Chapter 76. Brightly Coloured Mushrooms
"Professor Dumbledore?"
Fred and George widened their eyes and exclaimed at the same time.
Duncan felt speechless, with an urge to punch someone.
While these rookies were fighting hard here, the strongest man had been watching from the side.
Dumbledore really was a thoroughgoing schemer!
Seeing Professor Kettleburn call him out, Dumbledore lifted the Disillusionment Charm on himself and, utterly unembarrassed, stepped out from the side with a calm expression.
As early as when the first wave of Acromantulas surged in, he had received a message and had Fawkes bring him into the forest.
But seeing that Duncan and the others were doing a decent job, he hid a while longer to see how far they could go.
"I actually only just arrived not long ago..." Dumbledore walked up to them with a smile.
Professor Kettleburn silently rolled his eyes.
He had sensed someone approaching for quite some time.
"I'll leave them to you.
It's been too long since I fought people, and I feel like I'm falling to bits," Professor Kettleburn said.
He beckoned to Duncan and the others, told them to lower their wands, and led them to the side together.
"I'm a white-bearded old man as well..." Dumbledore said with a smile, stepping forward.
Seeing the group offer no resistance, the Acromantulas grew excited at once and charged madly at the frail old man standing alone.
Dumbledore drew his wand and gave it a casual wave, without incantation, almost as if he were merely showing everyone how nice his wand looked.
But the air around them suddenly turned scorching.
The temperature kept rising and spread outward at high speed.
Duncan's skin prickled with a burning sensation, as if being roasted by flames, and he couldn't help taking a few steps back.
As his last step touched down, pale-blue flames appeared out of thin air.
They rose and billowed with the wind, surging outward like a tide.
"Professor, what is this..." Fred said in amazement.
The show Dumbledore had put on was a little grand—like he meant to burn down the entire forest.
But it wasn't quite what everyone imagined.
The trees seemed protected by a fire-protection charm and remained unscathed where they met the flames.
The Acromantulas, however, were like they'd been doused in petrol—touch a lick of flame and they roared into a fierce blaze.
Crackle-crackle sounds rang through the woods as the fire burned.
Black smoke, along with a foul stench, coiled upward into the sky.
By the time the flames had swept into the distance, the Acromantulas had all turned into lumps of charcoal, to become nourishment for the forest.
Fred and George swallowed with difficulty and exchanged a glance with Duncan.
All three of them were shaken to their core.
The flames Dumbledore had summoned so effortlessly were a bit beyond their imagination.
It was like when everyone was besieging a boss and the mage in the back casually finished it off with a basic attack.
When every Acromantula within sight had been cleaned up, Dumbledore turned back to them.
"Now can someone tell me what on earth happened?" Dumbledore asked lightly.
"That's how it was, Professor..."
Duncan calmed his excitement and stepped forward to recount the entire incident in detail.
"So it was an accident?" Dumbledore said.
"Hagrid, how did those spiders suddenly come out..."
He had long known that Hagrid fed some dangerous magical creatures in the forest.
But Hagrid had always kept a tight rein on things and there had never been an accident, so he turned a blind eye and hadn't paid much attention.
"I... I..."
Hagrid's face flushed scarlet, his forehead beaded with sweat.
He didn't know how to explain himself to Dumbledore.
"I might know the reason," Professor Kettleburn suddenly said, stepping in to spare Hagrid.
Hagrid let out a breath, cast Professor Kettleburn a grateful look, and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Oh?" Dumbledore looked over.
"Are you comfortable saying it here?"
Professor Kettleburn nodded and looked at Duncan.
"The summer before last, Newt and I went to Asia."
"Which time in July?"
Duncan followed Professor Kettleburn's lead in thought.
He remembered that in June of that year, Newt had received a letter and suddenly vanished without a word, with no news at all in the interim.
He didn't return until a month and a half later, covered in injuries.
Tina's fury burned for three days before it went out.
In the end, Newt hardened his heart and injured Duncan to divert Tina's attention, and only then did the matter pass smoothly.
"Mm, that's right," Professor Kettleburn said.
"At the time I received a letter from a friend saying that animals in a rainforest in Southeast Asia had suddenly gone berserk.
They asked me to come help handle it and investigate the cause of their frenzy, so I invited Newt to go with me."
"The animals we saw then were similar to today's—bloodshot eyes bulging out, no reason left at all.
Newt and I, together with local wizards, spent tremendous effort to lock them all up.
I nearly left my life there...."
"Did you eventually find the cause of the animals' frenzy?" Dumbledore asked, his gaze deep.
"We did," Professor Kettleburn said.
"After we had them all secured, Newt and I spent a great deal of time combing the forest carefully.
We found the source of the disturbance in a cave."
Here Professor Kettleburn paused, rummaged about himself for a moment, and produced a grimy pouch with an Undetectable Extension Charm.
He undid the clasp, tapped the opening with his wand, and a brightly coloured mushroom flew out.
Its moisture had been drawn out so it was shrivelled up, but the red, cloud-shaped pattern on the cap was still clearly visible.
"I can say with certainty that this kind of mushroom was specially cultivated by someone.
It only grows in particular soil and at a set temperature," Professor Kettleburn said, showing the mushroom to everyone.
"Animals that eat it will become as crazed as those Acromantulas—turned into monsters that only know how to kill."
"And the purpose of cultivating these mushrooms?" Dumbledore asked.
"Regrettably, I still don't know," Professor Kettleburn said.
"In the cave we only found some mushrooms that hadn't been completely destroyed, and some messy footprints."
Dumbledore inclined his head slightly.
"Could that mushroom grow in the forests around Hogwarts?"
"No.
There's a big difference between our environment here and that rainforest in Asia," Professor Kettleburn replied.
Dumbledore's brow furrowed a little.
"In other words, there's no possibility the Acromantulas ate them by accident.
Someone deliberately brought this kind of mushroom to the school and fed it to those spiders....
Hagrid?"
Startled by Dumbledore calling his name out of nowhere, Hagrid jumped and hurried to explain,
"I—I didn't, Dumbledore.
I've never seen the mushrooms Professor Kettleburn's holding, let alone fed them to the Acromantulas!"
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