Chapter 469: Party! (2 in 1)
On the same day that Jon had just joined the Department of Mysteries.
Witching Horizon's first battle in Britain broke out, the village of Hogsmeade located next to Hogwarts Castle was captured by Witching Horizon, and the British Aurors who were originally stationed here and always kept an eye on Hogwarts Castle were either captured or killed, and none of them were spared.
This was also the first battle result achieved by Witching Horizon after it declared war on the British Ministry of Magic, but of course, the Daily Prophet didn't report on this matter, and this news didn't even make it to the next day's page, just that even if the newspaper didn't say so, wizards didn't lack means to transmit information, and after occupying Hogsmeade, the wizards of Witching Horizon didn't restrict the original inhabitants of this wizarding village from going out of Hogsmeade or staying in the village.
Thus, even if this matter hadn't been reported yet, almost more than half of the entire British magical community knew about it.
Even if the Ministry of Magic wanted to try its best to minimise the impact of the matter, it was simply useless.
It was also during this interlude, the sixth month since the end of the Triwizard Tournament and Cornelius Fudge stepped down from his position as the British Minister of Magic, that Barty Crouch Jr. was formally elected to the position of the current Minister of Magic of the United Kingdom.
Voldemort had handed him a great deal of power to allow him to deal with the Witching Horizon's attack on Britain. While Voldemort himself finally met with all the purebloods again, after disappearing from the public eye for a long time.
On that occasion, Jon was, of course, present. Right in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, Voldemort made a speech that was clearly in response to Dumbledore's declaration of war.
His appearance was as young and handsome as before, and regardless of what was really going on within the purebloods, the practical effect was undoubtedly a blow to the original message that had been circulating that Voldemort was war-shy and no longer dared to face Dumbledore head on.
However, Jon, who is working in the Department of Mysteries, can clearly see that even if Voldemort comes forward, there is no way to change the fact that the Death Eaters, that is, the purebloods, have long since been divided.
In the meantime, after familiarising himself with the work of the Department of Mysteries for a few days, Jon also had a general understanding of this most mysterious and unknown department of the British Ministry of Magic.
This world doesn't only have wizards as well as other magical creatures or races, such existences with vivid lives and independent self-awareness that can use magic.
Many other magics have always existed, that no one controls, but that can be sustained on their own.
Like time, like death, like planets, like prophecy.
That's right, prophecies are actually autonomous magical presences in their own right, and a wizard's divination is just another magical ability to access, or glimpse into them.
These are marvellous matters, and countless wizards have indulged in them since time immemorial.
For example, when Jon led the Hogwarts ship on the sea, he met "Sir Stoker", who has a fascination for planetary astronomical magic.
There are also masters of divination who travel around the world, and these people are all prophecy-snooping fanatics.
Then there's the now-lost alchemy of making time-turners, a testament to the ancient wizards' mastery and use of time magic.
Including the Horcrux as well, the one who created the Horcrux must have surpassed normal attainment in the study of death and soul magic.
The Department of Mysteries, on the other hand, is an aggregated department that gathers all of Britain and even all of Europe encompassing the existence of this type of magic.
When the Ministry of Magic was not called the Ministry of Magic but was called the Wizards' Council, the Department of Mysteries already existed, and from that time onwards, the name of the person working there has also been passed down, and the wizards working here are not called employees, but "Unspeakable".
The Department of Mysteries has a great deal of autonomy and is the only department in the Ministry of Magic that does not need to follow the orders of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and the Unspeakable can be described as the "scientists" of the magical world, and they can even ignore the actions of the Minister of Magic.
Of course, that was in the regular period, since Voldemort is in power, all the special traits are no match for absolute power.
Even if the Unspeakable didn't have to follow the orders of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, they still didn't have the means to disobey Voldemort's will, which was why there was this pureblood's great cleansing of the entire Department of Mysteries.
After understanding the nature of this department clearly, Jon then viewed this pureblood takeover of the Department of Mysteries, which gave him the absurd feeling of a group of second-generation children expelling the academicians in the Academy of Sciences, and then coming over to have a party by themselves.
