From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

He single-handedly and successfully raided the castle keeper, using the previous incident to completely divert the keeper's attention from the school's secret passage to the students—at least until the rumors of Filch wetting his pants in mid-air disappeared, the keeper would definitely not have the energy to do anything else.

"Well, you despicable Professor Lockhart, you've successfully attracted the administrator's attention, albeit not in a very clever way, but the effect is just as good."

The words that appeared on the diary were slow and neat: "Now you should be able to enjoy that groundbreaking discovery all to yourself. Find it, unlock it, and then polish the story, just like you've always done, making yourself a 'legend' in this new story." "Of course, I am a living legend," Lockhart said without picking up his pen, gazing at his photograph first. Although the diary constantly tried to mock him, it could indeed offer some excellent advice at crucial moments.

'It's still a little short.'

Looking at the words in his diary, he realized for the first time that he wasn't so bad after all.

After thinking for a moment, he wrote in his diary with his beautiful quill pen, "Foolish, don't always try to give me advice on things you're not good at—do you even know what a legendary story is?"

He wrote with lightning speed, "Discovering a secret left behind by Slytherin, and that's it?"

"Do you think my readers will like this kind of story? Do you think the Daily Prophet will like this kind of story?"

"No one understands legendary stories better than me!"

"No one was hurt, there was no danger or mystery, so what if it was something left behind by Slytherin? The gimmick of the story isn't even as appealing as a village wizard exorcising a vampire!"

Lockhart wrote rapidly and with great flair. He felt that this moment was the best he had experienced in the past year, and countless inspirations were pouring into his mind, gradually forming the rather grand story he had imagined.

"Slytherins hate Muggles, right? Then add them to that list!"

“You could even expel all the Muggle-borns from the castle—no, no, expelling them isn’t interesting, kill them, yes, kill them!”

"There's nothing more appealing than a death threat against a Muggle-born wizard!"

"My readers will absolutely love this story!"

“Foolish Professor Lockhart, you overestimate yourself. You can’t do it,” the diary continued to complain, but its rebuttal was utterly insignificant at this moment, which made Lockhart even happier—this was the first time he had ever suppressed the book so completely since he got it.

'I will be a legend, this time! Merlin, First Class, here I come!'

Chapter 185 William Gritting His Teeth

With the arrival of winter, the end of the semester is here—of course, only the end of the first semester.

Hogwarts has three terms in a school year, separated by three long holidays: Christmas, Easter, and summer vacation, allowing busy students and professors to rest from their busy teaching work—at least that's how it's officially described.

"So, William, you're planning to stay at the university for Christmas in your first year?"

On the last night of the semester, Adams asked this question at the dinner table.

“I think so,” William said, picking at the lamb chop with his fork. “I still have some questions I haven’t quite figured out.”

To be precise, William not only had some things he hadn't thought through, but he also had some ideas that he didn't want others to see and wanted to put into practice.

Among the mountain of information provided by Filch, he finally found something interesting—Professor Slughorn had suddenly reduced the number of times he requested to host banquets in a certain year, and the professor's consumption of alcohol was also greatly reduced in the bills for the same year.

It's worth noting that the university provides subsidies when professors host banquets, so it's safe to assume that something must have happened that year that forced a reduction in the number of banquets.

Even more interestingly, when William focused on researching the records from those years, he also discovered a rather intriguing name in the relevant records—Tom Riddle.

Although the name Tom is common in the wizarding world, William checked the exam records from that year and found that this guy named Tom Riddle passed the OWLs exam with top marks.

Yes, all excellent—considering the difficulty of this matter and the scattered information revealed by Dumbledore, William is pretty much certain who the name belongs to.

That Dark Lord, the most revered figure among the madmen deepest in Azkaban, a mysterious figure in the magical world, had a hidden real name that was just that ordinary.

"William?"

Before William could even sort out the convoluted thoughts in his mind, Adams, sitting opposite him, had already asked a question.

"It's nothing. I was just thinking about Filch. Who did it? How could they have hidden it so well?"

