Chapter Summaries

Lin Ze fought his way through the White Raven Chamber of Commerce’s underground tunnel and captured Claude Weil. Weil revealed that the chamber had another warehouse in Holloway District and that it stored wizard consumables, including blood and organs supplied by wizards.

• Lin Ze subdued the wizards guarding the ground-floor warehouse and broke open the anti-magic-locked gates to the tunnel.
• Lin Ze confronted Claude Weil and used Apparition to fight through the crowd of more than forty wizards without collapsing the street above.
• Lin Ze chased Weil through the tunnel, destroyed part of his magic-draining formation, and disarmed and pinned him.
• Lin Ze forced Weil to reveal a second underground warehouse in Holloway District, where the chamber stored goods and wizard consumables.
• Weil explained that wizard consumables included wizards who supplied the chamber with blood and bodily organs.

Lin Ze uncovered Weil’s underground cages, freed eight imprisoned wizards, and handed the White Raven Chamber of Commerce owner over to the authorities. After the evidence led to a Wizengamot hearing, Weil was sentenced to life in Azkaban, while Rookwood and Slater received fifteen years each.

• Lin Ze forced Weil to open the hidden shelter and found eight badly weakened prisoners held in cages.
• Lin Ze broke the prisoners’ shackles, freed them, and summoned Crouch and St. Mungo’s healers while keeping Weil in custody.
• Scrimgeour arrived with Aurors and healers, took Weil away, and Lin Ze went to the Wizengamot with evidence against the trafficking operation.
• Augustus Rookwood and Herbert Slater were arrested, while two implicated judges recused themselves before the hearing.
• The Wizengamot sentenced Weil to life in Azkaban, Rookwood and Slater to fifteen years each, and stripped three implicated members of public office.

After the White Raven Chamber of Commerce hearing, Lucius approached Lin Ze about filling two Wizengamot administrative vacancies and offered him control of the remaining illicit trade. Lin Ze rejected the trade, agreed to review possible candidates, and then visited a recovering victim at St. Mungo’s, who introduced himself as Ivan Crouch.

• Fudge told Lin Ze that Malfoy wanted to meet, and Lin Ze arranged for him to come to the Team Three office the next afternoon.
• Malfoy offered five candidates for two Wizengamot administrative posts and proposed handing Lin Ze the remaining trade in wizard blood and bodily tissue.
• Lin Ze refused to take part in the illicit trade and told Malfoy to prepare a candidate list for review after Lin Ze spoke with Director Crouch.
• Ben told Lin Ze that three victims at St. Mungo’s had stabilized and that the most seriously injured man wanted to see him.
• Lin Ze visited the man, who identified himself as Ivan Crouch and clarified that he was not related to Barty Crouch.

Lin Ze investigated candidates for two Wizengamot Administrative Office posts and arranged to appoint three clean candidates Malfoy had recommended. He began testing Patricia Webb’s willingness to cooperate with his investigation of the Department of Commerce, while planning to expand his network across the Ministry and other institutions.

• Ivan told Lin Ze about his rare-goods contacts and past dealings with distributors under the Greengrass Family, and Lin Ze asked him to recover and contact him after leaving St. Mungo's.
• Lin Ze asked Grot to examine five candidates’ Gringotts transactions and had Harper investigate former officials’ staff and Herbert Slater’s replacement.
• Lin Ze cross-checked the records, ruled out two candidates, and took the three clean résumés to Crouch, who approved the appointments on the condition that Lin Ze handle any problems.
• Lin Ze told Fudge to keep Patricia Webb temporarily in charge of the Department of Commerce and ask her to help investigate discrepancies in its payment records.
• Patricia told Lin Ze she was ready to cooperate, and Lin Ze ordered her to bring three years of original transaction records to Team Three’s office.

Lin Ze strengthened Group Three’s influence across the Department of Commerce and the Wizengamot while pursuing the White Raven Chamber of Commerce investigation. He learned that a Malfoy-recommended assistant, Thomas Perry, was asking about the case.

