Frank Bryce was a World War I veteran.

He was lucky to catch only the tail of the final victory, which allowed him not to forget his remnants on the battlefield like his father did.

Before his mother dies of excessive grief, she holds her withered arm and tells Frank that the rest of his life is the most important thing.

But he was young and stubborn, but he hoped to avenge his father.

But again, he was lucky.

When he returned from the battlefield, all the war had brought him was a leg that was too stiff to obey, and an extreme revulsion to the crowd and the noise.

Is my father's revenge over?

Frank never found an answer to this question.

Since then, he has decided to listen to his mother, find an ordinary job, and live a good life in peace.

At this time, in his hometown, the wealthy Riddle family happened to be looking for a gardener to hire.

It couldn't be better for him – he doesn't have to be so sharp on his legs, and he can stay away from the noisy crowds. He believed that this would be the best job for him.

Truth be told, the Riddles are a good match, because they're both equally obnoxious.

But it didn't have much to do with Frank, he didn't care how much he was paid. All he wanted was to live his stable life—his mother's last wish.

But one day nearly five years later, the owner's family all died at home inexplicably. Frank, the only living living in Riddle's house, was taken away by the police as a suspect.

The villagers immediately started talking, after all, this kind of topic will always become a pastime before and after tea.

Just when the situation was extremely dire for Frank, the Riddles' autopsy report returned, and the situation was reversed at once.

The police said they had never seen a more bizarre autopsy report.

None of the Riddles were injured by poison, sharp weapons, or pistols, nor were they suffocated or strangled.

In fact, the report was clearly written in a confused tone: the Riddle family of three all appeared to be healthy — except for one point, they all died.

It was as if the medical examiners were determined to find something wrong with the corpse.

Everyone in the Riddle family had a look of horror on their faces.

But as the already helpless policeman said, who had ever heard of three people being scared to death at the same time?

Since there was no evidence that the Riddles were murdered, the police had to release Frank.

To everyone's surprise and suspicion, after the Riddles were buried in the cemetery, Frank Bryce actually returned to the Riddle House garden, in his cabin.

Frank was not too interested in the gossip in the village, and he continued to work for the owner of the land as his gardener.

This has been done for nearly half a century.

Now, Frank is approaching his seventy-seventh birthday.

He was deaf and his bad leg was stiffer than before. But when the weather is nice, people can still see him working in the flower beds, even though the weeds are creeping around him, and he can't stop it.

Old Frank wasn't too confused, he knew he was just working in vain.

Besides, Frank had to deal with more than just weeds—the village boys liked to throw stones at the windows of Riddle House.

As for the flat grass that Frank had worked so hard to maintain, they rode their bicycles on it.

On one or two occasions, they even broke into the old mansion in order to bet with each other.

They knew that old Frank was devoted to the care of the house and the garden, almost to the point of obsession. So they would like to see him limping through the garden, brandishing his cane and shouting at them in a hoarse voice.

Whenever this happens, they feel very happy.

And what about old Frank?

He believed that the boys tortured him because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought he was a murderer.

But he'd been doing the job for almost his entire life, and he had no reason to interrupt it. It may be for his mother's last wishes, but it is also for his own life.

So, on that August night......

Old Frank woke up in his sleep from the pain of his bad leg - now that he was older, the leg hurt even worse. He got out of bed and limped downstairs into the kitchen, trying to fill the hot water bottle to warm his stiff knees.

He stood by the pool, filling the kettle with water as he habitually looked up at Riddle's House.

At this time, he saw a glimmer of light from the upstairs window.

"What new tricks have those little ones come up with to punish my old bones?" Old Frank thought he had guessed what was going on.

The boys had broken into the old house again, and the glimmer of light in the windows was so uncertain that they could see that they were still on fire.

He quickly put the kettle down, dragged the bad leg, and went back upstairs to get dressed as quickly as possible. Immediately, he returned to the kitchen and removed the rusty old key from the hook by the door.

