Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world.

Chapter 218 Dumbledore: Vaughn, are you insane?

Vaughn watched them leave, then walked over to Dumbledore and mocked him, "Talking about desolate Bhutan in front of a bunch of wolf children who were previously isolated from the world, I really don't know what you were thinking."

Dumbledore was also somewhat annoyed: "I thought they would be interested in the history of magic. Don't you think Bhutan is very mysterious? The birthplace of magic, the most sacred place in the hearts of wizards all over the world—"

"But it's still a barren hilltop, without a city, without a magnificent magical shopping street. I dare say, if you talked more about Diagon Alley, about Joko's joke shop, those wolf kids would listen to you day and night."

"————Okay, you have a point."

Old Deng sighed, then smiled and looked at Vaughn: "I thought you'd be holed up in your suite for the next few days studying your lab notes and spells. So, is there something you need from me?"

Vaughn stared into his deep blue eyes, paused for a moment, and asked, "Did Isabella already tell you?"

"Honey, what do you mean?" Old Deng blinked.

"Stop pretending. I know Isabella. She's a very calculating person. She's been trying to curry favor with you lately, so she must have already mentioned wanting to apply for the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship. How are you going to respond to her?"

They've been exposed.

Dumbledore shrugged and asked with a smile, "And you? You came to me wanting me to reject her?"

He was actually quite certain about what he was asking.

For decades, the entire wizarding world has known that the Defense Against the Dark Arts class has been cursed by Voldemort.

No wizard knows how he did it.

Everyone, including Dumbledore, knew that ever since Voldemort wanted to become a professor but was rejected by Headmaster Armando Dippet, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had been involved in an accident every year.

Accidents manifest themselves in different ways and have varying degrees of impact, but the consequences of such accidents will inevitably prevent the professors from teaching and force them to leave their positions.

This result has been consistent for decades.

In Dumbledore's mind, Vaughn probably came to him because he didn't want his friend to step into a pit of fire.

However, to his surprise, Vaughn did not stop him.

"You can agree to Isabella's request." Gripping the deck railing, gazing at the sea and the hazy, indistinct outline of the land at the horizon, Vaughn said calmly, "But I have one condition."

This strange attitude made Dumbledore hesitate: "Hmm—why don't you tell me first?"

Glancing at him, Vaughn ignored his wariness and said, "Over the decades, have you developed a basic understanding of the curses you've cast on Tom? For example, what are the patterns in their effects? How are the curses cast on the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors carried out?"

Dumbledore pondered for a moment, then asked curiously, "Why are you suddenly interested in it?"

"I'm interested in anything that's unknown."

"Okay—actually, my understanding of that curse is similar to what's circulating in the magic world right now. For example, its pattern of action? That curse has no pattern at all."

Dumbledore shook his head helplessly: "No matter how much I've observed over the years, I haven't been able to figure out under what circumstances it will be activated. What I can be sure of is that as long as a wizard enters Hogwarts as a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, he or she will become the target of the curse."

"But at times like this, the curse usually doesn't work. It seems to be waiting for something, waiting for a trigger to set off a series of events that would cause an accident to happen to the professor."

Listening to his description, Vaughn pondered for a moment: "From what you've said, it sounds a bit like fate—"

"Yes," Dumbledore said, "I also suspect that the way that so-called curse came about, by manipulating the forces of fate—like Quirinus last semester, that poor fellow. I've always regretted offering him a job. If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have gone out to train, wouldn't have gone to Albania, wouldn't have—"

We ran into Tom!

Old Deng looked frustrated: "I underestimated the power of the curse. Before Quirinas, it had never caused such serious consequences."

In the end, it was clear that Quirinus was indeed a wizard with an unstable will, easily coerced and seduced by Voldemort.

But if we trace it back to its source, it really is Dumbledore's fault.

However, Vaughn wasn't interested in Old Dumbledore's guilt, nor did he intend to investigate who was right and who was wrong. He was only interested in the curse itself: "Have you tried any other methods? For example, changing its name, or, based on changing the course name, spreading the content into several new courses, or even more radically, canceling the Defense Against the Dark Arts course altogether?"

"—Darling, if we cancel the course, what's the point of breaking the curse?"

Vaughn shrugged. "I was just offering a suggestion."

"Over the years, I've tried everything except canceling the course." Dumbledore removed his glasses, his expression helpless. "It seems Tom's curse isn't just targeting his position, but the very concept of 'Defense Against the Dark Arts.' Any professor with an academic position who teaches a course related to Defense Against the Dark Arts will be affected by the curse."

