A certain broken Hogwarts

In the misty, wall-facing space, all was always silent. Apart from the sound of the rabbit Muse chewing vegetables, Owen could even hear his own heartbeat.

He picked up the exquisite time converter hanging on the table, and with his slender fingers gently turned the small golden hourglass once.

For a fleeting moment, Irving seemed to sense a rapid change in time, but it was only for a brief instant. He blinked and glanced at his unchanging surroundings.

The surroundings were still shrouded in a white mist. Muse was still munching on that piece of green vegetable. The hands of the clock on the table had not changed position, and the second hand was still ticking forward. There was no other version of himself beside Owen.

In the walled space, the time converter seemed to have completely lost its effectiveness.

Irving didn't experience the sensation of flying backward at high speed like time reversal; the clock beside him told him that he was still at the original point in time and had not returned to the past.

"It's malfunctioning? Why?" Owen looked at the time converter in his hand with some confusion. The delicate, shimmering hourglass swayed between his fingers. "Time flows in sync with the outside world, which means there is a concept of time within the walled space..."

Thinking of this, his expression suddenly froze: "Wait, does time really exist here?"

He suddenly looked at the crystal vase on the corner of the table, in which sat a vibrant white rose, its petals still glistening with dew. Even though it had been copied long ago, the flower showed no signs of wilting.

He jumped up from his chair and rummaged through the cabinet next to him, pulling out the herbs and potions he had copied before. Even though they hadn't been properly stored, they still retained their potent magic and hadn't gradually lost their power over time.

"Such an obvious thing, and I overlooked it." Owen scratched his head, then frowned. "But that's not right. If there really is no passage of time here, how could my experiment have succeeded?"

Especially when studying potions, many potions require a long brewing time. If time is meaningless in this space, then the mixed potion ingredients should remain in their original state.

Irving picked up the cat-shaped alarm clock on the table. The second hand on the dial was still ticking away, visually demonstrating to him the passage of time.

"What factors caused the difference between the two?" Owen slumped back in his armchair, staring blankly at the white rose on the table. A pearl-like dewdrop slowly slid down from the pure white petals, landing with a "plop" on the emerald green leaves.

"The rose...it's starting to change." Owen's expression instantly became focused. "Its time has started to move?"

His eyes lit up, and his pupils, as dark as the night sky, seemed to hold a thousand stars.

"So, this is my thought process?" He gently bit his lip, unconsciously entering a state of creative inspiration, a moment of facing the wall. "Wall-facing space, thought space! I see."

"I had previously overlooked the timeline of the rose, instinctively assuming that anything copied into the walled space would remain unchanged, so it remained the same. But once I realized this was abnormal, the rose's timeline began to pass!"

"So, if I believe that time should stand still..." Owen stared intently at the cat-shaped alarm clock in front of him, repeatedly giving himself psychological suggestions, telling himself that there was no concept of time in this space.

Much later, when he was convinced of this, the second hand on the small alarm clock stopped with a "click," hovering between the numbers six and seven.

"It's a success!" Owen looked up and around. Several instruments that had been puffing out smoke were now silent, and wisps of colorful smoke had solidified in mid-air; the rabbit Muse, who had been chewing on vegetables, stood frozen in place, like a taxidermied rabbit; the little nightmares that had been floating around stopped beside the bookshelf, like white balloons hanging in the air...

"I myself am unaffected." Owen glanced at his pale palms. "In other words, I am the anchor point of this space, the core of this place. My thoughts influence everything around me; time here can be considered non-existent."

"The time converter is useless here. You can understand it as me existing simultaneously in the past, present, and future of this space. Time rewinding is meaningless here..."

"So, since there's no concept of time in the walled space, can I influence the time of the surrounding objects?" Owen stared at the small alarm clock in his hand again, trying to speed up its time.

After staring intently for a while, Owen rubbed his dry eyes. The alarm clock in his hand didn't react. "This isn't working? No, maybe it's my problem. I have a hard time getting a feel for the acceleration of time."

He picked up the time converter again and turned the small golden hourglass. A feeling of time rapidly changing made him momentarily disoriented, and he vaguely grasped something in his heart.

He fiddled with the small hourglass again and again, savoring the sensation of time passing. Everything around him seemed frozen in place, strange and mysterious, as if solidified.

I don't know how much time had passed. Irving blinked and put down the small hourglass in his hand. Following a strange sense of time that he had grasped in the darkness, he looked at the alarm clock next to him.

The second hand, which had been stuck there, trembled slightly and clicked forward one tick. Then, its speed gradually increased, changing from ticking one tick at a time to spinning rapidly in circles.

Soon, the minute hand began to spin rapidly, and the hour hand started to rotate like the second hand, its speed increasing rapidly. Finally, the three hands on the dial became completely blurred afterimages, no longer discernible.

Irving looked away with satisfaction; everything around him remained frozen in place, unchanged.

He focused his attention on the alarm clock again. The rapidly spinning hands slowed down and gradually returned to normal. Slowly, the second hand ticked away, but much more slowly, taking more than ten breaths to move a single tick.

Irving closed his eyes and tried various things many times until he was completely familiar with the feeling before he stopped.

With a snap of his fingers, everything in the white mist space came back to life. The clock ticked, the rabbit munched on its vegetables, and nightmares floated around like balloons in the wind.

He chuckled and raised his hand again, and everything around him sped up. Muse's mouth moved rapidly, Nightmare darted around like a deflated balloon, the clock hands spun rapidly, and everything seemed to be on fast-forward.

