Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world

Chapter 146 The Invisible Hand

Therefore, even the all-knowing Miss, who always dislikes trouble and is too lazy to take care of herself, could not resist this novel approach.

Of course, that includes her teeth!
About a week ago, Mr. Granger personally fixed his daughter's front teeth, and with the help of a potion that Hermione had specially found, the two slightly larger front teeth have now returned to their original size.

Mr. Granger was upset about this for several days—as a dentist, he was happy to restore his patients' beauty and confidence.

But as a father, he gets so angry that he can't eat whenever he thinks about his stubborn daughter suddenly wanting to get her teeth fixed for another man!

After basking in the sun for a while, Hermione, who had remained silent, suddenly asked, "What exactly is the corruption of dark magic? Or rather, what form does it take?"

Ordinary couples can spend an entire day together, completely absorbed and doing nothing.

However, when Vaughn and Hermione are alone, they rarely talk about anything beyond feelings. They usually discuss topics that interest them, such as magic, philosophy, and even Muggle science.

Under the long-term influence, Hermione's way of thinking has also begun to approach Vaughn's—for example, now, when she encounters something she doesn't understand, she doesn't follow her existing knowledge and accept the wizarding world's definition wholesale, but tries to understand its objective form from another different perspective.

Upon hearing her question, Vaughn did not answer immediately.

Under the bright sunlight, he squinted slightly, pondered for a moment, and then said, "I don't have a conclusion yet. Would you like to study it together?"

Hermione raised her head and glanced at him silently.

Although Vaughn didn't say it, she could already deduce that the contamination might not be due to learning a curse, but rather to some unconventional variables.

She always knew that Vaughn was hiding many things from her.

He may have another side that is not so acceptable to others.

but……

As memories of the past year flashed through her mind, Hermione became absolutely certain that Vaughn was not a bad person!
He may not be a conventional wizard; he is somewhat rebellious and anti-traditional.

But he's definitely not a bad guy.

This isn't Hermione's romantic ego or a beautified subjective perspective, but rather the answer she subconsciously gleaned from her daily observations of Vaughn's behavior after more than a year of getting to know him.

He followed the rules.

Even when he's very busy, he tries his best to be present in every class if conditions allow. This is his way of showing respect to professors and pioneers. In contrast, he also directly rejects those who seek fame and fortune, such as Quirinas Quiró and Gilderoy Lockhart, whom he just threw into Azkaban at the beginning of the month!

He also possesses empathy.

After spending a long time together, Hermione admitted that Vaughn's initial intentions in developing the wolfsbane potion might not have been honorable, as some of his opponents had said in the newspapers, that Vaughn Weasley was trying to exploit the werewolves.

But unlike those people, Hermione, who had been by Vaughn's side for a long time, actually saw more of Vaughn's contributions to the WAC.

The simplest point is that no one asked Vaughn to be responsible for the survival of the werewolves, but the fact is that from the very beginning of the WAC, it was Vaughn who provided loans and connections so that the werewolves could escape their savage lifestyle and return to human society.

This is something that shouldn't have been done by him; it should have been a shared responsibility of the entire magical world!
So in Hermione's mind, Vaughn might be an ambitious man, but he was definitely not a reckless rule-breaker. He might be "rebellious," or he might have his own ideas.

But at the same time, he is also cautious. As long as the world's order can still meet his needs, and as long as he is not ready to create a new order, he will remain the world's orderkeeper!
Young girls don't have enough experience to clearly define what is good and bad.

But she knew an irrefutable truth: the greatest disaster in the world is the collapse of order, and the greatest good is the maintenance of order.

A person who is willing to follow the rules can never be associated with "bad".

In her eyes, that's exactly the kind of person Vaughn is!
Hermione didn't know what Vaughn was planning, but as long as he didn't intend to destroy the world, she felt she could accept it...

After a long pause, Hermione nodded and smiled, "Okay, how can I help you?"

In reality, her heart was far from calm; instead, she was filled with trepidation and trembling. She knew this was a sign that Vaughn was willing to reveal a part of his secret to her!
Vaughn said softly, "Let's look at a memory together first!"

