From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

'I'll have to do it myself—it's repetitive work, but I feel at ease doing it. I'll just squeeze some time out of my leisure time to avoid attracting attention to other people by drastically changing my schedule.'

With this plan in mind, William began to erase all his records related to his speculations.

-

'Tom's enrollment year is unknown—his age is unknown—in fact, I wouldn't have been able to confirm even this if Dumbledore hadn't told me Tom was the Dark Lord.'

Without borrowing from the library, William relied solely on his position as a professor of self-defense to research most of the publicly available information about that dark magician—after all, when it comes to dark magic, modern books simply cannot ignore that person.

'As expected, no one has investigated this yet—the Dark Lord's core faction consists of pure-bloods. I bet many pure-blood families are secretly waiting for any relevant information to surface.'

'Or perhaps, that Dark Lord also placed a curse on his own origin records, only the curse of the self-defense professor was overt, while the curse of the investigator was covert?'

'Who knows—after all, if you can create one curse, you can create a second. Given that Dark Lord's mind, creating another curse wouldn't be surprising.'

William boldly speculated that if the curse of the position was real, then the curse of the investigation must also be real.

'A direct investigation probably won't be very useful. Let's start with the Death Eaters. The system card says there were Death Eaters on campus when Professor Snape enrolled, so let's start by checking the records from that time.'

'Got it, Professor Snape's violation record—' William chuckled as he rummaged through the pile of documents and pulled out what he wanted.

'I have to thank Professor Lockhart; his autobiography mentions his enrollment date, and on the first day of school, he also told me about Professor Snape. Didn't that make things easy?'

William rubbed his hands together with a grin—at the very least, he'd get to see Professor Snape's embarrassing past, which was really something to be happy about.

'They fight over cursed positions, and if they can't get them, they discriminate—' William flipped through the records, 'Now their dark history is definitely out there, isn't it?'

'James Porter?'

'This surname seems to belong to one of the so-called Twenty-Four Purebloods?'

In the more harmonious anecdotes about pure-blood nobles in Azkaban, to make the stories seem more realistic, they would all be cloaked in the guise of pure-bloods. Thanks to this, William remembered the so-called twenty-four pure-bloods very clearly.

"Yes, and Harry Potter too. James Potter is Harry Potter's father, and many books that mention Harry will casually mention the Potter family history."

"The fight was quite a spectacle back then—it's just that now the child is in someone else's hands."

William shook his head, ignoring the feud between the two generations—the sins of the father are the sins of the son, what's there to say?

'We need to find the admission lists before and after Professor Snape enrolled, ignoring the other houses and focusing solely on Slytherin—after all, the vast majority of Death Eaters are from that house.'

Although it was somewhat discriminatory, this allowed William to quickly gather the list for those years.

“Interesting, interesting,” William said, as he dug out the names of those who had committed crimes with Professor Snape and then searched through the list of violations—finally, he found a name that appeared particularly frequently.

Horace Slughorn.

William also found a stack of orders for alcoholic beverages that the head of Slytherin had placed with the kitchen in his personal capacity.

'Mr. Filch is really something; the administrator's files have everything!'

William was familiar with these orders—the elf had mentioned them when he hosted a banquet, but he had omitted the drinks because most of the students were minors.

There's also a club application form—the Slug Club.

'A club banquet? Interesting, very interesting. All the people close to Professor Snape are in this club—could it be the precursor to the Death Eaters?'

William boldly speculated, 'It's a pity the school doesn't keep records of memberships; otherwise, it would be much easier to trace them.'

“I’ve never seen that professor before—but a little guessing tells me that Professor Snape was his star pupil.” William looked up at the sky. “Could he be just like Professor Snape, with a personality cut from the same cloth?”

William wasn't just making wild guesses; there were ready examples within the school. For instance, the old professor was retiring this year, and all the professors privately believed that Hagrid could be specially recommended by the old professor—the two actually had some similarities in their personalities.

'Let's check the list of students admitted to Horace Slughorn's advanced classes over the years. That slug club recruits students that professor likes; they shouldn't fail to get into the advanced class.'

William determined a new direction for the investigation.

"Ding! You've been cursed. You've obtained a treasure chest."

The system suddenly emitted an untimely sound—only then did William raise his head and look at the sky outside.

'It's already dark?'

They've only uncovered a tiny bit—you could even say they've only uncovered the easiest parts to investigate.

There's still too much data; we can't miss the irrelevant information.

'Things won't progress so quickly after that. Next time they're in detention, I'll have to squeeze those kids dry, otherwise I won't have an excuse to get new data.'

William silently made a decision that would cause those troublemakers great pain.

The investigation is progressing much more smoothly than expected—and it's on the right track.

'The system testifies that the Dark Lord is truly petty, cursing the teaching profession and even his life story investigation.'

Since he already had a curse on him, William wasn't worried anymore—it's common knowledge in black magic that curses of the same effect and origin would be severely weakened or not stacked at all when they were combined.

For example, Ron's slug curse means that even if he gets cursed with it again, he won't spit out twice as many slugs at once.

A similar principle applies to protective spells, such as the Ironclad Spell. Repeated casting only refreshes the effect; stacking armor doesn't exist. Otherwise, wizards would just stack armor like crazy before a duel—like cheating in a game.

