Chapter 546: Voldemort is Coming
Chapter 546: Voldemort is Coming
A few minutes earlier.
In Hogsmeade village, the challenge was still ongoing.
According to the schedule, Felix would explain Ancient Runes in the morning, followed by a challenge session (to showcase his strength) at noon. In the afternoon, the session would be open to the experts in ancient runes, professors, and headmasters, who would ask questions, with Felix providing the answers.
However, after the mysterious disappearance of "over a dozen Dark Wizards" and Felix using Lumos to dispel the dark clouds, the wizards were clearly in a daze. They stared at Felix mechanically, still reeling from the shock.
No one dared to challenge him, and many wizards who had signed the magical contract were complaining bitterly.
Felix decided to move the challenge session to the next day, allowing everyone to rest and recover. The questioning session would resume in two hours. The wizards dispersed, needing time to process everything they had seen that morning, especially to redefine their understanding of the subject of Ancient Runes.
A few wizards and all the reporters stayed behind, surrounding Felix with various questions.
"Mr. Hep, was the fire that looked like lava also an Ancient Magic?"
"Yes, it was."
"It was incredibly powerful! So, did those people die?"
Felix glanced at the reporter, "You could say that." The reporter's breath caught, and he gave a nervous smile.
"Mr. Hep, I read about Lumos in a booklet about Ancient Runes, but its description was far from what you demonstrated..."
"Ancient Magic varies from person to person", Felix explained patiently. "It is difficult to control but also less constrained..."
"Mr. Hep! Ow, don't push! I am a senior official from the French Ministry of Magic, and I have corresponded with you before—"
A short, fat man said, his hat falling off to reveal a few wisps of thin, wispy hair.
Felix looked him over. "Giles Fizjer?"
"That's right, Maxwell sends his regards." The man bowed slightly, revealing his bald head, and said, "The French Ministry of Magic is considering adding a new subject at Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. Can we discuss this?"
Felix's eyes lit up. He looked around, searching for the impressive, tall figure. "Is Madame Maxime not here?"
"She's tied up with some trivial matters and might arrive tomorrow. However, the Deputy Headmistress of Beauxbatons is here..." The man was being jostled, looking like he might vomit. He clutched his head with one hand and pointed with a short, stubby finger to a man about fifteen feet away.
"Sure", Felix said.
At the edge of Hogsmeade Square, Amelia Bones let out a long breath. "Thankfully, there hasn't been any major trouble. What are the backgrounds of those dozen Dark Wizards? Do we have any records?"
Kingsley Shacklebolt replied, "We have very little usable information, and they apparated in. These Dark Wizards aren't fools—"
"They proved to be fools", Bones said sharply.
After a moment, she whispered, "Hasn't Mad-Eye Moody reported anything?"
"No word yet", Kingsley Shacklebolt said.
"That's strange", Bones said, puzzled. "We deliberately arranged a day off, and the Ministry's defenses are more vulnerable than ever. This would be the perfect opportunity to steal the Memory Orb..."
Kingsley Shacklebolt shrugged.
"Let's not worry about it. We need to maintain order here. Have the Aurors and Hit Wizards expand their search to the areas around Hogwarts."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I don't think Voldemort will show up here, but we should eliminate any potential threats", Bones said with a smile. "Even without the Aurors and Hit Wizards, there are nearly two to three thousand wizards in Hogsmeade, many of them elite."
Her expression froze when she saw a face. Headmaster Alden Fontana of Ilvermorny School suddenly turned pale and left with a grave expression.
"Let's follow him", Bones said after a moment's hesitation.
They watched as the Headmaster of Ilvermorny School entered a nearby temporary tent. Bones and Kingsley Shacklebolt called out a couple of times, but received no response. They immediately realized something was wrong.
Bones cautiously lifted the tent flap, and Kingsley Shacklebolt readied a spell, but the tent was empty.
They exchanged a look.