William casually changed the subject, but he couldn't let anyone get involved in this matter. It was still unknown how many curses Tom had cast after his disguises were exposed, and with Adams's fighting strength, he would die if he tried.

“Yes, they’ve really hidden it well,” Adams nodded in agreement. “Professor McGonagall hasn’t been in a good mood these past few days because the perpetrator hasn’t been caught, not to mention Filch, the person involved.”

"Hopefully he'll feel better during this holiday. Many people won't be spending Christmas on campus, so he won't need to keep such a close eye on things."

"I hope so."

-

William and the others' blessing did not take effect; shortly after the Hogwarts Express carried the students away from the campus, the caretaker fell ill.

As William prepared to search for more information, Filch lay in his hammock with a low-grade fever, while his cat, Mrs. Lorice, lay obediently on the mat beside him, watching him until William knocked on the door, at which point she let out a shrill scream.

As a cat, it did a great job—if it weren't for its meowing, William would most likely have thought Filch was missing and left, and no one would have noticed the caretaker's illness until dinner or even longer when no one had noticed Filch's absence.

"Madame Pomfrey, what's wrong with him?"

William's research on disease treatment was not in-depth—due to time constraints, his research focused on first aid for injuries caused by magic and some common antidotes to poisoning. More comprehensive treatments would have to be added later.

“A cold plus overwork,” Madam Pomfrey shook her head helplessly. “Potions can cure it, but he needs to rest properly. I dare say he hasn’t slept more than three hours a day lately.”

There were no three hours—based on the students' feedback during this period, Filch was patrolling almost day and night trying to find the murderer, and he would only lie down in his office for a while when he was extremely tired.

"Let him get some rest. There aren't many students during the holidays anyway."

William glanced at the administrator on the hospital bed and shook his head—very few students remained on campus, mostly to avoid the increasingly irritable administrator.

After thanking Mrs. Pomfrey, William sighed and left the hospital.

Feeling sorry for his own kind, and grieving for the death of a rabbit, William was not in a good mood as he looked at Filch lying in the hospital bed.

Filch was tricked by the students and hung on the castle wall because he was not strong enough. This led him to frantically search for the murderer and eventually exhaust himself. And what about himself?

Was it not because of insufficient strength or being entangled by the curse of that Dark Lord that they had no choice but to search for anything potentially useful from those documents?

'Why be so pessimistic?' William casually stuffed a piece of chocolate into his hand. 'The most basic cover has been uncovered. The next step is to deduce Tom Riddle's social circle based on Professor Slughorn's records from those years.'

That retired professor was the former head of Slytherin and a guy who liked to collect geniuses—geniuses aren't exactly commonplace, and William didn't believe that the Dark Lord Slughorn had his eye on wouldn't be interested in him.

The Death Eaters list is hard to come by, but Hogwarts has a very complete banquet log. William bets that the overlap is at least 80%.

'But what I'm about to do is a bit unlike a professor.'

William sighed and continued to plan—he would most likely have to try to infiltrate the Slytherin common room during this holiday. If he didn't succeed in infiltrating during this time, he would have to wait until the Easter holiday to find such a good opportunity again, which would be too far away.

'The investigation hasn't reached there yet, but based on the current evidence, I need to understand the basic structure of Slytherin's common room so I don't end up bluffing.'

William was conflicted.

As a professor, invading the student lounge is hardly a classy act, not to mention there's another place he's likely to go besides the lounge.

"Professor Snape's office."

He couldn't help but cover his face.

These are all tough nuts to crack, but we have no choice but to go—if we don't seize this opportunity to infiltrate during the holidays, and the investigation is interrupted, we might not be able to catch up until Easter!

'I'll probably have to use a card. The common room is fine, but Professor Snape's office... with my abilities alone, it's almost impossible to leave no trace...'

He calculated the cards in his hand, starting to take into account the disposable cards.

'If we still can't find it this time, I'll help Professor Binns create a few sets of exam papers! The kind that's for the whole university!'

