The Prisoners of Hogwarts

Chapter 99 The Camera

Chapter 99 The Camera

Lin Qi sat on the sofa, quietly reading the book in his hands. As he turned the pages, the title of the book was revealed on the side cover: "Notes on Interpreting Ghosts".

The afternoon sun shone through the sparse branches of the forbidden forest, through the open windows, and cast dappled shadows on the floor of the stone house.

He caught a glimpse of the light out of the corner of his eye, and then pulled his attention back from the contents of the book.

Lin Qi closed the book, tapping the cover lightly with his fingers, his gaze deep and melancholy.

The book's content comes from a research manuscript left behind by a wizard in the 17th century. It was compiled and published by his descendants decades ago, hoping that their ancestor's glory would allow them to make a small fortune. Unfortunately, it was like throwing a stone into the sea, without causing the slightest ripple in the magical world.

But the content was quite inspiring for Lynch, especially the part about the interaction between ghosts and reality...:

Thinking of this, he looked up at the clock on the wall.

Judging that the time was about right, Lin Qi raised his hand, and a Galleon floated in his palm.

He flipped his palm, and the Galleon turned into a small gray cloth bag.

Lin Qi casually tossed the cloth bag away.

A dark shadow flashed through the room, and the crow firmly grasped the cloth bag that was still in the air in its claws.

With a flap of its wings, the crow flew straight out of the open window and disappeared into the treetops in an instant.

Outside the stone house, an Auror seemed to sense something.

But when he turned his head, he found nothing.

He instinctively wanted to get up and check, but then he remembered Chief Crouch's instructions to them before he left, so he sat back down.

I simply assumed it was my own hallucination.

The crows fly extremely fast; in just a few flaps of their wings, they cover a distance that would take humans more than half an hour to walk, and arrive at Hogwarts Castle.

This time, however, Lynch did not choose to fly into the castle. Instead, he flapped his wings and flew towards a window high up in the castle.

The window was already open, and the crow's wings were slightly folded as it shot into the room like a straight arrow.

The instant the crow flew toward the window, Dumbledore seemed to sense something and looked up.

I just happened to see the crow fly into the room.

The crow flew towards the ground in the center of the principal's office, and as it landed, its body twisted like ripples on water.

In the blink of an eye, Lynch stood before Dumbledore, bag in hand.

He bowed slightly, offering an elegant apology to Dumbledore: "Good afternoon, Headmaster Dumbledore. Please forgive my impolite manner of entering, but my current condition is probably not suitable for me to appear directly in the castle."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Lynch." Dumbledore looked Lynch up and down. "Is this the alchemical trick you called a marionette? It's amazing. If I hadn't seen it transform with my own eyes, I would have thought that you were standing in front of me."

"I've named this spell 'Raven's Eye,'" Lynch said, looking at the inquisitive expression on Dumbledore's face. "Perhaps one day in the future, I will reveal the details of this spell so that all interested wizards can understand the principles behind it."

Dumbledore smiled gently. "Then I look forward to that day."

Lynch didn't say anything more, but simply raised the hand holding the small gray cloth bag to Dumbledore.

That's enough small talk.

Dumbledore understood Lynch's meaning.

He stood up from behind his desk and walked towards Lynch: "Let's go now."

Lynch watched as Dumbledore walked up to him, stopped, and then reached out a hand to put it on his shoulder.

He didn't flinch, letting Dumbledore's hand land on his shoulder.

The instant their fingers touched, a "whoosh" sounded in the principal's office, and the two of them seemed to be sucked away by an invisible pipe, disappearing from the spot.

In a dizzying moment, they found themselves in an empty room.

The room was dimly lit, making it difficult to see one's surroundings. A tall, ornate mirror stood in the center of the room—the very same Mirror of Erised that Lin Qi had seen before.

The two of them appeared directly in front of the magic mirror, so Lin Qi saw the image reflected in the mirror as soon as he looked up.

His expression remained unchanged as he shifted his gaze from the magic mirror to examine the house.

Lynch first tapped the floor tiles with the sole of his foot, then turned to look at Dumbledore. Underneath the floor tiles of this house, Dumbledore had already laid white stone bricks.

Noticing Lynch's gaze, Dumbledore remained silent, simply stroking his beard and smiling as he stood there.

Lin Qi walked into the darkness surrounding the room.

Once his figure disappeared into the darkness and he could see that the walls of the room were made of rough stones, he nodded in satisfaction.

Lynch picked up the cloth bag in his hand and turned to look at Dumbledore, who was standing in the light: "Then I'll begin."

Dumbledore's expression remained unchanged, still bearing that gentle smile, as if he himself hadn't been the one who had brought Lynch directly to the Mirror of Erised.

His gaze pierced through the darkness, precisely locking onto Lin Qi. He gestured to Lin Qi from afar, saying, "Please make yourself at home."

Lynch untied the rope binding the opening of the bag, then reached his hand into the bag until his elbow was inside.

Clearly, this is a cloth bag that has been enchanted with a seamless expansion spell.

Lin Qi pulled out a rectangular metal box from the bag, about the size of an adult's torso. On the smaller side of the box was a metal tube about the length of a finger and the thickness of a goose egg.

If there were a young wizard from a Muggle family at this moment, he might recognize that it was a camera.

Lynch took the camera, walked to the corner, and tapped the stone brick twice with his hand. The brick became as soft as sand.

He tucked the camera into the brickwork, leaving only a small part of the lens's metal tube sticking out.

Making sure the camera was pointed directly at the center of the room, Lynch nodded in satisfaction.

Then he walked around the walls of the room and stuffed seven or eight cameras into the brickwork, just like he had done.

He didn't return to the center of the room until he was sure every corner of the room was covered.

"If you don't mind, could you tell me what you put there?" Dumbledore asked curiously.

"A camera," Lynch said. "A machine invented by Muggles, just like a camera, you just point it at a place and take a picture, but what this thing takes is called video, and Muggles can make the content it takes move, it's more magical than a wizard's photograph."

"Unfortunately, Muggle cameras can only record a few minutes of footage at a time."

"Later, the Stone Tower Merchant Guild discovered the advantages of this item and obtained permission from the Office for the Prohibition of the Misuse of Muggle Items of the Ministry of Magic. They asked the alchemists in the guild to make magical optimizations to them, preparing to sell them to wizards as commodities. They can now shoot continuously for several months at a time."

"However, this is also the problem: it captures so much content that it makes it difficult for users to view all the footage."

Finally, Lynch looked at Dumbledore and added, "That's how the picture of Voldemort that I gave you came about."