From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's spy has returned, bringing more firsthand information. Dumbledore visited him today to offer his condolences, but the outcome is unlikely to be optimistic.

'We don't even know how many Horcruxes we have... A bunch of pathetic Death Eaters, they can't even compare to Bellatrix, let alone Malfoy, who's now widely recognized as the number two traitor...'

As William surveyed the students below, he pondered—he and Dumbledore had searched the homes of the Death Eaters again, but to no avail. The only notable finding was that the shop where the Dark Lord once worked was now struggling under pressure and was preparing to hand over its old ledgers.

Dumbledore said that Slughorn was the Dark Lord's professor back then, and he likely knows the secret of the Dark Lord's Horcruxes, since the other professor has passed away... So when will Dumbledore be able to defeat him?

'The old professor has no information either—damn it, how could the Dark Lord have made contact with the Purifiers?'

William sighed—he'd better focus on improving his strength; he'd better practice his transformed combat skills in the Forbidden Forest later…

At this point, the next reinforcement should be the exiled government of the Magic Congress... Could reinforcements possibly fall from the sky?

Chapter 551 Everyone is working hard

When Rolf Scamander yawned and got out of bed, the sun was already high in the sky.

He has just finished a long and dangerous journey and is still jet-lagged.

Logically, he should have slept until noon, then lazily went out to find something to eat, and then reported back to the newspaper office—he was employed by the Daily Prophet and had his own column; this adventure was also under a similar pretext.

But this morning's appointment disrupted his plans—he hadn't expected that the respectable gentleman would be so eager to hear his firsthand account.

'Just as Grandfather said…Dumbledore is such an impatient man…'

He got dressed, glanced around the house, and, after confirming there wasn't time for a thorough cleaning, decisively used his wand to tidy up the living room. Then he tightly closed the doors to the other rooms, pretending he couldn't see anything.

After completing everything, he decisively placed several orders through the owl, awaiting the legendary principal's visit.

But the other party returned faster than an owl—the doorbell rang shortly after the order was placed.

He rushed to the door and opened it with a look of surprise.

An elderly man with white hair and beard stood at the door with a smile on his face. "Good morning, Ralph—I'm glad I'm not facing a wand or a fake body or anything like that."

Ralph was completely confused by what he heard, but he still happily welcomed Dumbledore in and sat him on the sofa.

"It's a bit messy; I haven't had a chance to tidy it up yet..."

When he saw the dust in the corner of the sofa that hadn't been cleaned, he shook his head, waved his wand, and explained apologetically.

“You’ve had a tough time; you must have suffered a lot these past few days…” Dumbledore shook his head. “If we hadn’t been so desperate to find someone suitable, we wouldn’t have entrusted this task to you.”

"Actually, it's alright... I quite enjoyed this adventure. It was a good opportunity to see what my grandmother's hometown is like now, and it was pretty good," he laughed cheerfully. "It's just that my skin got a bit tanned, which is a bit of a nuisance..."

However, after a brief complaint, he quickly became serious.

"This time I visited thirteen states where wizarding activities are frequent, investigated more than forty attacks, and interviewed hundreds of victims, roughly defining the area of ​​activity."

"Based on the maximum distance that most wizards can Apparate, I made a simple deduction about their possible hiding places, and Massachusetts, where Ifamoni is located, is indeed the most suspicious one."

"Furthermore, I investigated the local wildlife conservation system, which is already on the verge of collapse. I discovered that in addition to some magical creatures being ruthlessly hunted by poachers, some animals carrying seriously prohibited materials are being hunted on a large scale..."

“And another thing,” he said, rummaging through his box, “is that some of the intelligent beings you specifically instructed me to keep an eye on have moved from their previous habitats toward Muggle society. This is a map I drew after roughly finding their migration trails.”

He laid out the things he had investigated one by one on the table, then shook his head. “No matter how you look at it, it looks like war is about to break out over there—he must have really come back, ready to start a war at any time.”

“Unfortunately, they were too cautious,” Rove shook his head. “I didn’t find any conclusive evidence, otherwise, perhaps we could have tried to avoid war.”

Dumbledore smiled and shook his head at this—Voldemort was almost impossible to kill before all the Horcruxes were found. With only a few pieces left in the puzzle, he had to be extremely careful to keep the secret and prevent Voldemort from discovering it.

He's no longer young, so this time he has to make sure it's a sure hit.

If Voldemort were to be half-killed again, just like he was a decade or so ago, and then resurrected after another decade or so, then Voldemort would truly have no power left to deal with him.

“Very helpful, Rove.”

Dumbledore changed the subject, nodded at him, and then took out the gift he had brought him—another batch of Blasttail eggs that Hagrid had cultivated.

"These are the eggs of the amazing creature, the Exploding Tail Snail, which was used in last year's Triwizard Tournament. There are very few left after the last competition, so you might like them."

Ralph was a magical biologist like his grandfather, but not as famous as his grandfather—he wouldn’t have been qualified to breed hybrid magical creatures if it weren’t for Dumbledore’s gift.

There was no way around it; he'd only been out of school for a little over four years, and Newt, who'd been expelled back then, was now strictly forbidding him from learning how to illegally raise those creatures...

"Of course, I saw a lot about it in the booklet for the Triwizard Tournament."

Rolf responded cheerfully, his face full of joy.

This joy made Dumbledore stop the conversation—although he only intended to reorganize the Order of the Phoenix, perhaps Ralph wasn't so suitable for the job…

"Alright, thank you, Rolf, for making this special trip for an old man like me—you should take a few days off."

-

“Mr. Barty has sent a letter? Very good, put it over there, I will review it.”

