Chapter 101: An Interview Regarding Souls and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks
Xenophilius Lovegood waved the glittering detection wand around Cassius Malfoy, the eyeball at the top spinning faster and faster.
"Mr. Malfoy, please allow me to ask you an extremely important question first."
He leaned in close to Cassius, his voice as solemn as if he were presiding over a Wizengamot trial.
"Have you ever seen traces of a Crumple-Horned Snorkackin the corridors of Hogwarts, especially near the third-floor corridor around the full moon?"
Cassius held his teacup.
"No."
"That is a pity."
Xenophilius was not discouraged in the slightest; he turned a page in his notebook and continued to press him.
"What about Wrackspurts? Have you ever felt dizzy or heard a buzzing in your ears near the entrance to the Restricted Section?"
Lucius Malfoy let out a sigh of near-despair from the corner.
Cassius did not answer this question.
He set down his teacup, leaned forward slightly, and his gaze fell upon the detection wand in Xenophilius's hand.
"I will answer your questions later, but first, let me ask you one."
Xenophilius stopped his waving motion.
"These ancient runes inscribed on your wand are neither standard Runes nor a branch of the ancient Elvish language."
Cassius pointed at those ancient symbols.
"Is this specific arrangement intended to resonate with the mental frequency of a certain creature?"
Xenophilius froze for about three seconds upon hearing this question.
Then, he slammed the detection wand directly onto the coffee table.
His eyes began to redden.
"Finally, someone has noticed."
His voice began to tremble, so excited that he nearly knocked over the plate of snacks on the coffee table.
"I spent seventeen years copying these runes in an abandoned temple in Transylvania. Every single stroke was painstakingly traced with frozen fingers while I crouched in a cave at twenty degrees below zero. After I returned, I published six papers, but not a single academic journal was willing to print them."
He cleared his throat and continued in a tone of reverence that bordered on preaching.
"This symbol system comes from the pre-Roman Druid Wizard tradition. It is designed to resonate with the mental frequency of a target creature through a specific symbol matrix."
He picked up the detection wand and drew a circle in the air.
"Simply put, it bridges the language barrier across species, establishing a direct connection with another life form at the soul level."
Cassius leaned back in his chair.
The Dual-Soul Furnace in his mind began to spin at high speed, cross-validating the rune resonance principle described by Xenophilius with his own knowledge of the nature of magic.
If the underlying logic of this theory held true, then the rune matrix was essentially an external mental frequency tuner.
Its function was not to create a connection, but to eliminate the noise during the connection process.
This was structurally similar in logic to the zero-loss magic output he had been exploring.
"Go on."
Once encouraged, Xenophilius became even more eloquent.
"The original Druid records also mentioned a higher-order application: by modifying the dimensional parameters of the symbol matrix, it is theoretically possible to resonate with non-biological magic sources."
He lowered his voice.
"For example, the ley lines of a building."
Cassius's hand, holding the teacup, paused.
He remembered the silent clash between the Dual-Soul Furnace and the Castle's ley lines when he first stepped into Hogwarts.
At the time, he had relied on absolute brute force to suppress the ley lines and force them into submission.
If there were a more precise tuning tool, then the ley lines wouldn't need to be suppressed; they could be directly taken over and driven by him.
This man appeared to be a lunatic on the surface, but what he held in his hands might truly be invaluable.
Draco Malfoy walked down from the second floor.
After treatment in the Hospital Wing, the wounds on his body had healed, but the spot on his right chest where the statue had struck him still throbbed with pain.
He pushed open the door to the drawing room and walked in, standing there, completely bewildered as he looked at the gesticulating man in the yellow robes and his father, whose face was livid.
"What exactly is going on? Since when does our home host a circus?"
Luna Lovegood, who had been sitting at the other end of the sofa as quiet as a dandelion, turned her head to look at Draco.
She tilted her head and observed him for about five seconds.
"The light inside your brother's body doesn't seem as hot as it was before."
Draco was stunned for a moment when he heard this, and then the expression on his face slowly turned serious.
He did not know this strangely dressed little girl, nor did he know what she meant by "light."
But in an instant, he understood why Cassius held this pair of father and daughter in high regard.
Because she was right.
The fact that Cassius had forcefully overclocked and drained his magic during the battle in the Restricted Section, causing damage to his meridians, could not possibly be known by a third person, aside from Snape and Dumbledore.
Yet this girl had given her judgment after just one glance.
Draco walked over to Cassius and sat down silently, without saying another word of mockery.
At this moment, Xenophilius was explaining how to use a sincere heart and a bowl of fresh milk to win over a Bubotuber.
Lucius finally couldn't take it anymore.
"I've had enough. Whatever Snot Beast or Snorkack you intend to discuss next, please forgive me, but I cannot stay."
He adjusted his robe collar and walked out of the drawing room, slamming the door shut behind him.
The muffled thuds of his cane hitting the floor in the corridor faded into the distance.