As he spoke, a deep blue light shone in his eyes, drawing Hermione into his inner world.

The process was quick!

Aside from a fleeting, barely noticeable moment of disorientation, Hermione barely sensed anything amiss; they remained leaning against the attic windowsill, basking in the sunlight.

When sunlight shines on the skin, the skin becomes slightly red and warm due to the stimulation of the light.

A gentle breeze slipped in through the cracks in the window, and the curtains swayed slightly like the trees outside.

If Hermione hadn't looked up and seen the strange sight on Vaughn, she wouldn't have even known that she had escaped reality—wisps of thick white mist hung down from Vaughn's body, making him look as if he were wearing a raincoat woven from thick fog.

Hermione is very familiar with this.

Personality in disguise!

As mentioned earlier, when the two spend time together in private, they don't "waste time" like other couples. For them, discussing academics and knowledge is actually a way to communicate their feelings.

Since the beginning of the year, Hermione has been involved in Vaughn's Persona development process to some extent, and has naturally seen what it looks like more than once.

Realizing she had entered Vaughn's mental world, Hermione curiously lowered her head to observe herself.

At first glance, there was nothing unusual; the clothes were just like those in real life, everything was so real and simple that it felt like we were still in the real world.

Noticing her curiosity, Vaughn ruffled her hair: "This background is a memory from a second ago; it's completely based on reality."

Although Hermione wasn't very skilled in memory magic, she had heard Vaughn mention some of it.

According to Vaughn's theory, memory is actually the recording and reproduction of information collected by the senses.

I remembered Vaughn saying he would show her a memory.

Hermione hesitated for a moment, then asked, "The memories you're going to show me, are they also things that actually happened and caused you to be corrupted by dark magic?"

"Yes, it just happened today... Are you ready?"

Vaughn asked her in a low voice.

Hermione paused for a moment, her thoughts racing, but she quickly suppressed her distractions and nodded emphatically: "Ready!"

Vaughn didn't say anything more.

To be honest, he hadn't originally intended for Hermione to get involved in his "secret" too early, but as they spent more and more time together, he started acting strangely.

One can imagine that Hermione probably had a lot of questions accumulating in her mind.

The reason he hadn't said anything was simply because the girl was considerate of his feelings and hadn't spoken up.

Maintaining and communicating relationships is a two-way street, and he has no reason to feel at ease letting Hermione always be in the role of "giving" in this mutual process.

So when Hermione asked about the corruption of dark magic, he thought about it and decided to take the opportunity to reveal some of his secrets to the girl.

As for whether she can accept it...

Vaughn wasn't sure either!

After thinking it over, Vaughn hesitated for a moment, which was uncharacteristic of him, but he still raised his hand and snapped his fingers!
In an instant, the memories of the changing world resurfaced!

The surrounding scenery became blurry for a moment.

It's like sitting on a speeding train, with everything outside the window rushing past so quickly that they merge into one blurry outline in your eyes, indistinguishable.

But this change soon stopped.

When her vision cleared again, Hermione found herself and Vaughn in a seaside fishing village. She could see the cliffs and the ocean in the distance, and also saw another "Vaughn" and two middle-aged men in front of her.

They stood in front of a small building with a golden roof and white paint, and "Vaughn" raised his wand.

But everything is frozen in time.

Raindrops falling from the sky float in the air, reflecting the faint light diffracted from the horizon, making them sparkle like gemstones.

Hermione curiously raised her hand and touched it, only to have her hand pass right through the raindrop.

It reminded her that this was the world of the mind, of memories, not of real objects.

She glanced at Vaughn beside her, and under her curious gaze, Vaughn snapped his fingers.

Snapped!
The world that had been frozen in time suddenly came alive!

A curtain of rain, like a beaded curtain, fell instantly, and a sudden gust of wind swept in, the sounds of wind, rain, and distant waves crashing... countless sounds rushed into our ears in an instant.

And then, a spell was cast!

"Tempus Edax!"

