Blake is still at large!
Sirius Black, believed to be the most notorious of the prisoners held at Azkaban Castle, remains at large, the Ministry of Magic has confirmed today.
"We are working hard to recapture Blake," said Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge this morning. "We ask the wizarding community to remain calm." Fudge had been criticised by some members of the International Confederation of Wizards for informing the Muggle Prime Minister of Blake's fugitive status.
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A corner of the newspaper with a striking uppercase English headline was gently blown by the breeze, revealing a strand of fluttering silver hair and a handsome and evil face.
"Hey, someone escaped from Azkaban?" Dracula took a sip of the bright red wine and read the newspaper in front of him with great interest.
At this moment, Dracula was staying in the Black family's residence where he had visited once before, leaning on the soft sofa, gently shaking a wine glass filled with red wine in one hand and holding a copy of the Daily Prophet in the other.
Nearly a year has passed since Dracula resurrected Regulus Black, who had long been turned into an Inferi by Voldemort.
After nearly a year of tidying up and organizing, Regulus Black and the house-elf Kreacher, who had gradually adapted to the physique of the Inferi, gradually managed this house that had been abandoned for more than ten years and made it presentable.
Kreacher is an elderly house-elf who has lived in this house since Regulus' mother, Walburga Black, was a child. Even though his thinking has become rigid, as a house-elf born in the Black family, one of the so-called "Twenty-eight Pure-blooded Holy Clans", his personal business ability is still very good.
The return of Regulus brought new life to the old house-elf. Kreacher, who had been complaining and grumbling for years, unexpectedly became energetic and motivated.
Dracula was now leaning comfortably on the soft sofa, taking a sip of the red wine in the goblet from time to time. Kreacher stood respectfully beside him, and whenever the wine in his glass was running low, he would refill it in time.
Now, where they were was a magic training room of the Black family.
Regulus was holding a custom-made wand suitable for dark creatures and practicing casting spells at a target, hoping that the vampire lord who was very professional about dark creatures could teach him how to better utilize the magic power in the corpse of a Yin.
However, Dracula's attention was completely drawn to the newspaper in his hand, and he didn't even look at Regulus casting the spell.
"Sirius Black... Is this man who escaped from prison your brother?"
Dracula pointed his thumb at the large photo on the front page of the newspaper and asked Regulus who was still practicing magic not far away.
The large photo on the front page showed a man with a sunken face and tangled long hair. He blinked slowly at someone reading the newspaper and looked in a worrying mental state.
"Sirius?" Regulus was stunned for a moment, slowly retracted his wand, and his expression became a little cold. "I thought he was dead."
"If the information in the newspaper is correct, then he should not have had time to die." Dracula looked at the photo with interest, then turned to look at Regulus, "Didn't you subscribe to this newspaper? How come you didn't know about it?"
Because Regulus was worried that his physical condition would be exposed, he hardly left the Black house in the past year. He could only rely on Kreacher to buy newspapers to learn about the wizarding world.
"I haven't had time to read today's newspaper before you come here." Regulus said, "Besides, the Daily Prophet is going backwards and backwards. It only publishes meaningless content all day long. Sometimes I am not interested in reading it anymore..."
"I still remember a few days ago there was a newspaper that actually listed in great detail on a fairly front page the story of a Ministry of Magic employee winning a prize. It was extremely boring."
Regulus pursed his lips indifferently and looked away.
"Oh?" Dracula became interested again and looked at Kreacher. "Kreacher, help me get all the newspapers you subscribed to a few days ago. I want to see how the Daily Prophet describes something as simple as winning the lottery."
Kreacher bowed and disappeared with a thud.
When he came back again, he was holding a thick stack of The Daily Prophet in his hands.
"Let me look for it... Hmm, is this it?" Dracula casually flipped through a few newspapers and found the content about the lottery that Regulus described.
When he saw this page, his expression suddenly became a little playful—
Title: Ministry of Magic Staff Wins Big Prize
Content: Arthur Weisley, Director of the Ministry of Magic's Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, won the annual Galleon Award from the Daily Prophet. The elated Mr. Weisley told the Daily Prophet reporter, "We will spend the money on a summer trip to Egypt, where our eldest son Bill is working on breaking spells for Gringotts Magic Bank." The Weisleys will stay in Egypt for a month and return before the start of the Hogwarts school term. Currently, the Weisleys have five children attending school there.
The content was followed by a corresponding photo, which was a group photo of nine members of the Weisley family standing in front of the pyramid.
Everyone at Wes's house looked very excited, waving at the camera with happy smiles on their faces.
In the picture, Mrs. Weasley is small and fat, while Mr. Weasley, who is bald, is tall. Their six sons and one daughter all have fiery red hair. Ron is standing in the middle of the picture, tall and thin, with his pet little mouse Scabbers standing on his shoulder and his arm around his sister Ginny.
"The Weiss family is really restless. Even though they are so poor, they still want to go out for a walk during any holiday." Dracula chuckled, "The little wizard in their family is so troublesome. Maybe it's inherited from their parents..."
He smiled playfully and stuffed the newspaper with the information about Mr. Weasley's winning back into Kreacher's hand. Then he picked up the newspaper with the big news about Sirius Black's prison break on the front page and looked up at Regulus.
"Mr. Dracula, I'm going to the library to find some information on spellcasting. Kreacher will take good care of you." Before Dracula could say anything else, Regulus greeted him stiffly and then walked straight to the door of the magic training room.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" Dracula raised his hand, and the door of the training room suddenly closed. "What are you running away from, Regulus?"
