Jon's Speculation (Signed, Please Vote)

(This chapter involved some speculation; readers were advised to read it repeatedly.)

The three roommates went to the kitchen for a late-night snack, while Jon returned to the dormitory alone.

Though he had been sleepy to death that morning, now that it was nighttime, he was wide awake.

He had talked with Helga for nearly the whole night yesterday, so tonight's lessons were temporarily suspended. But Jon was not planning to rest. Instead, he intended to organize the results of his conversation with Helga.

He pulled two sheets of parchment from his desk drawer, picked up a quill, and dipped it in ink. He was still unaccustomed to using a quill, but with more practice, it should get much better.

Jon lightly drew a few strokes on the parchment, sketching out a timeline.

"Jon, your pie." Scaly walked in carrying a pie wrapped in a paper bag. "What are you drawing here?"

"Take a look. Can you understand it?"

Jon handed the timeline on the parchment to Scaly, only to receive a shake of his head.

"What even is this thing you drew?"

Jon looked at Scaly's confused expression, shook his head, and offered no explanation. "It's a secret."

"Fine. You always have so many secrets."

Scaly set down the pie and parchment, then patted Jon on the shoulder. "Get some rest early. Don't wear yourself out. Tomorrow's first class is Professor Snape's Potions."

"Don't worry, I'll go to bed early. You should hurry back and rest too."

After seeing Scaly out past the bed curtains, Jon bit into the pie and continued drawing the timeline.

A timeline and a magic fluctuation curve. The former was used to sort through the major events of the past thousand years, while the latter estimated the level of magic at the time based on those events.

Jon had studied some Muggle history. By tradition, whenever major events occurred in the Wizarding World, major events often occurred in the Muggle world as well.

The reverse was basically true too. The Wizarding world's lowest ebb had coincided with the decline of European theology, followed by the age when science came into its own.

"The Industrial Revolution... that should have been the lowest point of the magical environment. Then, along with technological development, the magical environment's downturn ended, and the Wizarding World's ability to survive began to recover."

"As for the beginning... it should have been the bourgeois revolutions that erupted across Europe. The first one... should have been Britain's Bill of Rights in 1689, which limited royal power and established a constitutional monarchy in which Parliament restrained the King's authority. That same year, the Wizarding World passed the International Statute of Secrecy."

"The downturn should have lasted from 1689 until around 1840. By then, Britain had benefited from the Age of Discovery, its overall strength reaching the peak of the world. Along with that came the recovery of the broader magical environment. The Wizarding World must have had a hand in no small part of the benefits Britain gained as a nation."

"After that, as the magical environment recovered, wizards grew stronger, friction between them increased, and nations changed positions as well. After all, magic had no borders, but wizards had their own countries."

The curve beneath Jon's quill had already become clear. At this moment, it maintained its steadily upward trend. Though still weak, it was far better than at its lowest point.

If one followed the timeline of the Original Work, Harry Potter and his two friends—the future Minister for Magic Hermione Granger and her husband Ron Weasley—along with classmates of the same year such as Neville Lumbaton and Draco Malfoy, would all reach the level of "lesser Dumbledores" in magical ability. Their combined total would certainly surpass two Legendary Wizards.

As Jon thought, he wrote the name Gellert Grindelwald on the parchment.

This Legendary dark wizard had been expelled from Durmstrang in 1899. That summer, he went to Britain and met the young Dumbledore. The two quickly fell in love, only to later separate because of differences in ideology.

But Grindelwald had loved only Dumbledore his entire life. There was no doubt about that.

Dumbledore was the same.

Jon had little experience with romance and had never known a love so unforgettable that it lasted a lifetime, so aside from feeling shaken, he had no other particular reaction.

"If Gellert Grindelwald had secretly pushed Germany's will from behind the scenes and indirectly started two great wars, it wouldn't be entirely implausible."

Jon drew a circle around the name and reached a verdict. "He definitely had the power to do it."

Even after reaching that conclusion, though, it was not especially useful.

Could he submit an article to The Daily Prophet and beat Rita Skeeter to publishing The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore?

Hogwarts would probably expel him next.

He was not a historian, and there was no need for him to conduct historical research. As for why he had spent so much time and effort making this timeline, half of it was for Helga to see. The other half was because Jon wanted to verify an idea of his—or rather, he wanted to predict whether something might happen next in the Wizarding World.

Leaving aside everything else, Britain at this time, and even the entire international environment, was nowhere near as peaceful as described in the Original Work.

Last year, in 1989, after the Berlin Wall in Germany was forced to fall, large numbers of East Germans controlled by the Soviet Union poured into West Germany. This sharply increased the German Muggle government's welfare and social security expenditures, directly causing Germany's fiscal deficit to soar.

Jon had not looked too deeply into this matter before. He had gathered major events in the Wizarding World before enrolling, while he had only begun gathering major events in the Muggle world during these three days after enrollment. On the one hand, he had relevant memories in his mind; on the other, Hogwarts offered Muggle Studies, so he could find related books.

Jon suspected that dark wizards in Germany had been secretly behind the fall of the Berlin Wall.

He did not know whether those dark wizards were subordinates left behind by Grindelwald or part of Voldemort's arrangements across the British Isles—either was possible. Voldemort's forces were indeed not as weak as the books had described.

No matter what, Jon believed dark wizards had been fueling the situation.

Since dark wizards had acted, their goal definitely could not have been as simple as bringing about German reunification.

If these dark wizards wanted to use the opportunity to stir up trouble, then the British Wizarding World, where Dumbledore resided, was undoubtedly the first key point they would target. Whether they were Grindelwald's followers or Voldemort's subordinates, they all held irreconcilable hatred toward Dumbledore.

That was why Jon said this was an extremely important matter.

Whether or not this was one of the signs of Voldemort's return, the British Wizarding World in the days ahead was very likely to collapse just as British society had in Jon's previous life.

By then, the magical world might not even be able to maintain its surface-level peace for long.