Let's just say that reality was far more outrageous than the story.
These newly inducted purebloods hadn't even studied the magic attributed to wizards, let alone these innate magics.
That's why in the initial period when they got transferred into the Department of Mysteries, they couldn't even understand the most basic information left behind by the previous Unspeakables and thought that it was because of the lack of manpower, and that as long as they recruited enough people, they would be able to bring the affairs of the Department back on track.
But the reality is, a straw man is a straw man, even if 10,000 straw men are together, they can't be turned into elites who can do something.
After Jon's batch of purebloods who had been hired to expand the manpower, those purebloods who originally thought that recruiting people would solve the problem found that even if they recruited more people, there was no way to figure out what they didn't understand before, and these people started to completely lose their shit.
Only a very small number of purebloods who had stayed in the Department of Mysteries as Unspeakable before were still able to do their jobs, but with only the number of people you could count on one of your hands, it didn't help the big picture at all.
So all these people just stopped caring, and just stuck their heads into their previous fields of study, while the rest of the people did as they pleased.
As for pulling back the Unspeakable who knew what to do before?
That is definitely impossible, those who have been sidelined from the Unspeakable are either half-bloods or purebloods who have already made it clear that they are loyal to whichever Voldemort ruling Britain, which are irreconcilable issues that are impossible to bring back again.
Since they can't do anything, and they can't bring back the people who can do something, everyone will just have to lie down and relax together!
Anyway, the Ministry of Magic pay them their wages as usual, the work in the Department of Mysteries also has nothing to do with the day-to-day operation of the magical world, and the newly-appointed deputy head of the department, Slughorn will not go to check on their work progress and condition, so even if everyone is here all day partying and not doing anything, there is no problem.
After Jon had seen this group of purebloods swarming all over the place, he could only say that he had truly seen the diversity of the human race.
But this could be called a totally good thing for his and Slughorn's actions here.
Judging by the way these purebloods were acting right now, they hadn't been given any further instructions since they were ordered to be stationed in the Department of Mysteries, and it looked like the only thing these people would be doing was keeping a watchful eye on the place and not letting anyone else have a chance to get their hands on anything here.
These purebloods who had fallen in favour of Voldemort II weren't all that distant when it came to their attitude towards Spike, who Jon was currently pretending to be, as well as Slughorn and a few others whose attitudes hadn't yet made it clear as to whom they stood with.
After all, they only have an ambiguous stance, not a clear statement that they will not stand with them, so as long as there are more get-togethers (partying); after the feelings have been enhanced, everything else will be fine.
Jon also took this opportunity, using the age difference between him and the newly recruited purebloods that are not that big to make a good surface relationship, at least they will not have a nodding acquaintance when they meet later on.
At the same time, by using the identity of assistant of the deputy head of the Department provided to him by Slughorn, these days he strolled through several halls of the Department of Mysteries that he could enter at the moment.
The purebloods in charge of the various halls were basically having a party, and some of them even brought their house elves over to have a barbecue at the site of the Space Chamber, which they beautifully coined as "flirting".
Jon was quite speechless, but he didn't make any comments and even rubbed a few skewers from the barbecue party.
The Space Chamber which was not accessible to the public, was so polluted that it smelled of kebabs as soon as the door was opened, and there was obviously nothing in the chamber that had anything to do with what Jon was looking for.
There was a locked door next to the Space Chamber, and the purebloods were initially interested in this inaccessible room, but after failing to open the door no matter what they did, they got the name of the room behind the door from various sources - "The Love Room".
As the name suggests, it was a room dedicated to the study of love.
After learning about this, the group of purebloods immediately felt bored and stopped looking for a way to enter this door.
As for the Death Chamber, which was used for the study of death, no purebloods went in lightly after being warned by one of the remaining proper Unspeakables.
They are wastrels, but not fools, and know that anything that has to do with death is never a good thing.