The drawing room was quiet for a short while.
Luna turned back, her silvery-grey eyes staring intently at Cassius.
"Can I ask you a question?"
Cassius set down his teacup.
"Speak."
Luna's expression did not change at all, but there was a warmth in her voice that was difficult for others to detect.
"It must be very hard to share the flames inside you with your brother."
Cassius did not answer.
"That fire is so bright; do you feel cold guarding it all by yourself?"
All sound in the drawing room ceased completely in that instant.
Xenophilius's hand, holding the quill, hung suspended in mid-air, and Draco also turned his head slightly.
Cassius looked into those silvery-grey eyes.
There was no worship, no fear, no curiosity, and no probing in those eyes.
There was only an extremely pure, almost transparent, kindness.
This kindness did not come from a judgment of knowledge or logic, but from some more primitive and direct life instinct.
She could see things that others could not see at all.
And when she saw them, she was not afraid.
"Not cold."
Cassius's answer was only two words.
But he discovered that as he said those two words, the operating frequency of the Dual-Soul Furnace within him experienced an extremely minute fluctuation.
The interview ended in a strange and tranquil atmosphere.
Xenophilius contentedly packed away his notes and the detection wand into his satchel, ready to leave.
"Mr. Malfoy, the content of this interview is enough for at least three special issues."
He stood up and shook Cassius's hand vigorously.
"The readers of The Quibbler will surely be very interested in the theory linking Wrackspurts and soul flames."
Luna walked up to Cassius, pulled a necklace strung with Butterbeer corks from her robe pocket, and handed it to him.
A clumsy but brightly colored smiley face was drawn on the cork, and the string connecting the corks was twisted from red and blue yarn.
"This is for you."
She placed the necklace on the coffee table in front of Cassius.
"It can help you drive away those noisy Wrackspurts."
She paused.
"And make you seem less lonely."
Cassius looked down at the cork necklace on the coffee table, which was crudely made to an appalling degree.
This item looked ridiculous in front of any piece of decor in Malfoy Manor.
But he did not push it away, nor did he mock it.
He reached out, picked up the necklace, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his robes.
"Received."
Luna tilted her head and revealed a very faint smile.
After seeing the Lovegoods off, Draco leaned against the doorframe of the drawing room, looking at Cassius with a complicated expression.
"You actually accepted that broken cork."
Cassius walked past him without answering the question.
He returned to the basement, took the cork necklace out of his inner robe pocket, and hung it casually on an iron hook beside the stone table.
Then he sat down, his gaze falling once again upon the silent black diary in front of him.
His fingertips pressed lightly against the leather cover, and the Dual-Soul Furnace initiated a new round of low-frequency scanning.
He needed to thoroughly analyze the internal structure of this Horcrux before the start of the second school year.
The thousand-year-old serpent in the Chamber of Secretsand the diary on the table—both prey were waiting for him to make his move.
Meanwhile, on the balcony of the master bedroom on the third floor of the manor, Narcissa stood holding a cup of cold black tea, gazing in the direction where the Lovegoods had departed.
She had witnessed the entire process of Cassius accepting the cork necklace from behind the curtains.
"Lucius."
She called out softly to her husband, who was in the room next door, irritably flipping through a manual on defensive arrays.
"That girl from the Lovegood family—don't stop her from coming to our home in the future."
Chapter 102: The Cork Necklace and the Diary's Response
Three old-fashioned oil lamps hung on the stone walls of the basement, their flames flickering in the draft seeping through the cracks, casting shifting, dim shadows against the rough rock surface.
Cassius sat at the large oak stone table, turning a necklace made of a butterbeer cork and red and blue yarn between his fingers.
On the cork was a clumsy yet brightly colored smiley face, the lines crooked and the paint bleeding over the edges.
The string connecting the cork was unevenly twisted and tied with three tight knots, one of which was tangled with a small tuft of golden hair, picked up from who knows where.
This object looked completely out of place in any room of Malfoy Manor.
He held the necklace up under the oil lamp and examined it for a moment.
The words the girl with silver-gray eyes had spoken swirled through his mind again.
"That fire is so bright, do you feel cold guarding it all by yourself?"
Having lived two lifetimes and witnessed the schemes and deceits of two worlds, this was the first time someone had bypassed his projected strength and cold expression to ask him directly if he was cold.
It wasn't a probe.
It wasn't flattery.
It wasn't accommodation born of fear.
It was just a clean, simple question.
He casually hung the necklace on a rusty iron hook nearby, the smiley face on the cork facing directly toward him.
"Not cold."
He repeated the two words he had spoken in the parlor; his voice held no echo in the empty basement.
The Dual-Soul Furnace hummed low in his chest, its operating frequency showing a minute fluctuation before returning to normal.
He did not delve into what this fluctuation meant.
His attention returned to the black leather diary on the table.
The diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
An item his father had retrieved from the family's secret vault.
Lucius had said one thing when he handed it to him.
