Chapter 329 Uninvited Guest
Although she has kept pets for several years, Ada has never studied the psychology of pet behavior. She does not know the meaning of the various sounds made by cats and dogs, but Ada knows that there must be a monster when something goes wrong.
In order to verify her conjecture, Ada returned to Crookshanks again, and the big cat stopped barking. Crookshanks lay on his back in front of Ada, exposing his soft belly, and seemed to be showing cuteness to Ada.
Ada stood up again and left Crookshanks' sight, and Crookshanks made another "Gurgling" sound. After doing this several times, the big cat would follow Ada wherever she went, and would rub Ada's calves affectionately.
If word got out about her battle of wits and courage with a cat in the Twilight Cabin, Ada would no longer have to mess around. Looking at Crookshanks who was spying on her, Ada showed a sly smile.
No matter how cunning the hunter is, he can't defeat a good fox! No, that's the opposite.
In any case, Ada has determined that the cat's owner is still the same cat owner. The reason why the cat is intimate with her and allows her to play with it is just to prevent her from wandering around in this room.
Knowing that he is the master here, Crookshanks doesn't mind getting into the secret passage in front of him, but his wandering around the room seems to worry Crookshanks.
Of course, these ideas are probably Ada's one-man show, and Crookshanks may not be as smart as Ada thinks. The big cat got into the secret passage and ran into the hut, probably because it was too cold outside.
Ada gently kicked Crookshanks away from her feet. She wanted to search her house carefully. She didn't want to find the corpses of mice or birds in a corner of the room. .
After carefully searching the room inside and outside, Ada did not find the bodies of any small animals, but her worries did not diminish at all, but became more.
There was no Crookshanks' food supply in the room, but Ada found something in the room that didn't belong here. She found a black animal hair in the carpet downstairs! It’s still a very flavorful hair!
Ada pulled the innocent-looking Gallon over and compared it carefully. This black animal hair did not belong to Gallon.
The color of galleons is off-white, which first of all does not match the color. Secondly, Gallon is a Labrador. Although he also sheds hair, the Labrador's hair is not as long as this one.
By the same token, this black hair does not belong to Crookshanks either.
The reason Ada pulled Garen over for verification was just to confirm that her pet had not mutated in any way. After all, this is a magical world and anything is possible.
There is only one way for animals to enter the cabin, and that's through the secret passage beneath the Whomping Willow. Because the entrance and exit of Hogsmeade was sealed by Ada with magic, animals could not enter or exit.
In previous winters, Ada had never found any traces of animals in the cabin. How could the sudden appearance of black hair not make people feel strange?
Although the real situation may be similar to Crookshanks, who was brought here by Garen, it is always right to be cautious, and it just so happens that Ada can also test the newly learned spell.
"The footprints appear!" Ada whispered.
A light golden mist sprayed out from the tip of the yew wand and soon covered every corner of the room.
This is a very useful spell. Aurors can use this spell to track dark wizards or criminals, and Ada can also use the footprints to infer whether there are any uninvited guests breaking into the hut.
In the hands of some people who are proficient in this spell, this spell can also directly display what has happened here in recent days, but Ada cannot do this yet, otherwise she can directly identify the real culprit.
The golden mist gradually dissipated, revealing many golden, glowing footprints on the ground. By the size and shape of the footprints, you can tell which ones are Ada's own, which ones belong to Fred and George, and which ones belong to Winnie the house elf.
There are three types of animal footprints, namely those from Gallon and Crookshanks. The last one is probably the owner of the animal hair, an uninvited guest in the Twilight Cottage.
Ada stared at Garen fiercely, and the off-white Labrador was so frightened that he immediately shrank into a ball and made a pitiful groan. It looks really pitiful, but Ada still wants to grab Garen and beat him up. Is it you who led the enemy here?
In the end, Ada couldn't bear to take action and spared Garen's life for the time being.
The other footprints gradually faded away, leaving only the paw prints of the uninvited guest still glowing. The paw prints looked more like those left by canines, except that the paw prints looked much larger than those of ordinary canines.
Judging the size of this canine from the paw prints alone, Ada felt that five Galleons shouldn't be a problem.
Following the paw prints, Ada tried to deduce the canine's movements. It left very few footprints from the entrance of the secret passage, as if it was carefully hiding its whereabouts. If it weren't for the missing hair, Ada might not have discovered this uninvited guest at all.
But something strange is that one of these careful paw prints leads to the bathroom! This situation should not happen and is very unreasonable.
The location of the bathroom was the original bathroom of the Shrieking Shack, but it has long been out of use due to disrepair. The current bathroom was rebuilt using magic in the original location after Ada transformed it into the Twilight Shack.
The forced separation of dry and wet areas made this bathroom a little small. Ada had just checked here, but she didn't find anything unexpected. But with this string of paw prints, everything becomes different.
The slightly dense paw prints proved that the canine had stayed under the shower for a long time, and the paw prints at the shower switch proved that it had turned on the shower.
A canine who loves hot baths, what the hell?
Waving her hand to remove the magic, all traces disappeared, and Ada returned upstairs and sat next to the warm fireplace. Now Ada was really one and the same, and on the one hand she was confused by the canine, and on the other hand she felt very angry.
An unknown animal entered your house without permission, leaving behind a trail of tracks and a hair. The suspect also took a comfortable hot shower in your house and finally left.
It's too much!
Ada pulled Gallon over again, and while thinking about who this canine was, she rubbed Gallon's dog face hard. Garen looked at his eldest brother for help, but Crookshanks had long been hiding away from Ada. A woman with low pressure could not be offended.
Normally, Ada might not have cared so much about this illegally trespassing canine, and she might not have hated Garen, the mole, so much. However, Ada had only recently begun to suspect that Sirius Black was an illegal Animagus when her house was taken over by a canine.
This is too much of a coincidence. Why, in addition to forcing his way into the Gryffindor common room, Sirius Black also learned how to steal homes?
The most important thing is that neither Galleon nor Crookshanks seem to be hostile to the intruder. The intruder is also very inconsistent with the habits of animals. He did not leave any marks of enclosure, but was very anthropomorphic. A hot bath.
It could be seen from the remaining animal hair on the ground that Winnie the house elf hadn't had time to clean the room, but there were no obvious water stains on the walls of the room. After a canine takes a bath, instead of brushing its hair, it chooses to air-dry naturally. This is not only unscientific, but also unmagical!
Could this trespassing canine be Sirius Black?
A big question mark was drawn in Ada's heart.