Chapter 577: Voldemort's New Plot

Things have not been going so well lately.

Ron's name inexplicably appeared in the Goblet of Fire. The attitude of all the young wizards towards him had changed drastically. Rita Skeeter's invention in The Prophet exacerbated all of this. Meeting other students in the corridors was not a pleasant greeting, but a never-ending taunt.

The scar on Harry's forehead kept hurting. He didn't dare say it. He didn't even tell Ivan and Hermione.

Ron's situation there was even worse. The first task of the tournament was to face a dragon. This was, in fact, more like a legalized death sentence for him.

Things for him weren't even going that well either, and he still hadn't figured out what Barty Crouch Jr.'s plot was.

As for Hermione, while she was busy with her studies, she was distracted by the S.P.E.W., juggling more than most students could handle.

They would talk about these things, Sirius would listen patiently without interrupting.

He was like an old man, listening to everyone tell their troubles.

"Sirius, they must be joking with me, right?" Ron finally said hopefully. "Tell me, please! Tell me I'm not going to have to face a fire dragon!"

"Ron!" Sirius looked at him and said earnestly, "I wanted to tell you. The first task is indeed to face a fire dragon. Barty Crouch planned the contents of this tournament, and I just found out about it."

"Then I'm definitely doomed!" said Ron, in a desperate tone.

Receiving a positive response from Sirius, he finally broke the illusion he was trying to maintain.

"Don't worry about the fire dragon, we can deal with him!" said Sirius casually, "We can talk about this matter later. Before then, there are things I need to warn you about."

"What?!" they all looked at Sirius in surprise. There couldn't be anything more terrible than a fire dragon, could there?

"Karkaroff!" said Sirius. "I spoke to Ivan alone before school started, but recent events have made me decide to warn you that he used to be a Death Eater. You all know what Death Eaters are, don't you?"

"Yes!" said Harry, looking surprised. "He... What?"

"They caught him, he was in Azkaban with me, but then they released him. Maybe that's why Dumbledore wanted an auror at Hogwarts this year... to keep an eye on him. You know, it was Moody who caught Karkaroff and put him in Azkaban in the first place."

Everyone was shocked by this news. They couldn't believe that the headmaster of Durmstrang was actually a former Death Eater.

It was absolutely shocking news, if Rita Skeeter knew....

"Sirius, what have you discovered recently?" asked Ivan.

"Voldemort!" said Sirius, ignoring everyone's expression. "You know, the aurors have been tracking vampire trails recently. They're very active."

"I haven't seen anything about that in the paper," said Hermione, "All is quiet."

"Fudge thinks it's necessary to maintain confidentiality and not allow the newspaper the prophet to report anything," Sirius said quickly, "Those vampires have done a lot of things overseas, and there's Voldemort's shadow behind them."

"Those vampires?!" Ivan frowned.

Damn it, Caresius had never told him about these things.

As head of the vampire clan, Ivan thought that since he was at Hogwarts, the rest of the vampires would stop and hide from the Ministry of Magic.

Besides, Caresius had also said that Voldemort didn't believe in them at all.

But now it seemed that this was not the case at all. Voldemort and the vampires must have had some sort of plan.

"I've talked to Dumbledore about this, and we think it may be the statue he took," Sirius said, "Traces of those vampires show up on ancient relics left by many ancient wizards. Voldemort may have some plans. They seem to be looking for something."

"What are they looking for?" asked Ivan.

"It's not clear. We don't know much about the statue of the evil god and the remains of ancient wizards." Sirius sighed and said, "And all these things have happened overseas, even in America, out of reach of the Ministry of Magic, in inaccessible jungles and deserted ruins."

No one spoke, and their brains seemed to strain to assimilate another piece of shocking information.

Vampires frequently appeared in the ancient ruins to search for something, surely that was not a good phenomenon.

Ivan decided to look for an opportunity to talk to Caresius; he didn't know what Voldemort was going to do.

Was he going to summon evil spirits? Or was he going to get a more powerful dark power from the statue of the god of evil?

"Well, this is not something you should consider. Let's keep talking about Karkaroff," Sirius said.

"Did you just say he was released?" Harry asked slowly, "Why was he released? shouldn't all Death Eaters be imprisoned in Azkaban for life?"

"That's true. But he made a deal with the Ministry of Magic," Sirius said bitterly. He said he'd seen the error of his ways and then he named names. He put a lot of people in Azkaban in his place. I can tell you he's not very popular there. As far as I know, since he got out, he's been teaching the Dark Arts to every student who goes through that school of his, so watch out for the Durmstrang champion as well."

"You mean Krum?!" retorted Ron immediately. "That's impossible, he's a nice guy."

"Ron, what do we know about him besides his Quidditch performance?" said Hermione, looking a little alarmed. "Sirius is right. We have to be careful, especially right now."

Ron still wanted to refute, but in the end said nothing, and merely hummed a few contrite words.

"All right!" said Harry slowly. "Sirius, are you saying that Karkaroff put Ron's name in the Goblet of Fire? Because if he did, he's a really good actor. Ha seemed furious about it. He wanted to stop Ron from competing."

"We know he's a good actor!" said Sirius. "In fact, he convinced the Ministry of Magic to let him off the hook, didn't he? And according to our research, he showed up in London a few months ago, right around the time Moody was attacked."