Hogwarts 1991

Chapter 445 Interrogation
"Okay, let me see what you are capable of?"

Moody opened his mouth and smiled for the first time in front of the MacGuffin.

But because there were too many scars on that face, and even half of the nose was missing, this smile was even more ferocious.

And his normal eyes and magic eyes are facing in two directions... staring at Dumbledore and McGuffin separately, which is even more frightening.

Before McGuffin and the others could reply, Moody continued, "Lupine is guarding here! I'll take them into the cell... By the way, let's see our Hogwarts professor's ability to interrogate Death Eaters?"

"Lupine, give me the broken lamp."

He reached out and took Lupin's lantern, turned around and leaned on his crutches, and came to the wall where the crystal ball was placed.

McGuffin took two steps closer and finally saw——

Inside the crystal ball are miniature humans...it seems...

It looked like a Death Eater.

And it's still going on--

Before he could react, Moody urged,

"Okay, come near me! Stand under the light..."

Snape reluctantly tugged on McGuffin's arm and moved closer to Moody.

Moody opened the glass cover of the lantern, raised his wand to the faint blue light,

As the spell sounded, the faint blue light gradually turned into golden yellow... and flowed like a layer of mist... covering their whole bodies.

McGuffin immediately felt an inexplicable awkward feeling.

He felt that his body was twisting and bending like noodles, and in a trance, it began to grow and shrink in different order... The head was still the original size, but the body became that of a child... and they seemed to be fused into a mist, and they slowly drilled into the crystal ball.

In the feeling of paradox, he came to a completely strange place.

It is also a hemispherical room, but it is much smaller than the previous place.

Moreover, the curved walls on all sides were no longer black metal, but instead turned into some kind of translucent circular shield.

The glare of light was coming in from outside, making it hard for him to keep his eyes open.

——What exactly is this?
"Okay, we're here!" Moody's voice came from the side, looking like he was watching a good show.

After a minute or two, McGuffin finally got used to the current situation and could barely see the current situation clearly.

—They entered the crystal ball.

This is the 'Werewolf Suppressor', apparently the Ministry of Magic has changed it into this very unique prison.

And the prisoners are the Death Eaters.

A 'humanoid monster' curled up in the middle of the cell.

It sat on the ground and held its head, looking completely insane and inhuman.

McGuffin immediately understood whose cell they had entered.

— Bellatrix.

That crazy witch who has turned into a ghoul (Wendigo).

Compared with the last time I saw the situation, this guy's injuries have completely healed, but her condition is not much better.

She (it) was pale, her skin swelled like a dead body, it looked like some kind of leather mask.

His hair zoomed and curled into wisps, scattered over the same pale scalp, his face was pulled into the shape of a house elf, his ears were slightly pointed and covered with fluff, his eye sockets were as deep as a skeleton, his eyeballs were protruding, abnormally large, and filled with bloodshot eyes...

—Bellatrix is ​​only two or three half human now.

She (it) sat on the ground with her knees hugged, lowered her head and kept repeating, "Master... my master... master, I will complete the task, master..."

"You have also seen that the symptoms of ghoul turning have become more and more serious in this idiot. It is difficult for me to tell you that this thing still retains some sense of reason."

"Come on, Professor Snape, let me see if the Veritaserum you brewed can make a monster speak!" Moody spread his hands and made a gesture of 'please', taunting.

Snape showed a very disgusted expression on his face, looking at the Bellatrix Death Eaters not far away, and did not respond to Moody's ridicule.

He turned to Dumbledore and McGuffin.

The same meaning is expressed in the eyes.

——It's your turn!

Dumbledore coughed, stepped forward, raised his wand, "Inspirit!"

As the spell was cast, Bellatrix began to tremble violently, the whites of her eyes were dizzy, and she looked like she was about to faint.

After a while, Dumbledore sighed and shook his head.

"No, it's all meaningless babbling. It's hard to find some useful memory fragments! Come and try it! Albert, you have to be careful."

