Chapter 141: Voldemort’s Past
“No thanks,” Vaughn said. “Those Death Eaters really put a bad taste in my mouth. Send me to Dumbledore!”
The Aurors were visibly relieved.
He was genuinely afraid the other party would want to keep touring. There were several more levels of Death Eaters below, and if a Dementor suddenly went berserk and injured him, it would be difficult to explain.
He said cheerfully, “As you command! Please stand still, Mr. Weasley, we’ll be back to the upper levels immediately.”
As for whether anything had happened in the cells before?
There was no need to ask. Aside from the benevolent and naive Mr. Fudge, no one believed Death Eaters were entitled to human rights!
In a while, the two guards would do a headcount. As long as no one died, any minor disturbances inside would be buried with them.
…
Upon returning to the upper levels of the fortress, faint sunlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, casting a hazy glow upon the island.
After spending some time in the maximum security area and feeling thoroughly uncomfortable, Vaughn came out and basked in the sun for a while. Then, guided by the Aurors, he found Dumbledore in a rather cozy common room on the top floor of the fortress.
As Vaughn entered, the old man was sitting by the common room window, his crescent-shaped glasses reflecting the sunlight.
Across from him sat an old man with tangled long hair, his face vacant.
A slender silver thread emerged from the old man’s forehead and was attached to Dumbledore’s fingertip. Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled with a deep blue light, and numerous shadows flickered in his pupils.
He was reading the old man’s memories!
“Is this Morfin Gaunt?” Vaughn walked up to the old man and looked down at him.
The old man’s hair was dirty and matted, caked with thick grime, making it almost impossible to discern its original color. His face had the typical pallor of someone who had spent a long time in Azkaban—pale, unhealthy, and so thin as to be almost transparent.
What struck Vaughn was the old man’s eyes.
Of course, it wasn’t that his eyes were beautiful, but rather their deformity. The two listless black eyeballs, even in his vacant state, stared in opposite directions.
“…Tragic pure-blood ideology, inbreeding…”
Noticing the old man’s eyes, Vaughn immediately commented.
Then, he heard Dumbledore sigh, “Yes, even among the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the Gaunts were the most fanatical about pure-blood ideology. For the sake of so-called purity, they disregarded humanity, and in the end, only produced one tragedy after another.”
Vaughn looked up and saw the blue light in Dumbledore’s eyes slowly extinguish.
Old Dumbledore gazed at the silver thread in his hand, his expression grim.
“The memory extraction wasn’t smooth?”
“…Yes, these memories are false!” Dumbledore said, rubbing his fingers together and returning the silver thread to Morfin Gaunt’s large head.
Vaughn wasn’t surprised by the outcome he described.
Before coming here, both of them had reviewed the case file of the Riddle murders. It clearly stated that Morfin Gaunt had confessed to killing the Muggle Riddles.
If his memories hadn’t been altered, how could he have confessed willingly?
“Exquisite Memory Magic. If I hadn’t been somewhat skilled, I might not have discovered the traces of alteration…” Dumbledore said with a complex expression. “Even now, there are no more than 10 wizards in the entire Wizarding World who can detect that Morfin Gaunt’s memories have been tampered with.”
“And at that time, Tom was still just a student…”
He glanced at Vaughn as he spoke.
This was why he had always felt Vaughn was so much like Tom—both were astonishingly talented, possessing profound magical attainments at such a young age.
Such genius was rare even in Hogwarts’ thousand-year history.
Vaughn, who knew Dumbledore extremely well, immediately understood his thoughts. He rolled his eyes at the old man and said mockingly, “Please rest assured, esteemed Headmaster, I care more about this face than Tom does, and I have no interest in turning into that monstrous form of his!”
Dumbledore, snapping back to attention, grinned cheekily, “Indeed, you must not emulate Tom, or Granger would be terribly sad.”
Vaughn, not wanting to get bogged down in such nonsense, asked, “What are you planning to do next?”
