There were still over two weeks until the end-of-term exams at Hogwarts, and the entire school atmosphere had entered a do-or-die state.

  Whether it was the seventh-year students about to graduate or first-years like Harry Potter, anxiety and tension were unavoidable.

  Yes—anxiety and tension! Without Hermione to act as the bancing force in their trio, Harry Potter now looked at Snape with pure terror. This annoyed Snape greatly, though he didn't quite understand why. Not that it stopped him from continuing to unleash sharp-tongued remarks, like a crazed shepherd whipping his flock, driving the Hogwarts students toward the finish line.

  "I thought Snape was going to kill me right there in css."

  With dark circles under his eyes, Harry Potter shuffled through the Hogwarts corridors like a zombie.

  "Yeah! Snape always said he didn't need a wand for csses, but now he's waving it around during lessons. When he pointed it at me, I thought I was about to be hit by a spell!"

  Ron was having an especially unlucky day—Snape had called on him to answer a question. Twice!

  "Haven't seen Assistant Professor Bck around much tely."

  "Yeah! Maybe if he were here, Professor Snape wouldn't treat us like this."

  The two boys sighed and shook their heads as they hurried to their next css. With exams looming, their schedules were packed tighter than ever.

  Meanwhile, Regulus Bck was still preparing for Harry Potter's final trial. Hagrid's three-headed hellhound, Fluffy; Professor Sprout's Devil's Snare; Professor Flitwick's flying keys; Professor McGonagall's Wizard Chess; and Snape's riddle-based potion puzzle—Regulus found all of it very intriguing.

  Aside from handling some assistant duties each day, he mostly drifted through in a half-idle, dazed state. This led Dumbledore and the other professors to believe that losing the unicorn had dealt him a major emotional blow—something Hagrid reted to on a personal level.

  Ah, the dragon egg! That dragon egg was gone—just like that. It was right there on the table, ready to hatch… and now it was gone.

  Hagrid, who had just patted Regulus Bck in an attempt to console him, suddenly started crying himself. He turned away and entered a washroom to wash his face.

  Hagrid didn't notice that it was the girls' washroom, and Moaning Myrtle's familiar wails rang out almost immediately.

  Drenched and embarrassed, Hagrid fled the washroom in a mess—only to earn a new nickname: "Moaning Myrtle's Admirer."

  "Actually, with Hagrid's massive size, it's hard for him to find a suitable partner. That's why he never considered falling in love with a normal person. In the end, he fell for Moaning Myrtle, and she loved him too. But the way they expressed their love was a bit… unusual—just like the magical creatures Hagrid adores. The more aggressive they are, the more he loves them."

  —All of the above was Peeves' serious nonsense, delivered to a curious audience from all four houses.

  Hagrid's nicknames were now flying off the charts:

  "Unicorn Devourer," "Dragon Egg Taster," "Moaning Myrtle's Admirer"…

  Just then, Lucy Piddell delivered a message to Regulus Bck: there had been progress with the film project.

  A chubby director named Guillermo del Toro had expressed interest in adapting Crimson Peak into a film. He had long been fascinated by the novel, but was surprised to discover that Regulus Bck had already acquired the rights. After investigating further and learning that even the mansion featured in the novel belonged to the Duke of Bck, del Toro realized he had no choice but to work directly with him.

  "Do you know anything about this director's background?"

  At that moment, Regulus Bck was receiving guests inside the Crimson Peak Manor, while Lucy Piddell arrived with all the documents and materials.

  "From his past work, Guillermo appears to be a true jack-of-all-trades in the film industry—director, actor, assistant director, screenwriter, producer—you name it. In the early 1980s, after nearly a decade as a makeup supervisor, he founded his own company. At 21, he made his first narrative film Do?a Herlinda and Her Son. He produced and directed numerous Mexican TV shows and even taught film courses. In 1992, he directed Cronos, which won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy and earned the International Critics' Week Prize at Cannes. After that, he made The Devil's Backbone, a ghost story set during the Spanish Civil War."

  Lucy Piddell's report was nothing if not detailed—though it was limited by the era and cked the parts Regulus Bck already knew.

  Regulus Bck did a mental calcution: Harry Potter was born on July 31, 1980. Based on that, the events described in Harry Potter's story, when transted into Muggle-world chronology, took pce from the 1980s through the early 21st century.

  While the director hadn't yet made his ter science fiction films, his artistic foundation seemed solid enough. European directors, after all, had a reputation for taking art seriously.

  "Alright then, arrange a meeting first. I have a few thoughts on adapting the original novel—I'd like to discuss them with him face-to-face."

  Regulus Bck gave the instruction while flipping through the original manuscript of Crimson Peak.

  Not only had he acquired the copyright to Crimson Peak, he had also secured the original manuscript.

  In fact, Muggles around the world were defenseless against wizards.

  If a wizard wanted something, all it took was a face-to-face meeting. One spell—whether it was Memory Modification or Soul Control—and the Muggle would fall to their knees, and willingly so, with joy in their hearts. Whenever Lucy Piddell encountered someone she couldn't handle, Regulus Bck, as the money behind it all, would step in personally to persuade them. Of course, there was always a price—one measured by the limits the other party themselves had revealed.

  Regulus Bck had no desire to gamble on a Muggle's stubbornness without the proper price paid. Who knew what trouble they might cause? But if he pushed just to the edge of their bottom line, all they'd feel was pain—and then admiration for someone so skilled at making deals, never realizing it was they who had disclosed their own boundaries in the first pce.

  Take, for example, some of the properties Regulus had recently recimed:

  – A cattle ranch on a remote isnd in the Outer Hebrides, located at the far northwest tip of the UK.

  – A manor in a secluded mountainous area in northwest Engnd, situated on a red cy mining site.

  He had also acquired property in Godric's Hollow—and the Ministry of Magic was about to return another asset to him: a private psychiatric hospital.

  All of these reflected the Bck family's investment philosophy and aesthetic tastes—clearly, a pure-blood dark wizard family had its own brand of sophistication.

  He flipped through a recent financial report, which included a cost assessment of the cattle ranch.

  Knowing that British cattle were sometimes fed scraps from their own kind—an issue that would soon lead to the outbreak of mad cow disease—Regulus had ordered that all meat by-products from the ranch be collected and handed over to him for disposal.

  This naturally raised the ranch's operating costs above average, and the reason—"as instructed by the owner"—was clearly noted. The comment made Regulus Bck both amused and helpless.

  He couldn't very well expin mad cow disease to them outright, so he enforced the measures under the pretense of "high standards and strict requirements."

  Still, none of the cattle by-products went to waste. Regulus Bck repurposed them all as experimental materials.

  Under his orders, the cattle were categorized into hides, meat, bones, blood, organs, heads, and offal.

  The milk, hides, and meat were sold through legitimate channels, bringing Regulus a steady stream of income.

  The bones and blood were used to enhance summoned skeletons and blood familiars. Nowadays, his skeletal soldiers and mages were fully cd in bone armor, wielding thick, sharp bdes made of bone.

  His blood familiars had grown into vast, ocean-like entities. Without the spatial system built into his magic, there would be nowhere to store them.

  As for the organs, heads, and offal—they were piled up as offerings for summoning rituals.

  The Bck family, being a lineage of dark wizards, had always had deep expertise in demon summoning.

  Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon

  https://patreon.com/Glimmer09