From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

After dressing himself and taking adequate precautions, he dragged over a chair and began unwrapping the gifts one by one.

"Hmm... Hagrid's... Wow, this is..."

Hagrid gave him a large bag of centaurs' mane. He had mentioned to Hagrid when he was preparing for his last experiment that he wanted to see if Hagrid could help him buy some. At the time, Hagrid had said regretfully that the centaurs wouldn't come. He never expected that Hagrid would secretly get so much...

"This is... Professor Lupin's... well, as expected, it's a book..."

"This is Percy's... a big bag of purple candies? I like this."

"This... Professor Slughorn actually gave me a gift... That's unexpected... A book on how to make candies and preserves? Hmm... This gift is rather novel. I'll pass it on to Adams and see if he can get the finished product directly..."

"I also need to consider giving Professor Slughorn a gift; I didn't prepare one for him..."

As William spoke, he nudged his owl, then packed up the extra souvenirs he had brought back from his summer trip to Greece, added some local candies and handwritten greeting cards, and entrusted it to take the items to school.

It doesn't matter if Professor Slughorn isn't at school; the elves will find a way to transfer him.

"Then comes the next one."

William happily opened the package and found a large bag of specialty desserts from Australia—from Adams.

'Unfortunately, the gift I gave him can't be taken out of the country, so it will have to stay at Hogwarts for now,' William shook his head. He assured Adams that his gift would definitely suit Adams' tastes—it was a seed of a rare herb. The wizards he had hired had been keeping a close eye on the black market of the U.S. Ministry of Magic lately, and as a result, they had discovered several items that were hard to come by on the market.

"This...is so thin..."

William weighed the letter in his hand for a moment, then realized something and hurriedly opened it—it was a Muggle telegram! And it was an urgent one, a message of urgent communication between him and his intelligence provider who was far away in another country.

To avoid restrictions under secrecy laws, certain special terms must be used, and it must never be used as a general means of communication.

Logically, this item should have been sent to Hogwarts through special channels, but the elves may have sent it along with other gifts.

"What happened that they had to notify me in this way?"

He carefully examined the letter, confirming that there was no obvious curse present, before opening it and anxiously reading it.

First, there was the time. He glanced at the time; the urgent telegram had taken less than five hours to reach him, which was incredibly fast.

'There is a five-hour time difference between the UK and the US…'

He was too lazy to calculate daylight saving time for a moment, so he just made do with what he had figured out—if that's the case, the incident happened last night? Christmas Eve?

"Riots, shopping streets were vandalized."

The urgent telegrams, paid by the word count, contained only a few words, and even the punctuation was chosen by William himself.

"The shopping street was vandalized?"

"The Muggle shopping street isn't worth it... Could it be... these people..."

William's mouth dropped open—such a person was rare even in Azkaban.

He was familiar with the shopping streets in America, comparing them to Diagon Alley in London; if those were vandalized…

"Damn it, how many lunatics will this attract!"

He knew all too well what the guys in Azkaban were like—very few were born criminals; most slid down the social ladder after making mistakes that went unpunished, leaving behind a motley crew of criminals.

Based on the situation in the American wizarding world, those wizards who follow suit and make mistakes are unlikely to get into trouble. Having tasted the benefits, they will not only try to make mistakes themselves, but will also become important supporters of the Dark Lord…

"Stay calm...this was expected..."

After a long while, William finally managed to convince himself not to be overly upset or show any other expression about it.

He had known all along, and had deduced that the Dark Lord would never relinquish his power just because he had obtained Elfarmoni. The Death Eaters' assassinations and sabotage were no different from the Purifiers', only they would be more covert and use more sophisticated methods.

That's the Dark Lord...

-

Wow, Ron really is!

Harry was in his room, lost in thought, when Ron gave him a beautifully crafted and meticulously finished woolen voodoo doll. According to Ron's notes, the professor said that such ritualistic items could occasionally bring good luck.

Harry had seen Ron weave them—he spent almost a month making fewer than five dolls.

Hopefully he didn't give it to Lavender, but maybe Lavender would like it very much.

"The professor gave me a gift too?"

Harry hurriedly tore open the box and found a small bottle of golden liquid inside. He picked it up and examined it uncertainly before finally confirming what it was.

'Felix Felicis…wow…'

Harry sighed and quickly packed the small vial of potion, which looked like enough for a day, and stored it using all the methods he could find.

"This is..."

Harry was happily unpacking Cho's package when there was a sudden knock on the door.

Sirius's urgent voice rang out, "Harry, are you awake? Come out quickly!"

'what happened?'

Harry paused, his hand reaching for his wand—Sirius was actually urging him to get up?

But it didn't look like anything had happened outside, and with Professor Lupin there, Harry didn't think anyone could cause any trouble in this situation.

When he pushed open the door and walked out with some unease, he finally understood what had happened.

Two peculiar guests have arrived, and they are currently conversing with Lupin and Professor William. Apart from Dumbledore, everyone else looks rather grim.

"Harry, your socks are beautiful."

Professor Moody's voice rang out, and Harry's plan to hear something more immediately fell apart.

