After providing some limited information about Voldemort, Victor saw Rita Skeeter out the door. The current editor of the Daily Prophet, Barnabas Cuffe, was basically an absentee boss, and as the most influential special correspondent for this major newspaper, as long as Victor held Skeeter's secret, he could completely control a large part of the mainstream public opinion in the British wizarding world.
With the Daily Prophet situation taken care of, it was time to move on to the other one. The Quibbler's content was absurd and bizarre, and its audience was mostly young wizards, so the Ministry of Magic and many adults often ignored it. This gave Victor an opportunity to "seize the chance to start with the children…"
Victor took out the first draft of his new comic book and used spatial magic to go to the village of Ottery St. Catchpole. He had forgotten the name of the editor of The Quibbler in the original story, who was Luna Lovegood's father, but he remembered that the Lovegoods' house was somewhere near the Weasleys' Burrow. So, he decided to go to the Weasleys' house first to gather some information.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Victor knocked on the Burrow's door. Less than two seconds later, Fred opened the door and poked his head out.
"Hey, Fred!" Victor said, greeting him with a smile.
"Hey, Victor!" Fred opened the door and jumped over the threshold, then put his arm around Victor's shoulder and said, "Didn't you say you were resting for the weekend? Why are you here? Also, I'm not Fred, I'm George!"
"No, you're Fred!" Victor said with a confident smile. "Whenever you or George say that, it's nine times out of ten that you're actually who you say you are."
"Oh, well, it looks like we'll have to come up with another prank!" Fred said with a fake look of disappointment. "Are you here to hang out, or do you have a good business proposition for us?"
"No good business for now. I just wanted to ask if you know where the Lovegoods' house is?"
"The Lovegoods? That weird father and daughter? Why are you looking for them?" Fred asked with a puzzled expression.
"Nothing, I just want to publish my new comic book in The Quibbler!"
"What?! You've drawn a new draft?!" Fred's face immediately lit up, and then he raised an eyebrow. "Can I see it first?"
"I've already prepared it for you!" Victor said, taking out a stack of bound comic books, then reminded him, "There are five copies here. You absolutely must not leak them ahead of time!"
"Don't worry about it!" Fred excitedly took the comic book, then pointed to a small hill not far away. "The Lovegoods' house is behind that hill. It's a house shaped like a car."
"You can just fly there. It's very close!"
"Okay, thanks!"
After saying goodbye to Fred, Victor flew directly in the direction the former had pointed. Looking down from mid-air, three strangely shaped houses quickly came into view. Victor landed at the entrance of the Lovegoods' yard.
Behind the tall hedges and the delicate orchard was an irregularly shaped three-story cylindrical house. It looked like a bus standing on its end and seemed to be made of a random mixture of large black stones. A huge green kite was constantly flying on the outside of the roof. In addition, a large mistletoe tree grew at the entrance to the yard, and three hand-painted wooden signs were nailed to the broken gate.
Victor walked over curiously to take a look. From left to right, the three wooden signs read: "Editor of The Quibbler," "Pick Your own Mistletoe," and "Keep Off the Dirigible Plums." It was enough to show the quirky personality of the owners.
"What in the world are dirigible plums?!" Victor was a bit confused by what was written on the last sign.
The first sign was an introduction. The second sign, although he didn't know why he should pick a plant with white berries that was traditionally used as a Christmas decoration, at least the meaning of the noun was understandable. But these dirigible plums… were they the kite on the roof?
Just as Victor was wondering, a fairy-like voice suddenly came, answering his question.
"Dirigible plums can help people accept the extraordinary."
Victor looked up at the sound and saw a girl with a somewhat ethereal quality suddenly walk out of the dense woods next to the yard. She had a messy head of dirty blonde hair that reached her waist, and a pair of gray eyes that looked vacant and bulged out slightly. Her eyebrows were light-colored, and her whole body exuded a slightly eccentric aura. She was also wearing a necklace made of butterbeer corks and a pair of radish earrings.
