The healer's speech was so impassioned that by the end of it, he looked positively intoxicated by his own eloquence.
Then he met Quirrell's expression.
Quirrell's face had turned an ugly shade of green.
"Glorious your mother!"
In the next moment, he flew into a rage and began wildly lashing out with his wand.
Spells roared through the room, blasting furniture apart and sending the gathered healers fleeing from the ward in panic.
Even then, Quirrell still was not satisfied.
The rage and resentment boiling in his heart had reached such a level that he genuinely felt the urge to cast the Unforgivable Curses right there in public—torture every last one of those useless frauds, then kill them all.
At that moment, even Voldemort's expression changed.
If Quirrell actually used an Unforgivable Curse here in St Mungo's, then everything afterward would be ruined. Returning to Hogwarts to seize the Philosopher's Stone would become impossible.
He immediately spoke within Quirrell's mind.
"Quirrell. Calm yourself. Don't be foolish."
"This is not yet a situation that calls for the Cruciatus Curse or the Killing Curse."
Quirrell's eyes were bloodshot.
"Shut up!"
"If I hadn't let madness take me and allowed you to latch onto me, would I have ended up like this?!"
The next moment, Voldemort gave a long, low hum.
"Oh?"
"Quirrell… you dare speak to me in that tone?"
A furious shout rose in Quirrell's heart.
"So what if I do?"
"I'm dying! At this point, I'm afraid of no one!"
"To hell with the Dark Lord!"
The next instant, pain lanced straight through his soul.
Quirrell's expression instantly cleared.
"Master! I didn't mean it that way, Master!"
But Voldemort did not stop after one bout of agony.
He made Quirrell suffer through that soul-deep torment three or four times before finally easing off.
When at last the pain began to subside, Voldemort's voice was icy and laced with ridicule.
"Quirrell, do you think I do not know what you mean?"
"You imagine your petty thoughts are hidden from me?"
"But now—what choice do you believe you have?"
"You are dying. Even if you ran to Dumbledore, that old fool would not tell you how to keep living. He would only tell you that death is the next great journey and advise you to accept it with composure."
"How laughable."
Quirrell's voice trembled.
"But… what if Dumbledore does know how to remove the curse?"
Voldemort gave a cold laugh.
"Before this, I might have said that was possible."
"But now? No."
"I can tell you with certainty that even Dumbledore could not produce a curse of this sort."
"I do not know whether this is some mutation of the curse brought on by unicorn blood, or whether you somehow picked up some particularly vile and aberrant hex elsewhere."
"But one thing is certain—this was not Dumbledore's work."
"And even if the curse could somehow be lifted, Quirrell, the life you have already lost will not return to you."
"You would still be dying."
"Only I can keep you alive."
Quirrell clenched his fists hard enough for the knuckles to whiten.
Where had he picked up such a curse?
No matter how he turned the question over, his thoughts always circled back to one person.
Theodore Ashbourne.
"It's that child," Quirrell hissed inwardly.
"Ever since I crossed paths with him, my life has been one catastrophe after another."
"Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong."
"This must be part of the curse itself!"
A terrifying killing intent burst from his eyes.
At this point, he truly had no road left but one.
Whether it was to remove the curse…
Or to obtain the Philosopher's Stone and rebuild himself in a new body untouched by this nightmare…
"Theodore Ashbourne must die!"
…
Meanwhile, unlike Quirrell—who was being tormented half to death—Theodore was in an excellent mood.
He led Harry, Ron, and Hermione through the cool evening air on flying brooms, the wind rushing pleasantly against their faces.
Before long, they descended onto the grounds of a large estate.
The moment they landed, Theodore said, "This is a manor I purchased in the Muggle world. It's fairly close to the site of Ron's match. We'll stay here for the night."
Harry and the others were stunned.
Even Hermione, whose parents were both dentists and therefore comfortably well-off by Muggle standards, was still very far from casually owning a manor.
They stared at the expansive estate before them—its elegant grounds, the grand building, the polished stonework, the scale of it all—and all three swallowed at once.
"How much money have you made from writing books, Theodore?"
"Your own manor? If I had one of these, I'd be set for life!"
"Do you know how brilliant it would be to play Quidditch over these grounds?"
Theodore laughed.
"It didn't actually cost much. The local people wanted me to help promote the area, so they sold it for practically nothing."
"Honestly, getting one of your own in the future won't be hard for any of you."
Then he looked at Harry.
"Harry, do you even know how rich you are?"
"You told me before about the gold in your Gringotts vault, but that's only a small fraction of what you stand to inherit."
"Your family owns property in Godric's Hollow. Houses there are not cheap. You know the history of the place—Godric Gryffindor lived there, Dumbledore lived there, even the author of A History of Magic resided there. In the magical world, that sort of property is worth more than this manor."
"And on top of that, you have ties to the Black family. There's a very real chance you may inherit some of that ancient family's wealth as well."
"When you add it all together, establishing a Potter Manor one day would be effortless."
Harry's eyes widened.
