Chapter 794
Memory
Chapter 794 Memory
As footsteps approached the door, Stella gave a timely, curt snort: "Turn right when you go out, I think that bathroom would be perfect for you!"
“Stella!” Mrs. Picqueli gently patted the girl’s hand and scolded, “Don’t talk nonsense…that’s Amy’s toilet!”
She turned to the maid who was carrying in the potion and said gently, “Miss Harper, please take Mr. Gray to the restroom—ignore Stella, just go to the nearest one.”
The maid put down the potion and curtsied, saying, "Yes, madam... please come with me, Mr. Gray."
Vader followed the maid to what appeared to be an ordinary washroom. The room had only a small, not-so-transparent stained-glass window, and a white porcelain sink was placed against the wall, its edges decorated with a few blue floral reliefs.
The maid reached out and opened the door, glanced inside, and then stepped aside.
After Wade went inside, he closed the door behind him. The thick walls and wooden door had been soundproofed by the homeowner to ensure that the sounds inside wouldn't be heard by people outside.
Wade approached the sink, ran his fingers over it lightly, and then smiled.
An extremely clever spell was cast on it—of course, magic is everywhere in a wizard's house, so it's not unusual.
But the key to unlocking the magic lies hidden within these floral reliefs, and this combination of magical runes...
If discovered by an ordinary wizard, they would only interpret it as "we are all waters from different rivers," a phrase full of peace and inclusiveness.
But only those skilled in alchemy can decipher another meaning... a spell.
Presumably, Ms. Picqueli set up this little trap after she learned that the messenger was Wade Gray.
Vader slowly drew his wand, tapped it on the sink, and whispered:
"Aparis-Apasno-Water Mirror Opens, Reality Immediately Revealed!"
In an instant, the washbasin emitted a soft silver light, and its shape began to flow and change, as if thousands of years had passed in an instant. The smooth and white surface became extremely rough, and the color turned dark gray.
—It was transformed into an ancient meditation basin.
Unlike the Pensieve that Dumbledore kept in his office, this one looked rougher, with no extra decorations on the stone except for the inscriptions that contained magical power.
【Stone……】
Wade's thoughts drifted away for a moment.
Dumbledore's Pensieve, Voldemort's Horcrux hidden in the cave, the Runestone Vagabond received upon entering school, and even the Resurrection Stone, are all made of stone...
Ancient wizards lacked advanced processing tools and the convenient spells of today. They chose to imbue powerful magic onto various stones, utilizing the stones' hardness to ensure the effects of the magic could be sustained for a long time.
There are many alchemical materials available today: the horn of a unicorn, the tail feathers of a phoenix, the heartstrings of a dragon, the hair of a Veela, the fingernails of a sphinx...
Magical materials that ancient wizards wouldn't even dare to dream of can be obtained by simply writing a letter to a shop in Diagon Alley, and you'll receive a package within a day or two.
These materials are not only easy to process and deform, but also contain a magic that is more active and powerful than that of stone.
As a result, various stones become less important—for example, when Vader makes puppets, he often chooses expensive and rare materials to make them more flexible and lightweight.
However, these materials generally have one weakness—they are not fireproof.
Recalling the devastating losses suffered by the puppets at the hands of Voldemort's Fiendfire, an idea suddenly occurred to Vader—
Perhaps what he should do is not to strengthen the fire resistance spells for the puppets, because even a powerful Horcrux cannot withstand the burning of Fiendfire. Instead, he should choose a suitable stone as the main material.
The stone was more difficult to work with than most materials, but the moment the idea popped into Vader's head, inspiration began to flow freely.
Of course, these ideas flashed through my mind in the blink of an eye.
On the surface, Wade paused for a moment, then took out the bottle of silver memory hidden in his sleeve, gently poured it into the Pensieve, and chanted the spell in a low voice like Dumbledore.
The fragile silver thread seemed as if it might break at any moment. As it entered the basin, it began to slowly rotate, and the silvery mist spread outwards, as if it might evaporate at any moment.
Without further hesitation, Wade put down the bottle, placed his hands on the edge of the stone basin, took a deep breath, and buried his face in the ever-spinning silver memory.
