Black lines and natural magic...
Dawn lowered his head and looked at his arm. Within the flourishing mist of magic, he focused his attention on the space between the two layers.
Actually...
He should have noticed this much earlier.
Back when he had conducted the Blood Curse experiments in Egypt, he had already discovered through William that the lines covering the patterns could resist external interference.
The problem was...
They had their limits.
Dumbledore's lines had remained completely intact, yet his memories had still been easily altered by the World Correction.
They couldn't perfectly resist natural magic.
Dawn rubbed his chin.
Although he already knew this, he suddenly had an idea.
Could the "bottle" created by the Four Founders be related to these things?
Could there be a way to strengthen the protective abilities of the black lines?
With this thought in mind, he grabbed another wizard from Luxor City and began studying the lines on the surface of the man's body.
However, after tinkering around for quite some time...
Dawn discovered that although he could use the Severing Curse and Restoration Spell to destroy and restore them, he simply couldn't find a way to strengthen them.
After a while, he could only temporarily give up.
"What a nuisance."
Dawn muttered.
He patted the grains of sand clinging to his clothes, extracted the wizard's memories, and tossed him into the desert.
Flames then erupted around Dawn.
With a loud bang, he vanished from Egypt.
However...
He didn't return to Vatican City.
Since Avery had just crossed his mind, Dawn wanted to investigate the matter, even though he knew there was probably nothing to find.
And if possible, he would retrieve the Time-Turner while he was at it.
Following the address of the banquet he had once attended while disguised as the potion shop owner Jiggs, Dawn appeared outside Avery's manor in an instant.
An iron gate covered in patterns cast from pure gold entered his view.
Looking inside, he could still see magnificent murals carved into white-jade-like marble.
The manor's facilities remained as luxurious as ever.
But as Dawn went deeper inside, the lively atmosphere of the old banquets was nowhere to be found.
Instead, there was a silence steeped in decay.
That was only natural.
After old Avery and Murphy Avery had both died, and the next generation had failed to produce another wizard, the family's influence had already plummeted.
On top of that, when the Ministry of Magic began promoting Dawn and building up his reputation, the Avery family had firmly opposed it.
As a result, the Malfoys and Greengrasses had taken another bite out of the Avery family's influence.
Now, the family was a shadow of its former self.
Dawn let out a hypocritical sigh of pity.
He secretly promised that he would take good care of the books and materials he had obtained from the Avery family.
He crossed the front courtyard and made his way toward the main hall.
Avoiding the house-elves' attention, Dawn moved around the manor with practiced ease, searching for the current head of the Avery family.
"Ah..."
"Ah..."
Suddenly!
As he passed a certain room, moans of passion drifted through the crack beneath the door, making Dawn freeze in place.
Seriously?
In broad daylight?
He glanced through the corridor window at the enormous sun hanging in the sky.
His face twitched.
Then, unusually, he actually began considering whether barging in right now would be appropriate.
After thinking it over...
Dawn really didn't want to witness such a visually traumatic scene.
So he moved a little farther away, leaned against the wall, and waited for them to finish.
Finally.
Ten minutes later.
Creak.
The door opened.
A middle-aged man stepped out.
His eyes were puffy, his clothes disheveled, and from his appearance alone it was obvious that his body had been thoroughly drained.
Dawn didn't bother talking.
He simply turned invisible and knocked the man unconscious with a Stunning Spell.
He then used Scourgify several times, continuing until the strange smell on the man's body had completely disappeared.
Only then did he approach and read his memories.
Scene after scene flashed before his eyes.
But soon, Dawn regretfully shook his head.
There was absolutely no information about the Time-Turner in the man's memories.
Moreover, after Murphy Avery had resurrected through Lee Jordan last year, he hadn't met or communicated with this man even once.
The man's mind was filled with nothing but an overwhelming amount of lewd material.
One could only say that, in his desperate efforts to have children and revive the Avery family, this man was truly working himself to death.
"Mr. Avery, is something wrong?"
A woman's hoarse voice suddenly came from inside the room.
Dawn snapped back to reality.
He forcibly erased the contaminated images from his mind.
Rather than pointlessly killing a potentially useful research subject, he simply Disapparated.
Whoosh!
A wave of air rolled through the area.
When the surroundings stabilized, the manor's luxurious decorations had disappeared.
They were replaced by a simple wooden structure.
Dawn had returned to his safe house.
He didn't rest.
Instead, he first took out the old Headmaster's memories that he had extracted earlier and stored inside a crystal bottle.
He carefully examined them again.
Within them...
The origins of the Diadem had already been corrected into the current version of events.
Harry had found it and handed it over.
There was no trace of the original version remaining simply because Dawn had extracted the memories beforehand.
"Not even the slightest loophole."
Dawn clicked his tongue and put the bottle away.
He found the World Correction genuinely fascinating.
Whether it was the blank days during Christmas in his first year or the inexplicable circumstances surrounding the pyramid, both incidents had left obvious traces.
And yet, at the smallest details, there wasn't a single flaw.
Was it because those two World Corrections had possessed some special characteristic?
Or were those simply false images created by his own unreliable memories?
Dawn pulled out a chair and sat down.
He pressed his fingers against his temples, feeling an intense headache coming on.
Judging from what he had seen in his dreams of Lai, his memory of obtaining Ravenclaw's Diadem was very likely false, a product of the World Correction.
But now...
Natural magic had corrected that already-unreliable memory and the past once again.
Truth and falsehood.
Falsehood and truth.
Dawn felt as though he were trapped inside a labyrinth with no exit, surrounded on every side by mirrors reflecting one another.
He sighed.
After thinking for a moment, Dawn took out his wallet and rummaged through it.
He found a sleeping potion.
Perhaps he could obtain more information about the past and see if anything had changed.
But...
As expected...
The images disappeared once again.
Dawn only heard two vague conversations related to a class in the darkness.
He replayed them several times, but still couldn't obtain anything useful.
"So I can only wait another half month?"
Dawn clicked his tongue and got out of bed.
He packed up some essential items and prepared to head to Hogwarts.
For the next period of time, he would continue building his reputation and try to use the Collective Consciousness to protect himself.
He also needed to search for the statues Ravenclaw had left behind.
Of course!
He couldn't neglect his research into Trait Patterns either.
After all, this was his greatest asset.
And besides...
Dawn vaguely sensed that Nicolas Flamel's theory of transforming matter into magic might prove extremely useful if he wanted to escape the restraints of natural magic.
His mind was filled with countless thoughts.
As he packed parchment and ink into his wallet, he suddenly realized that he hadn't lived an easy life for quite some time.
He really was born to be busy.
Every year brought one crisis after another.
But...
Forget it.
He had long since become accustomed to this rhythm.
After taking one last look at his comfortable little house, Dawn turned around and disappeared into flames once again.
.....
At the same time.
Hogwarts.
The third-year Gryffindors had just finished a Charms lesson.
As they left the classroom, Ron looked utterly miserable.
He kept muttering the incantation for the Color-Changing Charm they had just learned, but no matter how he waved his wand, he couldn't successfully cast it even once.
With a miserable sigh, he suddenly remembered the Confidence Charm Dawn had mentioned at yesterday's magical conference.
He turned to Hermione with pleading eyes.
"Hermione, have you learned that learning-assistance spell from yesterday? Could you cast it on me?"
___________
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