While Connie was busy scouring for traces of dark wizards so she could get closer to her idol, Ethan, events at the Riddle House were taking a different turn.
In the Riddle Manor, Barty Crouch Jr. slowly woke on the cold, hard floor.
What… exactly happened last night?
He felt as if he'd been trampled by an Erumpent. Every inch of him hurt.
Barty frowned, forcing himself upright. He clutched his pounding head and tried to recall. He rembered going after Mad-Eye Moody, determined to teach this so-called Mr Lamp a sharp lesson.
And then… what?
Those horrifying hands. That wild-haired woman. That "giant rat."
A cold sweat broke out over Barty's skin.
That thing should not exist in this world. He was only locked up for a few years—how had the wizarding world turned into this?
Was the Dark Lord not supposed to still be unrevived?
At that mont, a slip of paper fluttered down from his chest.
"'The rest is up to you.' …Left by Mr Lamp?"
Right. Mad-Eye. What happened to Mad-Eye?!
Barty jolted fully awake.
The original plan had been to quietly replace Mad-Eye Moody with Polyjuice Potion, infiltrate Hogwarts, and smoothly kill Ethan and Harry.
But with Mr Lamp involved, the plan had bolted like a wild horse, galloping straight toward collapse.
Just then—
Bang!
An owl slamd into the window. The force of the impact knocked the already loose fra clean out.
Cold night air slapped Barty in the face. This kind of utter disregard for windows felt oddly familiar.
The huge, thick-winged owl, whose wings looked strong enough to break bones with a single flap, loftily dropped a newspaper and then glided off through another window.
Barty stared at the two newly destroyed windows.
Maybe that "ominous on" should be renad "the Scottish Round-Faced Chicken of Shattered Glass."
He picked up the paper. A sense of dread climbed to its peak.
The front-page headline read: Forr Auror's Ho Destroyed? Major Discovery by Captain Connie Rosier!
A large moving photo of the missing Mad-Eye and the ruined house stabbed into Barty's vision, making everything go briefly dark.
He ground his molars and roared from the bottom of his lungs, "This is what you call 'infiltration'?!"
Now everyone knew.
The difficulty of pretending to be Mad-Eye had just shot through the roof.
And as the saying goes, misfortune never cos alone.
Barty looked up and t a deep, hollow gaze from the sofa.
After a night without proper care, Voldemort looked even more withered and corpse-like.
Barty: "!!!"
With a shrill yelp, he sprang to his feet, tears and snot flying as he scrambled to milk Nagini for venom to feed his noble Dark Lord.
In the end, he received only a rasped judgent.
"Useless."
Elsewhere, Ethan and Mad-Eye Moody were in the middle of a friendly chat.
At the Lovegood ho, Mr Lovegood humd a little tune as he added ice to his Gurdyroot tea.
Ethan had been out and about a great deal recently. Mr Lovegood had no idea what he was up to, but assud it must involve so bright and righteous heroic endeavour.
After all, Ethan's deeds last term had spread throughout wizarding Britain. Thanks to him, The Quibbler had sold several tis more copies than before, greatly improving the family's finances. They no longer needed to buy the cheapest "early-bird" Quidditch World Cup tickets. They could even afford a big, comfortably enchanted tent.
"We must promote Ethan's heroic image as much as possible. We cannot let the Daily Prophet and that old crone Rita twist things as she pleases," Mr Lovegood said fervently, clenching a fist.
He would make The Quibbler into Ethan's personal publicity platform.
"Speaking of which, this morning's report about the 'forr Auror attacked' is quite interesting. An unknown assailant and a missing ex-Auror… very curious where they both ended up."
Suddenly, his foot caught on sothing on the floor. He almost spilled his tea before steadying the cup.
He looked down. "Is that… a trapdoor? When did we get a trapdoor?"
On closer inspection, it turned out to be drawn in crayon. It looked like a child's doodle, jarringly out of place.
"Oh, Daddy, you didn't know?"
A dreamy voice floated over. Luna set down the upside-down newspaper she had been "reading," pushed up her odd red-and-blue Spectrespecs, and smiled at her dazed father.
"Ethan and his friends are downstairs," she said.
Sunlight stread through the window and over her. Her figure, now that she was heading into her third year, was beginning to show the first hints of growing up, casting a long shadow across the floor.
For a fleeting instant, Mr Lovegood felt a strange unfamiliarity toward the daughter he saw every day.
Ethan. Downstairs. With friends.
When had they arrived? What was Ethan doing?
Mr Lovegood shivered. He swallowed hard as he watched his daughter swing her legs and calmly return her attention to her book.
It should… be fine, right?
rlin, help us.
Beneath the trapdoor.
"Achoo!"
Ethan sneezed suddenly. He sniffed and looked up at the little square of pitch-black door high above, like a hole in the sky.
"Soone is talking about my heroic deeds again," he mused. "Being too famous does have its downsides."
Across from him, Mad-Eye Moody sat tied to a chair.
What heroic deeds? Kidnapping a forr Auror and impersonating the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor?
Moody glared at the man in the eerie white mask before him.
"Do your worst," he rasped. "Kill , cut up, I don't care. No matter how many tis you use the Cruciatus Curse, I will never bow."
His magical eye was gone. His lined face twisted into sothing even more villainous than Ethan's.
He looks more like the villain than I do, Ethan thought, amused.
"Hahaha, really now. I'm not that violent," Ethan said.
eting Moody's contemptuous, wary stare, he flipped his hand and produced paper and pen.
"To make up for the fact you won't be teaching next term, why don't you tell your lesson plans? I'll pass them on to the person in charge."
Person in charge, my foot.
Moody was almost too bewildered to swear. It felt like he had been kidnapped by so sort of legitimate organisation.
"Bah! If you want to play pretend with your little club, find soone else!" he snapped.
"Is that so…" Ethan let his brows droop in regret.
"In that case… You must be keen to continue enjoying so lovely art."
He lifted his hand.
Like the most courteous of gentlen, he lightly supported the claw reaching out of thin air.
"Rat King."
Her matted black hair spilled down, multiple arms wrapping around Ethan from behind like a spider embracing a lover. Sharp nails criss-crossed behind him.
[Ahh…]
Blood-red eyes fixed on Moody.
A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.
Monts later—
"Yes. I think those brats are far too comfortable. They need proper intensity!" he barked. "Start with extre agility drills, jumping platforms, and no one faces the final boss until they clear the first three hundred and sixty stages—"
He began to rattle off suggestions.
After all, with Dumbledore around, there was no way he would let this dark wizard run completely wild.
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