Moody gasped. Although he expected it, he really didn't expect Dumbledore to be so crazy that he asked a student to...

That coward Fudge...has the guts to allow...no, does he really know all this?

Just as Moody reached out to stop,
The MacGuffin was already waving his wand, yelling at Bellatrix, "Phantom!"

——Finally, I can officially try this spell.

A layer of black shadow emerged from the tip of McGuffin's wand, piercing into Bellatrix's shadow, and from the place where she connected to the shadow, it penetrated into the appearance of her body... The pale skin gradually turned black...

Bellatrix, she (it) involuntarily opened her mouth wide, and forcefully exhaled wisps of gray smoke, forming a translucent, gray-black smoke aggregate.

This thing looks like a magical ghost.

The ghost is Bellatrix when she was young, she stood there with blank eyes.

Inhale - exhale!

There was a loud gasp.

The harsh light on the crystal ball shield immediately dimmed.

It turned out to be Lupine outside. He happened to see this scene, so he couldn't help but walk in and come over.

He was looking into it near the crystal ball.

Lupine's big eye was outside the glass shield, magnified tens of thousands of times, looking very frightening.

Snape ignored the stunned Moody, turned around and asked McGuffin, "What should I do next?"

"Just ask! If the Death Eaters know, she'll answer. Come on! . . . I won't last long. That's not what the spell was supposed to do."

McGuffin held his wand tremblingly and said, it could be seen that he was doing his best to maintain the effect of the spell.

"Well done, MacGuffin!"

Dumbledore stood in front of the Death Eater, face to face with the ghost, observing carefully.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" Dumbledore asked calmly.

The ghost trembled, its figure blurred, and a wisp of gray mist fell off from its figure.

"I understand." 'She' said in a low voice, her voice was ethereal and hazy as if separated by a layer of veil.

"I wish you could tell us," said Dumbledore gently, "the most important secret of your master... Voldemort, the Dark Lord... what is his secret of immortality?"

Bellatrix's phantom's neck began to mechanically twist back and forth, as if twisted by an invisible wrench.

The thing was trembling, and its figure was indistinct, making an electronic sound without any emotion.

"I—don't—know, the master didn't tell me."

"Have you any guesses?"

"I, I-no...don't dare to speculate on the master's secret."

"But you must have thought of it, didn't you? [Horcrux]! (Moody gasped) Only this most evil, darkest magic can make him immortal, right? You should have thought of it, didn't you?"

"I—I..." The ghost kept repeating this step, as if it was stuck, the gray smoke that originally formed the body quickly dispersed and collapsed bit by bit, and soon one of the phantom's arms disappeared.

"Professor!" urged the MacGuffin.

Moody stayed in place motionless, staring at this scene, his magic eye kept trembling, looking back and forth at everything the little wizard had done, almost popping out of its socket.

Dumbledore thought for a while and asked again, "[Horcrux]... The Dark Lord gave this thing to you for safekeeping, right?"

The ghost stood there without answering. Its head turned back and forth, its mouth opened and opened, like a puppet. It seemed that some kind of force was forcing it to answer, and it was using all its will to keep the Dark Lord's secret.

"Another way, Professor! This is not [Teritaserum] and [Instigmatism]... This thing is a thought aggregate of a Death Eater. It is easy to coax if you have to speak according to her habits."

McGuffin hurriedly reminded that he was holding his wand with trembling hands, aiming at the Death Eater's body, and it seemed that he would not be able to hold on any longer.

"Who is the most trusted servant of the Dark Lord?"

Dumbledore asked in another way immediately after hearing this.

"It's me, it's me!" The ghost howled with its mouth open, its piercing piercing sounded like an alarm bell, and its body collapsed even faster.

"You are not! I know that the most trusted servant will keep something of the Dark Lord's possession!"

"It's me... I kept it!" The ghost, with only half of its body left, replied dully and stupidly.

"where is it?"

"I……"

"Unless you can prove it, you are not Voldemort's most trusted servant..."

"I am the master's most trusted servant, of course I know... that thing is in the deepest part of Gringotts..."

