Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 3 I'm broken

The birthday party was actually a bit quiet.

Dali hadn't come, and Cohen knew the reason why he could hear the Dursleys arguing next door.

Because Dali and Cohen had no friendship at all - especially since Cohen had invited Harry, Dali thought this was just a freak party, and if he attended such a party, he would definitely be laughed at by his best friends.

Mr. Dursley's roar must have been because he did not want to miss the opportunity to make a good impression on Cohen's mother, Rose. Public opinion always has a very important impact on the development of a company.

And in Mr. Dursley's opinion, the only way to stop Harry from blowing up the Nortons' house is to send one of his own men to keep an eye on Harry - apparently he doesn't realize that almost every time Harry gets into trouble it's when Dudley bullies Harry first.

For Harry, this "cold" party may be the only "happy" moment for him in the whole month of July.

But for Cohen, tomorrow is the day to be truly happy.

Because I can finally find more samples to confirm the soul strength of a normal adult wizard, and get my first wand.

The feeling of having a wand is definitely different from that of not having one. When Cohen tried magic before, he always felt that his strength was not used in the right place - a wizard would definitely not have this awkward feeling if he cast a spell in the correct way.

After sending Harry home, Cohen went back to his bedroom early to sleep, preparing for tomorrow's trip to Diagon Alley.

Which wand will be attracted to me? Wait a minute... a wand chooses a wizard, so there's no soul inside it, right? Can a soul be sucked out? Is it the same as a human soul? Does it nourish the body if consumed? If I sucked all the wands out of Ollivander's, would Ollivander be mad?
The process from waking up to falling asleep is always like this.

Cohen began to snore softly, like an ordinary human child, so much so that even when Rose opened the door and walked into Cohen's room, Cohen was not "woken up".

Rose placed a large box of beautifully wrapped birthday presents beside Cohen's bed, gave him a gentle kiss, and left quietly.

Outside Cohen's window, a black shadow darted away from the windowsill with a whoosh. Under the curtain of darkness, the shadow only revealed its appearance when it passed by the street light.

It was a tabby cat, with what seemed to be traces of glasses on its facial hair, and it came up to a white-haired old man.

"call out--"

"call out--"

The light from the originally lit street lamp seemed to be pulled away from its original place by an invisible hand, and flew into the silver old-fashioned lighter in the old man's hand.

"Albus, I have to admit that placing Cohen with the Norton family is a good choice."

The tabby cat's silhouette suddenly stretched out in the night, and in just a second or two it turned into a serious-looking woman.

"Minerva, this was Edward and Rose's choice, not mine," Albus Dumbledore said with a smile. The stars and the moon on his robe matched the starry summer sky above him. "It's a pleasure to see a child thrive in the love of his parents."

"If Harry is worth all this," Minerva McGonagall said somewhat dissatisfiedly, "his living environment is rather too bad compared to Coin. I don't understand why you would ask the Nortons to reduce their contact with Harry - even if it's just to allow this poor child to peacefully enjoy afternoon tea at a neighbor's house every weekend."

"Different flowers require different methods of cultivation." Dumbledore winked mischievously at Professor McGonagall, "But there is no doubt that they will all bloom the most beautiful flowers."

"Perhaps there is one more thing you need to know about Cohen."

Professor McGonagall hesitated for a moment, then decided to tell Dumbledore what she had seen.

"Oh, Cohen often does good things. I remember the last time I came here, I saw him helping an old man cross the street." Dumbledore was very relieved about Cohen. "Although his birth was not so normal, he still grew up to be an active and healthy child."

"He gave another child a lollipop today," said Professor McGonagall.

"That's a good thing. Being able to share is very rare for children of this age." Dumbledore obviously didn't realize the problem.

"But he used magic to get the lollipop back when he turned his back to the child, and the child cried for nearly a quarter of an hour before he stopped," Professor McGonagall continued.

“…” Dumbledore was silent.

