With Christmas and New Year approaching, the foot traffic in Chinatown was immense, the dense crowds like a surging tide, packing the streets until they were impassable.
At this moment, Adelaide and Alice, who were only in their early tens, were small in stature and weak in strength.
Although Adelaide shouted about running away, it was actually more like struggling to weave through this vast sea of people.
"Why are we running?"
Alice looked bewildered, clearly a bit confused about what was happening.
Despite this, she still obediently followed Adelaide closely, squeezing through the crowd. Not far behind them, Hermione also held the Roast Goose and Xiaolongbao to her chest, her eyes sharp as she squeezed through after them.
Adelaide didn't immediately respond to Alice's question. She focused all her energy on pushing forward, and only after finally making it through the most congested section of the crowd did she stop and quickly look back nervously.
What she was concerned about wasn't the pursuing Hermione, but—as expected!
"Quick! Look back at your right rear now," Adelaide whispered to Alice in a low voice.
Hearing this, Alice hurriedly turned her head. In that direction, in front of a shop, was a large pile of unprocessed decorations.
At that moment, a worker was laboriously moving these decorations one by one into a large cardboard box.
Just then, an accident suddenly occurred!
As if some extremely fast object had slammed into him, the worker instantly lost his balance, his entire body pressing heavily onto the pile of decorations.
At the same time, the cardboard box that had been placed to the side was also flattened by an invisible force, as if it had been crushed by some mysterious presence that was completely imperceptible to the naked eye.
Alice noticed the anomaly almost instantly. Relying on her own sharp intuition, she concluded that the mysterious object crushing the box was actually a Wizard using a Disillusionment Charm!
This discovery startled her. She quickly turned to look at Adelaide beside her and spoke with a face full of shock, "Are we being followed?"
Adelaide steadied her breathing slightly and responded quickly with an expressionless face, "You know, I went to St Mungos Hospital alone this morning without Dumbledore's company to visit Gellert Grindelwald—it would be more surprising if no one followed me given such a perfect opportunity. I'm just not sure yet which faction the one who slipped up was sent by..."
Which faction?
So it turned out that more than one group was targeting Adelaide!
Facing such a complex and thorny situation, Alice felt like her head was about to explode.
In terms of intelligence and strategy, even three more of her wouldn't be able to match the monstrous genius of Ravenclaw, Adelaide.
So Alice simply gave up thinking and asked with a righteous expression, "In that case, what should we do next? I'll follow your lead."
Adelaide looked at Hermione, who was stumbling through the crowd toward her, and sighed with a complex expression. This was why she said reuniting at Hogwarts was a surprise, but a chance encounter outside was only a shock.
Hogwarts was the territory of Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. No matter what she did there, Dumbledore would back her up, and she didn't have to fear the Ministry of Magic or Death Eaters causing trouble. But outside, she had much more to consider.
She didn't want to expose her Portkey ring to Alice and Hermione for the time being... She could only take a gamble.
"Look at that Wizard; he hasn't drawn his wand to attack the ordinary citizens, so he's likely an Auror from the Ministry of Magic. Let's wait here for Hermione to catch up. If no one attacks us, we'll keep running and head straight back to St Mungos Hospital. But if we encounter an attack—"
Before Adelaide could finish her sentence, a piercing red light suddenly shot out from behind a bronze statue not far away, its target clearly being Adelaide herself!
As expected, the Death Eaters had also sent people to follow her in the shadows!
In that split second, Adelaide grabbed Alice beside her while simultaneously lunging forward with a burst of speed toward Hermione, who was less than a meter away, successfully dodging the attack from the Death Eater.
Almost at that same instant, Adelaide felt a surge of warmth around her body. This warm sensation was exactly the same as the powerful Protego cast by Professor Flitwick on Halloween night.
Presumably, the Wizengamot guards had acted decisively at this moment. Adelaide immediately felt relieved.
The red light smashed directly into the glass display window of a shop behind their original position, and the window glass instantly shattered into countless fragments flying everywhere.
Everyone heard a violent explosion echo through the entire street. The pedestrians walking on the road immediately erupted in screams, fleeing frantically like startled birds, not knowing what was happening.
Hermione, who was protected under Adelaide, was also startled by the sudden explosion, curling up and screaming as she hid in Adelaide's arms.
Adelaide shook her head, which was dazed by the screaming, but she felt relieved in her heart. Fortunately, everything was developing as she had predicted.
The Death Eater responsible for following her had witnessed the Auror being tripped and temporarily losing the ability to handle emergencies, so he couldn't help but strike.
For this Death Eater, the Auror's mistake was undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he attacked Adelaide without hesitation.
This actually made Adelaide care less about him; it seemed this Death Eater wasn't very bright and likely wouldn't pose too much of a threat to her.
Because if she were in the Death Eater's position, launching a first strike under such covert circumstances, she would have used Avada Kedavra to kill the Auror without hesitation—only by completely eliminating the greatest immediate threat could she ensure the subsequent operation against the target went smoothly.
Although the Auror had accidentally tripped, he had not lost his fighting capacity.
When he saw a Dark Wizard dare to publicly use offensive magic spells in a Muggle-dense street to deal with Grindelwald's descendant, he immediately pulled his wand from his robes and faced the Dark Wizard without flinching.
The Auror knew it would be difficult to quickly defeat the Dark Wizard alone, so while he struggled to duel with the enemy, he cast Expecto Patronum to request backup, hoping to resolve the matter quickly and keep the disturbance to a minimum.
For a time, the battle between the two Wizards entered a fever pitch, with brilliant magical lights intertwining and flashing in the air, a dazzling sight.
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