Chapter 146: The Unseen Hand
So, even the ever-troubled and lazy Miss Watson, who usually didn’t bother with her appearance, couldn’t resist such a novel assault.
Of course, her teeth too!
Mr. Granger personally trimmed his daughter’s front teeth about a week ago, supplemented by a potion Hermione specifically sourced. Now, those two slightly larger front teeth have returned to their original size.
Mr. Granger suffered for several days because of this—as a dentist, he was happy to restore beauty and confidence to his patients.
But as a father, every time he thought of his stubborn daughter suddenly wanting to have her teeth fixed for another man, he was so angry he couldn’t eat!
After basking in the sun for a while, Hermione, who had been silent, suddenly asked, “What exactly is Dark Arts pollution? Or rather, what is its form of existence?”
Normal couples can spend an entire day doing nothing when they’re being affectionate.
However, when Vaughn and Hermione spend time together privately, there are rarely conversations solely about their feelings. They usually discuss topics of mutual interest, such as magic, philosophy, and even Muggle science.
Under the long-term influence, Hermione’s thought process also began to shift closer to Vaughn’s. For instance, when encountering something she didn’t understand, instead of accepting the Wizarding World’s definition based on her existing knowledge, she tried to understand its objective form from a different perspective.
Hearing her question, Vaughn didn’t answer immediately.
In the bright sunlight, he narrowed his eyes slightly, pondered for a moment, and then said, “I don’t have a definitive answer yet. Do you want to research it together?”
Hermione tilted her head up and looked at him silently.
Although Vaughn didn’t say it, she could already infer that the pollution’s appearance might not be solely due to learning a curse; there could be some rather unconventional variables at play.
She had always known that Vaughn kept many things from her.
He might have another side to him that was difficult for others to accept.
But…
Flashes of their interactions over the past year flickered through her mind, and Hermione was certain that Vaughn was not a bad person!
He might not be a law-abiding wizard; he could be somewhat rebellious and unconventional.
But he was definitely not a bad guy.
This wasn’t Hermione being blinded by love or romanticizing things; it was the answer she had subconsciously gathered from observing Vaughn’s actions during their year-plus of interaction—
He abided by order.
No matter how busy he was, if conditions permitted, he would attend every class, showing respect to professors and those who came before him. Conversely, he would openly reject those seeking fame unearned, such as Quirinus Quirrell, and Gilderoy Lockhart, whom he had sent to Azkaban just last month!
He also possessed empathy.
After a long period of observation, Hermione admitted that Vaughn’s initial intentions for developing the Wolfsbane Potion might not have been entirely honorable. As some of his opponents claimed in the press, Vaughn Weasley attempted to exploit werewolves.
But unlike those people, Hermione, who spent considerable time by Vaughn’s side, saw more of Vaughn’s contributions to WAC.
The simplest point—no one demanded Vaughn take responsibility for the survival of werewolves, but the fact was, from its inception, WAC was funded by Vaughn’s loans and connections, allowing werewolves to escape a feral existence and return to human society.
And this was something that should have been borne by the entire Wizarding World, not just him!
Therefore, in Hermione’s heart, Vaughn could be an ambitious man, but he was certainly not a reckless rule-breaker. He might be “rebellious” and have his own ideas.
But at the same time, he was cautious. As long as the order of this world still met his needs and he wasn’t ready to forge a new order, he remained a preserver of this world!
The young girl did not yet possess enough experience to draw clear distinctions between good and bad.
But she knew an irrefutable truth: the greatest disaster in the world is the collapse of order, and the greatest good deed is the maintenance of order.
A person willing to abide by order could never be associated with “bad.”
In her eyes, Vaughn was exactly that kind of person!
Hermione didn’t know what Vaughn was planning, but as long as he wasn’t trying to destroy the world, she felt she could accept it…
After a long moment of stunned silence, Hermione nodded and smiled, “Okay, how can I help you?”
In reality, her heart was far from calm; it was filled with trepidation and trembling. She knew this was a sign that Vaughn was willing to reveal some of his secrets to her!
Vaughn said softly, “First, come and watch a memory with me!”
