The warning letter from the German Ministry of Magic lay quietly on the wooden desk of the Burrow's second floor.
The parchment was rigid, carrying a coldness that seemed to have crossed the North Sea. The dark green wax seal bore the double-headed eagle, fierce and imposing; every detail radiated undeniable official authority.
The wording in the letter, rather than a mere warning, was more like a final ultimatum. Every word written in ornate German script was tempered with bureaucratic coldness and arrogance, forming a sword aimed directly at Alan Scott's throat.
Any sane underage wizard receiving such a letter would have reacted predictably:
Panic.
Helplessness.
Then, frantically drafting a reply filled with excuses and apologies, hoping for some leniency.
But Alan merely folded the parchment back into its envelope calmly. His face showed no emotion, no anger, no fear, as if the letter contained only tomorrow's cauldron sale information for Diagon Alley.
He didn't go downstairs to discuss it with the Weasleys.
He didn't use the emergency rune that could contact Dumbledore.
He simply stood up, walked to the door, and gently turned the brass latch under the doorknob.
Click.
A faint sound, and the noise of the outside world was completely sealed off.
The entire afternoon, the Burrow was filled with the aroma of Mrs. Weasley preparing dinner and the faint explosions of Fred and George testing new spells in the yard. But Alan's room was as silent as the deep sea.
He didn't pace. He didn't anxiously pull at his hair.
He sat at his desk, spreading out a fresh sheet of pristine white parchment. The ink bottle cap was twisted open, and a brand-new quill rested lightly between his fingers, adjusted to the most comfortable angle for writing.
He wasn't preparing a letter of defense.
He was preparing a weapon.
A tool more precise than any spell, more lethal than any curse.
His eyes rested on the blank parchment, but his mind raced at unprecedented speed. The German Ministry's tracking system, the workflow of the British Magical Law Enforcement, the magical dissipation models of high-level summoning spells, the turbulence algorithms of anti-detection spells… countless data points and theories collided, dismantled, and reassembled inside his mind's palace.
After a long moment, he finally moved.
The quill's tip dipped into the inky black ink, and at the very top of the parchment, stroke by stroke, he wrote a title so precise that even the most rigid bureaucrat would feel a physiological unease:
"Analysis Report on the Logical Limitations and Systemic Errors of Current Cross-National Magical Tracking Technology Under High-Level Anti-Detection Spell Interference"
After writing the title, Alan paused briefly.
He didn't rush to continue. His goal was never to prove his innocence. In the face of a rigid and arrogant bureaucracy, facts and innocence held no value.
What he aimed to do was dismantle the very foundation upon which the system operated,
its authority.
The quill touched the parchment again.
This time, there was no pause.
"…According to the basic principle of magical energy conservation, any long-range summoning spell that uses a non-corporeal medium as an anchor does not experience linear attenuation of magical power in the air. Its decay curve should be described by the following formula:
E(d) = E₀ * e^(-cd) * f(W),
where E₀ is the initial magical power, d is the distance, …"
"...α represents the ambient magic damping coefficient, while f(ψ) corresponds to the nonlinear interference factor caused by the caster's mental fluctuation…"
Line after line of cold, surgical precision flowed from his quill.
He had erased "himself" entirely from the text , no emotion, no identity , writing purely from the detached, academic perspective of an objective researcher conducting an autopsy.
Alan was like a ruthless mechanic, dismantling the German Ministry of Magic's proudest creation , its tracking system , piece by piece, down to the smallest component, and then calmly informing the world that the entire assembly had been wrong from the very beginning.
When he finished the first section, Alan reached for two heavy reference tomes from his bookshelf.
One was The Bureaucratic Hierarchy of Modern German Magic, and the other, Handbook of the British Magical Law Enforcement Department.
He laid the two open side by side, drawing crisp, logical lines between their procedural clauses with his quill.
"…Comparing the public handbooks of the German and British Ministries reveals a fundamental difference in their tracking models.
The German Ministry relies on a 'Single-Point Source Aggregation Model,' which prioritizes locking onto the strongest magical fluctuation within an area.
The British Ministry, on the other hand, favors a 'Multi-Node Correlation Verification Model'…"
His writing grew faster and faster, the ink cutting deep into the parchment.
"…When the complex magical turbulence generated by a powerful anti-tracking charm overlaps with the attenuation curve of a high-tier summoning spell within a confined space,
the logic core of the 'Single-Point Source Aggregation Model' faces exponential computational pressure.
Its internal magical signature recognition array fails to effectively distinguish between an active casting source and a passive resonance source.
According to the mathematical model I have constructed, the probability that the system misattributes the remaining magical residue to the nearest 'known source' reaches 83.7%."
That number , precise to one decimal place , he underlined firmly with his quill.
This was no longer an explanation.
It was a verdict.
At the end of the report, Alan even added ten "helpful" suggestions in a tone that was almost condescendingly kind , as though offering guidance to a group of well-meaning but incompetent subordinates.
"…To prevent similar 'misunderstandings' that may jeopardize the amicable relations between the two Ministries, I propose three preliminary technical adjustments:
(1) Introduce a multi-source magical signature cross-verification mechanism;
(2) Implement a real-time spectral analysis module for magical turbulence;
(3) Establish a transnational information-sharing protocol for suspect magical sources…"
Five full pages of parchment, filled to the brim.
By the time he finished the final sentence, the sky outside his window had completely darkened.
Alan set down his quill and gently blew on the last droplet of ink.
He then read the entire report carefully, from start to finish, confirming that not a single logical flaw remained.
With a silent Duplicating Charm, an identical copy appeared before him.
Two envelopes lay ready.
The first, he addressed to the "Office for the Improper Use of Magic," the very department whose warning letter had arrived earlier.
He knew the type , dull bureaucrats who spent their days policing underage witches and wizards, most of whom would not even understand the title of his report.
They would probably take it as some arrogant child's provocation and toss it straight into the fireplace in outrage.
That didn't matter.
That letter was never meant for them.
Alan picked up the second envelope.
The corner of his lips curved , a faint, razor-sharp smile.
He placed the other copy of the report inside and, in the recipient's column, wrote down a name.
A name that carried weight across all of magical Europe ,
the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Today's Spell.
His old friend.
Alan's true target had never been the bureaucrats hiding behind office desks.
Bureaucrats cover things up. Bureaucrats deflect blame.
What he intended was to transform a "disciplinary issue" into a scholarly scandal.
He was about to drop a bomb ,
the revelation that the international magical tracking system contained a fatal design flaw ,
straight into the calm waters of the academic world, a pond filled with the most brilliant, most exacting, and most unforgiving minds in wizarding research.
He wanted the entire magical theory community to witness, in detail,
just how absurdly, humiliatingly wrong the German Ministry of Magic had been.
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