Chapter 496: Chapter 496: Hacker, Prime Minister? (Edited)
Looking at the items on the table, Scrimgeour suspected that his subordinates were under a confusion charm. Perhaps they believed they had confiscated or acquired some treasure, but in the end, they had only obtained a pile of junk.
"Chief, look at this," Dawlish said, lifting the wand and waving it. The wand made a noise and transformed into a small rubber bull.
Now Scrimgeour could be sure that his subordinates were under a confusion charm. Naya, beside him, brought her hand to her forehead and sighed: had becoming an Auror brought a man like Dawlish to this?
"Chief, we found a very interesting shop on Knockturn Alley..." Naya recounted her recent experience to her boss.
Scrimgeour listened attentively and pondered. Dawlish, realizing this, felt relieved. He realized that his behavior wasn't appropriate, especially after the bull in his hand squirmed.
"Stupefy!"
Suddenly, Scrimgeour drew his own wand and cast a Stunning Spell. Naya rolled on the floor in a very uncomfortable situation, barely avoiding her boss's surprise attack.
Naya: ?
"I was just testing your alchemical artifact," Scrimgeour said calmly as he dropped his wand.
Naya sighed. "Chief, I didn't have time to recharge the Protego Charm."
Scrimgeour's face tightened.
"So why don't you hurry up and recharge it?" he coughed, "Let's see how effective it is."
Seeing the pained expression on his subordinate's face, he added, "If it works well, we can consider buying it wholesale and giving it to the frontline Aurors, so we can reimburse you for the one you bought."
Hearing his boss's words, Naya perked up. Initially, she was worried about overloading her magical protection glove, but she no longer had that concern after hearing about the possibility of being reimbursed.
Dawlish, beside her, listened with a hint of envy. However, considering that the performance of his magical protection ring was much better than that of his colleagues, he held back.
Scrimgeour and Naya tested a few spells on the side. Scrimgeour started with common spells and even tested the blasting spell, which was successfully defended against. Of course, rebounding was ruled out since a spell that could rebound was as bad as a joke in Scrimgeour's eyes.
"Interesting... I'm going to write you a note," Scrimgeour said as he approached the table, took parchment and a quill, and quickly wrote a note. With this note, Naya could reimburse her magical protection glove.
As a veteran who had experienced the wizarding war and spent most of his life fighting dark wizards, Scrimgeour clearly understood the significance of the magical defense item that Naya held in her hands. After the tests he had just conducted, he considered the strength of the Protego Charm to be sufficient to withstand an attack from most dark wizards. The only downside was that this spell had to be activated manually and couldn't defend against surprise attacks, only usable in direct confrontations.
But this would greatly enhance the safety of the Aurors on their missions.
Most importantly, this kind of magical item was very rare. Even during the days when Voldemort was causing chaos, there was no shop developing this type of product. Only a few alchemists made it, and only a few pure-blood wizarding families had it in their collections. There had never been an opportunity to buy it for 20 galleons each. Therefore, the Ministry of Magic had never equipped the Aurors with this type of equipment.
But now things were different. Surprisingly, there had appeared an alchemist willing to be charitable!
Yes, in Scrimgeour's eyes, the mysterious Mr. Seven was indeed being charitable. It was really hard to find such good things even if you searched for them with a flashlight.
Lucky at this moment, Scrimgeour felt he needed to raise a large amount of funds and buy as many of these protective alchemical items as possible. It was like a big annual sale, and if you missed it, not even Merlin could guarantee if there would be another opportunity.
Twenty galleons each? Could he accumulate two hundred at once? After all, it would only be four thousand galleons, and the department should be able to adjust that budget... right?
Thinking about the Ministry's approvals, Scrimgeour's face turned sour. The Auror Department fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement of the Ministry of Magic. After Amelia Bones became Minister for Magic, the person in charge of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was a mediocre wizard named Pius Thicknesse.
His record didn't have many highlights, his experience was passable, but he lacked experience in real combat, nowhere near someone like Scrimgeour, who had fought for half his life and was a competent bureaucrat. The reason he became the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was that he was mediocre and wouldn't become another Bones.
Due to the preparations for two major events, the Ministry of Magic had been under a lot of financial pressure lately. In such a situation, Scrimgeour knew that the path to requesting funds would be complicated. How could an office bureaucrat understand the difficulties of those on the front lines?
The shortcomings of these gloves were also evident: they could only be used once in combat, they wore out after being filled with spells several times, and so on. Scrimgeour could point out a series of problems himself, whereas Thicknesse would only be better at finding excuses.
Perhaps in the end, the department would only buy a dozen sets to deal with the situation. That was also the limit he could achieve: now dark wizards had virtually disappeared, and the Ministry of Magic didn't need to allocate too many resources to the Auror Office.
The fight between Aurors and dark wizards has never been fair: Aurors are in the light, dark wizards are in the shadows; Aurors can't use Unforgivable Curses at will, dark wizards don't have that restriction; Aurors have very little protective equipment, while dark wizards have all sorts of strange dark magical objects... These factors put Aurors at a natural disadvantage in their struggle against dark wizards. As the leader of the Aurors, Scrimgeour found it difficult to provide basic protection to his subordinates. He sighed and waved his hand for Dawlish and the others to leave. As for the junk that Dawlish had bought, he didn't care much.
Scrimgeour is a good warrior, but not a good bureaucrat. If his mind were agile enough, even if he couldn't buy a large quantity of protective gloves, he wouldn't be so tight with the budget.
...
At five in the afternoon, Mr. Penney still hadn't come out of the studio. Tom also packed up his things and left the alchemy workshop.
His way of getting home was to take a few buses and then take a taxi back if Mr. Granger didn't have time to pick them up.
In the taxi, Tom heard on the radio: "The Prime Minister, Mr. Hacker -"
Tom looked up.
The taxi driver noticed Tom's movement and quickly changed the station.
"Sorry, I didn't expect these boring things to start broadcasting suddenly," the driver apologized as soft music played.
"Hacker, Prime Minister? So Mr. Hacker has become Prime Minister?" Tom asked.
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