The Secret Path in the Office

Clutching her wand, Ivan walks down a corridor to the door of the Defence Against the Dark Arts office, wondering whether to go in and arrest him or wait outside for Moody to come out before attacking.

Ivan was confident in his abilities and believed that Moody and Barty Junior were no match for him, but he was not so careless as to suggest that the latter would be safer.

However, to his surprise, Moody seemed to be staying in the office for a long time.

Ivan waited for more than ten minutes, his little patience wearing thin in the cold wind.

As a last resort, Ivan turned his attention back to the Marauder's Map, this time not to check if Moody was out, but to try and locate Dumbledore and Hermione.

According to their previous agreement, they should have arrived by now.

To Ivan's surprise, Dumbledore and Hermione's names magically disappeared from the map as well.

Ivan's brow furrowed. This was completely out of his expectations. He had used the Marauder's Map to solve many problems over the past four years, but today it was completely out of order…

"They didn't go in early, did they?" Ivan murmured to himself, suspecting that Dumbledore and Hermione had gone to arrest them.

After waiting for another ten minutes, Ivan, who was enjoying the cold wind outside the door, finally made up his mind to visit Moody's office!

"Protegos ~ (Armor protection)" Ivan cautiously cast an Armor Charm on himself, then pointed to the lock and released another.

"Alohomora ~ (Alohomora opening)"

There was a slight noise and the locked office door swung open.

Ivan gently pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was pitch-black inside, and he could not see his hands in front of him until he cast a spell to light the fireplace on the side.

The interior was exactly the same as the last time he was here. It was as cluttered as ever, with many documents and strange magical objects lying haphazardly on the wooden table.

In the mirror opposite him, he could vaguely see a few strange-looking figures.

Ivan took a few steps forward to take a closer look, but the skull of the monster hanging on the wall beside him buzzed.

"Diffindo ~ (cracked apart)"

Almost instantly, Ivan backhanded a charm that shattered the monster's skull.

Looking at the debris on the floor, Ivan was not happy at all. He did not know how this magical tool worked, whether it was sound or something else, or whether Moody understood that he had entered.

"Well, I'll have to face him anyway…" Ivan sighed, but didn't dwell on it for too long. He already knew that Moody had placed security devices in the office, and he didn't expect to be able to fool him.

With this in mind, Ivan was no longer as cautious as before, and his gaze went straight to the seven large boxes stacked in the corner.

He strode over and used a charm to blow the lock off the chest, sending the first chest crashing to the floor. A pile of spell books and broken Sneakoscopes fell to the floor.

Ivan then proceeded to open the first six boxes, which contained a variety of objects, as well as several conspicuous objects of Dark Magic.

Ivan's movements became more cautious, but he was not slow at all. Soon, the last box was opened.

To his disappointment, there were no secret passages, as he had expected. Instead, there were just piles of newspapers and homework.

"That's strange. Where would that be?" Yvonne murmured to herself, rubbing her chin as she scanned the office.

Since Moody had vanished into thin air, there had to be another enclosed space.

Could there be a passage in the fireplace? Or could Moody have left by Floo Powder?

Yvonne glanced at it, thinking it unlikely.

A hole in the wall?

It would also be difficult… this was Hogwarts, and the castle was enchanted, so it would not be easy to transform it.

Yvonne's eyes wandered around the office, past the mirror and the small cupboard, and suddenly she saw the mahogany desk in the middle of the room.

This was because the wooden table was very strange. It was square in shape, with no legs underneath. In a way, it was no different from a large suitcase.

Crucially, he had been to the offices of several professors and had never seen a desk like this, presumably brought by Moody himself.

Yvonne walked over to the mahogany table and rapped lightly on it. A sharp noise came from the point of contact, and Yvonne's lips curled into a smile, indicating that the table was empty.

In order to prevent the destruction of the extended space magic within and the death of Moody, Ivan did not dare to violently blast the table with a charm, and instead studied the method of opening it.

This was not difficult for Ivan, who was close to Level 7 in Alchemy, and it took him less than half a minute to find the mechanism to activate it — a sensor with a golden antenna on the corner of the table.

After much fiddling, the golden antenna retracted and the wooden table began to shake. A crack opened up on either side of the table, and the front panel quickly sank underneath, revealing an open passageway.

Like a door, the passageway opened into a dark, narrow corridor.

The moment it was opened, a strong strange smell wafted out.

Yvonne covered her nose and backed away, thinking it was some sort of dark magic, but then she remembered that she had smelled something similar when she first entered Moody's office.

Moody and Barty Junior should not have had to commit suicide…

Understanding this, Ivan removed his hand from his nose and took a good sniff. It smelled vaguely like feces and food that had rotted and fermented.

Thinking about the food Moody brought in every day and the poor ventilation in the wooden box, Ivan had a good idea how the smell had accumulated.

Undeniably, Barty Crouch Junior was very hard on himself in order to successfully fool the Marauder's Map!

Ivan sneered, cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself to prevent him from catching the foul smell, and then headed down the stairs.

Torches were lit on both sides, lighting the way.

To Ivan's surprise, the walls were lined with Daily Prophet newspapers, and at first glance, the headlines were filled with familiar faces, all of them news stories about him and Harry!

Before Ivan could look any further, his eyes were fixed on the room at the end of the passage — where Moody, whom he had been searching for, was standing, staring into a large Sneakoscope with his back to Ivan, unmoving, as if he had not noticed anyone entering.

However, when he got closer, Ivan saw that the mirror was showing the office above him. It was obvious that Moody had seen him when he first entered.