Harry Potter and the Rebirth

The journey to the spiral staircase was particularly smooth today. Every time Hermione wanted to go up a floor, it would stop at her feet, just like a well-trained big dog, lying at the feet of its owner and sticking out its tongue.

Hermione knew that this feeling was probably subjective, but she couldn't help but associate these steps with a pug trying to please its owner.

She entered the eighth floor smoothly, and the little wizard was gradually left behind. As this floor was where the headmaster Dumbledore worked, it was particularly quiet. The portraits on the wall were all dozing off, and some of them raised one eyelid and looked happily at the little girl who had entered the eighth floor.

Hermione walked familiarly to the portrait of a troll holding a baseball bat and gathered her faith. "I need a place to hide. I need a place to hide."

A bronze door appeared with a door handle on it. Hermione turned it gently and then went in.

It was just as Harry said, but there was no sofa as rumored, no window with a view outside, only dim piles of garbage.

But this house can change according to the owner's thoughts.

Hermione soon spotted the small soft red sofa that belonged to her alone.

Hermione felt a strange touch on the soles of her feet, as if something was sticky. She lowered her head and saw an ancient parchment.

She bent down and picked it up.

When I saw the words above, my eyes widened and the gears of fate began to turn.

Many people have come and gone in this room, and they have more or less noticed this tattered parchment.

The destiny trajectory represented by the parchment and theirs are two parallel lines. Even if they look directly at it, they will ignore it and forget it.

Hermione came here under Harry's guidance and touched upon some long-buried and deep secrets.

Who would notice a piece of waste paper next to the trash can, and who would bend down to pick it up?

The note quickly turned to ashes in her hands, and something else came into her mind.

Hermione stumbled onto the sofa, staring blankly at the huge ruins beside her. Looking deeper, she saw darkness that vaguely concealed the edges of some objects.

crunch--

The door was closed.

Dumbledore hurried to the bar to meet Malfoy, and almost no one saw him along the way.

But the scene inside made him feel angry and helpless.

The originally complicated contradictions in the entire wizarding society began to be infinitely magnified when the living space was drastically compressed, and they were just short of a critical point of explosion.

At this time, it was only because of the huge threat from the outside world that forced the various forces to unite with each other, but with just a quick glance, you can see the irreconcilable contradiction.

Dumbledore had no time to worry. He came to the door of the bar and looked up at the shabby sign.

It was dirty and dark inside, with almost no people. The boss, who was wiping wine glasses with a rag at the counter, was delighted when he saw the visitor, but his enthusiasm dropped a lot after he saw Dumbledore.

But he still said respectfully, "Mr. Dumbledore, please come in. Mr. Malfoy is waiting for you in Box No. 1 on the second floor."

Dumbledore nodded and was about to say something witty to ease the atmosphere, but when he saw the boss's frown and the empty table, it seemed as if there had been no guests for a long time.

He keenly discovered that although the boss wiped the wine glasses clean with a rag, it could not hide the signs that they had not been used for a long time.

Dumbledore kept these in mind and then went up to the second floor.

At the moment his figure disappeared into the stairs, many wizards rushed in, clamoring for the boss to bring a few dozen beers and ordered many side dishes.

This is the number of customers in the past month. The boss was smiling and did not ask too much about the purpose of their coming here. In short, they just had to pay gold galleons.

Out of professional ethics and concern for Dumbledore, the boss brought over a lot of beer from the kitchen, placed a glass in front of each customer, and asked tentatively, "Has everyone been busy recently? Do you finally have a chance to relax?"

A big man with a full beard, a red neck and a sturdy body laughed happily, "Isn't it? I finally solved a big problem, and I came here to celebrate. Boss, don't care about the cost, bring me all the best things you have."

"Oh, okay~"

For a shop owner, nothing could be more joyful than seeing customers willing to spend as much as they wanted here. He was instantly overwhelmed, counting the people sitting in the shop and calculating the average spending of each of them.

Hearing the commotion downstairs, Malfoy frowned as he sat in the box.

He chose this place after careful selection. It is a place with few visitors, a relatively remote location, and high security and privacy.

Before he could think about it, Dumbledore pushed the door open and Malfoy immediately stood up and took a few steps forward to greet him.

"Sit down, sit down, Lucius. I'm really sorry to bother you recently. You handled the matter of Gringotts very well. Let's put the matter of the goblins aside for now."

Lucius thought for a moment, then sat on the stool with Dumbledore. After hesitating for a long time, he looked up at Dumbledore's expression and finally chose to speak.

"The death of Gilbert Fontana has caused quite a stir outside. They are now beginning to question your alliance and demand that the truth of the matter be made public. Are you still going to keep it secret for him?"

The long fingers tapped the table, tap-tap-tap--

Being in the same space with Dumbledore still made Lucius feel a little stressed, especially when dealing with a problem that he thought was particularly sensitive and could cost him everything if he wasn't careful.

"Have you found out who is behind this kind of talk? Which side are they on?"

Lucius cursed those people in his heart. They were all old foxes. One look at it and you could tell who did this despicable thing.

"Why, it's hard to say?"

Faced with Dumbledore's questioning, Lucius, with the optimistic spirit of "a friend's death is better than my own death", sold out those people completely.

They are not his relatives or friends, nor are they his clients, let alone his life-long friendship. Why should I hide it for them?

Dumbledore was not surprised to hear these names.

"You monitor them closely."

Seeing that Dumbledore had no intention of clarifying, Lucius finally couldn't help but ask, "Are we going to do nothing? He—"

"Lucius, perhaps clarification is beneficial to us, but for those who are already shaken, if such a powerful person wants to retreat, won't those of them who have no power want to retreat even earlier?"

