Chapter Summaries

Newt examined Aila and explained that she could learn to control her Obscurus through magical training and a stable environment. Quinn considered Dumbledore’s offer of a Defense Against the Dark Arts post, and the group agreed Aila could live at Hogwarts, where Newt would discuss her situation with Dumbledore.

• Newt opened his suitcase and showed Aila his Niffler, Penny, while she played with the creature.
• Newt examined Aila and said her Obscurus was quiet, could not be cured completely, and might be controlled through training and emotional stability.
• Lin Ze told Quinn that Dumbledore had invited him to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Quinn said he needed the job despite the position’s reputation.
• Newt suggested that Aila live at Hogwarts, where Quinn could look after her and Dumbledore could respond if her condition worsened.
• Aila agreed to go to Hogwarts, and Newt promised to speak with Dumbledore before she asked to see inside his suitcase.

Lin Ze and the others explored the magical world inside Newt's suitcase until Aila was drawn toward Danlin, the Obscurus Newt had separated from an Obscurial. As Danlin guided Aila to communicate with her Obscurus, the suitcase world began transforming in response.

• Newt brought Aila, Lin Ze, Quinn, and Amy into the vast world inside his suitcase and showed them its creatures.
• Aila suddenly turned black-eyed and floated toward the woods, while Lin Ze's attempt to reach her with Apparition was blocked by the space's restrictions.
• Newt revealed that Danlin, the first Obscurus he had separated from an Obscurial, had called Aila and was guiding her to communicate with her Obscurus.
• Aila's Obscurus erupted into a black pillar of light as motes gathered around her and the sky and landscape turned monochrome.
• Black threads and living vines spread through the transforming surroundings, and Newt warned Lin Ze not to touch anything as the suitcase world resonated with Aila and Danlin.

Lin Ze and the others saw Aila’s Obscurus stabilized with help from Danlin, while Quinn decided to accept the Hogwarts teaching position after meeting Dumbledore. The next morning, Minister Bagnold offered Lin Ze command of one of three squads in the expanded Special Operations Team, and he hesitated at the appointment.

• Aila’s Obscurus unleashed a shock wave, and Danlin left part of herself in Aila to help stabilize it while she learned control.
• Aila woke, saw the mark on her wrist, and learned that she had transformed into the black entity again.
• Quinn told Lin Ze he would take the teaching position but first needed to discuss matters with Dumbledore.
• Lin Ze received a message summoning him to meet Minister Bagnold at nine the next morning.
• Bagnold offered Lin Ze leadership of one of three squads in the expanded Special Operations Team, and Lin Ze did not immediately respond.

Lin Ze was promoted to lead the Special Operations Team's Third Team and had three days to recruit its members. After choosing Weiqi Lasigehuoen, he visited the Logistics Office seeking a specialist in contraband and was pointed toward Elon Carl.

• Bagnold appointed Lin Ze leader of the Special Operations Team's Third Team, tasked with handling Dark Magic items and dangerous creatures, and gave him three days to submit a ten-person roster.
• Lin Ze told Ben about his promotion and began searching Ministry personnel files for suitable recruits.
• Ben suggested Weiqi Lasigehuoen, and Lin Ze accepted him despite his reputation for wearing numerous amulets.
• Lin Ze went to the Logistics Office to find someone knowledgeable about contraband, and Malcolm Crabbe suggested Elon Carl.

Lin Ze recruited four specialists for the Ministry’s Third Special Operations Team, which focused on Dark Magic items and dangerous creatures. With six of ten positions filled, he still needed to find four more members.

• Lin Ze learned that Elon Carl had worked in the Department of Mysteries before being transferred to the Logistics Office, then persuaded Carl to join the Third Team.
• Lin Ze recruited Weiqi Lasigehuoen, who eagerly accepted and agreed to submit an application to Scrimgeour.
• Lin Ze recruited Mona Keli after she asked whether joining the team would let her swear at people.
• Lin Ze persuaded veteran magical-creature worker Bert Keladuoke to join after buying him drinks and talking with him for four hours.
• Lin Ze counted six members, including Ben and Carl, and decided to keep looking for recruits to fill the remaining four positions.

Lin Ze struggled to recruit members for Team Three until he learned Amelia had rejected Barty Crouch Jr. and offered him a place. After Barty accepted, Scrimgeour approved his transfer while warning Lin Ze that he would be responsible if anything went wrong.