Hermione's eyes widened suddenly, her brown pupils reflecting the rain flowing backward around the other "Vaughn" in front of her, and the fleeting twisted vortex at the tip of "his" staff.

And the next second, further away, that small building suddenly seemed to have its time taken away, rapidly decaying!

There were also the six magical lights struggling to resist inside the small building.

In less than ten seconds, she witnessed the building collapse, saw the six magical lights go out one by one, heard their desperate roars, and then, under the spell of "Vorn," they turned into skeletons one by one, visible to the naked eye!
The little witch was stunned for a moment.

Snapped!
With a snap of the fingers, everything froze once more.

The sudden stop of the video startled Hermione awake. She looked at Vaughn, who was staring at her silently, and her lips trembled slightly.

There are so many things I want to say, but I don't know how to start!
As she hesitated, Vaughn's expression softened.

Without a doubt, Hermione is kind at heart, just as she was very intelligent but was not sorted into Ravenclaw by the Sorting Hat, but instead into Gryffindor, which symbolizes bravery.

Clearly, in the Sorting Hat's view, courage and ambition outweigh intelligence and rationality in Hermione Granger's mind.

But that's precisely the complexity of human nature. No label can fully represent a living person. In real life, it's not that any wizard who enters Gryffindor is an absolute person who upholds positive emotions represented by courage.

People's ideas are influenced and constrained by a variety of factors.

Therefore, Gryffindor, which symbolizes courage, has a coward like Peter Pettigrew; Ravenclaw, which symbolizes wisdom, has the good-for-nothing Gilderoy Lockhart; and Slytherin, which symbolizes ambition, lust for power, and ruthlessness, also has Regulus Black and Severus Snape!
So... the kind-hearted Hermione wasn't actually as principled as she imagined.

In fact, Hufflepuff, which is more inclusive of education and does not impose restrictions on enrollment, is more in line with the complex nature of "human beings".

After letting his thoughts wander for a moment, Vaughn gently took his girlfriend's hand.

Hermione didn't struggle; she remained silent.

She was waiting for Vaughn to give an "explanation," a reason that she could accept!
And Vaughn did indeed provide the answer. Looking at the frozen memory image, he said, "The six people in that small building were a group of dark wizards..."

The reason was simple, but it was enough for Hermione!

The girl herself didn't realize that when Vaughn said the people in that building were dark wizards, she visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

Moreover, Vaughn also explained the "cause and effect".

“...William and James were attacked by them while working for the WAC, so I brought Remus and Mundungus here to punish these guys...That short, stout guy is Mundungus, a good guy who hangs around in the black market, and he's also a member of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix.”

Hearing this, Hermione was completely relieved.

Of course, she did notice some ambiguities, such as why Vaughn was sent to punish the dark wizard instead of the Aurors from the Ministry of Magic.
The girl subconsciously overlooked this point—some things shouldn't be investigated too thoroughly.

This was the first time Harry and Ron were annoyed by her stubbornness, and it was also the first time she had learned a lesson during the months she had been isolated in her dormitory.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione forced herself to focus her gaze on the frozen memory: the small building destroyed by Vaughn's magic, and the dark wizard reduced to a skeleton.

She had not forgotten her primary purpose in entering Vaughn's memories.

"What kind of spell is this?"

"The Curse of Time, a curse related to time, is not considered particularly vicious in dark magic, and the negative emotions it requires are not too extreme."

"If we can rule out the cause of this curse, then the contamination occurred after you... after you killed these people?"

"Ok!"

Vaughn responded, and the frozen memory began to move again, but this time it did not continue to play back linearly. The memory scene in front of him suddenly collapsed into large swathes of silver, which looked like light or mist.

This is the true appearance of memory; the silver threads that the memory magic pulls from the forehead are what it looks like after it separates.

Hermione looked at the silver light and mist around her. According to Vaughn's understanding of another aspect of matter, abstract concepts such as mind, memory, spirit, and consciousness are all "information".

Information is inherently invisible.

Just as computer data needs to be compiled into code and visualized in order to be seen intuitively, the essence of memory is actually the brain's graphical compilation of "information".

