A certain broken Hogwarts

Chapter 198 Research on Holidays

He collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

In the space shrouded in white mist, Owen held his wand in one hand, his dark eyes fixed intently on the little Nightmare who had been knocked unconscious by the spell, silently counting the time in his mind.

A few minutes later, the ghostly, illusory creature on the ground moved its thin arms, blinked its red eyes, and then floated up as lightly as a balloon, continuing to drift aimlessly in mid-air.

"About six minutes." Owen thoughtfully put away his wand and slowly sat down in a chair. "It seems this is the current limit. Although the advanced version of the Stunning Charm can target the soul and penetrate the Ironclad Charm's defense, it doesn't last long... Hmm, the soul's recovery speed is indeed very fast."

Whether it's snippets from forbidden books or answers from Voldemort and Grindelwald, when it comes to the realm of the soul, they all share one consistent view: the soul is something both resilient and fragile, perhaps containing the deepest mysteries of the magical world.

The soul's resilience lies in its unexpectedly strong resistance to a wide variety of spells. The soul is difficult to disturb or harm; even if slightly injured, it recovers quickly, sometimes much faster than the body.

The fragility of the soul lies in the fact that once it is severely damaged, it is often irreversible, with consequences far more serious than any physical injury.

Take the three Unforgivable Curses as an example. They may cause irreparable damage to the body, but the damage they inflict on the soul is actually negligible and easily healed. Even though the Killing Curse can change a creature's soul from a living state to a dead state, it does not truly harm the soul itself.

The body may die, but the soul lives on.

Owen's improved Stun Curse clearly falls into this category as well. It can cause a person's soul to fall into a brief coma, but because of the soul's self-healing ability, the duration is much shorter than that of a normal Stun Curse.

Only a very few soul spells—such as Horcruxes—can cause irreversible changes and damage to the soul. This kind of damage truly touches the very essence of the soul and is almost impossible to recover from.

After consulting numerous resources and conducting extensive research and experimentation, Owen discovered that with his current abilities, he simply couldn't elevate soul-attacking spells to the level of Horcruxes. The difference between the two wasn't merely in power, but on a more mysterious level, because spells that cause irreversible damage to the soul are almost always used against the caster's own soul.

Irving's summary of this is: It's easy to ruin your own soul, but difficult to ruin someone else's. Without understanding the fundamental principles behind this phenomenon, it's virtually impossible to fundamentally change the power of the soul curse.

The deeper Irving delved into the mysteries of the soul, the more amazed he became by its wonder. He increasingly felt that people's souls were like travelers who descended to earth, wandered the world, and then returned untouched and unharmed to the unknown realm of the soul.

A person's life is like a dream the soul has outside the world. After death brings life to an end, the free soul is freed from the heavy body to begin another great adventure, or to wait for the next dream.

Of course, this is currently just Owen's beautiful imagination of the afterlife and his romantic expectations of the soul. But with such thoughts in mind, he is not so eager to enhance the power of the soul version of the Stunning Curse, since the current improvements are sufficient for his needs.

"It should be noted that the duration of this spell will vary depending on the differences in the souls of different individuals..." Owen wrote down the conclusions of the experiment and some thoughts on the soul on the parchment, and then temporarily sealed away the research.

Then he pulled out another document and started scribbling on the paper with his pen, pondering improvements to the Ironclad Spell.

The Ironclad Charm, as one of the most practical defensive spells, is best known for its two advanced spells: "Super Armor" and "All Protection." Super Armor greatly enhances defensive capabilities, while All Protection is a range-based protective spell that can be used to protect people or buildings.

In Irving's view, there are two best directions for improving the Ironclad Curse: one is to improve it in the spiritual direction, so that the Ironclad Curse can defend against soul curses, which means it can resist the Unforgivable Curse; the other is to change the Ironclad Curse from being actively released to being passively defended, in order to deal with sudden dangers.

