Harry Potter: I am the Legend

Night fell, and the November chill made the British soil even colder than that of France. Dim stars dotted the sky like dying embers of a once-vivid firework display.

Hoffa walked along the long coastline, a torch in hand. Beside him was the nun, accompanied only by the desolation of an abandoned town.

He avoided using illumination spells. While casting a lighting charm without a wand was not difficult for him, he did not wish to attract any unwanted attention.

Yet, for some time after the two had landed on the coast, nothing unusual happened. They did not encounter a single soul for hours.

There were no dark wizards roaming about, no hordes of inferi, and no rumored armies of Muggles marching en masse. All they saw were desolate lands ravaged by war and towns shrouded in mist.

The only sound was the occasional howl of the wind. The land was eerily silent, so much so that even their footsteps, faint as they were, sounded alarmingly loud. There were no birds singing in the forests, no pedestrians on the streets.

All that remained were collapsed, dilapidated buildings, barren thickets of intertwined brambles growing across rocks, and patches of nettles among sparse, withered grass. Occasionally, there were sharp-edged or thorny plants, some of which released a foul stench when inadvertently stepped on.

Even in places bathed in moonlight, there was no warmth. A pale half-moon hung low on the western treetops, its light tinged with a chilling shadow.

Here and there, dried patches of blood stained the ground like brownish lichens, scattered across the earth. Strangely, there were no corpses to be seen.

The tranquility was unsettling.

If not for the icy chill on his face every morning and the gnawing hunger from scarce food supplies every night, Hoffa might have believed he had stumbled into another bizarre dream.

It was yet another long trek through the uninhabited zone, stretching from day into night.

"Shall we rest? We've been walking all day," Chloe asked softly. Her clothes were tattered and worn, but the garish makeup that once masked her face had faded, revealing an exhausted yet delicate and ethereal visage.

"Alright," Hoffa replied curtly. He pressed his hand to the ground and used transfiguration to carve out a simple cave from the rocks. Inside, he lit a fire.

In the nearby abandoned towns, he scavenged some food for Chloe and himself. Most of it consisted of mundane canned goods, hard, moldy cheese, or leftover rations discarded by soldiers. In their current predicament, they had no choice but to make do with whatever they found.

As mid-November approached, the prolonged and fruitless search began to make Hoffa doubt his own judgment. What if Mueller Mans wasn't as cunning as he had assumed and had never set a trap on land? Or perhaps Chloe wasn't as important to them as he believed, and they had already returned to Germany. If that were true, all their efforts over the past few days would have been wasted.

The fire crackled in the dark night. With only the two of them for company, most topics of conversation had been exhausted. Silence hung heavily between them.

"Should we keep searching?" Chloe suddenly asked, hugging her knees.

"Give up?" Hoffa's hand, which had been stirring the fire, paused. It was the first time the nun had ever hinted at giving up.

"I'm just asking, not suggesting we give up," she clarified.

"Then we keep searching," Hoffa said firmly.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" she asked after a moment of hesitation.

"What is it?"

"Why are you sending me back? Did Delfina promise you something, or do you need me to do something for you?" she asked, half-jokingly, half-seriously.

"Why ask that?"

"I want to know," the nun said in a rare coquettish tone. "Tell me."

"I'll tell you when we get to London," Hoffa replied absentmindedly, clearly uninterested in continuing the topic.

"Alright." Chloe smiled tiredly. "You're not the same as when I first met you."

"Really?" Hoffa asked curiously. "How so?"

"Hmm," Chloe thought for a moment before teasing, "I'll tell you when we get to London."

Hoffa rolled his eyes. "Get some rest. We'll continue tomorrow."

The stars in the sky grew slightly brighter. After their simple meal, the nun leaned against the rocky wall and began to doze off. As she slept, her head gradually slid onto Hoffa's shoulder.

It wasn't the first time this had happened. Perhaps it was the cold, or maybe his shoulder was just softer than the stone.

Hoffa didn't push her away. In the vast and lonely wilderness, he was grateful to have another living being by his side.

Or perhaps two.

He pulled out the glass sphere hanging from his waist, observing the unknown creature he had captured. It stretched its tendrils, gliding and twirling gracefully within the magically transfigured sphere.

Every night, Hoffa would take it out to study, hoping to uncover its secrets.

But the creature simply floated within the sphere, never eating, drinking, or communicating. Even when he conjured a sharp spike inside the sphere to prod it, it would merely drift away silently and elegantly.

Tonight, however, the creature behaved oddly. As soon as it noticed Hoffa watching, its nebulous, mist-like head unfurled like a flower. Starlight filtered through the smoky mass, refracting on the glass surface to form a map.

On the map, Hoffa saw the fire he had lit, Chloe sleeping nearby, and a moving light dot in the distance.

"What does this mean?" Hoffa muttered, intrigued. He softly questioned the mysterious creature, whose abilities remained an enigma to him.

The entity swirled upward in the sphere like a silent, mesmerizing genie.

"Chloe?" Hoffa gently shook the nun.

She responded with soft, steady breaths, curling up lazily like a cat by his side, showing no intention of waking.

Giving up on rousing her, Hoffa carefully slid her head off his shoulder, stood up, and fixed his gaze on the moving light. Was the creature warning him of someone nearby?

After so many days without seeing another soul, finding someone to ask for information would be a blessing.

The light wasn't far. Making up his mind, Hoffa decided to investigate. He draped a cloak over Chloe, cast a protective spell around her, and set off swiftly.

