Chapter 328: Empty Throne

Lu Xiusi left with confidence; Harry and Sirius both guaranteed to him with their Death Eater identities that they would express support for him in the Dark Lord election that might appear in the future.

"I even feel that even if he becomes the Dark Lord, it doesn't seem bad." Sirius said while touching his chin. "He also intends to weaken Bellatrix; we can use this point first."

"Lu Xiusi's cleverness lies in the fact that the future he depicts can not only move Regulus and Hoffa, but is also a condition that is completely acceptable to the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry of Magic." Harry analyzed. "They are all happy to see the Death Eaters fight internally and solve the most warlike one first, and since Lu Xiusi really has the strength and plan to isolate Lestrange, then everyone cannot raise any objections to this matter."

"Then do we still want to enable Saruman's plan?" Sirius was a bit confused.

"Don't know, I'll ask Snape later." Harry also scratched his head. "But one thing is certain, if we want to lead out Saruman, it must be introduced by Snape to everyone at the Death Eater meeting. So, before he opens his mouth, we had better not act rashly."

That evening, before the Occlumency remedial lesson as planned, Harry asked this question first.

"Potter, I am very curious, if you think you can appear as Saruman now, then what are we learning Occlumency for, just for fun?" Snape mocked. "Before you can fear no prying, we cannot reveal that matter."

"Ah?" Harry suddenly felt the pressure come up. "But, they are excitedly preparing to push for the Dark Lord!"

"Then drag it out for a while." Snape said without hesitation. "On one hand, we need to wait for you to learn Occlumency; on the other hand, dragging it out can give the two candidates more time, which is convenient for them to fight internally, or start bidding on the matter of fighting for support."

"I understand." Harry breathed a sigh of relief slightly.

"Don't think you can be relaxed, Potter." Snape seemed to see through Harry's thoughts. "If Bella gets impatient—she is already suspicious of your identity, and in her view, I probably already know the truth of the matter, just haven't told her yet."

Harry looked at Snape blankly; he realized that dragging it out might not be easy.

"For a madwoman who is under great pressure and anxiety every day, you can hardly know where she will," Snape paused and said in a serious tone, "ignite the war that is already on the verge of breaking out."

"You must learn Occlumency as soon as possible, understand?" Snape said coldly.

"Un, understand." Harry said in a low voice.

After a night of practice, Harry felt that he might have made some progress, but it was still far from Snape's expectations. Under his gloomy gaze, Harry chose to say goodbye first. As for how to drag out the Dark Lord election—let Snape worry about this matter; he only needed to eat melons and watch the show as Hoffa when the time came.

Harry put all his remaining energy into learning; he originally thought the only thing recently was the Dark Lord election caused by the Death Eaters. However, in reality, there was also some restlessness among the student group.

"Why does the Statute of Secrecy forbid us from using Muggle items?" When Harry passed the common room, he heard students complaining again. "The Statute of Secrecy is to make Muggles not know of the existence of wizards, not to make wizards not know of the existence of Muggles!"

"To tell the truth, Muggle Studies class never teaches us to avoid modern witch-hunting means, but instead keeps wanting us to be kind to Muggles; it's too outrageous."

"Ah, how I miss Professor Lu Ping; Doudou is also fine."

Harry of course also missed Lu Ping quite a bit, but he didn't take these things to heart too much. In his view, the crumbling Statute of Secrecy would have a day of being completely torn apart sooner or later, and by then there wouldn't be so many discordant voices.

At the Order of the Phoenix meeting on Saturday, Doge vaguely used "Deng Buliduo's secret backup plan" to stall the specific part of the plan, and then arranged a series of work.

The first was the problem of the painting. Previously, both sides felt that before the Horcruxes were gathered, the significance of the painting was not great; at the same time, until now, both sides still felt that Snape was one of their own. Therefore, for the matter of the painting being hung at the door of the headmaster's office at Hogwarts, they all felt quite at ease. But for the Order of the Phoenix, if the painting was about to become an important deterrent, then they must grasp it more securely in their own hands. Emmeline Vance and Hestia Jones were entrusted to secretly draw two painting fakes, and then Harry would be the one to replace the painting.

Following that, regarding the threat issued to the Death Eaters, it could not simply be summarized as obeying the law. Because, the high-level Death Eaters were all very good at finding loopholes in the law, so the members of the Order of the Phoenix needed to discuss it, recall the dirty means the Death Eaters had used, so that they could first formulate a basic version of behavioral constraints.

