Chapter 41: The Demon of Mental Parasitism

Hagrid was a simple and honest man. Since he had accepted Roger’s commission and was genuinely interested in breeding magical creatures, he naturally poured his heart and soul into the task.

Ever since he reached a verbal agreement with Roger nearly two months ago, he had been busy running around for this project. Initially, he conducted a few experiments, but they all failed. These setbacks made Hagrid realize that the magical creatures in the Forbidden Forest were insufficient for his experimental needs. He required more specialized species, but the ones he needed were rare and difficult to obtain, which caused his progress to stall. Even though Roger had been sharing his non-classified research on cellular deformation and modification during this time, it was of no use; even the most skilled housewife cannot cook a meal without rice.

It wasn't until Hagrid met two people that things changed.

The first was someone he encountered two weeks before Halloween. As usual, he had gone to Hogsmeade, the wizarding village near Hogwarts, to see if any new magical creature traders were at the tavern. He actually found one. Although the person was heavily cloaked and had disguised their voice, appearing quite mysterious, Hagrid didn't suspect anything. Dealing in magical creatures was a profession that walked the fine line of the law, and the trade of highly dangerous magical beasts was a serious crime; such attire was perfectly normal.

The seller brought a Boggart, which Hagrid had been seeking. Unfortunately, it was only a Boggart; the seller had never heard of the tiny magical creatures Hagrid truly wanted. After the transaction was complete, the person pestered Hagrid to drink with them. Under the influence of alcohol and the seller’s persistent questioning, Hagrid boasted about how he had tamed a rare three-headed dog.

"You have to learn how to keep them quiet, for instance... music."
"Music?"

After the party dispersed, Hagrid encountered his next stroke of luck. Having asked many friends in the trade without finding the tiny magical creatures he needed, Hagrid decided to pay out of his own pocket to place a bounty in various newspapers. Before long, someone came knocking.

At first, Hagrid was skeptical because the person was so young, and her claims seemed to transcend his understanding. But seeing how earnest she was, Hagrid, who was exceptionally tolerant of children, decided to give her a chance.

"Does such a creature really exist?"
"Nargles certainly exist; they are right there," the young blonde girl, who looked no more than ten years old, stated with conviction.

Hagrid, still half-doubting, kept the Boggart and the 'Nargle' together as instructed by the young Luna Lovegood. When it came to breeding magical creatures, Hagrid was one of the few masters in the world. He had even managed to crossbreed the XXXXX-rated Manticore with another dangerous creature, the Fire Crab, to create an entirely new species: the Blast-Ended Skrewt. His technical skill was beyond question, and now, Hagrid began his performance.

A Boggart is a Dark magical creature, a shapeshifter that lives in dark, cramped places and transforms into whatever the person encountering it fears most. No one knows the true shape of a Boggart because no one has ever seen its original form. Nargles, according to Luna, were tiny, invisible creatures that could float into people’s ears and scramble their thoughts.

Hagrid wanted to leverage the commonalities between the two to create a creature that was small enough to be unobtrusive, yet capable of sensing human thoughts and altering itself according to the thinker's desires. Hagrid aimed to breed them generation after generation until the creature was so small that it lacked even a consciousness of its own, obeying the wizard's commands entirely. In Roger's terms, it was a "parasitic beast" that could be controlled by humans and possessed the ability to autonomously reorganize its physical structure.

But as time passed to the present, Hagrid’s "parasitic beast" experiment hadn't succeeded in its intended goal, yet it had produced something strange.

After systematic observation, Roger summarized the characteristics of this creature. Under normal circumstances, it was transparent, roughly the size of a grain of sand, and emitted a faint yellow light, appearing like a stray firefly floating in mid-air. At this stage, it was not powerful; in fact, it was quite fragile.

However, once it came into contact with a human or other sentient being, everything changed. Its life form underwent a transformation, shifting from a material state to a semi-spiritual state, attaching itself to the brain and soul, and frantically creating visions of terror within the human mind. The creature seemed to feed on the fear of living beings; the more fear it consumed, the stronger it became. As it grew stronger, it began its next stage of evolution, transitioning from a semi-spiritual state into a "thought-form."

This might sound abstract, but for those familiar with Eastern culture, the term "inner demon" would likely make it easy to understand. Roger had not allowed the creature to fully metamorphose, but he felt that the "inner demon state" was likely not its evolutionary limit.

After finishing the final entry of his observation report and casually giving it the name "Demon of Fear," Roger looked at Hagrid with unprecedented seriousness.

"Hagrid."
"Destroy it."

"I will archive and seal the data from this experiment, but every new creature you’ve bred must be destroyed. Not a single one left." Roger’s tone was not impassioned, but Hagrid could feel the crushing weight of his words, which left no room for argument.

"Starting today, I will personally oversee the destruction."

Hearing this, Hagrid was shocked. "What!"
"But..."
"There are no 'buts'." Roger took out his wand and held it to his temple.

Having studied brain modification and the creation of alchemical brains, Roger had become highly proficient in Legilimency and related magics. With ease, he extracted a fragment of his own thoughts from his mind.

In the wizarding world, there was no environment like the Warp to allow a thinking creature to grow infinitely, potentially becoming a cosmic disaster. However, the sea of the collective subconscious of all living beings did exist! Why was it that once a spell was invented, any wizard who recited it could perform it, rather than needing the same deep understanding and intense willpower as the developer? The collective subconscious played a significant role in this process, a point discussed in the book *Ritual Magic: Far More Than Blood Sacrifice*.

If this "Demon of Fear" bred by Hagrid were to grow to the point where it could follow human thoughts, infiltrate the sea of the collective subconscious, and propagate there, what would happen?

In the memories of Roger’s past life, there was something similar: the "Dream Man." A chapter in *Tales of the Unusual* covered this; it could be understood as a nightmare that spread through memes and could not be escaped, causing massive social chaos. And that was just the best-case scenario. One had to remember that this world contained magic; if the Demon of Fear were to evolve further, becoming something like Freddy from *A Nightmare on Elm Street*, capable of killing within the mental world, it was not impossible!

In the wizarding world, few were proficient in soul and mind-related magic, and most of those were Dark wizards like Voldemort. If a catastrophic consequence truly arose, it was hard to say whether they would help or stand by and watch—or even fuel the fire.

Roger condensed the vision of the severe consequences he had deduced into the thread of thought extracted by his wand and pushed it into Hagrid’s mind. Roger believed this was a more efficient method of persuasion than words.