Chapter 878: Public Opinion and Nightmares (Patreon)
Content
After resolving the issues of length, thickness, and width, they began to argue about colors.
Finally, the result of the discussion was that after the broom handle was thickened, it was better to use bright black to give it a more metallic texture.
In this way, a thick and black broom was born.
Just from the outside, it felt thicker, harder, and better quality than all the brooms currently on the market.
Evan used alchemy to add an invisible magic shield to it, which made security a lasting feature of this broom.
Later, someone might imitate Evan’s broom and develop a thicker, blacker and bigger broom. However, there would be no way to compare it with Evan’s broom in terms of safety performance, because they didn’t know the secret, so they could only imitate it in the external design.
In addition, the design of other additional parts, such as the invisible cushions, was left to Fred and George.
This was their strong point. They always had many unexpected new ideas.
For example, the addition of a landing device, an embedded alarm whistle and self-straightening tail branches, as well as invisible handles, etc. After designing the tail of the broom, it could even spray colorful smoke and their two special Weasley’s fireworks backwards during flight.
This design, however, was also rejected by Evan. It was too gorgeous and inconsistent with the style of broomsticks for competitions.
If he designed an entertainment broom in the future, these ideas might be considered.
Among the rejected ideas was also the innovation of adding alarm whistles. The reason for the rejection was similar to not letting Hermione and Ginny make the flying broomstick thicker and larger.
To do so, the cost was too high, completely out of the initial budget.
If they really put all their ideas together, the design would not be a broom, but some other strange thing.
In this way, while they were studying the broomstick at 12 Grimmauld Place, things had already turned chaotic outside!
On the day after Evan and Hermione's visit to Diagon Alley, Rita Skeeter's article about the Dementors' uncontrolled attack on a wizard was published. Instead of mentioning Harry, she described him as an innocent young wizard attacked by Dementors.
Because of his legitimate self-defense, he had to go to the Ministry of Magic for hearing. What was more unfair in the world?
Until now, no one from the Ministry of Magic came out to explain the matter and why Dementors were out of control?
People showed conceivable concern about this matter, and the Ministry of Magic was under great pressure.
After the latest issue, they repeatedly explained that no Dementors were out of control. But they couldn't explain why two Dementors went to the Muggle community?
Although they said Harry was spreading rumors, Rita had already changed the focus of her attack and changed the matter to a conspiracy theory.
This was somewhat close to the actual situation, the Ministry of Magic executives controlled the Dementors to attack the young wizard, which was more terrible than the Dementors going out of control by themselves.
She kept coming up with new ideas and conjectures, and the Ministry of Magic had to passively explain, but was reluctant to start self-investigation.
Therefore, no one was willing to believe them at all. Everyone asked to strengthen the management of the Dementors in Azkaban. The ordinary people had a natural dislike for the Dementors, so they didn’t care if this was a rumor. All they wanted to see was results.
This was the first increase in subscriptions since Evan and the others had been suppressed by Fudge.
Rita lived up to expectations, restarted her activities, and began a series of reports with this incident as the core. In just one week, she unearthed many scandals of the Ministry of Magic. These were the materials she had collected before. Voices inside the wizarding world gradually appeared calling for the incompetent Fudge to step down.
Annoyed and infuriated, Fudge asked the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to send a letter to them to stop spreading these rumors against the Ministry of Magic and himself. After reading the letter Lupin brought him, Evan threw it directly into the trash can.
If Voldemort had been involved, Fudge might have been able to control public opinion and restrict the dissemination of information about Voldemort by relying on the relevant clauses in the rights of the Minister of Magic.
But they didn't mention Voldemort at all now, and Fudge had no right to stop them from saying anything else.
The right to freedom of speech could not be violated, especially when they were talking about the darkness of the Ministry of Magic and the incompetence of Fudge himself. Many people liked to read about this.
Rita caught on to this point. Whether it was true or not, they accepted it all.
Everyone would think these things were true, and anyone saying they were fake news would have to prove it.
But Fudge couldn't prove it at all and there was no way to prove it.
In this way, two days before Harry's hearing, Evan received another letter from the Ministry of Magic.
In the letter, the Ministry of Magic accused him of spreading rumors that were detrimental to the stability of the wizarding world and asked him to come to the Wizengamot as the person in charge for questioning. The time of his hearing was exactly the same as Harry's.
If the charges were established, they would take action to block them.
This was not to be expected or to worry about.
He and Hermione had carefully reviewed every report and strictly checked them. Whether it was Harry's attack by a Dementor or the incident reported by Rita later, it was all things that had really happened.
After being modified by Rita to achieve the desired effect, Fudge could not say anything...
Evan prepared a thick pile of materials, and if necessary, he could argue with them item by item.
Harry felt somewhat relieved that Evan was going to accompany him to the Ministry of Magic for hearing.
These days, he’d been busy with the broomstick project and forgot about it.
But once he was free, terrible memories appeared again and again.
He started to have nightmares again. In his dream, he saw long corridors and locked doors that made his scar prickle...
He didn't dare to tell anyone about it, he didn't want people to know that there was a new connection between him and Voldemort.
Although Evan had explained to him, it still made Harry feel like he was a terrible monster.
While being troubled by nightmares, he kept thinking, what would he do if he was expelled?
Fear jabbed at his insides like needles as he wondered what was going to happen to him if he was expelled. The idea was so terrible that he did not dare voice it aloud.
Sometimes, he could not prevent his imagination showing him a faceless Ministry official who was snapping his wand in two and ordering him back to the Dursleys’ … but he would not go. He was determined on that. He would come back here to Grimmauld Place and live with Sirius.