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"Jingle bells~ Jingle bells~~"
Cheerful Christmas carols echoed over the platform of the Hogwarts Express. With the official arrival of the Christmas holidays, most students were dragging their trunks and swarming toward the train home.
"Hey, Lynn, are you really not coming back with us? My mom said the turkey she prepared this year is exceptionally big!" Edgar greeted enthusiastically.
Lynn smiled and waved his hand. "No thanks, you guys enjoy it. I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of blessing."
After seeing off his roommates and watching the train disappear into the distance, Lynn finally strolled back toward Hogwarts Castle.
Right in the entrance hall, Lynn ran head-on into Lupin, who was eager to head to the courtyard for some fresh air.
Lupin looked even thinner and more gaunt than he had at the start of the term; his once-fitting old robes now looked a bit baggy. His face was bloodlessly pale, and the shadows under his eyes were heavy.
"Good morning, Professor." Lynn stopped and offered a polite greeting.
Lupin clearly saw Lynn as well. He nodded, his lips pulling into a smile. "Good morning, Lynn. You didn't go home? Oh, right, I remember you saying..."
He seemed to want to say something, but the words died on his lips. He simply shook his head and muttered softly, "Never mind, it's nothing."
Lynn: ???
What do you mean, "never mind"? Professor, stopping mid-sentence is a real cliffhanger!
"Professor, is something the matter?" Lynn asked tentatively, his face showing just the right amount of confusion and concern.
Lupin looked at Lynn's "innocent" eyes and hesitated for a moment.
Thinking that this wasn't exactly an embarrassing topic, he cleared his throat and decided to be direct. "Ahem, it's like this... the taste of the Wolfsbane Potion Professor Snape provided this month is... well, very unique. More... 'memorable' than any I've ever had before."
As soon as Lynn heard this, he understood immediately.
Good grief, he suspects I've been "innovating" with the Potions again? While there were indeed one or two "accidents" in the past, it really wasn't me this time!
He immediately shook his head like a rattle, refuting firmly, "Professor, you've wronged me this time! This month's Wolfsbane Potion was absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not brewed by me! I swear by the Hufflepuff kitchens!"
Lynn's expression was incredibly sincere.
"Ah? Oh, is that so..." Lupin was stunned for a moment, and then a hint of embarrassment surfaced on his face.
Damn, he got it wrong! It was all because the stuff Snape brewed tasted so bizarre—it didn't even seem like something a human could brew—that he had subconsciously associated it with this student who had a "prior record."
Stupid brain, quickly think of a way to smooth this over!
In a flash, Lupin had a sudden brainstorm. He cleared his throat again, trying his best to put on a professor's dignity.
"Ahem, what an... honest student! Brave enough to clear up a misunderstanding and uphold the... er, facts. Very good! Five points to Hufflepuff!"
He almost forced the words out; the reason for the points was so far-fetched he didn't even believe it himself.
Looking at Lupin's attempt to fix his blunder, Lynn almost couldn't hold back his laughter.
"Thank you, Professor! You're actually quite a nice person!"
Professor Lupin gave two dry laughs and patted Lynn on the shoulder. "Yes, good. Merry Christmas, Lynn. Enjoy the quiet holiday."
After saying that, he almost fled toward the courtyard, as if staying a second longer would make things even more awkward.
Time passed quietly, and the Christmas holiday was half over in tranquility.
On this day, inside his trunk, Lynn let out a long sigh of relief and slowly straightened his back, which was aching from bending over for a long time.
Before him, the complex core components on the lab bench that originally belonged to the "Artificial Vampire" had been dismantled even more thoroughly. Beside them lay a pile of parchment filled with calculation processes and runic analyses.
In the center of the bench sat his latest achievement—a rather peculiar-looking globe, along with an ordinary-looking gemstone.
This globe was no ordinary geographical model.
The sphere itself was transparent as crystal, but inside were no reliefs of land or sea. Instead, there was a slowly flowing, nebula-like silver mist of magical power. Within that mist, a tiny but exceptionally striking dark-red point of light was flickering at a certain position.