"I've tried changing the course name to 'Defense,' 'White Magic,' even 'Black Magic' or 'Cockroach Pile,' but it didn't work at all."

"I also tried hiring two professors for the Defense Arts class and then splitting the course into four parts. They each took charge of one part, and Minerva and I took charge of the remaining two parts—but it still didn't work. After four months in office, one of the professors made a mistake while brewing a potion and was burned off all his hair. His whole body was also stained like purple grapes by the failed potion, and he could no longer show his face."

"Another one got so drunk on Halloween that he ran naked from Muggle Downing Street to the Ministry of Magic. Unfortunately, there were thousands of Muggles and wizards in that area that day, taking advantage of this rare day of costumes to hold a holiday parade—"

Well----

Vaughn couldn't imagine what a socially disastrous scene that would be.

If it were him, he probably would never step out of his house again in his entire life.

Presumably, the cursed professor was the same—

Shaking his head to shake off the horrible images that were subconsciously swirling in his mind, Vaughn turned to Dumbledore: "So, you've only been experimenting with curriculum divisions? Haven't you tried anything else?"

Dumbledore paused, taken aback. "What do you mean?"

Vaughn rolled his eyes at him, then turned back to enjoy the sea breeze: "Didn't you notice? The curse has always targeted Defense Against the Dark Arts class, the professor—did you notice my syllables? These are two concepts, or even four if you break them down further: one representing the coursework and the position, and the other representing the person who teaches the course and holds that position."

"Both you and I can be certain that a curse must have a clear target. This is an objective law of magic. No matter whether the curse is ultimately achieved through fate or something else, this law cannot be changed. Currently, the methods you have tried are still not clear enough and do not conform to the general understanding of curses in the magical world."

"I suggest you test it again when you get back. Separate the 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' coursework from the job descriptions, and also separate the people who teach the course from those who hold the positions. See which part the curse is targeting."

As he spoke, Vaughn smiled slightly: "Divide it into four parts: one that nominally manages the coursework, one that nominally manages the positions, one that actually teaches the courses, and one that actually owns the positions."

"Furthermore, I think you've overlooked one point, Albus."

Because of Vaughn's suggestion, Dumbledore, whose brow furrowed and relaxed intermittently, instinctively asked, "What have I overlooked?"

"student!"

"?" Dumbledore was taken aback.

Vaughn chuckled. "Over the years, we've only heard of professors being cursed, but never of students taking Defense Against the Dark Arts. Why not try giving the students the actual teaching authority?"

'

That's exactly what Vaughn wanted!

Dumbledore instantly became alert!

Back then, Tom used the guise of studying to organize a secret society at Hogwarts and train the first Death Eaters.

Having learned their lesson, both Armando Dippet back then and he have been very wary of this ever since.

Vaughn noticed Dumbledore's suddenly serious expression, but said nothing. He simply lowered his head slightly and looked down at the children playing happily behind Tonks and Isabella on the next deck.

After a long silence, he suddenly asked, "Albus, did you know that when one werewolf mates with another werewolf, the child born is not only born a werewolf, but also possesses magical powers?"

"I know," Dumbledore nodded. "Nicole and I have studied this phenomenon, but we couldn't find a clue until you proposed the concept of 'werewolf virus' and the methods of 'DNA, RNA, and transcriptional and reverse transcription reproduction.' Only then did I have some ideas—perhaps the mating between werewolves allows the werewolf virus they carry to directly embed itself into the genetic sequence of their offspring."

In other words, those wolf children can be seen as a large-scale reservoir of werewolf virus—every hair and every cell of theirs is embedded with genetic fragments of the werewolf virus.

Once these latent gene fragments are activated, then—

However, it is precisely the embedding of the werewolf virus gene that has given these wolf children, who might not have originally possessed the ability to cast spells, magical powers.

It's just much weaker than that of a normal young wizard who has awakened their magic.

"When I get back, I plan to propose starting a werewolf class at Hogwarts!"

"Vaughn said suddenly."

Dumbledore's hand, which was stroking his beard, trembled, nearly tearing it off. He stared at Vaughn in astonishment: "Are you insane? You know this is impossible!"

Indeed, the advent of the wolfsbane potion and the establishment of the WAC improved the werewolves' long-standing bad reputation and situation.

But it's just an improvement.

