"No reason?" Tver asked with a frown.
"Voldemort can't have gone mad from being bottled up by me and decided to ruin the release of Harry Potter this way, can he?"
Marvolio shrugged and leaned back in his chair, looking perfectly at ease.
"How would I know? Maybe he thinks you didn't pay him image licensing fees, so he decided to smash up your operation."
Tver curled his lip and helplessly checked the losses he had suffered over the past few weeks.
Yes, for some unknown reason, Voldemort had gone berserk sabotaging the release of Harry Potter.
The incident with Joanne had merely been the Death Eaters trying to burn every copy in the bookstore. In reality, their targets covered every part of the process, from book printing and publishing to promotional events.
Of course, with Marvolio around, Tver only had to throw out some printed books and a few warehouses for the Death Eaters to give Voldemort a satisfactory report.
The problem was that these losses were neither big nor small. Since Tver could not risk exposing Marvolio's identity by stopping the Death Eaters, he could only take the hit, and that truly left him feeling helpless.
What on earth was wrong with this world?
All he wanted was to use this method to make the world accept the existence of wizards and magic.
In a way, his thinking was aligned with Voldemort's!
So why was Voldemort now trying to stop Tver from repealing the Secrecy Act?
The more Tver thought about it, the more he felt that Voldemort was acting like a rebellious child. Whatever the wizarding world wanted to do, he was determined to ruin it.
"You're rich anyway. It's just a few warehouses. If they burn, they burn," Marvolio said cheerfully, as if it were not his property being burned.
Well, it really was not his property.
Tver gave him a contemptuous glance.
"Do you know this book is already so popular that supply can't keep up with demand? Even if it's only the English edition, the number of countries affected is no small matter!"
There was no denying that English was still the most widely used language in the world, and most developed countries were English-speaking ones. The influence of the English edition alone was already considerable.
More importantly, for the first time, Voldemort's actions had become completely incomprehensible to him.
Or rather, Tver simply could not figure out what Voldemort hoped to accomplish by doing this.
In fact, it was not just Tver and Dumbledore. Even Harry and the others, who were fairly well-informed students, had vaguely sensed the strange calm currently hanging over the wizarding world.
It was like the quiet before a storm.
If Tver and Dumbledore had not remained at Hogwarts, giving them an immense sense of security, the castle would probably be facing another round of panic.
Yes, another one.
Ever since a certain Savior came to Hogwarts, the students here had grown somewhat resigned to these major incidents that kept cropping up from time to time.
So even after learning that Hogwarts might well become the main battlefield in the coming conflict, their strongest reaction was to shift their studies toward combat and battlefield coordination.
Because of that, Professor McGonagall had no choice but to step in.
"Unless you're unlucky enough to die on the battlefield, all of you still have exams to prepare for!"
Fortunately, there was now an energetic Sirius. Ever since he had beaten Tver in that so-called match, he had taken it upon himself to handle the students' review work and the assessments needed for their end-of-term exams.
Marvolio looked strangely at Tver, who was helpless one moment and trying not to laugh the next. Anyone who did not know the situation might have thought something was wrong with him.
Marvolio quickly placed a document he had prepared earlier in front of Tver, hoping to draw his attention elsewhere.
"About Karkaroff, whom you wanted investigated. This is the information Cynthia and I gathered."
"Oh?"
Tver raised an eyebrow and picked up the thin file.
A large "Nothing" sat right in the middle of the page.
"..."
"Ahem. Just a joke. It's not that we didn't find anything. There just wasn't enough to bother writing into a file," Marvolio explained, holding back a laugh.
Seeing Tver's expressionless face, he quickly said, "The main point is that aside from Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, he basically hasn't gone anywhere."
"And as for his movements in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, Cynthia already sent people to investigate them long ago. At the very least, the Aurors couldn't find anything unusual."
"Then tell me something I don't know," Tver said calmly.
"Of course there is!" Marvolio emphasized loudly, as if trying to prove how hard he had worked.
"Starting last summer, several potion shops in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade all lost potion ingredients at around the same time!"
"After the Aurors investigated, they found that some of the shop assistants had been placed under the Imperius Curse and had unknowingly mailed those ingredients away!"
"And the only ones capable of doing something like this, while also needing to use such a sneaky method to obtain potion ingredients, are Karkaroff and Voldemort behind him!"
"What is Karkaroff, or rather Voldemort, brewing potions for?" Tver asked gravely.
There were countless kinds of potions, and their effects could be far stranger than ordinary magic.
If Voldemort brewed some obscure poison, then with his ability, slipping it into Hogwarts's food without anyone noticing would be effortless.
Just thinking of that possibility startled Tver.
The professors certainly had the ability to tell whether the food had been poisoned, but students might not be able to detect poison from some tiny difference in flavor.
"Don't worry." Marvolio waved his hand, though he himself had panicked badly when he first learned about it. "We've already summarized the ingredients. They're on the next page of that file."
Tver quickly turned the page.
"Lacewing flies, leeches, fluxweed, wormwood, knotgrass, powdered Asphodel roots, powdered Bicorn horn, Boomslang skin..."
"This is... Polyjuice Potion?"
Never mind Tver's knowledge of Potions. Even a fifth-year student with decent grades in the subject would know that all of these were ingredients needed for Polyjuice Potion.
Of course, wormwood and powdered Asphodel root were ingredients for the Draught of the Living Dead.
"That's right. We have reason to suspect that Voldemort may have infiltrated Hogwarts using Polyjuice Potion. He might even..."
Marvolio's expression also turned serious.
"He may have been walking around openly among you this whole time!"
As someone who had once deceived the vast majority of Hogwarts's professors and students with a polite and humble appearance, if Voldemort truly made up his mind to disguise himself, then even Tver and Dumbledore might not...
No. Without probing him or being on guard, almost no one would be able to see through Voldemort's disguise.
In that case, if Karkaroff's strange behavior was treated as Voldemort's disguise, then everything could be explained.
Tver shot to his feet.
He had been worried that dealing with Karkaroff would alert the snake hiding in the grass, only to find that the grass itself was the snake in disguise.
Now there was no way he could let Voldemort do whatever he pleased inside the castle.
But the moment he opened the office door, he ran straight into Hermione, who came rushing toward him, panting hard.
"P-Professor..."
Her face was deathly pale, and sweat from her sprint kept beading on her forehead. She steadied slightly when she saw Tver, but her voice was still full of panic.
"Harry's missing!"