Hogwarts 1991

Chapter 174 Strike at the Magic Maintenance Office

The outside of the window on the corridor passage is just like the description in the original book, full of sunny scenes.

Views vary.

There are forests full of greenery, and the sunlight falls from the dense foliage in pillars of light...

Flying insects, birds, monkeys and other life forms live together, and sometimes their traces can be seen.

…Hold your breath and listen carefully, you can even hear the sound of insects, birds, and the gurgling of the stream.

There are also clouds covering the snow-capped mountains, and under the sun, the snow is shining.

There are scorching desert sun, dead branches of Populus euphratica, and sand dunes standing there unchanged through the ages.

There are green grass and green fields, and a magnificent and majestic castle on the hill.

--what!

McGuffin looked back, that castle was indeed Hogwarts, but...

——what's the matter?

In an instant, there was a hurricane, thunder and lightning over the castle, and a dark cloud covered the entire sky.

This is?

boom--

Rumbling--

The window glass in the corridor trembled almost simultaneously, and the sound of thunder kept echoing in my ears.

- deafening!
McGuffin looked at Mr. Weasley and found that he was also at a loss.

He pulled the MacGuffin forward quickly, and they realized that all the windows on the way were hurricane scenes.

The sound of howling wind and wanton thunder that wanted to shatter the glass continued to come from outside.

A terrifying and destructive storm seemed to have almost arrived, making the two of them extremely depressed, and the situation outside looked like it was about to destroy everything.

"What is this?"

Mr. Weasley muttered twice, pulled McGuffin around a corner, and passed through two thick oak doors.

What appeared to them was a noisy open area divided into individual cells.

A crooked sign hangs directly in front of the nearest cubicle, which reads:

【Auror Command】

Although the internal mail was still flying overhead like a rocket, the wizards or Aurors in this open area had no time to take care of it, and only let these paper airplanes gather more and more above the ceiling lamp.

Originally, this large open office area itself was very dim because of the dark windows, but now the lights are blocked... There is almost no light at all, and one can only vaguely see the blurred shadows below.

The Aurors who came out of the cubicle gathered in the aisle, looking very annoyed.

They were talking loudly.

"What is the Magic Maintenance Department doing here? Imperius Curse?...What the hell is going on here?"

There were voices yelling, some people ran out angrily,... some violent wizards even took out their wands and pointed them at the windows to cast a spell.

——Fortunately, the wizard stopped it.

Mr. Weasley saw this scene and understood that these Aurors didn't know what happened, so they turned to pull McGuffin to leave.

At this time, a tall dark-skinned man in a purple robe walked in, with a gold ring on one ear.

This person cast a [Loud Voice] spell on himself, and then the loud sound spread throughout the [Auror Command].

"Be quiet, nothing happened here... It's just that the Magic Maintenance Department saw Minister Cornelius Fauci hanging up that huge banner... to express dissatisfaction and want to raise wages..."

Before the words fell, the entire [Auror Command] was turned upside down.

"I knew it...Damn it! The Ministry of Magic clearly has the funds to do these useless things, but they don't give us a higher salary...It is clear that our department is doing the most dangerous things, but..."

"This kind of thing is first come, first served... Maybe we [Auror Command] also need to increase the salary level or treatment..."

"Go, go to Fauci for an explanation. There are enough things to do every day. Can't we have a quiet and relaxing working environment?"

A vast crowd of wizards squeezed past Mr. McGuffin Weasley, and the whole room was empty in an instant... There were not many wizards left.

"This is troublesome... something big is about to happen!!" Mr. Weasley pulled McGuffin away in a hurry with a serious expression, and even trotted a few steps from time to time.

They entered another unit through a second oak door, turned left, passed the next hallway, and turned right into a dimly lit, visibly dilapidated hallway.

Finally reached a dead end, where there are two doors.

Mr. Weasley took McGuffin to the door on the far right, where there was a tarnished brass sign that read:

[Office of Misuse of Muggle Artifacts].

Push open the door and go in. Compared with the Auror headquarters just now, the space is undoubtedly very small. Even the documents are piled up and all kinds of sundries are crowded together, which looks a bit sloppy.

