My Hogwarts has a serious problem.

Slytherin has welcomed many new students this year.

Lynn didn't know many people, only recognizing Draco Malfoy, who sat next to the blood-soaked Barrow and seemed somewhat uneasy, and his two henchmen.

The rest of the names, such as Pansy Parkinson, just sounded vaguely familiar to him.

The food at the opening banquet every year was very plentiful. Lynn was eating grilled sausages while chatting with the new Slytherin prefect.

Charles Horner, who has been serving as the prefect of Slytherin since the beginning of this year, was someone Lynn had known before when she was helping Snape with potion ingredients.

They sometimes helped out together in Snape's office, and their relationship was fairly good.

"If I borrow books from the restricted section of the library, will Professor Snape help me?" Lynn asked.

Charles hesitated for a moment when asked his question, but told the truth.

"I'm not really sure about that either. You know, our dean has a rather eccentric personality. If you can make him like you, he might help you, but how should I put it, no one has ever tried this before."

After Professor Fawkes left, Lynn lost a powerful backer among the professors. Although Lynn already had a lot of information about dark magic, Hogwarts was, after all, an ancient school. Its library contained many imaginative ideas and theories about various kinds of magic, which could greatly benefit Lynn's own learning.

So he was thinking that he would immediately go to Snape's office every day for a month of solitary confinement, to see if he could then flaunt Snape's name in public.

This year's freshman welcome party was much more lively than in previous years, especially in Gryffindor, where Harry Potter was always surrounded by a large group of people.

Lynn glanced at Malfoy at his table, glancing at Harry every now and then. The spoiled young master's face was full of jealousy and resentment.

He boasted to the Slytherin freshmen around him about how expensive his family's sterling silver cutlery was, and that the cutlery Hogwarts was currently using was donated by his father.

Unfortunately, apart from his followers, the freshmen were not interested in what he said.

After everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, the food disappeared from their plates.

As in previous years, Dumbledore introduced the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for the year.

"Professor Quirrell will be taking over Defense Against the Dark Arts this semester."

There were also some things he said every year, but at the end he suddenly added an extra sentence.

"Finally, I must tell everyone that anyone who does not wish to encounter an accident and die a painful death should not enter the corridor on the right side of the fourth floor."

Some young wizards were laughing heartily, but only a few people were actually laughing.

Most people realized that Dumbledore was serious when he said that.

But he deliberately didn't tell the students what was there, which made many of his students who knew him feel uneasy, because when their principal forbade them to go to certain places, he would usually explain the reasons, such as that there were many dangerous wild animals in the Forbidden Forest, which everyone knew.

But this time, it seemed as if he was deliberately keeping us in suspense, enticing those daring and reckless individuals to take the initiative to explore.

Lynn silently pursed her lips.

Dumbledore's attempt to fish for her was far too obvious.

After the dinner, Hogwarts campus life officially began.

After the start of the school year, Lynn never made any effort to contact Harry Potter. He was so busy every day that he simply didn't have the time.

Even while eating, he would hold a magic book, reading it while stuffing beef pies into his mouth.

"What exactly are you researching all day?"

Ian and Cedric were very puzzled. If it were just the usual second-year courses, Lynn wouldn't have studied to such an extent that he neglected to eat and sleep.

Lynn put down the notebook with the pure black cover in her hand, picked up a glass of pumpkin juice, and swallowed the food in her mouth.

"I can't tell you yet, but you'll find out later."

He is actually looking at Professor Fox's research on the spread of black magic.

The magical knowledge involved was quite profound. Even though Lynn had high talent, he had only been exposed to magic for a year, but his foundation was weak, so he still found it very difficult to learn.

He could only work for Snape in his office at night for free, finding various excuses to get him to sign the borrowing slips for the restricted section.

Although Snape would always make sarcastic remarks about him, saying things like, "Bellock, being all talk and no action is not a good habit. All this advanced knowledge will only turn your brain into mush."

But even as he said that, he would still sign his name on the note.

Lynn would always listen with a smile, and before leaving, he would sneak away a few single leaves of mandrake or a few pupae of hawk moths.

Snape would just glare at him and wouldn't say anything more.

Lynn is getting anxious.

He was trying to quickly master Professor Fox's technique for spreading dark magic so that he could make time to learn other spells.

Because so much time has passed, he only has a general impression of how the original plot unfolded over time.

He's waiting for a time, or an opportunity.

He only remembered that this opportunity was after the Halloween party, which meant he only had a little over two months to master at least two advanced dark magic spells, and if he was lucky, he would also have to add an advanced transformation spell—Animagus.

As for the Animagus, on the first day of school, he took a mandrake from Professor Snape's office, and then, following the steps Kira had written for him on how to transform into an Animagus, Lynn held the leaf under his tongue on a full moon night.

This period needs to last for a month, and he can only proceed to the next step when the next full moon arrives.

Because time was tight, Lynn made the most of every spare moment to study.

After a day of exploration, he has made some progress in understanding the notes left by Professor Fox.

The so-called diffusion of dark magic is essentially a secondary weakening of enhanced dark magic.

At the cost of increased power, a single-target spell is transformed into a spreading area-of-effect spell.

Take the Death Curse as an example; its effect is to ensure the death of the person cursed, and there is no way to break the curse.

This is why Harry Potter is known as the Boy Who Lived; he is the only person in history to have survived the Killing Curse.

Once the Killing Curse is spread, it becomes an area-of-effect spell. Using the ground as a conductor and the caster as the center, it spreads in all directions with a stream of light that carries an instant-death effect. The distance it spreads depends on the strength of the spell.