บท 164: Chapter 164: Would you like some rabbit, please? (Edited).
Naturally, Tom had to take Harry and Ron with him. Because it was big boss Dumbledore who asked Tom to train them, so he could call it training by taking them around London and putting them up in a luxury hotel for a night?
That's no way to fool a fool!
At this last moment, Tom couldn't send them back, he had to take them with him. But at the same time, he also had to come up with his own answer.
The most common rule in Japanese business management is the so-called Spinach Rule, which means "inform," "contact," and "discuss," and since these three words are pronounced like spinach in Japanese, they are also called Spinach Rule.
Although this rule has been used by the Japanese as a means of shirking responsibility and has led to a very inefficient company, it has some positive aspects. All Tom had to do was "report back," and Dumbledore needed to know how they were doing. But as for Dumbledore's instructions, Tom decided to take them for reference only.
Since Dumbledore was far away in the Scottish Highlands, commanding a thousand miles away, he always remembered one of the founding fathers of military logistics.
Tom first took Harry and Ron to the Leaky Cauldron, sent Dumbledore all the information they had found out and their next steps via owl, and then drove straight to Bristol.
Why not the train? Because trains were less frequent at night, and Bristol was only 190 miles from London, a three-hour journey.
The word "midnight" means late at night, but it actually means from 11 p.m. that day until 1 a.m. the next day, and "midnight" means the same as "night." If you think about it, midnight is not a late night for modern people, is it? For modern people, the real night is "cockcrow," which occurs between 1 and 3 am.
Tom and the others set off in the dead of night and arrived in Bristol at cockcrow.
But it wasn't until dawn when the three, who were unfamiliar with the area, found Burnham Hall at 514 St. Michael's Road.
"By Merlin's beard!" Ron looked at the well-designed mansion, the exquisite wrought iron gates and fences, and his heart fell: My Weasley family is also a pureblood family that has been passed down for hundreds of years, why is it so poor?!
No more than three generations of poverty, because after three generations of poverty, there will be no successors because they cannot marry a wife. Because the Weasley family is a magical family, they broke this curse: three generations of poverty can still find a wife, and still be poor~!
There are fountains in the gardens of Burnham Manor!
But now that the sun had risen, the manor was silent, which was unusual.
Ron stopped the car, got out of it with Harry and Professor Lockhart, and looked inside the manor through the wrought iron gate.
"It feels strange," Ron leaned against the wrought iron gate and poked his head out, "Harry, what do Muggles do with criminal's houses?"
Harry froze, he knew what the discrepancy was: wasn't the house of the criminal who was involved in terrorist activities sealed? Wouldn't there at least be a seal on the door?
Even little novice wizards like them know that there might be clues in this mansion, how could MI6 agents not think about it? The detectives had written about it in their reports!
Harry was a little worried that the agents would get there first and take all the key evidence.
The mansion looked completely normal, which was the biggest anomaly of all.
Tom pushed on the iron door, which opened very smoothly.
Tom: "..."
"Look out, come in!" He stepped in front of Harry and Ron and took the lead into the mansion.
Outside the mansion was a large garden, over fifty yards wide and as long as you could see. In the center of the garden was a three-story cottage, behind which was a hill less than a hundred meters high, covered with fruit trees.
"Why would someone living in such a luxurious house choose to travel by train?". Harry was a little confused by Burnham's mentality.
"There could be many reasons, for example, his driver couldn't make it, or his car was faulty, and of course the most likely reason: three hours straight in a car is too much, unless you have one of those extended luxury Lincolns, but those are also prone to motion sickness" Tom rubbed his sore bottom and gave himself a quick healing spell to relieve tiredness, "And believe me, the most comfortable way to travel this distance is by train."
Mr. Burnham was the man who died on the train, cursed by the gold coin. He was obviously very wealthy. So his train ride may have started a little differently than others. A normal person would have jumped on a crowded bus to get to the station, or a slightly more generous person would have taken a cab or asked a relative for a ride, then waited half an hour in a bustling waiting room to get on the train. The next thing you have to do is pray that you don't get a crying child, a rude seatmate, or a fool with a certain voice or touchy-feely touchy-feely.
For the rich it's a different story. The driver will take you to the station, you can wait in the VIP lounge, there is no noise in the first class compartment, and another driver will pick you up when the train arrives....
It's much more comfortable than being in a car. Of course, if it's too far, it's better to fly. Of course, there's no need to fly when it's a hundred and eighty kilometers.
"So that's it!" Harry nodded, "But, what about the housekeeping staff? where did they go after Mr. Burnham's death?"
With a garden this size, plus the accompanying mansion and the back of the house, it would take a cook, a maid or valet, a gardener and a chauffeur. Four at the very least, and if Mr. Burnham's finances were in good shape, they could go to ten.
But the house was now clearly in a state of neglect.
"Look over there!" shouted Ron, pointing to a spot where he had just seen something white. The three approached and found a skull, half submerged in the grass, its dark eyes staring back at them, with traces of dark red blood still on them. Although the sun was already rising and shining, the three still felt their hair stand on end and their bones tingle.
An ominous atmosphere permeated this exquisite garden, and I don't know if it was a psychological effect, Tom always felt like something was staring at them.
The skull appeared to be canine, with a head as long as a thermos, and the dog itself appeared to be quite small. They found some more scattered bones nearby, probably from the hound.
"It looks like it was eaten by some kind of wild beast, and these aren't very big," Ron said as he looked closely at the remains, big beasts don't gnaw that clean, and he pointed out the teeth marks on one rib, "And the teeth aren't very big either, almost human sized."