"Was it apparition? Or a Portkey? Kingsley, notify the Portkey Office and the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. We need to determine the approximate distance of the movement at the very least..." Bones said seriously.
Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Headmaster's Office.
A figure suddenly appeared in the room, and Alden Fontana simultaneously dashed out the window at an astonishing speed.
"Headmaster Fontana?" Uriah Edmund, who was walking with Bethany in the garden, asked in surprise. "Weren't you in Britain? How did you return so quickly?"
Headmaster Fontana hurriedly left a message: "The Hornbeam Ward has been triggered. I'm going to check it out." Then, he vanished from their sight.
Uriah's expression turned serious. He turned to Bethany and said, "Whatever has alarmed Headmaster Fontana must be serious. I'll follow to see what's happening."
"What if it's dangerous—"
Uriah hesitated for a moment, then raised his arms. Runes began to appear on the inside of his wrists, and a wand materialized out of thin air.
"Uriah, Mr. Hep gave you this wand for emergencies", Bethany advised. "I'll go find the other professors—"
"This is an emergency", Uriah said, gripping the wand. "Don't worry, I'll protect myself."
On the other side, Headmaster Fontana had already appeared at the school gates. After a brief pause, he ran toward the hornbeam tree. He thought quickly; every headmaster had left protective charms on the hornbeam, which were not something ordinary students could break, especially since the hornbeam held a secret that dated back three hundred years.
Ilvermorny students only knew that the leaves of the hornbeam had powerful healing properties, but as the headmaster and a descendant of one of the original twelve Aurors, he knew much more. Ilvermorny's most important founder, the witch Isolt Sayre, once possessed Salazar Slytherin's wand.
Headmaster Fontana hurried along, the hidden history of the past flowing through his mind:
Isolt Sayre's mother was born into the ancient Gaunt family, a pure-blood lineage and one of the longest-lasting branches of Salazar Slytherin's descendants from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, her mother did not share the family's views on blood purity and moved out early.
After marrying, she had a lovely daughter, Isolt. Isolt's early childhood was peaceful and happy, with her parents' love and the family quietly helping their No-Maj neighbors. But a fire destroyed all that, and in the disaster, Isolt's parents perished.
The culprit was Isolt's aunt, Gormlaith Gaunt, a temperamental witch. She took the five-year-old Isolt and intended to mold her into a "proper" pure-blood wizard. As Isolt grew, she gradually saw her aunt's true nature and, seizing an opportunity, stole her aunt's wand (which she was not allowed to have) and, after many trials, boarded the Mayflower bound for North America.
That wand was the Gaunt family's heirloom—Salazar Slytherin's hornbeam wand.
Isolt married a No-Maj in the New World and lived a peaceful life for over a decade, during which she established the foundation of Ilvermorny. However, her aunt, Gormlaith, who had lost the family heirloom, eventually tracked down the increasingly famous Isolt. Enraged, Gormlaith used the wand's built-in rules, speaking in Parseltongue to put the wand to sleep, and then appeared to kill Isolt and her family.
But she failed.
Later, Isolt buried the sleeping wand outside the school grounds and attempted to make her own wands. The following year, the spot where the wand was buried began to sprout, eventually becoming the iconic "healing" hornbeam of Ilvermorny.
Headmaster Fontana finally reached the hornbeam, but what he saw stunned him: the hornbeam was completely destroyed, reduced to ashes.
A pale-skinned, featureless black-robed wizard gently caressed a wand that glowed with an ethereal light.
The hornbeam wand!
Salazar Slytherin's personally crafted wand, which had recently been featured in the news as merely the seventh-ranked wand, but Headmaster Fontana had scoffed at that. He knew from the start that the other wands might be fictitious, but this one was real and extraordinary.
Voldemort was extremely pleased. In his hand was the wand of one of the Four Founders, the greatest of them all, and it felt no resistance. He could feel the ancestral wand rejoicing, its power resonating with his own magic, urging him to use it.