• Patricia showed Lin Ze Slater’s suspicious transactions, and Lin Ze urged her to take charge of the Department of Commerce’s daily work.
• Lin Ze asked Ezra Warren to help move Group Three’s cases forward in the Wizengamot schedule.
• Lin Ze had Patricia gather three years of potion-ingredient import and export records and encouraged her to act with confidence.
• Lin Ze assigned Ben to index Group Three’s cases and had Carl trace the origins of the chamber’s alchemical devices.
• Carl’s list suggested a missing storage site, so Lin Ze asked Sirius to search Black family records for clues.
• Fudge reported Patricia’s progress and said that Thomas Perry, a Malfoy-recommended assistant, was asking about the case.

Lin Ze investigated Judge Clinton Foster’s possible ties to Malfoy and learned from Sirius that an organization called Ouroboros had handled dangerous alchemical devices. The leads raised the possibility that someone was collecting Voldemort’s Horcruxes, so Lin Ze contacted Rodna to ask whether her father had known of Ouroboros.

• Lin Ze examined Clinton Foster’s trial records and found that Foster often favored pure-blood families, with seven of eleven winning parties later doing business with the Malfoy family.
• Lin Ze asked Ben to monitor Foster’s recent cases while he set the judge aside for the moment.
• Sirius brought Lin Ze a Black family notebook showing that three devices on Carl’s list needed regular magical energy and that Ouroboros had taken one of the items.
• Lin Ze copied the address of an Ouroboros warehouse on the Cornwall coast and asked Grot to check its property records.
• Lin Ze connected the devices and Ouroboros to a possible network collecting dark magic items and wondered whether someone was gathering Voldemort’s Horcruxes.
• Lin Ze used his silver badge to ask Rodna whether her father had heard of Ouroboros during his time in Europe.

Lin Ze investigated Ouroboros’s Cornwall warehouse after learning its members had deep knowledge of ancient magical creatures, and found three captives being used for blood and medicine experiments. He ambushed the gray-robed man who arrived with two attendants, leaving the man pinned against the wall.

• Rodna told Lin Ze that his father had traced ancient alchemical objects to Ouroboros, whose core members called themselves snake people and concealed their faces.
• Lin Ze asked Patricia to find alchemical-material import records and identified Klein Trading Company’s quarterly shipments of rare ore samples to St Ives.
• Lin Ze infiltrated the warehouse near an abandoned quarry and found three prisoners held in separate rooms, including a Muggle.
• Lin Ze freed the prisoners from their shackles and waited in the warehouse for whoever came to visit them.
• A gray-robed man arrived with two attendants, and Lin Ze petrified the attendants, disarmed the man, and struck him against the wall.

Lin Ze uncovered evidence that Ouroboros was collecting Voldemort’s belongings and traced one buyer to a Knockturn Alley shopkeeper. He returned to the Ministry with the name Albert Crane, while Ben worked through a new stack of documents.

• Lin Ze used Legilimency on the gray-robed man and saw him deliver blood bottles for Klein Trading and receive orders from someone wearing an ouroboros ring to collect Voldemort’s belongings.
• Lin Ze found a ledger listing blood deliveries, including one in Hogsmeade, and turned the captives and evidence over to Scrimgeour and his team.
• Lin Ze asked Mr. K about the buyers collecting Voldemort’s possessions, and Mr. K named three shops that had sold goods.
• Lin Ze questioned the owner of Dervish and Banges, who identified the buyer as Albert Crane, a tall, thin man in a gray hat with a northern accent.
• Lin Ze returned to the Ministry and found Ben struggling with a newly arrived stack of documents.

Lin Ze investigated Ouroboros’s Hogsmeade delivery point after finding clues that the group might be collecting Voldemort’s belongings. At the Hog’s Head, Aberforth told him someone had left an extra barrel containing an oilcloth-wrapped bundle, but refused to say what was inside.

• Lin Ze learned from Patricia that Klein Trading Company had imported fourteen shipments of vaguely classified minerals, approved by Herbert Slater.
• Lin Ze traveled to Hogsmeade and met Quinn Travers, who said he had become Hogwarts’s Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
• Lin Ze asked Rosmerta whether anyone had stored goods in the Three Broomsticks storeroom, and she denied renting it out or accepting anything.
• Lin Ze questioned Aberforth, who said someone had shifted the cellar barrels and left an extra barrel containing a bundle of assorted items.
• Aberforth refused to reveal what was in the bundle and ordered Lin Ze to leave, so Lin Ze resolved to investigate another way.