"What kind of beast ate the family dog?" Harry was a bit puzzled, "Professor Lockhart, what do you think?"
"Let's go into the house first." Tom decided to enter the house, to find out what was going on, and to find out what had happened to the servants.
The door to the mansion was unlocked, and Harry's jaw dropped as soon as he opened the door: the hallway appeared to have been splattered with dark red paint. It was clear to him that this was not paint, but blood.
Tom pulled out his wand and entered the hall, followed by Harry and Ron, wands in hand.
The furnishings in the hall were also very tasteful: sturdy mahogany tables, chandeliers of thousands of crystal pieces, paintings by various famous artists, not abstract paintings unintelligible to the general public, but real landscapes and figures, and it was also clear that the hall had been furnished with some "antiques", which had now been torn down and mixed in with the table pieces and chandeliers.
Stepping onto the sticky floor, Tom looked around and saw a trail of bullet holes in the walls, suggesting that the place had seen some serious combat, as evidenced by the shell casings and bone fragments left on the carpet.
Tom pulled the palm-sized puppet [Sister] out of the pouch at his waist, placed it on the floor and she instantly returned to her normal size. This is a new function added by Dumbledore, which is more convenient for Tom to transport [Sister].
In this situation, Tom had to be alert.
Crack!
A door to the left of the room burst open and a skeleton in a tuxedo with black flames in his eyes emerged from the room, a Roman gold coin could be seen embedded in the bones of his hand. As he marched, bullets fell from the crevices of his body.
"Get back!" Tom motioned for Ron and Harry to get behind him, cast a Protego Charm and pulled the handle at the same time.
The skeleton sped up and came up behind him....
Whoosh!
There was a flash of silver light, and the skeleton split in two, the flame in its eyes wavered and went out like a candle in the night wind. The tip of the [Sister's] long sword was pointed at the ground, and bright red blood gushed from it, but it was liquid fire rather than blood.
A small glass bottle was thrown to the floor by [Sister]. The bottle contained the blood of Fawkes the Phoenix, and she did not know how Dumbledore got it.
[Destroy a cursed skeleton, reward: +100 magic stones.]
There was an unexpected bonus, Tom hadn't expected to get magic stones for destroying a skeleton like this, and the system was being generous this time.
"Tsk, I didn't expect [Sister]'s movements to become so fast after Dumbledore's upgrade" Tom was astonished. After Dumbledore enhanced her, [Sister]'s hand movements became faster and smarter. The very [Sister] Tom had made would not have been able to draw, enchant and kill in one go, it would have taken at least twice as long.
"The agents must have been here..." was all that came out of Harry's mouth.
Looking at the footprints at the scene, it should be the servants who were contaminated by the cursed gold coins, and then the agents who came to investigate clashed with the servants, and after a fight between the two sides, the agents were eliminated.
"Don't they have that sort of strange little box? why didn't they call for help?", Ron was a little curious. He remembered that it was very convenient for Muggles to contact the outside world.
Harry found a cell phone under the couch, which turned out to be broken.
"Muggle electronics don't work at Hogwarts, so it's probably the same here." explained Tom, picking up an empty submachine gun from the corner, "Looks like times haven't changed at all, at least these thermal weapons aren't very useful for skeletons... and they certainly aren't powerful enough."
Tom couldn't believe it - he got a 280mm naval gun, but it couldn't kill these skeletons? Once the gun went down, the crater was several meters deep...
Could we try to catch one? Tom was suddenly tempted.
There was a sound of wind behind him.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
"Depulse!"
"Impedimenta!"
Harry and Ron reacted quickly, each using their own prepared spells. They both reacted so fast that it took less than half a second from the time the new skeleton appeared until they launched their counterattack, which meant they were good duelists.
However, it didn't matter that they didn't react, as Tom was able to cast a hindering spell just in time to buy them a second or two to react.
The two skeletons in maid costumes froze in place, and were decapitated by [Sister] in the next second, and the soul fire in their eyes was extinguished.
Tom is good at taking heads.
[Magic stones +80]
[Magic stones +50]
The reward is different...
A rustling noise was heard in the mansion.
Tom raised his wand, "You guys keep them under control, let me kill them, only [Sister] can effectively destroy these monsters."
Tom wasn't trying to keep the magic stones to himself, he was telling the truth: three people who hadn't even mastered the blast spell would be fools to do any damage to the skeletons, so it was better to play it safe, keep the skeletons under control and let [Sister] do the harvesting.
One by one, skeletons appeared in front of them, some dressed as cooks, some as gardeners, six in all.
"Look, Potter, all the servants are here."
The three formed a triangular formation.
One by one, the skeletons rushed at them, trying to tear Tom and the others apart like the previous agents, but Tom's spell always hit the skeletons with precision, holding them in place, followed by a flash of white light.
The skeletons were cut in two and turned into a pile of bones.
[Magic stones +90]
[Magic stones +40]
...
One after another, magic spells were quickly cast from the tips of the three staffs, and the slowest skeleton was fixed in place, but the one in front of Ron suddenly accelerated, escaped Ron's curse and ran in front of Ron.
At that very moment, a white light shone and the skeleton stopped in front of Ron. It was Tom who manipulated the [Sister] to apply an obstacle spell and saved Ron.
After killing the six skeletons, Harry and Ron relaxed, it seemed to them that it was all over. But Tom's face became even more serious: he saw that some of the skeletons did not have the cursed gold.
Worse, he heard more rustling outside.
A rabbit came in through the window, staring at the three of them.
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