Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 48 The word "magic" is meaningless.

The wooden podium, along with several potted flowers and even the carpet, seemed to float up.

A gasp rippled through the crowd, and some people even started clapping.

Damn it, do you really think this is a magic trick?

"Has anyone figured out how I did it?" Murphy asked.

"Hang me on wires!" shouted a slightly overweight man from the audience.

"Rollings Borg. Come up here." Murphy recognized him and invited him to the podium. "Make bold assumptions, verify them carefully. How do you plan to test your hypothesis?"

"Give me a stick, and I'll sweep around these things," Rollins replied.

"Good idea." Murphy said, pointing his wand at a flowerpot beside him. "Veravitto."

The flowerpot turned into a long wooden stick.

There was another gasp from the crowd. Rollins was stunned. It was only after Murphy gestured that he stepped forward, picked up the stick, stroked it for a while, waved it a couple of times, and tapped it lightly on the ground a few times before confirming that what he held in his hand was indeed a wooden stick.

"How... how did you do that?" Rollins asked.

"That's the second question. Let's verify the first one first," Murphy said.

So Rollins took the pole and moved it back and forth among several floating objects, but couldn't find any towing device.

"How did your verification go?" Murphy asked.

Rollins shook his head. "It doesn't look like something is hanging them."

"Do you have any new ideas?"

Rollins shook his head again.

"Does anyone have any other explanation?" Murphy asked the crowd.

"Anti-gravity field!" someone shouted from below.

"Very bold, William Boyle?" Murphy chuckled. "Come up here. How do you plan to test your theory?"

William walked up to the podium, thought for a moment, and said, "Give me something light."

Murphy took out his wand and pointed it at the wooden stick again. "Shrink quickly."

The stick quickly shrank, eventually becoming a small stick the size of a pencil. Murphy handed the stick to William. "You can begin."

The latter, shocked, weighed the wooden stick in his hand, feeling its weight befitting its shape. He was utterly bewildered. "This...this is unscientific! This is impossible! Where did its mass go?"

Murphy smiled. "I don't know. This is the third question. Would you like to verify your guess?"

"...Okay." After hesitating for a moment, William threw the stick into the area where Murphy had pointed his wand.

However, the stick did not float as it had hoped.

"this……"

Do you have any other explanations?

"Perhaps... the antigravity field isn't localized, but rather acts on each individual object," William said.

"You can try to verify your idea now."

William jumped up and reached for a flowerpot floating in mid-air. He pulled the flowerpot down, carried it to the edge of the podium, and let go. The flowerpot floated back into the air.

"You've provided preliminary proof for your hypothesis. Can you elaborate further? Where does their anti-gravity effect originate?"

William looked at his hands, which had been covered in soil from the flowerpot. Now, the soil was floating away from his palms, grain by grain.

"I... don't know yet," he stared blankly at everything. "They have mass, you can feel the inertia when they move horizontally, and their density is obviously higher than that of air, so it's not buoyancy."

"Perhaps, magnets? There are magnets installed in these objects?" William said, then shook his head. "But these soil particles, so small, would hardly maintain balance in motion. Their poles flip very easily; it's impossible to push them up with repulsion... Unless, a magnetic monopole?"

"No, no, that's too exaggerated. Maybe they just added iron powder to these things and put magnets on the roof."

"Is this your conclusion?" Murphy asked.

"No, of course not," he said, pulling a bunch of keys from his pocket. "This keychain is made of steel, but it wasn't attracted. There isn't that strong a magnetic field here..."

"I need experiments, lots of experiments. This is amazing. I've never seen anything like this before. There must be something here, something I didn't know before."

Murphy smiled. "Congratulations, you've found an interesting question."

"So now, does anyone want to try answering the second or third question?" He picked up the small wooden stick and used a transformation charm on it, turning it into a small bird.

"Illusion!" someone exclaimed. "A hologram!"

"Oh, really?" Murphy pointed at him. "Yugardim Leviosa!"

The man screamed and floated up, then was controlled by Murphy to fly around the room twice. Murphy asked, "Do you still think it's a hologram, Stavan Welch?"

Stavan Welch's face turned pale, yet he was also somewhat excited. "Incredible! Magic! This is magic!"

"Congratulations on getting it right!" Murphy said, waving his wand. Suddenly, a black aura enveloped him, and his body slowly rose up. Then, he suddenly rushed above the crowd and appeared behind them. By the time everyone looked at him, he had flown back to the podium.

"Magic." Murphy used a silencing spell to suppress the gasps from the audience, letting his own voice echo in everyone's ears. "This is indeed magic."

As he spoke, he conjured a fountain out of thin air on the stage with his wand. "That's magic."

Then, many birds were summoned. "This is also magic."

He made grass and flowers suddenly sprout on the carpet in the hall, and in a few moments, the carpet turned into a lawn. "That's magic."

"However, the word 'magic' is meaningless," Murphy said, waving his wand again to erase everything that had just happened.

"Just as it's meaningless to explain all phenomena as nature, miracles, or science, it's merely a convenient name we give to the unknown."

"Magic cannot be just magic. If we do not understand the details of science, we do not understand science. If we cannot explain the phenomena in magic, then we are no different from our ancestors who regarded thunder as the wrath of the gods, and have made no progress in our understanding."

"Yes, I am a wizard, and I can use magic."

"That's what sets me apart. But believe me, I don't know much more about magic than any of you."

"I am like a primitive man now. I can use fire to keep warm, drive away wild animals, and cook food, but I still know nothing about the nature of fire."

"Where does my magic come from? How does it work? Why can one spell start a fire, while another can make a person float? I am very curious about this, but I do not have enough energy to study them all. Therefore, I need you all."

"Now I can answer my initial question. What exactly is the subject of your research?"

"The answer is magic. You were invited here to explore that unknown world."

"Your job is to reap the rewards from the blue ocean of magic."

(End of this chapter)