A certain Hogwarts professor of runes.

He turned to Felix and said expectantly, "You must know that some things simply cannot be avoided. Dumbledore has held several meetings and rejected some interesting proposals."

"Are you talking about the three-way championship?"

“Three in a row? Now it’s four, maybe even more,” Bagman said. “Old Fudge wants to bring in more people, like Waggadu from Africa. To be honest, I think he’s lost his mind.”

“Bagman!” Mr. Crouch said sternly, “We should change the subject.”

“Oh, uh, okay.” Bagman seemed a little flustered, shrinking his shoulders timidly. “Okay, let’s talk about today’s main character, my good friend—Felix Heap.”

His eyes lit up as he said, “The youngest recipient of the St. Mungo’s Medal of Medicine, that’s no easy feat. In my memory, they’re all old men, I mean, older healers.”

“…and the Order of Merlin, I don’t know if I’m the youngest one.” He looked at Barty Crouch.

“My impression is that of Peter Pettigrew, who died at the age of 21,” Crouch said slowly, clearly not wanting to discuss the topic.

“Admirable, he’s a hero,” Bagman said, his tone not particularly respectful. “But Mr. Heap isn’t bad either, he’s only—” He glanced at Felix, who said briefly, “23.”

“That’s right, 23 years old, and she did it with real skill. Memory impairment, I’m not very familiar with this area, so it should be a weakness in treating memory? I think we need to see Bertha Jorkins. What she did was really a headache. She couldn’t even find a venue and wandered around the neighborhood for a week.”

Barty Crouch remained silent, his face expressionless.

“What do you think, Barty? She should be at the ministry today; it would be best to have her come over…”

“She’s not here,” Crouch said curtly.

"what?"

“She wasn’t here, so I approved her leave and let her go on vacation.”

“Uh, but she’s mine, Barty…”

Mr. Barty Crouch suddenly lost his temper: "Then you should take responsibility and use the time you spend meeting with fans to maintain the venue, instead of leaving everything to me."

Bagman's momentum immediately deflated, like a punctured balloon. "That's not what I meant. Okay, you're right. It's good for her to clear her head. One more person won't make a difference..."

Crouch left in a hurry. Bagman felt uneasy and chatted awkwardly for a few moments before taking his leave as well. "I'd better talk to the Americans again. Actually, their ideas aren't... not that outrageous."

More and more people poured into the drawing room, and Felix had to greet them one by one, saying some meaningless nonsense. It took him a long time to get rid of Cornelius Fudge, who, for some reason, kept enthusiastically introducing him to high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Magic's pure-blood faction. Fortunately, he saw some familiar faces.

"Felius, Minerva, Severus, and Damocles, you've all gotten together?"

“You’re going to be very busy today,” Damocles Belby said understandingly. “We’ll just keep ourselves occupied. We’ve been apart for so long, we have so much to talk about.”

Chapter 297 Sudden Event

The awarding ceremony went smoothly, and nothing "worried" happened. Felix felt that Professor Trelawney had misjudged him once again, but it was hard to say, since he couldn't go into the Department of Mysteries' prophecy hall to see if any new prophecies had been formed.

The Department of Mysteries, located on the ninth floor of the Ministry of Magic, is a secret department that conducts research on specific mysteries. Most of its operations are top secret, and even employees in other departments of the Ministry of Magic keep quiet about it.

Wizards working in the Department of Mysteries are called the Silent Ones. They are forbidden from revealing any details about their work or location. Felix suspects that they may have signed strict confidentiality agreements, which, while granting them permission to conduct dangerous research, also subject them to greater restrictions.

However, rumors circulate that the Department of Mysteries contains a mysterious room where a prophecy orb automatically appears for every prophecy that emerges in the world. Since the Ministry of Magic's founding, there may be tens of thousands of prophecies recorded, awaiting verification by future generations.

……

Felix fiddled with a gold medal with a purple ribbon that marked his “outstanding achievements and efforts.” Belby told him that the First Class medal had a green ribbon, representing Slytherin House.

"Isn't Merlin a medieval man? How could he be connected to Slytherin?" Felix asked curiously.

"Ha, some pure-blood families, when tracing their family trees, claim that their ancestors once followed Merlin..."

"real or fake?"

"Who knows! But some families do have a long history."

