Days at Hogwarts

Chapter 153 The Soul-Capturing Stone: A Startling Dream

Late at night, in a seaside hotel in Sunderland.

Wendell still felt a bit unreal. Just a few hours ago he was weighing the weight of the capelin he had caught, and now he was ashore and checking into a luxury hotel as compensation.

With a full refund and compensation for accommodation and return travel expenses, Bates felt it was a great deal after having enjoyed so many days of fun for free. He laughed and said, "Let's go to sleep early; we have to go back to London tomorrow morning."

It was indeed quite late, and everyone was a bit tired, especially Loren and Hermione, who were severely exhausted. After saying goodnight to each other, they returned to their respective rooms to wash up and rest.

The bright lights in the hotel room were turned off, making the moonlight outside appear even softer.

"Azkaban, Dementors..." Loren lay on the bed, toying with the black pebble in his hand, recalling the events of the day.

Magic was waning, and wizards were becoming less capable with each generation. The magical world seemed to be in turmoil, but it was ultimately like a stagnant pool. Only occasionally did figures like Dumbledore and Voldemort leap out of the water and create ripples.

Regardless of how the situation changes, the wizarding world will continue to focus on the second showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort for the next few years.

Was the Azkaban uprising part of the Death Eaters' plan, and how are they plotting to bring Voldemort back?

Loren didn't know the answer; his mind was a jumble of thoughts, with all sorts of ideas constantly surfacing.

Nagini was restored to human form, and if Voldemort were to create another Horcrux using something else, he would lose his initial advantage.

Harry can be put aside for now. Ravenclaw's crown has been taken by Dumbledore, and the diary will appear in the next school year. Only three Horcruxes remain.

Gaunt's ring, Slytherin's locket, Hufflepuff's golden cup.

"I need to speed up the Soul Weapon quest..." Loren muttered, his jumbled thoughts gradually blurring.

As night deepened, he fell into a deep sleep.

……

Dim light shone down from the water's surface, and Loren's consciousness continued to sink.

"Where am I?" He tried to open his eyes, hoping to see the scene before him clearly, but his blurry vision made it impossible to see anything.

It felt like being underwater, with a bone-chilling cold all around. The sounds of water and bubbles filled his ears, but he couldn't hear anything clearly. He could only feel himself sinking deeper and deeper.

The perception of time becomes blurred under the influence of dreams; one doesn't know how much time has passed—it could be a moment, or it could be a long time.

"Little Loren, do you know what the best thing to eat is?" a gentle voice asked.

Loren blinked, and a middle-aged man with alopecia areata appeared before him, dressed in priest's robes, with a warm smile on his face.

"I don't know, Mr. Bambur. But it's definitely not potatoes," a child's innocent voice rang out.

Mr. Bambur!?

Mr. Bambur from the children's welfare home!

And this voice is the voice he had when he was a child.

So, these are my memories? A thought arose in Loren's mind.

But he had absolutely no recollection of that scene.

Loren tried to move and check his surroundings, but no matter what commands he gave, his body didn't respond; he was confined to this perspective.

"It's the flesh of innocent children!" The middle-aged man's gentle voice suddenly turned sinister, his face filled with a ferocious smile.

Little Loren was startled, his breath almost stopping. After a moment, his childish voice finally rang out: "Are you going to kill me here?"

His voice was calm and composed, unlike that of a child.

"Hahaha!" Bambur seemed very satisfied with his performance, his voice filled with a morbid obsession. "Yes, that's it. I knew from the moment you were assigned to this orphanage that you were a child favored by God."

"You are smarter than any other child. I will send your soul to thank the Lord for His blessings, ha ha ha ha ha!" Bambur's facial muscles twitched, his expression full of madness. "And your body will become my medicine!"

Little Loren tried to call for help, but when he opened his mouth, his lips only moved slightly and he couldn't make a sound.

Seemingly sensing his confusion, Bumble explained, "It's a psychiatric medication, prescribed by the doctor outside the church. I stopped taking it a few years ago; he didn't know. You little angels are my true elixir."

Loren's mind was in turmoil as he recalled this memory through his senses. So, Bumble was mentally ill, killed children and ate their corpses, and had previously laced the cookies he gave him with drugs.

