Obliviate had turned into a [Blue Card], something Dewey had never expected.
Dewey frowned as he rode his broom, looking troubled.
He had always thought that once a card appeared, that was what it would remain.
But now that Obliviate had turned into a Blue Card, he realized his understanding might have been wrong.
He had been taking too much for granted.
It seemed the power of a card wasn't set in stone.
For instance, as a card leveled up, it could grow more powerful along with its strength.
Obliviate turning into a [Blue Card] was certainly a good thing, but the thought of upgrading it again made his scalp tingle.
Copying a [Blue Card] required 800 essence.
To upgrade Obliviate to level 6, he would need at least 9,600 essence.
Almost ten thousand.
A single Purple Card only yielded 400 essence when dismantled.
Twenty-five Purple Cards! Where was he supposed to find twenty-five Purple Cards to dismantle?
Dewey thought the Card System was determined to stop people from copying high-level cards by dismantling them.
The system seemed to have another preference.
There was no need to copy cards in order to upgrade high-level ones.
If you wanted to level up cards quickly, the Card System encouraged you to fight.
Cards of the same type dropped from battles were the best way to upgrade cards. The other methods were just supplementary.
Dewey's system had changed again:
[User: Dewey Jones (alias) Learned Cards: [(Apprentice) Protego (Level 5)] (Common, White) [(Apprentice) Stupefy (Level 5)] (Common, White) [Apparition (Level 2)] (Epic, Purple) [Avada Kedavra (Level 1)] (Epic, Purple) [(Apprentice) Obliviate (Level 5)] (Rare, Blue) [Finite Incantatem (Level 2)] (Rare, Blue) [Animagus (Special Card)] [Full Body-Bind Curse (Level 3)] (Rare, Blue) *2 [Reducto (Level 2)] (Rare, Blue) [Expecto Patronum (Level 3)] (Epic, Purple) *3 Title: None Magic Power: 120 Magic Essence: 1500 Dueling Points: 0]
Looking at his status panel, Dewey wasn't sure whether he counted as an ordinary Wizard now, or how he compared to a Hit Wizard.
He had no idea how he would fare against the Order of the Phoenix or the Death Eaters' core members.
Fortunately, he would soon find out.
He was already on his way to test his spells.
"How are you feeling?"
Dewey shouted, "Woohoo!" as he swallowed a mouthful of cold air. Sirius Black hunched low and yelled at him over the wind.
"Don't worry about me. I'm feeling better than ever!
"But I still have to say, I agree with what you said, and you need to remember your promise to me.
"Never. Hurt. Harry Potter.
"And from now on, you can't use jinxes or Unforgivable Curses on my friends."
He stressed those two points.
"No problem, Black. Absolutely no problem."
Dewey shouted, "Don't worry. I'll be gentle, gentle, and extra gentle with your Werewolf friend. Careful, careful, and extra careful.
"I'll only put him to sleep!
"This is all for our plan!
"Lupin will forgive you.
"We're not the guilty ones, are we?"
He shouted as the two of them sped across several counties, heading for Moony Lupin's home!
That's right. Dewey's next target was none other than Lupin, the Werewolf who had once been part of Sirius's close-knit circle of friends!
Lupin lived alone.
He wasn't married and didn't have a girlfriend at the moment. He didn't even have a permanent home.
He was a Werewolf.
To keep his identity secret, he rarely interacted with people. He was most often found in the forests of various small countries.
He didn't keep in touch with his family, and he didn't like Werewolves either.
Because of his identity, he had no steady job. Over the years, he had published a few books and managed to scrape by on the royalties.
Even Dumbledore had taken quite some time to find someone like him.
In the end, Lupin had contacted Dumbledore himself and offered to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.
At that moment, Lupin was at home.
He lived neither in a Wizarding village nor in a bustling city.
His home stood at the foot of a mountain in the northwest.
It was sparsely populated.
He himself looked almost absurdly plain.
Plain and haggard.
Of course, even a humble home like his had a fireplace.
It connected to the Floo Network, making it easy for Lupin to get home. Unlike the Black family's ancestral House-elf, Lupin had nothing of the sort. He had lived alone for a long time and hadn't even kept in touch with his parents.
I still have to go back.
Lupin looked at the newspaper report about Sirius and Dewey's escape and ran a hand through his graying hair.
He thought he knew how Sirius had escaped from Azkaban.
The Dementors wouldn't be too wary of an Animagus.
If Sirius had turned into an Animagus, he could have left Azkaban without any trouble.
But what about the other man? How had this Dewey Jones escaped from Azkaban?
Sirius Black didn't remember Dewey Jones, but Lupin did. He remembered everyone's face, including Dewey Jones's. The young man had been several years below them at school. He was clever, but envious of powerful people, much like Peter Pettigrew. He had wanted to be friends with James, but unfortunately, he had been left out.
James had no shortage of friends.
Dewey was clever, but that didn't mean he was an Animagus too. Lupin knew how difficult it was to become one.
Time.
Effort.
Luck.
You needed all three.
Starting from the full moon when you put a Mandrake leaf in your mouth, it could take weeks, months, or even years, provided nothing went wrong. The whole process was steeped in the unpredictable.
There was no fixed anchor for when to begin. You counted from the first full moon to the second. Between those two full moons, the Mandrake leaf in your mouth couldn't leave it. After that, you had to put the leaf, along with the other ingredients, into a glass phial.
Then you had to wait for a storm.
The phial couldn't be exposed to sunlight, and you couldn't observe it beneath a bolt of lightning.
See?
Every step of the spell was full of chance and temptation.
Miss even one step, and the spell would fail.
And even if it worked, so what?
It was fairly ordinary. Unless they had a special need, people wouldn't bother learning to become an Animagus.
Animagi also had a restriction: none of them could transform into a Magical Creature.
That was far too dangerous.
It didn't improve their fighting ability.
So James and the others had been incredibly lucky to become Animagi. That luck had belonged to them—and to Lupin, too.
He stared at the photograph of Sirius, gaunt and skeletal, and sank helplessly into his memories. At last, he sighed, gathered his things, and began packing the items he'd need to take with him when he went to teach at Hogwarts.
A textbook for his classes, Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. It was old, but useful.
And a few other scattered books that looked secondhand: Basic Defense Against the Dark Arts, How to Identify Vampires, and so on.
Lupin packed the books, then tucked in some potions and a spare coat identical to the one he was wearing. Finally, he straightened up and took one last look around his home.
"Goodbye."
He said it to the empty house. He had planned to use the Floo Network to get to London, but all the Floo connections there were restricted now. He would have to Apparate outside and then take a Muggle car to the Leaky Cauldron.
He also needed to have the Boggart he'd caught shipped there.
"I hope you haven't done anything foolish, Sirius. Otherwise, I won't go easy on you either."
Lupin muttered to himself.
Dragging his heavy trunk, he opened the door to leave.
Sirius Black was standing in the doorway.
"Stupefy!"
Sirius wasn't slow to cast a spell. The moment the door opened, he had cast it.
But Lupin was faster.
His wand was still in his hand. He had just been using it to do chores. As the spell came at him, he instinctively deflected the Stupefy and cast a jinx at Sirius!
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