Fawkes, who was lazily combing his feathers, suddenly shuddered for no apparent reason. He raised his red eyes and looked around for possible threats. After discovering that there was nothing here except a young wizard with low magic power and no harm to humans and animals, he closed his eyes and rested peacefully.
The harmless Ivan, under the pretext of getting closer and facilitating future communication, stretched out his evil right hand.
The nimble fingers paused briefly in the air. Seeing that Fawkes was still dozing off, Ivan carefully stroked Fawkes's feathers with one finger.
At the moment of contact, the dozing phoenix opened his eyes alertly. After a long stalemate with Ivan staring at each other, Fawkes, who had confirmed that the other party had no ill intentions, proudly used his wings to slap Ivan's evil hand away, with a warning in his eyes.
As a phoenix, Fawkes is not something that anyone can touch...
However, no matter how arrogant Fawkes was, he could not compare to Ivan's shameless intimacy.
After all, as Dumbledore's pet and quite human, Fawkes naturally could not attack Ivan. In the end, he hid with Ivan for a few minutes like playing hide-and-seek and then compromised helplessly.
This is also related to the fact that Ivan did not show any malice from beginning to end, otherwise Ivan's finger would have been gone long ago.
"I never thought that I would get to pet a phoenix one day!" Ivan happily played with Fawkes all over, applying his experience of petting a parrot in his previous life to him, hoping to increase his favorability to the point where he would not resist even if his blood was drawn.
The phoenix Fawkes gradually changed from being impatient at the beginning to being indifferent, and finally was even willing to raise his proud head and let Ivan stroke the feathers on his neck.
While Ivan was stroking Fawkes, he was also carefully looking at this phoenix in Western legend.
Unlike the mythical phoenix that Ivan remembered in his previous life, Fawkes looked more like a large turkey with beautiful golden-red feathers. Although it looked majestic, Ivan somehow thought about how it would taste after seeing it...
Ivan suddenly had an idea. Maybe he could fill his brain with delicious food and do it as soon as he thought of it. Ivan thought of frying, stir-frying... grilling, deep-frying... all kinds of delicious food in his mind.
Just as Ivan was thinking about roasting the phoenix over fire, a gentle voice suddenly rang out.
"Flames are the breeding ground for the phoenix. Perhaps you can try a different cooking method..."
Ivan turned his head and saw Dumbledore's tall figure walking in from the door. His advanced age of over a hundred years did not seem to cause any hindrance to the greatest white wizard of this century. He was still full of energy and even had the interest to joke with Ivan.
Fawkes, who was being stroked by Ivan, flew up in a hurry, pecked Ivan's head angrily, then fluttered to Dumbledore's hat and looked at Ivan with a vigilant look.
Fawkes never imagined that the harmless little wizard in front of him actually planned to roast him.
"Professor, I'm curious how you know what I'm thinking? Can you read my memory?" Ivan touched his aching head and asked innocently.
"Sometimes a person's actions and behaviors can reveal his thoughts." Dumbledore neither admitted nor refuted, but spoke meaningfully.
Ivan had an expression of sudden enlightenment on his face, but he had already started complaining wildly in his heart.
I don't believe you! You are such a bad old man!
Perhaps it was because the time for the academic experience card he had exchanged before had not yet expired, when Dumbledore spoke for the first time, Ivan felt a force sneaking into his brain. The force disappeared without a trace until he asked the question.
Ivan could guess with his toes that this power was Dumbledore's Legilimency. He just didn't know why he could sense this silent and soul-related magical trace in the experience card state.
For some reason, after Dumbledore took back Legilimency, he never used it again. Instead, he sat in the headmaster's chair in his long blue-purple robe, motioning Ivan to sit down, while taking out some snacks from the drawer and placing them on the table.
"Would you like some cockroach clusters? Or how about the newest flavor of sizzling honey candy?" Dumbledore picked out a little of something and asked Ivan to try it.
Ivan didn't even touch the notorious cockroach clusters, but he was quite interested in the sizzling honey candy. He took one out, unwrapped it, and put it into his mouth.
He bit it lightly, and the sweet taste of honey filled his mouth. The broken and scattered sugar cubes seemed to have self-awareness, jumping wildly in his mouth, avoiding Ivan's teeth. It was a bit like the popping candy he had eaten in his previous life, but it was sweeter.
Dumbledore did not rush to ask, but instead made Ivan another glass of iced lemon juice, and then pretended to be a listener.
After eating some candy and drinking half a glass of lemon juice, Ivan gradually calmed down from his first meeting with Dumbledore and began to narrate what had happened.
Of course, what Ivan said was not what Hermione said when she lied. After all, that was too fake. Not to mention Dumbledore, he himself didn't believe it.
Furthermore, Ivan was not sure whether Dumbledore would suddenly use Legilimency while he was telling the story, or read something from his face.
So what Ivan said was almost all true, except that he concealed some key information.
The last thing he said was that before the Halloween party, he learned from Harry that Hermione was hiding alone in the bathroom, so he went to look for her out of fear. On the way, he encountered a troll and hid in a secret passage. Then Hermione was attracted by the noise, and he stepped forward and finally killed the troll.
In order to increase credibility, Ivan even gave a general account of the battle.
The remaining doubts are the iron thorns that were transformed in advance to restrict the troll's movements, and the ingredients of the sleeping potion that might be detected on the troll's corpse.
Ivan couldn't explain the former. If Dumbledore asked, he could only say that he was practicing the Transfiguration and Shrinking Charms. Fortunately, Ivan started making this thing several days ago, and many young wizards could testify for him, so no matter how Dumbledore investigated, he could only come to this conclusion.
Ivan did not mention the latter, because even if it was detected, Dumbledore would suspect more than one person, and Quirrell was the most likely one to take the blame.
Ivan quickly considered the doubtful points in his words in his mind to see if there were any omissions.
However, Dumbledore's next reaction was like a heavy punch hitting cotton...