Lucius was frightened.
He began to doubt if all of this was a trap. Someone wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to kill him.
As the head of the Malfoy family, if he were to die violently, he would leave his wife a widow and his son Draco as an orphan. If anything were to happen to Draco, the Malfoy family would be extinguished!
In an instant, Lucius imagined a series of TV dramas in his mind.
Seeing Buckbeak's sharp claws, he felt intimidated.
"Um... this..." Lucius hesitated for a moment. Then, his usual drinking buddy had a clever idea and said directly: if you've already controlled the environmental conditions, then we should take it a step further and control the people participating in the experiment. We can use the Hogwarts students.
When those words were spoken, many people changed their facial expressions, and some looked at him with disdain: are you really so afraid for your own life that you're willing to make innocent students do this experiment?
The drinking buddy blushed but stood his ground. After all, he had already taken a look and didn't know any of the young wizards present.
Lucius instinctively felt that the proposal was absurd, but thinking that if the students didn't participate, he would have to face the hippogriff, he cowered. Lucius closed his mouth and remained silent, feigning a "neutral" attitude.
Many people had the same attitude as Lucius. Most of the Ministry of Magic officials present didn't want to be "volunteers" and remained silent in the face of potential danger. They always found all sorts of excuses to avoid responsibility.
Dumbledore suddenly raised his eyebrows. Upon hearing those words, he was initially very angry, but then he glanced at the students Newt had brought and suddenly understood something.
Newt seemed confused at that moment. He had come to teach, according to the new schedule, today he was supposed to take the students to the Forbidden Forest to take care of the Nifflers. But before leaving the castle, he ran into Yodel and Granger. According to what Yodel said, he and Granger had no morning classes, so he asked if they could attend as observers.
Newt was a very kind person and couldn't turn down students who wanted to attend his classes, so he agreed. But on the way, he ran into Dumbledore.
Was Dumbledore also going to the Forbidden Forest? Well... that's fine. You're the headmaster of Hogwarts; you can go wherever you want. And so, Newt brought his students here without fully understanding the situation.
Upon hearing the words from the drinking buddy, Dumbledore surprisingly showed no intention of refuting. Newt became anxious. As the world's foremost expert on magical creatures, he knew magical creatures like the hippogriff very well.
These creatures were very proud, and once an irresponsible wizard offended them, they would suffer terrible reprisals... And now the Ministry of Magic wanted a group of children to test the temperament of the hippogriff. Wasn't this madness?
Newt reached out to protect his students, but when he was about to say something, he felt someone tugging on his robe.
When he looked back, it was Tom Yodel.
Tom made a head-shaking gesture, indicating he should calm down first. Then, he pressed Newt's arm and stepped forward before Newt could react, walking to the front of the Ministry of Magic personnel.
"Let me do it. I'm willing to volunteer. What should I do?" Tom asked.
Seeing Tom step forward, Dumbledore's earlier suspicions were further confirmed, so he smoothed his beard and stepped aside to let him pass, saying nothing more.
Lucius frowned. Does this boy have some hidden agenda by being so willing? He signaled to his friend, wanting him to stand up and act as the villain, after all, what he said earlier was already embarrassing, so he might as well continue to show his baseness.
But before he could act, he heard Newt shout indignantly, "Yodel, have you gone mad? You haven't even seen a hippogriff before; you have no idea of the danger it poses! Professor Dumbledore, say something!"
Newt was unaware of the private interactions between Tom and Hagrid, so in his opinion, Tom was an impulsive young man who wasn't afraid of dangers.
Lucius was perplexed, and seeing Newt's expression, it didn't seem like an act, so he was surprised inside.
Are there still people so foolish in this world? Well, let him experience it...
"It's fine to let Tom go. Even if something goes wrong, I trust that Tom can take care of himself," Dumbledore said indifferently from the side.
Newt opened his eyes in surprise, not expecting Professor Dumbledore to say such a thing.
"Perhaps they don't know, but Mr. Yodel is an exceptional student at our school. It was he who drove away the Dementors during the previous chaos at Hogwarts."
Hiss!
The Ministry of Magic officials looked at Tom in a different light: he was a man who had been able to conjure a corporeal Patronus as a student! It was said that he had teamed up with a witch to banish hundreds of Dementors, and there were rumors that the Order of Merlin had initiated an investigation into him, and if this was true and not exaggerated, a First Class Order of Merlin was inevitable.
He was truly a prodigy! No wonder he had such courage.
"Hmm, there's no point in saying more. Let's get started!" Lucius snorted and withdrew into the crowd. The Ministry of Magic officials stopped talking and fell silent, stepping aside, watching Tom standing next to Buckbeak.
Without a second look, Tom crossed the exposed passage through the crowd and over the paddock fence, standing face to face with Buckbeak.
"Well done, Tom!" Hagrid cheered Tom on from the side. He trusted Tom wholeheartedly. He knew very well that Tom and Buckbeak had a good relationship.
Tom fixed his eyes on Buckbeak and gave a slight bow.
...
"They're going to condemn me to death, and I can't escape?". Buckbeak felt upset. The little black-haired boy had told him his fate. This seemed very unfair to him: why were they going to kill him when he hadn't done anything wrong? If he escaped, he would also endanger Hagrid. Therefore, he couldn't run away because Hagrid had been kind to him...
"You won't be executed, tomorrow you'll just have to..."
This conversation came to Buckbeak's mind, then he returned to reality and looked at the young wizard who was bowing and responded by bending his scaly-covered knees in a bow.
It seems that last night's communication was effective! Tom was confident.