The End of the Holiday

The Easter holiday finally came to an end. It was now early in the fifth month of the year, summer was approaching, and the weather at Hogwarts had turned bright and sunny.

The Great Hall was as lively as ever that morning, yet there was an unusual restlessness in the air.

When Skylar entered the hall, the whispers around the long tables were denser than usual. A still-unfurled copy of the Daily Prophet lay on nearly every table. The ink on the papers still carried a faint magical warmth; they had clearly been printed only that morning and delivered overnight to Hogwarts by owl.

Skylar had barely sat down when a newspaper drifted down from the air and gently unfolded before him.

The headline on the front page contained no exaggerated wording, yet it was enough to leave the entire wizarding world speechless.

—Ministry of Magic Emergency Statement: The Mysterious Man Confirmed to Have Returned.

The Great Hall abruptly fell silent for a moment.

Then came the suppressed gasps, the scrape of shifting chairs, and the faint sounds of students instinctively swallowing.

In relatively restrained yet unmistakably hurried language, the paper relayed the emergency statement issued by the Ministry of Magic the night before. Fudge had finally admitted that the dark wizard who had once terrified the entire wizarding world into silence had reappeared and begun operating in Britain. The full statement was not long, but every word weighed heavily. Even the Minister's own hesitation and unease before the reporters had been faithfully described.

The paper stated that the Ministry of Magic had confirmed this fact with "profound regret."

Moreover, the statement announced another, even more unsettling piece of news—the Dementors of Azkaban had collectively defected. These dark creatures, once employed by the Ministry of Magic and regarded as its