Chapter 356: Calling a Deer a Horse

After a long while of racking his brains without success, Harry couldn't help but raise his wand and cast an Inspiration Charm on himself, and he suddenly discovered where the problem lay.

Harry and Snape intended to simultaneously control the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters; many people knew about this, but only the Death Eaters didn't know, and they couldn't be allowed to know.

If they launched a student organization to attract Rodolphus's attention, and then the cup fell into Donald's hands, the Order of the Phoenix couldn't stay out of it; after all, on the surface, there was still a Dark working in the Order of the Phoenix.

The purpose of attacking the Lestrange house was to define this action, completely clearing the Order of the Phoenix of any involvement, and making the Death Eaters clearly determine that this was an internal Death Eater affair. This was not only to avoid them being blinded by anger and leading to war, but also to further verify Harry's (or Saruman's) legitimacy, letting everyone see that Harry absolutely had not colluded with the Order of the Phoenix, and that Harry did not trust the Order of the Phoenix.

Of course, in Harry's eyes, the Order of the Phoenix indeed had a firm stance, but their ability was somewhat lacking, so he didn't really trust that group of people anyway.

Then, the candidate for attacking the Lestrange house was very clear: the Dark Night Godfather, Regulus.

As a supporter of Snape and Saruman, Regulus had every reason to do so. Moreover, if this was an internal Death Eater coup, then the Death Eaters under him would no longer be in a state where they couldn't be mobilized. Usually, Harry didn't consider those gangsters because Sirius, in order to maintain his persona, couldn't let them do righteous things. Now that there was an unrighteous excuse for what needed to be done, there was naturally nothing inconvenient about it.

When Harry combed through the entire deployment from beginning to end, he found that although he hadn't made any explanations, the actions had already shown everyone a logically clear story.

Before the Dark Lord election, Snape and Regulus secretly reached a cooperation. The new Dark Lord they prepared to nominate was Saruman; legally, Saruman was also sufficient to inherit the position of Dark Lord, and for Snape and Regulus, Saruman was indeed closer to them.

However, because Bellatrix and Lu Xiusi secretly colluded with William of the Magical Congress, Nagini no longer favored them, so Snape and Regulus could only do something desperate: they intended to kill Delphini, thereby making Saruman the sole heir.

This required a meticulous plan, so they first laid low for a long time to prepare, and then pinned their victory on a thunderous strike: first, Snape used his connections at the Ministry of Magic to find a way to transfer the Aurors and the Order of the Phoenix, which could not only avoid them getting in the way, but also attract Rodolphus's attention.

Then Regulus led troops to raid the Lestrange house, killing Delphini and Bellatrix, to win this Dark Lord election by cheating. After winning the election, they could naturally dump the matter on the Order of the Phoenix, and then obtain the leadership of all Death Eaters. In terms of numbers and strength comparison, Snape and Regulus, who controlled all the Death Eaters on the island, could absolutely easily suppress the Saints left over from the old era under Rodolphus.

In this situation, where was the Lestrange family's only hope for a comeback? Only by resurrecting the old Dark Lord, hoping Voldemort would preside over justice for them. But if Rodolphus sneaked back to London wanting to retrieve his cup, he would find that the most important thing in the vault had long been quietly stolen, so he could only lament that the situation was gone, and then hide in a foreign land to die in sorrow.

In the eyes of others, the key to the success or failure of this plan lay in killing Delphini. But Harry didn't intend to kill anyone, so this was a doomed plan.

If there were a few traitors among the army besieging the Lestrange house, allowing Bellatrix and Delphini to successfully escape, then how would things develop?

It was impossible for those Saints on the continent to complete a counterattack by force. If Bellatrix wanted to fight back, she would still have to rely on the power of the Death Eaters, which meant she would come back to complete the election, and the election would also be her confident moment of comeback. Because Bellatrix also understood that principle: the more the enemy opposes something, the more it shows what they fear. Since Regulus chose to launch a coup, it meant they had no way to defeat Delphini in the election. At this moment, Bellatrix could take a risk and return to the country to continue running for office; once she was elected, Regulus wouldn't be able to easily touch her.

If Delphini was elected, the cunning Snape could continue to hold onto Hogwarts, waiting to get close to Delphini in the future as Headmaster, and the fence-sitter Lu Xiusi already had a basis for cooperation with Bellatrix, and suddenly everyone would stand on her side again.

But this was exactly what Harry wanted: Bellatrix, who took the election as her last straw, would definitely go crazy and lose her composure after failing the election, perhaps unable to help but cast a few Unforgivable Curses, and then in the full view of the Ministry of Magic, she would only have the fate of being locked in Azkaban. Even if she restrained herself, then there would only be one path left for her, and that was to leave this land as a loser.

