The End of a Gentleman

Delacroix saw the three people playing Killing Curse, and the last bit of blood on their faces faded away.

Killing Curse is placed on his peripheral.

He personally selected these people. Although they are greedy and rough on the outside, this group of people can release Killing Curse that makes people's scalp numb? Can they release Killing Curse that can feel the aura of death even dozens of meters away?

Impossible.

That means someone has tampered with you.

That UK woman arranged everything from beginning to end.

She planted something in these people.

Delacroix has been in the smuggling ring for twenty years. He knows how the curse is triggered. People are still alive, but their bodies are no longer their own.

That woman had a hidden plot on his person, without telling him, just waiting for this moment.

That's why she so happily agreed to all the conditions, including the Magical Creatures in the manor, the vintage wine in the cellar, and the market for UK.

It was all bait, and she had no intention of honoring any of the conditions from the beginning.

He thought he was hired to do a job, but in fact he was just her tool, and so were all the people under him.

UK people's internal fighting, madman's game, he was dragged into it.

But Delacroix has been doing big business for twenty years, and he has made more than one choice in the face of death.

He took a deep breath, put the wand away, and slid the wand into his cuff against his forearm, leaving his hands empty.

I straightened the front of my robe. The collar was hot due to the heat wave. The eagle-shaped brooch was also hot. I pressed it with my fingers and heated it.

Then he raised his head and looked at Regulus from a distance of thirty meters.

Trying to keep his tone as steady as possible, he shouted in English with a French accent, "Mr. Black."

Regulus's wand hung naturally, looking down at him from a high place.

The burning Magic in the sky is still maintained, Magic Power is surging in the body, and the body temperature is several degrees higher than usual.

He unleashed such fire.

He had read the description of the Flame Lasso that Dumbledore swung in the Inferi cave, and now knew what it felt like.

So he was in a bit of a state of excitement, wanting to see what the smuggler boss who fell at his feet could say.

Regulus tilted his head, and Baruk tilted his head on his shoulder.

Delacroix's tone was frank, and his eyes were frank. "What happened tonight was due to my wrong judgment. The information I received was wrong, and my understanding of you and the manor was insufficient.

I am willing to pay reasonable compensation, using my personal assets and the existing resources of the team. At the same time, I have some information on the behind-the-scenes arrangements of this operation that may be valuable to you."

As he spoke, his posture became calmer.

There were broken limbs all over the ground, and the curtain of fire above the head was still burning.

Behind him is the collapsed body of Luc, with a broken arm still oozing blood. In front of him are several core members lying in a mess, three or five peripheral members who are covered in fire and occasionally twitching, and a corpse of Killing Curse.

In the midst of all this he maintained the dignity of a businessman.

Delacroix continued, "I was misled by wrong information, and the other party used UK's commitment and Black family's internal contradictions as reasons to persuade me.

I made a wrong choice and paid the price, and I am willing to use everything I can offer to make up for this mistake."

Regulus Listen, it felt a bit fresh at first.

This person is really negotiating terms.

The severed limb was still bleeding on the ground, and the sky was still burning. He stood here adjusting his collar and talking about compensation.

He actually thought that we could still negotiate terms.

Britain and France have been fighting for hundreds of years. From Tracy to Agincourt to Waterloo, the France people always want to win back the battles they lose on the battlefield at the negotiation table.

Now this France man is the same. After being beaten to the point where only the remaining soldiers are defeated, with a sea of fire covering his head, he can still talk about compensation and information in this tone, as if this is just a business misunderstanding.

It's boring to listen to, what about compensation, what about information.

Do you think I don't know how to Legilimency? I can read whatever I want in your head, and you don't need to make a deal with me.

As for the ransom, Black family is not lacking. Can you afford a Whomping Willow with the money you have saved for twenty years?

Regulus looked into Delacroix's eyes. Under the light of the fire, his face did not respond to any message, he just looked at it.

Delacroix recognized this expression. He has seen it too many times. Buyers are not interested in your offer at all and have no interest in bargaining.

He could no longer maintain his calmness, so he swallowed and his voice became urgent. "Behind all this, there is a UK woman--"

"Bel--"

Before the uvula had time to pop out, the throat suddenly swelled from the inside, the vocal cords were squeezed into a slit, and the trachea expanded, blocking the entire larynx.

His mouth was still open, and the mouth shape for the next syllable was still in the position where the tip of his tongue was touching the roof of his mouth, but the sound could no longer come out.

Delacroix's face instantly turned red, the veins on his neck popped out, and the blood vessels on his forehead pulsated under his skin.

He reached out and grabbed his throat, his fingers dug into the skin, and his nails scratched a few bloody marks on his neck. He opened his mouth wider and stuck out his tongue, but no air came in and no air came out.

Regulus watched the whole process.

A man tries to say a name and is choked by a lump in his throat.

The pre-buried curse, the triggering condition is that name, and it's done very cleanly.

The same method as the one that triggered the curse of Killing Curse just now, I have to say, it is clever enough.

Delacroix knelt down, his knees hitting the ground, his hands still holding his throat, and the red color on his face began to turn dark purple.

The eyes protruded outward from the sockets, and the blood vessels on the surface of the eyeballs were clearly visible. His mouth opened and closed, repeating the same syllable silently.

Then his body fell forward and fell sideways to the ground.

He released his fingers from his throat, kicked his legs twice, straightened them up, and curled them up again. The suffocating twitching continued.