Leaving aside the large number of conservative opponents still existing in England, do the wizards who support the WAC truly identify with werewolves from the bottom of their hearts?

not necessarily!

Standing on Vaughn and WAC's side is nothing more than their political opportunism and the export of their opinions. They don't care if they shout a few words in the newspapers or hurl insults at each other at rallies.

Anyway, they don't deal with werewolves.

But if werewolves were actually allowed into their lives, even going to school with their children—those guys would absolutely explode!

Vaughn understood this, of course, but he didn't care: "I can guide public opinion now, and I can suppress it just as well. It's nothing more than shifting the blame and confusing the public."

In his previous life, a writer in the country said that the Chinese people all like compromise.

Actually, that writer was wrong. People of all kinds in the world prefer compromise. In any country, when you make an excessive demand that harms the interests of everyone, it will inevitably intensify their opposition.

So, if you take a step back at this point and make a less unreasonable request to protect the interests of some people, the camp that was originally firmly opposed to you will immediately split up.

Some people are afraid that if they reject you, you will go crazy, while others, after experiencing the shock, will calm down and think about whether your new proposal is a solution to the old one.

In short, compromise is merely a formality; frankly, it's still about appeasing and suppressing different interest groups.

Vaughn was all too familiar with this tactic.

Dumbledore, who had previously cooperated with Vaughn during the creation of WAC and witnessed his manipulative methods, was somewhat speechless.

After a moment, his expression became complicated: "You want me to hire Isabella, imply that you should be the instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, and even start a werewolf class—Vaughn, what exactly are you trying to do?"

Vaughn thought for a moment, then stopped with the riddle and said, "Would you believe me if I said I did it for an experiment?"

"What kind of experiment?"

"There's a lot: Tom's curse, the form of the virus in the wolf children's bodies, the true purpose of the werewolf virus, and my own research on the experiment of a new spell development system—oh, right, there's also alchemy and potions. I plan to focus on these two areas in the new semester, and all of these require a lot of experimentation—a lot of customer feedback."

Dumbledore's face fell.

He wasn't deaf; he clearly heard what Vaughn was about to say "experiment"!

Given his personality, he should have refused without hesitation, but—

Dumbledore felt a bitter taste in his mouth. Vaughn was no longer someone he could control at will, and frankly speaking, Vaughn's research abilities were indeed very strong.

Dumbledore didn't want to directly reject at least the studies Vaughn had mentioned earlier.

Therefore, after much hesitation, Dumbledore could only give a vague answer: "Let's talk about it when we get back to England!"

Vaughn could understand Dumbledore's hesitation.

Since the Voldemort era, he had been wary of secret societies forming within the school, and his suggestion to plant Isabella in the school, coupled with the proposal to open a werewolf class, clearly indicated such a tendency.

Therefore, Vaughn did not press him too much.

Since Old Deng insists on going back to England to discuss this further, let's wait until we get back to talk in detail.

The rest of the time was uneventful; the cruise ship sped along, passing through South Asia and crossing the Arabian Sea.

During the journey, Vaughn stayed in his suite and continued his research.

Until the cruise ship entered the Red Sea, it began to slow down and, like a real Muggle ship, queued to enter the Suez Canal.

As they entered the Suez Canal, the Middle Eastern sun was blazing, but on the other side of the Golan Heights, all the wizards could sense a gloomy, manic magical fluctuation, seemingly tinged with the scent of blood, weighing heavily on that land of disaster like dark clouds.

Almost everyone came out of the cabin.

Everyone went up to the deck and looked out at the land that made people shudder.

Dumbledore shook his head slightly and sighed, "Muggles—they seem to always repeat what has already happened in history, bringing iron and fire, blood and disaster to the earth for some faith—"

"It's not just for faith."

Vaughn stared intently at the distant sky on the other side of the highlands. He knew that wizards like Dumbledore were almost unable to distinguish between the grudges and feuds between Muggle races, and explained, "There is invasion and slaughter happening in that land, and this situation has been going on for decades."

"Which side is the aggressor?" Dumbledore asked curiously.

His eyes shone with a magical blue light as he observed the people on that land through magic.

Vaughn didn't know how to explain, so after thinking for a moment, he said, "Judas was an aggressor."

"Ah—" Dumbledore exclaimed.

But Vaughn knew immediately that this guy had no idea who Judas was.

He rolled his eyes at him, then looked into the distance again, his brow furrowed: "So many intense negative emotions, fear, curses, hatred—they linger with death, they're practically a dark wizard's favorite."

