Chapter 40: The Gardener Prophet and the Reflective Demon King

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“Immortality, agelessness, undying, imperishability…”

After ending his conversation with Harry, Roger returned to the familiar Hogwarts library. With the Quidditch match over, there were rather more people inside.

Roger was drafting his plans for the future on paper—the steps he would take toward eternal life.

He had already begun walking the path to longevity. With the assistance of alchemy, he might have made meaningful progress within a year or two.

The path to agelessness, however, was still only taking shape in his mind. Longevity concerned the body and the soul, whereas agelessness had far more to do with the mind. Even if one’s theoretical lifespan were infinite, if one’s mind could not withstand the erosion of time, if one grew weary and numb from living, then one could hardly be called ageless.

There was no need to hurry. Besides, when it came to the realm of the self, there was little anyone else could do to help. He could easily wait until he had nearly completed the path to longevity before turning his attention to it.

The real problem lay in the paths that came afterward.

How could one become undying and imperishable?

Physical immortality was easy enough to imagine. If his work in transforming his body through Transfiguration reached its utmost limit, then even if his flesh were reduced to ash, he could restore it with ease. But how could the soul be made deathless?

Drawing on certain ideas from his previous life, Roger believed that time, concepts, and existence might all offer viable paths.

He could weave his own existence throughout space and time: so long as space and time endured, so would he. Or he could become a memetic organism, surviving within the sea of all living minds: so long as sentient beings remained, so would he. Alternatively, he could become a conceptual entity; so long as the universe still contained a certain concept, he could resurrect himself countless times…

At present, Roger was already exhausting himself merely by studying longevity. He simply had no energy to spare for matters whose difficulty exceeded that of immortality by more than a single order of magnitude.

Thus, just as he had outsourced one path to longevity to Hagrid, Roger intended to outsource the paths to deathlessness and imperishability as well.

He did not expect the other party to achieve any actual results. As long as they conducted some relevant research, that would be enough. When Roger eventually set foot in this field himself, he would not have to grope blindly from the very beginning.

The other party did not even need to study deathlessness directly. Researching time itself would already save Roger a considerable amount of time and effort.

Roger had conceived this idea ever since the incident with Hagrid, but he had never found an opportunity to put it into practice.

Magic and scientific research were fundamentally different.

In science, if one threw enough money at a problem, then even if the scientists disliked the subject, repeated experimentation would eventually produce some results.

Magic, however, was so closely tied to the mind that without an affinity, an obsession, or genuine love for a particular field, it was extremely difficult to achieve much.

Therefore, even though Roger wanted to scatter a few seeds and wait for time to pass before harvesting the results, he could find no suitable candidates.

Until his conversation with Harry this time, when Roger realized that the boy’s current state of mind might possess the necessary affinity.

Roger did not take the matter too seriously, however. An eleven-year-old child was innocent, carefree, and changeable. The resolve he possessed now—to reverse the flow of time for the sake of his parents—did not mean that, a few years later, he would still be able to preserve that original intention after the stirrings of adolescence had begun.

Once a fearless, forward-charging state of mind was lost, reclaiming it was extraordinarily difficult.

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Thus, Harry was merely one of Roger’s idle gambits. If Harry succeeded, Roger would be delighted.

If Harry gave up halfway, Roger would lose nothing. After all, all he had invested was a few directions offered at crucial moments.

…

On the other side of the library, Voldemort was using Quirrell’s body to search through materials concerning prophets. He had no idea that, during the time he spent absorbed in his books, Roger had bent Harry’s fate onto a different course.

At that moment, Voldemort’s heart was filled with helplessness.

After searching through the library’s texts for nearly an entire day, he had discovered that the records concerning famous prophets, both ancient and modern, were fairly detailed. Some books even mentioned ways of dealing with prophets.

For example, the book Prophetic Noise described how one prophet could use prophecy to interfere with another prophet’s predictions, making it more difficult for the latter to observe the future.

Of course, that method required the user to be a powerful prophet capable of casting prophecies at any time.

Then there was Man Can Conquer Heaven. Its author had proposed a hypothesis: if someone’s hatred of fate reached an almost insane degree, perhaps they could use a spell-casting method akin to a magical rampage to conceal themselves within fate itself.

That was indeed another possibility. But to refine the hypothesis into a spell that could be used normally, Quirrell would first have to reach the level required to cast it…

Voldemort estimated his own talent in the field of fate. Even if he devoted himself to it wholeheartedly, he might not be able to complete such a spell within twenty years.

Most of the other methods were similar. Either they required Quirrell to possess extraordinary talent in the field of fate, or they depended on some prophetic holy relic that existed only in legend.

There were not many advanced spells concerning fate that did not rely on riddles and obscure wordplay. Voldemort had soon read through them all.

After summarizing what he had found, he concluded that to oppose fate, one either had to wield the power of prophecy oneself, or possess power greater than the total force of fate—in other words, overcome subtlety with sheer strength.

There truly was no other way to exploit a loophole.

Could he really be forced to admit defeat?

Unable to find a way to break the deadlock through Quirrell, Voldemort began considering whether he could do so through Roger.

For instance…

“Professor Quirrell defeats me in a direct magical duel, and the Philosopher’s Stone will be yours. Before your game with me ends, you may not use any other means to attempt to obtain the Philosopher’s Stone.”

…

Damn. Was even this included in your calculations, Prophet?

Recalling one of the conditions of the Unbreakable Vow, Voldemort brought his train of thought to an end.

In that instant, Voldemort began to reflect.

A mere little game between himself and a prophet had already left him in such an embarrassing predicament.

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The prophecy concerning the Dark Lord and the savior—could he really break it as smoothly as he had anticipated?

Could that bespectacled boy truly become his gravedigger?

I have so many Horcruxes. Surely not?

Once he realized that the power of fate’s prophecies was even greater than he had originally understood, a thought suddenly flashed through Voldemort’s mind.

Should I also prepare a contingency concerning Harry Potter?

He did not have enough time to win his wager with the little prophet. No matter what he did, victory would be difficult.

Harry Potter, however, was different. It would take many years for him to grow into his full strength—more than enough time for Voldemort to make preparations to unravel the prophecy of the savior.

…

…

…

Early the next morning, before Roger had even seen Harry, Hagrid unexpectedly came looking for him.

“What? Your miniature magical creature worked?”

“Not exactly. Um, it’s hard to explain. The situation is complicated. Anyway, you’ll understand once you take a look.”

Hagrid looked haggard, as though he had gone several days and nights without sleep. He scratched his head, wearing an expression of profound distress.

Seeing how much difficulty Hagrid was having organizing his thoughts into words, Roger said nothing. He simply followed him to the hut beside the Forbidden Forest.

And then…

Roger stood inside the hut, staring at Hagrid’s creation with a pained expression. His brow was furrowed even more deeply than Hagrid’s.

“This thing…”

The strange creature gave Roger the vague impression of having glimpsed the daemons of the Warp serving the Four Great Benevolent Ones—Khorne, Tzeentch, and the others.

Wizarding 40K? I do not want this timeline!

“Hagrid… could you tell me how you managed to raise it?”