Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world

Chapter 141 Voldemort's Past
“No need,” Vaughn said. “Those Death Eaters disgust me. Send me to Dumbledore!”

Aurora breathed a sigh of relief.

He was genuinely afraid that the other party would continue to tour the area, as there were several more Death Eaters below. If another Dementor suddenly went berserk and was injured by the other party, he would have a hard time explaining himself.

He said cheerfully, “Yes, sir. Please stand still, Mr. Weasley. We’ll be going back upstairs right away.”

As for whether anything happened in the cell before?

There was absolutely no need to ask. Apart from the kind and naive Mr. Fudge, no one believed that Death Eaters needed so-called human rights!

The two guards will go and take stock in a while. As long as no one is dead, any unusual activity inside will be kept secret.

……

Back at the upper level of the fortress, the soft sunlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, casting a hazy glow on the island.

After spending some time in the high-security area, Vaughn felt extremely uncomfortable. He went out and sunbathed for a while before, guided by the Aurors, he found Dumbledore in a rather cozy lounge on the top floor of the fortress.

When Vaughn entered, the old man was sitting by the window in the lounge, his crescent-shaped glasses reflecting the sunlight.

Opposite him sat an old man with long, tangled hair and a dazed expression.

A thin silver thread emerged from the old man's forehead, the other end sticking to Dumbledore's fingertip. Dumbledore's eyes gleamed with a deep blue light, and many shadows swept across his pupils.

He's reading the other person's memories!
"Is this Morfin Gunter?" Vaughn walked to the old man's side and looked down at him.

The old man's hair was dirty and tangled, covered with thick grime, making it almost impossible to discern its original color. His face also had the typical color of someone who had spent a long time in Azkaban—pale, sickly, and thin to the point of being almost transparent.

What impressed Vaughn most was the other man's eyes.

Of course, it wasn't that his eyes were particularly beautiful, but rather that they were deformed; those two dull black pupils, even in his demented state, still stared in two opposite directions.

"...The pathetic concept of purebloods, inbreeding..."

Upon noticing the old man's eyes, Vaughn immediately commented.

Then he heard Dumbledore sigh: "Yes, even among the Holy Twenty-Eight Families, the Gaunt are the most obsessed with the concept of pure blood. In pursuit of so-called purity, they disregard human ethics, and in the end, they only give birth to one tragedy after another."

Vaughn looked up and saw the blue light in Dumbledore's eyes slowly fade.

Old Deng stared at the strand of silver thread in his hand, his expression not looking good.

"Memory retrieval not going smoothly?"

“…Hmm, these memories are false!” Dumbledore said, fiddling with his fingers as he placed the silver thread back into Morfin Gaunt’s enormous head.

Vaughn was not at all surprised by the result he mentioned.

Before coming, both of them had read the case file of the Riddle massacre, which clearly recorded that Morfin Gaunt confessed to killing the Muggle Riddle family.

If his memories hadn't been altered, how could he possibly admit it willingly?
“Such exquisite memory magic. If I weren’t somewhat skilled, I probably wouldn’t have been able to detect the alterations…” Dumbledore said with a complicated expression. “Even now, there are no more than 10 wizards in the entire wizarding world who can detect that Morfin Gaunt’s memories have been modified.”

"Back then, Tom was just a student..."

As he spoke, he glanced at Vaughn.

That's why he always felt that Vaughn was a lot like Tom; the two were equally brilliant and possessed profound magical skills at a young age.

Such genius is rare even in the thousand-year history of Hogwarts.

Vaughn, who knew Dumbledore very well, immediately understood what he was thinking. He rolled his eyes at him and said sarcastically, "Please rest assured, great Headmaster, I care more about this face than Tom does, and I have no interest in becoming that monstrous appearance of his!"

Dumbledore, regaining his senses, grinned and said, "Yes, but don't be like Tom, or Granger will be heartbroken."

Vaughn, too lazy to waste time arguing with him, asked, "What are you planning to do next?"