"Hello, Victor Dreyar!" her voice sounded like a singing elf.
"Hello, Luna Lovegood!" Victor said, smiling at the girl in front of him.
"Oh, you know my name!" Luna showed a hint of happiness and surprise. Perhaps because of her family and personality, she had few friends. At the same time, the absent-minded, dreamy quality she displayed when she spoke also made the children around her hesitant or unwilling to approach her.
But in Victor's opinion, the quality that Luna displayed was more like a talent. And in the less than ten seconds of conversation, he had already seen that this quirky girl in front of him had a natural ability that was different from ordinary people.
"Are you here to see my dad? It's a shame, he's sleeping right now, and I don't want to wake him up," Luna said, turning her head to look at the second floor of the house, which seemed to be her father's room.
"That's a real shame!" Victor also looked at the second floor along with Luna's gaze, but then he said, "However, I think you should be able to accept this request on behalf of your father."
With that, Victor took out the new comic book draft from his pocket and handed it to her. "This is my new creation. See if you can publish it in The Quibbler?"
"Oh, this!" Luna happily took it. "Your stories are very interesting, but it's a shame that the one I had before was accidentally stolen by a Nargle."
"Then I can give you a new one!" Victor promised.
"Really?!" Luna asked softly, looking up, and a faint, unknown light involuntarily flashed in her gray pupils.
"I have no reason to lie to you!" With that, Victor used Geminio to copy an old version of the comic book from his space and handed it to Luna.
"Thank you!" Luna happily stroked the cover of the book, then suddenly changed the subject and asked, "I've always been curious, what is its name?"
"Its name?" Victor was a little slow to understand what Luna meant, but when he saw Luna staring at the blank white cover of the comic book, he immediately realized what she meant. His comic book had never had a proper name. So he thought for a moment and suggested, "How about you give it a name?"
"I can call it… Tom Marvolo Riddle's Diary," Luna answered after thinking for a moment. "Because it seems like he does a lot of interesting things every day, and these drawings are just like his diary."
"Okay, no problem!" Victor agreed without hesitation.
Luna held the comic book draft for Tom Marvolo Riddle's Diary in her arms, then looked up and stared at Victor's face. "I'll give these drawings to my dad. Maybe you'll see them in next week's or the week after's The Quibbler."
"Thank you!" Victor nodded his thanks, then suddenly handed her a slip of paper. "This is my contact address. You can send me a letter if you need anything."
Luna tilted her head and took the paper, and the smile on her face grew a little wider. "It looks like my family's owl can help deliver some different things."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Victor smiled, then turned to look at the figure on the second floor of the house who had been secretly watching them. "Then I'll leave it to you to give my drafts to your father."
"It was nice to meet you, Luna! I'll see you at Ravenclaw!"
"I'm also very happy that someone talked to me today. Don't worry, these drawings won't be stolen by a Nargle…"
And just like that, Victor ended his visit to the Lovegoods. He flew in mid-air, watching Luna as she walked into the house, and suddenly muttered, "A natural Legilimens?"
Time flew by.
It was late August, and there was less than a week until the end of summer vacation. But just as Victor was wrapping up the construction of the guild headquarters, he suddenly received a special delivery.
"What is this?!" Victor asked, confused. He had just returned from Hogwarts when an owl suddenly flew by and hit his head with a small wooden box, about the size of two fists. He opened the delivery and saw that the contents of the box were wrapped in many layers of cloth. There was nothing else inside.
"Who sent this?! There's no name on it!" Victor complained, then unwrapped the cloth. A potion suddenly appeared before him.
"Oh, no wonder that owl had such a nasty attitude and dared to hit me in the head. It's from the old bat…" Victor picked up the potion and looked at it. It seemed to be a potion brewed with Helena's venom. Snape hadn't left a letter, but he had written the potion's effects on the bottle: "Keeps a person completely lucid for 24 hours, and wards off the Imperius Curse."
And with this simple sentence, Victor immediately saw that the potion was a double-edged sword.
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