Hogwarts Raven

Chapter 398 (397): The Eccentric Dictator!
Everything in this spacetime has been turned upside down.

It was so twisted it was suffocating.

Grindelwald was not imprisoned; instead, he joined forces with Hitler and used magical powers to win World War II. However, the wizards' ambitions subsequently sparked a civil war, which was ultimately eradicated by a combination of technology and totalitarianism.

Magic was no longer a secret legend, but a "dangerous technology" openly used and openly eradicated. Wizards became a "taboo" and a "genocide" in this world.

And Ian, a legendary wizard from the world of canon, a white wizard who had just received the blessing of the sun god and should have become beloved by all, unexpectedly stumbled into a terrifying era in which wizards had been declared extinct.

"What on earth is going on?!" Ian's mind was in turmoil. He had intended to find the era of Merlin and Arthur, but instead stumbled into a dark parallel universe where magic was desecrated, exploited, and ultimately strangled. Here, there were no Knights of the Round Table, no glory of Camelot, only the iron heel of the Nazis and the erased history of magic.

And he.

It seems he's become the sole survivor among the wizards?
"What did you do to me!" The Imperial Guard captain collapsed to the ground, his eyes vacant, drool dripping from his mouth. Legilimency had caused permanent damage to his mind.

But Ian had no time to think about that right now.

More sirens wailed in the distance. Clearly, the commotion had attracted wider attention.

Ian took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He had to leave this place as soon as possible and find a safe place to carefully consider his options—the darkness of this dimension far exceeded his imagination. It wasn't just that the Nazis won the war; more importantly, the wizards, after their existence was completely exposed, had ended up in such a state.

This completely overturned all his understanding of the relationship between magic and Muggles.

"Get out of here first."

Ian told himself that with a flick of his wand, he erased all traces of himself. He took one last look at the unconscious crowd on the ground and the captain who had lost control of his excretory system.

"Without wizards and alchemical materials created by alchemists, how am I supposed to repair my time machine?" Ian stood beside the empty police car.

He was worried.

Look back again.

His gaze swept over the slumped crowd—villagers and police, all lost in a dreamless slumber. Only Captain Karl remained kneeling, his eyes unfocused, his lips barely moving.

It's as if they're still grappling with the cognitive collapse brought about by the word "wizard."

In the distance, the sound of more sirens grew louder and louder.

time is limited.

Ian, finding it hard to accept reality, knew that this police force was not isolated. Their communication systems must have sounded the alarm, and more "Imperial Order Maintainers" were on their way. He had to leave.

"Well, there's always a way out. I need to calm down."

He walked toward the dark gray armored police car. The door was ajar, and the key was still in the ignition. This car was unlike any modern police car he remembered; it was more like a hybrid of a military off-road vehicle and an armored personnel carrier, with a heavy body, wide tires, and an interior filled with a complex dashboard and flashing red indicator lights.

Ian took a deep breath, opened the car door, and got into the driver's seat.

It was unlike any car he had ever seen.

The car's control panel was incredibly complex. What puzzled him most was the presence of four pedals, and the symbols engraved on the gear lever were completely incomprehensible to him.

“Damn it, the cars in this world don’t even have automatic transmissions?” Ian complained, recalling the terminology his friends in another timeline used when talking about cars.

He tried pressing the leftmost pedal while turning the key—the engine roared, but the car didn't move. He tried again, this time with the middle pedal. Then, the engine roared, like a beast awakening. The gauges on the dashboard jumped wildly, and the headlights pierced the thin mist in the forest.

"Okay, start successfully." Ian breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the rightmost pedal—he thought it was the accelerator.

The car jolted violently and stalled.

"what?"

He restarted the engine and pressed the accelerator again. This time the car didn't stall, but it emitted a piercing roar, and the car body shook violently.

"Damn it! Why is this car so difficult to operate?" He looked down and saw that there were four pedals under his feet, instead of the three he remembered. The leftmost one was the clutch, the two in the middle were the brake and accelerator, and the outermost one... seemed to be an extension of the handbrake? Nobody knew why the structure of cars in this universe was so bizarre.

Perhaps that's why the world is heading in different directions. More police sirens blared in the distance, and Ian could see dust rising from the road ahead.

His intelligence was not bad; he began to recall the memories he had gleaned from the mind of the previous guard captain, studied them somewhat, and roughly grasped the general idea.