Dumbledore, whose mood seemed to have improved, smiled and said, "Of course, it's an attempt to restore Morfin Gaunt's memories. He must know the whereabouts of Gaunt's Ring, in fact..."

He looked at the old man with deformed eyes opposite him and sighed, "...He also realized that his memory was not right, so even though he had been in Azkaban for decades, even though every day was like hell, he did not forget the memory of the Riddle massacre, but preserved it carefully."

"He's a pitiful man. Even without the Gaunt ring, I have to try to restore his memories so that I can clear his name!"

Restoring Morfin Gaunt's memories is no easy task.

This tragic victim, during his decades-long life in Azkaban, had his mind shattered by the Dementors' greedy sucking, with his consciousness, memory system, and so on severely damaged.

"It's like walking through a mountain of garbage!"

When Vaughn made this comment, he and Dumbledore were in Morfin Gaunt's mental world.

All that could be seen was chaos. Memories, thoughts, emotions... these abstract concepts without substance were now like shredded paintings, wandering haphazardly in a dark void.

Vaughn looked down at his feet; it was a short, tan country road that, in the mind of a healthy person, would stretch far into the distance.

But in Morfin Gunter's memory today, it was less than 10 feet long, with no grass or rural scenery along the roadside, only endless darkness.

Several thorn bushes emerged from the darkness, perched at the end of the path, obscuring an old road sign.

Seeing the sign, Dumbledore looked pleased. He leaned closer to examine it and replied to Vaughn, "Yes, it's confusing, but there are still clues... Ha, little Hangleton, I haven't come to the wrong place."

Dumbledore shouted with delight.

Vaughn looked in that direction and saw two directional arrows at the top of the road sign, one reading "Big Hangleton, 5 miles" and the other "Little Hangleton, 1 mile".

However, neither of the two arrows pointed to a road. To be precise, due to the fragmentation of his memories, it was impossible to know where this "road" was located in Morfin Gaunt's mental world, or in what form it existed.

Because memory is a very sophisticated system, if we look at the process of memory formation, it is "fluctuating" and is a collection of many subjective feelings - information collected by sensory organs such as vision, hearing, and touch, and then summarized in the brain.

Since it's a collection, it can be broken down. A normal person's memory can be a continuous, clear scene, while a person whose mind is in disarray...

Dumbledore raised his hand and reached out to grasp at the air.

The magical energy spread outwards, but along with his magic, only a few blurry patches of color drifted towards the end of the path beneath their feet.

That was Morfin Gaunt's memory of the subsequent connections to this path, or rather, only a part of that memory.

It is a color perception, a color signal that is entered by the eyes, edited by the brain, and then decomposed again due to the overall chaos of the mental world!
"Sigh, it's gotten to this point..." Dumbledore sighed, then turned to Vaughn: "My dear?"

Vaughn grinned and rolled up his sleeves: "Why are you looking at me?"

"...Of course, it's about getting your help to find your memories. Isn't that part of the deal?"

Vaughn remained unmoved: "I never agreed to that. Besides, you've been immersed in memory magic for nearly a century. Don't tell me you can't even do the most basic memory information compilation!"

Of course, Lao Deng can do it.

However, everyone has a different focus when it comes to memory magic. His technique is more focused on the extraction and restoration of memories. No matter how deeply a person's memories are hidden, he can dig them out.

However, his technique is not very useful for memory elements that have been redistributed into various signals and information.

Old Deng rubbed his temples. Having spent a long time with Vaughn, he was now very familiar with the man's personality and knew that Vaughn's refusal was not because he didn't want to help.

Instead, they mostly need something as compensation.

He then said helplessly, "Tell me, what do you want?"

Vaughn was unfazed by Dumbledore's discovery of his purpose and said, "I want to copy some magical knowledge from Morfin Gaunt's memories."

This request made Dumbledore frown slightly.

According to the information he found, the Gaunt family had already declined during the time of Marvolo Gaunt (Voldemort's maternal grandfather), and was so poor that they only had an old house left, and it was said that they couldn't even afford new clothes.

