Chapter 414: The Aftermath
After returning to Hogwarts from Dumbledore, Mike sat alone in his dorm for a long time.
His mood was very complicated at the moment.
In general, the purpose of his trip to the villa in the forest has been achieved. First, he can use Dumbledore's power to solve the problem of Slytherin's pendant without bloodshed, and Dumbledore should set out to find the Resurrection Stone soon.
At that time, Dumbledore, who longs for his relatives, will definitely not be able to resist the temptation of the Resurrection Stone and step into Voldemort's trap. Time is running out.
Even Dumbledore's attitude towards Harry is exactly the same as Mike expected. It can be said that everything is developing as Mike planned, but despite this, Mike just can't be happy.
Is it really worth sacrificing the lives of two old friends, Dumbledore and Harry, for those cold interests?
Mike fell into deep doubts.
Fortunately, Mike's entanglement did not last too long. After some thinking, he quickly came to a conclusion.
Of course it's worth it!
Otherwise, what are his previous efforts?
At the same time, he also had a clearer understanding of himself in his heart.
In a way, he and Dumbledore are the same kind of people.
Dumbledore was willing to sacrifice Harry, the son of an old friend, in order to destroy Voldemort and restore peace to the wizarding world. For greater interests, Michael was also willing to sacrifice the lives of his two old friends, Dumbledore and Harry.
Of course, this does not mean that Michael is so ruthless that he decided to use the lives of Harry and Dumbledore in exchange for victory.
Just as Dumbledore tried his best to find a way to have the best of both worlds in the original book, and finally saved Harry's life while successfully destroying Voldemort.
Michael will also do his best to avoid the sacrifice of his friends around him, just as he persuaded Dumbledore to let Lupin retire so that he and Tonks could have a good ending. Michael hopes from the bottom of his heart that every one of his friends can have a happy ending.
However, who can know what will happen in the future? All he can do is to do his best.
Thinking of this, Mike, who had regained his fighting spirit, took a deep breath, sat down at the desk and started the post-war statistics.
After communicating with Dumbledore, he had a detailed understanding of the battle situation of this trip to the Ministry of Magic.
The casualties of the Los Santos wizard corps in this battle were not large, with only 6 casualties, including one lightly injured, four seriously injured, and one killed.
The original casualties should be smaller. After all, there were only two seriously injured people injured in normal battles, and the remaining one was slightly injured, two seriously injured and one killed were all caused by the negligence of the defense team. For this reason
, the leader of the defense team took the initiative to resign from his position as the captain and expressed his willingness to accept any punishment.
However, Mike did not punish him too much. After all, these Los Santos wizards were trained by Mike at a great price. Mike would never fire them at will before they helped Mike earn more than their cost.
But there should be some punishment, otherwise it would be difficult to convince the public. So, Mike deducted his bonus for one year and all the income from this operation as punishment.
The captain of the defense team naturally agreed with this punishment.
After all, his life was saved, so a fine was nothing.
The rest of the members were also very satisfied, because Mike promised the captain a monthly bonus of 500 gold galleons, and the bonus for this operation was as high as 1,000 gold galleons, which means that Mike fined him a huge sum of 1,500 gold galleons at one time!
And Mike did not put the money into his own wallet, but gave it all to the family of the sacrificed team member as a pension.
In general, the loss of the Los Santos Wizarding Corps this time was much less than Mike expected. After all, war always means death. Mike had even prepared for the loss of more than half of the entire wizarding corps, so he was very satisfied with the results now.
On the other hand, the Death Eaters were not ideal.
Although Voldemort successfully took away the prophecy, his Death Eaters suffered heavy losses.
First of all, the entire werewolf army was annihilated, and even the commander Fenrir did not survive.
Then the casualties of human wizards were also very serious. With the preliminary attack of the Los Santos wizards and the subsequent encirclement and hunting by the Aurors, Mike estimated that most of the Death Eaters were already in the Ministry of Magic.
And even if the remaining small part did not die, only a very small number of them dared to continue to join Voldemort.
In other words, Voldemort's army of Death Eaters has almost been killed or injured, except for the main core members such as Bellatrix.
Mike slowly wrote down this conclusion in his notebook, and the corners of his mouth slowly rose.
The action organized by himself undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to Voldemort, greatly hindering Voldemort's progress in notifying the magic world.
However, the losses of the Order of the Phoenix were equally serious.
First, Kingsley, an official of the Ministry of Magic who colluded with them, was missing. He was not there from the beginning to the end of the entire operation and was suspected to have been captured by the Death Eaters.
Later, Black, Lupin and Moody were all seriously injured and had no fighting power in a short period of time.
However, Mike estimated that even if they recovered from their injuries, it would be unlikely for them to return to the Order of the Phoenix.
After all, Lupin had been arranged to retire, and Black had developed a sense of distrust towards the Order of the Phoenix because of Moody's incident. It would not be impossible for him to come to Los Santos if he tried his best.
As for Moody, he should be the worst one in this operation, because Mike and Black ignored Moody's existence when they evacuated, which led to the Aurors successfully killing him in a coma!
According to Dumbledore, he went to the Ministry of Magic to try to rescue Moody afterwards, but the Ministry of Magic rejected his request mercilessly. They also said that Moody
had woken up after the treatment they provided, but he was unwilling to follow Dumbledore back to the Order of the Phoenix.
Mike strongly suspected that Moody had been bribed. After all, he was originally a senior Auror and knew the senior officials in the Auror's office (although the relationship was not very good). At this critical moment, he was very likely to rejoin the Ministry of Magic instead of returning to the Order of the Phoenix, an organization that someone would stab behind the scenes.