In the principal's office in Iphamoni, Bertha listened to the Purifiers' report with remarkable calmness, her face expressionless.

This made the Purifiers retreat hesitantly, fearing that the First Death Eater might cause trouble.

After meeting Barty, Bella, and a host of other Death Eaters, they were genuinely afraid of this undisputed number one figure among the Death Eaters.

After he stepped back and closed the door, Bertha breathed a sigh of relief and carefully picked up her wand to begin opening the letters.

These letters were specially encrypted, covered with subtle magic. She opened the drawer and carefully began to unpack them, following the steps written on them.

There was no way around it; that guy was a ruthless man who had broken out of Azkaban. Bertha's third greatest fear now was that little Barty—and above him was Bella, who always seemed ready to kill.

Everything is fine and going very smoothly.

I need more money, and more potions.

The letter contained only two short sentences, with no beginning or end, and it even looked fierce, but Bertha was relieved.

There's nothing wrong with wanting things—it's not like we're in the days of running a shop anymore. Back then, even nat would have to be split open... But now, under the Dark Lord's management, she can find whatever she needs in the warehouse.

This is much more comfortable than when she first opened the shop—she has plenty of money and supplies, and she doesn't have to worry about whether she has enough.

'Ah…it's time to approve the next batch of supplies!'

She shook her head, wrote down exactly what Barty wanted, and then began working on the next requirements list.

Chapter 552 Susan in Action

"I've tried so many times, but I still can't cast spells in Animagus form... not even the most basic ones..."

William glanced at the fallen trees in front of him and sighed.

After completing the Animagus transformation, he could no longer get help from books. Apart from some common-sense things that he could ask Professor McGonagall, he had to figure everything out on his own.

There's no way around it; the probability of encountering an Animagus with the exact same transformation is just too low. Aside from general techniques, there's really no way to find out anything else.

Could he possibly ask Professor McGonagall if she likes dried fish? If so, does she like it more after transforming, or before transforming?

Also, would you feel the urge to catch a mouse if you encountered one...?

It takes a lot of courage just to think about such a question, let alone ask it aloud.

So, when it comes to sweets, it really is...

William patted another tree, and with a thud, a huge thing fell from mid-air, rolled a few times, and then stopped—it was a beehive.

Subconsciously, William fiddled with it, and some listless bees emerged.

Winter is not over yet, and the bees are all huddled together to hibernate, so they don't have much energy to bite.

William shook his head, his bear paw instinctively breaking open the beehive before he realized what he had done—he had angered the bees and, to make matters worse, destroyed their nest in winter…

The hibernating bees immediately set out, trying to cause trouble for a bear—and as you can imagine, this was a very ineffective attack.

William casually fanned away the persistent bees and tried to stretch his hand—or rather, his bear paw.

Resisting the urge to lick his hands, he deactivated his transformation, glanced at the contents, hesitated for a moment, then took out some honey, poured in some sugar he had been using to make sweets, and diluted it with some water using magic…

He then quickly resealed the beehive with his wand, captured the bees with magic and put them back, hung the beehive back up, and then used the Disillusionment Charm and the Confusion Charm to eliminate the guys' hostility before making a quick getaway.

Once he found another secluded spot, he took out the honey from the container that had been deformed by the leaves, changed the container, and pondered his latest attempt.

First, Animagus transformations are magical—he himself doesn't fully understand this yet, but the experiences he gleaned from Sirius are enough to prove it.

Even wizards couldn't withstand the poison of a werewolf's transformation, but Sirius and his two companions were able to fight Lupin in his transformed state after their Animagus transformation, and were completely unaffected by the werewolf's poison.

'Oh, right, speaking of which—if we could harness the Animagus's magic, it might be able to suppress the werewolf's transformation poison!'

William suddenly realized this, quickly pulled a piece of paper from his bag, and scribbled down the idea.

The modified wolfsbane potion was not very effective, but neither he nor Mr. Damocles gave up on it. They still maintain monthly communication to discuss the wolfsbane potion.

“Very good,” William said, pleased with an interesting idea. “Then, let’s get back to the Animagus.”

"It is currently known that the Animagus are definitely protected by magic, possessing strong resistance to curses and spells, and can even suppress werewolf curses. So the question is—how to mobilize this magical power to use it?"

The invincible Andros can use his guardian spirit to fight, so the Animagus form might be able to be used against enemies. He doesn't even need to be able to mobilize magic that is even more terrifying than the wizard form; he only needs to be able to mobilize a small amount of magic to cast some simple spells.

"There must be something I haven't considered..."

William looked at the sky and leaned against a tree. Theoretically speaking, the wandless spellcasting technique he had mastered should be part of the key to unlocking that lock. Whether it was hand gestures or straightforward wandless spellcasting, it all required using other methods to mobilize the body's magic.

'Am I not fully understanding it yet? Or is there some problem with the Transfiguration technique itself?'

'How about I try to improve my Transfiguration skills again? I'm still researching human transformation techniques. Once I've fully mastered them, maybe this problem won't be so—who?'

William instantly drew his wand, and he heard the sound of unmelted snow being trampled.

However, he was a student—a Hufflepuff—who had come looking for ingredients.

To be precise, it wasn't just one person, it was five—a whole dorm room—who came to wreak havoc on the forbidden forest...

So, three minutes later…

"Hufflepuff deduct 15 points..."

"Go back and submit a self-criticism! You dare to run around everywhere!"

"How about it, seventh graders! Is this why you trespassed into the forbidden winter forest?"

...

"And you're talking about us? The professor himself is carrying a bag of honey!"

"It's just..."

The Hufflepuffs left the Forbidden Forest grumbling and then slunk back to their lounge.