But after all, they are direct descendants of Slytherin, so they should have some hidden treasures.

Especially the Slytherin lineage... This one of the four great powers was obsessed with the study of bloodlines and souls in his later years. Because he fell out with the other three great powers, no one knows exactly what he researched when he passed it down to the Gaunt family, or how dangerous it was.

but……

Could I really refuse Vaughn?

Thinking about it, Dumbledore's expression turned somewhat bitter. He considered for a while before reluctantly nodding: "I promise you... but I also hope you promise me, my dear, don't rashly try things you don't understand. Or, if you want to learn anything, you can talk to me first. You know, I no longer object to you learning dark magic!"

Not opposing does not mean agreeing.

Vaughn understood Dumbledore's dilemma perfectly well. He was too lazy to say anything more; as long as Dumbledore agreed, that was enough.

After discussing the matter, Vaughn raised his right hand to his left shoulder and gently tugged. Silently, a hazy white humanoid silhouette separated from his "body".

Personality in disguise!

Even Dumbledore considered Vaughn's memory magic crystallization to be a very sophisticated form of magic.

Dumbledore narrowed his eyes slightly, a faint, azure light shining in his pupils.

He stared intently at the detached persona, watching it disintegrate into a thick white mist the moment it left Vaughn's body, hanging down and spreading outwards.

But in reality, the white mist was just a facade. In Dumbledore's magical vision, what he saw was the essence of countless extremely fine, invisible threads that pierced deeply into this spiritual world the instant his personality collapsed and the white mist spread.

In the blink of an eye, Dumbledore saw the shattered country road beneath his feet and fragments floating in the darkness in the distance.

Threads were already emerging.

They resemble mycelia growing from spores, taking root, infecting, and growing among countless fragments, which are soon covered with "white fuzz".

After a while, the white fur started to glow with multicolored lights and began to sway, as if it had suddenly come to life, looking extremely eerie!

At the same time, Dumbledore saw the country road beneath his feet, covered in white fur, beginning to "grow" at the broken point.

No, it should be said that those white hairs are like silk threads, re-weaving the path!
"Intrusion, analysis, collection, editing... is this Vaughn's specialty in memory magic?"

As I pondered, the path grew faster and faster.

A dirt road, white and yellow, climbs and winds rapidly through the void.

Soon, the road came to an end, and a dense forest was revealed.

The trees in the dense forest are tall and lush, casting dark and thick shadows.

An old, dilapidated house, covered in moss and vines, was half-hidden among the tangled roots of the trees.

That's the Gaunt old house!

Before coming to Azkaban, Dumbledore made a special trip to Little Hangleton to investigate. Although the actual Gaunt House had long since collapsed due to years of neglect, its general outline was still intact.

But Dumbledore also knew that what was presented before him was not Morphin Gaunt's true memory, but rather a recombination and editing of all of Morphin's memories of Gaunt's old house, collected by Vaughn using his Persona.

Therefore, strictly speaking, the old house in front of us is completely fake.

However, what Dumbledore needed was not real memories.

All he needed was a scene, a place where the story would take place!

Dumbledore stepped onto the path and headed toward the old house, with Vaughn beside him.

The simulation of personification is still ongoing.

Countless tiny, transparent threads also spread through Morfin Gaunt's mental world.

As more and more information was collected, the scene around the two became more and more complete... When they walked into the dense forest, there were tall ancient trees with dense foliage.

Vaughn looked up, then snapped his fingers.

So the shadows of the swaying trees were no longer dark, and a few bright, clear moonlight shone down into the gloomy, cool woodland.

In that pearl-like light, the gloomy atmosphere was instantly dispelled, and the air became soft and warm.

At the same time, a tall, handsome young man with jet-black hair, carrying an oil lamp, quietly appeared beside Vaughn and Dumbledore.

Neither of them was surprised by "his" appearance. They watched in silence as the black-haired boy walked past them.

The black-haired boy also ignored the presence of the two.