Dumbledore, his mood seemingly improved, said with a smile, “Of course, I intend to try and restore Morfin Gaunt’s memories. He must know the whereabouts of the Gaunt Ring. In fact…”
He looked at the old man with the deformed eyes opposite him, his expression filled with emotion. “…he himself sensed something was wrong with his memories, which is why, even after decades in Azkaban, even living through hell every day, he didn’t forget the memory of the Riddle murders. Instead, he preserved it carefully.”
“He is a pitiable man. Even without the Gaunt Ring, I must try to restore his memories to clear his name!”
Restoring Morfin Gaunt’s memories was no simple matter.
This pitiable, wrongfully accused man, over decades of Azkaban imprisonment, had his mind shattered by the Dementors’ greedy extraction. His consciousness, memory system, and so on, were severely damaged.
“It’s like walking through a trash heap!”
Vaughn commented as he and Dumbledore found themselves within Morfin Gaunt’s mindscape.
All that could be seen was chaos. Memories, thoughts, emotions… these intangible abstract concepts were now like a cut-up painting, wandering aimlessly in a dark void.
Vaughn looked down at his feet. It was a short stretch of a yellowish-brown country road. In the mindscape of a healthy person, it would extend far into the distance.
But in Morfin Gaunt’s current memories, it was less than 10 feet long. There was no grass along the sides, no rural scenery, only endless darkness.
A few thorny bushes emerged from the darkness, coiled around the end of this short road, obscuring an old signpost.
Upon seeing the signpost, Dumbledore’s expression brightened. He leaned closer to examine it, responding to Vaughn, “Yes, it’s very chaotic, but there are still clues… Aha, Little Hangleton, I haven’t come to the wrong place.”
Dumbledore exclaimed happily.
Vaughn looked along and saw two directional arrows at the top of the signpost. One read 【 Hangleton, 5 miles 】, the other read 【 Little Hangleton, 1 mile 】.
However, there was no road in the direction indicated by either arrow. To be precise, this “road,” due to the fractured memories, had no discernible location or form within Morfin Gaunt’s mindscape.
Memory is a very precise system. If we look at the process of memory formation, it is “wave-like,” a collection of various subjective sensations—visual, auditory, tactile, and so on, collected by sensory organs and then compiled in the brain.
Since it is a collection, it can be decomposed. The memories of a normal person can be a continuous, clear scene, but someone whose mind is already chaotic…
Dumbledore raised his hand and grasped at the void.
A magical ripple spread out, but with his magic, only a few blurry patches of color drifted from the end of the road beneath their feet.
These were Morfin Gaunt’s associated memories of the road’s continuation, or rather, just a part of the memory’s composition.
It was a chromatic perception, a color signal recorded by the eyes, edited by the brain, and then decomposed again due to the overall chaos of the mindscape!
“Alas, it has already dispersed this much…” Dumbledore sighed and looked back at Vaughn, “My dear?”
Vaughn smiled and gestured with his sleeves, “What are you looking at me for?”
“…Of course, I’m asking you to help find the memories. Isn’t this part of our deal?”
Vaughn remained unmoved. “I never agreed to that. Besides, you’ve been immersed in Memory Magic for nearly a century. Don’t tell me you can’t even perform the most basic compilation of memory information!”
Old Dumbledore could, of course.
However, each person’s focus in Memory Magic differed. His skills leaned more towards extracting and repairing memories; he could unearth them regardless of how deeply they were hidden.
But for memory elements that had already dispersed into various signals and information, his skills were of little use.
Old Dumbledore rubbed his temples. Having spent a lot of time with Vaughn, he was now quite familiar with the latter’s personality and knew that Vaughn’s refusal wasn’t because he didn’t want to help.
It was more likely because he needed something in return.
He said with a sigh, “Tell me, what do you want?”
Vaughn, his intentions exposed by Dumbledore, didn’t care. He said, “I want to copy some magical knowledge from Morfin Gaunt’s memories.”
This request made Dumbledore frown slightly.
Although, according to the information he had gathered, the Gaunt family had already declined by the time of Marvolo Gaunt （grandfather of Voldemort）. They were so poor they only had an old house left, and it was said they couldn’t even afford new clothes.