William gritted his teeth, "I don't believe it! The self-defense professor is giving himself a test and you guys don't react? The whole school has to take a test as soon as school starts and we still can't generate any negative feedback!"

Chapter 186 William Inspects the Accounts

Hogwarts has a history spanning a thousand years, and the four houses have been separate since the school's founding, with the same structure remaining unchanged to this day.

Although no one would admit it openly, William knew one thing perfectly well, even without thinking: all four houses definitely had their own private accounts.

Putting everything else aside, given the irreconcilable conflict between Slytherin and Gryffindor, wouldn't their graduates at least make some demands regarding the intended use of their donations?

That's obviously impossible, not to mention donations specifically for the college. William personally witnessed the Malfoy family's sponsorship of the Slytherin Quidditch team this year, which was definitely not a donation made through official channels.

Without a doubt, this ledger was in Professor Snape's possession, and considering the amount of irregularities in the ledger over the years, Professor Snape could not possibly carry all the ledgers with him at all times; at most, he would be extremely cautious if he carried the ones from the last ten years.

But William wasn't looking into the Slytherin slush fund over the years; he wanted to investigate the Slytherin House's private accounts from when Professor Slughorn was still in school.

"Let alone pure-blood families, even an emperor of a dynasty has limited funds available at any given time. Money spent here will inevitably have less there. If money is spent supporting the Dark Lord, donations to Slytherin will decrease; there's no denying that."

"But no matter which professor is the dean, they definitely won't hand over these private accounts. If it weren't for the possibility that other things might be smuggled into those accounts, I wouldn't have been so foolish as to touch this stuff."

William has been at the school for so long that he is quite familiar with the school's rules regarding confinement—Filch has a record of all student violations over the years, in theory.

The reason it's described as "theoretically" is because school rules are never that rigid. Some people are punished for making mistakes, but the punishment is never reported or recorded. At most, the dean makes a note of it, and that's it.

This isn't William alluding to Professor Snape, but rather that some people make mistakes and end up in the hands of their own headmaster. After the headmaster has dealt with them by deducting points and putting them in solitary confinement, they don't want to report it to the school administration—this situation is quite common, but it happens more often in Slytherin.

Now that the name Tom Riddle has been discovered, and William is planning to investigate the members of the Slug Club organized by Professor Slughorn in those years, he naturally cannot let go of the records from those years.

'If not at Hogwarts, then at Gringotts; after all, it's not illegal accounts—hopefully not the latter, hacking into Gringotts is no easy task.'

William breathed a sigh of relief and began to list contingency plans for possible failure.

'Azkaban is definitely not a good place. I've only been there a short time, and the criminal schemes are already so sophisticated…'

He stuffed a piece of dried fruit into his mouth while muttering to himself.

……

Around noon, William stopped his work, memorized the plan he had made, then completely destroyed it before heading to the restaurant.

He didn't have a chance to see the list of students staying on campus, so he could only guess who stayed on campus during the holiday based on his observations in the cafeteria—thanks to Tofelch, the number of students staying on campus wouldn't be too many.

'The plan to infiltrate the lounge is not yet perfect. I don't have any stock of compound decoctions, and I can't reliably get them from my former colleagues...'

"Hello, Professor."

Students passing by greeted him, startling William—he had been preoccupied with his illegal activities and had completely lost his previous vigilance.

"Hello to you too."

William responded with a smile, without asking any further questions.

Aside from special circumstances, not many people stay on campus for Christmas. He didn't want to be the bad guy and ask something unpleasant during his precious holiday.

However, the child got excited and said, "Professor, there are fewer people during the Christmas holidays. Please sit at one of our college's tables."

William couldn't help but search his memory for the student in front of him again—yes, a Hufflepuff student, a sixth-grader, I think his name was Robert.

Anyway, the grade level shouldn't be a problem; a fifth-grader wouldn't be this happy to see him.

Given that he still needed to perfect his illegal plan, William began to think of an excuse to reject the student.

"Today is a rare holiday, and our group secretly used the kitchen to prepare a lot of delicious food!"

Ah, this...