Lupin: "..."
He gave up the idea of tidying the room and sat silently beside them.
Under his gaze, Sirius momentarily forgot what he wanted to say. After a few seconds of recollection, he spoke about a topic unrelated to the missing case.
"Harry's name was on the Hogwarts roster at birth, but Vid..."
He looked at the quiet boy beside him and said:
"It's said that before you received the admission letter, you never showed any magical power. Why did Hogwarts know you had the gift of being a wizard?"
"Yes, why?"
Harry couldn't help but ask, then turned to Vid:
"Has anything unusual ever happened to you? Like making your hair grow out, or suddenly jumping onto the rooftop chimney."
Vid shook his head: "No."
Lupin explained: "Sometimes young wizards who are emotionally calm and have relatively stable magic may not show magical power. Vid hasn't displayed magical power, indicating he hasn't encountered issues that required magic to solve, thus remaining indistinguishable from ordinary people."
"But Hogwarts selected him from countless people... How did it do that?" Harry asked curiously.
Vid actually knew the reason, but at this moment, like Harry, he looked to Sirius, who was ready to reveal the answer.
Sirius grinned and said, "I only found out recently—Hogwarts has a Book of Admission and Pen of Acceptance, which have been around longer than this castle."
"The Pen of Acceptance detects all newborns with magical talent and writes their names in the Book of Admission. The Book of Admission rigorously evaluates the child's talent, ensuring it doesn't mistakenly admit a dud."
"The Book of Admission and Pen of Acceptance have never made a mistake, ensuring all children with magical talent on this land are recorded, so the young wizards taken from the British Isles are merely a small fraction."
"But other magical schools select students in different ways."
"Some use divination or dreams—in these cases, errors or omissions can easily occur;"
"Some magical schools use a detection network similar to the Ministry of Magic. If a significant magical fluctuation occurs, they will quickly investigate. But children like Vid can easily be overlooked."
"And others... like Durmstrang, only accept young wizards from wizard families. Even if Muggle children display magical power, no one welcomes or explains magic to them."
"Dumbledore speculated that the missing Muggle wizards might be the largest number over there, but Karkaroff actually said... the disappearance of those half-blood wizards has nothing to do with him? He is unwilling to cooperate with the investigation!"
Sirius grew angry as he spoke and sincerely cursed:
"I hope those dark wizards take Karkaroff away; even a hunk of metal on that position would be more enthusiastic than him..."
"Igor Karkaroff is the headmaster of Durmstrang."
While Sirius was making pointless complaints, Lupin explained to the two young wizards.
"If you ever meet him, you must be cautious. Igor Karkaroff was once a Death Eater, but he betrayed the names of other Death Eaters to ultimately escape punishment."
"So the guy is completely unreliable, Durmstrang is destined to fail under his control."
Sirius then said:
"Most of the missing children are like Carrel, who unintentionally display magical powers and soon have dark-robed wizards contacting them."
"Under the operation of coaxing and deceiving by the dark-robed people, the family quickly decides to move to a new place, but on the way, they forget about their child. And where the child supposedly already moved to is unknown."
"Dumbledore contacted all magical schools—Durmstrang in Northern Europe, Beauxbatons in France, Ilvermorny in the United States, Castelobruxo in Brazil, Magic Institute in Japan, Kodostorians in Russia..."
"No results; none of them had more students than planned, and all were missing some to varying degrees. Several schools and the Ministry of Magic decided to investigate together, determined to capture those guys who were abducting young wizards!"
Sirius said the rest in one breath, gulped down a glass of water, and then asked, "Knowing this, have you thought of anything?"
"Could those missing people have been taken by the government or some big company?" Harry recalled some similar TV plots and said, "Someone might be using young wizards for cruel experiments."
"Although I really hope it's not the case, it indeed could be." Sirius said.
"Those guys might be entrenched within the Muggle government or have bribed some high-ranking Muggle officials."
Vid said: "They must have a massive intelligence network to obtain information on young wizards—nothing is more convenient than the local government."
At this time, the internet hadn't developed to the extent it would later, and people didn't always carry cameras to capture interesting or strange things to post online at any moment.
Thus, promptly tracking these "strange events" mostly relied on word of mouth.
"Very likely." Sirius showed an appreciative look: "But we still can't determine exactly who's suspicious, as there are simply too many Muggles. Therefore, the Aurors have made a plan..."
"Dong dong!"
Lupin knocked on the table forcefully.
Sirius suddenly realized he had said too much and immediately shut his mouth.
"What plan?" Harry pursued.
"Alright, alright, you should head back to school to sleep!" Sirius began rudely ushering them out: "You have classes tomorrow, remember?"
They reluctantly went upstairs to the bedroom that housed the wardrobe. Upon returning to Hogwarts, Harry was still muttering:
"I wonder what the plan is..."
"...bait?" Vid suddenly said.
"What?" asked Harry.
"Get a wizard to disguise as an underage Muggle girl, simulate a magical outbreak, create some noise, and see if those people appear."
Harry was silent for a while, then asked: "What wizard can pretend to be a girl under eleven?"
"You've forgotten about the Age-Reduction Potion?" Vid said: "And the Polyjuice Potion... Magic will always have a way."
...
A few wizards collectively tilted their heads back and drank a large gulp of the oddly-colored liquid from their cups.
"How do you feel?" asked the young wizard distributing the magic potion.
The wizards couldn't speak; they quickly showed expressions of pain, and their bodies began to shrink like deflating balloons.
"Poof," their eyeballs shrank back into their heads, followed by noses, mouths, and ears. Their limbs suddenly retracted, becoming short and plump, and soon clothes slipped off, propped up like tents by someone.
A small hand emerged from the clothing pile, fumbling left and right, finally grabbing a magic wand and withdrawing again.
After a moment, the wand poked out again, tapping on the surrounding clothes, which immediately shrank but also became inconspicuous.
In what seemed an instant, several children appeared on the ground, bearing expressions of either disgust or innocence; one asked blankly, "Are we becoming bait starting now?"
"It seems so."
A girl with violet hair said enthusiastically, taking the canned magic potion and distributing a bottle to everyone.
"Use it again when the effect is about to wear off." said the Auror in charge of brewing the potion, standing beside them with a hoarse voice: "Repeated use will shrink you back to embryo state."
However, observing everyone's giggling demeanor, they didn't seem to take his words seriously.
Then, they dispersed in all directions.