Lucius was silent. He had no doubt that what Dumbledore said was true.

After calming down, he asked, "So what should we do next—"

Dumbledore's thinking was very clear.

"Please purchase a batch of medicinal herbs first. I will give you the specific list of medicinal herbs later. Finally, report the total amount of expenditure to me."

Lucius raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to say. He liked that Dumbledore wanted to reimburse his expenses, but what money did Dumbledore have?

But he didn't point it out. Anyway, the money went from his left pocket into his right pocket, so let's ignore this small mistake for now.

"I know you have dealings with some Muggle business companies."

Lucius couldn't sit still any longer; he seemed very busy at the moment.

"When you take that batch of Muggles to the secret base in a few days, you can secretly spread the news that you have some channels that can send more people in, but they have to be exchanged for something valuable."

Seeing Lucius's eyes light up, Dumbledore immediately poured cold water on him, "Of course it must be some top-secret information from within the Muggles, but you can't say it directly and you have to prevent them from recording it by some means. You have to hint to them and let them know. Do you understand?"

"In fact, we can just use Legilimency, or at worst the Imperius Curse."

Lucius tentatively said the spell in front of Dumbledore, and when he saw that he was not angry, he became bolder.

In war, one must always have an attitude. It is impossible to observe so-called gentlemanly manners when the enemy has come to one's doorstep.

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair and relaxed, as if he was organizing his words. "How should I put it? I don't really want to know any news about them, but to create an illusion that valuable Muggles can be protected by wizards, so that they can have internal differences among themselves, which may be useful at a critical moment. Do you understand?"

Lucius was startled, his expression remained calm, but a huge wave of shock rose in his heart. The Dumbledore before him seemed no longer as great and glorious as before. He looked very much like the first Dark Lord.

But then, he changed his mind and thought, how can you expect a wizard who holds a high position and serves as the headmaster of Hogwarts to remain innocent and simple and hold on to the red line in his heart when facing a situation of life and death for wizards.

People who play politics have dirty hearts.

But the heart can better protect what you want to protect.

Maybe this can only be called complexity, and it is not an antonym of kindness.

"Okay, I understand." Lucius perfected the plan. "I will also secretly control some people, and then explode at the critical moment to send those who defect to us to high positions."

Dumbledore nodded in agreement.

"What else?"

Grindelwald, Muggles, and Bai You met at a place a few days ago and quickly reached a consensus.

"You keep a close eye on the goblins, and those old friends of yours."

This needs no further explanation.

The meeting in this room is still going on, and only two people know the details of the conversation.

Unknowingly, Lucius seemed to have surpassed Weasley in Dumbledore's heart. Although he did not join the Order of the Phoenix, he was like an invisible member of the Order.

Mr. Arthur Weasley was very calm about this. He did not care about the size of his power. Instead, he looked at the Muggle products collected in the warehouse with great excitement, one by one, which he had never seen before.

Refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, bicycles, luxury cars, racing cars...

Some people with ulterior motives even sent him a small helicopter. He was having a lot of fun researching in the warehouse, hoping to closely combine magic and Muggle technology.

Molly was cooking in the kitchen at this time. She came out from time to time and looked at the clock hanging on the wall. Ever since Ron went out with Harry, the pointer had been at Danger and had never gone down.

Molly was always worried. She respected the children's choices and looked at the dates crossed out one after another. The children would soon finish their final exams and would be back soon.

Molly went into the kitchen, took out a small iron box, put a small portion of the cooked meal in it, went out, said hello to Arthur in the garden, turned left, and came to Cedric's father's house.

He was accidentally injured by a Muggle weapon in Godric's Hollow last time, and was sent to St. Mungo's Hospital to recuperate for a few days, but was sent back home due to the shortage of medical resources.

A distant relative is not as good as a close neighbor, so the Weasley family took on the responsibility of taking care of him. She and Arthur took turns every day, and today was her turn.

In fact, research on the combination was just an excuse. The Ministry of Magic was almost on the verge of disbanding, and the Minister was as if he did not exist. Many of his colleagues suddenly disappeared one day, including the pink toad.

No follow-up.

It was as if this organization did not exist in the world. Ever since Crouch, the Director of the International Department of Magic, was revealed to be a spy, they, the staff of the Ministry of Magic, seemed to have been labeled as likely to be sentenced. Even though Arthur was very close to Dumbledore, he also faced this discrimination.

In this world where rules and order have been re-established, those who used to be high and mighty, able to call the wind and rain, can no longer preserve themselves intact.

At least his son Charlie was highly valued by Dumbledore and seemed to be carrying out a top-secret mission, which made Arthur feel much better.

This means that Dumbledore still trusts them, perhaps for some reason -

After all, Ron was still with Harry.

Arthur thought so and sat on the grass in his overalls, looking a little decadent. It seemed that he had lost his job overnight and had nothing to do when the war was about to begin.

After seeing Lucius off, Dumbledore walked through the crowded bar and disappeared into the crowd.

What relieved the hotel owner was that his new customers did not come in and leave because of the departure of the two big shots. Instead, more of them came, and even the private rooms were full.

This made him very happy.

Arthur went back into the warehouse and waited for Molly to arrive, and then they had lunch together.

Suddenly, he felt someone standing behind him, with a familiar yet unfamiliar aura.

Wait until he turns around and takes a look.

An old man with gray hair and beard, wearing a blue wizard robe dotted with purple stars, looked at him kindly.

"You're here!" Arthur was very excited.