In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 77: Caretaker's Office

When the afternoon class was over, Hermione went to get the tools they needed to clean the lavatory, but Jon found an excuse not to go over together.

He walked out of the classroom alone, and then entered the special lavatory for mudbloods, and put on the invisibility cloak.

The time was already late in the evening, but not yet completely dark. In such an environment, Jon could not be easily detected by other students as long as he walked close to the wall and paid some attention carefully.

He also cast a levitation charm on his body at the same time after putting on the cloak of invisibility, so that he can move more swiftly and more feather-light next.

As he made his way up a staircase that no mudbloods were normally supposed to step on, he encountered a number of half-blood and pureblood students who had also just got out of their classroom and were walking down the stairs towards the great hall to have their meal.

They talked and laughed, just like normal students in a normal school, passing by Jon, without noticing that a mudblood who is not supposed to be there is heading upward.

Jon moved quickly, counting the stairs silently in his mind, and took less than half a minute to get from the ground floor to the fourth floor, which had already become deserted, with most of the students leaving to go to the great hall.

And just as Jon arrived at the fourth floor, Dolohov happened to be coming out of his office, he turned over and closed his office door, then passed by Jon and walked down the stairs.

This was certainly no coincidence. In the three weeks of his arrival at the castle, Jon had been observing Dolohov's behaviour every day, and he had basically figured out the castle caretaker's daily routine.

Some professors would have their meals brought directly to their offices by the house elves, while Dolohov liked to go to the great hall, where he seemed to enjoy the feeling of his students bowing to him and calling him "Mr Dolohov".

So his three meals a day are served in the great hall, just like the normal students. That means that right after mealtime, his office will be empty for roughly half an hour, and this is the opportunity Jon has been eyeing all week.

After personally watching Dolohov walk down the stairs, Jon approached his office door with quick steps.

The door was not locked, because no student in the castle would dare to sneak into this perverted caretaker's office.

Jon carefully pushed the door open, and then closed it again.

After entering, he first took the quickest possible glance at the office premises.

The place is very gloomy, the half-set orange sun outside the window shone with a ray of sunset and fell on the dark floor.

There are four or five cold chains and shackles hanging down from the ceiling, making the room look less like an office and more like an interrogation room.

There are no portraits of any characters hanging on the surrounding walls, which is the best possible news for Jon.

The portraits in the magical world are generally alive, and the characters have their own identity and can communicate with people, if a pair is also hung in Dolohov's office, then Jon who's wearing a cloak of invisibility, although he will not be discovered, the purpose of coming to this office will not be completed, and it will also reveal that someone broke into Dolohov's office.

The various parchments on the desk were arranged in a messy manner, and it seemed that the caretaker didn't have the habit of tidying up his room regularly. Jon didn't bother to look at the things on the desk but went straight to the wooden cabinet on the wall.

Basically, all the prohibited items collected by Dolohov from the hands of half-blood and pureblood students should be here. When dealing with students other than mudbloods, even if they are half-bloods, he cannot use force, at most, he can confiscate the tools of crime and then punish them with detention.

Jon started rummaging through the wooden cabinet, even at this time he did not take off the invisibility cloak, and looked through the things with very light movements, as soon as he was sure it was not what he wanted then he would put them back in place.

The wooden cabinet is not that big, and there are not that many things stored, basically, some prank props, the kind of things that you can usually buy at the joke shop in Diagon Alley, Jon probably used more than ten minutes of time to rummage through the two wooden cabinets, but he still did not find what he was looking for.

Looking at the caretaker's office right in front of him, he frowned slightly.

On second thought, maybe he was going in the wrong direction.

The item he wanted to find was confiscated from James and the gang by the former caretaker Filch when Hogwarts Castle hadn't fallen, and now that the castle had changed owners and the caretaker had become a pureblood supremacist wizard, would he still keep the items left behind by his predecessor, the squib Filch?

Just as Jon was pondering, a chatter suddenly resounded from far and near outside the office door.

"Is it really okay for us to come and steal from Dolohov like this?" The voice sounded a bit naive and had a thicker vocal pitch.

The voice that answered him sounded familiar to Jon, he had met up with this boy once back in Diagon Alley.

"What are you afraid of, he is only fond of those shackles he has, and will never check if the collected confiscated items missing or not, we will not be found out. Besides, what can he do even if we got found out? My father is the head of the Auror Office, and both of your fathers are working in the Ministry of Magic, so he will only detain us for a few days at most, he won't do anything to us."

The conversation at the outer door continued, and Jon had already tightened the invisibility cloak on himself and hid under the desk.

The door to Dolohov's office room once again was opened from the outside by three students, and Draco Malfoy and his two followers, Crabbe and Goyle entered.

With nowhere near as much caution as Jon, they just poked their heads into the office, as if trying to steal the prohibited items from here that had been taken away by Dolohov earlier.

"Go look in that cabinet over there, Goyle, and watch your movements a bit, don't make a mess of things."

Jon watched from under the desk as the three of them also made their way to the wooden cabinet and began rummaging through it, but they were obviously much luckier than Jon and soon found what they were looking for.

The item was found by Crabbe, it is a blue orb, roughly about the size of a ping pong ball.

Draco took the orb as soon as he was able to, with an excited expression on his face.

"I brought it to school secretly from home without my dad's knowledge, and luckily Dolohov didn't throw it into that room on the ground floor like he threw the other half-breed bastards' things. I don't want to go over to the ground floor to find my stuff and meet up with the mudbloods!"

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