Finally, he picked up the crutches leaning against the wall and walked into the night.

There is no sign of a forced break-in at the front door of Riddle House, and the windows are intact.

Old Frank limped to the back of the house, stopped at a door that was almost completely obscured by creepers, took out the old key, and opened it silently.

He hadn't been in in years.

Still, despite the darkness in all directions, he remembered where the door to the hallway was. He fumbled his way over, and the smell of decay came to his nose.

With his ears pricked up, he caught every trace of footsteps or speech overhead.

When he came to the hallway, there was a little bit of light in because of the large lattice windows on either side of the front door.

He began to go upstairs, thinking to himself that thanks to the thick dust that had accumulated on the stone steps, the sound of his footsteps and crutches was muffled and undetectable.

On the landing of the staircase, old Frank turned to the right and immediately saw where the intruder was—at the top of the hallway, a door opened a crack, and a shimmer of light shot out of the crack in it, casting an orange-yellow light on the dark floor.

Frank leaned sideways, cautiously approaching little by little, his cane clutched tightly in his hands.

A few steps from the doorway, he could see through the narrow, slightly open crack of the door.

He saw it now, and the fire was born in the fireplace—and to be honest, it surprised him.

He stopped, pricked up his ears, and heard only the voice of a man in the room. The voice was a little stiff, and the tone was dry, which was very uncomfortable.

“…… The host, Lucius Malfoy, is almost there. ”

"Hmmm......"

Another voice rang out suddenly, young and soft, powerful. Somehow, Frank only felt the hairs on his body stand on end, as if he had heard something he shouldn't have heard.

"So, what about Wormtail?" The voice asked softly, "How's he doing?" ”

"Dead."

"Well, that's to be expected," the man said calmly, "but what about the effect?" ”

"One Auror died, five civilians died, and twenty-two were wounded."

"That's it?" The voice seemed to be a little heavier, but it was still calm and natural, "Is it because that old thing Dumbledore arrived soon?" ”

"No, it's because of a student, and he's the one who killed Wormtail," the dry voice paused and continued, "and he called himself Macklean. ”

McKellen ...... One of the students ......" the man seemed to think, "Heh, who else but that kid?" Marca McKellen...... Have you ever fought with him? ”

"Without the master's order, the servants dare not move."

“…… Okay, well, let's go and feed the one at the door to Nagini first, and then I'll give a detailed report on the details of the battle. ”

At that moment, old Frank felt the door in front of him suddenly open wide, and his vision turned completely dark. His life ended uneventfully.

At the same time, a figure like Peter Pettigrew, covered in a thick black aura, stood there. He grabbed old Frank by the collar and dragged him into the hall of the old mansion.

As he threw Old Frank forward, a giant serpent with a black aura also loomed out of the darkness and swallowed Old Frank's corpse in one gulp.

Looking at the huge figure, which was still more than half still hidden in the shadows, it was obviously not much smaller than the basilisk.

"Hiss"

It hissed at the figure, a faint glint of wisdom in its defiant gaze.

……

As old Frank threw himself into the arms of death, a teenager was grinding a few thin pieces of stone in the cemetery behind the blackstone fortress known as Azkaban.

On this silent island, the sound of stones grinding against each other was quite abrupt.

But no one would disturb his work here, he just concentrated on polishing, trying to make the edges of the stone flakes sharper.

No one knows what he wants to do, and of course, no one will be interested here.

This teenager is naturally the Maca who was imprisoned in Azkaban.

"Whew!" He suddenly picked up the stone chips, blew the stone chips on the surface of the stone chips, turned them over and looked at them, and then nodded with satisfaction.

This boy is naturally Maca - all he has to do is wait before the time comes.

But it was definitely not what he wanted to wait here all the time, so he decided to use everything here to continue some of his research.

For Maca, time is precious, and it should not be wasted because of poor conditions.

"Well, it's not bad."

He picked up the stone chip and made a not-so-deep scratch on the trunk of a dead tree beside him.