"So, I can speed up or slow down everything here by my own will." Owen stroked his chin with interest, his expression eager to try it out. "In other words, I can do some time-consuming learning and research in the wall-facing space, like brewing Felix Felicis or something."

"So, can I speed up my own time?" He touched his face thoughtfully, his eyes shining brightly. "When my time moves at the same speed as the environment, it means that my learning and thinking speed in the walled space can be countless times faster than outside!"

He stared excitedly at his palms, intently imagining the passage of time accelerating. A strange sensation washed over him, causing his body to sway slightly, as if he had become much lighter, yet his thoughts felt heavy, as if weighed down by something.

Irving shook his head, suppressing the discomfort, and frowned slightly as he thought, "Did I fail?" He saw that the things around him were still changing rapidly.

"But..." He suddenly raised his eyebrows, pressed his right hand to his left chest, and felt his heart pounding. His heart was beating as fast as the patter of raindrops during a downpour; no living being could have such a rapid heartbeat.

"No, time in my body has indeed sped up, but my thought process hasn't." Owen thought rapidly. "It seems my mind is the true core here, and my body is just an afterthought... That makes sense, I can create several bodies here and transfer between them..."

Thinking of this, Owen somewhat dejectedly restored time to its original state. His dream had just been shattered.

"What other tricks can this ability be used for?" He tossed the time-twister back and forth, his gaze drifting towards Tom's diary. "Perhaps I could ask Tom a difficult question to ponder, then speed him up, and ask him again a second later?"

"That's a great idea," Owen said with a mischievous grin, his expression playful.

He returned to reality to confirm that not much time had passed outside, consistent with his perception, before returning to the wall-facing space.

The rabbit that was just now eating voraciously and full of energy is now dead.

Owen shook his head, ignoring it. He had actually studied many characteristics of the Wallfacer, such as how, after he returned to reality, this space essentially ceased to exist, and time stood still. Only after his return would everything resume its normal flow from the moment he left.

He had asked Tom in the diary about this, and even tried to suddenly return to reality while talking to him. However, Tom had no idea that Owen had left, nor did he know that he was always in a state of alternating between life and death. He only felt that he would sometimes fall asleep suddenly, and he would always pitifully question Owen about what he had done to him.

Irving yawned and picked up the three Deathly Hallows that had been copied from the principal's office.

During this time, he had tried every method he could think of to investigate, but without finding any clues. The idea that collecting all three Deathly Hallows would make him the master of Death sounded like a lie.

Irving picked up the Resurrection Stone ring, skillfully twirled it three times in his hand, and imagined his deceased grandparents in his mind.

In fact, Irving didn't have any deceased people he wanted to see in either his past or present lives. In this life, everyone he cared about was alive and well, except for his grandparents who passed away when he was young, but Irving's feelings for them weren't very deep.

In his previous life, he grew up in an orphanage and had no feelings for his biological parents whom he had never met. The people he cared about most were all still alive and doing quite well before his accident.

Although he sometimes feels a pang of nostalgia, Kyrie Irving has always been carefree. He has a new life and a new way of living, so there's no need for him to dwell on acquaintances from his past life. They're all living their lives well, after all.

Owen smiled and shook his head, watching two familiar figures appear beside him, giving him loving smiles. They looked young and energetic, their bodies not quite as solid as those of the living, yet far more real than ghosts.

Irving smiled easily and chatted with the two for a while, telling them about their current lives. When the two showed signs of weariness and wanted to leave, Irving casually waved his hand and spun the resurrection stone, making them disappear.

Then, he imagined a dark wizard he had killed. Soon, a figure in black robes appeared, mocking him and trying to take Owen away with a few words.

While using his instruments to observe and record the phantom of the deceased, and experimenting with various spells on it, Owen made a few sarcastic remarks. After finishing the experiment, he simply spun the resurrection stone to send the eyesore away.

Even now, he can't tell whether what the Resurrection Stone summons is real or a false illusion formed from people's impressions of the dead. But it turns out that most of the figures summoned by the Resurrection Stone want to take the living to the world of the dead, even though they have no offensive capabilities.

Owen put down the Resurrection Stone, picked up the Elder Wand, and cast a few spells with it. It did feel a bit stronger than a normal wand, but only by a limited margin, perhaps because he wasn't the Elder Wand's acknowledged master.

Immediately afterwards, he put on the invisibility cloak, put the resurrection stone ring on his finger, and waved the Elder Wand to continue chanting the incantation, but he did not feel any difference.

"However, there does seem to be some kind of energy hidden within, but it can't be fully activated," Owen muttered. "It's like something's missing..."

"Could it be that a key is missing?"

His mind wandered, and he quickly copied several sets of the Deathly Hallows in his hand, then picked up one of them and walked into the laboratory area.

After using various spells to shatter them into pieces, Owen observed the surrounding monitoring instruments and recorded the data displayed on them.

"There are indeed signs of some kind of energy dissipating, but there's no way to stop it." He shook his head, flipped open his experimental log, and made a few notes: "The Deathly Hallows themselves are not indestructible; on the contrary, their durability is about the same as ordinary gem rings, wands, and invisibility cloaks..."

After finishing his routine study of the Deathly Hallows, he took out a roll of parchment from the drawer, glanced at the flight spell recorded on it, and his face lit up with anticipation, like a child who had seen a new and exciting toy.

After several exchanges with Grindelwald, Owen finally solved several key problems he encountered with this spell and has now completely mastered the principle of this flight spell.

"It's finally time." He ran his fingertips along the rough, torn edges of the parchment and sighed softly. (End of Chapter)