Mike was naturally happy to see this happen. After all, he himself didn't like the old guy Moody.
As for your statement that the Phoenix Society will not decline after losing so many capable people?
Mike said you were totally joking.
Who is Dumbledore?
He is the most powerful white wizard in the world today, and he has so many noble titles that you can't even count them!
For such a person, it is too easy for him to replenish the manpower of his organization!
...
When the morning sun fell on the Hogwarts Castle, Mike finally sorted out the relevant information.
Although Mike's mental strength was very strong, he still felt a little tired after experiencing a war and not sleeping for two days.
In order to cope with the next exam, Mike still drank some Dolphin Magic Drink to refresh himself.
Perhaps because it must be sunny after a storm, the weather around Hogwarts has been very good during the week of the exam, which is very rare, especially in the UK. The
beautiful sunshine and fresh air have greatly alleviated the students' anxiety about the exam, so when Mike came to the restaurant, he found that the atmosphere here has improved a lot compared with the previous two days.
Although the students still maintained the hard-working attitude of studying while eating, at least their expressions were not as ugly as in the first two days.
Mike easily found Harry, Hermione and others, and told them about Lupin's situation and Dumbledore's subsequent arrangements for him.
The three people had different reactions to this.
Ron and Harry's expressions were not very good, and they both expressed regret for this matter.
Mike could probably understand their meaning from their euphemistic words.
Ron felt sympathy for Lupin's serious injury this time, while Harry's focus was on the fact that Lupin would most likely lose a large part of his spellcasting ability in the future.
As for Hermione, her reaction could be said to be the most normal in Mike's opinion, because she was so happy to hear that Professor Lupin could finally retire and get married that she even forgot to take care of the review notes that had been inseparable from her during this period. Mike
also sighed about this.
In his previous life, Mike had heard a conclusion that girls were always three to five years ahead of boys in terms of psychological age growth and development. Before,
Mike thought this was nonsense at all, after all, his daughter in his previous life was hard to describe, but now from Hermione's performance, it seems that what the scientists said is true!
Harry and Ron saw things too one-sidedly, only seeing what Lupin lost, but not what he gained.
Fortunately, Hermione was relatively mature. After Hermione broke down all the twists and turns that were not complicated, Harry and Ron showed an expression of sudden enlightenment on their faces.
In the end, the four of them decided to visit Professor Lupin together after the holiday began.
After making this decision, everyone's life finally returned to its original track.
This made many people feel painful, because it meant that they would face endless exams.
Among them, Ron even said shamelessly: "This is more difficult than me fighting and winning against eighty Death Eaters alone in the Ministry of Magic!"
Mike was speechless about this, but the most speechless thing was still to come.
Because after Ron made such a shameless statement, many members of the da army echoed him, saying that the exam was much more difficult than fighting against the Death Eaters.
Thanks to their efforts, Mike and his team's record at the Ministry of Magic that night immediately increased a thousand times, and the number of Death Eaters killed reached an astonishing 100,000!
Mike was completely stunned, because this number was too exaggerated. If Voldemort really had 100,000 troops, he would have already conquered Europe, and would not have continued to tangle with Dumbledore in the Kingdom of England. But
the spectators just bought into this, and they even formed a contempt chain, in which the soldiers who participated in the action that night were at the top, and at the bottom were the Slytherins who already had some dark backgrounds.
In this regard, the Slytherins dared to be angry but dared not speak out. They
were angry because to some extent, what those classmates said was not wrong at all. The parents and elders of some of them were indeed killed by the Los Santos Wizarding Corps and Aurors in the Ministry of Magic.
And they dared not speak out because their two major backers, Chris (yes, you read that right, Chris did not take the OWL exam) and Umbridge were not in Hogwarts these days!
However, the hard days will always pass. Before the last week of the semester, all the exams were finally over.
On this day, the whole Hogwarts was boiling. Students ran around to tell each other and wantonly vented their repressed lively nature during the week.
Some graduates tore up all their books as soon as the exams were over to express their disgust for learning.
Such behavior is very irrational, because these old books should be donated to the school as second-hand books for other poor students according to the normal procedure.
Among the remaining graduates, there are even at least three pairs of student lovers who announced their love immediately after the exams and said they would get married during the summer vacation.
Naturally, everyone gave them heartfelt blessings, only Mike was confused.
After asking Benjamin and others, Mike learned that it can be said that announcing love and announcing the wedding date immediately after graduation is a tradition of Hogwarts.
It is said that the beginning of this tradition was a member of the Black family hundreds of years ago. He announced his wedding date with another pure-blood girl at the graduation dinner and invited all classmates to attend.
Of course, this tradition mostly belongs to the members of the wealthy pure-blood families, including the three couples who announced their wedding dates this year.
As for ordinary students, due to face and economic reasons, they rarely follow this tradition, because if they do so, they will most likely be laughed at by their pure-blood classmates.
All the students' faces were filled with happy smiles, even those who did not perform well in the exams.
After all, they still have a whole week of vacation. During this time, they don't have to worry about test scores, nor do they have to worry about the discipline of their parents and teachers. They can play freely in the huge castle of Hogwarts.
However, the professors did not act so happy. Even Professor Flitwick, who was usually the most optimistic, had a serious face.
The students didn't feel anything was wrong about this, or rather, they were so drunk that they didn't care about the professors' state.
But this situation was bound to not last long.
In fact, on the morning of the second day after the exam, a report in the Daily Prophet put a cruel reality in front of everyone and took away everyone's good mood.