In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 466: Spike Ollivander (2 in 1)

Jon wasn't surprised by Dumbledore's behaviour of making people guess his riddle-like sentence.

He would only be surprised if the day came when Dumbledore would tell his original plans and discoveries, all intelligibly and understandably, without any riddle.

"You've arranged all of it anyway, haven't you, Professor?"

Jon asked, hugging his arms.

Dumbledore didn't nod, he just said with an emotional smile.

"I wish I had it all arranged, but even now, I still don't know if I made the right or wrong choice."

"Couldn't you give me a heads-up ahead of time? Let me give you a few thoughts on it?"

"I'm sorry, Jon, I have to keep some things to myself."

Jon was not amused by this.

"So how do I connect with my teacher?"

"You can go to Kingsley now, he's the only one who knows anything about this besides me, you, and Horace, except he doesn't know anything about Horace's true identity yet, but even so, he'll tell you what to do."

Jon left the office after getting all the information about the mission from Dumbledore.

And after he was gone, it became completely quiet in this office until a portrait of an unknown person lying on the table spoke up and asked.

"Why didn't you tell him? Was it because he wasn't trustworthy enough yet?"

Dumbledore folded his arms, blocking the lower half of his face, his eyes not half as gentle as they usually were, instead, they were calm, so calm that it was a little unnerving.

"If there is anyone I trust the most in this world right now, it is this child Jon."

"Then why didn't you say anything? If he knew, he could work with you better couldn't he?"

"That's why it's me who trusts him, not you. Because you don't know him well enough to trust him, you lack trust in him, and I am the only one who knows for sure that if I told Jon all of my ideas and plans, the first thing he would do is certainly not cooperate with me."

Dumbledore's blue eyes, hidden behind crescent-shaped glasses, reflected the obscure candlelight.

"He would have stopped me from doing that, even if it is just an attempt."

***

Kingsley was busy when Jon found him.

He really should be busy. As the upper-echelon leader within the Witching Horizon after Dumbledore and Iniesta, he always had to be in charge of a lot of things.

But when Jon approached him and explained why he was here, he put aside all the work at hand for the moment, obviously the task concerning Jon was going to come before all the others.

"Regarding your next identity in Britain, we have already made arrangements in advance on our side. Some time ago, I don't know for what reason, the British Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries was subjected to some purging, and there were many veteran Unspeakables within were transferred elsewhere, which was a very rare thing in the past because the magic studied in the Department of Mysteries is not something that ordinary wizards can simply choose to learn about, even if newcomers are brought in, they still need to have an experienced person to let them familiarise themselves with it for a period of five years or even ten years, before they can sort out their research direction."

"And now, they are transferring all the seniors in there from their positions, and the inclusion of newcomers is also unorganised, including Horace Slughorn as well, someone like him who has never had any experience in all kinds of mystical matters or ancient magics has also been transferred in to serve as the Deputy Head of the Department. This has resulted in the entire management of the Department of Mysteries being in such disarray these days that unless they are willing to bring back the previously transferred people for a permanent job transition, they will have to keep recruiting."

The secret about Slughorn's undercover status was still a secret known only to Dumbledore, Jon and Lily, and Kingsley had no knowledge of it.

"They would rather choose to accept new people than the experienced ones. It seems they are more focused on the re-instated Unspeakables being purebloods than whether or not they have the ability to do their work in that area though, so that allows us to make some small moves there."

Kingsley said as he handed Jon a well-prepared profile and a vial of potion.

"Spike Ollivander, a distant but nevertheless pureblood member of that well-known wand-making family has previously been working as a scribe in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and two days ago he submitted his application for transfer into the Department of Mysteries, which just got approved today. Your trip to Britain is to assume his identity and enter the Ministry of Magic, while the real Spike will remain in a secluded location at all times, and someone will supply you with a polyjuice potion made from his hair."

Jon took the information and raised an eyebrow after reading the description of the identity of this pureblood he would be pretending to be.

"Ollivander."

