American comics: From Hogwarts to God on Earth

Chapter 98 Animagus

After a long while, Rune was finally put down. Even so, some wizards still asked Rune for his autograph. However, Rune politely declined them all. He had encountered this situation before; once he signed one, he had to sign countless others, which was extremely troublesome. Moreover, some people sold their autographs as commodities, so it was better not to sign at all.

After shaking off the group of wizards, Rune finally entered Hogwarts. The young wizards of Hogsmeade had already tipped off the professors, so Professor McGonagall personally greeted him.

"How have you been lately?" Professor McGonagall asked.

Rune nodded and opened his mouth, which held a single leaf of mandrake. With the teaching materials provided by Professor McGonagall and the help of many "kind people," Rune's transfiguration skills had become quite advanced, and he was now learning the most dazzling jewel in the crown of transfiguration.

Unfortunately, this ritual magic is extremely complicated. The mandrake leaves must remain intact for a full month without any damage. Even though Rune only needs to sunbathe and drink water to meet his daily needs, he has already wasted three leaves, even just by drinking water.

As for waiting for a thunderstorm, that's quite simple. Those islands deep in the ocean frequently experience thunderstorms. Therefore, for British wizards, the wait for a storm could be weeks, months, or even years.

But for Rune, a storm comes almost every two or three days.

Professor McGonagall examined Rune closely, touching it here and there, and asked, "Did he kill a lot of people?"

?

"Hmm." Rune nodded, then turned around to cooperate with Professor McGonagall. "Those who were loyal to their duties and had a conscience were not killed; those with evil intentions and who were stubborn became my materials for practicing shapeshifting. I haven't encountered any danger."

Those beasts are no match for me.

Professor McGonagall nodded, noticing Rune's hard work with Transfiguration during this time: "It seems you haven't slacked off; you've done well."

Rune smiled and then explained his purpose. On the way, Professor McGonagall recounted Voldemort's resurrection.

Snape's pursuit of Wormtail failed, which is actually quite normal. After all, he's a creature in the form of an Animagus, a rat, allowing Peter to enter many places inaccessible to wizards, such as the sewers. Furthermore, because Animagus have extremely high resistance to magic, trying to find him using spells like the Summoning Charm is a pipe dream.

Although Snape did find him several times and almost killed him, Peter always managed to escape.

It was Snape's relentless pursuit that forced Wormtail to seek a backer for himself ahead of time—namely, to resurrect Voldemort. The process was quite simple. Although Sirius Black was a sincere, brave person willing to sacrifice for those he loved, his personality was somewhat... to put it nicely, carefree; to put it bluntly, reckless.

During a holiday, he secretly took Harry out to play, only to be spotted by Wormtail. So, while infiltrating Sirius's inner circle, he searched for help. Finally, by sheer coincidence—rune guesses Dumbledore must have been involved, otherwise it wouldn't have been such a coincidence—he connected with Barty Crouch Jr., who was supposedly dead.

They swapped the Portkey Harry and the others had used to go to the Quidditch World Cup with the Portkey to Voldemort's father's grave. Harry, Sirius, and the others were thus teleported to Barty Jr.'s location. Normally, this Death Eater wouldn't be able to fight Sirius and the Weasleys, but guess what? Did Barty Jr. have some knowledge of the magnetic field generators invented by Muggles?

So Voldemort was successfully resurrected. But under Rune's direction, the elite wizards who were already lying in wait at Old Tom's grave easily drove away the three dark wizards.

While the magnetic field generator can significantly reduce the spellcasting abilities of wizards, wizards under the influence of runes must train daily under its influence. Misha and a few others even have to train daily under the pressure of runic magic.

Therefore, they were quite experienced in combat. In addition, Voldemort had just been resurrected and his strength had not yet recovered, so the Death Eaters had no intention of getting entangled with them for long.

Upon arriving at Dumbledore's office, Professor McGonagall called out "Wool Socks!" and the office door opened.

"Thank you, Professor," Rune said, stepping into the spacious room. Just like when he had come before, the office was large, with high ceilings and walls covered with portraits of all the past Hogwarts headmasters. Not far away, a phoenix nestled in a tattered hat, seemingly asleep.

The first to speak was not Dumbledore or Rune, but an old man with gray hair and an extremely long beard, who was depicted in a mural. He also had dark eyes that revealed a shrewdness and cunning, and he wore a silver-green Slytherin outfit.

"Thank you for saving my good-for-nothing great-grandson once again!" he shouted to Rune in thanks. Rune nodded in return.

He sat down in the chair and accepted Dumbledore's scrutiny.

After a long pause, Dumbledore spoke again: "You really do resemble one of my friends. Like you, he was handsome and dashing, possessed spellcasting abilities far beyond his years, and was very good at influencing people. He had lofty ideals, but his methods were ruthless. Most amazingly, like you, he also left school early."

Rune knew who he was referring to—Gellert Grindelwald. Strictly speaking, he was the undisputed Dark Lord of the wizarding world. Voldemort's activities were initially confined to Britain, so other wizards had little impression of him. But Grindelwald's activities in America and Europe had truly shocked all wizards.

This man attended Durmstrang School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a school that refused to accept Muggle students and allowed them to practice dark magic. But unlike Rune, who left Hogwarts on his own, Grindelwald was expelled from Durmstrang because his research into dark magic was too evil—that's right, even Durmstrang, which was the most open-minded about dark magic, could not accept Grindelwald's research.

Later, he became entangled with Dumbledore—in every sense of the word. Together, they planned to find the Deathly Hallows and lead a wizarding revolution, breaking the International Law of Secrecy and establishing a global hierarchical order led by wise and powerful wizards who would rule over Muggles.

The reason for the rift between the two was Dumbledore's sister. At the time, Dumbledore's brother blamed him for not taking good care of his sister Ariana. Grindelwald, on the other hand, believed that Ariana's condition would be a burden to him and Albus, leading to a conflict between the two brothers and Grindelwald.

During the chaotic fight, the three men injured the innocent Ariana, causing her to lose control of her emotions and unleash her magic, resulting in her death. This event left an indelible mark of pain on Dumbledore's heart.