"Telling a joke?" Ron looked at Harry suspiciously and touched his forehead with his hand stained with cake cream. "You are not having a fever, Harry. You are suddenly saying such inexplicable things... You are not having a fever?"
"It's not me who wants to hear a joke, it's Professor Dracula." Harry knocked away Ron's dirty, creamy hand that was on his forehead, and said weakly, "I have to find a funny joke to make Professor Dracula feel better..."
Harry told Hermione and Ron about his visit to Hagrid today, told them about Buckbeak's troubles, and also told them about his experience of seeking help from Professor Dracula but couldn't help but angered the professor by talking too much.
"Hmm... It's been a rough ride." Ron commented with a complicated expression.
"How could the people from the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures do this!" Hermione complained loudly for Hagrid. "Those people must have wanted to please Malfoy, but they didn't dare to deny Dumbledore's face, so they had to do it to a poor animal!"
"Yeah, it was Malfoy who clearly disobeyed Hagrid's instructions in that class and insisted on provoking Buckbeak," Harry agreed. "Otherwise, why would a docile hippogriff like Buckbeak attack him for no reason?"
"Alas, only the first Care of Magical Creatures class was interesting." Ron also sighed, "Hagrid seemed to have been hit hard later. In every class, he only dared to let us feed those disgusting, slimy Flobberworms. It was so boring!"
As Ron said this, he suddenly seemed to have thought of something and his eyes suddenly lit up.
"Got it, I thought of a really funny joke!" He slapped his thigh hard and said loudly.
Harry and Hermione both looked at him expectantly.
If Ron can really come up with a good joke to impress Professor Dracula, then Harry's problem of doubling his homework and Buckbeak's complaints should be solved!
"Ahem." Ron cleared his throat solemnly and said seriously:
"The joke is this - there is a Slytherin graduate who joins the Death Eaters, and Malfoy's father, Lucius Malfoy, is responsible for teaching him the Death Eater rules and some knowledge.
Lucius Malfoy asked: "Young man, what do you want to learn from us?"
The Slytherin graduate said, "I want to learn from you how to be insincere, hypocritical, and two-faced. On the one hand, you are extremely submissive to the Dark Lord, flattering him and wanting to kneel down and lick his toes; on the other hand, you keep donating to the Ministry of Magic, deceiving the officials of the Ministry of Magic that you joined the Death Eaters because you were controlled by the Imperius Curse, and in fact you are loyal to the Minister of Magic!"
Lucius Malfoy was furious and said, "What nonsense are you talking about? We, the Malfoy family, are honest and loyal, and are willing to serve the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord trusts us very much. How could we have such bad habits?"
The Slytherin graduate was delighted and said excitedly: "Yes, that's what I want to learn!"
…
After Ron finished telling the joke, he turned to look at Harry and Hermione and asked confidently, "How about it, is it funny enough?"
Harry and Hermione looked at each other, and then couldn't help but lean on the table and burst into laughter.
“Hahahaha… I can’t take it anymore, Ron, you’re such a genius!” Harry laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “Hahaha… Professor Dracula must hear this joke. Buckbeak can be saved!”
Hermione was a little more reserved, but not much better than Harry.
"Pfft... You're too mean, Ron!" She covered her mouth, her eyes curved, her messy hair jumping with laughter, "If Malfoy heard this, he would definitely want to kill you."
"It was just luck. I just happened to think of this joke when I was about to scold Malfoy." Ron said modestly, but his eyebrows were almost raised to the sky.
This joke may not be so funny to others, but the protagonist of the joke is their mortal enemy Malfoy, which makes the joke quite interesting.
Harry, Ron and Hermione laughed so happily that the other little Gryffindor wizards around them couldn't help but come over and ask them what had happened to make them so happy.
Ron generously retells his jokes, telling them with great joy to all the little wizards who gather around him.
Soon, this joke about Malfoy spread throughout the Gryffindor table, and even some of the young wizards at the Ravenclaw table next door and the Hufflepuff table quite far away had heard it.
Just as the three little wizards gradually stopped laughing, an uninvited guest came to the Gryffindor table.
"Potter! Weiss, come here! I knew it was you two bastards again!" A familiar voice sounded in the ears of the three, "I'm going to kill you!"
Harry and Ron stopped laughing and turned around to see three very tall Dementors wearing black cloaks and hoods standing in front of them.
The leading Dementor was wearing high-heeled shoes to show off his height. He was looking at them angrily and pulled out his wand from his cloak.
"What the hell?" Ron looked at the three guys in confusion, "Have Dementors sneaked into Hogwarts?"