Saying this, a sapphire light flared in his eyes, pulling Hermione into his Mind World.
The process was quick!
Apart from a fleeting moment of dizziness that was hard to notice, Hermione perceived almost no abnormality. They were still leaning against the attic window, bathed in sunlight.
The sunlight shone on their skin, causing it to redden and warm slightly from the light’s stimulus.
A light breeze slipped through the cracks of the window, and the curtains swayed slightly, just like the trees outside.
If Hermione hadn’t looked up and seen the peculiar sight surrounding Vaughn, she wouldn’t have realized she had left reality—wisps of thick white mist cascaded down from Vaughn’s body, making him appear as if he were draped in a cloak woven from fog.
Hermione was very familiar with this.
Persona Embodiment!
As mentioned earlier, when they were alone, they didn’t “waste time” like other couples. For them, discussing academics and knowledge was a way of expressing affection.
Since the beginning of the year, Hermione had been involved to some extent in Vaughn’s Persona Embodiment development process and had naturally seen its appearance more than once.
Realizing she had entered Vaughn’s Mind World, Hermione curiously lowered her head to observe herself.
What she saw was nothing unusual; she was wearing the same loungewear as in reality. Everything felt so real and simple, as if she were still in the real world.
Noticing her curiosity, Vaughn ruffled her hair. “This background is my memory from 1 second ago; it’s completely taken from reality.”
Although Hermione wasn’t skilled in Memory Magic, she had heard Vaughn speak about it before.
She knew that in Vaughn’s theory, memory was essentially the recording and replication of sensory information collected by humans.
Recalling Vaughn’s words about showing her a memory.
Hermione hesitated, then asked, “The memory you want to show me, did it actually happen and cause you to have Dark Arts pollution?”
“Yes, it happened today… Are you ready?”
Vaughn asked her in a low voice.
Hermione fell silent for a moment, her thoughts in turmoil, but quickly, she suppressed her random thoughts and nodded emphatically, “I’m ready!”
Vaughn said nothing further.
Honestly, he hadn’t planned to involve Hermione in his “secrets” so early. However, as they interacted more, his anomalies became more apparent.
It was conceivable that Hermione had accumulated a head full of questions.
The only reason she hadn’t asked was that the girl was considering his feelings and hadn’t spoken up.
Maintaining and communicating feelings were mutual. He had no reason to feel at ease letting Hermione consistently be the one “giving” in this mutual process.
So, when Hermione had asked about the Dark Arts pollution, he had thought about it and decided it was an opportunity to show the girl some of his secrets.
As for whether she could accept it…
Vaughn wasn’t sure!
With that thought, Vaughn hesitated for a rare moment, but ultimately, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers!
Instantly, the world reproduced by the memory shifted!
The surrounding scene blurred for a moment.
It was like sitting on a speeding train, where everything outside the window rapidly receded, merging into indistinct, blurry outlines in the eyes.
But this change quickly stopped.
When her vision cleared again, Hermione found herself and Vaughn in a seaside fishing village. She saw cliffs and the ocean in the distance, and up close, another “Vaughn” and two middle-aged men.
They stood before a small building with a golden roof and white paint. The “Vaughn” raised his wand.
But everything was frozen.
Each falling raindrop hung suspended in the air, reflecting the faint sky light diffracted from the horizon, crystal clear like gemstones.
Hermione curiously raised her hand to touch one, but her hand passed right through the raindrop.
Reminding her that this was the Mind World, a memory, not a real object.
She glanced at Vaughn beside her. As she watched curiously, Vaughn snapped his fingers.
*Snap!*
The frozen world before them suddenly came alive!
The curtain-like rain fell instantly, a sudden gust of wind swept by, and the sounds of wind, rain, and distant waves crashing into the shore… countless sounds flooded their eardrums.
And then, a spell!
“Tempus Edax!”
Hermione’s eyes widened sharply, her brown irises reflecting the reversed rain curtain around the other “Vaughn” in front of them, reflecting the fleeting, distorted vortex at the tip of “his” wand.