He almost died in the orphanage!

Bumble began rummaging through his suitcase, pulling out a notebook and scribbling in it: "Let me see, Maxwell, Isabella... you're the seventh one, seven is a magic number..."

As Bambur rambled on, he spread a large nylon sheet on the floor, almost covering the entire room: "This will prevent your bloodstains from leaving a trace. You don't know, the police these days are getting more and more difficult to deal with."

He was meticulous, carefully smoothing out every wrinkle on the nylon fabric, trying to make it fit the ground perfectly flat.

It took him a long time to lay out the nylon carpet. He stood up and straightened his back. "Don't worry, Joyce won't be sad. I'll tell her that a kind, well-off family adopted you."

"It won't hurt, this medicine is very effective." Bambur held a small knife close to his face, as if comforting a child, with a gentle and kind smile on his face.

As death loomed, little Loren's eyes suddenly shone with a bright, crystalline blue light, and Bambur was struck on the head as if by a giant hammer, losing consciousness.

The blue light before him grew brighter and brighter, but his vision became increasingly blurry. Finally, he closed his eyes, and the world plunged into darkness.

Before he fell asleep, he heard someone break down the door, and then a pair of warm hands shielded him. It was Joyce's voice: "Loren, hang in there!"

"Ms. Maggie! Ms. Maggie..." Joyce's anxious voice gradually faded into the distance.

The sound grew farther and farther away, more and more indistinct, and finally returned to the sound of something sinking to the bottom of the water, a chaotic mess from which nothing could be heard.

Loren regained a little consciousness, but did not wake up. The feeling of weightlessness came over him, and he began to sink again.

But the gurgling sound in the water didn't disappear; instead, it grew louder and louder. Amidst this jarring noise, a new scene unfolded.

He couldn't see anything clearly, only a dim blue expanse in front of him, as if a blue cloth was obscuring his vision.

Then a crimson stain spread, turning the blue fabric the color of blood. He heard screams coming from a great distance—horrible, terrified, pleading screams.

There seems to be chaos outside; something terrible has happened.

But before Loren could fully process it, his vision was enveloped in a blue light, and the noise grew louder and closer, gradually drilling into his brain as if trying to shatter his skull.

"hiss!"

"Huff—huff—huff." Loren suddenly sat up in bed, taking deep breaths.

Like breaking through the surface of water, the noisy sounds became clearer, quieter, and then gradually disappeared, and everything returned to tranquility.

He swallowed hard, cleared his throat, and the lump in his throat was finally released with a breath.

Outside the window, the moonlight was bright. Everything he had just seen seemed like a dream, but Loren was certain it wasn't. The nylon carpet, Bumble's sinister grin, and the sky-blue fabric gradually being soaked with blood—it was all too clear.

He was certain that it was his memory, the memory of the time traveler Loren.

Before tonight, he had always thought that Bambur's departure from the welfare home was a normal transfer, but now it seemed that he was arrested after the incident. As for the welfare home concealing this matter, that was perfectly normal.

If the fact that a staff member at a welfare institution is cannibalistic were to be reported, the government, the church, and the welfare institution would all be implicated. The best option is to keep this matter hidden.

His sudden knocking out of Bamba was likely a result of magical awakening and a surge of magical power. In a life-or-death crisis, he spontaneously used his magic to knock out Bamba.

The thought of that person made Loren feel nauseous, which is why he lacked that memory and continued to miss Bumble afterward.

Was it because Bambur drugged him?

Or perhaps it was that blue light that appeared before my eyes during a magical outburst?

Then there's the scene with the sky-blue fabric soaked in blood, which completely overturned Loren's long-held belief. He thought he had transmigrated when the original owner of this body was in a car accident, but now it seems that wasn't the case.

There was a gap in his memory, a discovery that made Loren uneasy—not uneasy about the perceived danger, but rather about an urgent need to complete himself.

Human memory is the cornerstone of self-awareness, and Loren desperately wants to recover that missing memory.

"Looks like I need to find some time to go back to the orphanage," Loren thought to himself, his fingers unconsciously fidgeting with the pebbles.

