Dawn stared at the pitch-black stone in his hand.
After scraping off a small amount of powder, the runes and magical pathways within it showed no sign of damage.
It was still exactly the same as before.
That eased him slightly.
He lowered his gaze to the scattered powder on the tabletop. It looked like ordinary lime—just darker in color, with no trace of magic within it.
So consuming it and dreaming of a second life was not because of the powder itself, but because the act of consuming it matched some kind of ritual?
Dawn formed a hypothesis.
He picked up a sheet of parchment, used its edge to gather the powder into a pile, and swept it into a crystal vial. Then he looked toward the woman who had been silently watching him.
"May I ask you a question?"
Dawn tried to ignore the awkward discomfort rising in his chest—the feeling that this woman was not truly his biological mother—and asked calmly,
"From your own perspective, what form do you think you currently exist in?"
"Form of existence?"
Sophia looked confused. "Sweetheart, are you trying to discuss philosophy with me? What do you mean by form of existence?"
"I mean—" Dawn paused, unable to find the right words. He chose a more concrete angle.
"Do you have a sense of touch? Can you feel temperature, humidity, things like that?"
"Yes, I can," Sophia said, examining her right hand and then squeezing it with her left. "Aside from passing through objects when I touch them, I feel almost the same as when I was alive."
Dawn's eyes darkened slightly. "Alive. You know that you're dead?"
"Of course." She sighed. "It wasn't a pleasant experience, but I remember it clearly."
Dawn unconsciously rubbed the brittle stone between his fingers.
His gaze swept over [The Study of the Resurrection Stone], recalling the author's notes. He suddenly asked, "Is there any secret you know that I don't?"
He wanted to test whether the apparition summoned by the Resurrection Stone could produce information outside the user's own memory.
The woman reached out with a translucent finger and tapped his forehead. The first half of her finger sank straight in.
"You should call me Mom, Dawn. You're getting ruder as you grow up."
She sensed something odd in her son's attitude today but did not dwell on it. After a moment's thought, she said,
"A secret, huh…"
"In high school, I had a deskmate who loved rummaging through my backpack.
I got so annoyed that I bought a non-venomous snake from a pet shop and put it inside. The next day, it bit him badly."
She laughed at the memory. "After that, he kept his distance. Looking back, maybe I overreacted a little."
High school?
That was twenty years ago.
Where could he even verify something like that?
Dawn let out a quiet breath. He stared at the mist-like figure of the woman and fell into thought.
She possessed vision and hearing, had a sense of touch, and could perceive the world—but could not physically interact with anything.
Spells could not affect her, not even magic that acted upon souls.
What, exactly, was this apparition?
Dawn recalled how she had comforted him before, and how, in his first year, he had been curious about the Sorting Hat and ghosts.
A spark of insight flickered.
He stood, retrieved a basic potions textbook from his office shelf, opened it, and placed it in front of the apparition.
"Oh, sweetheart, what's this?"
Sophia read the title aloud. "Potions—oh my God. Don't tell me you're one of those fairy-tale wizards."
She looked stunned, then thrilled. "So you're using magic to talk to me? Communicating with souls—wow, that's exactly like what I imagined as a kid!"
She accepted the situation with remarkable ease, pressing her face close to the book and reading rapidly.
When she tried to turn the page, her fingers passed straight through the desk.
Ignoring her pleading look for help, Dawn asked, "If I wanted to brew a potion to calm emotions, which ingredient would you choose: asphodel root, gillyweed, or wolfsbane?"
Sophia did not know what he was planning, but she found wizarding matters fascinating. After thinking for a moment, she answered eagerly,
"Asphodel root!"
"Why?" Dawn asked quietly.
She pointed at the page.
"The book says wolfsbane is poisonous, and gillyweed makes you grow gills. That obviously doesn't fit.
Compared to those, asphodel root makes the most sense for calming emotions."
Dawn fell silent.
After a moment, he loosened his grip and set the stone down.
A breeze passed.
The apparition dispersed like mist, vanishing completely.
Dawn tapped his fingers against the desk.
The question he had asked was simple. Even a first-year who thought carefully could have answered it. But it confirmed something crucial.
The apparition possessed intelligence and logic.
