Nipping a World-Class Crisis in the Bud

Hagrid could be a little muddleheaded at times, but when it came to matters of principle, he had always known where he stood.

Once he realized that the Magical Creature he had bred might bring about a world-class disaster, he agreed to Roger's request despite his reluctance.

Seeing this, Roger nodded, but instead of immediately destroying the Fear Demons, he bound the ones Hagrid had bred with spells and placed a magical lockdown over the surrounding area.

He then left the hut beside the Forbidden Forest and headed straight for Hogwarts Castle.

After returning to Hogwarts, Roger went to the Divination classroom.

Divination was an elective for third-years, and he had never taken it as a first-year.

"Professor Trelawney, could you come out for a moment?"

The instant Trelawney saw Roger, she could not help but shiver.

After all, she was a half-baked diviner who made a living off the incomplete talent inherited from her seer ancestor. Her predictions worked sometimes and failed other times. Facing a truly powerful seer, she found it difficult to stand tall.

Roger was not familiar with Sybill Trelawney, who taught the course. When he suddenly came knocking, Trelawney thought this genuine seer had come to smash her livelihood.

Fortunately, Roger quickly explained why he was there, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Roger had the letter Dumbledore had left behind. It was not merely a letter of introduction, but also a magical item that could mobilize many of Hogwarts' resources, effectively granting him half a headmaster's authority.

Roger instructed Sybill Trelawney to suspend her classes for the time being and summon the students she believed possessed genuine divinatory ability.

Professor Sybill Trelawney was usually a little unhinged. Most of the time in class, she engaged in "psychological divination"... the same sort of trickery used by fraudulent fortune-tellers and roadside fake priests. Nine out of ten things she said were false, but she truly did possess divinatory talent.

The prophecy concerning Harry and the Dark Lord had been her work.

Naturally, she could tell which students truly had talent for divination.

With the headmaster's token, Roger quickly assembled a team of diviners.

In divination, predicting events that had already occurred was far easier than predicting what might happen in the future.

Roger had called these people here to prevent any possible oversight and ensure that every Fear Demon still in existence was completely exterminated! Though Roger was a seer, his primary ability lay in sensing impending danger. His predictions in other areas were not entirely useless, but they did not reach the level of a "seer."

It was safer to have multiple parties verify and cross-check one another.

There was not much to say about the extermination process. One spell killed them instantly.

Fear Demons that had not fully matured were not particularly troublesome.

No matter how fierce a bird of prey might be, it was fragile while still an egg.

But it did not end with the extermination.

After a screening process even more excessive than that of a biosafety level-four laboratory, Roger had Hagrid look for the little girl named Luna, who could see Pestering Mites.

On the other hand, he returned to Hogwarts once more and went straight to find Professor McGonagall, the person he knew best and currently the highest-ranking member of staff at the school.

"Contact the Ministry of Magic?" Professor McGonagall's eyes widened.

"Yes. I need to speak directly with Minister Fudge and the person in charge at the Department of Mysteries," Roger said seriously.

"But given my status, my words carry little weight. I hope you can convey what I have to say on my behalf."

What Roger intended to do next was simple: inform the Ministry of Magic and the Department of Mysteries about the existence of Fear Demons and the harm they might cause.

Although the Department of Mysteries was nominally subordinate to the British Ministry of Magic, it had actually been established before the Ministry itself. Even the Minister of Magic could not always interfere fully in all of the Department's internal affairs.

This department, which researched the most cutting-edge fields of wizarding civilization—time, death, souls, the universe, and more—possessed a certain degree of independence. It was best to inform both sides.

Of course, to avoid legal trouble and other potential consequences, Roger would not mindlessly reveal every detail.

He would suggest that the Ministry of Magic seal the information on Fear Demons with magic similar to the Fidelius Charm, much like certain internal research records of the Department of Mysteries that had never been made public, and create a targeted contingency plan.

As for Fear Demons themselves, he would only state that they were bred from Boggarts and another Magical Creature. He would not reveal that the other creature was Pestering Mites, nor would he disclose any other details.

So long as the Ministry of Magic strengthened its control over Boggarts, Pestering Mites could not make trouble on their own... If Hagrid had not used special methods, these two creatures would never have crossed paths in nature.

As for Luna, he would deal with that afterward. It would not just be information control; to keep Luna from encountering unnecessary trouble because of this, he would also release some false intelligence.

...Lies and strategic deception were not the same thing. Roger hated lies, but he was not that rigid.

"Why?" Professor McGonagall did not quite understand.

Since Roger had already settled the matter, there was no need to bring it to the Ministry of Magic, was there?

Protecting one's own was also something of an unwritten convention in this small, insular wizarding society... Sometimes, unless a situation had become impossible to contain, people would not readily escalate it to a higher authority.

Understanding what Professor McGonagall meant, Roger replied, "Covering it up is not the best way to solve a problem."

If Hagrid could create something like a Fear Demon, then others could as well. Roger also did not believe that, throughout the countless years ahead of human civilization, Luna would be the only person capable of seeing "Pestering Mites."

Not only in the future—perhaps there had been ancient wizards who could see them too, only they had called them by another name... Perhaps Pestering Mites were what some people in the East called Inner Demons?

What if, someday in the future, someone happened to meet both Hagrid's and Luna's conditions, and Fear Demons appeared again—then spread quietly? "Once we recognize the possibility of a crisis, we have to resolve it. We cannot let our generation recognize a problem, or cause one, then simply ignore it and allow every danger to quietly ferment until it becomes uncontrollable, only to dump it on those who come after us, can we?"

So it was better to have the Department of Mysteries come up with a relevant contingency plan.

"If you do this, you may bring some... trouble upon yourself."

"I know." Roger interrupted Professor McGonagall's warning.

Back on the Middle East battlefield, Roger had had the chance to leave, but he had not. He chose to honor his promise and fight until the very end.

At the Wizengamot, having a lawyer defend him might have been safer, but Roger did not want to place his life and death in the hands of someone he could not trust. So even though he knew the outcome might not be good, he still defended himself and chose his own fate.

Roger had said from the very beginning that he was someone who feared death. He had never denied it.

But... to Roger, "self-will" was also part of life.

Doing things that violated his bottom line and becoming someone he despised was, in Roger's eyes, no different from death! If I am no longer myself, what use is this body? Therefore, Roger would always fight and would never do what he believed to be wrong.

Professor McGonagall looked into Roger's calm, unfathomable eyes, nodded, and rose to contact the Ministry of Magic and the Department of Mysteries through Hogwarts' channels.

After the professor left, Roger rubbed his forehead as he waited for both sides to arrive.

He had suddenly remembered something.

He had provided the idea and part of the technique, allowing Hagrid to accidentally create a Magical Creature with such catastrophic potential. If something like this could happen once, then it could absolutely happen a second time.

It seemed he could not be too casual about outsourcing his path to others.

"Harry..." Thinking of Harry, who might come looking for him, Roger frowned slightly.

In a sense, Harry was the protagonist of a certain strand of fate.

If Harry truly began cultivating the path of time-space magic and something went wrong, Roger did not think the trouble he could cause would be any less than Hagrid's.

"I need to put some safeguards in place."