"There are a lot of wizards out there?" Hermione looked nervous, "I didn't find anything." ”

"None of them have been trained in the Aurors' covert, obviously. Lockhart shook his head slightly, "Even if you don't sense their magic fluctuations, you can spot them just by observing: standing on the side of the road, looking bored but carefully looking at everyone passing by, I guess they also have Muggle Confusion Charm and Expulsion Charm on them, as long as you look at them or walk by them, you will immediately reveal the identity of wizards, because Muggles can't see them and actively stay away from them at the same time." ”

"What then...... Hermione's hand twitched, "let's go back the way we came." ”

"No, I think I should take a detour and take a look. Lockhart felt a pang of irritability in his heart, and now he had to sneak into an English town, and he was almost suffocated. "You wait for me here, I'll go and see. ”

"Let's go...... What do you want to see, with so many wizards outside, the meeting place must be exposed, and the most you can do is see the others arrested!" Hermione grabbed his hand, "And I don't think anyone who can escape will be stupid enough to rush in......"

"If you don't listen to me, forget it, take care of me!" Lockhart shook off her hand.

"But you're wrong, how can I care!" Hermione insisted on holding him.

The shopkeeper noticed the movement of the two and looked up, Lockhart held back his anger and took a bag of food: "Get some food and drink first, just in case you need it." ”

"Oh......" Hermione replied and began to take the food from the shelf, "don't risk it, Gildero......"

Lockhart shook his head and tried to calm down, he had always been a more rational person, he shouldn't be able to control his feelings, could it be that Moody's death had too much impact on him?

"Checkout!" Lockhart said to the shopkeeper, seeing Hermione pull a few poor change from her pocket, and Lockhart stopped her. He came out with a few thousand pounds, and he didn't need Hermione's pocket money at all.

"Okay, listen to you, let's go around town. Maybe you can meet someone who thinks the same way. After paying, Lockhart took a deep breath, resisting the urge to be stupid, and listened to Hermione.

――

The two cautiously followed the path they had come across the street, returning to the woods from which they had come. Let's be honest. Hermione was too nervous to show a lot of flaws when she left the store, but fortunately, the alertness and observation skills of the strikers were too poor.

"How do you confirm the identity of someone if you find it? The two searched along the outskirts of the town, "What if the other party also drinks the compound decoction and then hides from people?"

"Then don't drink any more, and it's best to make some markings on the trees along the way, if there are any marks that only the Aurors can recognize. ”

"Really. Lohart nodded, it was really useful to bring a nimble mind, "But the other party didn't know how many Aurors they caught...... Well, I don't think they're going to be smart enough to ask the people who were caught asking about the things they marked. ”

"To be on the safe side, don't leave a mark with magic. Hermione pulled out a folding knife from her beaded pouch. "That way, even if someone from the Ministry of Magic sees it, they'll think it's a Muggle carving. ”

"Very thoughtful, Hermione. Lohart nodded, took the knife, and began to carve on the tree next to him: α, G.L. "The letters in front are Aurors, and the letters in the back are my initials. ”

――

The two then continued to wander around the town, carving his mark into the trees from time to time. It was a difficult time, and they circled around Keith twice without finding any survivors. During this time, Hermione went to a wizarding family to get the Daily Prophet. The Ministry of Magic has reported a number of recent policy changes, and the biggest recent event is, of course, the successful encirclement of the "renegade wizards" by the Ministry of Magic. At the cost of more than fifty casualties, twenty-seven Aurors were captured or killed......

Twenty-seven! This number made Lockhart want to give up his insistence even more, and he thought that it was time to avenge Moody first, and then find the scattered Aurors along the way. But Hermione insisted on waiting here for Harry.

They quarreled from time to time during the day, and although Lockhart tried his reason to suppress his anger each time, it was still very unpleasant. Although the two slept together at night, Lockhart never had any sexual interest. Sleeping with the person you love the most but not making love...... Hermione grew more and more frustrated.

――

Thankfully, the days of nearer despair didn't last long, and their marker finally came in handy, after four days of wandering around Keith. They finally saw the other Auror markings beneath Lockhart's mark: α, L.S., H.P., S.B., and a long list of indecipherable lowercase letters underneath it.

"It's Harry!" Hermione screamed, "he's with Sirith, they're fine!"

Lockhart finally breathed a sigh of relief: "And Scrimgeour too, he's fine." "The Auror leader is still alive, at least not everything has to be taken care of by himself, and there is someone who can discuss the next step.

Harry and the other three of them couldn't have been together without mentioning their names once, but the lights out had not moved for the past few days, and now it seemed that it could only receive calls from lovers.

After discovering the other survivors, Lockhart's mood changed for the better, and with Hermione's advice, they changed the direction of their search around Keith from clockwise to counterclockwise in order to meet the other people.

Finally, at noon the next day, they met another group of people.

"Harry!" Hermione happily ran over to hug Harry, but was stopped by Lohartra.

Scrimgeour stopped Harry as well, drawing his wand and pointing at Lockhart, "Why did you use the experiences of other Aurors to write your new book?"

"You made me steal it. Lockhart lowered his wand.

――

"How did you get out, I saw a mysterious man attacking you. After confirming their identities, several people gathered together with confidence, and Lockhart couldn't help but ask, "What about the others, the newspaper said that twenty-seven did not escape, so there should be about ten." ”

"Alasto...... Like Dumbledore, he used a forbidden spell on the mystery man before he died, and unfortunately missed," Scrimgeour said calmly, "but there was a lot of movement, and I took the opportunity to escape." ”

None of the forbidden spells moved much, and it seems that Moody died a tragic death.

"As for the rest...... You know, twenty-seven refers to the corpses they grabbed or left at the scene, and some of them were hit during the forced apparition and fell to the place where the apparition appeared. "I'm just expecting seven or eight people to get out of the house and come around to see it." ”

Scrimgeour seemed very calm, this calm was different from Lockhart's pretended composure, it was not the numbness and confusion in the face of a defeated situation, but the tenacity and calmness of the spirit and soul, showing Lockhart's incomparable endurance and psychological element: Scrimgeour has been an Auror for more than ten years and the director of the Auror for more than twenty years, and Lockhart's participation in the Auror operation has always been smooth, for him, this is not the first time he has suffered a crushing defeat and sacrifice in the face of a powerful enemy- As long as he himself does not die, and the war continues, it is estimated that it will not be the last.

- (To be continued.) )