Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world.

Chapter 231 New School Year and Second Year Plans

"So what are your thoughts?"

Old Barty stared at Vaughn. "You should understand, Amelia isn't one to tolerate injustice, and neither is Dumbledore. They abhor killing, especially wizards using magic to kill—"

Before he could finish speaking, he saw Vaughn's lips curl into a slight smile: "That's how you see them?"

"Um?"

"Old Barty—you've never really understood these two men."

Vaughn shook his head slightly: "That's right. In a broad sense, they are kind, fair, and compassionate towards the weak. But beyond these appearances, one is the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a figure at the top of the power structure, and the other is the greatest white wizard, the Chief Wizard of Wizengamor, who has led the English wizarding world for decades."

Do you think these two people, when considering a matter, are limited by simple notions of good and evil?

of course not.

Barty knew very well that he might not be able to figure out exactly what Dumbledore was thinking all these decades ago.

But at least Amelia is a complex political animal.

It's complicated because Amelia Burns' actions are always guided by political considerations. In a sense, her public persona is one of fairness and impartiality.

It was because of this character setting that Amelia Burns, who had only graduated a few years ago and did not have much prestige among the Aurors, was able to quickly rise to power and take over the Department of Magical Law Enforcement after Barty Crouch was impeached and dismissed because of his son.

By now, her reputation in the Ministry of Magic and among the general public has even surpassed that of Cornelius Fudge.

If a major incident were to occur now, requiring Fudge to resign, then she would be the only candidate to become the next Minister of Magic.

In other words, if someone has maintained a persona for a long time and handles matters according to that persona for 10 years, then it can be said that the persona has become part of that person's personality.

This is also what makes Amelia complex.

"No wonder—that's why during our conversation earlier, she suddenly mentioned François by name while subtly asking you whether he was trustworthy."

Old Barty sighed.

The former was expressing her doubts to Vaughn, knowing that there was something fishy about the werewolf's murder, and that she was convinced that Vaughn was the one who orchestrated it.

The latter was more subtle, implying a deliberate inquiry to Vaughn about whether François needed to be dealt with.

"So, she supported what you did?"

Vaughn took a sip of tea and said calmly, "You can think of it this way—the more trouble Fudge gets, the better it is for her. A peaceful and quiet magical world doesn't suit her position, even if it's her persona, even if she doesn't like it in her heart—"

Old Batistuta was speechless, but not too surprised.

He used to be this kind of person, until his son became a Death Eater, until his wife was terminally ill and held his hand, making her last request.

After a moment of hesitation, Barty asked again, "Then, what about Dumbledore?"

If he could understand Amelia's ambiguous attitude and silence during their previous impromptu meeting, then he couldn't quite understand Dumbledore's attitude.

Dumbledore is not a political creature.

At the same time, with his wealth of wisdom, experience, and knowledge, Barty the Elder did not believe that Dumbledore could not see that the deaths of those two werewolves, including the current werewolf protests, were all related to Vaughn.

Strangely, Dumbledore did not show any sign of rejection, as if he were truly senile.

Vaughn didn't answer him, but simply said, "Don't worry about him. As long as things are kept under control, Dumbledore won't interfere."

After saying that, Vaughn put down his teacup and snapped his fingers.

In Amelia's office fireplace, the blue fairy fire went out, and the Floo Powder box on the shelf opened automatically, pouring the powder into the dark red fire.

Green flames ignited.

Vaughn got up and walked over: "The werewolves will contact you later. I'll have to trouble you for a while and do a good job of guiding the parade."

"And you?" Old Barty quickly asked.

Vaughn, who had already reached the green campfire, turned back and winked: "Of course I have more important things to do. Didn't I say? School starts soon, and I need to pack my bags and check my summer homework."

,

Old Barty was stunned.

Isn't that just an excuse to fool Fudge?

But before he could ask any further questions, Vaughn had already stepped into the fire and disappeared with a crackling sound.

"—Unbelievable! Two whole months of summer vacation, and you're only telling me on the last day that you've only finished the beginning of your assignments?"

In the afternoon, Molly's roar echoed throughout the Burrow.

Ron buried his head in the pile of parchment on his desk like an ostrich, desperately copying his homework to escape his mother's yelling.

Of course, Harry is pretty much the same.

He didn't even dare to look up, afraid of seeing the disappointment in Molly's eyes.

They were so unlucky. They should have finished their homework long ago, but because the two of them were playing around, and because he spent most of his energy communicating with that notebook, their progress was seriously behind schedule.