However, they were direct descendants of Slytherin. They should have had some hidden treasures.
Especially Slytherin’s legacy… This founder, who had become obsessed with bloodline and soul research in his later years, had fallen out with the other three founders. No one knew what he had passed down to the Gaunt family, or how dangerous it might be.
But…
Could he really refuse Vaughn?
Thinking about it, Dumbledore’s expression turned somewhat bitter. After pondering for a while, he reluctantly nodded. “I agree… but I also hope you’ll promise me, my dear, not to rashly attempt things you don’t understand. Or, if you want to learn something, talk to me first. You know, I don’t object to you learning Dark Arts anymore!”
Not objecting didn’t mean approving.
Vaughn understood Dumbledore’s dilemma well and didn’t bother with further explanations. As long as the old man agreed, it was fine.
The discussion concluded, Vaughn raised his right hand, brought it to his left shoulder, and gave a gentle tug. Silently, a hazy human-like silhouette detached from his “body.”
Persona Embodiment!
Vaughn’s Memory Magic crystallization, even to Dumbledore, seemed like a highly advanced magical art.
Dumbledore narrowed his eyes slightly, a faint azure glow lighting up in his pupils.
He stared intently at the emerging Persona Embodiment, watching as it detached from Vaughn’s body, instantly dissolved into a dense white mist, and descended, spreading outwards.
But in reality, the white mist was merely a visual phenomenon. In Dumbledore’s magical sight, what he saw was essentially countless extremely fine, invisible threads. The moment the Persona Embodiment disintegrated and the white mist diffused, these threads deeply penetrated this mindscape.
In just a blink of an eye, Dumbledore saw the fragmented country road beneath their feet and the floating fragments in the distant darkness.
Threads emerged from all of them.
They resembled mycelia growing from spores, “rooting,” infecting, and growing within those countless fragments. The fragments were quickly covered with “white fuzz.”
A moment later, the white fuzz began to glow with various colors and sway, as if suddenly alive, looking extremely eerie!
Simultaneously, Dumbledore saw the country road, now covered in white fuzz, begin to “grow” at its broken edges.
No, it was more like the white fuzz, like threads, were “weaving” the road back together!
“Invasion, analysis, collection, editing… Is this the primary direction of Vaughn’s Memory Magic?”
As he pondered, the road’s growth accelerated.
A dirt road, intertwined with white and yellow, rapidly climbed and meandered through the void.
Soon, the road reached its end, and a dense forest was woven into existence.
The trees in the forest were tall and lush, casting dark, dense shadows.
An old house, covered in moss and vines, was half-hidden among the gnarled roots of the trees.
That was the old Gaunt house!
Before coming to Azkaban, Dumbledore had specifically visited Little Hangleton village for an on-site inspection. Although the real Gaunt house had collapsed due to years of neglect, its general outline was still there.
But Dumbledore also knew that what was presented before their eyes at this moment was not Morfin Gaunt’s true memories, but rather a reconstruction compiled and edited by Vaughn using his Persona Embodiment, based on all the memory elements Morfin had of the old Gaunt house.
So, strictly speaking, the old house before them was entirely false.
However, Dumbledore didn’t need a real memory.
What he needed was a scene, the location where the story took place!
Dumbledore stepped onto the road and walked towards the old house, with Vaughn beside him.
The simulation by the Persona Embodiment was still in progress.
Countless fine, transparent threads were also spreading throughout Morfin Gaunt’s mindscape.
As more information was collected, the surrounding scenery became more complete… As they entered the dense forest, the ancient trees were full of leaves.
Vaughn looked up and then snapped his fingers.
Instantly, the dappled shade was no longer dark. In the gloomy, chilly forest, several patches of bright, pure moonlight shone down.
In that pearl-like light, the oppressive atmosphere was dispelled, and the air became gentle and warm.
At the same time, a tall, dark-haired, handsome young man carrying an oil lamp quietly appeared beside Vaughn and Dumbledore.
Neither of them showed any surprise at his appearance.
They silently watched the black-haired young man walk past them.
The black-haired young man paid no attention to their presence.