"This diary was given to me by the Dark Lord himself to keep; it is said to hide some kind of ancient power within."
"I have studied it for over a decade and have yet to figure out its purpose."
"You are smarter than me; perhaps you can open it."
Cassius remembered that when he had taken the diary, the Dual-Soul Furnace had completed its full analysis in a tenth of a second.
A soul fragment.
Six percent integrity.
A severed remnant of a soul, sealed within the leather and pages using extremely precise Dark Arts.
This was a Horcrux.
What he had to do now was simple.
Drain all valuable information from this Horcrux, then decide whether to keep it as bait or destroy it outright.
Cassius placed his palm flat on the cover of the diary.
The Dual-Soul Furnace in his chest adjusted its output mode, and a ghostly blue light seeped from his palm into the leather surface.
The temperature of the diary began to rise.
Not the high heat of being scorched by flames, but a more insidious and dangerous infiltration of energy.
He was using his magic to knock on the door.
"You are inside."
He did not speak with his mouth, but instead carved these words directly into the pages with his magic.
The diary was silent for three seconds.
Then, black ink began to slowly seep onto the blank pages.
The ink twisted and wandered across the paper; you could see it hesitating, probing, carefully identifying the strange visitor before it.
The handwriting finally took shape, elegant and neat, carrying the reserved air typical of a Hogwarts prefect from the 1940s.
"Hello."
"My name is Tom Riddle."
"Who are you?"
Cassius watched those words.
The second line of text appeared immediately after, with significantly narrower spacing than the first.
"Why is your magic so scorching?"
The person writing was not calm.
The way normal people injected magic into the diary was like turning on a faucet: gentle, controllable, and carrying the emotional imprint of the user.
But the magic Cassius poured in was like a volcano ready to erupt at any moment; the temperature, density, and pressure far exceeded the limits a diary should be able to withstand.
Riddle's remnant soul had been awakened in pain.
Cassius did not answer the invitation to introduce himself.
He did not intend to play social games with a remnant of a soul.
He directly switched the output mode of the Dual-Soul Furnace.
The ghostly blue magic gathered at his fingertips into a needle thinner than a strand of hair, carrying the high heat and violent attributes peculiar to the Dual-Soul Furnace.
He pricked the needle into the third page of the diary.
The movement was light.
The diary's reaction was huge.
The entire diary twitched violently on the table; pages fluttered, ink splattered, and a few drops of black liquid splashed onto the edge of the stone table.
New handwriting crawled across the paper at lightning speed.
"What are you doing?"
"This hurts."
"Withdraw your magic."
"Stop."
Cassius did not stop.
He increased the output power of the magic at his fingertips, raising it from one ten-thousandth to one thousandth.
For him, this figure was negligible.
For the remnant soul inside the diary, it was a catastrophe.
The diary began to tremble frantically; thin white smoke rose from the edges of the pages, and charred marks appeared on the leather cover.
The ink scurried messily across the paper, the once-elegant handwriting becoming scrawled and terrified.
"Stop."
"Stop."
"Do you want to destroy it?"
"If you destroy the diary, you will lose an extremely valuable ally."
This sentence was written extremely quickly, the letters almost running together into a single line.
The remnant soul was using its last bit of reason to make a final negotiation.
Cassius watched those terrified words.
The corner of his mouth moved slightly.
Then he slowly withdrew the magic from his fingertips.
The diary went limp on the table, pages spread out haphazardly, and there was no further movement.
"I thought you could hold out for two more seconds."
Cassius finally spoke, his voice sounding exceptionally clear in the quiet basement.
He picked up the quill beside him and dipped it into the ink bottle.
"The integrity of the soul fragment inside you is about six percent."
He wrote the first line on a blank page of the diary.
"The magic circuit sustaining your existence has severely aged, and the efficiency of the internal energy circulation is less than one-tenth of its prime."
The second line.
"In your current state, you can't even consume a second-year student."
The third line.
"Your so-called ally value is equal to zero in front of me."
The fourth line.
The tip of the quill made a rustling sound on the paper.
The diary was silent for a long time.
So long that Cassius thought the remnant soul inside had been so frightened that it had completely lost the ability to respond.
Then, a line of crooked handwriting appeared below the words he had written.
"What exactly are you?"
This time, Riddle's remnant soul did not use that elegant, Hogwarts-prefect-style phrasing again.
It couldn't even maintain the facade in its choice of words.
Fear had torn a hole in its dignity.
Cassius put down the quill and leaned back in his chair, staring at that line of text for a moment.
"Someone who can decide how long you live."
He picked up the pen again.
"The game can begin."
Chapter 103: The Bait from a Fragmented Soul and the Negotiation for Power
The diary went silent for almost a minute.
Cassius was not in a hurry.
He rested his quill on the edge of the ink bottle, leaning back in his chair and waiting.
The Dual-Soul Furnace maintained low-power operation, continuously scanning the energy fluctuations of the fragmented soul inside the diary.