And there wasn't even a single internal mail (paper airplane) above the room.

There were no windows in this office, only two dim ceiling lights, one of which didn't even light up until Mr. Weasley shot a bolt of lightning at it with his wand, and then it came on.

Weasley saw McGuffin looking at the opposite wall, and said self-deprecatingly, "Don't look, McGuffin. We don't have windows here. Although we applied for it a few times, fortunately, some staff from the Ministry of Magic thought we didn't need a window here... Now it seems that it's all a bad thing, right?"

He smiled.

There are only two desks in the room, which is still very crowded.

The huge metal cabinets on the walls are a bit worn out and the paint is peeling off.

Inside, even above the top of the cabinet, there were piles of documents of various sizes.

The space between the cabinet and the desk was just big enough for them to barely pass.

Mr. Weasley led the McGuffin to his desk.

McGuffin put the square birdcage containing Niu Niu on the table.

He saw a lot of things used by Muggles on the table, such as two AA batteries bundled together, and an old-fashioned portable flashlight (wrapped in black plastic rubber), but somehow it was completely disassembled, leaving only an empty shell, and some parts (bulbs, shells) were spread on the table... Finally, in an open drawer under the table, he accidentally saw a drawer full of sockets, and wiped his head.

There are various models.

Mr. Weasley noticed too, and a look of embarrassment crossed his face.

While secretly closing the drawer with his legs, he abruptly brought up a topic...

Mr. Weasley asked, taking something out of a blue basket placed at the foot of the table.

"McGuffin, I haven't received an enchanted Muggle item from a wizard's house before... I'm a little confused about what this is? Can you take a look?"

——I saw a little yellow duck placed in front of him.

"What's the use of this little duck?"

McGuffin couldn't bear to tell Mr. Weasley the truth of the matter.

"This... this is a kind of toy for Muggle children, yes... it's a kind of toy!"

Avoiding Mr. Weasley's very interested gaze, McGuffin pretended to be interested in a few pictures taped to a spare space on the wall.

This look is the work of Mr. Weasley, and it is what fascinates him most:

There are a few photos of the car; a disassembly of the engine, a side profile; a diagram that looks like a mailbox cut from a piece of paper in an elementary school textbook; of course, there is a schematic diagram of how to wind the socket...

"Okay, McGuffin, you can sit on the chair at the desk opposite for a while... That wizard is drunk again... I guess he won't come to the Ministry of Magic until after ten o'clock."

"It's around 8:[-], and I'll take you to the office of the Chief Secretary to the Minister of Magic on the second floor of the Ministry of Magic to take notes later. Relax...you'll be fine..."

"If you're bored..."

From the corner of the side cabinet, Mr. Weasley struggled to pull out a children's book "The Adventures of the Mad Muggles" from the bottom of a large stack of documents, and handed it to McGuffin. "You can take a look at this book. I remember the content in it is quite interesting... I wonder what you can see from the Muggle's point of view?"

"I still have to add some paperwork... After the two-day surprise inspection, there are too many tedious things left over... The damned upper echelons of the Ministry of Magic don't think about recruiting more people for us!"

He muttered and complained.

After speaking, Mr. Weasley took out a thick document and started working.

McGuffin sat on the opposite chair. He noticed that there was a photo of an old alcoholic on the desk. He was hiccupping sullenly and playing with a pair of empty leather gloves on his thumb.

He flipped through the alternative story book "The Adventures of Crazy Muggles" written from the perspective of a wizard with Muggles as the protagonist.

—Don’t tell me, it’s quite interesting!
McGuffin remembered that Ron also had a copy, and borrowed it to read when he went back to [The Burrow].

……

In the office of the First Secretary to the Ministry of Magic,

David Goodman collapsed on the chair, his mood could not be calm for a long time.

Coupled with the non-stop lightning and thunder behind him, it made his brain ache even more.

Since I went to the Department of Mysteries to search all night last night, and finally found a mysterious prophecy hidden in the crystal ball.