Such silent curses are easy to use and are unlikely to be changed. William already carries a curse, so cursing again would have no effect.

I casually clicked on the purple box—and sure enough, it was there.

[Curse (Bone-Clinging Mange) causes paralysis; ...]

[The curse (a bone-deep wound) causes loss of heart; ...]

[Cursed (a bone-deep infection) leading to death; ...]

Three identical cards appeared in front of William. Then, the first card that William had chosen began to shake violently, its surface cracked and shattered, eventually turning into a yellow ticket.

[Meal voucher; you can use it to offset the cost of using a card once]

???

Is this even possible?

William swallowed his complaints and happily accepted the idea of ​​turning the repeated curse card into a meal voucher.

'William, stay calm. Don't be so easily frightened. You need to understand that this kind of silent curse is quite normal. Other hidden curses aren't necessarily like this kind of group-delayed curse!'

William, having accepted the meal voucher, began to advise himself not to court death.

Chapter 157 Passing the Blame Up When You Can't Carry It On

The last week of September, Wednesday, sunny.

Since he didn't have any classes today, William simply hid in his office with a pile of documents and refused to come out—he even had a ready-made excuse: the crown matter was rather troublesome, and he didn't want to go out.

"So you're just going to hide like this?"

In William's office, Adams was unceremoniously devouring William's candied fruit while asking William a question across the table.

"What else can we do?" William asked, flipping through the old book he had borrowed from the library.

"That's one way to think about it. What would happen if you showed up in the faculty lounge?"

Adams laughed gleefully—in his view, since William had received the crown from Ravenclaw, it was only right that he bear these happy troubles.

"cut!"

William gave him the middle finger. "The book is here. You're done being a tool, dear Professor Adams. You should leave my office now."

“Stay in your office,” Adams replied with the same gesture, leaving William’s office without a second thought. “I’m going to play chess with them. You just stay here and be a mushroom.”

-

"This guy," William shook his head irritably, "just because he took a few extra books from the library, he suspects I'm upset? Getting involved in this is just asking for trouble."

Although the curse turned into a meal voucher, allowing William to get one for free, there is no doubt that the Dark Lord really did curse his own background information. Anyone who investigates too thoroughly will be silently cursed and fall victim to the curse.

Compared to the Hogwarts professors whose positions were clearly defined, those who tried to investigate died much more quietly—because the effects of the curse made their deaths appear as if they were accidents.

'Thinking about it this way, that Dark Lord is truly terrifying. His silent, accidental curse—if it weren't for the professor's position being so obviously cursed, probably no one would even know of its existence.'

In other words, I've essentially gained control of the curse's power—if my theory is correct, anyone I tell about what I've discovered will also be affected by the same curse.

'But what use is it for me to know this?'

William has no enemies now, and he has no intention of using innocent passersby for experiments.

'Just remember this for now, as a backup plan. Even a piece of toilet paper has its own unique use; you never know when you might need it.'

Shaking his head to put the matter of the curse aside, William began to peruse Horace Slughorn's records.

The old dean, who had served as a potions professor at the school until his retirement, naturally left many records with Mr. Filch: associations, requests for leave for students' confinement, applications for banquets, miscellaneous procurement of supplies, selection of textbooks, and other miscellaneous forms.

There are too many!

William rubbed his temples in exasperation—although it was only the first day of his independent investigation, the prospects were quite bleak.

Horace Slughorn spent his entire life as a professor, not only teaching and nurturing students, but also having a hobby very much in line with pureblood habits—collecting outstanding individuals from all walks of life.

'Are you a collector? Year after year, tirelessly collecting records of top students—what's the point of checking those records!'

Every year's violation records show that Professor Horace Slughorn used his privileges to negotiate with administrators or professors to release offending students from confinement early. That retired professor was practically omnipresent, like air.

Even though they had never met, William's resentment towards that professor had already reached unprecedented heights—because there were just too many clues, and he simply couldn't investigate them all…

...

'Another invalid record,' William sighed and put down the documents in his hand.

'I can't take this anymore, all this research is going to drive me crazy.' William carefully noted down the locations of the information he had found, piling it all together. 'I need to calm down, I can't think too much. Hmm, I'll make a test to clear my head.'

-

"Nowhere to hide, huh? We still have class today."

On Thursday morning, Adams made sarcastic remarks at the dinner table.

'It's not that the aftereffects of Azkaban from being away from people for too long will kick in; do you think I can't survive until the Crown Incident is completely over?'

William rolled his eyes in annoyance—although he had tried many ways to convince himself, the information wouldn't thin out just because he tried to persuade himself or got angry. Although the truth was right there, the only useful method was to spend time looking at it again and again.

"Teaching is my job, and the students enjoy it, so why would I skip class?"

Although he was still pondering the information in his mind, William had no intention of revealing a single word to anyone.

"Students like it too?" Adams said with a sneer. "I heard that the fifth graders brought home quite a few test papers this time."

"What's wrong with the exam papers? Do you believe that if I promised the student who did the best job that they could talk to the principal for two hours about the use of the crown, they would even dare to give up on other professors' assignments?"

William raised an eyebrow and shamelessly retorted.