A decent person's last bit of dignity was stripped away in suffocation.

Regulus has roughly guessed who he is talking about.

UK, woman, Black family's internal contradictions, and the syllable that was just spoken.

But it needs to be verified again.

The figure of Regulus flashed in front of him. He squatted down and held Delacroix's head with his left hand to straighten it.

Delacroix's eyes are already turning up, the whites of the eyes are more than the pupils, and the edges of the pupils are dilated.

But he saw the boy's gray eyes looking down at him, with nothing in them.

It was this feeling of nothing that made him feel more uncomfortable than the curtain of fire above his head.

He had been a decent man for twenty years. He lost, but he was not resigned to it.

From the Cassis tavern to this ruin, from the red wine olives to the severed limbs of the fire curtain, he stepped on other people's arrangements every step of the way, and in the end he didn't even know what he had lost.

The remaining strength gathered on his eyelids, he opened his eyes and aimed his pupils at Regulus's line of sight.

His eyes were still shaking, but his gaze was fixed.

At this moment, he just wanted to maintain his last dignity.

Regulus looked at those eyes, feeling nothing at all.

Legilimency, the will sinks into the other person's memory and quickly travels between the formed pictures.

Cassis Port, private room on the second floor, backlit window, red wine and olives on the table.

A dark-haired woman sat by the window, half of her body in the sun and half in the shadows. Her accent in memory was the standard England southern upper-class accent.

The face gradually became clearer, with high cheekbones, thick black eyebrows, gray eyes, and disproportionately large pupils.

Bellatrix·Lestrange.

She looked in the direction of Regulus in Delacroix's memory, looking straight.

Just by looking at the person who looked at this memory, she knew it when she planted this memory.

The sun hit half of her face from the side, while the other half was covered by shadows. The corners of her mouth moved upward a little, but the amplitude was very small, and the corners of her eyes did not move.

She was smiling, but her smile was cold, with a kind of neurotic complacency that was deliberately suppressed but still seeping out. She was waiting for someone to come see her, and she knew who it would be.

Regulus's mouth twitched.

Unexpected, but not so surprising, Lucius said at the Malfoy Manor's family dinner that Bellatrix was quieter, talked less, and was very quiet.

At that time, he thought he had restrained himself after being defeated in Christmas Banquet, but now he sees that it was not restraint, but transformation.

Voldemort took her back and transformed her. Maybe he put something into her body, or maybe he took something away from her body.

She became quieter and more patient.

The technique of cursing is very clever, and the game he laid is pretty good. The previous Bellatrix did not have these abilities.

But is she still her?

A person actively chooses to change himself, and is reshaped into another person by external forces--

Delacroix's memory suddenly exploded.

Starting from the center of Bellatrix's face, the picture looks like a mirror that has been hit by a heavy hammer, with cracks spreading from the center to all sides and fragments flying outward.

Delacroix's consciousness, memory, personality, everything collapsed in the sound of fragmentation.

Regulus was pushed out of memory.

The Delacroix in front of him had eyes that were dilated, his pupils were so dilated that the color of his iris was almost invisible, there was saliva hanging from the corners of his mouth, and there was still saliva on his chin that had been squeezed out when he was suffocating.

His spirit was dead, and after a while, his body was dead too.

Curse, another curse, three more.

Regulus stood up and suddenly turned his head to look southeast.

Two miles away, there is a rocky slope, half-dark under the starlight, and nothing.

But he felt there should be something there.

He looked in that direction and paused for a moment, but saw nothing.

He looked away.

Auror and Apparition rang out one after another on the outside of the western slope. A series of crisp sounds exploded in the night sky.

UK Pure-bloods Black family's manor was invaded and destroyed by local wizards in France. French Ministry of Magic sent an entire team to respond quickly Auror Squad.

Including Department of International Magical Cooperation senior officials responsible for transnational Pure-bloods security affairs, there are a total of twenty-seven people.

The Aurors who landed on the ground dispersed immediately, wands in hand, in standard fighting postures.

Then they saw the burning sky above them.

A female Auror took two steps forward from where Apparition landed, looked up at the sky, and the expression on her face froze under the blue and white firelight.

Next to her was a middle-aged Auror who had just raised his wand to Spellcasting, but his hand stopped in mid-air.

Senior Auror, who leads the team, is in his fifties, has short gray hair and a dark blue uniform. He is standing under the fire curtain at the moment, his eyes moving from the flames above his head to the scattered people in the open space.

The fallen body, the broken arm, the blood on the gravel, the human figure burnt by the fireball.

A young Auror ran up from behind, his voice a little unstable. "Mr. Gaston, this is--"

Gaston ignored him and focused his attention on the only boy standing here.

Above the sky, the blue-white curtain of fire was slowly dissipating.

The flame began to dim from the edge, extinguished piece by piece, fading from blue and white to light blue, from light blue to gray and white, and then disappeared into the darkness above.

The remaining temperature still distorted the air, and the last few wisps of flames fell from the air and landed on the charred ground, flashing and extinguishing.

The sky darkened and the stars appeared again.

Regulus stood in the middle of the battlefield, with Baruk on his shoulders. A few drops of unknown blood were splashed on the light-colored robe, and his hair was a little messy by the heat wave.

The wand was hanging in his right hand, looking at the person who was looking towards him, and slightly raising his chin.