Chapter 143: Hunting Scabbers

With Harry's current knowledge and experience, he had not yet grown to the point of overlooking the big picture. The current Harry had just realized that the Soviets were betting on both sides, and began to try to get rid of the Comintern filter put on him by his childhood tutor, and truly think about problems from the perspective of British wizards.

Until the TARDIS stopped again, Harry still hadn't figured out how the current international situation would develop and what role the Wizarding World played in it.

"Oh, sorry, the brakes had a problem again." The Professor said. "But sometimes I think, perhaps the TARDIS has its own consciousness."

Harry poked his head out gently and found that he should have come to the pet shop in Diagon Alley, crowded and noisy, filled with the sounds of various animals, and a witch wearing heavy black-rimmed glasses was walking back and forth between the shelves. Harry walked out of the TARDIS disguised as a cabinet and looked at everything in the shop nonchalantly.

"Aha, I've caught you." An abrupt male voice suddenly sounded, attracting everyone's attention in the shop all of a sudden.

A man wearing a gray suit, with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, was holding his wand with both hands and walking slowly toward the small animal area.

"Sir, are you going to..."

"Don't question a professional Auror!" He interrupted the proprietress's greeting rudely. "I am hunting a dangerous fugitive, very dangerous, as dangerous as Sirius Black; rather, he is actually Black."

Customers gasped one after another, standing on the spot without daring to move; a little girl grabbed the cage in her hand tightly, looking at the suddenly intruding Auror with terrified eyes.

"Attention, child, you might have unintentionally become Black's accomplice." The man walked toward her slowly. "Now, give me the cage in your hand, let me check this little thing..."

The girl handed the hamster she had just bought to him tremblingly.

"Listen, Black, you think you can hide?" The man put his face in front of the cage, staring fiercely at the flower-colored hamster curled up in a ball because of fear inside.

Harry looked at this man; he remembered that Professor Doudou had said that for Peter who had escaped, there would be his "colleagues" to deal with him.

Now it seemed that this colleague might not be very reliable.

Just when Harry was holding a mentality of watching the fun, curiously paying attention to the development of the situation, a man in a suit wearing a black windbreaker strode out from behind him; Johnny English had returned to his Auror status again.

"I can see, Paul, you are trying to learn my efficient search method." His tone carried unquestionable confidence. "But obviously, what is truly efficient is not that method, but me."

Johnny English gently raised his right hand, and a rat pinched by its tail was dangling softly in the air. Harry recognized it at a glance; this was Peter Pettigrew who had transformed into Scabbers and was trying to escape.

"Oh, sir." The Auror named Paul stood at attention all of a sudden. "You took action yourself, then it must be foolproof."

"Alarm cleared, friends." Johnny pinched Scabbers proudly, showing a charming smile to everyone in the pet shop. "Now please continue to enjoy your beautiful day; the notorious Black has been caught."

Harry, under the Invisibility Cloak, suddenly felt someone pat him; he found that it was Johnny signaling him to follow.

It looked like two people, but in fact, it was four people; Johnny and Paul walked out of the pet shop, and then they found an empty corner and Apparated. This was Harry's first time following someone in Apparition under the Invisibility Cloak; he was initially worried that he would lose the precious Invisibility Cloak in that kind of space rotation, but the fact was that when he appeared on a huge rock by the sea, the Invisibility Cloak was still draped on his body, and the Auror Paul, who looked a bit dull, didn't notice anything wrong.

"We're here, sir." Paul looked at the castle standing in the cold waters in the distance with some emotion. "We've arrived at Azkaban."

"To be precise, we've only arrived at its periphery." Johnny corrected his subordinate's imprecise statement while explaining to Harry, who was invisible. "There is an anti-Apparition ward around Azkaban; we can only arrive at the seaside first, and then take a small boat to the castle."

In Harry's ordinary life, the word castle was always used to refer to Hogwarts; hearing this statement suddenly made him stunned for a moment.

"It's really hard to imagine how Black escaped; even if he can turn into a rat, it's very unbelievable for a rat to want to swim such a long distance." Paul gestured the distance from the coast to Azkaban; Harry felt that it was about four miles.

"Shh, did you hear someone talking?" Johnny made a gesture to keep quiet.

Harry pricked up his ears to listen carefully. Amidst the whistling sea breeze and the sound of waves, an ethereal female voice appeared and disappeared. When he distinguished the word "Caria", Harry's heart was shocked.

