From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 305 The End of Immortality
After Ivy activated Ariana's Obscurus magic into a brand new mud monster, the Dumbledore brothers finally showed up.

From a distance, Ivy could hear Aberforth complaining to his brother: "If Ariana is hurt, I will never let you go!"

"Even if you don't have confidence in me, you must have confidence in Ivy. He is different from all of us." Dumbledore said. The two of them were hidden near the rocks by the sea by the Disillusionment Curse. When Ivy opened his secret vision, he noticed the two old men.

Looking at the two similar girls, one black and one white, beside Ivy, the two old men couldn't help but be speechless.

"So..." Dumbledore stared at the Obscurus named Arbella for a long time before deciding to ask what was going on, "Is this a magical creature?"

"Her name is Alberta! Albus!" Ariana shouted excitedly, "She will be our sister from now on!"

"It's Ariana's Obscurus, and I gave it life," Ivy explained. "Now that it's a separate entity, it won't threaten your sister's life anymore."

"Is there any possibility that the Obscurus will relapse?" Aberforth asked immediately.

Ariana's dissatisfied voice followed behind: "Don't always treat me as a patient!"

"Yes, but it's very small. As Ariana's body grows older, if it doesn't erupt before she reaches adulthood, the Obscurus will completely leave her." Ivy glanced at the mentally immature girl. "She has spent much more time in the spirit world than we thought."

"I'm afraid that's true." Dumbledore sighed, "The resurrected Ariana is indeed different from the girl I remember. As time goes by, the dead in the spirit world are also changing. Nothing can go back to the past..."

Dumbledore then laughed again: "But I am still very grateful to you, Ivy. You have allowed me to see completely different possibilities... By the way, can Ariana use magic now?"

"I think so, if you find her a wand." A faint blue rune halo lit up next to Ivy's hand, and the Grimoire of Destruction floated out of it.

Ivy rummaged through the magic book for a while and took out several bundles of parchment scrolls of different sizes, as well as many thick books.

"If you plan to let Ariana go to Hogwarts to receive education, you definitely can't let her start from the first grade. However, considering her age, she can be in the same grade as Harry and the others. It is not easy to make up for three years of knowledge. These are the test questions and knowledge points outlines I used for tutoring when I was in school. They are perfect for tutoring Ariana." Ivy smiled and handed the scroll and textbook in her hand to Dumbledore. "She is a very talented girl. I look forward to meeting her in Hogwarts after the summer vacation."

"This is really... a great help!" Dumbledore's blue eyes radiated a burst of joy. "I was still worried about where to find a suitable tutor for her. With your help, I think Ariana will definitely be able to keep up with the progress."

Ivy glanced at Ariana who was still having fun with the Obscure Mud Monster and smiled with evil humor. This poor child had no idea what kind of hell she would face next.

To deal with a naughty child like her, one must of course start by destroying their summer vacation. It was a pity that the teaching materials of Hogwarts did not include various exercise books and mock exams, otherwise Ivy would definitely make Ariana's summer vacation more difficult.

The key is that such behavior can be approved by the parents of naughty children, because there is definitely nothing wrong in learning more.

After doing all this, Ivy planned to leave. He had just returned from the world of Alda and there were still many things waiting for him to deal with.

For example, you can study carefully with your contract magician to find out how to better use the contractual bond between the two.

For example, he tried to use the wish to simulate other eight-ring spells. When using the wish to simulate these spells, Ivy did not need to pay experience points as a price, so he believed that in this way, the impact of the wish on the real world would be minimized as much as possible.

Among the eight-ring spells, the one that interested him the most was the creation of a demiplane in the conjuration system. He thought he could use this spell to add new rooms to the Room of Requirement, or directly create a plane outside the Room of Requirement to accommodate it. In this way, Ivy would not only have a magical mansion, but also add a yard to it.

Moreover, the four existing spaces in the House of Requirement for breeding magical animals can also be moved outdoors. To some extent, Ivy himself is also a god who created the world.

As a spell of conjuration, creating a demiplane can obviously be enhanced by the effects of the Words of Creation. How can this not be considered using the knowledge of creation to some extent?

After throwing the teaching materials in his hand to his younger brother, Dumbledore took Ivy a few steps to the side.

"I hope helping Ariana solve the hidden danger of the Obscurus didn't take up too much of your energy." Dumbledore said in a low voice. He obviously didn't want his conversation with Ivy to be heard by his younger siblings. "We still have one more thing to do."

Ivy looked at him sideways. After returning from the world of Arda, he found that Dumbledore had become a little fussy and procrastinating. But considering that he was an elderly man, Ivy thought it was no big deal.

"Go ahead." Ivy did not make his own promise. He wanted to find out what Dumbledore was talking about first.

