For someone like Damocles, a treacherous ingrate, beating him to death would hardly be too much.
Leaning against the wall, Leonard watched a rat scurry past along the street. With a flick of his finger, he caught it with a Levitation Charm.
Inside, that unusually creative interrogation was still going on, while Leonard yawned and toyed with the rat in his hand.
As he watched it struggle in midair, he kept replaying the black-robed man's escape.
That had undoubtedly been ancient magic.
But why?
Wasn't ancient magic supposed to have been lost? So where had this one come from?
Leonard thought back to the black-robed man's movements and remembered the moment he had crushed the crow in his hand.
"Looks like... he used the crow as a medium to use ancient magic. Even so, that's still astonishing," Leonard murmured to himself.
To be able to wield ancient magic in such an unusual way meant the other side had a very deep understanding of it. They must have researched quite a lot.
At this point, Leonard was basically certain that the organization Dumbledore had mentioned, the one searching for ancient magic, was Raven.
"According to Dumbledore, that organization will take the initiative to contact me..." Leonard narrowed his eyes. "Could it be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?"
Otherwise, there was no real explanation for why the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor would suddenly be replaced.
About ten minutes passed. The screams coming from inside the room gradually weakened. Not long after, Midgard pushed open the door and walked out.
"Where did that rat come from?" Midgard asked instinctively when she saw Leonard playing with it.
"Oh, come on. It's not like you can control where a rat runs," Leonard said, casually flicking it away. "How did the interrogation go?"
He glanced at Midgard's blood-soaked hands.
That was not Midgard's blood.
It was Damocles's.
"Not bad." Midgard nodded. "I finally got to vent a little."
"You didn't beat him to death?"
"No. He still feels a little useful." Midgard paused, then said, "By the way, didn't you say you were going to make some Veritaserum? Use it on him and pry everything out of him about the Wolfsbane Potion."
"That kind of thing can be left to anyone," Leonard said, looking at her.
"I don't really trust anyone else." Midgard frowned.
"Being cautious is a good thing, but there's no need to take it this far. Midgard, there are rats everywhere, but you should still have people you can trust. Marcus, for example," Leonard said.
"Isn't trusting you enough?" Midgard waved him off. "We can talk about trust once the intelligence department is up and running."
Clearly, what had happened with Damocles had dealt Midgard quite a blow. In her eyes, she had already given Damocles more than enough, yet not only had he intended to betray her, he had also planned to kill her.
That alone was enough for Midgard to hate him for the rest of her life.
"You can think of it that way, but sooner or later you'll have to trust your own intelligence department too, won't you? If you don't even trust them, then what's the point of intelligence work?"
Leonard said, "If you want to get rid of rats, it's not enough just to avoid touching them. You have to clean up the whole environment around you, maybe keep a few cats. That's how you drive them out."
"Tch. So that's why you were playing with a rat when you had nothing better to do. Just so you could say that to me?" Midgard rolled her eyes. "I'm not as extreme as you think. I'm just annoyed, that's all. Come on, have a drink with me."
"You want me to drink with you? You really think highly of me," Leonard said with a shrug. "I'm underage."
"Tch. You really are something. Hurry up and grow up already." Midgard shook her head. "Forget it. It's late. Go get some sleep. After one good night's rest, all your troubles will be gone."
...
One night passed, and the commotion in Knockturn Alley did not cause the slightest ripple. In fact, aside from the Werewolves themselves, almost no one even knew what had happened there.
The next day, the front-page headline of the Daily Prophet was Lockhart's arrest. His trial would begin in October, and until then he would be held in a prison inside the Ministry of Magic.
It was not that the Ministry was unwilling to put Lockhart on trial sooner. It was simply that the number of crimes he had committed was far too great. Just sorting through the victims' names and counting how many there were was already an enormous task.
But none of that had anything to do with Leonard.
Lockhart was no longer going to become Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, so Leonard naturally had no interest in anything related to him.
He would rather spend that time studying wandmaking.
Just as Mr. Ollivander had said, with Leonard's ability to learn, wandmaking was not especially difficult.
What mattered even more was Leonard's affinity with plants. Setting everything else aside, the fact that wood itself would respond to Leonard's wishes was already something no other wandmaker could compare with.
The wooden part of a wand was, by nature, a vessel that concentrated plant vitality. Only such vivid, living material could fully release a wand's magic.
But now Leonard was different from what Mr. Ollivander had expected.
He did not only have an affinity with plants.
He also had an affinity with animals.
The power granted by his new talent, [Friend of Nature], made every step of processing wand materials feel smooth and effortless in his hands.
So in only five days, Leonard had fully mastered wandmaking and begun crafting a wand for Claudia.
Mr. Ollivander did not offer any help throughout the process. He understood Leonard's desire to make Claudia's wand himself, and if he stepped in at a time like this, it would only spoil the moment.
For Claudia's wand, Leonard deliberately slowed everything down. He treated every step with great care and pushed every aspect of the wand as far as he possibly could.
Even Mr. Ollivander could not stop praising it.
Leonard spent ten whole days making this wand. On the tenth day, he finally completed the last stage of polishing it with his own hands.
"Truly perfect," Mr. Ollivander said with heartfelt admiration as he looked at the wand in Leonard's hand. "It's hard to believe this is actually the very first wand you've ever made."
"I imagine it'll also be the last. Not just anyone is worthy of making me sit there obediently and craft a wand for them," Leonard said as he stretched lazily, his bones cracking in a series of sharp sounds.
At the side, Claudia stared curiously at the wand in Leonard's hand. She did not know what a wand was for, but she did know it was a gift from Leonard.
And anything Leonard gave her, she liked.
Looking at Claudia's face full of expectation, Leonard rubbed her head, then turned back to continue working.
At this point, the wand still could not be considered finished. Fine burrs still remained on its surface, and it would definitely feel rough in the hand.
So Leonard picked up sandpaper and carefully polished it until the wand was completely smooth.