Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 275 Edward: You seduced my son to join a cult?

For the rest of the time, Wernher von Braun explained to Cohen everything that had happened to him.

Originally, he was just using his position as a Silver Key to help Cohen find people on the Silver Key list—and he even made contact with one of them, this old man…

“Wait a minute…” Edward frowned, suddenly remembering something:
"You mean, you, a member of the Silver Key, have been colluding with my son to find other members, and all of this was done without my wife and me knowing. If I hadn't come along, none of you would have told us..."

"Hmm—your dad doesn't know about this?" Wernher von Braun looked at Cohen with a chill down his spine.

“I’ve been winking and making faces at you until my face cramps,” Cohen said disappointedly. “I shouldn’t have had any expectations of your adaptability…”

"How many more dangerous things are you doing that your mother and I don't know about!" Edward said, glaring at him. "Aren't you in school? Is this how Dumbledore raises his students?"

“Wern von Braun is a professor,” Cohen said, shrugging.

“I really am…” von Braun said cautiously, “I was a student for half a semester last year… but let me make it clear beforehand, it was your son who asked me to find the silver key—”

“I’m going to have a good talk with Dumbledore!” Edward said angrily. “And you—Cohen!”

“Those people will disrupt our family’s normal life,” Cohen said. “Either I take care of them beforehand, or they will start trying to get rid of you and Rose.”

"..." Edward recalled the attack he had been in last year by several strange wizards.

“This is a difficult thing to explain…” Cohen said. “Silver Key thought I would destroy the world—but I obviously wouldn’t do that now.”

“You are Cohen’s last hope for this world,” Wernher von Braun explained to Edward. “At least that’s how the Silver Key members see it, so they will stop at nothing to achieve this goal.”

"..."

Edward didn't say anything more, but leaned against the corner of the table, lost in thought.

"What about me? What about me?" The Earl flew to the table next to the three of them. "Am I not Cohen's memory? We were such good friends—"

“They even kidnapped Mr. Flandre, but not you.” Cohen looked at the Earl with pity. “But don’t be too discouraged. One day you will rise to the top.”

The Count still looked at von Braun with unwavering hope, trying to get the result that "the Count was also on the Silver Key's assassination list."

“Emmmm…” Wernher von Braun looked away.

The result was unsurprising: Silver Key had no intention of harming Cohen's owl.

"Damn it." The count flew to the side in a huff.

“But they didn’t actually intend to kidnap the cat for Cohen,” Wernher von Braun explained. “At least the old man didn’t; he just felt that the soul of this cat, which could repeatedly come back to life, could be used to prevent the ‘Cohen clone’ from collapsing…”

"Where is Flandre's soul?" the Count asked.

“I saw it in that black bottle over there.” Cohen pointed to a dark glass bottle on the old man’s workbench, where Mr. Flandre was sleeping.

“But he never succeeded,” Wernher von Braun said. “The ‘fake Cohen’ couldn’t swallow the cat’s soul at all. Its soul was protected by some kind of magic. The fake Cohen could only take Flandre’s soul with him, but he couldn’t destroy it.”

“I bet Voldemort would cry his eyes out if he heard this,” Cohen clicked his tongue. “I thought the Silver Key had learned how to extract the souls of living beings…” *Smack!*

The count smashed the black glass jar.

Freed from any constraints, Frondo's soul quickly found Cohen and slipped into the pocket at Cohen's waist.

“My God, this period has been terrible. I can only talk to the black opening of the bottle, and there is no response—” A cat’s head popped out of Cohen’s pocket.

“Silently.” Cohen nudged Mr. Flander’s face with his wand. “Alright, Wernher von Braun, you continue. What role did you play in all this?”

“You don’t have to be so hurtful…” Wernher von Braun said as if stung, “I couldn’t beat that old man, and I was forced to be his assistant as a member of the Silver Key for more than a week. I was scolded for being inefficient at work, and even when I slept, he would scold me for being lazy—this old man is so desperate for his life, I’ve never seen him sleep…”

"It sounds even more like it's completely useless..." Cohen sighed.

"His greatest use is that he's useless!" Wernher von Braun raised his voice. "I can't exactly try to help him when he's killing people, can I?"

"Did the old man set up all this stuff in the hotel?" Cohen changed the subject, "The man with the crow's head, and that little note about immortality?"

“No, he’s just doing research down there,” Wernher von Braun said. “The hotel has long been abandoned. The things up there are what ‘Cohen’ wanted to do himself. Theoretically, his actions are a piecing together and imitation of fragments of your memories…”

"Your past?" The count seemed much more energetic after rescuing Mr. Frando. "You used to run an inn?"

“This is obviously something from a work of art!” Cohen said. “I’ve seen this kind of story before—and there’s no such thing as a crow’s head in real life.”

“And…” Wernher von Braun skillfully pulled out a large pile of parchment bound into books from various places in the laboratory. “Phew—that old man’s research was a replica of the experimental records from Burke Manor.”

"They want to recreate Cohen?" Edward suddenly asked, "A complete 'Cohen'?"

“The Silver Key was dismantled due to internal strife and the Ministry of Magic’s attack. Now it’s scattered in different places, with no contact with each other and even different goals…” von Braun said. “However, if we’re only talking about this old man, it’s like this: he wanted to recreate Cohen to accelerate the end of the world—that was his original goal, until that ‘copy Cohen’ said something.”

“One dies, another is enlightened,” Edward murmured.

“It’s from that work of art too,” Cohen said, covering his face. “It’s hard to imagine anyone taking this seriously—but considering that from a wizard’s perspective, it does sound like a prophecy… it seems quite reasonable that he believes it.”

“But the Cohen clones always collapse completely very quickly,” Wernher von Braun said. “There are no solutions to this problem in the experimental reports at all…”

Edward knew how to solve it—and he also knew why the Cohen clone project had failed.

"It would be a miracle if it succeeded," Cohen shook his head.

After accepting these parchments, which were practically "production reports" to Cohen, they needed to come up with a plausible reason for "why they were here."

A dark wizard, a basement marked with chaotic magical traces, a comatose Muggle, a blown-up second-floor room...

Anyone from the Ministry of Magic who isn't a slacker will eventually find this place. To avoid future trouble, Edward offered a very good solution.

After all, Edward wasn't without connections within the Ministry of Magic...

(End of this chapter)