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Time never pauses and waits for human hesitation.

The Christmas of 1991 quietly passed.

On this morning at the end of December, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry awakened from its dreams, the castle surrounded by several feet of snow, the lake and courtyard pools frozen solid.

Furthermore, nearly a third of the owls in the school's owlery appeared somewhat listless, forced to frequently shuttle through the snowy skies delivering letters due to Hogwarts' overall strategy these past few days.

Under such intense correspondence, several plump, round-faced owls had fallen ill and were temporarily unable to deliver letters. They needed to recover their strength and recuperate under the care of Hagrid and Ellena, among others, before they could take flight again.

Hogwarts was on holiday, and the castle was suddenly half-empty.

Aside from a small number of students who chose to stay at school for various reasons, the vast majority of young witches and wizards had left the school and returned to their respective homes to enjoy a pleasant and relaxing Christmas vacation with their families.

Naturally, Hermione, Luna, Hannah, and others were no exception. After the last lesson before the holidays ended, Hermione and the others eagerly boarded the train, leaving the white-haired puffball to flutter back to their respective homes.

Girls are always more attached to their parents and families than boys, especially younger children.

Apart from Ellena, only Harry and Ron among the first-year students had signed up on the list of those staying at school.

Harry didn't want to return to Privet Drive and spend the holidays with his aunt and uncle, while Ron and his two twin brothers stayed because the Weasley parents were going to Romania to visit Charlie Weasley – the situation there had been unstable recently, and the Weasley parents had been worried. They took the opportunity to visit their second son.

As for Ellena's reason for staying, it was even simpler...

As the actual helmsman of Destiny Group, the executive president of the Hogwarts Consortium, the successor of socialism (soul mark)... she needed to take advantage of this precious time to complete the analysis and planning of the chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was probably the busiest Christmas she had ever spent.

An old era ended, in a hasty manner that most people had not expected.

Neither the Soviet people nor the Western countries entrenched outside the Eurasian continent had been prepared to receive such a large amount of wealth and resources. The new era unfolded hastily in a state of disorderly chaos.

Of course, the so-called chaos was limited to non-magical people.

For most wizards living in the magical world, the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union had not yet had time to spread to their lives. And for a small number of wizards, they had been preparing for this day for months.

With huge financial support and prescient groundwork, Ellena conservatively estimated that she and the entire Destiny Group would be almost invincible in the former Soviet Union in at least the first week after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The opportunity was fleeting, and the situation would not be so optimistic once the Americans and Russian oligarchs entered the game.

Compared to the readily available economic benefits, Ellena immediately set her sights on the most valuable part of the former Soviet Union's resources, the talents who were about to be or had already been ordered by the Yeltsin government to stop research and were being cut from various research institutes.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, funding for a large number of research projects was cut off.

Apart from a few studies, such as mathematics, that did not require too much cost, most researchers were forced to stop their work and leave the research institutes one after another to find a way out to solve their personal survival problems. Governments in economic difficulties could not even afford the expenses of the army, let alone researchers.

According to incomplete statistics from various countries in later generations, more than 80% of researchers in the Soviet Union were displaced after its collapse. Of these, less than 16% found a profession similar to their field of study, becoming valuable "former Soviet experts."

It is not that there were no smart people in the world who did not understand the importance of researchers.

But in this era, the term "former Soviet expert" was not equivalent to "former Soviet scientist." Its more accurate definition should be "former Soviet weapons expert."

In any era, experts in weapons research are only a small part of the vast scientific research community. What truly constitutes the cornerstone of human civilization are those engaged in basic science research and basic theoretical research.

After these researchers left the research institutes, their lifelong learning could not become a skill for making a living.

Therefore, apart from a small number of "Soviet experts" who were closely guarded by governments around the world and closely watched by Western spies, receiving many olive branches from different regions every day.

More people wandered around the European continent with suitcases containing research manuscripts worth millions of dollars.

Like most homeless people, they squeezed their heads to apply for a job as a security guard in a warehouse, a waiter in a bakery, or an accountant in a foreign shopping mall... or they embraced their lifelong research results and silently left the world in hunger and cold.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were like bubbles in the sun, quickly forgotten by everyone...

Or, in an era when most people were struggling to survive, this group of researchers was of no value to most countries outside the magical world - harmless and expensive, not even as useful as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.

And Ellena's target was precisely this group of scholars that no one cared about.

Weapons, powerful killing capabilities, the magical world has plenty.

What Hogwarts, or rather the magical world, lacks is not the means for mutual slaughter, but the sparks and knowledge that can stabilize the cornerstone of a civilized world and allow it to rise rapidly.

With the first ray of morning light after Christmas, Destiny's employees had already begun to act.

If nothing unexpected happened, by this evening, she would be able to receive the first batch of names. Fishing in troubled waters is always the safest approach. Many research institutes had already fallen into a state of semi-paralysis before the Soviet Union announced its dissolution.

The power of magic, the attraction of unknown worlds, free food and accommodation...

This was a considerable temptation for those scientific personnel who had long been unemployed. Even if the talks temporarily broke down, it didn't matter. After all, the greatest advantage of magical negotiations was that they could flexibly use Obliviate to rewind.

As long as they experienced a few more beatings from society, it was expected that before long, those researchers in trouble would understand how irresistible the conditions she offered were... Ellena, who had been taught by Grindelwald and Dumbledore in how to play with and grasp people's hearts, could be said to be almost invincible.

However, before that...

Ellena still needed to solve a small problem.

A problem that had been bothering her from time to time these days.

The white-haired puffball raised her head, looking blankly at the familiar corridor around her, and muttered uncertainly in a low voice.

"Did I just walk through here? Or is this the road Hermione took me on last week?"

The invincible her, got lost again and again and again...

...

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Russia, Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics.

"...I refuse! I will not betray my motherland!"

"But the Soviet Union no longer exists, and your research has been suspended for a long time..."

"No need to say anything, please leave! Wait, what are you going to do?!"

"Sorry... this is what Miss Derisa requested - for the sake of a pleasant next communication, and confidentiality."

"Obliviate!"

As a cold voice sounded, the eyes of Mr. Alexei, the deputy director of the research institute, became distracted.

"Another one who refused. These Soviet Muggles are really stubborn."

Kurt Meyer shook his head, put away his wand, and drew a circle on the parchment scroll in his hand.

On the list in his hand, a large list of circles had been drawn one after another, all representing Muggle scholars who directly refused the invitation from the magical world. So far, he had not completed a single successful lobbying.

"They are already so poor that they have to sell their watches and medals to exchange for potatoes. These guys who have been forgotten and abandoned by their own country, government, and even the magical world, what are they still insisting on? Unreasonable Muggles."

"Okay, let me see... who's next..."