fact that we can only use our own wands and cannot rely on additional props. In this situation, if we can use a simple and effective spell, we can get what we need."
Sherlock paused and said straightforwardly. "The Summoning Charm. It can allow us to summon our broomsticks to the arena. Once we have broomsticks, we'll have the advantages of speed and flight. As it happens, the three of us have fairly good talent in this area."
Hearing Sherlock say this, everyone was delighted.
Harry and Cedric were both Seekers for their respective house Quidditch teams, and Harry was the youngest Seeker in a century.
Their flying abilities ranked among the best in the entire school.
Sherlock then looked at Harry. "From the current situation, a speed of one hundred and fifty miles per hour is enough for you to fly past the dragon."
At this moment, Harry almost wanted to laugh out loud.
Not only was it enough, it was more than sufficient.
Although the Firebolt was advertised as being able to accelerate from standstill to one hundred and fifty miles per hour in ten seconds, Harry, who was as familiar with it as could be, knew very well that this was not the Firebolt's maximum speed.
If necessary, its speed could increase even further.
If he had the same flying advantage and speed as a dragon, the task of "getting past the dragon" no longer seemed so unattainable.
He should have thought of this long ago.
In their first year, when they went to the room with the Philosopher's Stone, Sherlock had already used this spell.
Although first-year Sherlock's mastery of summoning wasn't proficient enough at that time, it was precisely because of that "Portkey, come!" that he confirmed the target.
Ultimately, it was also by relying on the broomstick that he caught the target object.
Now they had already reached fourth year, and they had been learning to master the Summoning Charm during this period.
Really, how had he not thought of this?
You can read more than 40 chapters on:
patreon.com/MikeyMuse