It's just a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

Chapter 306 Three Zero Five The Firm-willed Old Batty

The only thing Sherlock and Moody got out of this trip was this ring.

Moody looked bad, he said sullenly.

"This proves that old Batty was actually controlled by someone very early! But we didn't find out until now!"

Sherlock touched the ring on his hand, thinking about the summer World Cup in his mind.

"If we calculate based on the time when the fight took place, the time when Crouch was controlled should have been after the end of the World Cup, and that time was also when his son, Barty Jr., who was hiding at home, was killed by me."

Even if they can infer that Crouch was under control, the information they have now is very limited.

Finally, after searching in this small building without any results, Sherlock and Moody returned to Hogwarts together.

There is no curfew in the castle tonight, but the students can't be too presumptuous. By this time, no one is still wandering outside, and basically returned to their lounges.

Dumbledore's office was still brightly lit, he was not dealing with anything else, but had been waiting for news from Sherlock and the others.

However, what he waited for was not good news.

After listening to Moody's report, he picked up the ring engraved with the crouch family crest that Sherlock had found, and whispered softly.

"The Crouch Family's Ancestral Home"

Finally Dumbledore shook his head.

"I don't know about this. The older the family, the more they build their manor in a secret place, and the outside world has never heard of the specific location of the Crouch family."

Sherlock stared at the ring, his eyes narrowed slightly.

"If Crouch still does not appear in front of the public, can we infer that he is about to encounter disaster?"

Moody's expression looked extremely ugly.

"I don't understand, if someone among the Death Eaters used the Imperius Curse to control him, and wanted him to create chaos in Hogwarts, frame Harry, and kill Sherlock. Then why is the game just over now? A project, this school year has only passed one semester, and now they want to change their minds and get rid of him?"

The problem he noticed was obviously not ignored by Sherlock and Dumbledore.

Dumbledore tapped the table lightly with his fingers.

"There are two possibilities. First, someone on the Death Eater side knew that we had doubts about him, so Batty not only didn't come to them, but if they continued to let him stay in Hogwarts, It is also easy for us to follow the clues and find some other information about them."

"Second, Batty himself is consciously fighting against the Imperius Curse on his body."

Sherlock frowned. As a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, he naturally had the most in-depth research on the three Unforgivable Curses.

"Resist the Imperius Curse? Professor, with all due respect, there have indeed been wizards with extremely strong willpower in history who have lifted the Imperius Curse on their bodies simply by themselves, but Barty Crouch, he really has such a ability?"

Dumbledore and Moody looked at each other, and they both shook their heads together.

"You haven't really experienced the era when the mysterious man exerted white terror on the magic world, Sherlock, so you won't understand how rare it was for the old Batty to make such a clear stand against the Death Eaters. "

Moody said in a low voice.

"It can be said that the group interests represented by the mysterious people at that time were beneficial to all pure-blood families. It is precisely because of this that 90.00% of the pure-blood families in the magic world fell to their side."

"Among the few remaining pure-blood families that have no superficial position, the Crouch family is the most powerful family. At the beginning of the 70s, old Batty had already become the deputy director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. In [-], he officially became the chief minister, and all the violent armed forces of the Ministry of Magic are under his control."

"If he had chosen to fall to the mysterious man at that time, then the Ministry of Magic would basically have lost the capital to resist, and the benefits promised to him by the mysterious man could completely make him a man under one man and above ten thousand people. exist."

"At that time, the mysterious man was not as crazy as he was later. He basically fulfilled every word he said to the outside world, so no one would suspect that he was cheating. As long as Old Batty agrees, he can get a more prominent position."

"That is to say, in such a situation, old Batty not only did not express any intention of being moved, but also publicly declared that he would lead the Aurors to launch a forceful attack on the mysterious people's forces, and he persisted in doing so for six years. Because of this, he has been attacked countless times, but his faith has not been shaken!"

Dumbledore answered him, clasping his hands, his voice still.

"His son will join the ranks of Death Eaters. Perhaps out of guilt for not fulfilling his father's responsibilities, Batty will bend the law for personal gain and hide Batty Jr. who should have been imprisoned in Azkaban for the rest of his life. His safety is guaranteed, but he will never take the initiative to fall to Voldemort, even if he threatens him with death."

"The only thing that can make him do such a thing is the Imperius Curse, and Barty Crouch's own willpower is definitely able to contend with the Imperius Curse that controls him. He doesn't have what you think As bad as you can imagine, Sherlock."

Although Sherlock went back to the past for a while, the experience during that time really made him not have a good impression of Barty Crouch.

The level of trust in him is certainly not as firm as that of Dumbledore and Moody.

But since both of them are more inclined to the second possibility, Sherlock is naturally willing to trust their judgment.

"But regardless of the possibility, Crouch's current state is bound to be more or less ominous." He touched his chin and said, "If he is relying on his own will to resist the Imperius Curse, it is impossible for the Death Eaters not to After discovering this problem, if they find that they have no way to exert control over him, the most likely thing is to kill him."

Sherlock was quite right.

Now that they can't find Old Batty, and they don't know the Crouch family's ancestral home, there is basically no way to follow up.

They stayed in Dumbledore's office until two o'clock in the morning, and finally returned without success.

After Sherlock returned to his office, he didn't choose to rest immediately, but took out a transparent box from his pocket, inside the box was a beetle that looked ordinary from the outside.

He stared at the beetle quietly for more than ten seconds, and then asked calmly

"Did you change back to human form yourself, or do you need me to give you a little help?"

(End of this chapter)