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Half an hour later, Dudley walked out of the cell satisfied. He had already obtained the information he wanted.
He had obtained the addresses of those wizards who had been struck by Memory Charms.
As for whether he could find them, that could only depend on those wizards' luck.
Before Dudley left, Lockhart still tried to argue using the excuse that no one wanted to listen to the stories of old and ugly wizards, and that it was better for him to spread those stories instead. He tried to make Dudley agree with his approach.
However, Dudley was not a child. He would not fall for that.
No matter what reason Lockhart had, it was not an excuse to harm others.
He could have handled it in a gentler way, such as buying the rights to those stories and adding those wizards' names.
As long as there were enough Galleons, with both reputation and money involved, Dudley believed many people would have agreed.
Unfortunately, Lockhart had chosen another method.
Because they were not his own experiences, he could not use them as publicity points. Perhaps they would not have attracted as many readers.
Excessive greed had brought him to this point.
He deserved it. He had earned it.
Letting him out of Azkaban was impossible. Even if Dudley could do it, he would not. But he could apply to appropriately reduce Lockhart's sentence.
For example, right now, Lockhart had to spend a full ten years in Azkaban.
Dudley could reduce it to five. If Lockhart had not gone mad by then, he could still live a normal wizarding life after leaving.
The premise was that the wizards whose memories he had erased were all still alive.
On the way back, Dudley did not take the straight path. Instead, he circled around.
He saw many prisoners in Azkaban. The Data Eyes scanned over them one by one.
Long years of life in Azkaban had tortured them into mental confusion. Their magic had slightly decreased, and their muscles also showed signs of atrophy.
But as long as they got out, they would still be a group of highly destructive criminals.
Finally, he saw a man quietly crouching in a corner.
He seemed completely broken. His hair was disheveled, his face full of beard, his eyes empty.
There was not the slightest will to live on him. His entire body gave off a rotten, defeated air. Even the Dementors disliked approaching such a person.
No happiness. Nothing for them to feed on.
When Dudley passed by this man's cell, he accidentally lost a newspaper. The paper drifted down in front of the man. On the front page was the photograph of the Weasley family winning the prize.
Dudley did it very subtly. Apart from Dementors, there was no one else nearby, and Dementors could not speak, much less tell wizards.
After coming out of Azkaban, Dudley looked at the white paper in his hand, which was filled with addresses, and selected the nearest location.
"There will be plenty to do next."
If there was one thing fastest in the magical world, it was movement.
Muggle airplanes could not compare to Apparition.
Of course, the premise was that one had to know this magic and not make a mistake.
Dudley spent a full week visiting those wizards one by one according to the addresses Lockhart had given him.
Obviously, the process was not smooth.
Lockhart had written ten books in the series. Apart from The Gilderoy Lockhart Collection, the anthology, the remaining nine books had been published across a span of one to ten years. Adding in the time he needed to compile them himself, the span was even longer.
That was why Lockhart was such a bastard.
Lockhart only cared about stealing and casting Memory Charms. He never cared how the wizards who lost their memories would survive after he left. He did not even care about their basic living.
When Dudley went to those addresses, either the person was gone and impossible to find, or they had long since died and become a handful of dust.
The wizards Lockhart selected all had one trait: they had powerful magic yet were unknown. Most of them had no desire for worldly fame or profit and lived like hermits.
Most importantly, they had no descendants.
In other words, this bastard Lockhart specifically targeted isolated old wizards.
Following the addresses from the first eight books, Dudley found only two old wizards. This was only because the events in their books had happened relatively recently, so they had not yet reached the worst state. They had only lost their memories and were living somewhat miserably. After all, they had even forgotten how to cast spells.
One was a gap-toothed old witch who had driven away the Bandon Banshee. The other was a bald old wizard who had defeated a vampire.
When Dudley found them, one was picking through rubbish for food, and the other was dizzy from hunger, lying on the verge of death in a filthy, chaotic house.
'Lockhart really is a bastard.'
Dudley temporarily settled them down. He planned to find everyone first, then treat them one by one.
Under ordinary circumstances, the counter-charm to Obliviate was a Memory Revival Charm. However, Lockhart's Memory Charm was rather special. After all, this was the only spell he had practiced well for his entire life. In addition, Lockhart had never known restraint. He had already harmed the brains of these two wizards.
A simple Memory Revival Charm could not restore them.
It had to be paired with continuous potion treatment. Even then, Dudley did not have absolute confidence.
Now, Dudley arrived at the location of the final wizard, in New South Wales, Australia, at a small village at the northern end of a town called Lougha.
In Wanderings with Werewolves, Lockhart claimed he had defeated the Wagga Wagga Werewolf abroad and restored him to normal.
In truth, that old wizard had not been in America. He belonged to the Australian wizarding community.
"The person you're talking about should be there."
The local villagers enthusiastically gave Dudley directions.
All right. In truth, they had not been enthusiastic at first. They had even wanted to rob Dudley of his belongings. But after having a friendly exchange with Dudley, they became this enthusiastic.
Dudley walked in the direction they pointed.
It was a shaky thatched hut. Mm. It could barely be called a house.
He slowly pushed the door open, and a rotten smell mixed with mold rushed toward him.
Fortunately, Dudley had prepared early. Before opening the door, he had already put on a mask he had made himself.
The inside of the house was pitch-black. It seemed no one was home.
Dudley stretched a finger forward, and a ray of light shone in.
The room was not large. It seemed to have only one room.
Soon, he found that old wizard.
A dried corpse lay on the bed.
The muscles on the corpse had already dried out. Clearly, he had been dead for a very long time.
"Sigh." Dudley sighed softly.
He had come too late.
Wanderings with Werewolves had been written three years ago. Having lost his memory for a full three years, combined with his advanced age, death was within expectations.
It was only a pity that, with this old wizard's death, the spell that could restore a werewolf had also been lost.
Lockhart's crimes were monstrous.
After Dudley returned, he would definitely appeal to the Wizengamot and request that Lockhart's sentence be increased.
Just as Dudley planned to bury the thatched hut along with the old wizard, a notification suddenly appeared in his Data Eyes.
Dudley followed the notification and looked over.
Not far from the old wizard's corpse, there seemed to be a notebook.
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