Felix returned to his office. A two-week Easter break was coming up, giving him time to sort out his recent work. But the first thing to deal with was the pile of Easter eggs that filled half the room. He suddenly felt a pang of sympathy; these chocolates and candies could feed him for ten years.

He picked out some to give to Sirius, and also gave him the results of his recent analysis of the Marauder's Map.

It was a rather rudimentary map, only the size of a palm, and irregularly shaped, like a child's doodle, simply marking the castle, the Forbidden Forest, the Black Lake, and Hagrid's Hut.

Sirius took it with a look of disgust. It was covered with tiny dots, making one dizzy, but some names were marked in small gold letters. Those were people Sirius cared about: Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore...

"Actually, there's also Peter the Pettigrew, but we can't see him."

Sirius Black tore open the wrapper of an Easter chocolate egg with his teeth and took a big bite of the chocolate on top. "Thanks, otherwise I would have gone crazy." He kept staring at the palm-sized piece of paper.

Kreacher said in a low voice, "That good-for-nothing young master goes to the Muggle community to play chess every day and comes back smelling terrible..."

“Shut up, Kreacher,” Sirius roared, exasperated.

As the days went by, Felix took some time to reorganize the magical items he had researched this year and put the research data into his Mind Hut.

Mundungus went to the Far East as planned and brought back a large number of magical items, while Felix had only one requirement: that they be ancient.

While broadening his horizons, he also increasingly felt that he was somewhat like Flitwick in his youth, having mastered too many runes, but only a small portion of them were truly usable.

"This is also my original intention for writing the Book of Magic Runes."

Felix thought to himself, and as his thoughts raced, one magical symbol after another appeared in the air—gold, red, blue, green… flowing through the office like a colorful river.

"Next up is the Nameless Book, ha, I remember Ron Weasley called it the Ghost Book, it does seem somewhat like one."

Before Felix appeared a book that was half real and half illusory. The first few pages were real, but the rest were illusory. It was very similar to the Nameless Book in Harry's hand, but the two were not comparable.

He turned to a new page, and one magical rune after another flew out from the colorful river, leaping into the pages, where they materialized into various forms.

A cascading waterfall, lightning streaking across the sky, a bridge connecting the two places, and ever-spreading green mist...

Felix watched all this with satisfaction. If he could collect all the runes, it would mean that he had completely mastered the magical symbols of these runes, although the process might take a long time.

He suddenly thought of a question: where did the earliest ancient magic come from?

It's unlikely that wizards were born with this ability; he's more inclined to believe that ancient wizards stumbled upon it accidentally while studying magical creatures and plants.

The difference between the two is that for magical creatures, talent is an instinct that does not need to be learned. Just like humans can run and jump, they are born with the ability to release lightning and change their shape, but inevitably, they are also limited by their bodies.

Ancient wizards, by transforming their talents into ancient magic, unexpectedly broke free from this constraint. Their challenge, however, lay in painstakingly controlling it to prevent it from spiraling out of control. But from another perspective, they also made this magic even more powerful.

Felix's heart stirred, and he took out a stack of parchment. These were manuscripts left behind by Slytherin. He had decided to seal these materials away because Salazar Slytherin's methods were too cruel and not suitable for his path of runes. However, it seems that the two have now crossed paths.

Without realizing it, he had already begun to analyze other people's paths using his own.

Felix shrugged off the bloody and cruel methods and looked at the records of magical creatures, especially the three parchments he had previously chosen as suitable for him. They recorded a line of thought that Slytherin had developed in his early research on blood magic: how to strip away the talents of magical creatures and transform them into spells for wizards.

This seems to coincide with Felix's conjecture. Salazar Slytherin had considered following in the footsteps of the ancient wizards, seeking inspiration from the broader magical world.

Unfortunately, he eventually abandoned this approach.

Felix couldn't help but wonder, if Salazar Slytherin chose to give up, what was he pursuing? Recalling what Helena had told him—that Salazar Slytherin was delving deeper into forbidden territory and becoming increasingly grotesque—it seemed to suggest that Slytherin was experimenting on himself, incorporating the blood of magical creatures, and possibly more than one.

Did Salazar Slytherin eventually become completely inhuman?

Rowena Ravenclaw's words still echoed in my ears: "We ourselves are magical creatures."