Thanks to the evolution of life, this process is completed automatically by the brain, without control or reversibility (because reversal is not within the functional scope of brain evolution).

But for a wizard like Vaughn who is proficient in memory magic, restoring memories to the state of "information" is not a difficult task.

This method is also usually the most intuitive way to examine one's own memory structure using memory magic.

The silvery mist churned continuously.

Gradually, Hermione saw specks of black appear in the light mist. Just like she had seen in reality before, they moved rapidly, almost indistinguishable as whether they were spots or threads. Even when Vaughn snapped his fingers again to freeze the light mist, they remained unaffected.

Hermione was disappointed.

Beside her, Vaughn gazed at the black trails that continued to move through the frozen silver mist, his brows gradually relaxing.

Hermione noticed his expression.

"Did you find anything?"

"It's not exactly a discovery, just some conjectures." Vaughn sighed and said thoughtfully, "You should still remember my understanding of abstract concepts like memory and emotion, right?"

Hermione nodded: "Yes, you think they are all information."

"Yes, but information is a general term. In my opinion, information originates from the movement of matter. If memories, emotions, and so on are information, then Hermione, what kind of movement of matter do you think brings them into existence?"

Hermione was taken aback.

She hadn't heard such a "Muggle-like" question in a long time, as if it had been a lifetime ago.

In reality, it only lasted a year.

The long-dormant memories were quickly activated. The girl recalled the biology knowledge she had learned before and hesitated before saying, "Electrical potential movement in the brain?"

"Correct!"

"No matter how abstract memories and emotions may be," Warn said with enthusiasm. "Their initial formation is certainly based on the information collected by our senses: our skin touches objects, sound waves are conducted into the periosteum to activate the ossicular chain, and water-soluble substances stimulate taste bud receptors and ligands to generate nerve impulses."

"And light... photons strike the retina, leaving a pre-processed image and undergoing photoelectric conversion!"

"All this information collected through sensory contact is converted into electrical signals within our bodies after entering the nervous system. After a series of transmissions, accelerations, amplifications, and summaries, it finally converges in the brain. Then, these electrical signals generated by touch, hearing, taste, smell, and sight together form complete memories, nurture emotions, and stimulate thoughts..."

"Then let's look at it from a different angle—"

With a gentle wave of his hand, Vaughn caused the frozen silver mist to begin moving again. Gazing at its shimmering, water-like luster, he said softly, "From a magical perspective, when I use memory magic to manipulate memories, emotions, and thoughts, what am I truly manipulating?"

"..." Hermione paused, then realized, "It's an electrical signal!"

"Yes! Electrical signals, or you could say, motor potentials in my brain!"

Vaughn laughed: "I don't know yet how memory magic achieves this function, but based on my personal experience, I can deduce that memory magic can absolutely control the electrical activity of the brain, modifying, erasing, and overwriting... But now, why can't I control the pollution caused by dark magic?"

Hearing this, Hermione finally understood why Vaughn, despite not being able to control the black marks after seeing the memory freeze, still relaxed his brow.

She covered her mouth in surprise: "Those pollutants aren't in your brain?"

Yes!

This is the conjecture that Vaughn suddenly came up with after observing it—memory magic can control all electrical activity in the brain, so can what cannot be controlled by it be considered not to exist in the brain?

This is quite a wonderful idea.

Hermione thought about it more and more and it made a lot of sense.

But she also had a question: "If black magic doesn't exist in your brain, then where is it? And how can it appear in your mind's world?"

good question!
Vaughn's eyes seemed to light up.

After a moment of silence, Hermione heard him murmur: "Perhaps the contamination originates from the world where souls reside... The so-called dark magic contamination might be the souls of the dead, entangled with my soul..."

……

When Vaughn first entered the Aether, Dumbledore posed a very puzzling question: What is real? What is false?

For a long time, Vaughn had felt puzzled by this issue.