"Finally... got it done!" Lynn's voice carried a hint of exhaustion.
After several consecutive days of non-stop "problem-solving," he had finally successfully reverse-engineered the remote consciousness projection function within that alchemical core.
The globe in his hands was the manifestation of that success.
It could roughly locate the macro-geographical region of a target by capturing that unique form of energy.
"As long as that fellow doesn't run out of Earth's atmosphere and is still bouncing around on this planet..." Lynn's fingers lightly brushed over the smooth surface of the globe, activating the device, "he won't escape the detection of this 'reverse tracker.'"
The silver mist inside the globe accelerated its flow, as if scanning the entire planet.
"Let me see which corner you're hiding in now, you bitch..." Lynn's gaze closely followed the movement trajectory of the point of light.
On the globe, the red light representing the target had been clearly located within Egypt just a second ago, likely flickering along the Nile or near some desert ruins.
But then, without any warning—the light disappeared!
No, it didn't disappear.
Almost instantly, it abruptly appeared within the range of the British Isles. Before Lynn could even distinguish it clearly, the light flickered again.
This time, it was located in a certain region of the Scottish Highlands, and... it stopped.
Lynn's breath hitched slightly as his gaze locked onto that position. The Scottish Highlands... the region where Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was located!
"Holy crap!" Lynn couldn't help but curse out loud in disbelief. "Coming for Hogwarts?! I haven't even found the time to settle the score with you, and yet you've delivered yourself to my doorstep..."
...Meanwhile, outside Hogsmeade Village, at the Shrieking Shack.
Crack!
A slight sound of spatial cracking, almost drowned out by the wind, rang out inside the shack.
In the dim light, several figures appeared.
At the head was a wizard.
He was tall and thin, wrapped in a dusty, dark-yellow traveling cloak. His hood was pushed back, revealing a face that appeared abnormally pale from a long lack of sunlight.
His eye sockets were deep, his cheekbones prominent, and his lips thin and bloodless. Only his eyes shone with an eerie light.
The man held a strangely shaped wand in his hand. The shaft seemed to be carved from some kind of black bone, with an irregular polyhedral crystal embedded at the tip.
Behind him stood three tall figures silently.
They were clad in heavy, hooded black robes, their faces hidden. One could only sense a faint dark-red glow beneath the brims of their hoods—more "Artificial Vampires."
The pale-faced wizard looked around the dilapidated shack, his lips pulling back into a smile as a series of "Jie jie jie" eerie laughs escaped his throat.
"Albus Dumbledore... wise for a lifetime... yet you would never imagine that I would play a game of 'hiding in plain sight' with you, would you?"
His gaze turned toward the distant direction of Egypt.
For some time now, Dumbledore had been relentlessly tracking his trail within Egypt, forcing him to abandon several important alchemical sites and hide like a rat in a gutter.
"You're turning Egypt upside down looking for me..." The smile on the pale-faced wizard's face turned hideous, "while I have returned to your home base, right next to the place you know best!"
He turned his gaze toward Hogwarts.
"It was here... that I lost two precious 'Blood Puppets' in one go!" The pale-faced wizard's voice trembled slightly with heartache.
"Blood Puppet" was the name he gave to these alchemical creations of his. The creation of every "Blood Puppet" had cost him countless amounts of effort and precious materials.
They were all remains he had "painstakingly" excavated from the depths of pyramids and the tombs of pharaohs and priests, risking death from curses and traps.
He had spent many years saving up this little bit of property. Each one was like his child, an important tool for him to realize his ambitions and draw power.
"Just to capture one werewolf..." He gritted his teeth, "I actually lost two directly! Two!"
This was not just a loss of combat power, but a huge blow to his knowledge and wealth.
And according to the information sent back by the last "Blood Puppet" before it lost contact in the Forbidden Forest, the destroyer was a student at Hogwarts—a young wizard who could destroy a "Blood Puppet"?
"Lupin... and that brat... it's time to... settle account's with you!"