There is no wand more suitable for me, and no one is more worthy of using it... Voldemort thought. At this moment, he needed to find a worthy sacrifice for it... He looked up at the sky. Felix Hep should be in Hogsmeade right now, shouldn't he?
Voldemort flashed a cold smile and turned to leave—
“Stop!” Headmaster Fontana shouted. Voldemort's red eyes fixed on him. Fontana frowned, the tall, thin figure before him looked like a skeleton, with a face grotesquely twisted. The more he looked, the more familiar it seemed...
“Are you Dark Wizard Voldemort?” he said coldly.
“You may call me Dark Lord Voldemort,” Voldemort said with a polite bow.
“No matter who you are, leave the wand behind! It’s not yours,” Headmaster Fontana shouted, his heart sinking. Although Voldemort had never appeared in America and he had never dealt with him, the mere fact of resurrection... No, that was absurd, magic couldn’t bring the dead back to life.
But since Voldemort had terrorized Britain for over a decade, he was on high alert.
“Not mine? No one is more rightfully entitled to it than I am,” Voldemort said disdainfully. “What if I say no?” He lazily spread his hand, and the Hornbeam Ward glowed in his grasp.
Headmaster Fontana felt a sense of foreboding. It seemed the Hornbeam Ward had chosen its master. Still, he drew his wand, prepared for battle. It was his duty as Headmaster.
“Hey!” Voldemort sneered, his red eyes vivid as if they could drip blood. He whispered, “Being the first sacrifice for it wouldn’t be a disgrace...”
“What are you saying?”
“Avada Kedavra!”
Green light filled his entire vision.
“No!”
...
“No!”
Harry shouted. His mind was a chaotic mess, as if it had been stirred with a knife. His vision was filled with green light, the color of death. He and another young man in his mind shouted simultaneously. The person looked familiar...
“Harry, wake up!”
Hermione shook him. He forced his eyes open, finding himself lying on the ground, his head resting on the cold earth. A large shadow loomed over him. It was Ron, who was arguing with Malfoy.
“What did you do to him, Malfoy? I knew I couldn’t trust you!”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“It’s not him, Ron. It’s Harry’s scar,” Hermione said.
Harry blinked a few times, uninterested in their argument. His mood was heavy; someone had died, the Headmaster of Ilvermorny. The green light still lingered in his mind, and the faces of Ron, Hermione, and Malfoy were oddly distorted. He looked around; Neville was also holding his wand, silent as a stone.
He turned his head to see Sirius and Snape running over, their expressions as anxious as Sirius’s.
Harry rubbed his forehead vigorously, the scar stinging like a needle.
“Harry,” Hermione said, her voice trembling. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t let your mind be invaded—”
“Invaded? Hermione, I can’t let important information slip away, and it’s not that I’m being invaded; I’m invading Voldemort’s mind!” Harry retorted angrily.
“But it’s the same thing. Your mental defenses are already riddled with holes. It will ruin the Occlumency you’ve practiced so hard,” Hermione said patiently.
“I can’t afford to worry about that right now, Hermione. We can talk about this later. We have more important things to deal with,” Harry said, pushing himself up. His hand touched the cold earth, which invigorated him. He grabbed a handful and pressed it to his forehead, the icy sensation easing the pain.
He looked up at the iron gates before him.
“Harry, what did you see? What did he do?” Hermione leaned in and whispered.
“He killed the Headmaster of Ilvermorny,” Harry said woodenly.
Hermione gasped, covering her mouth. Ron and Malfoy were speechless, Neville’s eyes wide open. Sirius and Snape, who had just arrived, were also stunned. They stared at Harry as if they had heard the most absurd thing in the world.
Harry was the first to react. “There’s something more important. Voldemort is coming.”
“What?”
“Voldemort is coming. He’s going to Hogsmeade to find Professor Hep!”
(End of Chapter)
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