Kasen dug through the corner of his office again and found that little sign that said "No Sirius or Dogs Allowed", then hung it right on his office door.
The reason?
Because Dumbledore had refused to give Sirius a room.
And Sirius, utterly shameless, had come to Kasen's office to beg for a doghouse instead.
"So… really not allowed?" Sirius stood pitifully outside Kasen's office, staring at the sign beside him.
"Obviously not," Kasen said without the slightest sympathy.
Bang!
"…bloody hell."
…
"No, I refuse. I finally have a day off today."
Kasen looked at Dumbledore, who had come to hand out a mission.
With what felt like an exclamation mark floating above his head, Dumbledore sat down with a strange smile. "If I had anyone else to send, I absolutely wouldn't be here."
"Oh, I see. So you only came to me because you couldn't find anyone better," Kasen suddenly said, acting unreasonably like a drama queen.
Dumbledore sighed. He pulled a small flask from his pocket and took a sip to wet his throat. "Ah~ One of my dear friends from India had sent me an exquisite bottle.. but it's gone missing—"
Twenty minutes later, Kasen used Ender Teleportation to arrive in Diagon Alley, appearing inside Ollivander's wand shop.
"Oh, you've come to fetch me. I must say, we haven't seen each other for quite a long while," Ollivander said.
"If I didn't come today, we'd still see each other soon enough… because our paper is nearly finished." Kasen spoke as casually as an old friend reunited, finding a stool and sitting down while waiting for Ollivander to pack up.
"We? I know you may not like hearing this, but I still think your students' contributions to the paper are very, very tiny. If you took back the credit you handed them, at the very least, the position of England's branch president would definitely be yours," Ollivander said.
"A professor's duty is exactly that." Kasen shrugged.
"All right then. How are we getting to Hogwarts? A Portkey or something else? As far as I know, you don't seem to have much talent for ordinary spells," Ollivander said as he finally finished closing up the shop.
"I believe the world itself is one enormous piece of alchemy, so we can rely on alchemy to accomplish all sorts of great things. For example, alchemy can replicate many types of magic to a certain extent… including Apparition." Kasen stood up and explained. A force field wrapped around them, and in the next second, they were transported directly to the Alchemy Office in Hogwarts.
Ollivander came back to his senses after a brief moment of daze, then looked at Kasen, who was already seated on the sofa. "Previously, I only had a rough guess about the size of your office based on the letters you and Dumbledore wrote me. And now that I've seen it… my vocabulary isn't sufficient for me to express my shock without resorting to profanity."
"Oh? Your idol façade is really something. I thought you didn't know how to swear at all." Kasen stood up and poured him a glass of liquor. "Wet your throat. This is Hogwarts' way of welcoming guests."
"You haven't spent more time at Hogwarts than I have. How come I've never heard of this sort of hospitality?" Ollivander asked in confusion.
"Because back then, you were still underage."
Kasen hadn't even finished speaking when the crystal ball on his desk lit up red.
"What does that mean?"
"It means Dumbledore is rushing us. Let's head to the Great Hall." As Kasen spoke, the force field wrapped around Ollivander again, and the two of them left the Alchemy Office instantly.
Part of it was because Kasen had absolutely no trust in this old wizard's flying skills, and the other part was that he didn't trust the old wizard's body either.
If the man arrived healthy and ended up dying on the way back, the blame would land squarely on Kasen.
"I thought you'd take me straight to the Great Hall," Ollivander murmured, still a bit dazed.
"You might want to take a walk through Hogwarts' corridors. But if you don't, we can just go directly."
"Let's stroll a bit, then." Ollivander looked around at the corridor furnishings, nearly unchanged from his own school days, and the smile on his face never faded.
Of course, not everything was the same—at the very least, the knight statue had been replaced by an iron golem.
"My memory has always been good. Practically everyone who's met me twice knows that about me—you should know it too, right?" Ollivander suddenly asked as they walked.
"Obviously."
"So when necessary—like when I miss Hogwarts, or miss my student days—I only need to immerse myself in my memories, and I can see scenes almost identical to what they are now. But after actually setting foot here again after so long, I've realized there's still a big difference between reality and memory," Ollivander said with a sigh.
"For example?" Kasen asked.
"The sense of reality. The biggest difference is that all of you are living, breathing people… not just characters coming to my shop, getting groped by the measurement tape and handed a wand..."
"Mmhmm. We are not NPCs, after all."
The two chatted casually as they walked—mostly Ollivander talking and Kasen listening, occasionally adding a timely response. Before long, they arrived at the Great Hall on the first floor.
Dumbledore immediately stood up to greet them.
Seeing this, Kasen instinctively put some distance between himself and Ollivander.
But contrary to what he expected, once Dumbledore finished welcoming Ollivander, he then walked toward Kasen, and for a moment the whole scene looked strangely like a father approaching his dutiful son.
Of course, Kasen was the father.
And in contrast, Dumbledore was giving him a sly look, silently reminding him to maintain his majestic, respectable façade in front of this old friend.
To summarize in one sentence:
When outsiders are present, act like a proper human being!
That was it. Simple.
Seeing this, Kasen naturally slipped into the mindset of an indulgent father. Giving someone a bit of face? Sure, no problem.
He stepped back twice, patted his sleeves with his palm, and was just about to kneel down and perform a full three-bow-nine-kowtow ceremony to Dumbledore when two of the only three people who truly understood his character—and could predict exactly what he was about to do—appeared at his sides.
Snape and Sirius grabbed him simultaneously.
"So? What exactly are you two doing?" Kasen asked, pretending to be offended.
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