During his summer vacation, Owen spent his time researching this spell, only to find, to his dismay, that advancing the Ironclad Charm was far more difficult than the Stunning Charm, given that it was already a highly complex spell. The magical principles involved were far more intricate, making improvement exponentially more difficult, not to mention that there was little prior experience to draw upon in the two directions Owen had chosen.

For the past month, Irving's research has been progressing very slowly. He can only painstakingly overcome difficulties by consulting various books and materials, and he writes down the parts he really can't figure out, planning to ask Grindelwald, his cheap teacher, after the semester starts.

After revising the parchment on the paper for a long time, Owen waved his wand and experimented. Dissatisfied, he frowned, crumpled the parchment on the table, and tossed it aside. The parchment landed on the white ground, silently dispersing into wisps of white mist, mingling with the misty fog on the ground, indistinguishable from the surroundings.

Irving held the back of his head with both hands, leaned back in his armchair, squinted and thought for a while, then turned his gaze to the worn-out diary on the table and reached out to open its black hard cover.

"Tom, are you there?" he wrote on the yellowed page, dipping his quill in ink.

After waiting a while, the words he had written remained there, neither absorbed into the paper nor emerging as new words.

"Fine, you're dead again this time." Owen sighed and casually tossed the diary aside.

Yes, Schrödinger's Tom, sometimes dead and sometimes alive, has the same problem as the rabbit muse.

During this time, Tom seems to have finally accepted the harsh reality, his emotions have stabilized considerably, and he's become more willing to offer advice to Owen. The two often discuss the problems they encounter when trying to improve the spell.

Although Tom in the diary didn't possess the Dark Lord's vast knowledge and broad vision, and his knowledge base might not even match Owen's now, his brilliant mind was preserved flawlessly in the diary. The two academic high-achievers exchanging ideas and researching together often sparked flashes of inspiration, making their work far more efficient than if one were working alone.

Irving didn't care whether Tom had truly resigned himself to his fate. In his own personal mental space, he only needed a single thought to make everything here dissipate back into white mist, and Tom couldn't possibly cause any trouble.

Since Tom was currently dead, Owen was too lazy to go out and refresh his status. He listlessly petted the rabbit for a while, shared a whole bag of vegetables with it, and then energetically began his next research project.

He first took out a stack of neatly bound parchment, opened it, and added a few strokes. The top page of the stack read: "A Study on the Existence of Ether."

This was the inspiration he got last year, but due to its immense difficulty and various other distractions, the research has been shelved ever since. Irving is currently working hard to refine it; while it may not yield results, it's still a worthwhile hobby.

Feeling a lack of inspiration, Irving put down the document and took out a triangular prismatic gemstone that shimmered with a deep blue light.

He had stolen this gem from a suspected thief organization while dealing with a minor problem at the bookstore. After replicating the gem, he studied it for a long time but still couldn't figure out its purpose.

Owen, recalling the skull and scepter design he'd seen in the briefcase, thoughtfully raised his hammer and slammed it down on the gem. With a thud, the gem remained unchanged, just as it had been when he'd struck it with spells before—beautiful and fragile, yet incredibly hard.

He lit another small ball of Fiery Flame, which transformed into a lifelike little phoenix and swallowed the gem. A moment later, with a "crack," the gem shattered into colorless, transparent fragments, and the faintly shimmering deep blue light vanished completely.

"Huh? It seems it wasn't formed naturally, but is a man-made magical artifact?" Owen raised his eyebrows in slight surprise and collected the fragments. He used his instruments to test them and confirmed that the fragments had lost their magical fluctuations; their composition was likely diamond.

He jotted down his new discovery in his notebook, then returned to his desk, took out a roll of parchment from the drawer, and his eyes lit up instantly.

He received this from Voldemort when he was in first grade; it contained Voldemort's flight spell. He hadn't been able to master this spell before, but now his dark magic was almost sufficient.