It wasn't until recently, in Morfin Gaunt's spiritual world, through Dumbledore's demonstration, that he realized the soul does not exist within the human body, and only then did he suddenly understand that Dumbledore's question was actually a classic dilemma for alchemists—

If the soul does not reside in the body but exists in another dimension, then which one truly represents reality: the soul or the body?
No one can say for sure about this.

Even someone as powerful as Dumbledore spent his entire life searching for the location of the soul, but he never found out what it looked like or where it was.

We can only speculate that, just like the world where our physical bodies are active, the place where the soul resides may also be a "world".

All souls reside in that world!

Alchemists call it the collective unconscious!
This is a theory that is quite revolutionary, and even a transmigrator like Vaughn, who is quite receptive to new ideas, was shaken when he first learned about it.

Hermione was completely stunned as she listened to Vaughn explain the Golden Soul School's theory of the "collective unconscious."

The girl's eyes widened: "The collective unconscious... the world of the soul... the body and all our thought processes are very likely just projections of the real soul into this universe, this..."

If it weren't Vaughn who said these words, she definitely would have argued back!
Sensing her hesitation, Vaughn gently comforted her, "It's just a hypothesis. I mentioned it because I felt that this hypothesis could explain the nature of the black magic's corruption."

Hermione instinctively took a deep breath; even in the mind's eye, this action was meaningless.

She was just using this action to calm the turmoil in her heart.

After frowning for a moment, she finally forced her attention back to the main issue:
"I still don't quite understand. Even assuming... assuming the world of souls really exists, if you kill someone, why would their soul become entangled with yours?"

When asked about her confusion, Vaughn didn't offer an answer, but simply smiled and said, "So I'm just guessing."

Hermione puffed out her cheeks and whispered, "I don't like this kind of speculation... Isn't this just the Muggle legend of being haunted by a vengeful spirit?"

She hated that kind of talk; it inevitably made her think that Vaughn killing those six dark wizards might... might indeed be a very bad thing!

...haunted by vengeful spirits...

Silently pondering these words, Vaughn narrowed his eyes slightly.

The idea that black magic contamination is equivalent to the souls of the dead coming to haunt and interfere with the soul is just speculation and seems illogical—why would such a phenomenon occur, and what objective laws does it follow?
These were questions that Vaughn, who had just met him, naturally did not have the answers to.

But as analyzed before, since dark magic contamination does not exist in the brain, then based on Vaughn's current knowledge, it must exist in the soul.

Whether the pollution is caused by vengeful spirits or not, it makes no difference.

An obvious rule is that killing with black magic will inevitably lead to pollution, and this pollution originates from the world of the soul.

It does indeed look somewhat absurd:

How could a naturally developing world possess such a rule that seems to restrict the killing power of black magic?

but……

My thoughts were churning.

Vaughn looked up at the sky. The sky of his mind was different from that of reality; it was always deep and boundless, filled with a sense of illusion.

But is reality really real?

Is the real world truly a world of natural development?

He recalled the experiment he and Dumbledore had conducted on time—the time in the world of the painting could be traveled through and modified at will.

In reality, time seems to be a circle twisted by an unseen hand, closed off and with fixed cause and effect!
It sends chills down one's spine whenever one thinks about it!

……

Late at night, in the attic of Granger's house.

The night breeze rustled the curtains, and the pale moonlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the attic floor near the window with a bright glow.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, bathed in moonlight, Vaughn's eyeballs twitched rapidly beneath his closed eyelids.

Thoughts swirled in his mind like a storm.

At this moment, the mental world is completely filled with silvery-white light mist, so thick that it is like the eye of a storm, piling up like mountains in the boundless illusory space!

Vaughn's consciousness hovered in the center of the storm's eye.

His eyes shone with a faint light as he gazed at the towering, thick silver mist that resembled mountains around him. With each thought that arose, he manipulated the mist to roar, spin, or freeze!

After an unknown amount of time, it seemed that the mental exertion and consumption had finally reached its limit, and the thick, silvery-white "clouds" gradually began to disintegrate.

Vaughn finally let out a long breath and opened his eyes.

Consciousness momentarily detaches from the mental world and returns to reality.