“… I didn’t run away.” Seeing the door in front of him close, Regulus paused for a moment and said with an expression of indifference.
"No escape?" Dracula raised his lips slowly. "If you really didn't escape, then why did you change the subject to the news of winning the lottery?"
"Sirius Black is your brother whom you haven't seen for many years. Even if your relationship is not good, you can't hear about him after so many years without having any extra interest, right?"
"I guess... you've actually read this newspaper, right?" he asked with a half-smile.
Regulus stood there and exhaled deeply.
"Sure enough, I can't hide it from you, Mr. Dracula." He turned around and smiled helplessly at Dracula, "I have indeed read the newspaper... I didn't expect that after being resurrected more than ten years later, my first meeting with Sirius would be in the newspaper."
"How is the relationship between you two brothers?" Dracula asked with interest, shaking his glass gently. "I see that you care about your brother very much, otherwise you wouldn't avoid the topic about him like this."
"No, you are indeed wrong this time." Regulus shook his head. "The relationship between the two of us is extremely bad... Let's put it this way, the relationship between the two of us is no longer bad. Perhaps it is more appropriate to describe us as being as hostile as fire and water."
"Our Black family has always been a group of Slytherin students until Sirius, an outlier, appeared. He couldn't stand the ways of pure-blood families since he was a child, and he often stood up for those poor Muggle-born wizards and half-bloods. Later, he was sorted into Gryffindor."
Regulus slowed down his tone and slowly told the story of their past.
"Mother was so angry that she wanted to kick Sirius out of the house on the spot. But she later decided to give Sirius a chance and was ready to use Professor Slughorn's connections to transfer him back to Slytherin."
"But Sirius seemed very satisfied with Gryffindor. He didn't want to transfer to another house. And after returning home during every holiday, he would hang all the honors he had won in Gryffindor on the walls of his room. He even used a permanent sticking spell to stick Gryffindor banners, photos of Muggle girls in bikinis, photos of motorcycles, and photos of himself and his friends on the walls to anger our parents..."
"My mother and father were completely disappointed in him, so they placed their hopes on their second son, me."
"I have always known their expectations of me, and I couldn't bear to disappoint them, so I have always followed their instructions since I was a child, which is exactly the opposite of Sirius."
"Later, I became the only pride of my parents, and Sirius was completely ignored by them, as if they had never had such a son."
Regulus sat on another sofa, took the water handed to him by Kreacher, took a sip, and continued his story.
"After graduation, he joined the Order of the Phoenix, and I joined the Death Eaters. As you can imagine, our relationship became more tense between these two opposing camps."
"But my parents both agreed with the Dark Lord's ideas, and regarded Sirius's behavior as a traitor to the pure blood. So they completely removed him from the family list. You may still remember some of the burnt holes in the family tree tapestry..."
"One of them is where Sirius originally was."
Dracula gently put down the cup and newspaper in his hands and looked at Regulus thoughtfully.
"The Order of the Phoenix?" he asked. "Are you talking about the Order that Dumbledore founded to fight the Death Eaters?"
"Of course, there is no other Order of the Phoenix besides this one," said Regulus.
"That is to say, Sirius Black is a member of the Order of the Phoenix and a subordinate of Dumbledore." Dracula rubbed his brow, feeling that this matter had become a little strange. "But the newspaper said that Sirius Black was a Death Eater who strongly supported Voldemort."
"Let me see, the reason why he was taken to Azkaban... Well, he killed thirteen people with just one spell. And he did it in broad daylight in front of witnesses. It probably caused a lot of trouble at the time, so Sirius was judged to be very dangerous by the Ministry of Magic."
"So he later betrayed Dumbledore and joined the Death Eaters?" Dracula asked, "If that's the case, the biggest rift between you two has naturally disappeared."
"No," Regulus hesitated and shook his head gently, "No matter how much I dislike Sirius as a person, and hate his arrogance, recklessness, rashness, and his love of the spotlight, I still want to say..."
"It's possible for anyone to join the Death Eaters, but not Sirius!" Regulus said, "And with his empathy for those Muggle-born wizards, I don't think he would use a spell to kill a dozen Muggles!"
"I have always known that Sirius has a very good relationship with his friends. After he was kicked out of his home, he often went to James Potter's house for meals. Old Potter almost treated him as his godson."
"Heh, the Potter family was killed by the Dark Lord. How could Sirius turn to the Death Eaters' camp and do such evil things after the Dark Lord lost power?"
"There is indeed something wrong." Dracula raised an eyebrow. "Also, you just said... Potter? How is it related to the last name Potter again? Are you from the same family as Harry Potter?"
"James Potter is indeed Harry Potter's father." Regulus nodded.
Dracula frowned slightly, and quietly combined the various clues together in his mind, trying to deduce the most complete story line.
What he knew was that Voldemort went to Godric's Hollow twelve years ago to kill the Potter family, but he suffered from the blood magic of Harry's mother, Lily Potter, who had invested strong emotions in it, and was rebounded by his own killing curse, so that he became a humble remnant soul.
After this incident, Sirius Black suddenly exploded, killing twelve Muggles and one wizard, and was finally imprisoned in Azkaban by the Ministry of Magic for life.
Under the analysis of Sirius's younger brother, many illogical aspects naturally surfaced.
"It seems that I have to find another opportunity to go to the headmaster's office to interrogate Dumbledore." Dracula's eyes showed interest.
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