And in the next second, further away, the small building that suddenly seemed to have its time drained away, rapidly decaying!
And the six magical lights struggling to resist within the building.
In less than ten seconds, she watched the building collapse, saw the six magical lights extinguish one by one, heard their desperate roars, and then, under “Vaughn’s” spell, they visibly turned into withered bones, one after another!
The young witch was stunned for a moment.
*Snap!*
With another snap of fingers, everything froze again.
The sudden cessation of the image jolted Hermione back to reality. She looked at Vaughn, who was looking at her without a word, her lips trembling slightly.
She had many things she wanted to say but didn’t know how to start!
Amidst her hesitation, Vaughn’s expression softened.
Without a doubt, Hermione’s heart was kind, just as she had great wisdom but was not sorted into Ravenclaw by the Sorting Hat, but instead went to Gryffindor, which symbolized bravery.
Clearly, in the Sorting Hat’s view, bravery and ambition held greater weight in Hermione Granger’s heart than wisdom and rationality.
But human complexity lay precisely here. No single label could fully represent a living person. In real life, it wasn’t that a wizard entering Gryffindor was necessarily a person of absolute, unwavering positive emotions represented by courage.
One’s beliefs could be influenced and constrained by various factors.
Thus, Gryffindor, symbolizing courage, produced a coward like Peter Pettigrew, while Ravenclaw, symbolizing wisdom, had the ignorant Gilderoy Lockhart. Slytherin, symbolizing ambition, lust for power, and ruthlessness, also had Regulus Black and Severus Snape!
Therefore… the kind Hermione wasn’t as principled as she might have imagined.
In a way, Hufflepuff, which was more inclusive and didn’t impose restrictions on admissions, better suited the complex creature that was “human.”
His thoughts drifting, Vaughn gently took his young girlfriend’s hand.
Hermione didn’t struggle; she remained silent.
She was waiting for Vaughn to provide an “explanation,” a reason she could accept!
And Vaughn did provide it. He looked at the frozen memory and said, “The six people in that building were a group of dark wizards…”
The reason was brief, but for Hermione, it was enough!
The girl hadn’t realized it herself, but when Vaughn said the people in the small building were dark wizards, she visibly relaxed.
Moreover, Vaughn also explained the “cause and effect.”
“…William and James were attacked by them while working for WAC, so I brought Remus and Mundungus here to deal with these fellows… That short, stout one is Mundungus, a good man who operates in the black market; he’s also a member of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix.”
Upon hearing this, Hermione was completely relieved.
Of course, she still had some vague awareness of the ambiguities. For example, why was Vaughn dealing with dark wizards instead of the Ministry’s Aurors?
The girl instinctively ignored this point—some things were best not to pry into too deeply.
This was a lesson she had learned when Harry and Ron were annoyed with her for her stubbornness for the first time, and also when she was isolated in the dormitory a few months prior.
Taking a deep breath, Hermione forced herself to focus on the frozen memory scene: the small building destroyed by Vaughn’s magic, and the dark wizards who had turned into withered bones.
She hadn’t forgotten the main purpose of her entering Vaughn’s memory.
“What spell is that?”
“Tempus Edax, a curse related to time. It’s not particularly vicious among Dark Arts, and it doesn’t require extreme negative emotions.”
“If we can rule out this spell as the cause, then the pollution appeared after you… after you killed these people?”
“Yes!”
Vaughn responded. The frozen memory began to move again, but instead of continuing linearly, the memory scene suddenly dissolved into large swathes of silver, appearing like light, or mist.
This was the true form of memory. The silver threads pulled from his forehead by Memory Magic were its separated appearance.
Hermione watched the silver light and mist swirling around. According to Vaughn’s understanding of another layer of matter, abstract concepts like mind, memory, spirit, and consciousness were all “information.”
Information was fundamentally invisible.
Just as computer data needed to be compiled by code and visualized to be seen directly, memory’s essence was essentially the brain’s visualization of “information” through compilation.
Thanks to biological evolution, this process was entirely automated by the brain, uncontrollable, and irreversible （ because reversal was not within the brain’s evolutionary functions ）.
