Chapter 322: Loyalty Issue

After some nutritionless wrangling, Doge announced the end of the meeting. Afterwards, Harry, Doge, and the Ministry of Magic's special envoy Frank found a quiet little room to continue discussing the terms of the peace talks.

"Then we can basically confirm that one of the most important points is to require that painting to be handed over to the Order of the Phoenix for management." After several rounds of statements, Frank concluded. "If the Death Eaters have any illegal behavior, you can immediately burn the painting and resurrect Deng Buliduo. And the Death Eaters, forced by the ring Horcrux, still cannot resurrect the Dark Lord, which is very terrifying for them."

"Yeah, yeah." Doge echoed, but no smile could be seen on his face.

"And under normal circumstances, you would rather not resurrect Deng Buliduo than absolutely prevent the Dark Lord from resurrecting." Frank continued. "So the Death Eaters don't have to worry about you immediately resurrecting Deng Buliduo."

"Right, that's correct." Doge agreed.

"I think." Harry originally felt it was inappropriate, but he realized that what he was worried about was not this matter. "Let's just do it like this for now."

He thought one layer further: what reaction would the Death Eaters have to this resolution?

Obviously, they wouldn't be peaceful; like Bellatrix here who wanted to resurrect Voldemort, she would try to steal the Horcrux, just doing it more covertly. And Lu Xiusi—

Harry remembered a problem that had been ignored, which was that "Deng Buliduo has a Horcrux" was not Snape's idea, but Lu Xiusi's idea. In other words, even if the Order of the Phoenix put forward conditions, Lu Xiusi also knew that our deterrence was not established at all.

Lu Xiusi possessed the ability to unilaterally tear up the terms at any time; this was where his strategy lay.

Harry further thought that Lu Xiusi, knowing that the deterrence was not established, just wanted to use this to stabilize Bellatrix. If he was confident that he had grasped Bellatrix, or if there were other changes, he would naturally start to ignore the supervision of the Order of the Phoenix.

By then, would the Order of the Phoenix burn this painting or not? Burn it, Deng Buliduo wouldn't be resurrected, but Voldemort could be resurrected (even if he really went to try it, Britain's deterrence would be gone), it would be better not to burn it; don't burn it, it couldn't scare Lu Xiusi, and it made no difference whether the painting was in hand or not.

Therefore, one must find a way that was enough to deter Lu Xiusi, rather than being led by the nose by him.

Harry thought quickly, what was Lu Xiusi most afraid of? In fact, people like him who played with politics and interests were most afraid of people who possessed absolute strength. Therefore, he would be afraid of Voldemort and Deng Buliduo.

Nowadays, he knew that Deng Buliduo couldn't be resurrected, so the only thing that could truly suppress Lu Xiusi was Voldemort. But for Lu Xiusi, Voldemort's resurrection was not completely unacceptable; after all, he was still considered one of his own in Voldemort's eyes.

In order for Voldemort to be able to play a deterrent role against Lu Xiusi, it must be ensured that: Voldemort wants to kill Lu Xiusi after resurrection.

If this could be done, Lu Xiusi would also join the ranks of "afraid of burning the painting." If the painting was burned, Voldemort would be resurrected, and Voldemort would kill Lu Xiusi, so he would be miserable.

In order for Lu Xiusi to be afraid of burning the painting, and for Bellatrix to also be afraid of burning the painting, one must make the two of them form a cognitive misalignment. It must make Lu Xiusi think: after burning the painting, Voldemort would be resurrected, but Deng Buliduo couldn't be resurrected. At the same time, it must make Bellatrix think: after burning the painting, Voldemort still couldn't be resurrected, but Deng Buliduo would be resurrected first.

Obviously, the difference between the two lay in a ring Horcrux, so to achieve this, one must do a risky thing: let Lu Xiusi know that the ring had been destroyed.

Although this was very risky, Harry believed his judgment was not wrong; Lu Xiusi was a selfish careerist, and he dared not let Bellatrix know about this matter. In this way, a subtle deterrent balance could be formed again.

Now, the problem was, how to ensure that Voldemort must kill Lu Xiusi after resurrection, or, how to make Lu Xiusi think so?

Admittedly, Voldemort was a cruel and murderous person; although he would want to kill people on a whim, he wouldn't make up his mind to kill anyone. Perhaps Deng Buliduo was someone Voldemort must kill, because he felt Deng Buliduo threatened him, but Lu Xiusi couldn't threaten him no matter what.

Then, one could only create some established facts, a kind of fact that "Lu Xiusi betrayed Voldemort." In this way, even if Voldemort might choose not to kill him for some reason (just like he chose not to kill Harry first because he discovered Harry was a Horcrux), Lu Xiusi himself would be terrified.

It was impossible for Lu Xiusi to agree to resurrect Voldemort and hand his life over to others after having done something that betrayed Voldemort.

