In an abandoned house in Hogsmeade, Voldemort was receiving the regular intelligence reports. This time, however, his face looked far from pleasant.
"What are you saying?!"
"I… I…"
Facing the furious Dark Lord, Augustus Rookwood, who was in charge of compiling intelligence from outside the school, shrank his neck and truly did not dare repeat this unbelievable news.
"My Lord," Snape, who was in charge of intelligence inside the school, stepped forward at this moment. "Although it is difficult to believe, according to information obtained from within the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore was indeed discussing something with Tver Fawley on Christmas Day."
Voldemort whipped around, his fury aimed directly at Snape.
"Discussing something? With that little information, you can confirm that Dumbledore truly intends to abolish The Statute of Secrecy?!"
He had been planning things perfectly well at Hogwarts. Although Dumbledore, for some unknown reason, had stayed inside the castle all throughout the past half year, Voldemort's plan had still been proceeding step by step.
Then, during the Christmas holiday, it would have been one thing if Dumbledore had not left the castle. But the moment he did, he brought back this earth-shaking piece of news.
Dumbledore intended to abolish The Statute of Secrecy!
Then what meaning did everything Voldemort had done even have?
The perfect plan he had spent an entire year preparing had ended with the Vampires attacking the pure-blood manors only to discover that those pure-bloods had already left Britain. Not only that, they had even run into Aurors lying in ambush, suffered heavy losses, and lost much of their trust in him.
As for the Inferius giants that destroyed Whitehall, they had been even more useless. The British government had apparently been colluding with Tver Fawley all along and had not cared about that little leak at all.
The only part of the plan that could be considered a success was the Azkaban breakout, but those Death Eaters had been terrified out of their courage by Fiendfyre and were utterly useless.
And now, the Hunting Plan had forced him to abandon his original plan of attacking Muggles all over the place. His scheme to forcibly incite a Muggle war had also gone up in smoke.
So as long as there was no Statute of Secrecy, there was no Statute of Secrecy to break, was that it? In that case, he might as well hand the title of Dark Lord over to Dumbledore!
The more Voldemort thought about it, the angrier he became. But he also knew that the worse the situation was, the less he could afford to take his anger out on his subordinates.
After all, one of them was Snape, who had been undercover for years and had diligently provided him with intelligence from around Dumbledore. The other, while not particularly clever, was cautious and had remained loyal to him ever since escaping Azkaban.
For Voldemort's stretched-thin forces, these two were already people he had no choice but to rely on.
Seeing that the Dark Lord still seemed relatively calm, Rookwood gave Snape a grateful look, then gathered his courage.
"My Lord, although it isn't completely certain, according to the intelligence Dusko gathered, the Wizards' Confederation has been holding meetings throughout the entire Christmas holiday."
"What is certain is that they must be discussing something extremely important. At the very least, now that it is already January, Tver Fawley is still busy with official business at the Confederation headquarters."
Only then did Voldemort nod approvingly.
At least there was one less troublesome person, and the most troublesome one at that. That counted as the only good news among all the bad.
"And Hogwarts, Severus?" he asked, even showing a rare trace of a gentle smile.
"Everything is as usual. Karkaroff is teaching according to schedule. Sirius seems to have received some task from Dumbledore and often tutors Potter after class. He also appears from time to time at D.A. activities, though I believe the latter is simply because he wants to show off."
Snape thought for a moment. Since he did not know why the Dark Lord cared about such trivial matters, hiding anything would do more harm than good.
"In addition, Potter seems very interested in a certain memory of Slughorn's, but Slughorn is keeping his mouth tightly shut about it."
The memory that Dumbledore and Potter were desperately pursuing did not mean much to the person involved.
So with a little thought, Voldemort realized that Dumbledore had been studying his past for the past half year.
Yet there was not the slightest trace of worry on Voldemort's face. Instead, his smile became even more obvious.
Only then did Rookwood, standing nearby, realize that this was not his imagination.
He took the opportunity to move closer and said carefully, "Master, what should we Death Eaters staying in Azkaban do?"
"If you don't return soon, I'm afraid… I'm afraid everyone's faith in Dusko will surpass their faith in you!"
Rookwood did not actually have any issue with Dusko. The main problem was that the Carrow siblings, relying on Dusko's trust, had become so arrogant that they even dared act high and mighty in front of Bella, let alone ordinary Death Eaters like them.
So if the Dark Lord could suppress Dusko's arrogance a little, or at worst, deal with the Carrow siblings, that would be good enough.
Voldemort paid no attention to his little schemes, because he did indeed need to think seriously about this problem.
Originally, he had Macnair planted inside the Ministry of Magic, and Quéops in charge of inciting war abroad.
But in the blink of an eye, both of them were gone.
More importantly, he could not even use this as a reason to punish the Death Eaters. Otherwise, the consequences would be more than he could bear right now.
Still, Rookwood was right. He did need to handle the problem of these Death Eaters.
Damn them. Couldn't they just hide quietly?
He was the Dark Lord, and even he had to work diligently here. All those Death Eaters had to do was hide properly and wait for his plan to succeed.
Instead, they insisted on stirring up one mess after another.
"Answer one question first," Voldemort said through gritted teeth. "Who suggested punishing Macnair, and even managed to obtain his whereabouts?"
"The Carrow siblings!" Rookwood said without hesitation, immediately naming the two people he hated most.
But after saying it, he looked at the Dark Lord with some confusion.
"Master, why do I feel as though Macnair might really have been innocent?"
"Because he was the mole I planted inside the Ministry of Magic!"
Voldemort's blood-red eyes glared at Rookwood, frightening him so badly that his first instinct was to use Apparition.
Fortunately, he forced himself to hold back, and then, to his own delight, suddenly thought of something.
"Master, it was the Carrow siblings. It must have been them!"
He recalled what had happened during this period. If he treated the Carrow siblings as Ministry moles, then everything seemed to make sense.
"I thought it was strange from the beginning that the Carrow siblings managed to escape from prison. If the Ministry did it on purpose, then everything fits!"
"Recently, the Ministry supplies we sabotaged and the Ministry employees we attacked all came from intelligence provided by Amycus!"
"And Alecto has been responsible for spreading distrust of you among us. She even said something as vicious as, 'Rather than wait for your plan to succeed, we might as well wait for Dumbledore to die of old age!'"
Once he heard this, even Voldemort, who had still been hesitating, began to feel that something was wrong with the Carrow siblings.
At the very least, they were no longer so loyal to him.
"It seems I really do need to do something…"