Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 22 Tampering with Memories

"Hero or..." Ollivander didn't finish his sentence, but said, "Whether the power is good or bad depends on the wizard who uses it, Mr. Murphy. Challenging authority is a very brave thing, but the disruption of order often brings suffering. I hope you will use your power carefully."

"Thank you for your suggestion, Mr. Ollivander," Murphy said, drawing another, shorter wand from his sleeve.

Ollivander's eyes widened. "This, this...you really did..."

Murphy pointed his wand at the old man. "I'm sorry, Mr. Ollivander, but you'll probably have to relearn some things... Legilimency!"

Then, "Forget everything!"

"Capture the spirit, grasp the mind!"

"Forget everything, and all is emptiness!"

Legilimency forces Ollivander to recall the events of seven years ago when Murphy's predecessor purchased the wand, pinpointing that memory so that Ephemeral Memory can blur it out. At the same time, it adds false memories, and after repeated exposure, it strengthens these false memories through erroneous recollections, making them indistinguishable from the real ones.

Memory is such an ambiguous thing. People have never truly and simply read their memories. Every recollection is actually a correction and reinforcement of past memories.

Murphy was using this mechanism to mix up a part of Ollivander's memory of buying a wand today with the memory of Murphy's predecessor buying a wand seven years ago, replacing the material of the wand he bought back then with the material of today's wand.

After three repetitions, Ollivander would only remember that Murphy had bought an aspen wand, and would completely forget the cypress wand that Murphy was currently holding.

Ollivander fainted, and Murphy let him sleep.

After the violent alteration, the brain needs a rest to readjust its contradictory memories.

When he woke up, he only felt that he had had a strange dream.

While Ollivander slept, Murphy summoned his ledger, which recorded information on every wand sold there. Murphy found the entry from seven years ago, and with a gentle stroke of his wand, the original "12.4 inches, cypress, unicorn hair" became "14 inches, aspen, phoenix feather".

Thus, Murphy possessed a wand with absolutely no registration information and no traceability.

He can use it to do whatever he wants from now on without having to worry about investigations like the Flashback Curse.

More importantly, the history of this magic wand has been buried, as if it never existed.

Murphy's trip to Knockturn Alley was very rewarding, and he happily Apparated back to the old house in Darkholm.

After chatting with Alex Wood for a while and learning that the potions used to make the Beauty Potion were all used up and that the work of mixing the materials had been completed, Murphy thought for a moment and assigned Alex another task.

"Do you know any spells that can keep secrets?" Murphy asked.

He plans to build a potion research institute, and may also build a spell research institute in the future, all of which will require a large number of Muggle scientists and researchers to participate in the research.

Therefore, getting them to keep the secret became a problem that needed to be solved.

"An unbreakable oath?" Alex asked.

"I had that in mind, but the effect of an unbreakable oath is that a person dies after revealing a secret. What I want to achieve is to make it impossible for the subject to reveal a certain secret."

An unbreakable oath can serve as a deterrent, but only if the person making the oath is sincere and knows that breaking the oath will result in death.

This makes its application scope very narrow.

Given that Muggle researchers know they could die if they accidentally revealed some secrets, they are unlikely to wholeheartedly accept such an oath.

"The spell of unwavering loyalty?" Alex thought of another spell.

The Fidelity Charm is incredibly powerful; it is almost one of the most powerful spells Murphy knows. It can turn an entity or a location into a secret.

When this secret is kept by the person who keeps it, the entity cannot be found, seen, or touched by anyone other than the person who keeps it.

It is considered powerful because the scope of this spell is conceptual. Through a reverse logic, it reverses the original scope, which only applies to the person who keeps the secret and the person whose secret is kept, to apply to everyone outside of them.

At the same time, its effect is conceptual; it rejects all contact between non-secret parties and the secret object, whether physical or magical, whether it is seeing, hearing, or using spells such as Summoning Charm or Guiding Charm.

It was as if the object of the secret had been erased from the world of the non-secret party.

Murphy shook his head. "This spell doesn't work."

The Keeper of Secrets can intentionally leak secrets, and the Curse of Loyalty cannot achieve Murphy's goal.

"Is there a spell similar to an unbreakable vow, but whose effect is not that the recipient will die if they reveal the secret, but rather that if they try to reveal the secret, they will be subjected to a throat-locking spell, a petrification spell, or something similar to prevent them from revealing the secret?"

As an orphan, Murphy learned his spells at school, mostly standard spells, with a few, like the simple levitation spell, from books in the library.

There is much magic he doesn't know, and children from wizarding families like Alex probably know even more than he does.

"A throat-sealing, tongue-locking..." Alex pondered for a long while, "I feel like I've seen something similar somewhere before... but I can't remember..."

"It's okay, take your time thinking about it. There's no rush."

Anyway, it will take some time for the research institute to be built, and before that, he still has to deal with the bankruptcy crisis of the Umbrella Corporation.

With that in mind, Murphy packed up the mixed herbs that Alex had prepared and a bottle of beauty potion, and went to find Patrick.

After having Patrick find him a warehouse and put the mixed herbs inside, Murphy told Patrick about the outcome of his meeting with Rita.

"She wasn't willing to endorse us. And it seems she's not someone who can be swayed by money."

Murphy greatly admired scientists who had such personal principles; he couldn't bring himself to use a soul-stealing curse on them.

"That's already very good. At least you've attracted the attention of quite a few scholars, and perhaps their research will bring us some good news. We can also use this to do some positive publicity."

Murphy nodded. "How are things going with your negotiations with those companies?"

Patrick shook his head. "Don't even mention it. A pack of wolves! Insatiable! They knew we were trying to stall for time, so they pressed us hard. I brought in some negotiation experts, but they turned around and advised me to go public."

"Going public?" Murphy didn't quite understand.

"On the surface, they say that going public allows them to be subject to public scrutiny, offsetting some of the negative public opinion, and at the same time, it allows pharmaceutical companies to invest, turning enemies into friends."

"In reality, they were only thinking that after the IPO they could launch a mandatory takeover bid and swallow us up."

(End of this chapter)