Chapter 51: Go find the magical conch
Many people know this: Hogwarts Castle is right next to the wizarding village of Hogsmeade. At the very least, everyone is clear that the school's train station is in the village, and generations of young wizards remember how they would directly walk from the back of the school into the village to play on weekends.
But strangely, Hogwarts was currently experiencing a long rainy season. In Lockhart's experience, this rainy season would probably last at least half a year, while the weather outside was exceptionally sunny.
In the afternoon, before sunset, it started raining again at Hogwarts.
However, when Lockhart followed Dumbledore as they Apparated to the Carrow family's ancestral home, which logically should have been in the same climate zone as Hogwarts in the neighboring county, it was a warm evening here.
Bathed in the warm sunlight, the Carrow family's ancestral home even looked somewhat cozy.
Flowers bloomed in the garden, trees were laden with fruit, and the sunlight fell on the ancestral home's mushroom-shaped large dome, giving it the feel of a cute castle in a charmingly illustrated fairy tale.
This momentarily eased Lockhart's tense emotions.
Not every wizard liked a dark and eerie aesthetic. At least the Carrow family's ancestral home gave Lockhart the feeling of a kind old lady with reading glasses knitting a sweater while a kitten dozed nearby in the afternoon.
Warmth – this was the taste of home that this house provided to every generation of the Carrow family.
The people who lived here must have been very happy.
But alas, a house was just a house, and the Carrow family had completely withered.
Especially after Amycus was captured, strictly speaking, the family had completely lost its male lineage, announcing that the Carrow family, one of the sacred twenty-eight pure-blood families, was about to disappear into the river of history.
Past glory and honor now looked as illusory as this house.
When Lockhart followed Dumbledore into the house, he truly witnessed the real scene of a ruined family.
Everywhere were signs of decay and old age. The sunlight seemed to loathe this place and refused to shine in. The corners of the walls were damp, with peeling paint revealing dusty colonies of fungi.
"Wait!"
Lockhart called out to Dumbledore, who was holding his wand and casting a Lumos spell to explore ahead. "There's something wrong with this house!"
His eyes burned as he looked around, his brow deeply furrowed. He quickly came to the tea-drinking area near the entrance of the hall, kicked a small black and white striped round stool, and his expression cleared. "This little stool usually likes to play hide-and-seek, making family members look for it everywhere. But look, it doesn't seem to be able to move at all now!"
"There's none of the magical liveliness that a magical house should have!"
Dumbledore's expression shifted. He waved his wand around, and a scattering of colorful bubbles floated out, bursting with a soft 'pop' as they hit the walls and ceiling.
"It's an illusion!" He quickly stood in front of Lockhart, looking around warily.
Yes, this house was an illusion!
As the bubbles detected, everything around was rapidly falling apart. Large pieces of wallpaper peeled off, the ground quickly rotted and cracked, and everything was rapidly disintegrating.
Boom!
Suddenly, the entire ceiling shattered and collapsed downwards, all falling towards them.
Dumbledore grabbed Lockhart's arm and Apparated them quickly out of the house and into the open air.
But an extremely strange scene occurred.
The spatial distortion of Apparition seemed to become real and tangible. The entire space was rapidly twisting, as if no matter how Dumbledore moved through space, the space would expand to match.
It had been subjected to a powerful anti-Apparition jinx!
Dumbledore instantly changed his strategy, stopping the Apparition. He flicked his wand upwards, and a powerful gust of air swept through.
The falling ceiling was instantly torn apart, crashing down on both sides with a roar, sending dust billowing.
Lockhart looked up. The original roof had become an inverted world.
Through the thin clouds, he could faintly see upside-down trees and what looked like reversed land and rivers at the very top.
It was as if there was an upside-down world in the sky.
Not only that, but looking down, it was as if they were standing above the clouds. There was another world below, with a dense forest where a small squirrel was holding a nut and looking up at them curiously from a large tree.
Lockhart gasped and quickly looked at Dumbledore. "'Caro's Bedtime Story Fairy Tale Book,' a treasure passed down by the Caro family, is a magical book! It can take people into fairy tale worlds! They disguised the book as a house!"
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. Danger, as they say, comes from the unknown. Now that they knew what was happening, there would naturally be a solution.
"How do we break it?" he asked.
"Someone must be controlling this book. It can't work on its own. This was a restriction placed on it by the second generation Caro after the book caused an accident. Someone must be watching us right now!"
Lockhart's tone was urgent, trying to explain the unambiguous answer in the shortest possible words. "No matter what the scene is in the storybook, there's always an exit! There will also be some conch shells in various corners of the scene. Find the conch shells, listen to their sounds, and they will provide guidance!"