But for a wizard skilled in Memory Magic like Vaughn, returning memory to its “information” state was not difficult.
And this method was also the most direct way to examine the construction of one’s memories using Memory Magic.
The silver light and mist churned continuously.
Gradually, Hermione saw specks of black appear in the light mist. They moved rapidly, just as she had seen them in reality before, making it almost impossible to distinguish whether they were spots or threads.
Even when Vaughn snapped his fingers again to freeze the light mist, they were unaffected.
Hermione was disappointed.
Beside her, Vaughn gazed at the black traces still moving through the frozen silver light mist, his brows gradually relaxing.
Hermione noticed his expression.
“Did you discover something?”
“Not really a discovery, just some guesses,” Vaughn exhaled, speaking gravely. “You still remember my understanding of abstract concepts like memory and emotion, right?”
Hermione nodded. “Yes, you believe they are all information.”
“Yes, but ‘information’ is a general term. In my opinion, the generation of information stems from the movement of matter. If memory, emotion, and so on are information, then Hermione, what movement of matter do you think gives birth to them?”
Hermione froze for a moment.
Such a “Muggle science-like” question hadn’t been heard in a long time, so long it felt like another lifetime.
In reality, it had only been a year.
Buried memories were quickly activated. The girl recalled the biology knowledge she had learned and hesitantly said, “Electrical potential movement in the brain?”
“Exactly!”
Vaughn said excitedly. “No matter how abstract memory and emotion are, their initial formation must be based on the information collected by our senses. Our skin touching an object, sound waves transmitting into the ossicles and activating the chain of ossicles, water-soluble substances stimulating taste receptors and ligands to generate nerve impulses.”
“And light… photons striking the retina, leaving pre-processed images and undergoing photoelectric conversion!”
“All this sensory contact and collected information, upon entering the nervous system, is converted into electrical signals within our bodies. After a series of transmissions, accelerations, amplifications, and summarizations, they converge in the brain. Then, these electrical signals generated by touch, hearing, taste, smell, and sight collectively form complete memories, brew emotions, and stimulate thoughts…”
“Then let’s change our perspective—”
Vaughn gently raised his hand, and the frozen silver light mist began to move again. He looked at the shimmering colors flowing like ripples on water and said softly, “Returning to the perspective of magic, what am I truly manipulating when I use Memory Magic to manipulate memories, emotions, and thoughts?”
“…” Hermione froze for a moment, then suddenly realized, “Electrical signals!”
“Yes! Electrical signals, or you could say, the electrical potentials in my brain!”
Vaughn laughed. “I still don’t understand how Memory Magic achieves this function, but from my personal practice, I can infer that Memory Magic can absolutely control the electrical potential movements in the brain, allowing for modification, erasure, and overwriting… But now, why can’t I control the pollution caused by Dark Arts?”
Hearing this, Hermione finally understood why Vaughn’s brows had relaxed upon seeing the frozen memory, even though he couldn’t control the black traces.
She covered her mouth in surprise. “That pollution isn’t in your brain?”
Correct!
This was the guess Vaughn suddenly had after his observation—if Memory Magic could control all electrical potential activity in the brain, then anything it couldn’t control might be considered not to exist within the brain?
This was a rather novel idea.
The more Hermione thought about it, the more it made sense.
But she also had a question: “If the Dark Arts aren’t in your brain, then where are they? And how could they appear in your Mind World?”
Good question!
Vaughn’s eyes seemed to light up.
After a moment of silence, Hermione heard him murmur, “Perhaps the source of the pollution originates from the world where the soul resides… The so-called Dark Arts pollution might be the souls of those who have died, clinging to my soul…”
…
When Vaughn first entered Aether, Dumbledore had posed a very peculiar question: What is real? What is false?
For a long time, Vaughn found this question inexplicable.
It wasn’t until recently, in Morfin Gaunt’s Mind World, through Dumbledore’s demonstration that he realized souls did not reside within the human body, that he suddenly understood. Dumbledore’s question was actually a classic dilemma for alchemists—
If the soul isn’t in the body and exists in another space, then which one, the soul or the body, represents reality?