That fragment of a soul was undergoing an intense psychological struggle.
Cassius read a pattern of three emotions alternating from the frequency and amplitude of the fluctuations.
Fear, anger, deliberation.
Fear accounted for sixty percent.
This proportion pleased him greatly.
Ink traces finally reappeared on the paper.
This time, the handwriting appeared very slowly; each letter was written with extreme caution, and some strokes even showed signs of repeated modification.
Riddle's fragmented soul recovered some of its thinking ability after a brief moment of fear.
"You said you could decide how long I live."
"This means you don't intend to destroy me yet."
"This also means there's something you need from me."
"So my question is..."
"What do you need?"
Cassius looked at these four lines of text.
"Finally, something smart."
He wrote his reply on the paper.
"Since you still have value, I can keep you for now."
"But you have to prove you're worth keeping first."
The diary's ink paused for about ten seconds.
Then a new passage of text began to seep out from deep within the paper, much faster than before, and the handwriting regained some of its former fluidity.
Riddle had made a decision.
But his decision came with a carefully designed trap.
"I can give you everything a Slytherin heir deserves."
"The location of the Chamber of Secrets."
"The method to control the Basilisk."
"And the way to obtain its power."
"In exchange,"
The ink paused here.
"You need to help me restore my physical form."
"Just one living person's life force is enough."
"A Muggle-born."
"No one will care."
Cassius looked at these words.
He sneered inwardly.
This fragmented soul still hadn't given up its attempt at self-preservation.
Using information about the Chamber of Secrets as bait to gain a host and restore its power.
This rhetoric might have fooled a teenage girl fifty years ago.
Before him, it wasn't even a joke.
He picked up his quill, dipped it in the ink, and the nib drew crisp, clear lines on the paper.
"A fragment without even a complete soul."
"You think you're worthy of negotiating terms?"
This sentence was written directly below the bait.
The diary fell silent.
After a while, new handwriting, filled with suppressed anger, appeared.
"You don't know what you're refusing."
"I am the Wizard who has gone the furthest in history."
"The knowledge I possess is enough to rewrite the rules of the magic world."
"And you treat me with such brutality."
"You will regret it."
Cassius looked at this text filled with pride and bluster.
He wrote only one word on the paper.
"Nonsense."
Then he reinserted the magic probe into the diary's spine.
The diary let out a tremor that was almost a scream.
This time, the power was even higher than before.
Two thousandths.
The edges of the pages began to curl and yellow, and the scorch marks on the leather cover expanded by a full circle.
The fragmented soul's writing twisted and struggled wildly on the paper, letters deforming and blurring, the ink bleeding into unrecognizable smudges.
"Enough."
"Enough."
"I'll tell."
"I'll tell everything."
Cassius withdrew his magic.
"That's better."
He wrote his command on the paper.
"Write down everything you know about the Chamber of Secrets."
"How to open it."
"Internal structural map."
"The Basilisk's species, size, weaknesses."
"Rules for transferring control."
"Do not omit a single word."
"In exchange, I won't destroy you."
"For now."
The diary was silent for about thirty seconds.
Then the ink began to spread across the pages in large areas.
Lines of detailed information quickly appeared, the handwriting restored to neatness, but the spacing between strokes was tighter than normal, indicating that the writer's mental state was still under high tension.
"The entrance is in the girls' lavatory on the second floor."
"On the copper tap of the third sink, there's an extremely small snake-like carving, barely visible to the naked eye."
"You need to speak 'Open' in Parseltongue to that snake."
"The sink will automatically separate, revealing a vertical pipe entrance."
Cassius took out a blank piece of parchment and placed it nearby, using another pen to simultaneously record key points.
"The pipe leads directly to the drainage system beneath the Castle's foundations."
"You will pass through a stone-lined tunnel about three hundred meters long."
"There's a collapsed section in the middle of the tunnel that needs to be cleared of rubble to pass."
"At the end of the tunnel is a giant circular door, carved with seven intertwined silver snakes."
"It requires a second use of Parseltongue to open."
Cassius's pen did not stop.
"Inside the Chamber of Secrets is a long hall, with six stone pillars carved with snake patterns on each side."
"The floor is covered with shallow standing water."
"At the end of the hall is a giant statue of Salazar Slytherin, over twenty meters tall."
"The Basilisk resides within the statue's mouth."
"To summon it, you need to speak'Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the four founders' in Parseltongue to the statue's face."
Cassius circled this summoning phrase.
"The Basilisk's species."
He pressed for more information in the diary.
"Basilisk."
"A female individual personally bred by Salazar Slytherin a thousand years ago."
"Approximately twenty meters long."
"Possesses a deadly gaze; looking directly into its eyes causes instant death."
"Indirectly seeing its facial image causes permanent petrification."
"Its scales can withstand most magic attacks, including high-level Reducto and cutting curses."
"It has only one known weakness."
