From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

'If I hadn't heard Mrs. Weasley's outburst letter, I really wouldn't have believed that this good-natured lady could get so angry…'

“What’s there to be curious about, William? Most half-bloods go to school normally, as do Muggle-borns. Pure-bloods will hire tutors or do it themselves until their Hogwarts acceptance letter arrives—” Adams spread his hands. “It’s that simple, though there are occasional exceptions.”

"exception?"

"A dud, but nobody wants to talk about it much; it's an unfortunate existence."

Adams shook his head, clearly unwilling to discuss the word further.

William didn't press the matter. It was the first time he'd heard the term, and he'd find out more about it in a book when he got back—but that would have to wait a long time. His priority right now was to work through the thick stack of records left by Professor Slughorn and couldn't afford to be distracted by anything else.

'Make sure to write this down in your notebook when you get back, don't forget.'

'Tom is such a common name. There are tons of Toms in the Muggle world, and in the wizarding world too—even Old Tom is called Tom—it's really hard to know what to say about this name.'

"William, what are you thinking about?"

Adams's shout snapped William out of his reverie, and before he knew it, he was already at Adams's office door.

“Sorry, Adams, I was thinking about something else. That crown is putting a lot of pressure on me, and my thoughts keep drifting back to it—” William calmly replied with a pre-prepared lie.

"Oh dear, stop with the veiled probing. I know I was careless," Adams blushed slightly, waving his hand dismissively. "I'll be more careful on tomorrow's test. You've only been at Hogwarts for a short time!"

William looked at him with a smile, without saying a word.

"boom!"

Adams slunk back to his office, saying, "See you tomorrow! I have important documents to deal with!!!"

The trip to the hospital wasn't a waste of time; bringing along Professor Adams, who was unrelated to the hospital, was precisely to show him just how powerful that crown could be when it came to power—undoubtedly, the secondary objective was achieved after the primary objective of visiting the injured student was accomplished.

'It's really strange—why did they erase the memories of the Sorting Ceremony from that tiara? Surely Ginny Weasley isn't some kind of chosen one like Liu Xiu, finding the Ravenclaw tiara on her very first day, is she?'

'But that doesn't make sense either. If she's truly the chosen one, why wasn't she assigned to Ravenclaw?'

William shook his head, pulled a notebook out of his pocket, and jotted down the sudden inspiration and the earlier incident with the dud—ever since he saw the old professor's fast-forwarded memory, he had carried this thing with him at all times.

'Time to go back to work, I still have a thick stack of notes to work on, I'm really making trouble for myself...'

-

“William!”

The shout came from outside the door. William, who had gotten up early and was happily going through those damned records, was suddenly interrupted. He had finally found some interesting and useful information before going to bed last night, and only fell asleep when he was too sleepy to continue. He got up early this morning to continue reading.

'It's only seven o'clock. That bastard Adams, wasn't he supposed to be reflecting on his mistakes yesterday? What's he doing so early in the morning?'

After marking the file and carefully putting it back in the distance, William rubbed his hair a couple of times, then squinted and pretended to have just woken up. "What are you doing here so early in the morning, Adams, instead of sleeping?"

"Hurry up and wash up, something urgent is happening!"

Adams, standing at the door, sounded unusually excited.

'Huh? Why did I mess up my hair? As long as I don't open the door, that guy won't come in—' William, who was a little slow to react due to lack of sleep, suddenly remembered the useless effort he had just made and angrily popped a mint into his mouth.

Five minutes later, after roughly tidying himself up, William opened the office door. "What's the rush? It's the weekend, time to sleep!"

"I get up at four in the morning to take care of the plants, so there's no such thing as a weekend."

Before even entering the room, Adams responded confidently.

...

You won.

Seeing that William was speechless, Adams slowly strolled in and pulled over a chair with his wand.

"The Ministry of Magic and the Board of Governors have arrived, and the Daily Prophet is here too—"

"Someone's here? For the crown?"

William immediately thought of that troublesome matter.

"Of course, what else could it be—it's said that Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall almost got into a fight."

"Will you start arguing?"

William was surprised—Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore arguing was no small matter.

"Yeah, they're going to start arguing. The news about the crown has been around for a while now. The Ministry of Magic and the Board of Governors want to do a special report on the Daily Prophet or something. I don't really understand the specifics, but they just want to link the crown to them."

Adams rummaged through William's snacks as he spoke, his movements practiced and efficient.

'It's roughly equivalent to one of the Nine Tripods being unearthed; it's understandable that the Ministry of Magic wants to capitalize on the hype.' William digested the information briefly and roughly understood—then he panicked a little. Thinking about it, it was quite terrifying: why was this thing given to him?

Adams, engrossed in his candied fruit, was completely unaware—

"The Board of Governors and the Ministry of Magic said they would provide a total of 50,000 Galleons, and then Dumbledore agreed to let them bring the Daily Prophet—Professor McGonagall blocked Dumbledore for a long time."

Adams said with a happy smile.

'Looks like this crown can't be destroyed; how could it possibly be destroyed now? But even if it can't be destroyed, it's still good enough to bring the school some funding.'

“Fifty thousand Galleons in funding, that’s a lot, isn’t it? Even for a school, it’s not a small amount—what’s Professor McGonagall’s objection to?”

