"The Lazy" Couple

This small house on Rich Street is a dream home for many, although its owner can no longer afford to live there.

The spacious and luxurious living room is brightly lit and fully equipped with various appliances and furniture. The combination of white and natural wood tones creates a harmonious and warm atmosphere.

However, the homeowner completely ruined the atmosphere of the house.

On the spacious sofa, a man wearing glasses and a smoking shirt sat on the left. From Sean's perspective, the man's posture was slightly hunched, but his hands were placed neatly on his knees.

Beside him was his wife, a woman wearing a floral print long dress, her legs together and slightly tilted, her hands clasped in the middle of her thighs, maintaining the same expression as her husband.

Opposite them was a television that was not turned on, and the dessert box on the coffee table was open, but the desserts inside had not been touched.

Even more bizarrely, Sean came downstairs and observed the entire living room, watching the couple, for three or four minutes. During this time, the man and woman didn't move an inch, not even blinking.

If it weren't for the fact that their chests were still rising and falling rhythmically, Sean would have thought they were already dead.

"Imperius Curse? Or is it a phenomenon of amnesia?" Sean pondered to himself.

However, I have seen many wizards in this situation, but none of them are as strange as these two.

Most importantly, these two are clearly just ordinary Muggle.

Sean continued to carefully conceal his presence while Dave focused on sensing the room. Once he confirmed that there was no fourth person in the room, he cautiously began to investigate.

The invisible wand waved gently, and after a while Sean put the wand away in confusion.

There were no Defensive Magic, no trap spells, and not even warning spells.

With his current strength and keen magical perception, Sean can detect most spells—it would be incredible if a spell he couldn't detect appeared in the homes of two Muggle.

But something was clearly wrong, so Sean didn't let his guard down. After casting a few spells, he slowly walked toward the couple on the sofa.

As he got closer, Sean frowned.

I couldn't see it clearly from a distance, but now that I'm closer, I can see that Lloyd Couple's faces have developed an unhealthy paleness, and the exposed skin on their collarbones, hands, cheeks, and so on has begun to sag.

It felt as if we had been going through a long period of food shortages.

"Um?"

Sean sniffed the air and looked down at the dessert box on the coffee table. Inside the open box were untouched cream puffs, and a distinct sour smell could be detected when he got close.

Clearly, the box of cream puffs had been there for several days, meaning that after the Lloyd Couple bought them, they simply opened it, placed it on the coffee table, and then never touched it again.

Sean looked around again and found that in a corner of the living room that was not easily noticed, there were all kinds of expired desserts and fruits. The living room seemed to have been sprayed with air freshener, and you could hardly smell the rotten smell of the expired products if you were not paying attention.

Sean walked to the dining room opposite the living room, where an even stronger, sour stench assaulted his nostrils.

Looking around, the restaurant floor was covered with all sorts of ingredients: fruits, vegetables, steaks, whole chickens—you name it. And all these ingredients had one thing in common: they were all rotten in varying degrees.

Sean walked into the restaurant, pinched his nose, and examined the ingredients.

The food packaging hadn't been opened, indicating it was placed on the ground as soon as it was bought. In such hot weather, the food fermented and rotted inside the packaging, with nauseating green liquid dripping onto the floor, and many maggots wriggling wildly inside the packaging.

Enduring the stench, Sean checked the time labels on the ingredients. He could see that the ingredients were generally purchased every two or three days, which was a normal frequency for a normal family to go out shopping.

However, none of the ingredients were touched.

Sean walked around the food scattered on the floor and gently opened the refrigerator. Sure enough, the refrigerator was also full of things. Looking at the labels, the oldest box of tomatoes had been bought half a year ago. Now, those originally bright red fruits had long since rotted and molded, but the low temperature environment had prevented them from becoming even more disgusting.

Sean carefully examined the items and found that the oldest ingredients were purchased about six months ago. In other words, excluding the Lloyd Couple discarding overly rotten ingredients, this phenomenon started about six months ago.

What's going on...?

Sean's pupils contracted slightly.

He hadn't forgotten that there should have been another person in the house, Lonte Lloyd, the son of the Lloyd Couple. The boy had gone to Durmstrang for school, and it should have been a holiday time, but judging from the current situation, it seemed that Lonte Lloyd hadn't returned at all.

Six months ago, due to the impact of the Time Disappearance Incident, universities across the country postponed their enrollment period until after Christmas.

In other words, this strange situation arose in this otherwise normal family after Lonte Lloyd was admitted to Durmstrang!

The Lloyd Couple were clearly affected by a curse or some kind of magical power, but given Sean's mastery of all kinds of Dark Arts, even the most obscure curses and Dark Arts could not achieve such an effect.

Another curse I've never seen before...

Sean neither revealed his form nor spoke; he inquired about Dave's identity through thought.

"What's wrong with those two's heads right now?"

Dave seemed to take a deep sniff, then said with some confusion, "It smells normal, but it's strange, it can't even be described as calm."

The Swooping Evil had a limited vocabulary, and it pondered for a while before coming up with a thought, "Oh—for example, your brain, it smells so good, the smell is like it has a life force that will rush straight into my nose, and then dance and cheer inside, enticing me to eat this brain."

Sean: "..."

"Let's get down to business. You still haven't given up on my brain, have you?"