"Clutch...accelerator...gear shift...damn sequence!" Ian was sweating profusely, his fingers frantically flicking the gearshift. "In the movies, they just step on the gas and go!!"

Finally, after the fifth attempt, the car slowly moved forward. Ian breathed a sigh of relief and was about to accelerate when the car suddenly lurched violently—he had forgotten to release the handbrake.

"what--!"

The police car sped forward like a maddened beast, bursting out of the forest path and plunging into a narrow dirt road.

Ian was flustered, swerving the steering wheel left and right, the car swaying wildly between the ditch and the road, crashing around like a bumper car. From the outside, the police car looked like it was performing a bizarre dance on the road, accelerating and braking suddenly, its tires carving serpentine tracks on the dirt track.

Ian gripped the steering wheel tightly, his face pale: "Merlin, this is even harder than dealing with the Dark Lord!"

Since he had never encountered similar vehicles in either his previous or this life, Ian could only tinker with the car belonging to the director of his orphanage.

This performance monster is even more exciting than a flying broomstick.

Fortunately, he has exceptional reflexes.

After the initial bumps, the car gradually stabilized and continued driving along the road. Ian breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

"Left! Left!...No, right! Damn it!"

While maneuvering the vehicle, he used magic to subconsciously construct a "dynamic equilibrium field" to stabilize the car body; otherwise, this several-ton iron box would have already overturned into the ditch.

Yes, Ian also used a little magic to help him drive.

The next ten minutes were the most thrilling "driving" experience of his life. He felt like he was controlling an untamed beast, relying entirely on magic to secretly correct the direction, cushion the bumps, and anticipate obstacles. The car drifted on the curves, bounced through potholes, and even nearly hit a wild boar crossing the road once. Each near-miss made him curse repeatedly.

"This piece of junk doesn't even have ESP! The aerodynamics are terrible! Has the world's technology tree gone astray?!" He cursed as he used magic to sense his surroundings.

Avoid danger in advance.

Less than a minute after he left, three police cars roared into the village. The new officers stared in shock at their unconscious colleagues and villagers on the ground, and at the police car that had vanished.

"Attention all units! The suspect has stolen a police car and is fleeing eastward!" came the urgent German report over the radio.

Ian couldn't understand the wanted poster on the radio, but he could guess its contents. He tried to keep the vehicle moving smoothly while thinking about his next move.

After half an hour of bumper car-like driving, the car was getting faster and faster until an asphalt road appeared at the end of the dirt road. Ian caught a glimpse of a road sign—the city name was in German.

Another period of driving.

Finally, the city's outline appeared on the horizon.

This is a medium-sized city.

The architecture was bizarre—a fusion of traditional German style and stark modernist structures, with soaring spires, massive circular buildings, dense clusters of chimneys, and ubiquitous Nazi eagles and swastikas, all appearing particularly oppressive against the gloomy sky. A towering concrete wall, riddled with searchlights and patrol towers, surrounded the city like a prison. Ian knew he couldn't drive that stolen car in again.

He stopped beside an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of the city. The front of the car was dented, the tires were worn, and the hood was covered in forest mud. He quickly got out, used magic to melt the car key, and threw it into an oil-stained puddle. Ian carefully erased all traces he had left behind: fingerprints, hair, even magical residue.

He then cast several confusion spells to ensure that even if someone found the car, they wouldn't be able to obtain any useful information from it.

"Goodbye, my first 'driving' experience." He patted the car and turned to walk towards the city entrance. He was clearly very skilled at this kind of criminal method of destroying stolen cars. Although he couldn't drive, he had watched enough crime movies to know that stolen cars were likely equipped with tracking devices.

"Now, we need to change things up."

Ian took out his wand and cast a shapeshifting spell on himself.

His bones cracked slightly, he grew a little taller, his shoulders broadened, wrinkles and stubble appeared on his face, his hair turned gray, and his figure became slightly hunched.

A few seconds later, the mirror reflected an ordinary middle-aged man of about fifty years old, wearing simple gray work clothes and carrying a worn-out leather suitcase—a perfect blend into the world's underclass.

After confirming the transformation was correct, Ian walked towards the city. Near the city entrance, he saw a chilling checkpoint.