"Oh, thank you."

He answered somewhat uneasily, "What happened...Professor?"

Sirius looked at Harry, his eyes not much clearer than Harry's—he didn't understand what was going on or why these people were so nervous either.

Moody's Magic Eye glanced at Harry, clearly not expecting him to ask such a question.

Lupin looked at Dumbledore, then at Sirius, and finally back at Dumbledore.

“What can we say? We have to consider the possibility of increased martial law measures in the future—Harry reminded us of that.”

William asked in a low voice, and Dumbledore considered for a moment before nodding.

"Come over here, Harry."

William gestured for Harry to sit down. "Remember the Gryffindor common room fire during the Triwizard Tournament? It's related to that—anyway, you gave us a heads-up, which led us to start searching for clues about the Dark Lord in some places."

As he spoke, he looked at Dumbledore. Seeing that the headmaster did not react, he continued to dig deeper, "All the signs that have been emerging indicate that he is trying to overthrow the rule of the American wizarding world and then steal the highest power."

Before Harry could react, Sirius was completely dumbfounded—you guys told Harry this?

However, William disregarded Sirius's concerns, saying, "You must keep what I just said and what I'm about to say absolutely secret. You are forbidden from telling your friends, including that Miss Cho Chang."

“Because without a doubt, it will cause massive chaos and directly disrupt all our plans…” William said, half warning and half scaring Harry—the rest didn’t matter; what he was afraid of now was Karkaroff suddenly running away, which would mean a third of the European wizarding world would be thrown into chaos, and that would be a huge joke.

But even that doesn't matter—Karkaroff would have run away whether Harry was there or not if he wanted to; that former Death Eater was being overly cautious.

"I promise I won't tell."

Harry, who was being trusted so much for the first time in such an important matter, quickly made his assurances.

"That's good."

William nodded. "According to the latest news from Headmaster Dumbledore, the Dark Lord's plan is about to be revealed. The Magical Parliament has already submitted an impeachment motion against the President of Parliament..."

"Cough cough..."

Dumbledore coughed softly—he hadn't expected William to be so candid, revealing so much information without him even realizing it.

“That’s roughly it. What we’re considering right now is,” William quickly corrected himself, “that if the other side is clearly displaying the Dark Lord’s banner, you’ll need to make some sacrifices.”

"What sacrifice?"

Sirius Black immediately started protecting his own without a second thought, but William just smiled at him.

"Simply put, we want you to reveal that you ruined the Dark Lord's resurrection plan, forcing him to change the resurrection location and ultimately complete his resurrection ritual in the American wizarding world."

This is a way to help Fudge—you can't say that Minister Fudge's brilliance prevented the Dark Lord from being resurrected here, can you? It's good that Harry stepped forward; it's good for the Ministry of Magic and for stabilizing the mood in the British wizarding community. He had to step forward.

First came the Christmas Eve riots, then the impeachment on Christmas Day. These two moves even frightened William—it basically foreshadowed that the Dark Lord would take control of the entire American wizarding world within this year.

Even Dumbledore had to admit that the one who called himself Voldemort was far more capable of subversion than anyone else. He was good at recruiting madmen into his ranks and then using all sorts of methods to increase the number of his so-called "own people".

-

"Impeach?"

Fudge stared wide-eyed in his office. Although it was Christmas and the department should have been on holiday, he had rushed back to work after hearing the news of the riots that morning.

But before he could even settle in, even more explosive news broke.

"They've gone mad! How dare they impeach their own Speaker of Congress in this situation?"

Fudge didn't understand, but he could empathize—if he were impeached, he might even cling to Dumbledore's leg to maintain his power.

"How could this be, how could this be..."

His voice was so low that his assistant didn't hear him; he was currently giving Fudge some good news—"Your sudden announcement of increased defenses had initially lowered your approval ratings considerably, but now the entire Diagon Alley is praising your measures!"

Not just Diagon Alley, but almost every magical village and region was praising Fudge at this moment—except for Azkaban.

Although some of Fudge's measures have caused prices to rise a little, compared to his neighbors, he is still very fortunate.

Last year's coverage of the Triwizard Tournament made many people aware of the school's existence. Now, with riots breaking out there and all sorts of conspiracy theories emerging, Fudge's measures seem acceptable in comparison.

More hitters are fine—if Muggles surround the Leaky Cauldron, that would be a real problem.

-

"That idiot striker is practically living next door to Dementors!"

Inside Azkaban, the prisoners were shouting insults with great enthusiasm.

They had a tough time during this period—because the Ministry of Magic had recruited a lot more strikers.

Logically speaking, recruiting more strikers is none of Azkaban's business. This place is practically an exile zone. With so many Dementors around, who would want strikers to gather here?

The prisoners inside don't like Dementors, but how can the thugs outside stand them?

No way—unfortunately, Fudge, that idiot, didn't understand, and the prisoners in Azkaban, after much discussion, still came to the exact same conclusion.

What can be done? The Minister of Magic doesn't even bother to come to Azkaban anymore. Before, when the Ministry of Magic people came, we'd get extra food, but now—we can't even use up Galleons!