"And the time you saw him helping an old man cross the street, Cohen even pointed the way for him." Professor McGonagall paused.

Dumbledore seemed to know what the next sentence would be.

"That route requires an extra mile to reach the destination, and Cohen's destination was the same as the old man's, but he took the shorter route—only needing to pass two shops." Professor McGonagall said with a headache, "It's hard to imagine what he would be like after meeting the Weasley brothers."

"Young people always have some novel ideas. Pranks don't mean evil..."

Dumbledore soothed, not sure if it was to McGonagall or himself.

"Even adult wizards can easily fall into the vortex of power and lose themselves, but Cohen restrained his evil desires when his will was at its weakest. He is different from Voldemort."

Professor McGonagall shuddered involuntarily at the name.

"Remember the day we found him?"

"That dark wizard's laboratory?" Professor McGonagall recalled some bad memories. "There were corpses everywhere, more than 300 corpses, with empty eyes, as if they had been cast under a killing curse. I never thought that this could be the work of a child under one year old - I would rather believe that it was done by the You-Know-Who, even if he was already dead at the time."

"A rose has thorns for protection, Minerva... We cannot deny its enchanting blossom just because it has sharp thorns."

--------

"Cohen!"

"Cohen!"

It was still dawn when Cohen was awakened by a series of rapid shouts outside the door.

"I want to sleep!" Cohen couldn't even open his eyes, let alone get up and open the door. "Children can't get up too early, they will become like cattle and horses!"

In his dream, he saw his mother Rose secretly put the birthday present on his bedside in the middle of the night and kissed his forehead gently.

He also dreamed of two people whom he had never met but had seen in movies in his previous life.

Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore.

The two men were chatting about Cohen and Harry on the street under the cover of night.

The dream was so real that Cohen felt it was probably a real situation that he had secretly seen while he was daydreaming.

"Cohen! Daddy's taking you to Diagon Alley today. Hurry up and get up, or you'll be late for my third adventure in the Dungeons & Dragons Club this afternoon!"

Oh my god, how could a middle-aged wizard be so keen on playing a "sword and magic" role-playing game with a bunch of Muggle teenagers! If you really like Dungeons & Dragons, go to one of those dragon farms and find a dragon to fight alone. Those wizards who extract dragon blood must be eager for someone to help them train their unruly fire dragons.

"Alright, alright, there's nothing I can do about you..." Cohen changed out of his pajamas sleepily and soon noticed something seemed to be missing next to his bed. "Wait until I change..."

birthday present?

Cohen regained consciousness instantly.

The packaging of this gift is exactly the same as the one in my dream.

If the Rose I saw in my dream was real...

Cohen quickly trotted over to the mirror.

There was a fading lipstick mark on her forehead.

Could it be that Old Man Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall really came to visit my house at night?
Is it really okay to have no privacy at all? I even saw someone snatching candy from a kid!
No, it seems more important are Dumbledore's last few words about Cohen's origins...

The dark wizard's laboratory, more than three hundred corpses with empty eyes... It sounded like the young Cohen had eaten all the souls of those dark wizards.

Was his predecessor this powerful? I originally thought it was Xiao Yan who hadn't started to develop, but was it actually Shi Hao who had his Supreme Bone dug out?
But it seems that Old Deng is still very confident in himself. Although it sounds like he still comes to check on him frequently, Cohen's performance is obviously in line with his goals.

At least I don't have to worry about being killed by the righteous forces before entering school. Dementors are not "good" creatures.

And the fact that Edward and Rose adopted me... was very strange. Edward just said yesterday that he almost thought Cohen was a Muggle child. It didn't seem like they knew Cohen's identity as a dark magic experiment subject.

But Dumbledore also said, "This was Edward and Rose's own choice," which means that the two must have known most of the circumstances and the dangers of adoption, but they still did it.