On top of that, they used the Time Room as an exhibition hall. Fortunately, none of the time-turners could be used now for whatever reason, or else it was expected that quite a few Purebloods would have slipped in a few of them to take home, even if they couldn't use them, they could still be used as heirloom collectables.
The brain room is also not a place where people would go in, which left with few genuine Unspeakables specialised in the research of human thinking aspects, they buried their heads and hid in the brain room, shut the door, and did not care about how those other uneducated purebloods are going to toss and turn, while others won't go to look for their trouble.
And there weren't many purebloods interested in this room, which contained brains that fluttered around like jellyfish and made people feel sick to their stomachs.
The Hall of Prophecies is also basically not visited by more than a few people, most of the time this room is used as a storage room for all kinds of prophecies from the past to the present, the most famous of which, without any surprise, is the prophecy about the Saviour who can defeat Voldemort, but that prophecy is said to have been put in a special storage room, with only Voldemort himself knows exactly where it is hidden.
Purebloods also knew the importance of discretion, and no one came to such a place to test their guts.
And it wasn't more than a few days later that a portion of the purebloods grew weary of life in the Department of Mysteries, and that was partly because the Witching Horizon's war within the United Kingdom was apparently getting smoother and smoother.
After occupying Hogsmeade at the very beginning, Witching Horizon had relied on Hogwarts Castle and Hogsmeade, as well as a place that had been a goblin command post for a while during the goblin rebellion thing, as a bridgehead.
Previously, the large and small safe houses that had been covertly constructed in various places during the Hogwarts wagon's period of exile served as small strongholds, from which they began to launch an attack on the high-level personnel of the Ministry of Magic in Britain, that is to say, those purebloods of honourable status.
These days there were already quite a few purebloods who had been attacked in their own manors or castles and had already suffered losses, but the Witching Horizon wizards, who were the active attackers, had hardly paid any kind of price.
So the purebloods began to spontaneously choose to hug each other, they temporarily abandoned their family residences and instead gathered together to prevent being broken one by one.
However, these families all have industries in Britain, they almost monopolise 100% of the upper-class business in Britain, otherwise, how could they possibly provide for their luxurious life with only the "meagre" salary from the Ministry of Magic?
After they embraced each other as a group, the Witching Horizon began to target these pureblood families' various shops and commercial traffic activity, causing them to be anxious and exhausted, and constantly pressuring the current head of Auror's office, Karkaroff, to find a way to start counterattacking against the Witching Horizon's action as soon as possible.
The iteration of these messy things together made these purebloods who had come to serve in the Department of Mysteries no longer have the heart to stay in the Department and throw parties.
They began to show regular absenteeism, and the most exaggerated occurrence was when Jon came to the Department and counted the number of people who showed up for work on ten fingers!
Slughorn, a good old man, never said anything and did not have the slightest intention of calling the absentees over to reprimand them.
Jon was even more at ease during this period of time to boldly go more deeply to find the source of the golden sand.
However, although these purebloods were scattered and unreliable, there were still a few amongst them who had clearly been here with a mission in mind.
Jon then found that a few of them were very different from those reckless purebloods, even if they didn't know anything about the work in the Department of Mysteries, they wouldn't mess around with things, but rather, they were just like patrols, with a clear division of labour who roamed the various halls every day and clocked in and out of work every day, and even stayed behind after work at night, just like specialised security guards.
If they were asked what they were doing, they would say they were bored and just walking around.
Jon stopped bothering these people after determining their walking trajectory.
He is now a pureblood with a regular identity, and this Spike's identity handed to him by Kingsley wasn't supposed to be a pureblood young master who was too much of a waste and still had a certain amount of intellectual literacy. Plus there was no way the Ollivander's wand business would be affected in normal circumstances, so it wasn't really noticeable that he wasn't absent from work.
Therefore, Jon's investigation, later on, went very smoothly, and he quickly ruled out the other rooms and locked his final target within the confines of the Hall of Time.
Because, inside the main chamber of the Time Room, there were many large and small hourglasses placed, and the sand that kept flowing from those hourglasses was very similar to the vial of golden sand that he had obtained from Snape's hands.
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