He walked along the path in the moonlight, flicking the oil lamp, until he reached the old house of Gaunt.

It was a dilapidated house that was too awful to look at.

The walls are covered with traces of erosion by moss, vines and other plants. The roof is sloping at a steep angle, and many tiles are broken, exposing the uneven rafters underneath.

Tall nettles grew around the house, so densely that they almost completely blocked the windows.

Following behind the black-haired boy, Vaughn glanced at the old house a few times before focusing his attention on the boy.

It was clear that this was also the first time the black-haired boy had been here. He hesitated, then raised the oil lamp and, by the light of the moon and lamp, looked at the dilapidated house with a furrowed brow.

After hesitating for a moment, the black-haired boy finally knocked on the door.

dong dong!

Dumbledore grabbed Vaughn's arm, and Vaughn did not resist, letting him pull him forward a step.

The next instant, everything spun around, and Vaughn felt a darkness before his eyes—truly pitch black. They found themselves in a closed room, unlit and completely dark.

All that could be heard was a heavy knocking sound coming from the direction of the door.

Then, with a creak, the door was pushed open, and a black-haired boy came in carrying an oil lamp, the dim light providing some illumination.

On the dusty ground illuminated by the lamplight, a middle-aged wizard surrounded by empty bottles, his face covered with hair and beard, shuddered and came to his senses. He raised his wand at the boy.

"hiss--"

He screamed loudly.

The black-haired boy responded with the same hissing sound, like a snake.

“Parsleyan?” Vaughn turned to look at Dumbledore.

Old Deng nodded: "Yes, the Gaunt family inherited this special ability from Slytherin."

Watching the dark-haired boy and the middle-aged wizard scream at each other, Vaughn was speechless: "Can you understand what they're saying?"

"I can understand some of it, but that's all I can understand. After all, I don't speak with a snake-like accent!"

Dumbledore smiled and looked at the dark-haired boy, his eyes slightly narrowed and his vision somewhat blurred: "This memory is from when Tom first came to the Gaunt family, when he was investigating his origins... A teenager, he must have been eager to know what his ancestors were like."

"He first returned to the Muggle orphanage and tracked down his mother, Merop Gaunt, who had committed suicide."

"But he simply couldn't accept that his mother was such a cowardly person, that a witch would commit suicide, so he placed his hopes on the Gaunt family, hoping they were a noble family..."

As they spoke, the young Voldemort and Morfin Gaunt in the room screamed more and more intensely.

Vaughn observed the young Voldemort, noticing his eyes frequently sweeping over the dilapidated and dirty traces of the old house, and over the disheveled Morfin, his uncle.

Dumbledore was also watching, his eyes deep and unfathomable: "Tom is a very proud man. He is smarter than all his classmates, even more powerful than adult wizards. He thinks he must have a noble bloodline... but reality is always crueler than dreams."

In the center of the room, after a few more screams, something Morfin said caused the young Voldemort's face to suddenly turn ashen, his expression becoming hysterical!

He suddenly drew his wand, his pupils gleaming with a terrifying light.

An invisible curse slammed into Morfin Gunter, and in the next instant, endless darkness descended from an unknown direction.

It instantly engulfed the living room of the Gaunt mansion.

Then--

Snapped!
Dumbledore clapped his hands, and the sudden darkness abruptly stopped, along with the flickering lights, the Morphin who was knocked away by the spell, and Voldemort's robes that were billowing with magical energy!

Vaughn stared at the darkness that had encroached on half of the living room. "The memory ends here. What follows is that false memory that you extracted?"

Dumbledore's expression was complicated: "Yes, Tom found out who his biological father was, and then there was the Morfin massacre of the Riddle family. That altered memory isn't very useful... However, we can speculate on the truth based on what we know so far—"

"As I said, he was a proud man who couldn't even tolerate his mother's suicide, let alone the fact that his father was a worthless Muggle."

