“My memory?” Amir blinked.

“Regarding Mr. Harris,” Dumbledore said softly. “I believe his family deserves an explanation.”

“Oh—sure. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you.”

Dumbledore smiled warmly.

Suddenly—

Bang!

The office door burst open.

Professor McGonagall stormed in, face tense, with Snape gliding behind her wearing his usual sour expression.

“Albus, I heard Dawn returned—and that you were chasing him? What is going on?!”

Her rapid questioning revealed just how shaken she was.

Before now, she and Dumbledore had both firmly believed Dawn was innocent in the Halloween incident.

So why was Dumbledore suddenly pursuing him?

“Minerva, Severus…”

Dumbledore paused, then recounted everything that had happened. McGonagall’s face tightened, shifting several times during the explanation.

When she heard of Dawn committing murder, her emotions tangled between anger at Dawn’s fall and guilt for failing as his teacher.

Snape was indifferent.

He had never believed Dawn was anything but dangerous. What he wanted to know was:

“How, Dumbledore, did he escape from you?”

“Perhaps… it’s tied to magical creature transformation.”

Dumbledore looked at Fawkes perched on the walnut branch, uncertainty in his voice.

He recalled the wave of heat radiating from Dawn when he had bound him in the snow—an aura identical to that of a phoenix.

If Dawn possessed some form of phoenix transformation, then perhaps his ability to ignore anti-Apparition spells was connected to that.

“That’s impossible!”

McGonagall snapped before she could stop herself. “Magical creature transformation? Albus, that is entirely impossible! And Dawn never changed his appearance!”

It wasn’t her fault she reacted so strongly.

As someone with a deep mastery of Transfiguration, she knew better than anyone how absurd the concept was.

Animagus transformations had existed for nearly a thousand years, yet Animagi still could not use magic in animal form.

To transform directly into a magical creature?

Impossible.

“Yes, Minerva, you’re right. But… it is still the most plausible explanation I have,” Dumbledore sighed.

He remembered discussing this very topic with Dawn in the library—and firmly declaring it impossible.

Who knew…

He rubbed his brow and continued.

“Please keep an eye on things in the castle. I’ve asked a friend to help locate Dawn, so I may be absent more often.”

He paused.

To catch Dawn, he would need to bring Fawkes with him.

But Hogwarts was not safe.

Voldemort was still lurking.

Fawkes needed to stay to guarantee the students’ safety, yet Dumbledore also needed the phoenix to escape Dawn’s evasion.

“Eavery Manor.”

Snape spoke suddenly.

“Dawn Richter is not someone who forgives. He will definitely retaliate against the Eavery family. It’s only a matter of time.”

Meanwhile—

In the sprawling Eavery estate.

Old Eavery was not having a pleasant day.

He had just received a frantic letter from his son at Hogwarts.

News spread quickly from Hogwarts—within half an hour of Dawn’s appearance, every student knew, and so did every parent who could receive a letter.

Murphy Eavery had immediately grasped how dangerous this was and sent word home.

And so Old Eavery’s good mood ended.

A boy who held a grudge against their family had just escaped the strongest wizard of the century—and returned to Britain?!

This was the worst thing he’d heard all year.

Gripping the wrinkled letter, he groaned, thinking suddenly of a Muggle novel he loved—The Count of Monte Cristo.

Yes, Old Eavery had a hobby quite unsuitable for a pure-blood: he enjoyed reading Muggle literature.

Not because he admired Muggle progress, of course.

It had begun during his humiliating struggle with the problem of—infertility.

It was not a joke.

In the wizarding world, especially among pure-blood families, birthrate was a critical issue for survival.

The Blacks had fallen from one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight to near extinction—just because they ran out of heirs.

Old Eavery envied the Weasleys bitterly. They had no money, no prestige—but they could reproduce.

Every time he saw them in public, he felt his eyes burn with envy.

He had long planned to marry his son to their youngest daughter just to improve his family’s terrible genetics.

Eavery men simply lacked talent for siring children.

He himself, after twenty-plus years of effort, countless fertility potions, and even secret trips to Muggle doctors, had produced only one heir.

He still suspected, sometimes, that he wasn’t the father at all.

But during this long struggle, he had developed an appreciation for Muggle books.

And his favorite was The Count of Monte Cristo.

Now—Dawn’s escape from Dumbledore felt disturbingly similar to Edmond Dantès retrieving his treasure in the cave.

And everyone knew what came after that.

Old Eavery paced restlessly.

How to survive this?

Two strategies existed for impending danger:

Strength. Or alliance.

The Eaverys had neither.

Their entire pure-blood line consisted of:

Old Eavery, his wife, his son, his brother, and his brother’s wife. (Plus two Squib nephews who did not count.)

And if locked in a cage match? The only survivor would probably be his son—because the rest were even more useless.

Still— They had money.

Old Eavery sat down at his desk and rapidly wrote a letter. He asked Dumbledore to keep his son at Hogwarts over the summer for “safety reasons.”

Then he planned to donate fifty thousand Galleons to the Ministry so the Auror patrols would focus on his estate.

And finally, he would pull every connection he had to ensure backup if anything happened.

“Damn you, Dawn Richter!”

He swore, imagining how expensive this would all be.

Across Britain, many people were having an awful day because of Dawn.

And Dawn himself?

He was no happier.

Far away in a barren region of Greenland, he knelt in the snow, trembling violently as he tried to suppress the sensation of something growing inside him.

He felt like he had pushed things too far.

The natural magic inside him was beginning to overwhelm the balance.

Tiny feather quills were pushing out of his arm, as though brilliant plumage would burst forth at any moment.

An hour had passed since he left Hogwarts. The desolate landscape proved he had successfully escaped Dumbledore.

But when he tried to expel the natural magic from his body, he realized the terrible truth—

During their chase, the natural magic that seeped into his body had already surpassed the total amount of his own magic.

This is bad.

Far worse than bad.

He had never imagined that breaking a single line in the pattern would draw in so much natural magic.

Gritting his teeth, Dawn fought to steady his will, trying desperately to strengthen his own magic.

He knew what mattered most now was forcing the natural magic out.

Because once the balance broke, once he began transforming into a phoenix and triggered the world’s correction—

He’d be as good as dead.

___________

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