Something doesn't feel right... Loren held the pebble up to his eyes and looked it over from all sides.

"It looks a little big," Loren muttered to himself.

To test his theory, Loren placed a pebble beside his pillow, then: "[Patriot Protection]"

The Dementor was originally burned into a pebble under the protection of the Guardian Light. If the pebble grows larger, it can be shrunk back down by being heated with the Guardian Light.

He controlled his magic, preventing the summoning of the giant whale, and enveloped the pebble in a silvery-white light.

Under this light, Loren felt much more at peace.

The black stones had smooth surfaces but could not reflect light. Under the light of the guardian deity, they slowly shrank by one size, returning to their original size when they first boarded the ship.

Loren's face was filled with surprise and uncertainty, so his nightmare, or rather his memory, tonight was triggered by this pebble.

Even when burned down to a small piece, it retains the instincts of a Dementor, awakening despair and pain in people and robbing them of their joy.

And after absorbing his emotions, the pebble grew to some extent. Could we then conclude that, after receiving sufficient emotional nourishment, a new Dementor will be born?

"What an evil creature!" Loren exclaimed.

Although he desperately wanted to retrieve that memory, Loren didn't want to use the Soul Stone; he didn't want to feed it with his emotions. For safety's sake, Loren dared not sleep with it anymore, and instead used Transfiguration to create a wooden box and placed it aside.

……

Crabbe Estate.

Porcelain vases and historic wooden tables were all smashed to pieces and scattered haphazardly on the floor.

Old Crabbe kicked Vincent Crabbe into a corner.

Although he was taller and stronger than his peers, Vincent was only 12 years old and could not withstand the force. His body slammed into the wall with a dull thud.

"You, you, how dare you!" Old Crabbe's face was filled with violence and rage. "You actually dared to contact the werewolves and send them to storm Azkaban!"

Old Crabbe paced back and forth in the room, his hard-soled leather shoes making a loud thud on the wooden floor, exuding a dangerous aura, as if he were about to strike at any moment. "You dare to use my name!"

He couldn't help but strode up to Vincent, grabbing him by the collar with both hands, his face close to Vincent's, staring intently into his eyes. "What do you want to do? Do you want to kill my whole family?"

Vincent looked at the bloodshot veins in his father's eyes and remained silent.

Old Crabbe grabbed Vincent and slammed him to the ground: "If your cousin hadn't killed that beast during the interrogation, you could be in Azkaban now, visiting your dear father!"

"7000 Galleons. I spent a full 7000 Galleons to get your cousin and his partner to agree to keep it a secret. I haven't spent this much money since the Death Eater Trials."

He turned around and roared, "What exactly do you want?!"

Vincent remained silent, head bowed, enduring old Crabbe's beatings and scoldings.

Whatever mistakes Vincent made, he was still old Crabbe's son; they couldn't just kill him. Old Crabbe vented his anger for a while, then stormed off, his footsteps pounding the floor.

Vincent, who had been keeping his head down, looked up and watched his father's figure gradually disappear, his gaze distant. "How could I tell you?"

Last time I told you that the Dark Lord was going to return, and in less than a week, the entire pure-blood family knew about it, and then the Ministry of Magic found out too.

Although Vincent wasn't particularly bright, he understood that his father wasn't a reliable Death Eater. And those older, pure-blooded Death Eaters, or rather, those outside of Azkaban, weren't loyal to the Dark Lord.

"I can only rely on myself..." The boy's voice was soft, but his violence was exactly the same as his father's.

……

The Ministry of Magic, an ordinary office.

Dolores Umbridge, wearing a pink dress, tidied up the files on her desk and finished her overtime work for the day.

She was different from the lower-ranking laborers under the Ministry of Magic; she didn't have to work overtime, but this was voluntary on her part.

She stood up, straightened a small black velvet bow in her short curly hair, patted her broad, sagging face, and said in a sweet voice, "If I submit the Anti-Werewolf Bill now, the minister will definitely recognize my talent."

Her cheerful tone shifted abruptly, her voice still high-pitched and sweet, like a young girl's, but filled with resentment: "Those beasts, those dog-like creatures, they should all be put to death!"

(End of this chapter)