Chapter 435: The Dementor Movement (Edited)

The cabinet floated all the way up until it connected with the ceiling. The buried part of the cabinet resembled the wand shelves in Ollivanders' wand shop, with small boxes lined up in tight rows. Glancing at it, Tonks realized there were hundreds of them.

Mr. Borgin: !!!

For a moment, he felt like he was being strangled, unable to breathe: this was what he and his partner, Caractacus Burke, had accumulated over the years, and now it was over!

Mr. Borgin was a cautious person. Although he had cast many anti-theft spells in his shop, he used to keep the genuine items of value under the counter. The objects displayed in the showcase were replicas created with duplication spells or forgeries made by craftsmen. There were also some low-value or very dangerous items that were displayed directly. He didn't care if someone stole the former, but the latter would probably leave the thief trapped in the shop.

However, this trick was pointless in the presence of Moody. His magical eye could even see through the invisibility cloak, so what did a few layers of floor and protective spells mean? In less than two minutes from his entry, Moody found Borgin's secret hiding place.

Moody looked at Borgin, not wanting to personally open the cabinet. Mr. Borgin sighed again and approached the cabinet, knocking it several times, and all compartments opened.

Moody snorted disdainfully as he approached the cabinet and took out the illegal items one by one, sealing them in bags from the Department of Magic. With each item he took, Borgin's face grew paler and paler.

What was inside were not only Mr. Borgin's belongings but also those of his partner Burke and other things belonging to pure-blood wizards that were temporarily stored there. Although it was the Department of Magic conducting the inspection, were they really going to be reasonable with them? After the Department of Magic staff left, he would probably be arrested by this group of people and squeezed for his last copper coin. Although he had been collaborating with Burke for decades, he knew his partner had no scruples. Borgin was very aware that his partner was not a person of good character.

"Let's go," Moody said after taking a few turns around the room to make sure there were no forgotten prohibited items, and he left Borgin & Burkes directly. Before leaving, his magical eye fixed on a corner of the wall for a brief moment. He knew there was some kind of mechanism there, but unfortunately, it was a treasure hidden by Burke, and Borgin couldn't open it.

Although there were nearly a hundred prohibited items in Mr. Borgin's shop, the Department of Magic couldn't simply arrest him because he had a legal business license. According to official records, Borgin & Burkes was an antique shop that also provided secret appraisal services for "ancient rare magical objects inherited by prominent wizarding families." Moody and Tonks could only confiscate the illegal items from the shop and couldn't arrest the owner.

Today, only a gang of thugs and wizards who had been discovered buying dark magic items would be caught. These people would spend the winter in Azkaban.

After Moody left, Borgin's body trembled a few times. He almost collapsed but managed to hold himself up by leaning on the counter.

At that moment, several Dementors floated into Borgin & Burkes. At that moment, Knockturn Alley was in total chaos, with Aurors and other Department of Magic members busy searching. Shop owners and customers were being taken away by the staff, and no one noticed that several Dementors had entered Borgin & Burkes, which had already been frantically looted by the Aurors.

Borgin felt them approaching and abruptly looked up, his face filled with horror. "You, how... there were no-"

He was terrified. He thought these Dementors had come to take him to Azkaban.

"Don't get nervous," a voice sounded from behind the Dementors, "Mr. Borgin, I believe we could make a deal."

Borgin: ???

"What are you... what are you?" His face turned pale, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He knew that whether the speaker was a man or a monster, one couldn't toy with him.

"Of course, I am a person," the voice said as the Dementors made way, allowing a young person in a mask and strange attire to approach Mr. Borgin.

"I'm curious, do you have to pay for the things they just took? Or do you have some other way to get them back?" He looked with interest at the empty shelves and the descriptions of the merchandise that had been on them, mentally calculating the value of the dark magic objects.

Mr. Borgin opened his mouth and then closed it, repeating this several times before letting out a long sigh. His body slumped a bit more, and his back hunched even further. "Of course, it's up to me to pay... and even if those important folks can reclaim their own confiscated items, they'll make me pay... the more demanding ones will require a public relations compensation, and the less demanding ones will demand a refund for the original value of the items... Decades of accumulation, all gone down the drain!"

The young person who entered Borgin and Burkes was, of course, Tom. After carrying out a major operation with hundreds of Dementors, how could the Dementor leader not follow through? So far, he had been observing from a distance with the protection of some of his henchmen. Seeing how they confiscated Borgin and Burkes and took away a large number of hidden items, Tom suddenly had an idea. So he led the Dementors to enter Borgin and Burkes.

Mr. Borgin's words confirmed Tom's assumption. At that moment, he looked at the few remaining items on the shelves, lost in thought.

"If I were you, I'd run," he said as he approached a large cabinet and stopped. His intuition told him it was the vanishing cabinet from Borgin and Burkes. Through this cabinet, one could teleport directly to Hogwarts.

The vanishing cabinets came in pairs. They were easy to use: enter one of the cabinets, close the door. If you opened the door again, you would exit from the other. There was a Vanishing Cabinet in Borgin and Burkes, and another in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. However, the one in the Room of Requirement was damaged and didn't allow living beings to be transported onto the campus.

Although living beings couldn't currently be transported, once repaired, this pair of Vanishing Cabinets would become a secret passage for accessing Hogwarts undetected. In the original timeline, the Death Eaters had entered Hogwarts this way and trapped Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower.

Undoubtedly, this pair of Vanishing Cabinets posed a security risk to Hogwarts. As a student of Hogwarts, Tom wouldn't like to have vulnerabilities in the school's defenses. The way to eliminate this risk was also very straightforward: destroy the cabinet and toss it into the fireplace to use as firewood; that would be absolutely foolproof. But what would be the consequences of doing that?