"It's about this..." Dumbledore took out a pocket watch from his pocket. It was decorated with exquisite carvings, but the hands on the dial were not moving. It was obvious that it had stopped working. There was no time scale on the dial, so it was unclear how to use it to tell time...

Ivy stared at the pocket watch and thought for a moment, then he remembered everything: "Master Flamel...died?"

"Hmm." Dumbledore handed the pocket watch to Ivy. "This is something he gave you. I'm just keeping it for you."

"When did you find out?" Ivy pressed the button on the pocket watch case, causing the cover to pop open automatically. The two pointers pointing in different directions began to rotate clockwise and counterclockwise respectively, and finally overlapped.

Ivy guessed that this was probably a compass or something like that, so he laid it flat and turned it a few times, and sure enough, both needles pointed to the same position.

"I think it will be around the Easter holidays." Dumbledore thought for a moment, "Nico has never had a strong sense of time, so it doesn't matter if we are a little late."

"I don't think more than two months is considered ordinary lateness." Ivy said unhappily.

Two months is enough time for an ordinary person's corpse to stink eight hundred times. If the Flamels were not two alchemists, Ivy would never have thought of collecting their bodies.

"But two months is only a tiny period of time in Nico's long life." Dumbledore still had a smile on his face. "You don't have to blame yourself. After all, you are also on a journey."

"Okay, okay." Ivy did not continue to ask why Dumbledore did not tell him the news earlier, because he guessed that the old man might use excuses such as "I am old and have a bad memory" to get away with it.

"Will you come with me?" Ivy had already observed the direction of the compass needle, which was undoubtedly the east.

Considering that Nicolas Flamel and his wife were both French, it is impossible for them to have died on British soil. France is a reasonable guess, but no one can predict what the great alchemist was thinking.

"Nico left his inheritance to you, Ivy, not to me. So I won't go with you to visit Nico." Dumbledore shook his head. "If he has written anything else in his will, please let me know. If he has any additional arrangements for his body and needs my presence, it won't be too late for me to go to the scene."

"Okay." Ivy put away the compass. He planned to use triangulation to determine the final location of the Great Alchemist. With the wizard's Apparition, long-distance travel would not be too difficult for him.

----

When facing very distant target points, the accuracy of triangulation positioning will obviously be affected by various factors. Since the surface of the earth is a curved surface rather than a flat surface, Ivey must spend extra time to adjust the positioning accuracy.

Fortunately, Apparition gave him an extremely high movement speed, so after spending a whole day, Ivy found the trace of the Great Alchemist in a remote valley with gurgling water in the Alps.

Nicolas Flamel undoubtedly had ample foresight about his own death.

He leisurely set up some puzzles in the valley, hoping to play a little joke on Ivy.

The puzzle design is very alchemist-like, and the hints and steps are full of French romantic aesthetics.

These puzzles hardly hindered Ivy's progress, because as long as he carefully studied Nicolas Flamel's "Book of Hieroglyphics", he could guess the correct solution.

This is both a test and a disguised form of teaching.

At the deepest part of the valley, Ivy once again saw the shabby rag tent of the Great Alchemy.

Although he had known for a long time that there was something special inside the rag tent, Ivy still couldn't help but complain about the great alchemist's strange aesthetic taste in alchemical props. The pastoral scenery in the alchemist's house had not changed at all, except that all the creatures that Nicolas Flamel kept in the yard were gone.

Ivy remembered the majestic rooster on their roof, but now there was nothing left there, not even a feather.

There was no foul smell in the air, neither the smell of animal manure nor the smell of rotting corpses.

Ivy felt relieved. The great alchemist must have provided some protection for his own and his wife's bodies, so Ivy didn't have to face two highly decayed corpses.

Walking along the cobblestone path toward the cabin, Ivy saw the animals behind the fence—sheep and ponies lying on the ground in stiff postures.

Ivy had thought that the LeMays had released all the animals, but now it seemed that was not the case.

Walking over the fence to the barn behind the wooden house, Ivy not only saw the sheepdogs, cows and sheep that were common on the farm, but also some meat poultry such as chickens, ducks and geese. The big rooster that roosted on the roof was also here.

"All dead?" Ivy couldn't tell how these creatures died, because they looked no different from being alive, as if they had fallen into a long sleep.

Ivy stretched out his fingers and ran them across the skin of these animals. The touch of the fur and skin was completely different from that of a lifeless corpse. There was even a faint warmth hidden in these animals' bodies.

"Nicolas Flamel wouldn't have so much of the elixir of life that he could share it with animals, right?" Ivy came to a conclusion that even he couldn't believe.

Then, in order to overturn his own conclusion, he activated the secret vision that was fixed on his eyes.