A reinforced concrete checkpoint stood across the road, with armed soldiers meticulously checking the documents of everyone entering the city. A huge sign read, "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (Every Volunteer, Every Reich, Every Führer). Next to the sign was an electronic display screen that scrolled the message, "Reporting suspicious behavior is the responsibility of every citizen."

I can tell.

It's very stressful.

The core ideology of imperialism is fully displayed.

"Damn world." Ian lowered his head and blended into the queue.

He noticed that the people waiting in line for inspection had blank expressions and avoided eye contact with the soldiers. When they showed their identification, their arms would unconsciously make a gesture similar to a salute.

“Identification,” a soldier with a blank expression mechanically said when it was Ian’s turn.

Ian handed over a "civilian ID card" forged with magic—he copied the format and anti-counterfeiting features from the knowledge of the police officer whose memories he had previously accessed.

The police scanned it, and the screen lit up with a green light.

"Profession?"

“A mechanic,” Ian replied in fluent German.

"destination?"

The other party continued to ask questions.

"Industrial Zone 7, Hans Factory"

Ian answered fluently.

The police officer stared at him for two seconds, then waved him on.

Upon entering the city, Ian immediately sensed an eerie "order".

The streets are wide and clean, and the road surface is spotless.

The buildings are mostly gray-white concrete structures, square, cold, and devoid of any aesthetic appeal. Each building is topped with an eagle emblem, and the windows are covered with stickers bearing the "quotes of the leader."

Pedestrians, dressed in uniforms or work clothes, walked in unison, their eyes fixed straight ahead. There was no laughter, no noise, and even conversation was rare—the reason was perhaps quite simple: every fifty meters, armed police officers stood patrolling, their eyes scanning the crowd like hawks; they were not there to protect people.

It's more like a form of control and supervision.

"The apparent efficiency and cleanliness mask an omnipresent fear."

Ian thought to himself.

It looks like a typical European city: people are shopping, trams are clanging by, and customers are chatting outside cafes.

But the details reveal the essence of this society: loudspeakers hang on every street corner, playing announcements and music from time to time; uniformed armed members march through the streets in neat rows.

The bookstore window displays "Mein Kampf" and various promotional materials; outside the cinema, posters for the latest movie, titled "Eternal Victory," are plastered.

What caught Ian's attention even more was that almost every public place displayed a "Certificate of Racial Purity," proving that all the staff of the place were pure Germans.

The ideological imprint of imperialism is everywhere.

"What a mistake! What an absurd direction! Good heavens!" Ian, who came from the normal world, would certainly not accept such an order that seemed to be like raising all living beings in captivity.

of course.

He didn't show it yet, but just complained to himself.

"How do I fix my time machine?" Ian walked into an ordinary-looking restaurant, hoping to gather more information. Next to the menu on the wall hung a "Recommended Nutritional Guide."

This is an outrageous menu.

They even had different dietary standards based on race and occupation. When the waiter came over, he first praised the Führer before asking Ian what he needed.

Ian casually ordered a dish and pretended to read the newspaper on the table.

Ian noticed the conversation at the next table.

Two middle-aged men were talking in hushed tones, their voices barely audible.

Ian noticed that when they realized he was listening, they immediately changed the subject and began loudly praising how great the latest National Sedan was.

Ian sat in a corner of the restaurant, absentmindedly eating the bland stew on his plate.

The food tasted mechanical and uniform, as if it were mass-produced according to some standard recipe. Suddenly, the television screen hanging on the restaurant wall interrupted its usual programming, and after a burst of rousing background music, a familiar face with a small mustache appeared—the head of state was delivering a live speech.

Everyone in the restaurant stopped what they were doing, turned to the screen, and looked solemn.

"We proudly declare to the entire nation and to the world: the remnants of the wizarding world have been completely eradicated! These pests, lurking in the shadows and attempting to poison the world with evil magic, have been wiped off the face of the earth forever! A pure and safe new era has arrived!"

On the television, the leader's voice, clear and penetrating, resounded through the speakers to every corner of the restaurant, eliciting a sparse but timely round of applause.

"Ok?"

Only Ian's fork remained suspended in mid-air.

The wizard's fate was so openly declared, making his stomach churn. But then, an even more startling detail caught his eye—he stared intently at the face on the screen.

This face... is so young.

(End of this chapter)