No one could definitively answer this.
Even the formidable Dumbledore, after a lifetime of searching, never found out what the soul’s dwelling place looked like or where it was.
He could only guess that, just as this world where our bodies are active, the soul’s dwelling place might also be a “world.”
All souls reside in that world!
Alchemists called it, the collective unconscious!
This was a profoundly paradigm-shifting theory. Even a quick learner like Vaughn, a transmigrator, was shaken to his core when he first learned of it.
Listening to Vaughn explain the Golden Soul School’s “collective unconscious” theory, Hermione was completely stunned.
The girl’s eyes widened. “Collective unconscious… soul world… our bodies and all our thought processes are likely just projections of our true souls in this universe. This…”
If anyone other than Vaughn had said these words, she would have been compelled to argue!
Sensing her inner conflict, Vaughn gently comforted her, “This is just one hypothesis. I mention it because it seems to explain the nature of Dark Arts pollution.”
Hermione unconsciously took a deep breath. Even in the Mind World, this action was meaningless.
She was simply using this action to calm her turbulent emotions.
After a moment of furrowed brows, she finally forced her attention back to the main issue:
“I still don’t quite understand. Even if we assume… assume the soul world truly exists, why would the souls of the people you killed cling to your soul?”
Vaughn didn’t provide an answer to her confusion, only smiling and saying, “That’s why it’s just a guess.”
Hermione puffed out her cheeks and whispered, “I don’t like this kind of guess… Isn’t this like the ‘vengeful spirits haunting’ in Muggle legends?”
She hated that phrase. It made her unavoidably associate it with the possibility that Vaughn killing those six dark wizards might… might actually have been a very bad deed!
…Vengeful spirits haunting…
Silently chewing on these words, Vaughn narrowed his eyes slightly.
The idea that Dark Arts pollution equates to the souls of the dead clinging to and interfering with the soul, while just a guess and seemingly illogical—why would such a phenomenon occur? What objective laws governed it?
Vaughn, encountering these questions for the first time, naturally had no answers.
But as analyzed before, Dark Arts pollution does not exist in the brain. Therefore, based on Vaughn’s current knowledge, it must exist in the soul.
Whether the essence of the pollution was vengeful spirits haunting or not made no difference.
A clear pattern emerged: killing with Dark Arts invariably leads to pollution, and this pollution originates from the soul world.
It indeed seemed absurd:
How could a naturally developing world possess such a rule that seemed to restrict killing with Dark Arts?
But…
His thoughts churned.
Vaughn looked up at the sky. The sky in the Mind World, unlike reality, was always boundlessly deep, filled with an illusory feeling.
However, was reality truly real?
Was the real world truly a world that developed naturally?
He remembered the experiments on time he and Dumbledore had conducted—time in the Painted World could be arbitrarily traversed and modified.
But in reality, time seemed to be twisted into a circle by an invisible hand, closed off, with fixed causality!
A thought that sent shivers down his spine whenever he remembered it!
…
Deep in the night, in the Granger’s attic.
The night wind brushed past the curtains, and faint moonlight spilled in through the window, bathing the floor by the window in a bright, silvery glow.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, bathed in moonlight, Vaughn’s eyeballs trembled rapidly beneath his closed eyelids.
A storm raged in his mind.
At this moment, the Mind World was completely filled with silvery-white light and mist, so dense it resembled the eye of a storm, stacked like mountains in the boundless illusory space!
Vaughn’s consciousness floated at the center of the storm’s eye.
His eyes shone with a faint, eerie light, gazing at the surrounding silvery light and mist that towered like mountains. With every emerging thought, he manipulated the light mist to howl, rotate, or freeze!
After an unknown period of time, it seemed that the mental operation and consumption had finally reached their limit, and the thick, silvery-white “cloud layer” gradually began to disintegrate.
Vaughn finally let out a long breath and opened his eyes.
His consciousness instantly detached from the Mind World and returned to reality.
In his opened eyes, a silvery-blue, faint glow had yet to completely dissipate, leaving a faint trace of light in his pupils.