The ink paused here.
"A rooster's crow is fatal to a Basilisk."
Cassius read this information and processed it in his mind.
What would he need a rooster for?
His own attack power was more effective than a hundred roosters combined.
"Basilisk's control."
He continued to press.
"Parseltongue is the only command channel."
"As Slytherin's creation, it will obey anyone who can speak Parseltongue."
"When multiple Parseltongue speakers issue conflicting commands simultaneously,"
"Priority depends on the speaker's magic strength."
"The stronger the magic, the more stable the control."
This information made Cassius's gaze linger on the paper for two extra seconds.
Priority depends on magic strength.
Even if there was only one person on this planet who could contend with him for Basilisk control—that Potter boy inherited a remnant of Parseltongue talent from his mother's bloodline—his total magic was less than one percent of Cassius's.
No threat.
He wrote the last question on the paper.
"In which organ is the Basilisk's essence blood stored?"
The diary was silent for a moment.
"This is a strange question."
A hint of confusion appeared in Riddle's handwriting.
"Ordinary Wizards seek the Basilisk's power by controlling or utilizing its deadly gaze."
"What do you want its essence blood for?"
"You only need to answer."
Cassius's handwriting was utterly cold.
The diary was silent for a few seconds, then the ink flowed again.
"A Basilisk has two hearts."
"The main heart is in the center of the chest cavity, responsible for driving blood circulation and maintaining vital signs."
"The secondary heart is located one-third of the way down the tail, its function is to filter and concentrate the magic essence within the body."
"The thousand-year essence blood is stored in the blood sinuses around the secondary heart."
"The blood there contains an extremely high concentration of magic essence, is deep purple in color, and its temperature is close to boiling point."
"But I must warn you, that blood is highly corrosive to the human body; direct contact with skin will cause..."
Cassius didn't wait for it to finish writing.
He closed the diary.
"Pleasure working with you."
He branded these four words onto the cover with his fingertip; the characters embedded in the leather glowed with a faint blue luminescence.
He locked the diary in the iron box under the table and reread the information recorded on the parchment.
"Chamber of Secrets, Basilisk, secondary heart, deep purple essence blood, near boiling point."
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
The Dual-Soul Furnace began to operate at high speed, constructing a three-dimensional model of the Chamber of Secrets in his mind.
According to the size data provided by Riddle, the hall was about fifty meters long, ten meters wide, and fifteen meters high.
This was a semi-enclosed, long, narrow space.
If the Four-Channel Shunt were used for full-power output in such an environment, the magic pulse rebound rate would be between seven and nine percent.
Acceptable.
However, the Basilisk's twenty-meter length meant it could perform high-speed serpentine maneuvers within the hall, which would significantly reduce the single-shot hit rate.
Therefore, the tactical approach should be to first restrict its movement with a Gravity Field, then use high-frequency firepower to penetrate its scales, and finally precisely locate the secondary heart for blood extraction.
The entire process was expected to take no more than ninety seconds.
As the simulation reached the third minute,
The magic defense barrier of Malfoy Manor let out a sharp wail.
Blinding red light illuminated the basement walls.
The flames of the three oil lamps flickered violently simultaneously.
This was the highest level of intrusion alert.
Cassius opened his eyes.
The last time this barrier alerted was when Xenophiliusarrived with Luna two hours early, poking at an anthill by the entrance.
That was just a yellow alert.
This time, it was red.
Someone was forcibly assaulting the Manor's defensive array.
Chapter 104: Uninvited Guests and the Honor of the House
Lucius stood before the magic mirror at the end of the second-floor corridor.
This bronze-colored mirror, embedded in an oak frame, was connected to all the surveillance arrays around the manor's perimeter, capable of projecting real-time images within a two-hundred-meter radius.
In the reflection, six Wizards wearing red robes stood outside the manor's wrought-iron gates.
On each of their chests was pinned the silver badge of the Ministry of Magic's Department of Magical Law Enforcement, engraved with the pattern of crossed wands and scales.
Lucius recognized the person leading them.
Robards.
Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a former Auror, known within the Ministry for his ruthless methods and unforgiving nature.
He led the team that raided the contraband trading den at the Nott residence last year; after the operation, he even removed the door knocker from the Nott family's front door as evidence.
He had absolutely no friendship with the House of Malfoy.
Being sent specifically meant this was definitely not a courtesy call.
Lucius grabbed his sterling silver snake-headed cane and strode down the spiral staircase, his leather shoes making sharp, rapid clicking sounds against the marble steps.
Narcissa walked out of the dining room, still holding an unfinished cup of black tea.
"What happened?"
"People from the Ministry of Magic. Six of them."
A muscle tightened along Lucius's cheekbone.
"Robards is leading them."
Narcissa placed her teacup on the side cabinet in the corridor.
"Has Fudge gone mad?"
"Not mad, just completely enraged by the fact that Cassiusrefused to see him last time."
Lucius called Dobby over.
