"So, Professor, you had Fawkes wake me from my bed in the middle of the night just so I could mourn these unlucky former professors with you?"
Harley watched Professor Dumbledore put away the faculty register and could not help but remark sarcastically.
"Of course not." Professor Dumbledore shrugged. "Do I look that unreliable?"
Faced with the rather strange looks from Harley, Fawkes, and the portraits of the other former headmasters around them, Professor Dumbledore knew full well that this topic was not in his favor.
So he coughed twice and got to the point.
"Ahem... Harley, after looking through that register, don't you think Hogwarts has been changing Defense Against the Dark Arts professors far too quickly?"
"They really have been changing too quickly." Harley nodded. "From the middle of your tenure onward, they basically had to replace the professor every year."
"And the further along it went, the greater the chance of the professor dying. They practically became disposable items. It was truly tragic."
"Not that bad, not that bad." Professor Dumbledore shook his head repeatedly. "Look, didn't quite a few of them survive?"
"Uncle Remus is a werewolf, so he has a high resistance to magic," Harley replied mercilessly.
"And Professor Moody is a veteran Auror with especially rich experience. At the very least, his magical ability is far above those earlier professors."
"Going back another ten years, I didn't see a single professor leave this castle alive."
Professor Dumbledore took several large gulps of honey water in an attempt to cover it up, only to be choked into coughing by the thick liquid.
"I only wanted to use these abnormal death statistics to tell you that the rumor among the students—that the Defense Against the Dark Arts course is cursed—is true."
After recovering, Professor Dumbledore explained