Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 123 I Made the Curse of Unwavering Loyalty in Your Family

"What are you thinking about?" Daphne couldn't help but ask when she saw Rice lost in thought.

Rice then told Daphne his speculation.

"Oh? But what about those young wizards who don't go to Hogwarts..."

"They weren't under the Ministry of Magic's control to begin with, were they?" Rice revealed the truth in one sentence.

There are only two paths for young wizards to learn magic: either be educated at home by their parents or attend a magic school. If neither is possible, an extremely tragic future awaits them.

In Britain, no one can resist the allure of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—a world-class magic school where anyone with magical talent can receive an acceptance letter simply by being born there.

To put it in perspective, if you have a permanent resident card, you can go to Harvard—and it's tuition-free. With that kind of advantage, what kind of madness has anyone gotten into choosing to homeschool?

So it's hard to say what kind of people live in England but don't go to Hogwarts. They're probably fringe figures in the wizarding world, or even wandering wizards or dark wizards. Expecting them to obey the law is very difficult. The Ministry of Magic doesn't have any hope for them either; they'll just arrest them when they commit crimes.

"I see." After listening to Rice's analysis, Daphne felt that what Rice said made a lot of sense. However, she didn't care much about the clues and they were almost irrelevant to her. She was more concerned about whether Rice would come to Greengrass Manor for a summer vacation.

Upon receiving an affirmative answer, she couldn't suppress the urge to smile. She took out a piece of parchment with writing on it and handed it to Rice.

"This is the address of my family's summer resort. Remember it, but don't tell anyone, okay?" Daphne winked at Leslie. "My family's estate has been protected—"

"The Spell of Unwavering Loyalty, right?" Rice glanced at Daphne, feeling quite moved. He hadn't expected this little girl to be willing to tell him even this.

A building protected by the Red Heart Mantra cannot be found by anyone other than the Keeper of the Secret. After the Keeper of the Secret dies, everyone who knows the secret will become the Keeper of the Secret. Therefore, the act of being willing to tell you the house address is equivalent to giving you a copy of the house key, which is an act of extreme trust.

"You also know the 'Loyal Heart Spell'?" Daphne's surprise lasted only a moment before she understood: it seemed only natural that he knew these things.

"Of course, how could I not know this spell!" Rice said with a smile. What he didn't say was that this spell was the one that they had modified.

Initially, they wanted to include the Faithful Charm in the defensive magic added to Hogwarts Castle, but later abandoned the plan because they considered that the charm was very complex and too easy to break.

The Spell of Unwavering Loyalty secretly hides the location of a building within the soul of a living person, using this as a medium to generate extremely powerful magic. Unless the person keeping the secret reveals the address, outsiders will never be able to find the hidden building.

This spell's protective power is both extremely strong and extremely weak; it will immediately lose its effectiveness if its location is leaked. Therefore, the fewer people who know the exact location, the better. Places like schools and castles, with their constant flow of people, are not really suitable for imbuing with the Unwavering Loyalty Spell.

"The 'Loyalty Spell' is actually a combination of contract magic and spatial magic. When casting the spell, the space around the house to be protected must first be cut off and hidden in a spatial rift. At this point, the house and the outside world are no longer in the same space. The only bridge connecting the house and the outside world is its 'address,' which we can also consider as the 'key' to space. This key is sealed within the person's soul by contract magic," Rice explained the principle of the 'Loyalty Spell' to Daphne.

The optimizations that Rice and his team provided at the time were to simplify the casting process of the Loyalty Spell and strengthen the secrecy of the "key," making it impossible to extract the address from the person keeping the secret through ordinary spells or potions.

Daphne: That sounds amazing!

Rice glanced at the bewildered Daphne and thought that only an ancient pure-blood family could have such a foundation to imbue such a vast estate with the spell of unwavering loyalty.

The greater the size of the house, the more difficult it is to cast the Charm of Loyalty. For an ordinary wizarding family, casting the Charm on a small cabin would be incredibly difficult, but the Greengrass family managed to cast it on an entire manor. The sorcerer they hired must have been quite powerful; I wonder how much it cost. No wonder they're the wealthy Greengrass family…

and many more!

Rice glanced down at Daphne's address, and then he couldn't hold back any longer: he knew this address because he was the one who cast the Fidelity Curse on the manor, and he had asked for it himself, without receiving any money.

"I believe this spell is already stable and does not need further optimization." Ravenclaw handed a roll of parchment to Slytherin.

"But we've only tried it with the cabins so far. If we expand the scope to the entire school, the situation might be different." Salazar frowned.

"Don't many of your students own several estates? Why not try it out with them?" Ravenclaw offered his suggestion.

"Who should we look for?"

"Teacher, this is my guarantee. I will never trespass into the Gryffindor Tower again." Adrian limped in, carrying a roll of parchment, only to find his teacher and the Ravenclaw professor staring intently at him.

Adrian broke out in a cold sweat. Did they find out about his plan to go to the astronomical tower with Helena that night? That shouldn't be possible; he genuinely wanted to learn about astronomy. Where was the trust between people?!

"Would you like to cast a spell of unwavering loyalty on your estate?"

"Teacher, I really just... um?" Adrian paused for a moment, then realized that his teacher wanted to use his own things for experiments again!

"Teacher, won't this spell blow my house up? Last time—"

"The past is the past, and the present is the present. This spell was personally improved by Professor Ravenclaw, so you must trust her!" Sarah said earnestly, looking at her student.

Adrian: ...

It's precisely because she made the improvements that I'm worried!

Ravenclaw cleared his throat: "If Mr. Greengrass is unwilling, we won't force him, but in that case..."

Before she could finish speaking, Adrian agreed. His intuition told him it was best not to let Professor Ravenclaw finish.

Rice sighed and turned the note in his hand into ashes.

"I will keep this a secret."

Just like the previous thousand years.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

This is the second update. The next update will be at the usual time tonight.

(End of this chapter)