"Perhaps it was at that moment that his mentality collapsed. He attacked Morfin Gaunt, then stole Morfin's wand and used it to slaughter the Riddle family, who also lived in Little Hangleton. Then he came back and fabricated a false memory for Morfin, making Morfin believe that he had killed the Riddle family!"

"Incidentally, he also took Morfen's ring."

His gaze finally settled on Morfin Gaunt's right hand, where a black gemstone engraved with the Peverell emblem glittered in the light.

Vaughn also looked at the ring and said, "What are you going to do next? My Persona can only be restored to this extent for now. Morfin Gaunt's memories are too messy, and Voldemort's methods are too clever. He didn't leave any traces to follow. If I were to continue, I could only use the rather clumsy process of elimination to search through Morfin Gaunt's mental world."

"Oh, you've done enough, child."

Dumbledore smiled, walked over to Morfin Gaunt, and stroked the messy, tangled head with one hand: "Watch me now. With your help in reconstructing this stable memory scene, I'll try to drag Morfin Gaunt over and have him take me there!"

Vaughn and Dumbledore have completely different understandings of memory and the mind.

Memory magic is also the most idealistic of all spells. It is easily influenced by a wizard's beliefs, which include philosophical ideas.

Philosophy is a way of understanding the world and comprehending all things.

If we had to define their philosophical ideas, then without a doubt, Vaughn leaned more towards materialism, while Dumbledore leaned more towards objective idealism.

In a general sense, the two seem to be not much different.

Both believe in the existence of objective entities and that human cognition of the world and all things is limited. For example, memory is the projection of matter onto the mind through the senses such as the eyes, rather than the truth. That is, what you see, hear, and feel, and what you ultimately form into memory, is only one side of things, not their true appearance.

However, upon closer examination, materialism and objective idealism actually contain irreconcilable contradictions:
Knowable and unknowable!

For materialists, everything must have objective laws, and everything must be interpretable and understandable. One day, the truth or the real truth will be grasped.

For objective idealists, things exist objectively, but people can only understand their projections, not their true nature, because the true nature cannot be directly inserted into the human brain.

In Muggle society, such differences would mostly amount to nothing more than verbal sparring, with neither side able to convince the other.

However, in the magical world where consciousness can interact with things through some medium, the distinction between materialism and idealism becomes enormous when applied to magic like memory magic, which is easily influenced by concepts.

For example, Vaughn's persona disguise!
Its main functions are analysis, collection, and compilation. Its functions clearly show traces of epistemology: analysis is used to observe things, collection is used to summarize information, and compilation is used to transform the summarized information.

In theory, as long as Vaughn continues to improve and his senses continue to upgrade, one day he will be able to compile reality into his memory on a 1:1 scale.

In the midst of ethereal memories, let us recreate a universe of truth!
It can be said that, under the influence of materialism, the upgrade path of the Persona Armor developed by Vaughn is traceable even to Muggles who do not understand magic.

Because its core principle is "everything is knowable"!
In contrast, Dumbledore's memory magic is "unknowable"...something that is simply incomprehensible!

thump—

When Dumbledore's hand touched Morfin Gaunt's head, Vaughn felt only an ethereal sound echo in his ears.

The next second, his consciousness was plunged into boundless darkness!
But Vaughn didn't panic, because he knew that the darkness wasn't in his consciousness; it was actually affecting Morfin Gaunt's mental world. He felt the darkness only because he was also in Morfin Gaunt's mental world.

Without resistance, Vaughn remained quietly in the silent darkness.

Before long, a ray of light appeared, and then quickly grew stronger.

It's Dumbledore!
At this moment, the old wizard radiated a gentle yet highly penetrating light that stretched out in the boundless darkness, yet had no boundaries.

Like a star floating in the boundless space.

Standing in the darkness, Dumbledore opened his hand, and a bubble-like object floated in his palm—it was the old Gaunt mansion that Vaughn had woven with his Persona not long ago. It floated on the surface of the bubble like a painting, twisting and flowing.

The instant the bubbles appeared, countless mirror images of the old Gaunt house emerged in the boundless darkness.