"Go tell Draco to stay upstairs and not to come down."
Dobby, clutching a stack of freshly ironed tablecloths, nodded tremblingly.
"Narcissa, you too. Go back to the side parlor and close the door."
Narcissa glanced at him without saying much, turned, and went into the side parlor, taking the cup of black tea with her.
Lucius straightened his robes and confirmed that the slender wand inside his snake-headed cane could be drawn at any moment, then strode toward the manor's front door with two short House-elves in tow.
Robards outside the door had clearly been waiting for a while.
His red robes were dampened by the night dew, his boots were stained with mud from the lawn, and his expression was one of official, detached indifference.
Through the iron gate, he held up a piece of parchment stamped with the Ministry of Magic's purple seal.
"Good evening, Mr. Malfoy."
Robards unfolded the parchment and held it up toward the iron gate.
"We have received a report alleging that forbidden Dark Arts objects are hidden within Malfoy Manor."
"This is a search warrant personally signed by MinisterCornelius Fudge."
"Please open the gate and cooperate with our work."
Lucius stood inside the gate, motionless.
He looked at the parchment through the bars of the iron gate.
Fudge's signature was in the bottom right corner, as scrawled as if someone had held his wrist and forced him to sign in a hurry.
But there was a line of small text in the annotation section at the bottom of the warrant.
It was a different handwriting.
Sharp and angular, every letter looked as if it had been carved with a knife.
Lucius recognized it as a handwritten note from Rufus Scrimgeour.
"This search involves a national security assessment; the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has priority for handling."
So this wasn't just Fudge acting out of shame and anger because he had been refused an audience.
This was the hawks of the Ministry of Magic seizing an opportunity to make a move.
Fudge wanted to save face; Scrimgeour wanted to gather intelligence.
The two of them, each getting what they wanted, had joined forces and sent six fully armed Aurors to knock on the door of the House of Malfoy in the middle of the night.
Lucius slammed his snake-headed cane heavily against the bluestone of the porch.
The manor's defensive wards were activated by this blow, emitting a low hum.
The eyes of the silver snake relief on the iron gate lit up, hissing with a threatening sound.
Pale gold defensive runes lit up on the tops of the stone pillars on either side of the gate.
"Malfoy Manor was built in 1066 AD."
Lucius's voice was not loud, but every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
"For over nine hundred years, no outsider has ever stepped through this gate without an invitation."
He lifted his chin, his gray eyes looking down at the Aurors outside the gate.
"What makes you think you can make an exception today?"
"Go back and tell Fudge."
"If he wants to completely break ties with the House of Malfoy, I would be more than happy to confront him in the Wizengamot chamber."
Robards sneered.
"Mr. Malfoy, the Minister is simply performing his public duties according to the law."
He refolded the warrant and put it into his breast pocket.
"If you refuse to cooperate, we have the right to use forceful measures."
He gestured to the five Aurors behind him.
"This warrant authorizes us to use force to break through private defensive wards if necessary."
"I do not wish for things to reach that point."
"But if you insist."
Robards drew his wand.
The five people behind him drew their weapons at almost the same time.
Six wands were aimed at the iron gate.
Lucius's knuckles turned white as he gripped his snake-headed cane.
The manor's defensive wards had been laid by the elder Lucius, who had hired four top-tier spellcasters and spent three months setting them up; in terms of defensive level, they ranked in the top ten among all private manors in England.
But under the combined attack of six well-trained, high-level Aurors, they could hold for at most thirty minutes.
After thirty minutes, they would march openly into every room of the House of Malfoy, turning over everything from the master bedroom to the storage room, searching from the attic to the cellar.
Including the underground vault.
Lucius knew better than anyone what was in that vault.
Just as Lucius was gripping his cane, calculating how much time he had to move the sensitive items.
Rapid footsteps came from behind him.
Draco ran out from the hall.
He hadn't listened to Dobby.
He saw the fully armed Aurors in red robes outside the gate, saw the wands they were holding up, and saw his father's back as he stood alone in front of the iron gate, gripping his snake-headed cane.
His face paled for a moment.
But he did not stop.
He remembered that back that had stepped across the wall of black fire in the forbidden area.
He remembered what his younger brother had said to him in the dungeon.
"Draco, your enemies will not wait for you to be ready."
He gripped the wand in his pocket and walked to stand behind Lucius.
"Draco, I told you to stay upstairs."
Lucius lowered his voice, his tone stern and brooking no argument.
"Father, I'm not leaving."
Draco's voice trembled slightly, but his heels were nailed to the ground, and he did not retreat half a step.
"This is the gate of the House of Malfoy."
"I am a Malfoy too."
"I have the right to guard it."
Lucius turned his head to look at him.
At that moment, a complex expression flashed in his eyes.
The Draco from before last semester could not have said such things.
The Draco from before last semester would have long ago retreated to his room and pulled the covers over his head upon seeing six Aurors standing at the gate.
