Dewey left the tent calmly, leaving a few little trinkets beside it.
His target had never been the people inside the tent.
Attacking them was a means, not an end.
They were vessels for spreading fear and bait to draw attention. From the moment they set up camp here, they had been in Dewey's grasp.
Sirius Black had already investigated their movements thoroughly.
When the Ministry of Magic stopped treating them like people, they had nothing left to do with ordinary folk. The Ministry couldn't even guarantee these Hit Wizards proper supplies. As for the rotation schedule it had promised them, Fudge had brushed them off.
"We can't spare anyone from the department, everyone. Please bear with us a little longer and do your best to overcome these difficulties."
That was what Fudge had told them. The entire Ministry of Magic was bloated and inefficient. Even the older Aurors who had been planning to retire had been forced to pull themselves together and shoulder the burden.
From top to bottom, the Ministry was rotten to the core.
There was no cure.
An incompetent Minister, a chaotic middle management, and employees who had given up.
Dewey could have stayed in the tent and taken a nap without anything happening. No one would have noticed.
Dewey Apparated, vanishing into the sky.
When he appeared again, he was flying through the air on a broomstick.
He glanced at his status panel.
He'd been teaching at Hogwarts for almost a month.
He'd gained quite a lot.
And not just in salary.
He'd also acquired several Cards from attacking that group just now.
His status panel now looked like this.
[User: Dewey Jones (alias) Learned Cards: [(Apprentice) Protego (Level 5)] (Common White) [(Apprentice) Stupefy (Level 5)] (Common White) *4 [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)] [Werewolf (Special Card)] [Full Body-Bind Curse (Level 3)] (Rare Blue) *7 [Reducto (Level 2)] (Rare Blue) [Expecto Patronum (Level 3)] (Epic Purple) *3 [(Teacher) Expelliarmus (Level 8)] (Rare Blue) *65 [Impedimenta (Level 2)] *2 [Alohomora (Level 1)] (Common White) [Lumos (Level 1)] (Common White) *11 [Rib-Bending Curse (Level 1)] (Rare Blue) *7 [Relashio (Level 1)] (Rare Blue) *16 [Morsmordre (Level 1)] (Common White) Title: None Magic: 110/210 (slowly increasing) Magical Essence: 1500 Dueling Points: 0]
There were three major changes.
The first was his Disarming Charm.
His Disarming Charm had reached a new level and gained a new prefix.
Teacher.
It had also gone from a White Card to a Blue Card. From then on, White Cards were no use for increasing its strength. White and Blue Cards, even when they were the same kind of Card, couldn't be combined to upgrade it.
The Card System was quite interesting.
It upgraded different Cards in different ways, and its classifications for spell Cards had an underlying logic.
Take the levels at which several Cards had changed from White to Blue. The Apprentice-prefix Obliviate became a Blue Card at Level 5. The Disarming Charm didn't become a Blue Card until Level 8, when it gained the Teacher prefix.
The Teacher prefix was different from Apprentice.
At the Teacher level, the spell was more powerful.
When Dewey used Expelliarmus, he only needed to raise his hand to disarm all six people opposite him. If he wanted, even sixteen people couldn't resist his Disarming Charm. He even had a feeling that—
This was nowhere near the Disarming Charm's limit.
It was only the beginning.
Anything could be targeted by the Disarming Charm: guns, bricks, cutlery, even human organs.
But at the Teacher level, Expelliarmus could only affect the first few things. It couldn't disarm someone's organs. He couldn't use Expelliarmus to kill a person by pulling an enemy's heart out of their chest.
As for the other spells, the Rib-Bending Curse was probably Walker's jinx, used to torture prisoners. Relashio, also known as the Extraction Curse, had roughly the same effect as injecting someone with a sedative. It could also be used on inanimate objects. For example, chains restraining a person would unlock themselves under the spell.
The reason he'd gotten so many Relashio Cards was that the unlucky fellow he'd beaten up last had used that particular spell most often. He'd beaten the man until he was barely recognizable.
Dewey didn't care about those spells.
He cared about the last one.
Morsmordre.
"How interesting. This is really interesting."
Dewey vanished into the sky. When he appeared again, he put away his broomstick. Flying brooms were outrageously expensive. They were the Wizarding World's equivalent of cars. Forget luxury models like the Firebolt—even the Nimbus Series brooms were pricey.
Dewey's broom was an antique fit for a museum: a Cleansweep Five. He had no idea where Sirius had gotten it.
He put the broom in his suitcase and found someone who was by himself.
The man had a thick head of hair. After knocking him out, Dewey changed clothes, pulled out several of his hairs, and dropped them into a potion.
He drank it.
A little while later, he looked like a Muggle.
Dewey took out his wand and used Obliviate on the lucky fellow. An Apprentice-level Obliviate could target specific memories; he could erase a particular stretch of someone's memory. After dragging the man into a small grove beside the road, Dewey came back out and stood by the roadside, hitchhiking.
Before long, he'd left the area. Seated in the back, he finally began to study Morsmordre in earnest.
Morsmordre was a Dark Magic spell. Its purpose wasn't to harm people. "Dark Magic is magic that can harm others, but Morsmordre is even more evil than those spells, because it's magic that calls upon Dark Magic."
