Not only that, the Muggle Studies professor was softly humming a soothing lullaby, while the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts obligingly kept his eyes tightly shut, swaying peacefully back and forth in the air as though sleeping on a soft woolen blanket before a fireplace in winter.
Besides them, several witches lay stiffly on the dueling platform, struck by "Petrificus Totalus." Their expressions were frozen at the moment they had been hit-a fanaticism impossible to overlook at a glance, the sort of expression usually seen on the faces of Death Eaters.
"..." Dumbledore blinked his bright blue eyes and thoughtfully reached to adjust his glasses, only for his fingers to touch his eye socket. Only then did he realize he had left his glasses at Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.
He had happened to be trying on a newly released robe in Diagon Alley that day when a large black dog had "attacked" him just after he put it on. Sirius's Patronus was every bit as lively as Sirius himself-the details needed no further elaboration. In short, after receiving Sirius's Patronus message, he had hurried here.
Although the scene was rather bizarre, Dumbledore still trusted that Brian would not do strange things without a reason. After a moment's thought, he waved his wand, arranged the witches from the floor in a neat row on a nearby bench, then walked over to Brian and silently examined Gilderoy Lockhart's condition in the air.
"So that's it..." Dumbledore nodded in understanding.
Thanks to Voldemort's Horcrux, he had recently been reading a collection of books on the connection between soul and body, including several forbidden books about that connection in wizards.
He soon discovered that there was a considerable gap between Gilderoy Lockhart's soul and body-like a quilt that had become