As he spoke, the world in the sky began to descend rapidly, and the world on the ground also rose rapidly, as if a book was about to close.
He grabbed Dumbledore's sleeve with his backhand. "Don't make any movements at this time. Blindly struggling will lead us into unknown dangers. This is what every generation of Caro has taught their descendants when using this book."
Providing a direction for the solution and predicting danger, Lockhart was playing his part.
He tensed up, carefully sensing the surrounding airflow. His expression changed, and he muttered a bad word under his breath, quickly continuing, "The person controlling the storybook clearly realized that I know the Caro family's secret and intends to separate us. Later, I will try my best to find a conch shell and call out to you. Remember to find a conch shell as soon as possible and listen to my voice!"
Bang~
The book closed.
The two worlds rapidly overlapped.
Everything around was filled with colorful dazzling lights, twisting and swirling.
When Lockhart's vision returned, he had appeared on a scorched earth. Looking up, the entire world was so dark and dilapidated that it was unimaginable.
The pitch-black earth cracked open, revealing gaps filled with rolling orange-red lava, emitting terrifying heat.
Looking around, there were no obstructions. Only a charred, broken tree still stood there, with a flock of strange, scavenging birds perched on its branches, waiting to feast on his corpse.
Further away, where the gray sky met the horizon, faint, miserable wails could be heard.
"Despair Land!" Lockhart's expression was solemn. This was the scene from the thirteenth chapter of "Caro's Bedtime Story Fairy Tale Book," "Kalibu's Gem." Its biggest characteristic was the scarcity and difficulty in finding conch shells.
Clearly, the person controlling this storybook had heard what he had explained to Dumbledore and had specifically chosen this fairy tale scene.
Just then, a black, rotten hand with exposed bones suddenly reached out from the scorched earth, forcefully grabbing Lockhart's ankle.
He looked down and was shocked to see the ground crack open, and a corpse that had been lying in the ground for who knew how long was using his ankle to pull itself up.
The corpse's head turned to look at him, its mouth, full of black, sticky goo, opened wide, and it roared.
Bang!
Lockhart lifted his other foot and forcefully kicked, slamming its head back into the earth.
But such damage couldn't kill this corpse.
Lockhart kicked the black wrist again, freeing himself. He quickly retreated, creating distance. A cloud of black smoke flew out of his wizard's robe pocket, crashing to the ground, and a tall figure draped in blood-stained rags slowly stood up.
For some reason, the Boggart seemed to really like the image of the 'Hanged Corpse.' It now quickly swung a massive cross-shaped great axe, chopping down at the corpse.
Boom!
The strength of the laborer was enormous. The axe blade instantly cut through the corpse and slammed into the scorched earth.
The corpse let out a miserable wail and suddenly spat a large amount of black, viscous blood at the Boggart before completely collapsing and dying.
This viscous blood was their means of attack. After being contaminated, it caused intense stinging pain, but it clearly had no effect on the Boggart.
Soon, the corpse began to rot and bubble rapidly, turning entirely into a black, viscous paste. Three more corpses struggled to crawl out of it.
The Boggart raised its axe again.
"Wait, don't kill it anymore!"
Lockhart stopped the action, commanding, "Throw them all into the lava!"
The Boggart dropped the axe in its hand, reached out its large hands, grabbed the heads of these corpses, and, holding them by their heads, pulled them out of the viscous blood. It quickly walked to the edge of the earth's crack and threw them in.
The corpses wailed in the lava, spitting blood at the Boggart, and were soon completely burned away.
Lockhart was now completely certain that this was the Despair Land scene from the fairy tale chapter "Kalibu's Gem."
The core of this chapter's story was 'life,' and the most frequent characters in the scene were these Inferi.
These Inferi were almost impossible to kill. They would resurrect using the power of 'killing' and would split into three.
Without understanding this key, one would only find that the more Inferi they killed, the more there would be, eventually filling the entire land.
To deal with them, one needed to avoid killing them and instead throw them into the high temperatures they feared, allowing them to perish in an unsuitable environment.
Thinking of this, Lockhart looked into the distance with some worry, wondering if Dumbledore knew this information.
Of course, he didn't need to worry too much. Old Albus was incredibly powerful, and no amount of Inferi could harm him.
He should worry about himself.
He had to find a conch shell as soon as possible and reunite with Dumbledore.
The unknown person secretly controlling the storybook was watching them. Only by Dumbledore's side could he feel safe at this time.
He also didn't know how many people the other side had, or if the Dark Lord Voldemort was among them...
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