"But it really smells amazing..." Dave said, sounding a little aggrieved, before continuing to explain, "The smell is so strong it seems to dance. If you're angry, the smell will dance more intensely, and you'll even get a spicy kick in; if you're happy, the dance will be even more enthusiastic and the movements will be much bigger."

"As for the others, they don't smell as good as you, but their smells also move. Even those two stinky brains we encountered before, their stench moves, it spreads, and it even makes movements that match their mood."

Those two rotten brains refer to Crabbe and Goyle...

Dave's thoughts were tinged with obvious doubt. "These two don't smell too bad, but this smell doesn't react at all. It's like, it's like—oh, like their current movements, the smell is sitting there motionless. I've never smelled such a... such a lazy smell."

Sean frowned and looked at the Lloyd Couple. Dave's explanation, if explained in another way, was that the taste of the brain might depend on a person's IQ, EQ, and so on, while the act of tasting it represented the activity level of the brain.

Even a rotten brain can still keep thinking.

In addition, even when you are sleeping, your brain is still working and active, so normally, apart from people who have already lost their lives, no one will experience the "smell not move" situation that Dave described.

Whether it's Imperius Curse or a woven memory.

Sean circled the room invisibly for a moment, then, without revealing himself or taking out his wand at the Lloyd Couple, he summoned Naja.

"Honey, could you go to the door and ring this family's doorbell for me?"

The Occamy shrank to its smallest size and swiftly slithered out of the crack in the door.

Soon, the doorbell rang. Sean remained invisible, standing still and quietly observing the two people's reactions.

The doorbell sounded like a start button; the "ding-dong ding-dong" sound seemed to have pressed a start button for the Lloyd Couple.

The blank expressions on their faces vanished instantly, replaced by normal smiles.

Mr. Lloyd straightened his collar, then stood up and walked toward the door.

Mrs. Lloyd quickly picked up the box of expired cream puffs from the coffee table and skillfully placed it in a corner where the visitors wouldn't see it. At the same time, she turned on the television, and finally, there was some sound in the room.

After doing all this, Mrs. Lloyd sighed, not in a low mood, but in a very lethargic way, but one that she had to get moving.

Lloyd turned his neck slightly and then put on a warm smile, which was probably the most standard smile the house owner gave when welcoming guests.

"Honey, who's here?" she called out enthusiastically toward the door.

At the doorway, Mr. Lloyd, with a smile on his face, was looking around.

Even though there was no one at the door, he still had a smile on his face.

Hello, where are you?

Hello, where are you?

Hello, where are you?

The smiling man looked around the doorway, but when he didn't find the guest he was supposed to greet, he closed the door and went back inside.

"Nobody's here."

Mr. Lloyd's words were like a power button; before the words had even finished, the warm smiles of the man and woman welcoming the guests vanished without a trace.

They returned to the sofa expressionless, reverting to their original postures and expressions.

On the television, the host's voice continued to speak in a measured tone. The two people appeared to be watching the television, but their pupils were not focused at all. No one picked up the remote control that was right next to them to turn off the television, and the box of expired cream puffs that had been hidden away lay quietly in the corner, never to be touched again.

Sean, who was invisible, watched the whole scene in silence. Now he knew how the desserts and fruits placed in various corners got to that spot.

Sean couldn't even describe the couple's situation; they seemed to be living in two different forms.

One form is their normal form. When they discover guests or someone intruding into their lives, they will greet and welcome them in a normal manner, which completely follows their previous living habits.

The other form is the current Lloyd Couple, or rather, this is their true appearance, their true appearance after being affected by some inexplicable force.

Sean couldn't even think of a good adjective for a moment, and finally found a barely acceptable way to describe it.

They were lazy and indolent to the extreme.

They are too lazy to eat, too lazy to move, too lazy to entertain themselves, too lazy to rest, and even too lazy to think.

Sean now suspects that if they didn't have to commute to work regularly, and their lunch on the way to work might be their only source of energy, the two of them might have already starved to death.

Everything they did was to maintain their former selves in front of outsiders, but once it was just the two of them, there was no need for any pretense anymore.

And all of this stemmed from their son, Lonte Lloyd, being accepted into Durmstrang.

Or rather, the source of all this is Durmstrang.

Dumbledore's hints were indeed correct; Durmstrang is definitely in big trouble now...

only...

Sean looked at the completely lifeless couple with a troubled expression. He had never seen such magic before and didn't know how to save the innocent and pitiful couple.

"Never mind, I'll just take him back to Hogwarts..." Sean thought to himself.

He raised his wand.

Stupefy

The silent spell was reduced in power by Sean, and two inconspicuous red lights struck the Lloyd Couple.

The couple remained silent and fell into a deep coma.

"Dumbledore must have a solution..."

Sean took out the Portkey and then used a spell to gently bind the couple together. He took their cold, withered hands and placed them on the Portkey, then put his own hands on it as well.

The air distorted, and that familiar feeling of weightlessness and dragging surged up.

"Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

Sean habitually began to count silently, a routine he followed when using the Portkey.

"Three..."

The habitual countdown abruptly stopped at three!

Sean felt an immense force from another direction attached to the force that was pulling him with the Portkey. That force gave Sean no time to react and pulled him and the Lloyd Couple directly towards him!

The Portkey has been intercepted?!

The idea popped into Sean's head immediately. He forcefully suppressed the feeling of weightlessness and, without any hesitation, waved his wand the moment he landed.

"Protego Diabolica Protego Diabolica!"

Blue demonic flames shot into the sky!