To achieve this, two elements were indispensable: one was that Voldemort would regard this behavior as betrayal, or the Death Eaters would recognize this behavior as no different from betrayal; the second was that once Voldemort was resurrected, he would easily discover that Lu Xiusi had done this, and he would have no room for rebuttal.

It was not difficult to achieve the first point; instigating Lu Xiusi to snatch or destroy the Horcrux would work, but in this way, he still had room for sophistry in front of Voldemort (for example, being forced or impersonated by Polyjuice Potion, etc.), and when things were not going well and Voldemort needed to be resurrected, Lu Xiusi would definitely have a fluke mentality and not stop it.

It seemed not difficult to achieve the second point. If Lu Xiusi was made to personally capture Bellatrix and send her to Azkaban, and the Ministry of Magic gave him a Merlin Medal, it would be an irrefutable betrayal to Voldemort. But the difficulty lay in the fact that Lu Xiusi was very smart; he knew that the end of completely leaning toward the Order of the Phoenix could only be being slaughtered and liquidated. Only by leaning on the Dark Lord would he not be manipulated by the Order of the Phoenix.

As for finding someone to impersonate him to capture Bellatrix, for one thing, Harry felt it was too low-down to do so, and for another, if it was really done, Lu Xiusi could still (or he would feel he could) use Veritaserum or something to prove his innocence, so it couldn't achieve the effect of making Lu Xiusi believe that Voldemort must kill him.

"Harry, Harry?" Doge said from the side.

"Ah, sorry." Harry realized he had been thinking a bit too deeply.

"Did Deng Buliduo really..." Doge asked cautiously, "... leave it to you?"

Harry wasn't sure if anyone was eavesdropping, and, he also wasn't sure if he could tell Doge the truth.

So he said ambiguously: "That Snitch, the Snitch he left me."

Doge's complexion turned ashen all of a sudden.

"It's empty." Harry finished.

Doge's complexion brightened slightly.

Harry wanted to hint to him that Deng Buliduo didn't leave a Horcrux, but we could induce the Death Eaters to guess that the Snitch was the Horcrux.

Before he left, Doge sat in his original seat without saying a word, and Harry sincerely hoped he could understand his hint.

"To make Lu Xiusi think that Voldemort must kill him after resurrection?" Sirius savored the new problem Harry proposed, and he was also a bit confused. "Impossible, Lu Xiusi is one of Voldemort's main economic pillars; as long as he has a little room for rebuttal, he can save his life."

"So we must make him do something irreversible, for example, personally capturing Bellatrix; I think he definitely doesn't like Bellatrix." Harry said the conclusion he had thought through halfway before.

"No no no, Bellatrix is Narcissa's own sister, she is his sister-in-law, he is her brother-in-law." Sirius quickly denied this option. "No matter how much they quarrel, they won't go to that step."

"Uh... I didn't notice this point." Harry scratched his head. "Then are there any other ways?"

"Of course you wouldn't notice, pureblood families are cold by nature." Sirius laughed at himself.

"Then is it still possible for him to capture Bellatrix? Or capturing 'Hoffa' would also work..." Harry pondered.

"Impossible, he's not stupid." Sirius's eyebrows were tangled together; obviously, when he started to think, he also couldn't figure out this problem.

"It doesn't matter." Sirius shook his head. "Even if the plan on our side has some problems, as long as we can drag it out for a year, until the Focused Rainbow is completed, all problems will be solved."

"You can't pin everything on the Focused Rainbow!" Harry stretched his hands forward exaggeratedly. "You told me last year that Donald is a Yankee, you can't pin all your hopes on him!"

"It's fine, your experience last year proved that he is a reliable Yankee." Sirius's tone revealed a feeling of letting it rot. "Isn't the national defense of the Muggle world also like this? Pinning everything on the invincible Trident, and everything else doesn't matter."

Under Harry's gaze of strong dissatisfaction, Sirius promised to "think about it after going back," but his tone seemed to carry a trace of perfunctoriness.

Carrying a heart-wrenching problem, Harry returned to school; he originally planned to write his Muggle Studies essay before dinner, but now his heart was a mess.

"Oh, you seem to have something on your mind?" Zhang Qiu beside him stopped her pen and looked at him with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

Harry hesitated slightly, and then he threw the problem out: "Is there any way to make Lu Xiusi think that Voldemort must kill him after resurrection?"

Zhang Qiu was also stumped by this problem at first, but her brows soon relaxed.

"Voldemort is a tyrant, but a tyrant is also a monarch." Zhang Qiu said confidently. "What kind of thing is something a king absolutely cannot tolerate?"

"Someone wants to assassinate him?" Harry thought of this first. "But we can't use circular reasoning—"

"No no no," Zhang Qiu interrupted him. "Let me say it again, what kind of thing is something an emperor absolutely cannot tolerate?"

Harry, who didn't have a deep impression of "emperor," was a bit bewildered; he blinked until Zhang Qiu said the answer helplessly.

"What he absolutely cannot tolerate is: someone coveting his throne." ===== CHAPTER 323 =====