Although she had kept pets for several years, Eda had never studied animal behavior or psychology and didn't know what the various sounds cats and dogs made actually meant.
But she did know that when something unusual happens, there's usually a reason behind it.
To test her guess, Eda returned to stand in front of Crookshanks—and sure enough, the cat stopped making noise. Crookshanks lay on its back in front of her, exposing its soft belly, as if trying to act cute.
Eda got up again and moved out of Crookshanks' line of sight, and the cat immediately started making that "purring" sound again. After repeating this a few times, wherever Eda went, the big cat followed, even affectionately rubbing against her calves.
If word got out that she was here in the Shrieking Shack, matching wits with a cat, Eda might as well forget about saving face. Looking at Crookshanks, who seemed to be keeping an eye on her, Eda revealed a sly smile.
No matter how cunning the hunter is, it can't outmatch a clever fox… wait, that's backwards.
In any case, Eda had figured it out—the cat was still very much a cat. The reason it was acting affectionate and trying to get her to play with it was simply to stop her from wandering around the room.
Since it knew she was the owner here, Crookshanks didn't mind slipping into the secret passage right in front of her. But her moving around the room freely seemed to make it uneasy.
Of course, all of this might just be Eda overthinking things. Crookshanks might not be as smart as she imagined. The cat entering the passage and running into the shack could simply be because it was too cold outside.
Eda lightly nudged Crookshanks away from her feet. She wanted to thoroughly search her house—she certainly didn't want to discover things like a dead rat or a dead bird in some corner of the room.
After carefully searching the entire place inside and out, Eda didn't find any small animal corpses—but her worry didn't lessen in the slightest.
Instead, it only grew stronger.
There was no stash of food belonging to Crookshanks in the room, but Eda did find something that didn't belong there—a black animal hair in the downstairs carpet!
And it was a very "distinctive-smelling" one at that!
Eda immediately grabbed the innocent-looking Garlon and carefully compared it. This black strand of fur did not belong to Garlon.
Garlon was cream-colored, so the color already didn't match. Secondly, Garlon was a Labrador—while Labradors do shed, their fur wasn't this long.
By the same reasoning, this black hair didn't belong to Crookshanks either.
The reason Eda dragged Garlon over to check was simply to confirm that her pet hadn't undergone any kind of mutation. After all, this was the wizarding world—anything was possible.
There was only one way for animals to enter the shack: the secret passage beneath the Whomping Willow. The Hogsmeade entrance had been sealed off by Eda with magic, so animals couldn't get in or out that way.
In previous winters, Eda had never found any trace of animals in the shack. So how could this suddenly appearing black hair not seem strange?
Of course, it was possible that, like Crookshanks, it had simply been brought here by Garlon. But it was always better to be cautious—and it also gave Eda a chance to test a new spell she had just learned.
"Appare Vestigium," Eda murmured.
A faint golden mist sprayed from the tip of her yew wand, quickly spreading to cover every corner of the room.
It was a very useful spell—Aurors could use it to track dark wizards or criminals, and Eda could use the footprints it revealed to determine whether any unwelcome guest had entered the shack.
In the hands of someone truly skilled with this spell, it could even directly show what had happened here over the past few days. Unfortunately, Eda couldn't do that yet—otherwise, she would have been able to identify the culprit immediately.
As the golden mist gradually faded, many glowing golden footprints appeared on the ground. From their size and shape, it was easy to distinguish which belonged to Eda herself, which were Fred and George's, and which belonged to the house-elf Winnie.
There were three kinds of animal footprints: those from Garlon, those from Crookshanks, and the remaining set—which must belong to the owner of that black hair, the uninvited guest of the Shrieking Shack.
Eda glared fiercely at Garlon. The cream-colored Labrador was so frightened that it immediately curled into a ball, letting out pitiful whimpers.
It really did look miserable, but Eda still had the urge to grab it and give it a good beating—so it was you who brought the enemy here?
In the end, she couldn't bring herself to do it and spared Garlon for now.
The other footprints gradually faded away, leaving only the glowing paw prints of the intruder. These prints looked more like those of a canine, but they were noticeably larger than those of an ordinary dog.
Judging from the size of the paw prints alone, Eda felt that this creature could probably take on five Garlons without any problem.
Following the trail, Eda tried to deduce the creature's movements. From the entrance of the secret passage onward, the footprints became scarce, as if it had been carefully hiding its tracks. If not for the stray hair it left behind, Eda might never have noticed this uninvited guest.
But something was strange—among this cautious trail, one set of paw prints led straight into the bathroom! This shouldn't have happened; it didn't make sense.
The bathroom's location had originally been the restroom of the old Shrieking Shack, but it had long since fallen into disrepair and become unusable. The current bathroom was something Eda had magically rebuilt in the same place after transforming the shack.
With its enforced separation of wet and dry areas, the bathroom was somewhat cramped. Eda had already checked it earlier and hadn't found anything unusual. But now, with these paw prints, everything felt different.
The somewhat denser paw prints proved that this canine had stayed under the shower for quite a while, and the prints near the faucet clearly showed that it had even turned the shower on.
A canine that likes taking hot showers? What kind of nonsense is that?
With a wave of her hand, Eda dispelled the magic, and all the footprints vanished. She went back upstairs and sat down by the warm fireplace.
Now she truly had a splitting headache—on one hand, this canine had completely confused her; on the other, she felt genuinely annoyed.
An unknown animal had entered your house without permission, left behind a trail of footprints and a strand of fur, taken a comfortable hot shower in your home, and then swaggered off.
That was just too much!
Eda grabbed Garlon again, thinking about what this mysterious canine could possibly be, while vigorously rubbing his dog face. Garlon looked toward his "big brother" for help, but Crookshanks had already retreated far away from Eda—an angry woman was not to be trifled with.
Under normal circumstances, Eda might not have cared this much about an illegally trespassing canine, nor would she have been so irritated at Garlon for acting like an accomplice.
But recently, she had just begun to suspect that Sirius Black was an illegal Animagus—yet now her house had been "occupied" by a canine.
That was just too much of a coincidence. What, besides breaking into the Gryffindor common room, had Sirius Black also learned how to break into people's homes?
Most importantly, neither Garlon nor Crookshanks seemed to show any hostility toward this intruder, and the intruder itself behaved nothing like a normal animal. It hadn't left any territorial markings—instead, it had very human-like behavior, even taking a hot shower.
From the animal hair left on the ground, it was clear that the house-elf Winnie hadn't yet come to clean the room, yet there were no obvious water stains left on the walls. After bathing, a canine hadn't shaken off the water but instead chose to air-dry naturally—this wasn't just unscientific, it wasn't even magical!
Could this illegally trespassing canine actually be Sirius Black?
A huge question mark formed in Eda's mind.
__
Read 12 Chapters ahead:
Patreon: Dragonel