The ghost with only one head left screamed and twirled in mid-air, like a leaky balloon, but before it could finish saying where the thing was...it collapsed...disappeared in a puff of smoke.

At this time, Moody finally understood the purpose of Dumbledore and the others coming here - to find something hidden by the Dark Lord.

——[Horcrux]!
The word made even him feel chills.

He also didn't care about the "amazing performance" of the little wizard, and hurriedly asked, "Is that statement true? Last time, the giant dementor was assembled by the Dark Lord...to control it?"

"The secret of the Dark Lord being alive like this...is it because of that thing?"

"[Horcrux]! Are you looking for the [Horcrux] of the Dark Lord?"

Moody subconsciously lowered his voice.

"Hmm!" Dumbledore said vaguely, frowning as he thought about the answer he had just tortured.

"No wonder?" Moody sighed, and he took out the curved flagon and took another big gulp.

Then, as if he remembered something, he quickly looked at Snape and the little wizard.

Sure enough, their faces were calm, as if they already knew all this.

It wasn't surprising that Snape knew that Dumbledore had a special sense of trust in him, which he had known for a long time.

But this little wizard, MacGuffin Albert!

Moody stared at the Hogwarts student, who was leaning on his knees and breathing heavily, with complicated expressions, feeling extremely complicated in his heart.

He sort of understood why Dumbledore brought the little wizard with him, and even allowed him to interrogate him.

The little wizard's mind... and the spell?
He'd never seen anything like this—

He couldn't believe it... This is a... a student who hasn't even passed the [Ordinary Wizard Level Certificate]...

McGuffin Albert, a little wizard, has far more mana and ability than those young Aurors outside, at least——

Moody thought back to the night when the little guy tore Voldemort alive.

I shivered, and hurriedly stopped thinking about it.

At this moment, Bellatrix, who was paralyzed on the ground, began to twitch, her limbs twisted into weird shapes.

"Resuscitate quickly!" Snape stepped forward, pointing his wand at the Death Eater's chest, and the prisoner began to relax after the spell was fired, but after only a few breaths, it began to twitch again.

"What's going on?" Snape asked McGuffin aloud.

"I-I don't know, this is the first time I've used this charm," McGuffin responded loudly.

"fine!"

Dumbledore finally came back to his senses this time, he gave the Death Eater a cold look, without any emotion in his tone.

"The effect of that spell is exactly what McGuffin said it was, to move people's minds out of their bodies...and bring them together."

"That thing is the aggregation of people's thinking memory and subjective cognition. It is a magical phantom, a ghost... It is different from [Instinct], so [Occlumency] in the general sense has no way to defend against it... And even in the situation of ghoul transformation, it can also be tortured."

"And it won't cause serious sequelae like [Dementor Curse] or [Veritaserum]."

"So...Death Eaters are just more serious symptoms of ghoul transformation, and it is not related to MacGuffins." Dumbledore came to a conclusion coldly.

Moody didn't care about this. He stared at McGuffin curiously and asked, "What kind of spell is this? What's the use? Why haven't I heard of it... And it must be cast by this little wizard? Could it be?"

McGuffin did not answer, he was immersed in the feeling of the effect of the spell he had just cast.

"Well, you are right, it was indeed created by the little wizard." Dumbledore said.

"[Phantom Shifting Soul]!——Magic used to change people!"

"If I'm not mistaken, what McGuffin cast just now is only half of the spell, and the rest needs to implant an idea into the 'aggregate of thinking'... that is, the 'ghost', so that it can be integrated into the original thinking of the caster."

"That will slowly change a person without anyone, including the subject... a master who is proficient in Soul Removal, being able to detect it."

"Is it inspired by [The Curse of Theseus]? McGuffin."

"Yeah!" McGuffin responded.

"A genius idea..." Dumbledore admired, but he said instead, "However, this spell is too dangerous, for anyone, including you, MacGuffin... this spell is too dangerous!"

"You must use it with caution!"

(End of this chapter)