Early the next morning, when Lin Ze walked into the Auror Office right on time, he distinctly felt that the atmosphere had changed.
After a night of spreading, word of how he had single-handedly taken down three Death Eaters in Knockturn Alley yesterday had clearly reached the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
The moment he entered, several colleagues looked up and regarded him as though he were a rare magical creature.
Their eyes held both admiration and surprise.
Without a change in expression, Lin Ze walked to his desk, plopped into his seat, and rummaged in his drawer for the half-finished bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans from yesterday.
He had gotten up too late that morning and rushed out without time to buy breakfast.
These would have to tide him over.
He had just tossed a bean into his mouth when a burly figure loomed over his desk like a small mountain.
Scrimgeour stood in front of his desk, his thick eyebrows knitted together.
"Lin." Scrimgeour kept his voice very low, but his tone held an excitement he couldn't suppress, like a farmer who had lived in fear of poverty suddenly digging up a pot of gold in his own field.
"Meadows told me about yesterday."
"Three Death Eaters. You really dealt with them all by yourself?"
Lin Ze nodded as he chewed his bean. "I got lucky. Mostly, they were just too noob."
"Lucky? Too noob?" It took Scrimgeour a second to realize this was an Eastern slang expression.
He paid it no mind and waved a hand instead. "Don't give me that rubbish about luck! A rookie who's only been on the job for ten days, taking down three Death Eaters single-handedly! You're the first in the history of the entire Auror Office!"
His voice unwittingly rose an octave, drawing glances from several colleagues nearby.
Scrimgeour coughed and lowered his voice again, but a smile had already broken through his usually stern expression.
"The higher-ups are very pleased. The head of the department personally asked me about you last night."
"Keep it up, lad. I've got high hopes for you."
With that, he gave Lin Ze another heavy clap on the shoulder, nearly making him spit out the bean in his mouth.
After Scrimgeour strode away, Lin Ze rubbed his shoulder and muttered, "He's a good boss in every other way, but the way he shows his happiness is murder on his subordinates."
He tipped the remaining beans into his mouth and was just about to stand up and start organizing his patrol route for the day when an arm suddenly reached over from beside him and landed heavily across his shoulders.
An intense smell of sweat immediately enveloped him.
Lin Ze turned his head and saw the office's notorious chatterbox, a young Auror named Ben Frick. He had joined six months before Lin Ze, and his greatest talent was digging up gossip about everyone in the Ministry of Magic.
"Mate!" Frick leaned in with shining eyes, his freckled face almost pressed against Lin Ze's ear.
"You're famous now, you know that? This morning in the lift, I heard people from the Wizengamot secretariat talking about you!"
"Hmm? Word travels that fast?"
"Of course! They said you're the Auror Office's most outstanding rookie this year. Apparently, even Barty Crouch was full of praise for you!"
"That's Barty Crouch we're talking about!"
Frick spoke as fast as if he were rapping, spraying spit toward Lin Ze's face with every sentence.
Lin Ze silently shifted his chair back half a meter and said with a straight face, "Department Head Crouch praised me? Then he definitely doesn't know about the several formatting errors in my patrol report last week."
"Oh, you don't get it!" Frick completely ignored his self-deprecation and leaned even closer.
He lowered his voice, his tone turning conspiratorial. "Do you know what the hottest topic in the Ministry is right now?"
"What?"
"People are betting on how soon you'll be transferred to work at Department Head Crouch's side."
Lin Ze: "..."
Wait, wasn't that a rather sudden change of subject?
He blinked, confusion written all over his face. "Me, transferred to the department head's side? Why?"
Frick looked at him as though to say, "How can you be so clueless?"
"Mate, do you genuinely not know, or are you pretending? Everyone in the Ministry is taking sides now. The pro-Dark Lord lot are one camp, and old Crouch's people are another. You took down three Death Eaters in one go yesterday. That's a feather in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's cap, understand?"
"You've already been labeled, and it's not the kind you can back out of."
At those words, Lin Ze's brows involuntarily furrowed slightly.
Labeled?
That wasn't good. He had no intention of getting dragged into political struggles this early.
Bodo Crabbe, who had been eavesdropping nearby all along, noticed the change in Lin Ze's mood.
He thought Lin Ze was afraid. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, and a barely perceptible gleam of satisfaction flashed in his eyes.
"Young people get impulsive. That's perfectly normal. The question is what that impulsiveness costs them afterward. Now, that's harder to say..." Crabbe said to Goyle beside him, deliberately speaking loudly for fear that Lin Ze wouldn't hear.
"I heard one of the three arrested yesterday was named Selwyn."
"You've heard of the Selwyn family, haven't you?"
At those words, the colleagues who had been whispering among themselves instantly fell silent.
Everyone's eyes turned to Lin Ze at once. Some held sympathy, some concern, while others were clearly taking pleasure in his misfortune.
The Selwyn family.
One of the pure-blood Sacred Twenty-Eight, and one of the first ancient families to side with Voldemort.
It was said that a member of the Selwyn family served as a High Inquisitor in the Wizengamot.
Offending people like that usually brought serious consequences.
The office remained silent for about three seconds.
Lin Ze's expression did not change in the slightest.
He leisurely pulled open his drawer, took out a notebook, opened it to a page, and picked up his quill to carefully write a few words.
Then he closed the notebook, looked up, and gave Bodo Crabbe a bright, sunny smile.
"Thanks for the reminder."
Crabbe: "..."
He didn't understand.
Was this rookie putting on an act or not?
When an ordinary person heard the Selwyn family's name, even if they didn't tremble with fear, surely they would at least go pale?
Why was this brat still smiling?
Lin Ze paid him no further attention, lowering his head to continue organizing his patrol forms.
He understood his situation very well.
Though Bodo Crabbe's words were full of barbs, he was right about one thing: among the three Death Eaters Lin Ze had arrested yesterday, there really had been a fellow named Selwyn.
And the surname Selwyn did indeed carry considerable weight in the Wizarding World.
But so what?
Even if the head of the Selwyn family came in person, Lin Ze wouldn't bat an eye.
After all, Voldemort would fall in less than a month.
When that happened, anything connected to the Death Eaters would become a target of universal scorn.
The Selwyn family?
Just the first lot bound for Azkaban.
But at that moment, Lin Ze had yet to realize that his habit of casually jotting down notes had already become a signal that left certain people unable to eat or sleep in peace.
Sitting in the corner, Evan Goyle quietly leaned toward Crabbe's ear and asked in a low voice, "What was he writing just now? Was he putting your name down?"
Crabbe didn't look too good either, but he still forced out a sneer. "Let him. What's a brat fresh out of school going to do, turn the world upside down?"
Yet even he didn't quite believe the tone in which he said it.