Moving like a shadow through the deserted towns, Hoffa quickly reached the river's estuary near the sea, guided by the glowing map in the glass sphere.

There, he found a cargo ship stranded at the mouth of the river. Its hull had a gaping hole from shellfire—clearly, it was the small vessel they had boarded at Normandy.

Hoffa's eyes lit up. He leaped aboard the tilted ship in a few strides.

But the ship was empty. The bloodstained and chaotic deck bore silent witness to the violence and cruelty that had unfolded. Touching the dried, brownish blood on the ground, Hoffa's expression grew grim.

Everyone had been taken.

He pulled out the glass ball, and the light dot within it flickered just under five meters from him, subtly shifting.

"Who's there?!" he called out.

No answer.

In the stillness and cold atmosphere, the idea of asking peacefully was quickly abandoned. He put on his metal gloves, the black iron plates slowly covering his right hand.

Sensing danger, the creature inside the glass ball retracted its head, continuing to spiral aimlessly.

The light from the glass ball faded, and Hofar raised a finger, softly chanting, "Glow, dance." A silver dot of light flew upward from his fingertip, defying gravity as it circled his head.

He pressed forward, but the glow spell seemed to meet some resistance, dimming.

The place was entirely different from the ship he'd seen crossing the sea. The white-painted walls were smeared with star-like bloodstains.

On the wall near the door, a wooden stick with a hook for clothes hung. It was used by the crew to hang their clothing. Below it, there were traces of scratches on a newspaper, likely left by someone desperately grabbing it as they were dragged away.

The walls further along were bare, except for the hanging wires, originally connected to the captain's cabin door. It was unclear whether it was blasted open by magic or artillery, but it had been shattered into pieces, scattered on the ground.

He moved deeper.

The creaking of the slanted stairs beneath his feet reminded him of the past, when children used to run up and down these halls.

As he reached the second deck, the ground looked even more wrecked and chaotic. He stepped on something soft and half-soggy. When he moved his foot, it revealed a severed human hand.

A hand, horribly mangled.

Following the break, he noticed moonlight streaming through a massive hole in the ship's hull, created by the cannon fire. A man's severed head hung from the jagged metal.

Beneath the shimmering glow, Hofar approached the head.

It was Matthew.

The thug who had once planned to knock him out and toss him into the sea to be eaten by fish. Now, under the eerie glow, Matthew's decayed and grimacing head seemed to accuse him of the cruelty and violence at the moment of crisis.

Hofar turned his gaze to the ground.

The deck was covered in a thick layer of coagulated blood. It had solidified over time, but it still retained the distinct texture of fresh blood. Among the dried blood, faint footprints were visible—recently made, perhaps not long ago.

He lightly stepped on the deck, and it creaked under his weight. The explosion hadn't completely destroyed the ship's structure—it could still support him.

He continued downward, reaching the bottom floor, where the door to his old room stood wide open. The door hadn't been blown open; it appeared to have been pushed open by someone.

His hand brushed the wall, and his caution heightened.

If his assumptions were correct, everyone should have been taken away by Mans. Was there truly someone left behind after all the wizard attacks?

Or had they anticipated his return and stayed to ambush him?

The glow spell disappeared.

Hofar remained still, his body shifting like a chameleon, vanishing into the air. Carefully, he kicked away the scattered glass shards, ghost-like, standing at the door of the room. Under the cold moonlight, the light patterns on the floor quickly blurred.

Someone was inside.

He was certain of that.

But he also knew that the person couldn't see him. Just as he couldn't see them.

They stood like this for three or four minutes until a cloud obscured the bright moon. A soft noise came from the corner, accompanied by a faint magical disturbance, causing the shadows on the floor to once again shift.

Hofar immediately spun around. A dangerous spell of unconsciousness drifted past him. His magic gloves flashed with dangerous red light as he raised his hand to strike.

The wooden door seemed to be hit by an invisible air hammer, denting inward, followed by a muffled groan of suppressed pain.

"Come out."

Hofar pressed firmly on the invisible head.

This time, the response was a sharp dagger, a transformed wand. Hofar was well accustomed to such tricks; with a slight misstep, the transformation spell was quickly undone under their mental clash. The dagger reverted to a wand, and Hofar seized the translucent wrist of the person.

"Is that all you've got?" Hofar said.

The man struggled but couldn't break free. He murmured, "Flame of destruction!"

Orange-yellow flames rose from the translucent arm, burning it to scalding temperatures. Hofar shook off the arm and quickly grabbed the wand, stepping back three paces.

"Come out now, or I won't be so courteous."

With a chilling voice, sharp iron thorns began to grow in every direction except under his feet, warping the ship's interior.

With a crack, accompanied by intense magical fluctuations, the person abandoned their wand, trying to displace themselves with apparition. Hofar clenched his fingers, and sharp thorns curved and extended wildly from five meters away.

"Ouch!" A voice with a London accent cried out. "Let me go!"

A wizard was forcibly dragged out of their apparition state. The man was dressed in a black and yellow robe, tall with a broad chin. He appeared young, just a year or two older than Hofar.

Had this been any other time, Hofar would have easily incapacitated the opponent and interrogated him.

But this time, he didn't do that. Instead, he released the young man. The yellow-black robes bore a badger emblem on the chest. This was a Hogwarts student, from Hufflepuff.

(End of Chapter)

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