What qualifies someone as a magical creature? Or to put it another way, what changes occur when a wizard is called a magical creature? Felix had no idea, but he figured that since Lady Ravenclaw had told him so solemnly, it meant it was a huge hurdle.

It's quite possible that Salazar Slytherin crossed this threshold by having his blood transplanted. But what about the other three? What did they rely on?

So far, he only knows about Rowena Ravenclaw. Judging from her manuscripts, she was a true polymath, proficient in alchemy, transmutation, spells, and potions, but her deepest research was in memory magic.

As Felix delved deeper into the realm of memory magic, a question arose in his mind: Was Rowena Ravenclaw, whom he had met in the Room of Requirement, truly just a memory?

Or is that her?

What will the memory nodes eventually develop into? Is it related to the soul?

He had too many questions, but no one could answer them, so he had to walk on alone.

On the last day of the Halloween holiday, Felix had composed himself and was ready to welcome the final stretch of the school year when Dumbledore suddenly appeared with a grave expression, bringing him bad news.

"Nick is leaving, and he wants to see you one last time."

Chapter 298 Prayer

Felix felt somewhat heavy-hearted. Although he had only met Nico Lemaître once, they had communicated many times through the magical photographs. To him, Nico was more like a teacher.

"Wait a moment, Headmaster Dumbledore, I have something to take with me."

Paris, France.

Felix revisited the place and, guided by Dumbledore, arrived at a secluded street. Two blocks away was the Boothless Hotel—the place where the Muggle meeting was held during the summer holidays.

Here he met a group of energetic young people, their youthful faces still vivid in his mind: student leader Julia, Matt who was captured but didn't utter a word, Byers who valued friendship and family, and the innocent and carefree Bessney...

Dumbledore handed Felix a piece of paper with "7 Montmorency Street" written on it. As he read the address to himself, a small white house suddenly appeared out of thin air between two lawns.

"The Curse of Unwavering Loyalty." The thought flashed through Felix's mind.

He glanced at the magnificent sunset clouds on the horizon and followed Dumbledore into the house. Inside was a medieval-style drawing room, with various oddly shaped glass containers, candlesticks, and a bronze globe on the table. Several sofas were covered with white sheets, and the fireplace in the corner was blackened with soot.

On the other side of the spiral staircase in the corner, there is an exquisite bookshelf filled with books. On the table opposite the bookshelf, there is a large crystal ball, its light shining through the thick dust.

Led by Dumbledore, he came to a bedroom on the second floor. A small wooden sign hung on the brown door, which read: Nick and Perenaar.

Pushing open the door, an old man lay quietly on the bed, his chest motionless, his face frighteningly pale. Only when you get close can you hear his soft snoring.

“Nick,” Dumbledore said softly, “Felix is ​​here.”

After a long while, the old man opened his eyes, which were covered with a layer of white film. In a trembling voice, he said, "Felix?"

“It’s me, Nick. Long time no see,” Felix said, trying to sound casual, while clutching a spyglass hidden in his pocket. This belated Christmas gift might never get a chance to be given.

“Felix—I’ve always looked forward to the day we could finally meet,” Nick tried to open his eyes wide, but everything was blurry. “However, something came up—”

"Don't you have the Philosopher's Stone? How could this be..."

“It’s ruined, child. I’ve lived for nearly seven hundred years. Death… is not a bad thing.”

Nicolas Flamel stretched his hand out from under the covers, trembling. "Felix—ouch!" he cried out.

Felix heard a crisp click. He fell silent for a moment, and though the timing was inappropriate, he felt a slight urge to laugh. He recalled Nick's hasty retreat when they first met. His fingers trembled slightly, causing the blanket to slip down a little.

"Thanks--"

Nick opened his palm, revealing a golden key.

“I know I’m not long for this world, but that doesn’t matter—Perenaar and I have no children, and before I die, I need to find someone to inherit my knowledge.”

"Why me?" Felix asked. He specializes in runes, not alchemy, something Nick Lemaître surely knows.

“I want the world to be a better place, and you are the most suitable candidate. You meet all my requirements in every way—this is the result of my careful consideration.”

Felix was deeply moved. The culmination of Nicolas Lemaître's centuries of research was an immense body of knowledge, and the two men's paths were remarkably aligned, sharing a natural connection.