Charles Murphy and the Polyjuice Potion

Today was the last day for students staying at school. The students going home would take the Hogwarts Express tomorrow and return to King's Cross Station in London.

When Ye Ting arrived at the Great Hall, Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were busy putting up Christmas decorations. He saw Hagrid carrying in an enormous fir tree, scattering needles everywhere as he went.

"Ah, Hagrid, the last tree is in too—put it in that corner, all right?" Professor McGonagall said casually.

The Great Hall looked beautiful and magnificent. Garlands of holly and mistletoe hung from the walls, while no fewer than twelve towering Christmas trees stood around the room. Some were adorned with glittering icicles, while hundreds of candles twinkled on others.

Unfortunately, none of it had anything to do with him. Though he had been looking forward to staying at Hogwarts over the holidays, attending the Christmas feast, and sampling the special Christmas dishes—honestly, Hogwarts' food had always been both plentiful and delicious, far superior to the unbearable local cuisine of British Muggles.

But he had his own grand plan for making money.

During term time, leaving Hogwarts was an extremely troublesome matter. Not only did it require a long journey—Apparition was impossible at Hogwarts—but he also had to avoid the surveillance of the castle's portraits, statues, ghosts, professors, and creatures from the Forbidden Forest. On top of that, he had to return before the next morning. It was practically making things difficult for him on purpose.

So the Christmas holiday was his only opportunity. He had already missed the chance to short the yen during Japan's Plaza Accord a few years ago, as well as the chance to short oil during the Gulf War earlier this year. George Soros would not short the pound until after school began in September next year, which would be far too late. He absolutely had to seize an event as major as the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Early the next morning, he boarded the Hogwarts Express and set off for London.

His three female friends—Hermione Granger, Cho Chang, and Penelope Clearwater—were all leaving school for the holidays. At King's Cross Station, he exchanged hugs with the three girls in farewell.

"Don't forget to write back to us," Penelope said reluctantly. "I know you don't have an owl, but I'll write to you. And I'll send you a Christmas present too."

"Of course. I remember," Ye Ting said with a smile and a nod, warmth rising in his heart.

In the end, each of the three girls secretly gave him a kiss when no one was looking.

Ye Ting was touched and somewhat helpless, but also a little excited and relieved.

It seemed he was destined to become a deeply sinful man. But whatever.

After saying goodbye to the three girls, Ye Ting prepared to get down to business.

He had made thorough preparations for this operation: a large quantity of petrification potion, an antidote to petrification potion, and an entire cauldron of unfinished Polyjuice Potion. Some time ago, he and Orianna had infiltrated Snape's private storeroom, stolen the ingredients, and brewed these potions in the Room of Requirement.

The petrification potion had originally been entirely unnecessary, since the Petrification Charm existed.

But Ye Ting felt that his magical power was still insufficient and his mastery of the Petrification Charm was not deep enough. Its effects would not last long enough, so he could only use potions in place of the spell.

All these things had been shrunk with Reducio and hidden in the pockets of his cloak.

After leaving King's Cross Station, he did not immediately return to Wool's Orphanage. Instead, he went straight to London Airport.

Using the Confundus Charm and the Disillusionment Charm, he sneaked aboard a plane bound for New York in the United States.

Of course, because of the Trace, when an underage wizard used magic outside school, the Ministry of Magic would detect it. The young wizard who had cast the spell would then receive a warning letter from the Ministry, and in severe cases, Aurors might even come knocking.

But the Trace was not without flaws.

According to Ye Ting's analysis, the Trace could not detect exactly which young wizard had used magic. Its principle was to sense the location where a young wizard used magic.

When a young wizard lived in a Muggle family, young wizards were scattered far apart, and their parents could not use magic. Therefore, the Ministry could easily identify the offender through the young wizard's home address.

But when a young wizard who improperly used magic was in a wizarding family, it was not so easy to identify them through the Trace. Still, that was not a problem, because wizarding law stipulated that the parents were responsible for supervising underage wizards from such families when they broke the rules by using magic.

The evidence Ye Ting used to reach this conclusion came from the original story, when Harry Potter was falsely accused during the summer after his first year. Clearly, Dobby had used magic, yet the Ministry insisted that Harry had done it and sent him warning letter after warning letter.

That proved that the Ministry could only confirm the location, not the caster.

And now, Ye Ting had long since prepared for this.

He had chosen to sneak aboard a plane that was about to depart. So by the time the Aurors arrived at the airport through Apparition, the plane had already taken off, and Ye Ting had long since flown far away from the scene.

The Aurors looked around the airport in confusion but found nothing. Meanwhile, the nearby Muggles were startled by their sudden appearance—who would have thought that an underage wizard would dare use magic in broad daylight?

In the incidents they had handled before, because they took place in the Muggle world, young wizards usually cast spells secretly in secluded places to avoid being discovered and mistaken for monsters. Once the Aurors Apparated directly to the scene, they could catch the culprit on the spot.

But this time, they had encountered an unexpected situation.

Some Muggles thought they were hallucinating, some were so frightened that they ran, and others excitedly came forward to ask questions. If smartphones had existed in this era, pictures and videos of the Aurors would already have appeared on social media for Muggle netizens to gawk at.

What followed was a large-scale Memory Charm cleanup. The Minister of Magic would probably have to notify the British Prime Minister to help control public opinion as well—after all, the incident had happened in an airport waiting lounge, where there was an enormous flow of people. Perhaps some witnesses had already left by plane. If they did not handle it properly and allowed the matter to spread further, the world might gain another famous unsolved mystery.

As for Ye Ting, he had no idea how much trouble the mess he had caused had brought to the Ministry of Magic and the British government. At that moment, he was still on his way to New York.

Now, he was like a fish in the open sea and a bird in the vast sky, free to go wherever he wished. The Trace only functioned within Britain, which meant that once he had left the country, he could use magic as he pleased. The British Ministry of Magic had no authority over him at all.

As for the Ministries of Magic in other countries—at the very least, information from the Trace was not customarily shared internationally.

The flight lasted a full eight hours. By the time the plane reached New York, the sky had already grown dark. But Ye Ting did not immediately deal with trivial matters such as finding a place to stay or getting dinner—his time was extremely tight.

The feast of the Soviet Union's collapse was about to begin. Most people had already entered the game, and he had to hurry.

First, he needed to solve the problem of his identity. He naturally could not handle this under his own identity, because he was too young and had no initial capital. Even if he had methods for getting something from nothing, he would have nowhere to start.

His solution was to find someone with an identity sufficient to carry out his plan. This person had to work in finance, possess enough credibility and assets, and currently be single or living alone.

That was not to say Ye Ting wanted to seize someone else's property. He was not that low-class. He felt that using magic to rob Muggles was neither technically challenging nor fitting for his status—what kind of thing was it for a future God of Magic to rob ordinary people?

The reason he wanted to choose such a person was simple: he needed a loan. Using borrowed money to make more money was his best option.

Being single and living alone was even simpler: he only needed to use magic to deal with the target himself. Knocking out an entire family at once and altering all their memories would be a major hassle. Few people would believe something like a shared hallucination.

And the best place to find a single financial worker with credibility and assets was Wall Street in New York.