A familiar feeling of falling suddenly washed over me—
……
"Hurry up, Jason!" a man roared. "Don't stop! Keep going!"
The young man named Jason was rather thin. He looked around in a panic, clutching a heavy gun in his hands, and staggered after the others.
Wade stood to the side, not moving.
He looked at the young man named Jensen—the source of that memory—and was somewhat surprised to find that he was not a wizard, but an ordinary person.
To be precise, he was a rather weak soldier.
The images in the Pensieve always follow the subject of the memory; when Vader stopped, the world around him seemed to be rapidly receding.
Vader looked around. The sky was gray, and everywhere he looked, thick black smoke was rising into the sky. Many places were burning, and he could hear shrill and terrifying screams.
This is a chaotic, arid, and dilapidated city street. Judging from the architectural style and writing, it should be in the Middle East.
On the streets, almost no building was intact; the once-high-rises were reduced to ruins. In places that were clearly residential buildings, almost all the windows were shattered, and large holes were left in the walls.
blood.
Bloodstains were everywhere, and corpses covered in black ash lay beneath the ruins. The dry, hot wind whipped up sand and scraps of paper, making a whistling sound.
Gunshots continued to ring out in the distance, and fragile lives were being taken away by bullets. The screams of women and the cries of children had come from all directions, but soon became quieter and quieter.
Jason looked around in alarm at the scene before him.
Judging from his clothes, he was also one of the invaders, but at this moment, his expression was as if he were a squirrel that had accidentally wandered in.
"Zizi...Zizi..."
A sound suddenly came through his earphones, and to Wade, who was in the realm of his memories, the sound seemed to be ringing in his ears as well.
"Hey guys, come quick!" someone excitedly reported a location, then said, "Found something good... looks like what the boss's looking for!"
In an instant, many people cheered excitedly, like a pack of wild beasts roaring.
Jason, however, stared wide-eyed ahead, his white eyeballs surrounded by bloodshot veins, making him look as if he were about to collapse.
The scene abruptly froze, and a silvery mist suddenly obscured the view. The memory trembled violently, like a television screen with a poor signal.
"what!!!!"
Accompanied by a piercing scream, the scene finally stabilized, but large areas were still covered by an impenetrable white mist, as if the memory itself contained many gaps.
Jason's hat fell off, and there was blood on his forehead. He got up from the ground and continued to run around with the others as if sleepwalking.
This was the interior of a building. A long corridor stretched out in numerous rooms. A soldier slammed a door shut with a gunshot, and terrified screams erupted from inside. Inside one of the rooms, five or six children dressed in brown robes huddled together. The oldest was no more than sixteen or seventeen, and the youngest looked to be less than ten.
Seeing the door being kicked open, the children ran around in panic.
"Stop! Don't move!"
The soldier shouted.
puff!puff!
The gun fired darts with wires attached, which accurately hit the two children running behind.
Blue arcs of electricity exploded instantly on their thin bodies, and the children convulsed violently, falling stiffly to the ground, their hands and feet still trembling.
"Control the intensity!" someone roared impatiently. "The order is to capture them alive!"
"Sorry, boss!" The soldier who fired the shot turned around and said with a grin, "Don't worry, these little bastards are tough..."
Before he could finish speaking, an older child who had dodged several shots suddenly turned around, his face a mixture of tears and hatred, raised his wand and hysterically shouted a few spells.
He wasn't speaking English, and his pronunciation was very strange. Wade couldn't understand the meaning, but he soon saw the consequences of the spell—
The soldiers who fired the shots, and the one at the very front, were hit by the spell and exploded into pieces almost without a sound, their flying limbs splattering blood all over Jason.
Jason was so scared he wet himself. His legs were shaking so badly he could barely stand, and the muzzle of the gun he was holding was trembling uncontrollably.
"Strange...monster..."
Jason wanted to fire, but looking at those young faces, he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.
But the children opposite him didn't stop because of his hesitation; another girl suddenly waved her hand—
"boom!"