He walked on the moonlight, swinging his oil lamp, and followed the road all the way to the old Gaunt house—
It was a house so dilapidated it was painful to look at.
The walls were covered in signs of erosion from moss, vines, and other plants. The roof, tilted at a steep angle, showed many broken tiles, exposing the uneven rafters beneath.
Tall nettles grew around the house, so dense they almost obscured the windows.
Following behind the black-haired young man, Vaughn glanced at the old house a few times before focusing his attention on the young man.
It was clear that the black-haired young man was also visiting for the first time. He hesitantly raised his oil lamp, looking at the dilapidated house by the moonlight and lamplight, his brow furrowed.
After a moment of hesitation, the black-haired young man finally knocked on the door.
Knock, knock!
Dumbledore grabbed Vaughn’s arm. Vaughn didn’t resist, allowing himself to be pulled forward a step.
The next instant, the world spun. Vaughn’s vision went black—true blackness. They appeared in a sealed room, unlit and utterly dark.
Only from the direction of the door could they hear heavy knocking.
Then, with a creak, the door was pushed open. The black-haired young man entered, holding the oil lamp, its dim yellow light providing some illumination.
The light illuminated the floor, covered in thick dust, where a middle-aged wizard, surrounded by empty wine bottles and with hair and beard covering his entire face, jolted awake. He raised his wand at the boy.
“Hiss—”
He shrieked loudly.
The black-haired young man responded with the same hissing sound, like a snake.
“Parseltongue?” Vaughn turned to look at Dumbledore.
Old Dumbledore nodded. “Yes, a special ability inherited from Slytherin by the Gaunt family.”
Watching the young Voldemort and Morfin Gaunt hiss at each other, Vaughn was somewhat speechless. “Can you understand what they’re saying?”
“I can understand some of it, of course. But only understand, I’m not a Parselmouth myself!”
Dumbledore said with a smile. His eyes narrowed slightly as he gazed at the black-haired young man, his vision somewhat hazy. “This memory is from Tom’s first visit to the Gaunt house. He was investigating his origins at the time… a child of about ten, he surely wished to know what his ancestors were like.”
“He first returned to the Muggle orphanage and traced down his mother’s whereabouts, Merope Gaunt, who had already committed suicide.”
“But he simply couldn’t accept that his mother was such a cowardly person, that a witch would commit suicide. So he placed his hopes in the Gaunt family, expecting them to be a noble lineage…”
As he spoke, the young Voldemort and Morfin Gaunt in the room were hissing more and more intensely.
Vaughn observed the young Voldemort, noticing his eyes frequently scanning the dilapidated and dirty state of the old house, and glancing at the slovenly Morfin, his uncle.
Dumbledore was also watching, his gaze deep. “Tom was a very proud person, smarter than all his classmates, even more powerful than adult wizards. He thought he must possess a noble bloodline… but reality is often crueler than dreams.”
In the center of the room, after a few more hisses, Morfin said something that made young Voldemort’s face turn ashen, his expression hysterical!
He suddenly drew his wand, and a terrifying light flared in his pupils.
An invisible curse struck Morfin Gaunt violently. In the next instant, an infinite darkness descended from an unknown direction.
It instantly engulfed the living room of the old Gaunt house.
Then—
Crack!
Dumbledore clapped his hands. The sudden darkness immediately halted, as did the flickering lamplight, Morfin, who had been blasted by the curse, and Voldemort’s robes, agitated by the magical fluctuations!
Vaughn looked at the darkness that had already consumed half the living room. “The memory is interrupted here. The rest is the fabricated memory you extracted?”
Dumbledore’s expression was complex. “Yes, Tom asked who his biological father was, and then Morfin massacred the Riddle family. That altered memory is of little value for reference… However, we can infer the truth based on the current situation—”
“As I said, he was a proud person. He couldn’t even tolerate his mother’s suicide, let alone the fact that his father was a useless Muggle.”
“Perhaps it was then that his mental state collapsed. He attacked Morfin Gaunt, then stole Morfin’s wand and used it to slaughter the Riddle family, who also lived in Little Hangleton village. Afterward, he returned and fabricated a false memory for Morfin, making him believe he had killed the Riddle family himself!”