They appeared in all directions, shrouded in thick gray fog, like nested mirrors, endlessly folding outwards in all directions.

Some were illuminated by the light emanating from Dumbledore, but many more remained hidden in darkness, their outlines stretching endlessly into the distance.

Dumbledore raised the bubble high, and a dark wave emanated from him.

Sensing the fluctuations and the gray mist surrounding the mirror, Vaughn, who had been observing from the sidelines, suddenly felt that everything was very familiar... much like what he had seen and heard a few months ago when Dumbledore took him on a journey through the Aether!
This……

The next moment, a somewhat bewildered Vaughn sensed that something in the depths of darkness was responding to Dumbledore!

No, it's not anything.

Vaughn lowered his head and looked at the countless phantom images of Morfin Gaunt gradually emerging in the mirror images of the surrounding Gaunt houses.

Some virtual images, like their mirror counterparts, are illuminated by light, while others, like the mirror image that only shows its outline, are merely blurry shadows.

They raised their hands at the same time—

"Dumbledore——"

"come over--"

The cacophony of countless voices seemed both close at hand and far away.

Looking at the countless phantoms that seemed to have their own consciousness, Vaughn, who had experienced a similar scene in the ether, suddenly understood something.

He looked at Dumbledore: "These..."

In the distance, after "summoning" the phantoms, Dumbledore, who looked somewhat tired, smiled upon seeing this: "Yes, they are Morfin Gaunt's subconscious... Do you remember the alchemy books you once read? The subconscious is the embodiment of all dreams, fantasies, and forgotten memories."

Vaughn certainly remembered.

He even made plans to study the subconscious after he tried to enter the ether and truly observed its existence.

Because during his practice of memory magic, one thing kept bothering him—why do people's memories gradually recover over time after being modified?

At that time, he guessed that there must be a backup of his memories somewhere.

I later learned that the subconscious mind has the function of storing forgotten memories.

but……

Vaughn stared at the countless subconscious minds of Morfin Gaunt. He knew that each of them was real, just like back in the Aether, where his consciousness was infinitely subdivided because the Aether had no concept of time.

These "Moffin Gunter" are also the subconscious of Moffin Gunter, who has lost the concept of time and is infinitely subdivided!

This realization greatly surprised him, and he couldn't help but look up at Dumbledore, who was smiling at him: "Is the human mind connected to the ether?"

Although it is a question.

But Vaughn was certain that what he was asking was the truth, not just because after his last journey through the Aether and learning about the existence of the subconscious, he had tested it on his experimental subjects (Harry and Peter) and found no trace of the subconscious.

It truly exists only in the ether, as alchemical texts state.

Furthermore, he suddenly understood why alchemists could enter the ether simply through meditation.

Because the two are inherently interconnected!
Having figured out the connection between the mind and the ether, Vaughn suddenly realized something, but a new question arose in his mind: if the mind is connected to the ether, then why can only alchemists enter the ether?
In fact, he found it strange when he first saw the Golden Soul School divide humans into concepts such as "mental body," "spiritual body," and "subconscious" in alchemical literature.

Alchemy is a discipline that studies matter, but the theories summarized by the Golden Soul school are more like Muggle psychology.

Psychology studies groups, not unique individuals or small groups.

This is the complete opposite of reality—alchemists are a small group, while Muggles and ordinary wizards, who make up a much larger proportion of the population, are unable to enter the aether. They lack alchemical talent and are unable to detect or observe the aether.

Why did the alchemists who developed the "Golden Soul" doctrine include Muggles and ordinary wizards in their theories?

Vaughn vaguely sensed the problem...

Perhaps, in theory, just as the hypothesis of "all things connected to the universe (golden) soul" suggests, just as we see now, the spiritual world is connected to the ether.

Perhaps, in the eyes of alchemists, all intelligent life could originally enter the ether.

The reason they cannot do so at present is simply because they are "not perfect" or "incomplete." Among those "defects," what is missing is a crucial authority, a key!
(End of this chapter)