Good Headmaster Phineas

Harry sat in the chair across from the desk, looking slightly restrained.

Dumbledore smiled kindly at Harry, assuming he was nervous because this was the first time he had been summoned for a talk with the Headmaster.

"Oh, Harry, relax," Dumbledore said. "I was once a Gryffindor student myself. You could even say I'm your senior."

Harry glanced up at Dumbledore, then quickly lowered his head again.

He had no intention of arguing, because he wasn't sure what the consequences would be.

He had only heard a little about the Headmaster from Hagrid, and since he had never interacted with him before, Harry could not judge what the man's attitude toward him truly was.

"Lemonade?" Dumbledore asked.

"Yes, with ice, please." Harry nodded obediently, without the slightest bit of politeness.

Before long, a glass of iced lemonade appeared before him.

Harry picked up the glass and took a sip—

"Ew!" Harry wrinkled his face in distaste. "It's so sweet..."

He seriously suspected that sugar at Hogwarts was free. Otherwise, they would not be so extravagantly generous with it in lemonade.

Was this lemonade, or lemon-flavored syrup?

"It seems you don't like it. What a pity." Dumbledore spread his hands, grabbed a Cockroach Candy from a jar on the desk, and stuffed it into his mouth.

If Harry had not known it was a magical sweet, he would have thrown up right there on the desk.

"You two, someone is still sleeping here!" a familiar voice rang out from the wall. "Oh, my heavens, Albus, you should know that even when I was Headmaster, I never summoned students for talks this late at night! Any students!"

It was Phineas Black. No matter how much time had passed, Harry could recognize that voice.

Don't see me, don't see me...

Harry chanted silently to himself, trying his best not to draw Black's attention.

Yet Murphy's Law told them that the more one hoped something would not happen, the more likely it was to happen.

After finishing his jab at Dumbledore, Phineas Black noticed Harry sitting opposite him.

"You are...?" The figure felt very familiar, but he could not recall who it was for the moment.

After a while, realization dawned on his face.

"Ha! I knew it! Let me think, Gryffindor's..."

Dumbledore thought he was about to start preaching his theories about Houses and bloodlines again, so he immediately said, "Dilys, could you do me a small favor?"

"It would be my pleasure, Albus."

Headmistress Dilys Derwent lifted her skirts and gave Dumbledore a lady's curtsy. Rubbing her hands together, she led a group of Headmasters out of their portraits and charged into Phineas's frame.

"You... what are you doing?" Phineas asked in horror.

The Headmasters did not answer. They rushed forward together, threw him to the ground, tied him securely to a chair with rope, and stuffed something into his mouth while they were at it.

Phineas struggled for a while, then suddenly relaxed and stopped resisting.

He had never expected that this Gryffindor boy had not perished together with Runcorn, but had instead come a hundred years into the future...

Judging by his appearance, his age had actually become younger after Time Travel?

Heh, so what?

Even if he turned to ashes, this Headmaster would still remember him!

But!

Phineas glared viciously at Dumbledore outside the frame. So what if I recognize him? You had me tied up! Even if you beg me, don't dream of making me tell you the truth! Never!

"Phineas is just like that." Dumbledore smiled at Harry. "Actually, he isn't a bad person. He's a good..."

He got stuck there.

"A good Headmaster?"

Harry finished the sentence for Dumbledore, though the moment he said it, goosebumps danced wildly across his arms.

A good Headmaster?

Him?

Phineas Black?

Merlin's longest rabbit ears...

Dumbledore wore an expression too complicated to describe. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

After all, he had truly spent seven solid years at Hogwarts being tormented by Phineas's various rules during Phineas's tenure as Headmaster.

The Headmasters in the surrounding portraits also fell silent. Then, no one knew who started it, but they erupted into earth-shaking laughter.

"Oh, child." Headmistress Dilys wiped away tears of laughter and said between gasps, "If you had attended Hogwarts while Phineas was Headmaster, you would understand just how hilarious what you just said was..."

Harry shrugged. He had been to the Headmaster's Office before, though that was when he had used Polyjuice Potion to transform into Phineas.

Besides, he had never interacted with the other Headmasters, so it was perfectly normal that they did not recognize him.

"But it must be admitted that, at the very least, no Headmaster could match Phineas when it came to promoting unity among the Houses," Headmistress Euphrasia Moore said. "I dare say that even if the Four Founders came back from the dead, they could not accomplish that."

Phineas kicked his legs furiously in protest, making the chair clatter.

"Portraits are truly marvelous, aren't they?" Dumbledore raised his lemonade toward the Headmasters in the frames.

Harry felt they should not drag this out any longer. He was still young, at an age when he needed plenty of sleep.

"Then, Headmaster," he said, "I think we should talk about what happened on the Quidditch pitch today."

"Go on." Dumbledore took out another Cockroach Candy and soaked it in his cup.

The cockroach's two antennae stuck out from the cup, twitching from side to side with startling lifelike realism.

"I think someone must have been cursing my broom when it suddenly went out of control," Harry said with absolute certainty. "A classmate was the one who pointed it out to me."

"Hermione, was it?" Dumbledore smiled. "At her age, there are very few witches cleverer than her—"

"So what I want to ask is, why did the person who cursed my broom dare to do it right in front of you?" Harry tried not to meet Dumbledore's eyes, instead staring at the cup in his hands. "Or rather, why did you remain indifferent?"

"Someone was already doing their best to save you, weren't they?" Dumbledore stroked his white beard and pulled the Cockroach Candy free from it.

After finally extracting the cockroach from his beard, Dumbledore raised his head and saw Harry still staring absently at the cup in his hands, looking "restrained."

"Are you... very afraid of me?" Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, though he did not find it strange.

A student talking with the Headmaster in his office—being unafraid would have been the strange thing.

"No, Headmaster. I read about a kind of magic in a book," Harry said. "The book said that it could obtain another person's thoughts by looking directly into their eyes."