"I have an idea!" George leaned closer and whispered something in Fred's ear, making Fred's eyes light up. George's idea was indeed good.
"Let's open it in Hogsmeade," Fred decided.
Astoria did not mind. She had no intention of interfering in the shop's operations anyway.
"I will put in two hundred. How about you give me fifteen percent out of that thirty percent?" Daphne also wanted to invest, so she set her sights on her sister's share.
"Sure." Astoria had no objections.
The group gathered around the campfire, chatting until late into the night. Laughter mixed with the crackle of flames and the occasional hoot of an owl overhead.
Many people in the camp were lining up, hoping to get a Portkey and return home early. However, Rhys and the others, along with the Weasley family, were not in a hurry. They planned to stay and camp with their friends for a while, savoring the rare moment of peace after the chaos.
Early the next morning, Sirius moved his tent over and set it up next to the Weasleys'. Cedric and Hermione also decided to stay, and the group camped together in a lively atmosphere. The sun filtered through the trees, casting golden patterns on the dew-covered grass.
"Look, this is how you use a match."
Early in the morning, Hermione was patiently teaching Mr. Weasley how to use matches. Sirius, who had just finished setting up his tent, stood to the side, yawning widely.
"Mr. Black, would you like to learn how to strike a match?" Hermione turned to him and asked if he wanted to learn something new.
Sirius laughed as if he had just heard something amusing.
Instead of taking the match from Hermione, he pulled out a vintage-style matchbox from his pocket. Holding it in one hand, he bent a match with his thumb and pressed it against the box, then struck it smoothly. The match lit instantly.
Although it was flashy and not particularly practical, it was ten thousand times cooler than lighting a match the usual way. Mr. Weasley, sitting by the fire, stared in amazement. His eyes widened with pure delight at the simple Muggle trick.
"One-handed matches. Muggle gangsters like to use them, because you only need one hand to light it, leaving the other free to hold a weapon." Sirius winked at Hermione. "And just call me Sirius. 'Mr. Black' makes me feel like I am sixty years old."
Hermione raised an eyebrow.
"Sirius has been playing around with all kinds of Muggle items since he was a student," Harry explained from the side.
There was even a poster of a Muggle girl on the wall of Sirius's bedroom. When Harry first saw it, he had been completely stunned. In a family that upheld pure-blood ideology and wizard supremacy, putting something like that up took real nerve.
Mr. Weasley eagerly took the one-handed match from Sirius, and, unsurprisingly, ended up burning himself and yelping in pain. He shook his hand with a grin, clearly undeterred.
While the others were fiddling with matches, an owl landed in front of Rhys, delivering a copy of today's Daily Prophet. The bird's feathers were slightly ruffled from the flight.
Rhys eagerly took the newspaper from the owl's beak and quickly spread it open. But the moment he saw the headline, he froze.
[The Dark Lord's Throne Changes Hands! The Dark Lord Returns Only to Be Beaten and Flee in Disgrace]
Rhys rubbed his eyes, looked at the headline again, and confirmed he had read it correctly.
The latter half was a statement of fact, which he could accept. But what did it mean that the Dark Lord's throne had changed hands?
He was an upstanding, law-abiding wizard, not some Dark Lord!
To be honest, having that title pinned on him brought him no joy. It only felt like an insult.
Daphne and Astoria leaned over. The moment they saw the headline, they could not hold it in any longer.
"Rhys, did not you say yesterday you were trying to restore Slytherin's reputation? Is this how you did it, by snatching the title of Dark Lord from Voldemort?" Daphne asked, her face flushed red as she tried to suppress her laughter.
Rhys felt his blood surge, his head buzzing.
Astoria was also holding back her laughter as she took the newspaper from Rhys's hands.
Unlike Rhys and her sister, she carefully read the contents of the report.
It was largely consistent with what Rhys had described. What was astonishing, however, was that this reporter seemed quite bold. They had actually gone up to the stadium's upper box and recorded the battle that night.
The scene of more than a dozen "Death Eaters" exploding at Rhys's single gesture had been captured in photographs. Presented as moving images in the paper, the moment replayed repeatedly. Seeing this, something stirred in Astoria's mind.
That night, she had been there as well, with a much better vantage point than the reporter.
Astoria began to carefully recall what she had seen. As the memories surfaced, she felt her heartbeat growing louder and louder, her blood seeming to pound against her eardrums. She could even hear the sound of it flowing through her veins.
She tossed the newspaper onto the table and quietly slipped back into her family's tent. Lying down on her bed, she closed her eyes and entered a state of complete focus, with nothing in her mind but the rushing of blood.
Rhys and Daphne did not notice anything unusual about Astoria.
"This is a bit too much," Rhys said with dissatisfaction. "How did I end up becoming the new Dark Lord in the eyes of those reporters?"
Daphne thought for a couple of seconds before telling him that even Voldemort had no record of killing so many wizards in one go.
To find a precedent in history, one would have to go back several decades to the era of Grindelwald, when that Dark Lord had killed more than a dozen Aurors from the Ministry in a single move.
Rhys paused.
"But they were members of the Secret Society. Alright, you have a point." Rhys was now glad that he had been cautious enough not to leave behind any identifying traces. Otherwise, his peaceful life would have been over.
Then he realized an even more regrettable fact. Because of his actions, Slytherin House's reputation seemed to have become even more tightly linked with dark magic and dark wizards.
"It should not be that bad, right?" After hearing Rhys's concern, Daphne did not seem too bothered. "It was already firmly tied to Voldemort. What you did has not really deepened the stereotype."
Rhys sighed inwardly.
"Oh? Rhys, did you get today's Daily Prophet?" Hermione remembered what Rhys had said the night before, so she momentarily shifted her attention away from the matches and asked him about the newspaper.
"No." Without the slightest hesitation, Rhys set the newspaper in his hand on fire and casually tossed it into the stove beside him.
"Alright." Hermione did not notice Rhys's little action. She shrugged and went back to dealing with Mr. Weasley.
"The road to restoring the House's reputation is long and difficult." Rhys sighed.
Only then did he realize something was off. Where had Astoria gone?
Rhys looked around, then caught a faint scent of blood near their tent.
"Hm?" His expression shifted. He strode into the tent and found Astoria lying on her bed, covered in blood.
Rhys was overjoyed. He recognized this scene. Astoria had also reached the threshold of a Domain.
He immediately turned back. Seeing Daphne busy tending the fire to prepare breakfast, Rhys made a decisive move and sealed the entrance of the tent, locking the place down.
When awakening a Domain, no interference could be allowed.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI