Chapter 767 Department of Mysteries
Ministry of Magic,
department of mysteries,
It is located on the ninth floor of the Ministry of Magic headquarters. Due to its remote location and the high confidentiality of the business involved, it is rarely visited on weekdays and is shrouded in dead silence most of the time.
Tonight,
In the director's office, a deep and rich "tick" sound rang out, which had lasted for several hours.
The sound came from an old grandfather clock, and a gray-haired old man sitting on a Morris chair covered with fine Utrecht velvet was dismantling and repairing it.
In mid-air, a roll of leather floated, revealing a variety of neatly arranged tools:
Rows of screwdrivers, needles and tweezers for repairing clocks, each tucked into a separate leather pocket.
There are also large and small, fine screws and gears floating in a row behind the roll of leather.
Octavius Arkus sat across the table, quietly watching Corvinus Gaunt playing with the grandfather clock.
He had been here for a while, but he knew that his master didn't like to be disturbed when he was working, so he just waited silently.
After waiting for a long time, Akus listened to the slow and regular ticking sound, as if his heartbeat had slowed down. He shifted his gaze and looked at the entire office.
Speaking of an office, this is more like a luxuriously decorated library in Renaissance style:
Tall ash wood bookshelves stand along the wall, with various hand-written magic books bound in papyrus, parchment and vellum neatly arranged on the partitions.
Many of them are single copies, so the towering bookshelves are loaded with heavy history.
The dark green marble walls are inlaid with bronze oil lamps engraved with snake-like patterns. The pale yellow flames jump and flicker, dispelling the darkness and illuminating the luxurious tapestries hanging on the walls:
Depicted above are famous battles from the Goblin Rebellion, Giant Wars and Wizarding Wars of the eighteenth century.
Akus looked at those battles. Being born in the eighteenth century, he happened to have experienced these personally and knew how glorious and magnificent those years... were.
However, with the passage of time, they have now become history, and all that remains are these cold paintings and a half page of the history of magic outlined with only a few strokes.
It's so sad.
Akus shifted his gaze and was suddenly attracted by a mural on the wall:
A man spreads his limbs and lies naked on the ground.
Four little men were lying on him, one of them was beating his crotch with a wooden stick, a four-legged little man was looking at the burning grass, and he didn't know what he was looking at. Button his jewel-like eyes.
The slightly larger villain, holding a weapon in his hand, was cutting off the man's head, and most of it had been cut off...
Akus narrowed his eyes and stared at the simple and rough mural. He remembered that it didn't exist when he came last time.
"I found this mural deep underground in the Upper Barnton Giant Tribe." An old voice suddenly sounded.
Arkus turned his head, looked at Corvinus Gaunt, and said in surprise: "Have you found the lost city of giants?"
After the doomsday catastrophe thousands of years ago, wizards, centaurs, goblins and giants gained freedom and began to inhabit and multiply around the world.
In England, a dazzling kingdom of giants once appeared, and a luxurious royal capital - Giant City was built.
With the decline of the giant civilization, the kingdom was destroyed, and the royal capital also disappeared in the long river of history.
For thousands of years, magic historians, archaeologists, tomb robbers, goblins... have all been searching for the ruins of the royal capital, trying to obtain the massive treasures left by the giants.
However, the specific location of the Giant City has never been known, and Upper Barnton, England, is one of the suspected locations.
"I did find the Giant City." Gunter raised his finger, and the two gears flew towards the grandfather clock. He said calmly:
"I also opened the Winter Palace and saw the bones of Andal VI, the last king of the City of Giants."
When Akus heard this, his breathing suddenly became rapid, and he couldn't hide his excitement and asked:
"Then have you found the legendary weapon?"
Back then, wizards, centaurs, goblins and giants formed an alliance to fight the ancient wizard, and finally created a weapon to cut him into pieces.
Legend has it that the powerful weapon was taken away by the giants and hidden in the giant city.
Arkus once owned the Elder Wand and knew how terrifying it was. He was really eager to see a weapon that was said to be a hundred times more powerful than the Elder Wand.
"It's a pity." Gunter accurately installed the gear in the grandfather clock, shook his head and said: "I searched the Giant City and couldn't find that weapon."
"How could it be?" Arkus murmured with disappointment on his face: "Isn't it in the hands of the giant?"
He suddenly remembered something and asked in a low voice: "Could it have been taken away by a wizard? Isn't there a rumor that Gifford Alton got a very powerful weapon?"
Gifford Alton was a famous giant hunter in the fifteenth century. He once single-handedly killed the giant Hangis in Upper Barnton and protected the nearby wizard village - Fertile Land.
The wizards of Fertile Tuyuan regarded him as a hero and built a statue in his honor, which remains to this day.
The real purpose of Gifford Alton's visit to the Fertile Plains was to find the ruins of the Giant City.
"The weapon is not in the hands of Gifford Alton." Gunter said without looking up: "Do you remember Heloise Mintab?"
Akusi pondered for a long time before he found the memory of this name from the corner of his mind.
"Is he the silent man who used a time turner to return to the fifteenth century more than a hundred years ago?"
"Yes." Gunter nodded softly and said: "I asked Heloise to go back to the fifteenth century to find Gifford Orton.
The information she brought me confirmed that the weapon had not been obtained by him. "
Arkus looked at Corvinus Gunter with deep eyes.
He remembered that when Heloise used a time turner to return from the fifteenth century to 1899, her body's age suddenly increased by five centuries, and she only lived for a few hours before she died.
Corvinus Gaunt lost an innocent life just to confirm a piece of news!
Of course, Arkus is a dark wizard, not a pure white rabbit. He has long been accustomed to this kind of thing, and he even did it himself back then.
But now his identity is different. As the servant of Corvinus Gaunt, Arcus has become the "innocent life" that may be "buried" at any time. Naturally, it is inevitable that the rabbit will hate this kind of thing.
After a long silence, Akusi asked tentatively:
"Master, can you directly use the time turner to go back thousands of years ago when the Giant City was destroyed? Wouldn't it be easier to find out the whereabouts of that weapon?"
"Do you think I don't want to?" Gunter raised his head and looked directly into Arkus's eyes with his black pupils. He said quietly: "I just can't do it."
"Is there not enough magic power?" Akusi asked with some doubts.
"Magic?" Gunter smiled disdainfully, and he gently opened the drawer on the table.
Akusi looked closely and saw that the drawer was filled with large and small blood-red stones.
Those are not ordinary stones, they are all... magic stones!
Gunter took out a dove egg-sized stone from the drawer. He held it high and placed it in front of his eyes, admiring the subtle lines of the magic stone.
The stone is slightly transparent, and the inner lines are clearly visible, vaguely like silk, and there are tiny bright red dots, like frozen peach petals.
Viewed from a slight distance, the stones look like glistening blood clots.
"If you lack magic power, just put a few more magic stones in the time turner." Gunter played with the magic stone and said in an old voice:
"If one piece is not enough, put ten pieces in it; if ten pieces are not enough, put one hundred pieces in it...Magic power is the simplest and easiest problem to solve."
Arkus couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth. I'm afraid only Corvinus Gunter and Nico Flamel in the world could say this.
After all, no one else can make the Philosopher's Stone!
But the two of them do have what they say. Not to mention how many magic stones Nico Flamel, who has lived for six hundred years, has produced, Gunter alone can produce a drawer full of magic stones, as if for free.
"In that case, are there any questions?" Akusi asked.
"Too many." Gunter waved his wand, and a golden river appeared in the air.
"You can compare time to a long river that never stops. We are at the lowest downstream of the river..."
The old man clicked lightly, and two silver lights appeared at the end of the river. He continued:
"Wanting to use a time turner to go back in time is equivalent to taking a boat upstream. The further back in time, the faster the river flows, and the harder it is to go back upstream.
"This is not the most difficult problem." Gunter sighed and said: "The most difficult thing is that there are many reefs in this long river of time, which does not allow you to go ashore at a specific time point."
"Reef?"
"I once sent many silent people back to the time when the Giant City was destroyed, but they all failed. But hundreds of years forward and back, they can succeed," Gunter said.
"So, I call it a reef... As for why that happened, I don't know."
Akusi hesitated: "Then there is no solution?"
"That's it for now." Gunter lowered his head again and placed the magic stone in a row of gears.
He picked up the wand again, waved it quickly, and began to use the hour reversal spell, encapsulating it in the enchanted grandfather clock.
A beam of pale moonlight suddenly poured down from the wide skylight of the dome and shone on the grandfather clock.
Soon, the pendulum was filled with a churning, sparkling air current, shining as brightly as a diamond.
The magic stone emitted red light, constantly stirring the airflow.
Gunter waved his wand, and an egg appeared in his hand. He threw the egg into the flickering airflow.
When it rose up in the grandfather clock, it cracked open, and a hummingbird came out and rose straight to the top. However, as the air flow fell, the bird's feathers were stained and wet again. Wet until it landed at the bottom of the glass cover and was locked in the egg again.
Gunter tried it several times, then leaned back in his chair and said with a smile:
"Finally the broken time clock has been repaired. Let's go...send it back to the Time Hall."
The old man stood up and walked towards a wooden door. Akus quickly picked up the grandfather clock and followed closely behind him.
The two soon came to an old, gray wooden door. The door was stained with cracks and looked ordinary.
Gunter pushed the door open and entered a huge room.
It was as high as a cathedral, lined with towering shelves filled with little dusty glass balls, but nothing else.
Countless candlesticks were embedded on the shelves at certain intervals, and dim light shot out from above. The flames were blue, and the small glass balls glowed faintly in the light.
Gunter walked forward along the shelf. He suddenly asked: "How is Tom Riddle?"
"Voldemort didn't trust me, nor did he believe that his great-great-grandfather was still alive." Arkus said, "After I told him my intention, he had a fight with me."
"How strong is he?"
"We didn't fight to the end." Arkus said seriously, "But he is indeed very powerful."
"Tom's magic talent is really good. He is the most outstanding generation of the Gaunt family after me." Gaunt said expressionlessly:
"It's a pity that it was contaminated with Muggle blood, making the bloodline obscure and impure."
The old man walked forward slowly, and when he came to the 97th row of shelves, he suddenly stopped and stared at a dirty glass ball on the shelf.
Akus raised his head and saw the yellowed label attached to the bottom of the glass ball on the shelf. It had a date written about fifteen years ago in delicate fonts, followed by:
S.P.TtoA.P.W.B.D.
The Dark Lord and Harry Potter
"This is the prophecy Trelawney made for Tom. He will want this prophecy ball." Gunter said.
"Tell him that if he wants the prophecy ball, he can trade it for the tree in Ilvermorny."
Akusi lowered his white-haired head respectfully: "Yes, Master!"
Although he didn't know why Gunter wanted that tree, since the master told him, he would do it.
Gunter asked again: "Have the bones of Isaac Newton been found?"
"No." Akusi shook his head, wondering: "Westminster Abbey completely collapsed and turned into ruins. It is difficult for me to find his bones."
"Back then, Newton asked the wizard of the Trelawny family to divine for him and calculated that he would be doomed in three hundred years. He didn't expect that he would be here." Gunter laughed.
"Are you familiar with him?" Akusi couldn't help but asked curiously.
"Well, I once used a time turner to go back to Newton's era and learned alchemy from him." Gunter sighed:
"He promised to teach me alchemy, and in exchange, I would keep his body safe.
Octavius, you use this time clock to go back a month and take his bones out of Westminster Abbey. "
"Yes, Master." Akusi picked up the grandfather clock and fiddled with the hour hand. With a ticking sound, his figure disappeared into the air.
Gunter reached out and slowly picked up the prophecy ball that only Potter and Voldemort could touch. He used his cuffs to wipe off the dust bit by bit and put it back on the shelf.
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