"Oh my God..." The conclusion of the previous second was immediately overturned. All the farm animals lying on the ground in front of him were emitting bright magical light.

Ivy didn't believe that there were magical creatures that looked exactly like ordinary animals. Even if there were, there wouldn't be so many different kinds appearing at the same time.

So there is only one possibility, these farm animals emitting magical auras are all creations of alchemy.

Ivy cast a spell to turn the alchemical animal that fell to the ground over and observed it carefully.

If it is a normal animal, it will definitely develop some non-standard physical characteristics during its growth process, such as a mole of medium size, a harmless growth, or a scar.

But the alchemical creatures in front of Ivy all looked like pictures cut out from encyclopedia illustrations. There was not a single trace of non-standardity on them.

"Nicolas Flamel really has plenty of time to spare, otherwise he wouldn't have created so many things that are useless except for viewing," Ivy complained.

“Perhaps it has companionship value?” Ivy thought uncertainly, because in many of the film, television and literary works he had seen in the past that depicted long life, separation from relatives, friends and pets was a pain that the immortals had to go through.

The alchemist couple chose to create so many lifelike alchemical creations here, perhaps out of consideration for rejecting the experience of life and death.

Ivy became more interested in Nicolas Flamel's alchemy knowledge. Imagine if this alchemy technology was applied to the creation of puppets and constructs that could act autonomously, wouldn't it be possible to get a group of helpers who would never betray him?

Ivy left the alchemical creations on the farm and walked towards the house where the alchemist and his wife were buried with great interest.

Aren’t the people lying on the recliner holding hands the target of Ivy’s trip?

The two old men looked energetic, as if they were taking a nap under the warm spring sun, and seemed extremely peaceful.

There was no doubt that it was the power of magic that ensured that the bodies of the two old men did not rot and stink.

On Nicolas Flamel's chest, Ivy saw a well-sealed envelope with the following words written in elegant cursive French:

To the owner of the Golden Dragon Guardian, Ivy Dum.

Ivy opened the envelope and found the letterhead inside had the same beautiful cursive writing.

"Dear Ivy:

Until now, just one second before we set out to meet death... or maybe the day before?
I still often think of your golden guardian angel that day, a fire dragon! And it was a four-legged, two-winged fire dragon!

I have never seen such graceful and majestic creatures! Apart from loose joints and missing teeth, there are some benefits to living a long life. It always allows me to see many extraordinary sights.

However, I have to admit that in my long life, most of the things are still various trivial matters, such as Perenal's daily worries about three meals a day.

Fortunately, I don’t have to be responsible for cooking, otherwise my already limited hair would have completely left my scalp!
I can see that you are a young man who likes simple and efficient things, so it is better to say less nonsense. I will leave everything about the Alchemist's House to you, or would you rather give it to a beggar on the street?
Anyway, after we die, you can do with everything here as you please.

Of course, I think exploration is a very enjoyable activity, otherwise we two old guys wouldn't have to die in a foreign land.

But to prevent you from saying bad things about me, I might as well tell you the general things to pay attention to.

All the alchemical manuscripts were in the study, and if one or two were missing, it must have been left lying around by Perenelle.

All animals are alchemical creations, but I'm sure you've already figured that out. As the owner of the Philosopher's Stone, I wanted to give my pet some of the elixir, but Perenelle said that would be a waste and might attract thieves who might steal and eat my poor pet.

To prevent this from happening, we used alchemy to create lifelike animals as a substitute. Alchemists like me always have time to turn delusions into reality. The animals' ability to move depends on magic, and I don't know if they will be able to move when you come here.

All the wine and gold are in the cellar. God knows why I made so much gold. It's a delusion to spend it all! I really hope you can get rid of it all.

The alchemical equipment is in the alchemical workshop on the first floor, and the materials are in the material room next to it. Forgive me for not leaving you any alchemical products except alchemical animals, because I think you must think that what you made is better than an old man like me. Haha! Did I get it right?

Okay... Perenelle is urging me again. God knows how much she is looking forward to this day.

Although the Philosopher's Stone has disappeared, I believe that for young talents like you, it is only a matter of time to recreate it. However, from my personal experience, the stone can only bring temptation and it is difficult to create new value. So I sincerely thank you for destroying it.

If you stand still, you will soon get bored with eternal life.

But I heard from Dumbledore that you want to devote your entire life to the pursuit of magic?

I must say, it is indeed a road with no end.

In short, we are about to embark on a new journey!

PS: Don’t let me see you in the spirit world too early.

Also: Please scatter our ashes on the top of Mont Blanc. I heard that you can see Italy from there. I was obsessed with the beauties there when I was young.

Yours faithfully, Nico.

"

(End of this chapter)