And in this real plan, the most important link, Nagini, would fall into Snape's control during the first attack; Bellatrix would never have thought that she had stepped into a trap from the very beginning.

Thinking further ahead, how should Harry prove to the Order of the Phoenix that Saruman was a made-up story, rather than something that really existed?

For the Death Eaters, Saruman was just a pawn pushed to the front, and they would only focus on Regulus and Snape; but for the Order of the Phoenix, this pawn had already reached the end: Doge and Aberforth both guessed that Deng Buliduo's Horcrux was in Harry's hands, and Harry also knew that the Order of the Phoenix's ring was in a damaged state. If Harry really was Saruman, then things would be terrible.

But... if Harry were to return Deng Buliduo's Horcrux to Doge or Aberforth, he couldn't produce it!

This problem couldn't stand up to careful thought at all, and Harry couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat. Perhaps he was just like Bellatrix, thinking about how to break the situation and make a comeback, not knowing that all of this was also part of the trap. If this was Yanayev's arrangement, he knew the Death Eaters wouldn't easily go to war with the Order of the Phoenix, so he changed his thinking instead, to guide the Order of the Phoenix to go to war with the Death Eaters; how should he deal with that?

Harry tried hard to throw this conjecture out of his mind; rather than believing that he and Snape had fallen into Yanayev's trap, it was better to first treat this as a loophole that appeared in the plan as a natural coincidence, and think about how to make up for it.

How should Harry prove to the Order of the Phoenix that he wasn't really Saruman? Because of that resurrection ritual and the relationship of the Horcrux, he couldn't prove he wasn't Voldemort's child; and because of the Dursleys' murder, he couldn't even prove he was James and Lily's child.

Snape and Sirius came forward to testify, but who could guarantee that Snape and Sirius hadn't betrayed them? Lupin was willing to believe them, but who would be willing to believe a werewolf? Even Pettigrew could betray the Order of the Phoenix; could the Marauders have betrayed the Order of the Phoenix at the same time? And Snape was both a master of Occlumency and a Potions master; no one could test if he was lying, and he might also have the ability to help his accomplices lie, which made it even more unclear.

Originally, the Order of the Phoenix wouldn't have so little trust in its members, but Harry was worried that there were foreign forces laying out plans in the dark, fanning the flames; as long as he couldn't use irrefutable evidence to prove himself, then a tiny bit of suspicion would be infinitely magnified—Aberforth had already suffered this bitterness.

Harry knew clearly that he must prepare irrefutable physical evidence in advance to prove his true identity, and stifle all doubts in the cradle from the very beginning.

Perhaps it was because the effect of the Inspiration Charm hadn't passed yet, Harry felt he had come up with an idea: there was no need to strictly prove Harry was one of their own, only to prove that the story didn't hold up. Because in that story, there was one person whose actions went against his true personality, and that was Regulus.

If the people of the Order of the Phoenix salvaged Regulus's body from the cave where Voldemort hid the Horcrux, and paired it with that note written inside the fake Horcrux, then Regulus's true stance would be beyond doubt. If Regulus was also resisting Voldemort, he and Sirius couldn't have let Pettigrew escape back then, or, on that night fifteen years ago, they could have caught Pettigrew and immediately uncovered that conspiracy.

Or conversely, if Regulus had already died in the cave, the only one alive now could be Sirius himself, and the possibility of Sirius himself betraying James or being deceived by Saruman was extremely low; rather than suspecting this, it was better to suspect whether the person raising this suspicion was maliciously stirring up trouble.

In this way, Harry had even thought of what the Order of the Phoenix and the Aurors were going to do: they would go to that cave to salvage "Sirius's" body.

When the Order of the Phoenix cleared the Inferi and confirmed that the one who died in the cave was Regulus, they could still pretend to claim that what they salvaged was "Sirius's" body, making it convenient for Sirius to continue lurking among the Death Eaters under Regulus's identity. And at this moment, they would also truly understand and approve of this plan to steal the Death Eaters' power, and tacitly begin to cooperate.

And on the Death Eater side, they could still follow Snape's story; Regulus hadn't cared about Sirius since the explosion at Tranzero, and upon learning that his brother had died in that cave while trying to steal the Horcrux, he only needed to sigh, and then go about his business.

If anyone stood up and questioned that the salvaged body was clearly Regulus, then it would just happen to be convenient for him to ferret out the mole in the Order of the Phoenix. Anyway, at this juncture of the election, it was not surprising to spread any rumors; how many people were willing to follow you in believing this rumor was what was most important. ===== CHAPTER 357 =====