• Lin Ze complained that Amelia and Moody were recruiting faster, while Ben joked about the few members on Team Three.
• Ben told Lin Ze that Amelia had rejected Barty Crouch Jr. for lacking experience, and Lin Ze decided to recruit him.
• Lin Ze offered Barty a place on Team Three, and Barty accepted.
• Amelia warned Lin Ze to make sure he could control Barty, but Lin Ze insisted he would make him work.
• Scrimgeour questioned Lin Ze about whether he had consulted Director Crouch, then signed Barty's application after warning Lin Ze to take responsibility for any problems.

Lin Ze recruited Arthur Weasley and Amos Diggory for the Ministry’s new Special Operations Team Third Subgroup and considered approaching Mia Aikelas for its final place. He suspected Mia had secretly served as a Death Eater, but had not yet met with her.

• Lin Ze showed Ben his candidates and went to invite Arthur Weasley to join the subgroup.
• Arthur hesitated and said he needed to discuss the offer with Molly.
• Lin Ze invited Amos Diggory, who accepted after Lin promised him autonomy from paperwork.
• Lin Ze told Ben he planned to approach Mia Aikelas, whom he recognized from Karkaroff’s memories as a Death Eater.
• Ben questioned whether Mia was suited to the team, and Lin said he would need to meet her first.

Lin Ze confronted Mia Aikelas about her past as a Death Eater and offered her a place on his Third Team in exchange for keeping watch on Barty Crouch Jr. Mia accepted the offer subject to two conditions, leaving Lin Ze with a new informant whose loyalty he did not expect.

• Lin Ze found Mia Aikelas at her desk in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and asked her to speak with him privately.
• Lin Ze revealed that Karkaroff had given him a list of former Death Eaters and implied that Mia was among those who had remained at the Ministry.
• Lin Ze offered Mia a choice between joining his Third Team and being exposed to Crouch and sent to Azkaban.
• Lin Ze asked Mia to monitor Barty Crouch Jr. and argued that working for him would be safer than staying among the Death Eaters.
• Mia agreed on the conditions that Lin Ze never involve underage witches or wizards and that she could abandon him if he got in over his head.

Lin Ze assembled the Third Team, laid down its rules, and began organizing their new office before Minister Bagnold summoned him. She assigned the team a case involving seven disappearances near Diagon Alley, with the latest victim found drained of all magic.

• Lin Ze welcomed the Third Team to its new office and explained its remit and rules for fieldwork and secrecy.
• Amos Diggory suggested adding a kitchenette, and Lin Ze built a curtained workspace at his desk.
• Scrimgeour urgently summoned Lin Ze to Minister Bagnold's office.
• Bagnold assigned the Third Team a case about seven people who had vanished near Diagon Alley over five days.
• Bagnold reported that the latest victim had been found dead near Knockturn Alley with all magic drained from the body, and Crouch warned that a dark creature might be responsible.

Lin Ze organized his new team to investigate a string of disappearances and drained bodies near Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, suspecting a vampire or another dark creature. The next morning, Weiqi brought in strange glowing residue from a crime scene, and Carl identified it as likely secretion or excrement from a dark creature.

• Lin Ze briefed the team on seven disappearances and assigned pairs to interview witnesses, examine the scene, and investigate the victims’ movements.
• Lin Ze reviewed the case files, considered whether a vampire or a resurrected Soul-Devouring Vine could be responsible, and asked Riddle’s Diary for advice.
• The team returned early the next morning, and Weiqi showed Lin Ze gray-black glowing particles he had scraped from a wall near the dead Gringotts guard.
• Carl examined and tasted the particles, then said they were likely a dark creature’s secretion or excrement.

Lin Ze investigated the disappearance of Maqi Travers and followed a report of black mist to a dead-end alley in Knockturn Alley. There, he and Carl found corpse vine growing densely around drained rat corpses, suggesting a powerful dark creature had been nearby, but its identity remained unclear.

• Lin Ze recognized gray-black granules as resembling residue left by a vampire in Brazil and sent Weiqi to search for similar traces and have the sample tested.
• Lin Ze questioned Mr. K about Maqi Travers and learned she had left with a person in a gray cloak two nights earlier.
• Mr. K told Lin Ze that a drunk had seen black mist containing a featureless woman's face, so Lin Ze questioned the drunk and learned where it had vanished.
• Lin Ze called Carl and Mona to the dead-end alley behind Gilderoy's secondhand shop, where the black mist had reportedly seeped into a wall.
• Lin Ze found drained rat corpses and dense vines on the wall, and Carl identified the plants as corpse vine that thrived near powerful dark creatures.