The silvery-blue light in his open eyes had not completely dissipated, leaving a faint trace of light in his pupils.

It is a probing spell in memory magic that helps wizards to see abstract things with their naked eyes. Vaughn rarely used it before because the vision it provides is not human.

Instead, it comes from a magical animal called the Baku.

This magical creature lives in the East, feeds on nightmares, and can ward off disease and misfortune. It is a very well-known auspicious beast in the East.

Vaughn didn't know what the real Baku's vision was like, but under the vision provided by the "Baku Curse," the whole world was like a camera with full saturation, and everything looked like bright, amorphous blocks of color. In the abstract realm of spirit and mind, one could imagine how indescribable what it saw was.

Rubbing his throbbing head, Vaughn rested for a while before getting up, sitting down at his desk, and pulling out his notebook from his small satchel to write:

"...Using various methods, only the 'Dream Eater Curse' can accurately detect dark magic contamination at present, but it has been basically determined that the source of the contamination is not the wizard's body, but an external invasion..."

"The previous speculations may actually be true; there seems to be some underlying logic in this world that prevents black magic from killing..."

As he wrote this, Vaughn suddenly paused, his quill pen poised to fall.

He looked closely at the line of cursive script he had just written—"Suppress black magic to kill."

He suddenly realized something was wrong.

After pondering for a moment, Vaughn picked up his pen again:
"……Do not!"

"My previous thinking had some preconceived notions. I personally reject the corruption of black magic and subconsciously think it's bad. That's why I subconsciously felt that the existence of corruption seemed to have some underlying logic or will that was suppressing the spread of black magic!"

"But if we change our perspective and consider pollution as the main issue, then..."

"Perhaps the rule that 'using dark magic to kill will lead to corruption and depravity' is designed to allow this corruption to occur?"

The pen paused.

The lingering ink stained the parchment. Vaughn snapped out of his daze, stopped writing, and leaned back in his chair, lost in thought.

Is it reasonable to consider pollution as the main cause?
Have!
And the possibility is very high.

Nothing is without a cause and an effect; the development of things must ultimately have a single purpose, whether or not it is man-made.

"...This is a truly chilling speculation."

Vaughn let out a soft breath and stood up.

Hermione had already been sent back to rest. She had suffered quite a bit today. Although she still wanted to go with Vaughn to study the pollution problem, staying at the Grangers' house meant that Vaughn had to consider the Grangers' opinions no matter what.

Even if Mr. and Mrs. Granger were incredibly carefree, they probably wouldn't be able to sleep if their daughter was alone with a boy in the attic late at night.

Another reason is that Vaughn himself was unable to delve deeper into the research.

On the one hand, he hadn't completed the side quests, and on the other hand, he hadn't obtained the "spell development module" he had been longing for, and he also lacked research tools.

On the other hand, he was leaving Granger's house tomorrow.

The first general meeting of the WAC is about to be held, and committee members from Wizengamo and even the International Federation of Wizards will arrive in London in the next two days.

At that time, a large number of wizards will gather here. As the founder of WAC and the designated chief committee member and president, he will be responsible for welcoming and entertaining them.

In fact, he didn't have much time to rest tonight.

After flipping through his notebook for a while, Vaughn realized it was getting late. He packed up all his things, changed into his robe, and with a crackling sound, he twisted and disappeared into thin air.

……

London, the Muggle neighborhood where Crouch lives.

In the dead of night, the Muggles in the community were already fast asleep, except for one corner, where the orange lights were still on in that two-story building that everyone usually avoided when taking a walk.

If a Muggle can ignore the "Muggle Exorcism Charm" and is lucky enough to pass through a thin, bubble-like magical shield composed of "Peaceful Protection," "Hearing and Hearing Silence," and "All-Encompassing Protection," then...

Then he will surely hear a shrill voice joyfully shouting:

"Distinguished guests, what would you like to drink? Shining is an expert at making Duke Black Tea, the aroma of citrus infused into every leaf… Oh—yes, and Honey Black Tea, made with tea leaves from Qimen in the East, paired with the sweetness of honey…"

(End of this chapter)