Cohen felt a little touched in his heart. The love of these adoptive parents for him was real, and it would not matter even if there were more lies.

Putting aside these unimportant matters, Cohen now only wanted to figure out one thing: how he was able to peek and eavesdrop on what was happening on the street outside as if his soul was out of his body.

And Dumbledore seemed completely unaware of it!

There are many magical methods that can be used to simply peek, but being able to do so without being discovered by the most powerful wizard of this century is very subtle.

Of course, Cohen was not planning to spy on whether Dumbledore was secretly hiding a stack of photos of Grindelwald, but he could use this method to collect information extremely safely - think about it, a single God's perspective plug-in can make the situation of a game one-sided, not to mention the God's perspective in reality!

Still won’t be caught and banned!

But how can I trigger that state again?

Sleep? Isn't this trigger method a bit too useless?
Cohen sat back down on the bed and sank back onto the pillows.

But now my consciousness is extremely clear and excited, and if I want to fall asleep again, I will probably have to rely on physical hypnosis.

However, after closing his eyes, Cohen clearly had a strange feeling.

It's like... it's cracked?
That's pretty much how it can be described. The soul is torn apart, with only one place still tightly connected.

Cohen can also actively control the shape of the two halves of his soul, and observe everything around him from the perspective of his soul - including Cohen's body lying on the bed.

However, when all of Cohen's souls leave the body, the body will enter a state of suspended animation with "no life activities" until Cohen's soul comes and it will recover.

The soul can be stretched, or flattened, or rolled out like dough into something like a cape—

Wait a minute...

"Isn't this a Dementor?"

After Cohen molded himself into a cloak-like thing, he examined the appearance of his soul.

My goodness, with his black, rag-like appearance and two rotten hands, he might as well go to Azkaban for a civil service interview.

After studying for a while, Cohen discovered a way to play.

You can place half of your soul on your body and the other half outside, so that you can control your body and see more things through your soul - but because the two halves of the soul are closely connected, there is a limit to the distance that the two halves of the soul can move separately.

Although this part of the connection can be adjusted at will, its length is still limited, only about fifteen meters, which is exactly the distance from Cohen's room to the other end of Privet Drive.

No wonder I was able to overhear the conversation between Dumbledore and McGonagall on Privet Drive last night without realizing it.

[Ding! Special ability unlocked: Spirit Shaping (1/10)]

So this is how the special ability column is unlocked?!

Cohen originally thought that the system was already rudimentary for not providing a gift pack for beginners, but it turned out that this special ability had to be unlocked through exploration and discovery by himself.

"It's so hard. I feel like I'm losing right at the starting line compared to the time travelers in online novels..."

Now that the new trick has been figured out, the next thing to do is to wash up, eat, and then follow Edward to Diagon Alley to buy school supplies.

Before going downstairs, Cohen opened the gift from Rose.

It was a snow globe that required two hands to hold up, and inside it lived three living clay figures, living happily together in a small snowy village - "happy" because Cohen could even hear the cheerful laughter coming from the house that the family of three had just walked into.

This thing sleeps at night, right? Otherwise, having a ball that makes giggling sounds in the dorm would be a bit too creepy.

But generally speaking, the gift from Rose was great, and Cohen always liked such warm gifts. After all, he rarely received such straightforward "love" on Earth in his previous life - Cohen really didn't want to admit that he was indeed an orphan in his previous life.

But the clay figurine, powered by a solidification spell, had no soul, so Cohen couldn't keep the snow globe as an emergency dessert.

"How are we going to get to Diagon Alley later?"

At the dining table, Cohen successfully swallowed the last piece of bread and butter with milk, and asked Edward, who had already started counting the gold galleons and silver Sickles.

Floo fan? Apparate with a minion?

"Driving? How else can we get there? Magic carpet?" Edward rubbed his hands and estimated the remaining amount. Maybe he could still have a lot of money left and buy a pet for Cohen to take to school.

(End of this chapter)