The Shopkeeper of All Worlds in the British Wizarding World

Chapter 736 For London (Please subscribe, please bookmark, please vote)
"I called all of you here today because I think it's time to discuss the next steps. After all, the current situation is much better than before the war broke out. It can even be said that we have come to an important turning point." After sitting down on the chair, Headmaster Dumbledore first stated the goal of today's meeting.

"Yes, Headmaster Dumbledore," Ms. Bones agreed. "According to the statistics of our Ministry of Magic, there have been no cases of Muggles or wizards being harmed in the UK in the past week. And except in the Greater London area, the activity of Death Eaters and members of the Ministry of Magic in London has also greatly decreased."

"This is indeed good news." Professor Dumbledore nodded, then showed a serious expression. "But I don't think Voldemort will surrender, even if he has suffered huge losses before-"

At this point, Dumbledore glanced at Ryan and Hermione, and then continued, "Especially according to my calculations, even though he suffered huge losses in manpower and material resources in the previous confrontation with us, he still has a force that is no less than 1/3 of his peak period. This means that Voldemort's current retreat is not due to lack of strength, but is planning a conspiracy that we don't know about."

"Professor." Hermione raised her hand to signal, and after getting Dumbledore's permission, she asked, "Why can't this be the You-Know-Who trying to put up a complete resistance in London? Now ordinary people throughout London are their hostages. With downtown London, where we can't use powerful magic to attack on a large scale, he can definitely cause us huge losses."

"Besides that, I believe that after the mysterious man's recent series of failures and his exploitation of his subordinates, there won't be many people willing to follow him loyally. In this case, it should be no problem to defend a place with such a group of half-hearted guys, but I think it will be too difficult to mobilize these people to attack actively."

"You are right, Miss Granger. If Voldemort were a normal person, he would indeed do this." Dumbledore nodded after listening to Hermione's analysis, "But he has never been the kind of person who follows the rules. In other words, since I have known Voldemort, he has always been accustomed to getting everything he wants by any means. And being trapped in London and fighting a defensive battle is definitely not what he wants."

"I think Voldemort's plan now should be to use all the power he can still control to launch a powerful surprise attack, and then completely reverse the current situation of the war, and even win the war in this battle." Professor Dumbledore concluded.

"Principal Dumbledore, do you have any evidence to prove it?" Ms. Bones stood up nervously, looking very uneasy. This is because the main force on the front line is the wizards of the Ministry of Magic. According to Professor Dumbledore, those members of the Ministry of Magic on the front line should be in a very dangerous situation.

"Amelia, there's no need to be so nervous." Dumbledore also noticed Ms. Bones's uneasiness. He stretched out his hand and made a downward gesture to signal her to sit down, then said, "According to Voldemort's character, he should not directly attack the Aurors on the front line. Because if he attacks the Aurors, he can at most lift our siege of London, but London is not important to him. I don't think Voldemort will invest his only resources in such a thing."

"What is the mysterious person doing now?" Ms. Bones frowned. "If they have not broken our siege of London, what is the purpose of the mysterious person gathering so much power?"

"I don't know about that either." Headmaster Dumbledore shook his head helplessly. "But what I am sure of now is that the wealth and resources Voldemort had obtained before were not transported back to any place we know of. At the same time, several of Voldemort's core Death Eaters, such as Bellatrix, have not appeared in public for a long time."

"You are right, Dumbledore." Mrs. Burns also added. "Our intelligence personnel in the Ministry of Magic in London have also reported this matter. They said that recently some people planted by the mysterious man in the Ministry of Magic have appeared less frequently than in the past, and even some important people have been absent from work for a long time for unknown reasons."

Listening to the conversation between Dumbledore and Ms. Bones, Ryan was now certain that Voldemort must have gathered a large number of the most loyal people and sufficient resources to plan something, but he could not guess the specific situation. After all, the plot has changed too much now, and he really couldn't judge what Voldemort was thinking at this time.

So he subconsciously looked at Headmaster Dumbledore, because he knew that Snape was now lurking beside Voldemort under the orders of Professor Dumbledore, and as Voldemort's confidant, Snape should theoretically have sent some information to Dumbledore. Except for Ryan, everyone in the room also looked at Headmaster Dumbledore. After all, the Headmaster was the greatest white wizard in Britain, and at this time, Headmaster Dumbledore naturally became everyone's hope.

However, it seems that Headmaster Dumbledore has not received any useful information yet. Looking at everyone's hopeful eyes, he said helplessly, "Voldemort has done a very good job of keeping secrets this time. It seems that anyone who is related to his plan has been controlled. Even Bella, who is a close confidant, we haven't seen them recently."

"That's bad." Ms. Bones frowned, because Voldemort was now in a state of being on the verge of a strike, and no one knew what his next goal would be. That is to say, anyone at any place could become the target of Voldemort's next attack.

"Then what should we do, Headmaster Dumbledore?" Lupin asked the common question in everyone's mind. "Do we need to bring everyone back and then prepare defenses for all our locations?"

"No, we can't do that." Ryan objected directly. "If we withdraw our troops, it would be equivalent to giving up all the previous achievements, and the mysterious man would have enough time to recover. In this way, we may have to pay a higher price to gain such an advantage again."

"What Ryan said is correct," Hermione added. "Like what Headmaster Dumbledore said just now, the You-Know-Who has always tended to gain excessive benefits through taking risks, such as making Horcruxes and performing dangerous transformations on his own body. I think his plan now is no exception. He has concentrated so many manpower and resources in order to take a big gamble in order to completely reverse the situation."

"That's right, Miss Granger." Dumbledore nodded, then glanced at everyone in the office. "Now passively waiting for Voldemort to attack will not only greatly consume our resources and strength, but will also cause the initiative that originally belonged to us to change hands again, and let the hope of victory that is so close slip away. And this may be what Voldemort wants us to do."

"So I hope you can mobilize all your forces to prepare for a general attack on London. No matter what, eradicating Voldemort's last public stronghold is our most important goal at this stage. This is also the best way to prevent him from dragging the war on."

"No problem." "We will do our best." "Don't worry, Headmaster..." Others in the office nodded in agreement with Headmaster Dumbledore's opinion, because they also knew that doing something now was better than doing nothing.

In the following time, everyone began to discuss the deployment of forces. After a brief discussion, everyone decided to stop all non-essential actions in order to defend the current key points while drawing out some forces to reinforce the London front, in order to recapture the Ministry of Magic and a series of locations in London in the shortest possible time.

Just as everyone finished discussing the future war deployment, Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Today, in addition to discussing topics related to the battle, we also need to discuss some content about post-war reconstruction."

(End of this chapter)