Just like Murphy's Law, the worst thing happened.

School starts tomorrow, and when Molly came to their room to help them pack their luggage today, she unsurprisingly discovered that the two of them were doing their homework.

When bad luck strikes, nothing goes right!

The air in the small bedroom was stifling. In reality, only Ron was being scolded the whole time. In any case, Molly would never speak ill of Harry, who was a guest.

But Harry still felt like his face was on fire.

Arthur and Molly treated him very well, taking him from the wicked Dursleys and cooking him delicious meals every day, letting him feel the warmth of a normal family.

He clearly disappointed them.

After burying her head in her work for an unknown amount of time, Molly seemed to have exhausted herself with her tirade. She walked heavily downstairs, and in the room, Harry secretly breathed a sigh of relief, lifting his face, which was covered in sweat and shame.

"We can't be so playful anymore, Ron."

He said to his best friend.

Ron, his head spinning from the scolding, grumbled, "There's no 'later.' I'm going to die today, right at dinner!"

"Mom would bring up my mistakes at the dinner table—you don't have to worry, she won't embarrass the guests, it's just me—Percy would put on a superior air and list my faults, and then boast about how he did it with a sense of superiority."

"Fred and George might record Mom yelling and play it back to me in the middle of the night, making me feel like I'm having a nightmare."

Ginny would look at me with disdain, Merlin—

—"

He clutched his head, looking utterly desperate: "And Vaughn, that guy—"

Speaking of Vaughn, they then heard the crackling of magical flames burning in the fireplace downstairs.

That's the sound of using FlooNet.

Throughout the Weasley family, apart from Vaughn and except for important occasions such as when the whole family is out together, almost no one uses FlooNet.

There's no other reason than that Filo powder is relatively expensive. Even though it hasn't increased in price for over a hundred years, it was still 2 scoops a spoonful in 2010 (according to official side stories).

However, its usage is too large. It's hard to say how many spoonfuls it would take each time. At least in the wizarding world, there are quite a few wizards every year who try to make their own Floo Powder in order to save on transportation costs, only to blow themselves into St. Mungo's.

This is "common knowledge" about the wizarding world that Harry only recently learned.

Sure enough, after a short while, the faint sounds of Vaughn and Molly talking could be heard from below: "—Don't worry, Mom, it's just a minor conflict. WAC, Wizengamor, the Ministry of Magic, and the International Confederation of Wizards will all be involved in the investigation to uncover the truth."

"That's good. I was really scared when I saw the news today—I read in the newspaper that those two werewolves died—died from the Killing Curse? Merlin, it must have been those dark wizards!"

Harry, who had been listening intently, seemed momentarily dazed upon hearing this.

Having experienced the baptism of the world in the painting at the end of last semester, he naturally knew what the Killing Curse was.

Even now, when he occasionally has nightmares, he can still see a pale green light, though the scene is different. Sometimes he hears a scream that comes and goes, and sometimes, like in a painting, he sees Vaughn appear in front of him.

That figure, which wasn't actually very tall, but appeared quite imposing to him at the time, saved him from the deadly green light!

I wonder if he was thinking about what he had experienced in the past.

Harry felt a throbbing pain in the scar on his forehead again.

To be precise, the scar on his forehead has been uncomfortable for the past few days. It's always swollen and has a vague pain, like the aching back he used to feel from the hard wooden bed against the closet in the damp and cold weather.

Harry rubbed his forehead, not thinking much of it, but instead focusing on "eavesdropping" to see if Mrs. Weasley would tell Vaughn that he and Ron hadn't done their homework.

Unfortunately!

The intermittent conversation coming from downstairs was brief; Molly started complaining to Vaughn after only a few words.

She still didn't mention Harry, only complaining that Ron was too playful. But Harry knew that someone as intelligent as Vaughn must know that he and Ron were no different.

He hung his head in dejection, while Ron, who was also eavesdropping beside him, looked utterly defeated.

Although Ron always seemed to be hostile towards Vaughn, Harry, who had the most contact with him, knew that he actually cared a lot about what Vaughn thought of him.

Last year, Ron received a wand as a gift from Vaughn, and now, almost a year later, the wand is still as good as new, thanks to his care.

Even Ron's beloved Charlie Artillery dolls don't have that magic wand.

The sounds downstairs subsided; perhaps Vaughn and Molly had left the stairwell and gone to the living room or kitchen. In any case, the two of them didn't hear any more conversation.

A short while later, the sound of someone coming upstairs could be heard from downstairs.

It's most likely Vaughn!