This was a type of probe spell from Memory Magic, which allowed wizards to directly see abstract things with their naked eyes. Vaughn had rarely used it before because the vision it provided was not human.
It came from a Magical Creature called a Dementor.
This Magical Creature lived in the East, fed on nightmares, and could ward off illness and misfortune, making it a very famous auspicious beast in the East.
Vaughn wasn’t sure what the true visual perception of a Dementor was, but under the vision provided by the “Dementor’s Curse,” the entire world appeared like a camera with saturation turned up to the max. Everything looked like vibrant, amorphous color blocks. In the abstract realms of spirit and mind, one could only imagine how indescribable what it saw must be.
Rubbing his aching head, Vaughn rested for a while before getting up and sitting at his desk. He rummaged through his satchel for his notebook and began to record:
“…Using various methods, currently only the ‘Dementor’s Curse’ can accurately observe Dark Arts pollution. However, it can be basically confirmed that the source of the pollution is not the wizard’s body but an external invasion…”
“The previous guess might be true. This world seems to have some underlying logic that suppresses the killing of Dark Arts…”
Writing this, Vaughn’s quill suddenly paused.
He carefully looked at the elegant script he had just written—suppressing the killing of Dark Arts.
He suddenly felt something was wrong.
Pondering, Vaughn picked up his pen again:
“…No!”
“The direction of previous thought was flawed by a preconception. I personally reject Dark Arts pollution, subconsciously viewing it as a bad thing. Because of this, I subconsciously assumed that the existence of pollution seemed to have some underlying logic or will that was curbing the spread of Dark Arts!”
“But if we change the perspective and view pollution as the primary subject, then…”
“‘Using Dark Arts to kill results in pollution and corruption’—this rule, perhaps, exists to facilitate the appearance of pollution?”
The tip of the pen paused.
The lingering ink bled onto the parchment. Vaughn’s thoughts returned to him as he leaned back in his chair, pondering.
Viewing pollution as the primary subject, does it make sense?
Yes!
And the possibility is high.
Nothing lacks a cause and effect. The development of things ultimately must have a single purpose, whether artificial or not.
“…Truly a chilling conjecture.”
Vaughn let out a soft sigh and stood up.
Hermione had already been sent back to rest. She had undergone quite a shock today. Although she wanted to continue researching the pollution issue with Vaughn, staying at the Grangers’ house meant Vaughn had to consider Mr. and Mrs. Granger’s views.
Even if Mr. and Mrs. Granger were more laid-back, they likely wouldn’t sleep soundly with their daughter alone with a boy in the attic late at night.
Another reason was that Vaughn himself couldn’t continue the research in-depth.
On one hand, the side quest wasn’t completed, and he hadn’t obtained the coveted “Spell Development Module,” so he lacked research tools.
On the other hand, he would be leaving the Granger house tomorrow.
WAC’s first general meeting was about to convene, and committee members from the Wizengamot, and even the International Confederation of Wizards, would be arriving in London in the next couple of days.
A large number of wizards would gather there, and he, as the founder of WAC and its designated chief committee member and president, would be responsible for greeting and hosting them.
In fact, he had little time to rest even tonight.
After glancing at his notebook for a while longer and seeing that it was getting late, Vaughn packed everything up, changed into his robes, and with a crackling sound, he twisted and merged into the air, disappearing.
…
London, the Muggle community where Crouch resided.
In the deep night, the Muggle residents were deep in sweet dreams. Only in a corner, the two-story house that people usually unconsciously avoided during their walks, still had its warm yellow lights on.
If a Muggle could disregard the “Muggle Repelling Charm” and, with great luck, pass through a combined magical shield as thin as a bubble, consisting of “Peace Town Guard,” “Deafening Silence,” and “Full Protection.”
Then they would hear a sharp voice exclaim cheerfully:
“Esteemed guests, what drinks may I offer you? Sparky excels at making Duke’s Black Tea, with the aroma of citrus permeating every leaf… Oh—yes, there’s also Bee Black Tea, from the Qimen region of the East, paired with the sweetness of honey…”