Morsmordre had only one purpose: to conjure Voldemort's Mark with a wand.
A floating skull and snake, writhing in the air.
It was the spell Death Eaters used to send messages and pinpoint locations. Voldemort had been dead for so long, and the Ministry still had no idea how the Death Eaters communicated with one another.
Those idiots and good-for-nothings knew what the Dark Mark was—the one conjured by Morsmordre, for example—but had no idea that every Death Eater officer bore the same mark on their body.
The Ministry had caught some Death Eaters—those who refused to believe You-Know-Who was dead and remained active. They'd also arrested many innocent people and thrown them into Azkaban—not hard-to-investigate innocents like Dewey, but people like Sirius Black, who'd been declared guilty without a trial.
At the same time, they'd let even more Death Eaters off the hook.
They all kept their mouths shut, unwilling to reveal even the smallest secret about Voldemort. Even Igor Karkaroff, who'd betrayed others to escape punishment, had never mentioned that he bore the Dark Mark on his arm.
Barty Crouch Jr. had the Dark Mark on his arm. Bellatrix, her husband, and her brother-in-law all bore the Dark Mark, too. Dewey, Karkaroff, Snape—every one of them bore Voldemort's Mark. And yet, after all these years, the Ministry still didn't know how to identify a Death Eater.
That information only leaked out when Voldemort returned for a second time. But what use was it then?
No one outside the Death Eaters had ever noticed the marks on their arms.
Absurd, backward, and ridiculous.
So, you see, what future was there in working with Fudge and the Ministry's officials? How could you build a bright new Wizarding World alongside vermin?
They were neither light nor dark. They were trash, rotten to the core. Anyone with ambition and drive would refuse to settle for life under the Ministry's rule.
Bound by the International Statute of Secrecy, unable to use their skills, with no path forward, their prospects blocked and their lives stifled.
The Ministry of Magic was disgusting.
That was why the Pure-blood Families had defected to Voldemort.
That was why Dumbledore had founded the Order of the Phoenix.
Whether they wanted to embrace the darkness or fight against it, talented people wouldn't choose the Ministry of Magic, that "mighty institution" which looked so imposing.
The Ministry had always been nothing but a façade.
Dewey let his thoughts rage like a storm. After venting just now, he felt much calmer. He kept his mind busy; only by thinking constantly could he stop himself from recalling painful memories.
He thought further ahead, to Grindelwald, the Dark Lord who had swept across Europe. He'd drawn countless powerful wizards to his cause by promising to build a world where wizards would be supreme and break the International Statute of Secrecy. He'd forced Dumbledore to turn against the man he loved and duel him.
Grindelwald was powerful, of course, but there were reasons he'd attracted so many followers: wizards were dissatisfied with the Statute of Secrecy and the current social order.
If the Ministry couldn't even keep a lifeless world running, how could it attract exceptional wizards?
What Dewey hadn't expected was that one of the six Hit Wizards would be a former Death Eater.
And it looked like he still couldn't forget the Dark Lord's rule. He was still hoping the Dark Lord would return.
Was he still practicing Morsmordre by himself?
What did he miss about the Dark Lord's reign?
Power?
Dark Magic?
Or the thrill of falling into depravity after drawing close to evil?
Or did he, too, refuse to coexist with Muggles? Did he want to destroy their world?
How ironic.
Dewey laughed with delight. Someone like that hadn't been sent to Azkaban—he'd become one of its guards? He'd actually escaped punishment?
And after getting away with it, he hadn't been grateful, changed his ways, and started over. He still wanted to be a Death Eater?
No wonder the mass breakout at Azkaban had happened before Voldemort had fully taken over the Wizarding World.
Had the wizards been longing for Voldemort's return for a long time?
"Good people shouldn't be locked up in Azkaban.
Bad people shouldn't be allowed to live comfortably out in the open."
Dewey said it to himself. He got out of the car, thanked the kind man, then continued along the road with his suitcase in hand, waiting for a ride into London.
London had a population of millions, with countless people passing through every day. The city consumed vast quantities of fruit, grain, oil, and household goods. The Ministry of Magic might have thought it could keep London under control, but its efforts were all in vain. It couldn't even guard the entrances to the Wizarding World, much less the roads ordinary people traveled.
Could they inspect every passing convoy, every harbor, every traveler?
They couldn't. The entire Ministry of Magic didn't have that kind of ability. They couldn't even manage the wizards, let alone the Muggles.
It never occurred to them that the fugitive they were hunting might enter London using ordinary Muggle transport.
Dewey obediently bought a train ticket, boarded the train, and headed to London.
He put down his suitcase and took a seat, looking as though he'd closed his eyes for a nap.
What an interesting thing.
If one of the six Hit Wizards stationed at Azkaban was a former Death Eater, then how many Death Eaters were there throughout the Ministry?
The following is not part of the main text:
An evil person can cast the Patronus Charm.
Magic is a matter of belief.
Emotions and the soul are both essential to casting spells.
Dolores Umbridge, the Minister's loyal lapdog—whether the Minister is Fudge, a Death Eater, or anyone else, as long as they're the Minister, the pink toad can cast the Patronus Charm.
As long as you don't think of yourself as a bad person, you can cast the Patronus Charm.
There's no need to worry about the spell backfiring.
Before you continue