A day at Hogwarts

"Minerva, would you like a steaming cup of coffee and some sugar?"

When Dumbledore walked into Professor McGonagall's office, he looked extremely exhausted physically and mentally. He was just a hair away from being a salty fish. He was breathing more out than in when he sat on the chair in front of his desk.

Professor McGonagall waved her wand to prepare a drink and asked worriedly: "Is the Gringotts incident serious?"

In all these years, she had rarely seen Dumbledore so tired.

Dumbledore sighed several times and said helplessly: "What I have to worry about more than Gringotts is Charles."

Professor McGonagall was stunned for a moment and asked in disbelief: "Could it be Charles's vault in Gringotts that was robbed?"

Dumbledore looked at the steaming coffee floating in front of him, sighed again and said, "Charles has something to do with the prisoner." After saying that, he drank the coffee in one gulp.

But his face suddenly became extremely distorted, as if he had drunk poison, and his body trembled.

Professor McGonagall said calmly: "You shouldn't eat so much sugar."

Dumbledore muttered something like "I'm not a child" and "I know how to brush my teeth well", and then told Gringotts and what happened with Charles in detail.

After hearing this, Professor McGonagall said with some uncertainty: "Are you overthinking it? How could Charles instruct Grindelwald to rob Gringotts?"

Dumbledore replied: "What I'm worried about is that he has given Gellert some inspiration. You also know that he has many novel opinions, and they are not nonsense."

"I think he realized this himself, so he didn't dare to tell me, maybe because he was afraid of being punished."

Professor McGonagall nodded slightly, and then asked: "Do you still believe that Charles is a good boy?"

Dumbledore was silent for a moment, rubbed the back of his head and said, "Phoenix believes in him, I believe in Phoenix."

Ruby's strength is quite strong, and it would hurt to peck someone.

Dumbledore said a little depressed: "I was deceived by him just now. He said he had a way to completely defeat Voldemort and asked me to teach him the mirror space spell just now."

"I gave him the memory of learning that spell, and he told me that the key to defeating Voldemort lies with you!"

After he finished speaking, he gritted his teeth. He was originally going to ask McGonagall to ask Percy about their situation, but Charles said that the key to completely defeating Voldemort was McGonagall. The spell was not a big problem, it was difficult to learn, but the key I feel bad.

Professor McGonagall trembled slightly after hearing Voldemort's name, looked down at the Horcrux notebook on the table, stretched out her hand and pushed it in front of Dumbledore.

Dumbledore had just seen the notebook and thought it was her old possessions and ignored it. When he saw the notebook in front of him, he was confused at first, and his expression soon became solemn.

He took out the Elder Wand and pointed it at the Horcrux notebook to cast a few spells, and then almost put his nose on it to observe. He had never been so attentive.

"It's incredible!" Dumbledore raised his head and kept shaking his head, "I didn't expect it to be a Horcrux."

Before Professor McGonagall studied it carefully, she was shocked when she heard it was a Horcrux and hurriedly told Dumbledore what Charles and Ginny had just said.

Dumbledore didn't express his opinion after hearing this. He turned over his notebook, picked up the quill on his desk, dipped it in ink, and started writing on it with different notes than before.

"Class is so boring today. Professor McGonagall has given me a lot of homework."

Professor McGonagall glared at her best friend, but the latter didn't pay attention.

The ink on the notebook didn't disappear, it didn't respond after a few minutes, and it was still there.

Dumbledore just frowned, thinking about what the problem was.

He didn't know because Harry was tired of asking Tom Riddle to help him with his homework.

But Dumbledore understood the other party very well, and he began to write notes for the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, which contained many obvious low-level mistakes.

Sure enough, Tom took the bait.

The words on the notebook seeped in quickly, and then a few lines appeared, and the handwriting looked a bit edgy.

"Did your head get caught in the door panel of the castle gate, or did your Defense Against the Dark Arts professor get his head caught in the door panel? You can make a mistake in such a simple place?"

Next, Tom pointed out a lot of mistakes that he had just written, and filled the page.

Dumbledore looked at it very carefully and judged the era when it was made through some knowledge points.

"About fifty years ago," he said to Professor McGonagall, "that's when poor Myrtle was killed."

Professor McGonagall covered her mouth in surprise, and then blamed herself: "If we could have discovered it as early as possible, there would not have been so many tragedies."

Dumbledore shook his head and said, "Don't blame yourself. At that time, few people could see through his true face. Many people were deceived by his deliberate performance."

"Even me, I thought he was redeemable at that time."

After he finished speaking, he fell silent and continued to sigh. Professor McGonagall saw that he was thinking of Charles from Tom.

"Charles is different." Professor McGonagall said, "He has no friends, and Charles has many good friends and family. This is the biggest difference."

Dumbledore nodded and suddenly said: "If I had introduced a girlfriend to Tom at that time, maybe he would not have gone astray."

Professor McGonagall didn't know what expression to make, and finally asked him: "Do you want to find a girlfriend for Charles?"

Dumbledore stopped mid-nod and said, "He is already popular with girls, he doesn't need help from others."

After he finished speaking, he continued to argue with Tom in the Horcrux Notebook. Some errors existed because intuitive feelings were contrary to the real reasons. This was especially obvious in the case of black magic spell-breaking.

After more than ten minutes, the two sides came to an end, and Tom asked: "What's your name?"

Dumbledore thought for a while and wrote: "My name is Jack Smith. Have you ever met my brother Charles Smith?"

He was a little worried that if Charles and Tom got together, God knew what kind of trouble would happen.

Tom replied with a hint of suspense: "I know this idiot. He often comes to ask me how to write my homework."

Dumbledore raised his head and glanced at Professor McGonagall, who was full of doubts and took Charles' homework from the side and handed it over.

Charles's Transfiguration homework was well written, and Dumbledore nodded after reading it, but there were two knowledge points in it that were new achievements of McGonagall a few years ago, and neither Voldemort nor Tom could possibly know about them.

Professor McGonagall took out two more assignments from the pile of parchment, one for Harry and one for Ron. Many of the knowledge points in the assignments were from more than fifty years ago, including Dumbledore's achievements, which were considered advanced at the time.

At first, Professor McGonagall thought they had copied old books from the library. This was very common and there would be no problem when using spells. They would be pointed out when correcting, so she didn't care.

This means that at least one of Harry and Ron may have been in contact with the Horcrux notebook. Dumbledore became vigilant, and the encounter between Harry and Tom was even more problematic.

He didn't ask too many questions. Tom was smart and alert. He casually chatted for a while and complained about some professors before closing the notebook.

Professor McGonagall immediately asked: "Do you feel any discomfort?"

Dumbledore shook his head, put the quill back on the pen holder, stood up with the Horcrux notebook and said, "Leave it here with me. Let the three of them come to my office tomorrow morning."