Harry instinctively buried his head in the pile of parchment, and Ron did the same next to him.

To their relief, the footsteps did not turn into the bedroom located on the fifth platform of the humble dwelling.

Instead, they continued up to the attic.

As the attic door creaked open, Harry looked up slightly, watching a few wisps of dust drift down from above with each footstep.

Immediately afterwards, a piercing scream startled him.

"What is that?"

He looked at Ron in a panic.

Ron remained sullen, his expression unchanged, as if it were commonplace: "I told you, it was a ghoul, and he drove it away."

Oh right, there's also a noisy tenant in the attic who always makes a racket in the middle of the night.

"Looks like he won't cause us any trouble today." Like Harry, he looked up at Ron overhead and said with relief.

Why?

"The attic is his potion lab, where a lot of potion-related things are stored. School starts tomorrow, so he's probably going there to organize equipment and experimental records, which will likely take a long time."

"oh----"

Harry felt relieved, but also vaguely a little lost.

He was afraid Vaughn would scold him, berate him, and see disappointment in those golden-brown eyes.

However, he felt empty when Vaughn didn't come.

It felt as if I had been forgotten —

This is unbelievable!

Ron's guess was correct. Vaughn did not leave the attic until dinner that evening. He was doing something inside. The only sounds that could be heard were the occasional sounds of objects moving and faint magical fluctuations.

More often than not, the attic is so quiet it seems like no one is there.

Only the flickering candlelight indicated that Vaughn was working inside.

Busy with his summer homework, Harry gradually forgot his feelings of melancholy and even ate a few bites of food for dinner.

It wasn't until late at night, when waves of exhaustion washed over him and he was about to go to sleep that he noticed the light in the attic was still on.

"Is there really that much stuff to organize?"

He stared at the closed door, hesitated for a moment, but still did not disturb Vaughn.

In the attic, Vaughn had much more to prepare than he had imagined.

In the attic, several braziers burning with blue celestial flames floated in mid-air, radiating light.

The light illuminated everything in minute detail.

I had been away from home for a long time and hadn't cleaned it since I came back. The attic was covered in dust. Luckily, I had cleaned it once before I left last year.

The shelves of herbs that used to be piled high on the surrounding area have long been emptied out. He brought them to Hogwarts last year and they have been used up completely.

All that remained were some rarely used instruments and some past experimental records.

Because there were too many of them, and Vaughn hadn't considered that they would be used soon, he locked them all in a box and sealed them with magic.

Since returning this afternoon, Vaughn has essentially been digging them out again and organizing them one by one.

This involves his plans for the new school year!

-

In second grade, Vaughn was no longer prepared to follow the usual schedule.

In fact, he gradually reduced his class attendance last semester. After all, having already completed the compulsory courses up to the fifth grade through self-study, there was really no need for him to waste time in class.

Of course, electives are not covered for now, because elective courses will not be available until the third year. There will be no exams or grades for them, so there is no need to rush to study on your own.

Time is precious.

Vaughn isn't a child with the mental age of 12, so how could he possibly be willing to waste his precious time in a slow-paced class?

Not to mention, he now has a grasp of many research areas that far surpass the level of many professors.

"————In European tradition, thyme is given to warriors about to go to war. According to my theory that under the influence of unknown mysteries, it can be endowed with medicinal properties, it should have the property of inspiring positive emotions such as courage and bravery. Let me check the records————Hmm, in my experiment, I did extract some unverified properties from thyme."

"Sage is usually used in the magical world to relieve pain, but in its original name, it comes from the Latin word Salvia, meaning health and salvation—oh, I can't believe I didn't do any extraction experiments on it before. I need to add it to my plans for the new semester."

The magical seals on the boxes were broken, and as the boxes opened, experimental records and plans flew out and floated automatically in front of Vaughn for him to review and read.

When he said he needed to pack his luggage, it wasn't just to appease or provoke Fudge; he genuinely had that need.

In the new semester, Vaughn, who decided to break away from the regular coursework, set himself many research topics.

The number one item is potions.

The reason it ranks so high is primarily due to the practical needs of power development, such as the wolfsbane drug!

The original plan was to complete the development of Wolfsbane Agent 2.0 in North America, but due to the sudden end of the North American trip, there were still a few key steps left to be completed.

Of course, 2.0 is not the focus; the focus is on 3.0.

In Vaughn's vision, Wolf Poison Agent 3.0 will curb the contagiousness of the werewolf virus and control its activity. In other words, it also means that werewolves may no longer need a full moon to transform on their own if necessary.