As if hearing what Jon was trying to ask, Kingsley lowered his voice and whispered in his ear.

"It's still a secret. We've already been contacted by a couple of families over in Britain who are already wavering, who don't think much of the bloodline theory and who weren't involved in much persecution of non-purebloods, and the Ollivanders are one of them. But don't worry about the identity of this person, even the Ollivanders themselves don't have a few people who know that it was you who switched instead. We just found an excuse to get Spike to cooperate with us in some way, and then we put him under house arrest."

Hearing that Kingsley had made all the preparations, Jon nodded and had no further questions.

"That's why I need to take up my posting at the Ministry of Magic in Britain as soon as possible, and I see that the transfer instructions on here tell me to report to the Department of Mysteries by the 3rd, and it's already the evening of the 2nd."

Kingsley patted him on the shoulder.

"So that's why Dumbledore told me to remind you more than anything else before your departure, that the person you're going to be about to play is a pureblood of noble status in a British sort of milieu, and that you should try to be a little bit more arrogant and less qualified and more morally corrupt in your attitudes towards people. Go and join the service in the same way, you can press the time to the last minute to go there, judge the people by bloodline first, and have a normal attitude towards purebloods but if they are new school purebloods, then you should be more contemptuous, and if you meet a half-blood, then you should be more arrogant and condescending, and as for the muggle-born, you shouldn't be able to meet any muggle wizards in the Ministry of Magic in Britain."

Jon nodded thoughtfully as he looked at Spike's biography and the description of his character on the profile.

It was fine in a school of wizardry, but in a workplace like the Ministry of Magic, one really couldn't behave the same way as one normally would when there was a clear hierarchy of status already in place.

He then changed his tactics, choosing to wait until tomorrow before travelling to Britain, reading all of this information once again tonight to get an in-depth understanding of the role he would soon be playing and the surrounding relationships he would have before leaving.

As for how to travel to Britain, now in the situation where Dumbledore had already started declaring war, there must have already been the highest level of surveillance on all means of transport over there. The good thing was that Jon didn't just know ordinary Apparition, he also mastered a kind of Apparition that no one else could spy on, so infiltrating into Britain was a piece of cake for him.

The wars between wizards were never very loud.

Because in the magical world, it was rarely a building that needed to be necessary to hold on to, the only thing that really mattered was the people.

This time the Witching Horizon's declaration of war against the British Ministry of Magic was also the same, in the case that the ownership of Hogwarts Castle had already been determined, apart from the two places, the British Ministry of Magic and Diagon Alley, there was basically no need to occupy the other locations, and there was no significance in occupying them.

The most important thing in a wizard war was still the assassination and elimination targeting the enemy's top brass.

As long as the people died, especially the senior management with high-level combat power, it is much more meaningful than occupying some place.

It is also because of this, that the wizard war will rarely appear with a group of people arranged in a grand array against each other on the field situation, it is more like special operations, divided into several small-scale combat teams, targeting the enemy with high status for point-to-point pulling out.

This is not only to maintain the accuracy of the information, to understand the specific strengths and weaknesses of each person at the enemy's high level, where and when they will show up, but also to ensure the peer-to-peer nature of the strength.

Like Voldemort, nowadays only Dumbledore can deal with him, any other wizard of the Witching Horizon at the first moment of encountering Voldemort must focus on saving his/her life, and any other tasks can be abandoned.

Only when all the top-level wizards are plucked out of this part of the world, and Dumbledore wins the duel with Voldemort, then the Witching Horizon side be equal to winning the war.

The middle and high level of the war power is not a problem, the elite of the Order of the Phoenix from Britain plus the native French wizards will not be afraid of those pureblood wizards who have been mostly pampered and lacking in determination for the war.

The most crucial point still lies in the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort.

But on the whole, the wizards of Witching Horizon didn't feel worried about this big battle which was counting down since the beginning of the war.

Because in the previous duel in the French Ministry of Magic, although Voldemort's side did not spread the word, within Witching Horizon, the result had already been known for a long time.

