The Butcher of Hogsmeade

In the end, Shen Hou took the Bone Spike Wand without opening the second old box, so no one knew what kind of wand was inside. Sirius was still talking about it when he arrived at Florin's Ice Cream Shop. Because after Shen Hou made his choice, Ollivander ignored Sirius's curiosity and requests and immediately put away the second old box.

"I just wanted to take a look. The first one is made of a material I've never heard of before, the second one must be even rarer." Sirius sat under the parasol outside the ice cream shop, muttering to himself, "I wanted to pay for it but he wouldn't let me. That old man really doesn't know how to do business."

Gideon, who was reading the Daily Prophet, glanced at Sirius upon hearing this: "You bought a wand not to use it, but simply out of curiosity to take a look; the fact that Mr. Ollivander didn't kick you out on the spot with that thought is enough to prove his gentlemanly manners."

Shen Hou ignored their bickering and focused on the ice cream in his hand. He found that the cold drinks in the magical world didn't seem to be much different from those in Muggles, except that the raw materials were a little more varied than those in the Muggle world. After all, Muggles couldn't get their ingredients from magical plants and animals.

"Did Longbottom say when he's coming?" Sirius looked around.

"He said there were still ten minutes until the agreed time; I remember you were there and heard it, right?"

"I just feel like time is passing too slowly..."

As they were chatting idly, a muffled clap of thunder suddenly came from the other end of the street. The three of them were startled and, like all the pedestrians on the street, immediately looked in the direction of the sound. They saw black smoke billowing from the street-facing window of a two-story building not far from Gringotts. A wizard, his face blackened by the smoke, was opening the window to ventilate the room while violently waving his wand, sending out puffs of black smoke.

Judging from the wizard's expression from afar, although he was furious, he showed no fear, as if nothing serious had happened.

Sirius Black craned his neck to look around: "There have been so many explosions in Diagon Alley today. Are people testing their wands over there too?"

"You don't know that place, or that person? That's the headquarters of the Daily Prophet, and the wizard at the window is Mr. Barnabas Guffey, the newspaper's editor-in-chief," Gideon said.

Sirius Black, upon hearing this, became even more excited: "You know what happened to them, right? Judging from your expression, you definitely do."

“I do know a little, and it’s related to Shen,” Gideon said, but then turned and handed the newspaper in his hand to Shen Hou instead of Sirius. “Take a look at this. It’s yesterday’s Daily Prophet. There’s a report about you in it. It’s a commentary published after the Ministry of Magic announced the news about the Hogsmeade incident that night. The author is a witch named Rita Skeeter, who has recently made a name for herself at their newspaper.”

Upon hearing that his name was in the newspaper, Shen Hou forgot all about his ice cream. He took the newspaper with one hand and placed the unfinished ice cream on the table. Unexpectedly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brightly colored beetle on the table, slowly moving towards the ice cream cup. He casually swept it away with the newspaper, and the beetle flapped its wings and flew away.

"What report? What did it say?" Sirius craned his neck across the table.

"A bunch of stupid nonsense, rubbish, utter rubbish." Gideon rarely uttered such profanities. "He said dark wizards' lives matter too, that even though those people were committing crimes, they shouldn't have killed them, that they should have protected the suspects' lives as much as possible, and used more humane and peaceful methods to stop the crime; and then he even suggested to the Ministry of Magic that this should be used as an opportunity to establish more restrictive codes of conduct for law enforcement officers..."

"What a load of crap!" Sirius's assessment was succinct.

"That's right, that's what my colleagues in the Auror office think too." Gideon sneered. "When I left work yesterday, several colleagues had already made plans to send howling letters to the Daily Prophet together; I guess the explosion just now was caused by those howling letters, the result of not opening them in time."

As we were talking, we heard several more muffled claps of thunder coming from the direction of the newspaper office. This time, it wasn't just one window; black smoke started billowing out of all the windows, both upstairs and downstairs.

Sirius Black gloated, "Looks like there were a lot of howling letters. They can't even open them all, and they don't even dare to look at them. Did you send out that many howling letters? It seems like every Auror got one!"

"There probably aren't that many just from the Auror office; there are likely other readers as well." Gideon smiled, not exactly gloating, but rather pleased with the outcome.

The two attacked and mocked each other, while Shen Hou, the person directly involved, remained silent, reading Rita Skeeter's report while nodding with interest, as if he quite "appreciated" the report.

"Aren't you angry at all, Shen?" Sirius asked.

Shen Hou countered, "Why are you angry?"

"That woman attacked you in the newspaper." Sirius was extremely surprised and couldn't understand Shen Hou's behavior at all.

"No, what she really wanted to attack wasn't me, but the Ministry of Magic. I was just an excuse so she could spout that nonsense about treating dark wizard suspects kindly and enforcing the law humanely." Shen Hou smiled and shook his head, indicating that this was nothing. If you haven't seen the chaos of 21st-century online media, how would you know what a media storm is? What it means to distort the truth and fan the flames?

"You can't be completely unangry, can you? She was still insulting you."

"But aren't they getting criticized now too?" Shen Hou pointed to the newspaper headquarters, which was still belching black smoke. "This article is very well written, and it's quite inflammatory; it's just a pity that the timing is wrong."

"Wrong time? Does that mean her nonsense would make sense if it were at a different time?" Sirius was quite dismissive.

"Of course, timing is important when speaking."

"Fine, then tell me, in what circumstances is it appropriate to spout this nonsense about forgiving dark wizards and criminals?"

"If you ask me, it will probably be five years... no, at least ten years later, after the war ends and society begins to enjoy peace, before most wizards will come to accept this report."

"You mean most wizards will be idiots in ten years?" Sirius scoffed at Shen Hou's words.

"No, it's not their minds or IQs that have changed, but their moods," Shen Hou said with a smile, putting down his newspaper to earnestly offer his good friend advice. "Right now, during wartime, wizards live in constant fear, hearing about casualties all the time. Therefore, their tolerance for black wizards and heinous crimes is very low, but their tolerance for human casualties is very high. They desperately want those black wizards to be severely punished, and they urgently need a strong government and law enforcement, because a strong government and severe punishments can effectively improve the security environment—this is the overall sentiment in wizarding society today. The Daily Prophet's choice to publish this report now is tantamount to going against the collective sentiment of the entire society, so of course it will be attacked by the masses."

"What about ten years from now?"

"Not ten years from now, but ten years after the war ends." Shen Hou first corrected Sirius's mistake. "By then, everyone will have enjoyed a long period of peace, the suffering and pain of the war will gradually fade away, and the hatred for dark wizards and criminal acts will be forgotten. At that time, they will begin to pay attention to life and human rights, and try to restrain government power. At that time, the tone of this article will just be in line with the overall mood of wizarding society."

"So the wizards back then didn't become stupid, they just had too much time on their hands?" Sirius Black was still unconvinced.

"I didn't say that."