“Incidentally, he also took Morfin’s ring.”
His gaze finally settled on Morfin Gaunt’s right hand, where a ring, inlaid with a black gem bearing the Peverell crest, gleamed under the lamplight.
Vaughn also looked at the ring and said, “What are you planning to do next? My Persona Embodiment can currently only restore to this point. Morfin Gaunt’s memories are too chaotic, and Voldemort’s methods were too skillful, leaving no traceable clues. If I were to continue processing this, I would have to use a crude elimination method, turning Morfin Gaunt’s entire mindscape upside down.”
“Oh, you’ve already done more than enough, child.”
Dumbledore smiled, walked to Morfin Gaunt’s side, and placed a hand on his tangled hair. “The rest is up to me. With the help of the stable memory scene you’ve restored, I’ll try to pull Morfin Gaunt over and have him lead me to it!”
Vaughn and Dumbledore had entirely different understandings of memory and the mind.
Memory Magic was the most idealistic of all spells, easily influenced by a wizard’s concepts, including philosophical thought.
Philosophy was a person’s way of perceiving and understanding the world and all things.
If their philosophical thoughts had to be defined, then undoubtedly, Vaughn leaned towards materialism, while Dumbledore leaned towards objective idealism.
In a general sense, there seemed to be little difference between the two.
Both believed in the existence of objective reality and that human perception of the world and all things was limited. For example, memory was a projection cast upon the mind by physical matter through the eyes and other senses, not the truth—meaning, what you see, hear, and feel, and the memory formed from it, was merely one facet of things, not their true appearance.
However, upon closer examination, materialism and objective idealism harbored irreconcilable contradictions:
The knowable and the unknowable!
For materialists, all things must have objective laws, be interpretable and understandable, and eventually, the truth or true knowledge would be grasped.
For objective idealists, things existed objectively, but humans could only understand their projections, not their true essence, because the true essence could not be directly instilled into the human mind.
In the Muggle world, such differences would likely lead to endless debates, with neither side convincing the other.
But in the Wizarding World, where consciousness could interact with things through certain mediums, the distinction between materialism and idealism, when applied to magic like Memory Magic, which was easily influenced by concepts, would lead to enormous differences.
For example, Vaughn’s Persona Embodiment!
Its primary functions were analysis, collection, and compilation, with clear traces of epistemological principles. Analysis was for observing things, collection for gathering information, and compilation for transforming the gathered information.
Theoretically, as long as Vaughn continued to progress and his senses were continuously upgraded, he would one day be able to compile reality into his memory at a 1:1 ratio.
In the ethereal realm of memory, he could recreate a universe of truth!
It could be said that, influenced by materialistic thought, the upgrade path of Vaughn’s Persona Embodiment was discernible even to Muggles who didn’t understand magic.
Because its core was “all things are knowable”!
In contrast, Dumbledore’s Memory Magic was “unknowable”… It was something utterly incomprehensible!
Dong—
As Dumbledore’s hand touched Morfin Gaunt’s head, Vaughn heard a clear, ethereal sound reverberate in his ears.
The next second, his consciousness plunged into boundless darkness!
But Vaughn didn’t panic because he knew this darkness wasn’t appearing in his consciousness. It was Morfin Gaunt’s mindscape that was being affected. He felt the darkness simply because he was also within Morfin Gaunt’s mindscape.
Without resistance, Vaughn remained quietly in the silent darkness.
Before long, a ray of light appeared and then rapidly intensified.
It was Dumbledore!
At this moment, the old wizard radiated a gentle yet incredibly penetrating light that extended into the boundless darkness but had no boundaries.
Like a star floating in the infinite expanse of space.
Standing in the darkness, Dumbledore spread his hands, and a bubble-like object floated in his palm—it was the old Gaunt house that Vaughn had woven with his Persona Embodiment not long ago. It floated on the surface of the bubble like a painting, distorted and flowing.
The moment the bubble appeared, countless mirrored images of the old Gaunt house materialized in the boundless darkness.