His brain seemed to be boiled, a mass of paste, and now he couldn't think at all.

Goodman understands why those who really hold power in the British magical world have acquiesced or secretly promoted the fermentation of that rumor in the past 11 years.

Let all kinds of skepticism give momentum to the Boy Who Lived.

Anyway, judging from Goodman himself being able to guess their urine nature—this can only show one thing:

Goodman dared to swear on his wand—the upper echelons of the Ministry of Magic, those in England, no... the top magic families in the entire western magic world should have known this prophecy...

As for the remaining wizards, or only when Voldemort's comeback is truly confirmed, they will be deliberately revealed by these people...to make the prophecy come true.

"The doomed foe...marked...only one of the two will survive..."

—what on earth does this mean?
——It seems that there is a paragraph missing!

When he heard the prophecy, Goodman immediately realized that it must be talking about Voldemort picking Harry 11 years ago.

"Is Harry Potter the savior?"

"But it also explains the fact that someone has been making Harry famous over the years..."

"Is it Dumbledore? No, no, no... there are others, just Dumbledore doesn't have such a big influence, and it's continuous, like a drizzle on the vernal equinox, implanting the idea that Harry may be the savior in everyone's heart..."

When Goodman was thinking about the various interests behind this.

Kingsley Shacklebolt knocked on the door and entered.

He just remembered that he had to wipe the ass of his idiot boss, Cornelius Fauci, this morning.

——To interrogate a little wizard, and to make a complete, correct, seemingly normal transcript that does not offend any wizard of any faction.

He was very annoyed by this, but somehow a thought popped up in his mind, and he couldn't stop it.

Goodman ignored Kingsley Shacklebolt's astonished face, and hurriedly searched through a pile of documents to find a description of what happened that night.

A letter from Dumbledore to Fauci was added to that document.

——It says that Quilinus Quirrell is a dark wizard... the matter of the Philosopher's Stone... the fact that Harry and another little wizard were almost killed by this wizard, and it seems to mention something about the mysterious man...

——What the hell?

All kinds of mixed ideas kept coming out, and Goodman immediately noticed the highlights.

——Why is the Sorcerer's Stone kept in Hogwarts?And there are some useless organs, why not keep them yourself?

Goodman didn't know of a safer place than with Dumbledore!
And he immediately thought of the attempted theft at Gringotts in early August...

Could it be that Dumbledore was targeting a specific person... Quirinus Quirrell?

—How is this possible, no, if it is true, why is it?
Although they heard that someone applied for the position of professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, everyone's reaction was surprisingly consistent—another idiot was recruited.

Almost most of the Aurors or the top officials of the Ministry of Magic knew that this position was cursed by Voldemort, and he had said that if anyone applied for this position, he would be his enemy.

Although Voldemort has since disappeared, the threat has since disappeared.

But the curse hanging over this position is still there... After several professors had accidents one after another, this fact was confirmed even more.

, so many people do not have the courage to apply, and the requirements for professors in charge of such courses are getting lower and lower... Now as long as you are a wizard, you can apply for the job if you have a certificate of OWLs adult wizard level.

But even so, there is such a half-baked person like Quirrell, it doesn't look like a wizard who doesn't look like a teacher has become a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Some Aurors in the Ministry of Magic were still betting on how long this young wizard would last.

did not expect……

In the end, it turned out to be a golden statue.

Moreover, he had passed the qualification review before coming here... The guy who seemed to be afraid of everything was actually a dark wizard, and he even threatened to kill Harry and a little wizard.

...the Philosopher's Stone...the Dark Wizard...Harry...on purpose...

Key points kept flashing through my mind.

Destined...marked boy?
Did Dumbledore deliberately involve Harry in all this! ?

And that little wizard?all these things...

With too much confusion and too little information, he still couldn't sort out all these related matters.

Goodman took out his pocket watch from his pocket and looked at the time - it was almost 9 o'clock.

He decided to ask the little wizard what happened that night?
By the way, what is his name?

Seems like a little wizard born to a Muggle family—

he is?

—McGuffin Albert!

(End of this chapter)