Finally, they also needed to choose someone to grasp the "button of deterrence," needing to make the Death Eaters believe that this person would not have a trace of hesitation when needing to burn the painting and resurrect Deng Buliduo, and even to make it seem like he had long wanted to do so. At the same time, he would absolutely not be bought off or assassinated by the Death Eaters in any form; he must live in seclusion, be very loyal to Deng Buliduo while also being slightly paranoid, and have almost no interests of his own, ready to dedicate his life to the cause of justice at any time.

At the end of the meeting, Aberforth defeated Moody by a narrow margin of three votes and was elected as the first painting custodian. And, he himself also used his one-vote veto power to veto Dak's proposal to name this position "Sword-Wielder."

After finishing this meeting, Harry felt it was alright and not very tired, because he fell asleep in the middle of the meeting and was only pushed awake by someone during the voting session.

Before the Death Eater meeting the next day, Harry took time to go to the training site of Deng Buliduo's Army to shake around. Once this was a product of the compromise between the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry of Magic, a project that was publicly recognized as meaningful but useless, but now, Deng Buliduo's student army was afraid it would become the most practical project of the Order of the Phoenix.

Seeing Klayster teaching the children quite well, Harry went back to write his homework with peace of mind.

The next day, Harry and Sirius exchanged briefly, unified the meeting strategy, and then both made disguises and stepped into the Death Eater venue, wanting to see how Snape prepared to drag out the Dark Lord election.

But when he opened his mouth, Harry didn't seem to hear a trace of dragging it out.

"I fully understand, and can even say I quite approve," Snape smiled coldly. "I even wanted to suggest you do this long ago, just worried it wouldn't be very polite."

"Is that so? I'm very happy you feel that way." Lu Xiusi said with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

"Then, how should we push for a new Dark Lord? Adopt an election system of one person one vote?" Seeing that the last person with weight also expressed approval, Dorothy quickly turned the topic to the implementation aspect. "Do we need us to do a national referendum?"

"That would be a mess." Sirius commented objectively.

"Right, mainly, who is qualified to participate?" Lu Xiusi echoed. "Can't let the Order of the Phoenix also come to run or vote."

"We can use the Dark Mark to examine qualifications." Dorothy put forward a suggestion very seriously.

"No, I think the significance of the Dark Lord is not here." Snape put forward a point of view like laying the groundwork. "What's important is strength or prestige, not judging simply by who has good popularity."

"You wouldn't want to use the method of dueling to set the new Dark Lord, would you?" Dorothy frowned. "This is a bit too primitive."

"Severus is right, the Dark Lord elected by voting is meaningless." Lu Xiusi said. "The inner meaning of voting is the transfer of power by the masses, they elect a manager they recognize. But the Dark Lord's matter is obviously not the case. Death Eaters usually obey the Dark Lord directly; they probably don't have much understanding of the meaning of power transfer and votes."

Obviously, Lu Xiusi was unwilling to conduct a vote. Because those fanatical Death Eaters who possessed the Dark Mark mostly supported Bella. And if the scope was expanded, Lu Xiusi still couldn't get any benefit, because he couldn't be sure whether Regulus, who controlled a large number of low-level Death Eaters, really stood on his side.

"Dueling might not be a good idea, but I still think strength is one of the important business cards of the Dark Lord." Snape looked at Lu Xiusi. "Why don't we change the push to an agreement: if someone can snatch the ring back from the Order of the Phoenix, then he can become the new Dark Lord—of course, he can also choose to resurrect the former Dark Lord directly."

"No, absolutely not." Harry couldn't help but suspect that Snape was crazy; this was simply inviting Bella to go to war.

"Why not?" Bella glared at him and questioned.

"Because, uh, because the ring is in the hands of the Order of the Phoenix; if the people of the Order of the Phoenix bring the ring over, do we have to serve him as master?" Harry thought of a loophole.

"Of course not, we can limit the agreement to a small range, for example..." Bella looked at this group of colleagues who were not harmonious. "Among everyone present."

"This idea is not good, even worse than dueling." Dorothy's mouth twitched. "I'm not saying going to war with the Order of the Phoenix, I'm worried that everyone present can't endure the temptation of power and fight each other."

"Ah, I definitely don't hope everyone hurts the harmony." Lu Xiusi immediately followed the wind and retorted. "More importantly, this will also consume our respective strengths; if we are not careful, we will be wiped out by the Order of the Phoenix."

"But we always need a selection method, right?" Dorothy spread her hands. "Can't we use a Qilin?"

"Perhaps..." Lu Xiusi's eyes suddenly lit up. "We are not without a Qilin." ===== CHAPTER 329 =====