And also the day after the declaration of war, everything in the whole world was still the same as usual, like the speech that Dumbledore had finished was an empty dream.

But in fact, all the changes had already begun quietly.

Jon made all the preparations early in the morning of the next day.

He hadn't brought anything extra with him, all the information about Spike's identity had been burned after he had memorised it all in his head last night, leaving him with only the vial of polyjuice potion.

Before the first rays of the morning sun had even shone through the windows, Jon had disappeared from Lyon without disturbing anyone else in the school, using Phoenix's Apparition.

His chosen landing spot was within Diagon Alley, only it was in a very remote location, in the alleyway close to Knockturn Alley.

Not only was it still early in the morning, but the fact that Dumbledore had only just declared war yesterday had resulted in the entire population of Britain still being in the most panicked state today, with basically very few shops open, and very few customers wandering blindly through Diagon Alley.

Jon drank the vial of polyjuice potion immediately after he landed on the ground.

The flavour was generic, with a feeling of cucumber juice.

After the transformation was completed, and he had also drunk the Voice Changing Magic Potion, Jon put on the invisibility cloak and groped his way towards the entrance of Diagon Alley, in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron Bar.

In the early morning, Diagon Alley was shrouded in a mist, and Jon didn't see more than a handful of people along the way until he reached the backyard of the Leaky Cauldron Bar, where he saw Mr Borgin walking back into the bar with a broken serving tray in his hand.

He looked like he had just finished pouring the leftovers from the breakfast into a slop bucket, and hadn't noticed that there was already one more person in the yard who didn't really belong here in the first place.

Jon watched his back disappear from his view before he began his next move.

He counted along the row of rooms on the first floor of the Leaky Cauldron Bar, starting from the westernmost position, and when he reached the seventh, he identified his target, then used the levitation charm to fly into mid-air, he gently flew into the room with an unlocked window and an empty interior.

It was obvious that someone had lived there before, the quilt was thrown casually by the bed, there was a black briefcase on the bedside table, and the slippers were scattered and discarded by the bedside.

Jon was sure that this was the room, and he didn't linger.

Removing the invisibility cloak from his body, he carefully folded it and placed it in his underwear lining pocket, then he changed out of the jacket he was wearing and put on a set of pyjamas from the cupboard in his room, taking one last look at the time on his timepiece.

6:43.

Jon rubbed and messed up his hair again, which had become less smooth after drinking the polyjuice potion, and then used magic to make his face a little drier, his eyes staying squinted and with a hard expression, acting as if he had just woken up and hadn't had a good night's sleep.

After all this, he took a deep breath, pushed open the door, walked out of the room, shuffled his slippers and headed towards the ground floor of the bar.

He had just turned the corner of the stairs and hadn't taken two more steps down when Jon started yelling.

"Bork! Bork! You old thing can't possibly not be up yet! If I knew at this hour you were still slacking off and sleeping and not up and ready for a new day's work, I'd have to shove that rag you've been wiping the bar with all day in your mouth!"

His voice was loud like he didn't even care if it would disturb the other guests on the first floor who were still resting as well.

And at the sound of his voice, Borgin Bork hurriedly jogged all the way out from behind the bar and stood in front of the stairway.

"Ah, it's master Ollivander. You actually got up so early this morning? Did you not rest well enough last night? This is my fault, What do you need me to do?"

His fawning attitude like this did not make Jon's face even half as good.

"Do something? Use your brain, which is on the verge of degenerating into a giant troll's brain, to think of what I can get you to do downstairs at this hour! Breakfast! I want breakfast! Oats in milk and a sandwich, double bacon no tomato slices, I want to see these at my room door in fifteen minutes!"

"Yes, yes, master, you can go ahead and rest, I'll knock on the door to remind you when I've got the stuff ready to put on the doorstep."

Bork appeased and sent Jon, the great god, back to the first floor, and Jon didn't look the least bit favourably to him, and with a grunt, he closed the door to his room heavily behind him.

----

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