Professor McGonagall felt it wasn't enough and complained that the headmaster had agreed too readily…

Adams swallowed the candied fruit with difficulty before giving the answer, and then laughed happily.

"Huh? I didn't hear about that last night—"

"The Ministry of Magic only heard the news last night, and the owls were already waiting this morning. I could see the flock of owls from the greenhouse—heaven knows how many owls the Ministry of Magic and the Board of Governors sent to deliver the message."

"Wow..." William exclaimed in surprise, "No, are they in such a hurry? They sent a letter in the morning and it arrived this morning?"

"Otherwise, once the students' parents spread the word and public opinion takes shape, wouldn't the money have been wasted?"

Adams answered matter-of-factly.

"How did Professor McGonagall know that?"

"Professor McGonagall was also woken up by the owl. I heard that when she went to check, Dumbledore had already agreed."

Adams stuffed another piece of candied fruit into his mouth. "Hurry up and write the report. We need to report what equipment we need as soon as possible. We can submit the application once Professor McGonagall has calmed down. That's all. I'm taking the candied fruit with me. I'm going to call Singed."

Chapter 161 As long as the goods don't end up in the minister's hands, it's a success.

William had been visited by the leaders of the wizarding world—that was when he had the best meal he had in Azkaban.

But this time is different from that time.

That time, he was in prison, just waiting obediently for the guards to distribute various benefits. This time, however, it's much harder—he has to do the work.

"Professor William, Professor Adams, Professor Singed, you three are the youngest. Please keep an eye on the students and prevent them from doing anything rash," Professor McGonagall solemnly instructed them.

"Huh? Professor McGonagall, isn't Professor Lockhart coming?" Adams asked with a puzzled look.

“No, he’s in charge of receiving the minister and his party,” Professor McGonagall pointed to the auditorium entrance. “He volunteered for that job and it solved a big problem. By the way—Professor William, would you like to go and receive them?”

“No need, Professor, I think I’m quite comfortable with Adams and the others,” William replied earnestly.

William was sent to Azkaban by that minister, though it wasn't directly related, but because of this, William really didn't have a good impression of the Minister of Magic.

“Alright then, but I think it would be good for young professors to get to know more important people—” Professor McGonagall nodded, “but it’s also good to have Professor Lockhart around.”

Why does your statement sound like it could be abduction? Is it just my imagination, Principal?

“Yes, Professor Lockhart is good at this. It’s a virtue to let those who are good at it do what they are good at, Professor.”

“Alright,” Professor McGonagall nodded. “Let’s leave it at that for now. I’ll go tell the kitchen.”

Professor McGonagall left quickly, and she looked nothing like the person who had been angry with Dumbledore all morning.

Once Professor McGonagall was out of sight, Adams approached and said, "That was close, William—thank goodness you reacted quickly, otherwise you wouldn't be able to escape now."

"Can't escape?"

"Of course, if you have to receive the Minister of Magic twice, no one wants to do that job. Managing students is much simpler. Just thinking about being with the Minister is exhausting."

Adams took it for granted.

Is the Ministry of Magic really that insignificant?

"Didn't anyone even think about getting promoted to minister?"

"The Minister of Contact got promoted? You mean within the Ministry of Magic? People who want to go down that path can't even become professors. How can someone who doesn't like teaching students become a professor?"

Adams was even more surprised than William, "How could Dumbledore allow someone like that to become a professor?"

Okay, Hogwarts is awesome, I got it.

William shrugged, indicating his agreement.

"Haha, get to work, William. You'd better watch out for troublemakers. You know, the students at this school are quite unruly, especially the Gryffindors—"

Adams drew his wand and waved it lightly, instantly creating a dazzling firework. "Setting off a firework on such an occasion will surely be the dream of countless little rascals. If we don't stop them, who knows what they'll do?"

So, the reason Professor McGonagall didn't explicitly state was that all the offenders were from their department?

Perhaps sensing William's thoughts, Adams shook his finger—"Don't think it's just Gryffindor. They're not the only troublemakers. Too many kids their age want to be famous. We need to be careful, at least we can't let any mess fall on the Minister of Magic's head."

...

How difficult must students be to manage for someone to have this kind of thought?

As long as the goods don't end up in the minister's hands, it's considered a success?

Before Adams could finish speaking, Singed pulled out a small lighter and started striking the flint.

Accompanied by the clicking sound of flint grinding together, he said in a satisfied voice:

"It's much better this year since you're here. I remember Adams and I had our funding withheld before—Professor McGonagall didn't approve my experiments for two months straight!"

That was truly a painful experience—alchemy is essentially useless without experimentation; it's an industry that burns through money.

"What did you do that made Professor McGonagall so angry?"

"It wasn't that I did anything, but I couldn't stop it. The Ministry of Magic was going through a leadership transition at the time, and some of the older students who were opposed to it threw dung balls during the leadership transition speeches..."

"No, you didn't stop them from getting off the stage, which is such a long distance?"

William was surprised. Let alone Singed, even any random older student could have pulled out their wand to stop him, right?

“No, that kid’s clever, he threw it on the ground at his own feet—” Singed shook his head, “He even got himself covered in it!”

...