The sky over the North Sea, which was already covered with dark clouds, fell into complete darkness. A wheel of cold white light bloomed on the horizon of the sea. The full moon, which was almost ferocious in size, began to climb gradually, and the sea surface, which was originally surging with waves, was as still as water at this time. Below Azkaban, which stood in the sea area, the overflowing black mist rippled, disturbing the full moon in the black water.

Such an abnormal phenomenon aroused Paul's vigilance; he raised his wand and looked around, and soon discovered that something was wrong. Under the illumination of the bright moonlight, Harry also easily saw that looming outline; Zhang Qiu's Disillusionment Talisman was far worse than the Deathly Hallows.

"Okay, I came here to see, is there any possibility, I mean," she slowly revealed her figure, "Peter Pettigrew fleeing in panic under the moonlight?"

Scabbers, who had been pretending to be dead in the cage, jumped up suddenly; it also seemed to perceive the opportunity to escape.

"This is impossible, Zhang." Johnny spoke first, avoiding Paul from messing things up under excessive vigilance. "We have already caught it; this cage is very sturdy; Pettigrew cannot escape at all in rat form, and if he wants to lift the transformation, humph!"

Johnny smiled proudly. "Unless he is willing to be squeezed into a cage of meat paste by high-strength alloy."

"But divination says that the full moon caused huge chaos, and this gave Peter a chance." Zhang Qiu frowned and said. "He should have found a chance to escape."

"It's impossible for him to want to escape." Paul echoed proudly. "Unless our Auror Office's Tiger loses his mind and takes the initiative to let him go."

"Then you take the initiative to let him go." Zhang Qiu said calmly. "Even if he is put in prison now, it won't help."

"Oh, if you know that sleeping at night will mess up the quilt, do you not make the bed when you get up in the morning?" Johnny said with his eyes half-closed.

"Professor Doudou should not have recovered from the muscle relaxant yet, I am very curious why you appeared here?" Zhang Qiu said slowly. "If the Professor's plan is the same as I guessed, it shows that the Department of Mysteries is indeed exploring a very dangerous field. So, we should be doing similar things, and if you don't want your subordinates to know about these things..."

"Stupefy!" Paul suddenly cast a Stun Spell on himself, and then fell straight to the ground.

"Oh!" Zhang Qiu, who was originally planning to threaten Johnny, was stunned all of a sudden, not knowing how to organize the subsequent language.

"You see, the Aurors of the British Empire are so professional." Johnny shook his head with a smile. "And, you might have underestimated the significance of the Professor's plan."

"For an individual traveler like you, some costs are unbearable." At this moment, his tone became the appearance of Professor Doudou. "And the Professor's plan is to let thirteen wizards who share the same name share the burden through the TARDIS's paradox function, so we can safely obtain some knowledge that belongs to the taboo in your eyes."

"You are indeed very smart, but this has little to do with what we are going to talk about today." Zhang Qiu re-sorted her train of thought. "What I want is for the divination to be realized, and I don't care what method is used; if this method doesn't work, then try another one."

"I demand you in the name of Master Xuanjun to acquiesce to Peter Pettigrew taking advantage of the chaos to escape." She showed the mark on the title page of the notebook again.

"For some people without background, a diplomatic accident is enough to make him suffer a big loss." Johnny raised the cage in his hand unhurriedly. "But the name of Xuanjun cannot scare me; whether it is the Professor's plan or CBE, I can do what I should do without interference."

"Perhaps I came late, wait, I have to think of another way." Zhang Qiu said with some distress. "The progress is really too far behind now; I don't want to give up this important node."

"If you only saw Paul when you came, perhaps you could succeed." Johnny said. "But I came; if I didn't come, maybe Paul wouldn't have been able to catch Pettigrew, of course this is not the point, the point is, why do you think I came?"

Zhang Qiu's hand that was holding the sword hilt slowly loosened, and she looked at Johnny with a puzzled look.

"I came because someone asked me to take a look at her travel experience, and if she hadn't said so, I wouldn't have thought of coming to this time point." Johnny said meaningfully; this was another time loop that was neither here nor there. "In other words, it is destined that I will be here to stop you."

Zhang Qiu's hand was holding the notebook tightly, and the expression on her face changed, seemingly hesitating.

"Zhang Qiu!" Neville ran out from behind the rock. "I must come to stop you; the future you asked me to do so; history is not that..."

A loud noise interrupted him. ===== CHAPTER 144 =====