"Ron, have you ever seen a Dementor holding a wand?" Hermione rolled her eyes at Ron and exposed the true identities of the three "Dementors". "These must be Malfoy and his two followers. I'm afraid they are dressed like this to scare Harry."
After hearing Hermione's explanation, Harry carefully looked at the three "Dementors" in front of him.
To be honest, he was actually a little scared when he saw this outfit for the first time, because the psychological trauma caused by the Dementors was really serious.
However, the three "Dementors" played by Malfoy and his two followers did not give him the dark feeling unique to Dementors, nor did they cause him to faint or have hallucinations, so it is actually easy to judge that they are not real Dementors.
Harry looked up and saw that the Great Hall was hung with hundreds of pumpkin lanterns, a flock of fluttering bats, and streamers of flaming orange ribbons that drifted lazily along the ceiling like brilliant water snakes.
Then he remembered that tonight was Halloween, and at the dinner many little wizards would dress up as elves and ghosts to scare others.
It seemed that Malfoy wanted to disguise himself as a Dementor to scare Harry, but he didn't expect to hear a joke about his own family, so he was furious and directly exposed his "identity" and immediately drew his wand to duel with Harry.
"Is there anything wrong with the jokes we told?" Harry glanced at Malfoy, who was wearing a turban and a black cloak, and asked provocatively, "Isn't this the way your family behaves?"
Malfoy was shaking with anger and blurted out a curse:
"Flipendo!"
Harry also drew his wand, ready to fight back.
But the next moment, another red-haired figure stood in front of him.
"Protego."
A transparent barrier blocked Malfoy's repulsive spell, and behind the barrier was the serious face of Percy Weiss.
"Draco Malfoy used magic in the hall outside of the Dueling Club's time, disrupted the order of the dinner, and attacked classmates...Draco Malfoy violated many disciplines and was deducted ten points from Slytherin!" Percy said sternly.
"They scolded me first!" Malfoy shouted unconvinced, "Weiss, you are favoring Gryffindor!"
"If you're not convinced, you can ask your prefect to come to me." Percy raised his head proudly and wiped the student union president badge on his chest with his hand. "Just tell them that the president of the Hogwarts student union wants to talk to them!"
No matter how confident Malfoy was, he didn't think he could defeat the seventh-year student council president with just himself and his two followers, so he left the scene angrily.
Before leaving, he said something harsh as usual, "Just wait, I will let my dad take care of you!"
However, before they had gone far, they saw two twins wearing pumpkin heads and dressed as Pumpkinhead Knights walking towards them, telling another joke -
"George, why do I feel a stomachache?" Pumpkinhead Fred asked another pumpkinhead.
"Just sit down and eat something," George said. "Your stomach aches because it's empty. Eat something and it will be better."
"So that's how it is," Fred nodded in sudden enlightenment, "Then I see that Mr. Malfoy seems to have a headache, why is that?"
"Of course the headache is because his head is empty," George said with a grin, "Put something in the empty head and it will get better!"
"Hey, don't say that, George." Fred waved his hand in a weird way. "If you put water in your head, wouldn't that mean you have water in your brain?"
"Ah, I didn't think it through." George blinked. "Thanks for the reminder, Fred."
Then, the two of them turned their eyes to Malfoy, laughing, looking like they really deserved a beating.
Malfoy was almost crying with anger, but because the student union president next to him was a family member of the two troublemakers, he could only glare at the two of them fiercely again, and then ran back to Slytherin's seat as if escaping.
After solving Malfoy's problem, the twins wearing pumpkin heads jumped in front of Percy with cheers, and patted Percy on the shoulder one by one.
"Percy, well done! You are definitely the most handsome you have ever been today!" they exclaimed. "We didn't know you were capable of such a lovely day."
"I'm not biased towards Gryffindor, I'm just fulfilling my responsibilities as the head student council president." Percy seemed to blush a little.
He straightened his collar that was messed up by the twins and changed the subject: "Are you two going to eat or not? Why don't you get rid of these two stupid pumpkin heads!"
…
The food at the Halloween dinner was as sumptuous as usual, and with the little episodes in between, Harry enjoyed the meal very much.
Although Hermione and Ron had already filled their stomachs in Hogsmeade, they could not help but order two portions of each dish. They stopped only when they were almost unable to walk and returned to the Gryffindor common room with Harry.
The three of them agreed to go together the next day to tell the joke to Professor Dracula, and said goodbye to each other at the staircase entrance on the side of the common room.
"Good night, Hermione." Harry and Ron waved to Hermione.
"Good night, Harry. Good night, Ron." Hermione yawned and waved lazily.
At night, Harry had a rare good dream after encountering the Dementors.