He had truly never thought about it in those terms.
"Then… could I invest in a Quidditch team one day and make myself the Seeker?"
"Merlin, that would be brilliant!"
Theodore laughed again, then turned to Ron, whose face was filled with open envy.
"As for you, Ron, getting a manor isn't impossible either."
"Win enough Wizard's Chess championships, build your reputation, and a manor will be the least of it. With enough fame, Diagon Alley might even put up a statue of you so every new young wizard grows up knowing the name of the great chess saint, Ron Weasley."
"And Hermione…"
His expression turned slightly odd.
"Honestly, one day the rest of us might end up paying taxes to her."
"We should probably start treating Minister Hermione Granger with proper respect right now. When she takes office, perhaps she'll spare the wealthy from a targeted tax increase."
For a second they all just stared.
Then the laughter hit so hard that they nearly doubled over.
After that, Theodore led them inside.
"You must be exhausted after flying all the way here. Go with the butler, get settled into your rooms, and dinner should be ready soon."
"And Ron—especially you. Your match is tomorrow. You need a proper night's sleep."
The three of them followed the butler in.
Theodore, however, slowed his steps and fell a short distance behind.
Then he turned his head, his gaze drifting outward beyond the edge of the estate.
His eyes became cool.
He had noticed it not long after leaving Hogwarts.
Someone had been following them from a distance.
The person had cast a Disillusionment Charm and kept well out of sight, but under Theodore's perception, such concealment was close to meaningless. Unless one possessed something on the level of the Potter family's Deathly Hallows invisibility cloak, hiding from him was nearly impossible.
He could make out a hooded figure with a broad, powerful frame.
The exposed skin was thick with hair.
The fingernails were long and sharp, more like claws than anything human, as though they had not been cut in years.
More importantly, Theodore could sense that within the figure's body, alongside the magic of an ordinary wizard, there lurked another kind of power entirely.
Wild.
Savage.
Bestial.
And beneath that, there was something even more disturbing—a faint trace of madness, as though inherited and diluted over countless generations but never fully erased.
Theodore's pupils contracted slightly.
"A werewolf?"
He frowned.
"And that madness hidden in the werewolf bloodline… what exactly is that?"
At that moment, lines of text began appearing across the System screen.
[While travelling abroad in the company of Nezha, Lei Zhenzi, and the others, you pass through a mountain range rich in spiritual beauty yet steeped in soaring baleful malice. Its name is Skull Mountain.]
[From Skull Mountain, a gaze full of malice falls upon you. You perceive that it comes from the infamous One-Air Immortal, Ma Yuan.]
[Among the many fierce immortals and gods of the Investiture era, the most vicious and depraved is surely Ma Yuan. This figure was born savage, delighted in devouring human flesh, and has eaten countless people.]
[Skull Mountain should originally have been a small blessed land, where Lady Shiji of the Jie Sect withdrew from the world to cultivate in peace. Yet Ma Yuan, who also cultivated there, corrupted the place so thoroughly with slaughter and filth that bones covered the mountain and even its name was changed to Skull Mountain.]
Theodore's brows rose faintly.
The hooded figure lurking in the distance and watching his group had to be the most notorious werewolf in the British magical world—
Fenrir Greyback.
Remus Lupin had been bitten by him as a child.
Later, Charlie Weasley too had been attacked and turned into a werewolf after a violent clash.
Ordinary werewolves tended to live in fear and shame, isolating themselves from others, terrified that the moon would strip away their reason.
Fenrir Greyback was the exact opposite.
He was vicious by nature.
He deliberately bit witches and wizards in order to spread lycanthropy.
He gathered other werewolves around himself, and many of them followed the same path.
There had even been whispers that Fenrir and his pack had long since ceased to possess anything resembling humanity.
On nights of the full moon, they were said to prepare Muggles in advance—stocking them like food for a feast once their transformations began.
If the System classified Fenrir Greyback as Ma Yuan, then Theodore found the comparison entirely reasonable.
But then the next lines appeared on the screen, and even Theodore was caught off guard.
[One-Air Immortal Ma Yuan is infamous, steeped in evil, guilty beyond redemption, and unworthy of friendship.]
[The host has automatically entered into an enemy relationship with One-Air Immortal Ma Yuan.]
[The enmity between host and One-Air Immortal Ma Yuan exceeds the bounds of irreconcilable hatred and has reached the level of—exterminate the bloodline.]
Theodore's eyes sharpened.
He had not expected Fenrir Greyback to trigger a relationship category in the System that surpassed simple life-and-death enmity.
Yet the next message was even more startling.
A line of chaotic, ancient-looking script surfaced across the screen.
[One-Air Immortal Ma Yuan possesses significant karmic weight and bears ties to the Western lineage. He is one marked by the Western Saint, Zhunti Daoren.]
[If you kill One-Air Immortal Ma Yuan and wipe out his kind, you will inevitably draw the gaze of Zhunti Daoren.]
[The gains and losses involved must be weighed by the host alone.]
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