Jason and the other two were sent flying as if struck by an invisible giant hammer, crashing heavily against the wall.
The road in front of the entrance has been cleared.
Wade stood by the door, watching the children struggle to carry their fallen companions and stumble towards the exit, and sighed inwardly.
Their spells just now seemed extremely powerful, but they were mainly the result of intense emotions being instantly ignited.
In terms of spell usage, these children were no match for their Hogwarts peers—they didn't even seem to know the Levitation Charm, not to mention that half of them didn't even have wands.
A group of kids with practically no fighting ability just ran off like that...
Wade knew what was going to happen, but it was Jason's memory, and he couldn't change anything.
Jason, who was lying on the ground, was not unconscious. He struggled to sit up, looked towards the door, and his eyes even held a hope that they could escape successfully.
however--
"Puff puff puff puff——"
Before the two older children who rushed to the front could even step out the door, they were hit by seven or eight stun guns. The crackling sound of electric current filled the air, and black smoke even faintly rose from the gun.
One by one, the children collapsed to the ground, their painful spasms quickly turning into a deathly silence.
Jason witnessed all of this, his breathing became rapid, his hand holding the gun trembled violently, and then he was kicked hard.
"If you're not dead, get up! You're all useless. A whole team almost got killed by a few kids!"
The speaker was also a soldier, tall and strong, but his chest and above were blank—in Jason's distorted memory, this person seemed to have no appearance or name, just a fierce symbol.
Immediately afterwards, the memory, which lasted only a minute or two, flickered again, covered by a silvery mist. After a full thirty or forty seconds of blankness and silence, the fragmented scene slowly emerged.
This time, most people only had half of their bodies left, or even less. Some people only had their boots standing on the ground or half of their heads floating in the air.
The only thing clearly visible in the picture, besides Jason himself, is an elderly man with gray hair kneeling on the ground.
They were in what appeared to be an underground structure, as it was extremely cold and dark and had no windows.
The ground was paved with neatly cut stone bricks, and the walls were covered with many portraits and intricate carvings, but all of these were illegible due to the incompleteness of the images.
The old man had his hair wrapped in a headscarf and was wearing a dark blue short jacket, which was almost completely soaked in blood. A cane broken into three pieces lay beside him.
His face showed an expression of extreme pain, he was breathing rapidly, and his whole body was trembling.
A man squatted down in front of him and, with a "thud," stabbed the old man in the shoulder with a short knife.
"Aren't you going to tell me yet?"
The man said, "You had a chance to escape using that teleportation magic, but you stayed behind for those brats... Since you didn't leave then, what's the point of keeping the secret?"
He said in a gentle tone, "Or do you have some moral constraint that forces you to speak only when you have no other choice? In that case, I can grant your request... Bring all those wizard brats here and dissect them one by one in front of you. Would that make you say something?"
“No…please don’t…” the old man pleaded, trembling, “Spare them, they’re all children… Kofi and Gabe, they’re still your Muggle’s children…”
“Oh…but they have magic, so they’re a different species, right? At least that’s what you wizards think.”
The man chuckled softly and said, "And even if they're all... um... 'Muggles,' do you think I'd care about them?"
The old man's eyes widened in astonishment, as if he couldn't believe he would say that.
“Naive fools,” the man said mockingly. “Go outside and see for yourself. The number of Muggles who have died today is dozens, even hundreds of times more than you! They are our main targets, and you… are just an extra bonus!”
"But...but those are all children..." the old man said in a trembling voice.
"Oh," the man said indifferently, "So?"
Seeing the old man's mouth agape without speaking, he waved his hand and said, "Bring a child over... the youngest one!"
"wait wait wait……"
The old man hurriedly stopped them: "Let them go, I...I'll tell you everything..."
……
A few minutes later, the old man with broken legs lay on the ground, his magic wand roughly snatched from his hand by a soldier.
On the floor, the bricks and stones rumbled and moved, forming a downward-sloping passage that revealed a secret chamber hidden underground.
Armed soldiers rushed in, and soon they came back up carefully carrying various items in boxes. Among them, a golden water jug looked particularly familiar.
(End of this chapter)