While flying in black mist might seem sinister, this drawback is negligible compared to its practicality. This flight spell is far faster than Owen's flight using the Dark Magic Guardian, and the body transformed into black mist can pass through tiny gaps and is immune to many magical attacks.

Owen's eyes lit up as he unfolded the parchment; he felt this spell suited him perfectly. "Hmm, Voldemort is such a good guy."

After spending some time memorizing the contents of the parchment, Owen stroked his chin and pondered for a moment, muttering to himself, "Although it's complicated and some parts aren't easy to understand, learning it step by step isn't a problem; it just needs more time..."

"Hmm, time." He pursed his lips and muttered softly, "There's never enough time. Maybe the time converter can bring me some surprises."

"In that case, I need to brew a batch of energy-restoring potions in advance. Vitality potions would be good..." Owen put away the parchment and closed his eyes slightly.

When he opened his eyes, he was already in a familiar room. He was lying on a recliner in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, his body burning hot from the afternoon sun.

Owen stretched and yawned, his dark eyes gleaming like lustrous black pearls in the sunlight. Melete lay on his stomach, her head against his chest, fast asleep, emitting peaceful snores.

Nyx stood on the balcony railing, its magnificent black feathers shimmering brilliantly in the sunlight. It flapped its increasingly full wings, glanced at Owen with its ruby-like eyes, then pushed off the railing with its gleaming black claws and gracefully flew away.

Irving watched as the black phoenix struggled to flap its wings in mid-air, gliding for hundreds of meters in the cloudless sky before thrashing about and plunging headfirst into the rose bushes.

"Pfft." Owen couldn't help but laugh, startling the cat on his body awake.

"Meow—" Melete meowed softly, yawned widely, flapped his big ears like fans a few times, and then slowly licked his paws.

"Yawn... What a beautiful day." Owen yawned as well, sitting up from the recliner.

He glanced at himself in the mirror beside him; his smooth black hair was perfectly styled, and his pale cheeks were almost translucent in the sunlight. Looking at his skin, which he couldn't seem to tan no matter what he did, he rubbed his face with some dissatisfaction.

He carried Melett out of the room, and under the silent gaze of the portraits hanging on the walls, they walked through the ornately carpeted corridor into his laboratory, where he spent the rest of the day brewing several potions of vitality potion.

As the afterglow of the setting sun painted the sky red, Irving finally left the laboratory and walked down the stairs to the living room.

On the escalator leading from the second floor to the first, he suddenly missed a step, and the wooden steps below clattered and sputtered into a smooth ramp, slippery oil seeping from the gaps. The carpet at the bottom of the ramp rolled up to one side, revealing a large, neatly laid-out net.

Irving leaned to the side, his expression utterly calm. He unhurriedly reached out and grabbed the stair railing, then sprang up from the ground like a nimble big cat, sitting on the edge of the railing and sliding down.

Just as he was about to glide to the corner, he used his arms to support his body, and with a light and agile flip, he sat on the handrail behind the corner and leisurely glided down to the first floor.

Meletus, who was with him, was in for a terrible surprise. The moment the stairs turned into a slide, the cat-like creature was so frightened that its fur stood on end. It jumped up and turned to run upstairs. But the oiled floor was extremely slippery. The cat-like creature's four legs left afterimages as it ran, but it still couldn't stop its body from sliding down. In the end, it tumbled and rolled onto the large net and was hung high up.

"Meow—" Melete weakly pawed at the ground, crying out in grief and indignation.

Irving stepped firmly onto the floor and looked helplessly at his father, who was peeking out from behind the corner, saying, "Dad, what are you doing now?"

Mr. Shafik, feigning nonchalance, coughed lightly and said, "Oh dear, I was just about to come over and remind you that the magic in the house has been getting a bit out of control lately..." He glanced at the cat-like creature hanging in mid-air, as if he had just noticed it, and said with a surprised expression, "What are you guys playing at?"