He didn't know what had changed his eldest son.
But he knew the source of that change was in the basement at this very moment.
Robards had clearly completely lost his patience.
He waved his hand, and the five Aurors behind him raised their wands simultaneously, entering a combat-ready stance.
The tips of the six wands lit up with different colored lights at the same time.
"Then that is obstruction of justice, Mr. Malfoy."
Robards's tone turned icy.
"Prepare to breach the wards, standard procedure."
"Wait a moment."
The six Aurors stopped in unison.
This voice did not come from Lucius, nor did it come from Draco.
It came from the darkness deep within the manor's hall.
Quiet, flat, like the tone of someone asking to pass the salt shaker at the dinner table.
Cassius had appeared on the highest step of the porch, though it was unclear when he had arrived.
He was wearing the inner armor woven from core spider silk, with a sharply tailored black robe over it, the dark silver patterns of the spider silk faintly visible under the light of the oil lamps.
His gaze passed over Lucius and Draco, landing straight on the leading Auror outside the iron gate.
"You want to search."
Robards locked eyes with him.
In that instant, this high-level Auror, who had been struggling and climbing in the Ministry of Magic for fifteen years and had seen all sorts of storms, felt a cold, numbing sensation spread rapidly down his back, shooting from his tailbone all the way to the back of his head.
He remembered the internal briefing circulating in the Ministry that was marked with the highest security clearance.
First-year student, Wandless Magic, physically killed an adult Mountain Troll, shattered a kneecap with one kick, destructive power equivalent to an adult Auror's full-force Reducto.
He had sneered when he first saw that briefing in the break room, thinking the intelligence department was exaggerating.
Now, the subject he had sneered at was standing three meters away, looking at him.
"Go ahead."
Cassius walked down the steps, one step at a time.
His footsteps were light, but the sound of each step on the bluestone was clearly transmitted to the ears of everyone present, including the six adult Wizards outside the iron gate who were gripping their wands tightly.
"Defeat me."
Chapter 105: A Teaching Demonstration of Six Shots per Second
Robards froze in place the moment he heard those words.
He stared at the boy walking toward him from behind the iron gate for about three seconds.
An eleven-year-old kid.
Wearing black robes.
No wand in hand.
He hadn't even raised his hand.
And yet he claimed he would take on an elite Auror squad single-handedly.
Robards glanced back at his five colleagues, who were looking at each other in bewilderment.
The tips of two of their wands had already begun to tremble slightly.
"Lucius, is this also how you Malfoys educate your children?"
Robards turned his head, his tone carrying undisguised mockery.
"Letting an undergraduate child come out to take the fall for you."
Lucius opened his mouth to say something.
Cassius had already walked up to his side.
"Father, Brother."
"Step back."
"Watch closely; this is the correct way to use power."
His voice wasn't loud when he said this, but Lucius and Draco simultaneously felt an extremely faint tremor from the bluestone slabs beneath their feet.
Lucius hesitated for a moment.
He looked down at his younger son.
Those eyes shimmered with a very faint, deep blue luster in the night, devoid of any warmth or superfluous emotion.
Lucius silently took three steps back.
He grabbed Draco's arm.
"What are you doing? Let me go!"
Draco struggled, trying to rush forward.
"Shut up."
Lucius's voice was kept extremely low, so only Draco could hear.
"Watch your brother."
"Don't blink."
Draco was stunned.
He looked up at the back of the figure standing inside the iron gate.
That back, half a head shorter than him, yet casting the longest shadow over his life.
Cassius bypassed Lucius's position and walked directly to the front of the iron gate.
He didn't open the gate.
He just stood on this side of the gate, looking through the wrought-iron bars at the six adult Wizards holding wands outside.
"I'll say it one last time."
His voice passed through the gaps in the iron gate and reached everyone's ears.
"Turn around and leave; there's still time."
Robards gritted his teeth.
He was being threatened to his face in front of five subordinates.
If he turned and left now, the story would spread throughout the Ministry of Magic by the next day, and he would never be able to hold his head up in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement again.
Moreover, he had a legal Search Warrant in his hand.
He had the dual authorization of the Minister and the Senior Undersecretary behind him.
He was performing his official duties.
"Formation."
He issued the command.
The six Aurors immediately adjusted their positions, forming a standard triangular offensive formation—three in front and three in back for mutual cover, with two meters between each person to facilitate dodging and cross-fire.
Six wands were simultaneously aimed at Cassius inside the iron gate.
"Last warning, Malfoy kid."
Robards raised his wand to eye level, the tip emitting a blinding white light.
"Leave the gate and let your father come out to talk."
"Otherwise, we have the right to treat you as a hostile target."
"The spells of the Law Enforcement Department don't distinguish by age."
Cassius didn't move.
He just let his hands hang naturally at his sides.
The Dual-Soul Furnace inside his body switched to tactical output mode, and four magic channels were simultaneously activated and preheated.