However, there are many difficulties in realizing this idea.

Through his previous research, Vaughn already knew that the reason why werewolf transformations occur during a full moon was because the existence of the "full moon" celestial phenomenon itself was a huge magical ritual.

The werewolf virus draws enough power from the full moon to transform a human into another life form from the inside out in a short period of time.

To achieve the goal of autonomous transformation, Vaughn must modify the werewolf virus using the wolf poison, allowing it to "absorb" magic and accomplish miracles without relying on the full moon.

This is undoubtedly a huge project.

Vaughn even doubted whether there were any medicinal herbs in the wizarding world capable of performing this miracle, so he had to thoroughly review his past experiments. Before entering Hogwarts, Vaughn had experimented with many medicinal herbs in order to perfect his magic extraction methods and theories on the properties of medicinal herbs.

He hadn't paid much attention to many of them, as they were not commonly used or were obscure. Now, he was revisiting them in the hope of discovering hidden gems.

Meanwhile, the wolfsbane medicine, the magic extraction method, and the theory of medicinal properties are also related to the system's tasks.

While organizing his experimental records, Vaughn opened the system panel and glanced at the two side quests.

[Side Quest 5: It's time to expand our influence. Use diplomacy to help Hogwarts establish friendly relations with the Central Academy of Magic in China.]

[Rewards: 50 Magic Scales, 10-Year Alchemist Experience Pack]

[Side Quest 8: It's time to get more involved in the changing international situation. Please help revive the "Three Kingdoms Tournament," the highest-level competition in Europe, and help it expand beyond its narrow European regional focus into a global magic high school competition. Successfully invite the eight most famous magic high schools to join the competition.]

[Progress: 0/8]

[Reward: 100 Magic Scales, One of Eight Chain Gold Items Gift Pack]

The two branches can actually be considered as one.

Although [Side Mission ⑤] is only for China.

However, [Side Quest 6] requires the revival of the "Triple Crown Tournament" and its expansion into a global magic high school competition.

Therefore, from an efficiency standpoint, it is quite necessary to lay the groundwork for side quest ⑥ while completing the side quest.

Furthermore, Vaughn also determined the method for completing side quest ③.

In the form of academic exchange on potions!

Throughout the world, if we're talking about magic alone, different countries have their own tendencies. For example, the popularity of wand spellcasting in Europe and America is a result of the influence of England after it developed wand-making technology and the modern spell system.

Outside of Europe, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Americas, magic varies considerably.

Africa has its own unique hand gestures for casting spells, and Asia, influenced by China, has its own unique systems of alchemy and talismans.

If it's done under the guise of magical exchange, it's probably difficult to achieve the "diplomacy" and "friendship" conditions for side quest 5.

But potions don't have this obstacle.

No matter where in the world, potions are essentially the same; they are all made by brewing medicinal herbs to achieve certain magical effects.

The only difference is the method.

Therefore, unlike magic, which is heavily influenced by regional culture and traditional customs, potions encourage exchange. Moreover, as a newly minted potions master who developed Wolfsbane, Vaughn's magic extraction methods and theories on the properties of medicinal herbs are already hot topics in the potions community worldwide.

If he were to release the news and invite major magic high schools to Hogwarts for exchanges, it's unlikely that any school would be able to refuse.

Anyone who refuses the opportunity to learn about new systems and new knowledge is a fool!

Of course, Vaughn had another intention—

The properties of medicinal materials are influenced by legends. Europe, where England is located, has its own legends, and so do Africa and Asia.

What characteristics would the same medicinal herbs have in their region?

If Vaughn were to collect, extract, experiment with, and record these things himself, it would definitely take a lot of time.

However, if we ask the talents from various magic academies who come to exchange ideas to "help out" under the guise of exchange, we can save a lot of effort!

Not to mention, the entire exchange will greatly enhance Vaughn's influence worldwide.

It greatly benefits the increase in reputation points!

Plans are in place!

"Hmm—when we get to the school tomorrow, we need to urge Dumbledore to spread the word to all the universities as soon as possible. Side quest number six requires eight universities; that's the bare minimum. Hopefully, old Dumbledore will be of some use—"

"At the same time, this exchange program could also force the establishment of the Werewolf Class—the country that initiated the Werewolf Liberation Movement is facing numerous obstacles to the establishment of the Werewolf Class. Isn't this detrimental to its international image? Doesn't it seem inconsistent with its pioneering role in freedom and democracy?"

Hopefully, Fudge can withstand the pressure and not break down!

Vaughn's mood brightened.

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