"yes----"

Dumbledore was deeply worried.

He didn't even need to see it with his own eyes to know that there must be a lot of black wizards from the Balkans gathered in that land—the two sides weren't far apart to begin with.

After observing silently for a while, Dumbledore said, "My dear, we'll be staying in Cairo for the night. Would you like to come for a walk with me?"

"You want to see the local wizard?"

"Yes, no matter what, as long as I am in office, I will still be the president of the International Federation. When something like this happens that could threaten the magical world, I need to fulfill my responsibilities."

Vaughn mocked him: "Oh—so you do know your responsibilities. I thought you'd given up on yourself after saying you were being sidelined by the deputy ministers."

"You really hurt me, darling. In fact, I don't have much power. In fact, almost all the past presidents have had little power. It's like that organization we visited in America—oh, it's called the FBI. Their department head is just a mascot. He doesn't even know what Area 51 is all about. He's not as good as his deputy."

Anyway, see you tonight.

Dumbledore left.

Vaughn stood there for a while, then returned to his room.

When he left America, Vaughn encouraged Dumbledore to take him to several secret departments in the United States.

Under the guise of trying to find traces of cooperation between the 12 purebloods and the American Muggle government, Vaughn was actually very curious about the legendary Area 51 and aliens.

The result disappointed him somewhat.

Area 51 does exist, but the so-called aliens are all nonsense. Based on the limited video and physical evidence preserved by the Muggle government, the so-called aliens may be Pukchi (a distant relative of fairies in North America, resembling little green men), and the UFOs may be Muggle vehicles or buildings modified by wizards who violated the ban.

For example, RVs, bunkers, and modified warships.

Analysis of the timeline also reveals that the period when extraterrestrials and UFOs were prevalent in North America coincided with the outbreak of the avant-garde movement and the 1960s and 70s when the control of the Secret Service Act was weakest.

With the fall of the Vanguard Movement, the Magical Congress regained power, and the numerous aliens disappeared.

Going to Area 51 to search for aliens is certainly not just about satisfying curiosity.

Vaughn genuinely wants to find life outside of Earth.

Especially after he had conducted preliminary research on the physiological structure of 10 types of fire dragons.

Through his study of the organs of fire-breathing dragons, Vaughn concluded that all fire-breathing dragons were closely related, or more precisely, they came from the same ancestor.

Because no matter how their habits and living environment change, and no matter how their habits change with the living environment, and how many branches they develop, there will always be some organs that remain in a highly similar primitive state.

This characteristic is completely absent among other creatures in Earth's natural world that do not possess magic.

At the same time, wizards, who possess the ability to cast spells, also do not have this characteristic; in fact, wizards do not even have magical organs.

Therefore, Vaughn suspects that dragons, magical creatures, and even magic itself may be something that "invaded" from outside Earth.

Moreover, this invasion must have occurred after the Earth's biosphere had matured and before the birth of human civilization.

This is supported by considerable reasoning.

First of all, even the oldest history of magic does not record when magic actually appeared. Bhutan is rumored to be the place of origin, but that is just a rumor. There is no concrete evidence to prove that magic developed in Bhutan, nor is there any written record. Magic just appeared suddenly one day.

Vaughn is inclined to believe that the earliest magic possessed by wizards may have been the result of ancient humans' research on magical creatures.

As for the methods of research, that's...

According to the notes borrowed from previous readers, magical creatures and humans are indeed vastly different in their physiological structure, but magic eliminates reproductive barriers between them.

Of course, this is only the initial possibility of the birth of magic. The subsequent development of magic should not have been so outrageous.

Otherwise, the physiological structure of wizards should be different from that of ordinary humans.

The very existence of humans and many other ordinary creatures on Earth provides further evidence that the magical invasion must have occurred after the Earth's biosphere had matured.

At least, the ancestors of most common species on Earth today already existed at that time.

Otherwise, if the magical invasion had occurred before the biosphere matured, Earth, this vast gene pool, would certainly have been "contaminated" by magical creatures.

Vaughn was somewhat disappointed, but not discouraged, for not finding any evidence to support his hypothesis in Area 51.

Exploring the origins of magical creatures is also a direction Vaughn will strive for in the new semester.

As night fell, the cruise ship docked in Cairo Port.

Upon hearing the announcement from the cabin loudspeaker, Vaughn paused his plans for the new semester, left his room, and went to the deck.

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