Owen couldn't help but roll his eyes at his over-the-top father, waved his wand to rescue Melett, and held her in his arms for a good while to comfort her. Mr. Shafik, on the other hand, chanted a spell to restore the stairs to their original state, and then said quite naturally, "It's time for dinner."

Melete nestled in Owen's arms, her golden cat eyes narrowed as she glared at Mr. Shafik, secretly revealing her sharp claws. "Hmm, I've decided," she thought, "I'll scratch this guy's precious oil painting into a thousand pieces someday!"

"Good idea." Owen pinched her ear as if by telepathy, and walked towards the restaurant with a smile. Mr. Shafik followed behind him with his hands behind his back, also smiling.

The restaurant door was closed. Irving suddenly quickened his pace, ran over, and yanked the door open, then smoothly hid behind it.

With a "whoosh," a burst of sparks shot out of the restaurant, instantly reaching Mr. Shafik before he could even react, pulling him out of the window and into the sky, where they became fireworks.

"Ahhh—" Mr. Shafik's cry was drawn out.

Mrs. Shafiq walked out of the restaurant with an amused look and stood side by side with Owen behind the window. The two of them and the cat looked up at the fireworks outside the window in perfect unison.

Fireworks, carrying figures, streaked wildly across the sky, darting about before finally settling gently on the grass. Mr. Shafik stood there, slightly dizzy, for a moment before returning with a broad smile, hands behind his back, saying with a hint of lingering enjoyment, "Wow, those fireworks were pretty fun."

"How did you find out, Owen?" he asked again, glancing sideways.

"It's too obvious, Dad. When has the restaurant door ever been closed during dinner?" Owen shook his head, suppressing a laugh. Ever since his last prank failed, Mr. Shafik had stubbornly started setting all sorts of traps for him, which had almost become a daily routine.

"I understand." Mr. Shafik nodded, resting his chin on his fist in deep thought. Although he had never managed to trick Owen, at most catching a cat or a bird, it had only fueled his competitive spirit.

At this point, education and such are no longer important; the main thing is to win.

Mrs. Shafik stood gracefully to the side, watching the two childish rivals, one big and one small, with a calm and gentle smile on her lips, tinged with a hint of anticipation and indulgence as she watched the spectacle.

After dinner, the family took a walk on the grassy field outside, and then sat on a bench in front of the fountain, enjoying the fragrance of flowers carried by the breeze.

Hedwig, a snow-white owl, flew over under the cover of night, tossed a letter into Owen's hand, and then flew off to the fountain to preen her feathers.

Irving opened the letter, listening to the conversation of the Shafiqs:

"...Dumbledore is a competent politician. Fudge has been trying to reduce his influence, but Dumbledore, through the Sirius Black affair, has directly extended his reach into the Ministry of Magic. Recently, he's been spearheading the establishment of a magical research department, hey, maybe it'll become the Department of Magical Research in the future..."

"...They're transferring some people from the Department of Mysteries and recruiting quite a few researchers. They're also planning to start a special newspaper, a daily magic newspaper or something... It's a good thing, but to be honest, I don't quite understand what they're trying to do..."

Listening to Mr. Shafik's words, Owen thoughtfully opened the letter in his hand and glanced at it.

"Dear Kyrie Irving, I hope you are doing well."

"My life has been much better lately because Sirius came to visit. After the Dursleys found out I had a godfather who had been convicted of murder and released from prison, they were less likely to raise their voices at me. You know, I didn't tell them Sirius was innocent."

Sirius found himself a place to live, and I sometimes stay at his place for a couple of days. He's planning to throw me a birthday party this Wednesday at 7 p.m. I was wondering if you'd be able to attend?

"The location is 12 Grimmauld Place. I really hope you can come, and you're welcome to bring your family and friends. Harry"

Owen thought for a moment, wrote a reply and handed it to Hedwig, watching the snow-white owl fly into the boundless night sky.

I injured my hand before, and it hurt whenever I moved it, but it's almost healed now. I'll try to update more these next few days, hopefully I can catch up...

(End of this chapter)