His body temperature began to rise.
The air began to distort.
The silver snake relief on the iron gate let out an extremely faint wail, and then the golden light in its eyes completely extinguished.
The defensive runes on the stone pillars on both sides of the gate also dimmed at the same time.
The eight-hundred-year-old Malfoy Family defensive barrier yielded of its own accord the moment Cassius stood before the iron gate.
It wasn't broken.
It made way.
Because the core magic source of the barrier sensed an existence far exceeding its own load limit and proactively shut down all output circuits to avoid an overload collapse.
Like a stream meeting the ocean, the only thing it could do was merge into it.
Outside the gate, Robards noticed the change in the runes on the iron gate.
He didn't know what it meant.
But he knew he couldn't wait any longer.
"Attack."
Six beams of differently colored spells shot through the gaps in the iron gate bars toward Cassius.
Two Stupefy spells, dark red.
Two Expelliarmus spells, deep crimson.
One Incarcerous spell, silver-white.
One Petrificus Totalus, deep blue.
The six spells wove into an airtight net, covering all the space within a three-meter radius around Cassius.
There was nowhere to hide.
And Cassius indeed did not hide.
An invisible magic shield formed of its own accord a foot in front of him.
No incantation.
No gestures.
No wand.
The six spells crashed into the shield and dissipated without stirring even a ripple; the condensed magic was decomposed into fine points of light that drifted away in the night wind.
Robards' fingers tightened around his wand.
Something was wrong.
This wasn't a Shield Charm.
No matter how strong a Shield Charm was, it would produce vibrations and recoil; the impact upon being hit would be transmitted to the caster, causing them to step back or their arm to go numb.
But this shield hadn't even wobbled.
Those spells hadn't been blocked; they had been swallowed directly.
"Too slow."
Cassius shook his head.
He raised his right hand, pointing his index finger at the group of Aurors outside the gate.
A tiny, deep blue light lit up at his fingertip.
In the dim night, that single point of light was incredibly bright.
Robards' spine went completely cold.
He didn't know what was about to happen, but his body made a judgment before his brain could.
"Defend!"
He roared.
The six Aurors exerted all their strength to prop up a translucent joint defensive barrier.
The power of six wands converged to form an arched wall of light, with complex rune arrays flowing across it.
This was the highest-level group defense technique in Auror training.
A six-person version had once withstood a full-power Blasting Curse cast by an instructor on the training grounds, with only a single crack appearing on the light wall.
The next second.
Dense pulses of blue magic poured out from the tip of Cassius's index finger.
The roar tore through the tranquility of the manor.
Six shots per second.
Each shot was a highly compressed wandless Reducto; the blue projectiles trailed scorching exhaust flames, hitting the same point on the light wall in rapid succession.
The joint defensive barrier was covered in a dense web of cracks within the first second.
The Aurors behind it could clearly hear the rune arrays inside the light wall making a creaking, shattering sound.
In the second second, the cracks expanded to eighty percent of the entire light wall.
The rune arrays failed completely, and the brightness of the light wall dropped sharply.
In the third second, the barrier exploded.
Shattered fragments of light flew everywhere like ice shards.
The magic pulses that followed immediately hit the individual shields on the six Aurors without hindrance.
The individual shields didn't even last half a second before shattering into dust.
The six Aurors were knocked to the ground by the surging shockwave.
They rolled and groaned on the lawn in front of the manor, their red robes rendered unrecognizable by mud and grass, their wands all knocked away and scattered in the flower beds and bushes five or six meters away.
From beginning to end, Cassius hadn't moved his feet a single inch.
His right index finger remained in a pointing position, the blue light at the tip slowly fading.
The iron gate swung open on its own amidst the lingering magic ripples around him.
The hinges let out a low creak and then fell completely silent.
He stepped over the threshold and walked out.
The night wind blew his black robes.
He stopped in front of Robards, who was sprawled on the lawn.
He looked down at this senior Auror, whose face was covered in mud and who had a blade of grass hanging from the bridge of his nose.
"The Minister's Search Warrant."
He bent down and pulled the parchment with the purple seal from Robards' breast pocket.
He opened it and took a look.
Fudge's signature, Scrimgeour's annotations.
He loosened his fingers.
The parchment fluttered down, landing on Robards' face and completely blocking his vision.
Robards used a trembling hand to brush the parchment off his face.
Cassius had already bent down and picked up the wand he had dropped on the ground.
Holly, Unicorn hair core, twelve and three-quarter inches; Robards had used it since he was sixteen, seventeen years now.
Cassius gripped both ends of the wand with two fingers.
With a gentle application of force.
The sound of snapping was exceptionally piercing in the night wind.
The Unicorn hair inside the core let out a faint wail at the moment of breaking, then turned into a wisp of silver light and dissipated into the air.
"Go back and tell Fudge."
He tossed the two pieces of scrap wood onto Robards' chest.
"Next time you come, bring enough people."