Lin Ze and his companions investigated a Corpse Vine and connected seven disappearances to the area around Delis Secondhand Shop and Slinger Alley. During a nighttime stakeout, they encountered a black mist that hunted a cat, sensed them, and attacked, leaving them fleeing through the alley.

• Carl showed Lin Ze roots beneath the paving stones and explained that the Corpse Vine had likely been feeding on small animals in Knockturn Alley for about a month.
• Weiqi reported that St. Mungo's had found active tissue from dark creatures in the samples, while Arthur revealed that seven missing people had disappeared within the same area.
• Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia met at ten that night to watch the alley near Delis Secondhand Shop.
• A black mist entered the alley, smashed a pile of liquor crates, and chased away a black cat before drifting into another alley.
• Lin Ze and the others followed the mist, but it dispersed and re-formed around them as a towering wall that resisted their spells.
• Lin Ze ordered Barty Crouch Jr. and Mia to run, but the mist passed through his Transfigured wall and continued pursuing them.

Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia fought an immortal-seeming man whose shapeless black mist resisted their attacks and blocked Apparition. As the mist engulfed the alley, Lin Ze discovered that his dragon scales repelled it.

• Lin Ze and Barty Crouch Jr. failed to damage the black mist until Mia used inherited magic to slow it.
• The trio tried to Apparate away, but an Anti-Apparition Jinx stopped them, and a strange man in white appeared atop the wall.
• The man sent mist tentacles at them, which Mia froze and Barty Crouch Jr. blasted apart before the fragments rejoined the mist.
• The man identified the mist as his Shikigami and revealed that he had lived for over fourteen hundred years.
• Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia attacked together, but the man merged with the mist, which flooded the alley.
• Lin Ze activated his dragon transformation, and his scales repelled the black mist as it climbed over his feet.

Lin Ze used his dragon-scaled strength and magic to drag the white-robed man out of the wall, but the man unleashed a vast black-mist hand that forced Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia to flee the collapsing alley. The trio survived behind Barty Crouch Jr.’s crimson barrier, while the alley lay in ruins and the black mist retreated underground.

• Lin Ze guessed that the white-robed man’s body was separate from the black mist and asked Barty Crouch Jr. to distract him while Mia concealed Lin Ze with her light.
• Barty Crouch Jr. attacked through the mist as Mia compressed her ring of light, allowing Lin Ze to rush the wall and seize the white-robed man with his dragon-scaled hand.
• Lin Ze’s golden magic burned the black mist and pulled the white-robed man from the wall, while Barty Crouch Jr. and Mia attacked the uncontrolled mist.
• The white-robed man caused the ground to roar and split, sending a giant hand of black mist after the fleeing trio.
• Barty Crouch Jr. raised a crimson barrier at the alley entrance, and Lin Ze helped reinforce it as the black hand struck and the alley collapsed.
• The black mist withdrew underground, leaving Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia alive amid the wreckage.

Lin Ze charged through the black lightning storm to attack the man in white and disrupt his flute ritual, while Mia and Barty Crouch Jr. struggled to hold their defenses. After Lin Ze wounded the man, the ritual unleashed corrosive black water, leaving Lin Ze ready to risk the protection Mia gave him or reveal Boundary Break.

• Barty Crouch Jr. identified the black mist's self-destructive reconstruction and realized the man in white was using a flute to guide it.
• Mia shielded Lin Ze and Barty Crouch Jr. from the black lightning, then gave Lin Ze an ice-blue pebble that could block one fatal attack.
• Lin Ze rushed out of the shield, dodged the lightning, and climbed a building using dragon scales on his arm.
• Lin Ze attacked the man in white with Fire-Making Spells and Severing Charms, grazing his shoulder.
• The man in white raised the flute's pitch and unleashed corrosive black water, while Barty Crouch Jr. blasted one rushing column aside.
• Lin Ze dodged the black water and prepared to gamble on Mia's pebble or expose Boundary Break if his life was in danger.

Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia fought the black water and mist in the alley, combining their attacks to weaken White Candle. As White Candle gathered the remaining darkness and claimed godlike power, Lin Ze charged in and punched him across the alley.

• Lin Ze grabbed the black water pillar and used Dawn to sever it, badly burning his fingers.
• The black water split into tiny snakes, but Mia repelled them and drew them toward the black mist.
• Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia struck the swelling mist together, causing it to collapse and expose the wounded White Candle.
• White Candle gathered the remaining black water and mist as Lin Ze transformed and charged at him.
• Lin Ze punched White Candle in the face, sending him crashing into rubble.

Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia faced the transformed man in white, but Dumbledore intervened when Lin Ze was gravely injured. As Dumbledore began to lose their battle, he crushed a tiny hourglass and regained his youthful form, ready to start over.

• The man in white regenerated, unleashed overwhelming pressure, and transformed as Lin Ze struggled to protect Barty Crouch Jr. and Mia.
• Lin Ze used Boundary Break to move himself and the unconscious Barty Crouch Jr. and Mia, but the man in white struck him and shattered his bones and organs.
• Dumbledore appeared, healed Lin Ze enough to keep him alive, and fought the man in white as their magic tore through the sky.
• The man in white's black vortex and giant eye drove Dumbledore back, leaving Lin Ze unable to help.
• Dumbledore crushed a tiny hourglass, grew young again, and declared that they would start over.

Dumbledore defeated Lingchang Murakami, who destroyed himself in a blast of darkness, but the battle left Dumbledore visibly older. Lin Ze, Mia, and Barty Crouch Jr. survived, and Dumbledore took them to St. Mungo's as the Ministry of Magic was expected to arrive.

• Dumbledore overwhelmed Lingchang Murakami with powerful magic and left him near death.
• Lingchang Murakami exploded into darkness, erasing part of the alley, while Dumbledore shielded Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia.
• Dumbledore aged rapidly after the battle, then told Lin Ze that Lingchang Murakami was an old enemy who had repeatedly revived himself through dark arts.
• Lin Ze checked Mia and Barty Crouch Jr. and found them alive.
• Dumbledore levitated Mia and Barty Crouch Jr. and took them and Lin Ze to St. Mungo's.

After surviving the battle with Lingchang Murakami, Lin Ze reported the events to Minister Bagnold and learned that another wizard had been found drained of magic and blood. He wrote to Dumbledore to ask whether Murakami could have returned, leaving the Ministry’s investigation unresolved.

• Lin Ze, Barty Crouch Jr., and Mia recovered at St. Mungo's, where Crouch Jr. learned that his father had visited briefly and left.
• Lin Ze gave Bagnold, Crouch Sr., and Scrimgeour an edited account of the battle and said Dumbledore had saved the team from Lingchang Murakami.
• Bagnold told Lin Ze that the battle had destroyed more than a dozen alleyways and killed over a hundred Muggles, but she did not pursue the matter further.
• Three days later, Crouch Sr. informed Lin Ze that Evan Rosier had been found drained of magic and blood and that three people were missing.
• Moody stormed into Crouch Sr.'s office and angrily cursed Rosier, who had once blinded him in one eye.
• Lin Ze wrote to Dumbledore asking whether Lingchang Murakami could have returned or was draining wizards, then sent the letter by owl.

Lin Ze investigated Evan Rosier’s death and discovered a faint mark that suggested the victims might have been restrained before their magic and blood were drained. After questioning Carl and Tom Riddle, he learned the killer might be gathering them to feed something, though he doubted Voldemort was behind it.

• Lin Ze examined Evan Rosier’s body and found a fine constriction mark on his wrist that had not appeared on earlier victims.
• Dumbledore’s reply confirmed that Lingchang Murakami’s magic did not involve draining blood or magic, but Lin Ze suspected Murakami’s presence near Knockturn Alley was connected to the killings.
• Lin Ze investigated Rosier’s last movements and learned that Rosier had suddenly left his apartment before being found dead behind Knockturn Alley.
• Lin Ze asked Carl about alchemical devices that could drain blood and magic, and Carl showed him a Blood Leech Ring that worked too slowly to match the deaths.
• Lin Ze questioned Tom Riddle, who explained that draining both blood and magic could feed a creation, a Dark creature, a cursed item, or a wizard without a body.
• Lin Ze thought of Voldemort as a possible culprit but rejected the idea that he would choose this method to resurrect himself.