They appeared in all directions, shrouded in dense gray mist, like nested mirrors folding infinitely outwards in all directions.
Some were illuminated by Dumbledore’s light, but more remained hidden in darkness, only their outlines visible to an infinite extent.
Dumbledore raised the bubble high, and a complex ripple emanated from him.
Sensing the ripple and the gray mist surrounding the mirrored images, Vaughn, who had been observing, suddenly felt a sense of familiarity… It was very much like what he had seen and heard months ago when Dumbledore had taken him on an exploration of Aether!
This…
The next moment, a somewhat startled Vaughn sensed something responding to Dumbledore from the depths of the darkness!
No, not something.
Vaughn looked down and saw, within the countless mirrored images of the old Gaunt house surrounding them, the gradual emergence of countless phantoms of Morfin Gaunt.
Some phantoms, like their mirrored settings, were illuminated by the light, while others, like the mirrored images with only outlines, were just vague shadows.
They simultaneously raised their hands—
“Dumbledore—”
“Come here—”
The cacophony of countless voices converged, seeming both near and far away.
Looking at the countless phantoms, which seemed to possess their own consciousness, Vaughn, who had experienced a similar scene in Aether, suddenly understood something.
He looked towards Dumbledore. “These…”
In the distance, Dumbledore, looking somewhat weary after “calling forth” the phantoms, smiled upon seeing this. “Yes, they are Morfin Gaunt’s subconscious… Do you remember the Alchemy books you once read? The subconscious is the embodiment of all dreams, fantasies, and forgotten memories.”
Vaughn certainly remembered.
In fact, after he had attempted to enter Aether and truly observed the existence of the subconscious, he had made plans to research it.
Because as he practiced Memory Magic, one thing had always troubled him—after memories were altered, why did they gradually recover over time?
He had then guessed that memories must exist somewhere as a backup.
Later, he learned that the subconscious had the function of storing forgotten memories.
But…
Vaughn gazed at the countless subconscious aspects of Morfin Gaunt. He knew that each of them was a real existence, just as his consciousness had been infinitely subdivided in Aether because Aether had no concept of time.
These “Morfin Gaunts” were also the infinitely subdivided subconscious of Morfin Gaunt, who had lost his sense of time!
This realization surprised him greatly. He couldn’t help but look up at Dumbledore, who was smiling at him. “Is the human mindscape connected to Aether?”
Although phrased as a question.
Vaughn had already confirmed that what he was asking was the truth. Not only was it because during his previous journey through Aether, after learning about the existence of the subconscious, he had tested it on test subjects （Harry and Peter） but found no trace of the subconscious.
It truly existed only in Aether, as stated in the Alchemy literature.
Furthermore, he suddenly understood why alchemists only needed meditation to enter Aether.
Because, inherently, they were connected!
Understanding the connection between the mindscape and Aether, and realizing this, Vaughn couldn’t help but have a new question arise—since the mind was connected to Aether, why could only alchemists enter Aether?
In fact, when he first read about the “Golden Soul” school’s concepts of “mental body,” “spiritual body,” and “subconscious” in Alchemy literature, he found it strange.
Alchemy was a discipline that studied matter, but the theories summarized by the “Golden Soul” school seemed more akin to Muggle psychology.
Psychology studied groups, not unique individuals or small circles.
This was contrary to the reality—alchemists were precisely a small group, while Muggles and ordinary wizards, who made up a larger proportion of the population, could not enter Aether. They lacked Alchemy Talent and could not perceive, let alone observe, Aether.
Why did the alchemists who developed the “Golden Soul” doctrine include Muggles and ordinary wizards within their theoretical framework?
Vaughn vaguely sensed the problem…
Perhaps theoretically, just as the hypothesis “All things are connected to the universe （Golden） Soul” suggested, and just as the mindscape was connected to Aether as they now saw.
Perhaps in the eyes of alchemists, all intelligent life was originally capable of entering Aether.
The reason they currently could not was simply because they were “imperfect,” “flawed.” Among those “defects,” what was missing was a crucial permission, a key!