In his peaceful and beautiful dream, he seemed to see his parents smiling at him, and he was riding a small broom, flying around a cradle.
Then…
"Ahhh! No no no no no no!"
Harry's beautiful dream was interrupted, and he was suddenly awakened by a scream. He rubbed his brows, still thinking about the beautiful dream before.
It was pitch black and he was completely lost. He could only grope for the curtains around his bed.
There seemed to be other noises around, and the voice of another roommate, Seamus Finnigan, came from the other end of the room.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
Harry heard the dormitory door close and wondered who had left.
Then he finally found the opening in the bed curtains and pulled them open, while another roommate, Dean Thomas, turned on the light.
Ron sat up in bed with a look of extreme horror on his face.
His bed curtains were pulled aside, and the bed was in a mess, with several holes appearing on the mattress.
"Black! Sirius Black! With a knife!" Ron shouted incoherently.
"What?" Harry's mouth opened.
"Right there! What happened just now!" Ron shouted. "He ripped the bed curtains! He woke me up!"
"Are you sure you're not dreaming, Ron?" Dean Thomas asked.
"Look at that bed curtain! I tell you, he was here just now!" Ron's expression was still very panicked, "He turned over my bed while I was sleeping and poked a few holes in it!"
They woke up immediately and climbed out of bed quickly.
Harry was the first to reach the dormitory door, running downstairs in his pajamas as fast as he could while doors opened behind them and sleepy voices addressed them.
"Who was yelling just now?"
"Hey, what are you doing?"
The remaining light from the fireplace illuminated the common room, which was empty, and there was no sign of Sirius Black.
"Are you sure you're not dreaming, Ron?" Hermione, in her pajamas, poked her head out from the top of the stairs in a daze. "Oh, Crookshanks, come here."
She saw her half-breed cat-nose walking towards the common room from the doorway, probably wanting to go out for a run at night.
"I'm telling you, I saw him!" Ron shouted loudly, "I'm absolutely not mistaken, such a big figure standing in front of me, it must be Sirius Black printed in the newspaper!"
"What's all the noise for?"
"what happened?"
A few more girls came down the stairs, wearing their dressing gowns and yawning.
The boys also showed up one after another, and everyone was woken up by Ron.
"Great, little Luo Luo, do you want to host another Halloween dinner?" Fred said happily.
"Everybody go back upstairs!" Percy glared at Fred.
He hurried to the common room, pinning his Head Boy badge on his pyjamas as he talked.
"Percy! Sirius Black!" Ron shouted until his voice was hoarse. "In our dormitory! With a knife! Woke me up!"
The common room was silent.
"Nonsense!" said Percy, who also looked frightened. "You ate too much, Ron, and you had a nightmare..."
"I tell you-"
The two men started arguing, one firmly believed that Sirius Black had never been to the common room, while the other tried every means to prove that he had really seen the notorious wanted criminal.
A few minutes later, Professor McGonagall was also alarmed and entered the common room through the doorway.
As she entered the lounge she slammed the doorway through the portrait behind her and looked around angrily.
"I can hear your noise from the second floor. Are you planning to rebel by not sleeping at night?" Professor McGonagall said loudly, looking at the President of the Student Union. "Percy, I was expecting you to do better!"
"I certainly didn't ask them to do that, Professor!" said Percy indignantly. "I'm telling them all to go back to bed! My brother Ron had a nightmare..."
"It's not a nightmare!" Ron shouted. "Professor, I woke up and Sirius Black was standing in front of me with a knife!"
Professor McGonagall stared at him with wide eyes, "Don't be a laughing stock, Weiss. How could he pass our portrait?"
"Ask him!" Ron pointed his trembling finger at the portrait of Sir Cadogan. "You can ask him if he has seen it!"
Professor McGonagall gave Ron a suspicious look, then walked over and turned the portrait over so that Sir Cadogan was facing the inside of the common room.
The entire common room held its breath.
"Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man into Gryffindor Tower?" asked Professor McGonagall.
"Of course, ma'am!" said Sir Cadogan matter-of-factly.
The Gryffindor students were so shocked that they were speechless and their eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.
They felt a sense of fear, and the little wizards who shared the same dormitory with Ron began to tremble even more.
If Ron wasn't having a nightmare, and the person standing at the head of his bed was really Sirius Black, the wanted criminal who had committed countless murders, did that mean that all of them had a narrow escape from death
"Did you...did you really open the door?" Professor McGonagall was also sweating coldly and asked sternly, "But...but where is the password to the common room? How can you let people in and out without the password!"
"He has the password!" said Sir Cadogan confidently, brandishing his knight's sword. "The man has the password for the whole week, ma'am! He reads it from a little piece of paper!"
…
…