Thinking of ghosts and portraits—beings that often could not answer even basic questions—Dawn's suspicion grew clearer.
Could it be that—
The apparitions summoned by the Resurrection Stone—
Were a form of thought?
But could thought really exist as an independent manifestation?
Dawn massaged his temples, troubled. For the first time, he became aware of a blind spot in himself.
He had always pursued grand goals—ancient legends, natural magic, the truth of collective consciousness.
Yet he had never truly understood his own nature as a wizard.
Where did magic come from? Did it flow through the body, or the soul?
What was a wizard's soul, exactly? Was it a single whole, or composed of parts? What was the relationship between thought and soul?
And emotions—how did they tie into spellcasting?
Countless questions spun through his mind, only to circle back to the Resurrection Stone and its apparitions.
An entity with thought, logic, the ability to learn, and retained memories—
How was that different from a living being?
The Resurrection Stone— If it could not truly resurrect the dead, had the collective belief surrounding it twisted resurrection into this form instead?
Dawn pressed his lips together.
Could this black stone be connected to the thoughts of all the dead?
The more he considered it, the more plausible it seemed. Though he did not yet know how this knowledge could be used, his instincts told him it was significant.
And remembering the mindless ghosts, he could not help but wonder what the world of the dead was truly like.
But—
What concerned him most was still world correction.
Dawn shook off his wandering thoughts and turned his attention back to The Study of the Resurrection Stone.
If the Resurrection Stone truly connected to the thoughts of the dead, then when the author consumed the powder, he might have linked to the thoughts of some deceased person.
Could it be that—
By connecting to the thoughts of a dead individual, one could see the true history from before world correction?
But judging by how the woman addressed him, even the memories carried by those connected thoughts had been altered under world correction.
After all, Dawn was certain that his relationship with her was not what his memories suggested.
The swirling confusion made his irritation grow.
Still, after placing the Resurrection Stone back into its box, he picked up the crystal vial containing the powder.
No matter what, he had to try.
Of course, Dawn had no intention of consuming it himself. The book's abrupt ending was deeply unsettling.
He could simply have someone else ingest it and then read their memories. There was no need to take the risk himself.
He stood, intending to capture a wizard for the experiment—but as he remembered the book describing a two-day coma after ingestion, he slumped back into his chair.
He still had classes tomorrow. He could not just disappear.
Hogwarts gave him access to vast knowledge, but it was restrictive when it came to experimental materials. Constant travel was inconvenient and drew attention.
He would wait until the weekend.
"I seem to need something with an expanded internal space—big enough to hide a person. I should probably write to Slughorn later," Dawn muttered.
And so, over the following week, the students noticed that their new professor seemed slightly distracted.
Not to the extent of Quirrell's dull recitations, but his lessons stayed closer to the textbook, with far fewer tangents.
The students speculated.
Most believed that the two recent incidents involving Professor Hickman had made him more cautious, and they felt a great sense of regret over it.
Dawn did not care what they thought.
He only felt that time crawled by.
As soon as he finished the last class of the week, he returned to his office, tapped the long-spouted sprinkler, lit the fireplace, and grabbed a handful of Floo powder.
Flames engulfed him.
Emerging from the Leaky Cauldron, Dawn altered his appearance.
He first went to a hospital, submitted strands of his own hair and Mr. Richter's together, and paid in transfigured pounds for expedited service, asking for results within two days.
Then he Apparated to Egypt.
Once again in Luxor, he efficiently abducted a wizard from the black market—there was no need to describe the process.
The Disillusionment Charm and Stunning Spell were a flawless combination.
With his subject in tow, Dawn Apparated back to his Vatican hideout.
He took out the vial of Resurrection Stone powder. Without waking the wizard, he pried his mouth open, poured it in, and flushed it down with water.
Throughout the process, Dawn showed no emotion. He simply watched the unconscious wizard coldly, waiting for what would happen next.
After consuming the powder, how would the subject's internal patterns change?
Dawn narrowed his eyes, watching intently.
Slowly, silvery mist thickened in the room. Natural magic descended like dangling tendrils, reaching into the wizard's body.
It looked eerily similar to the onset of a blood curse—
But then Dawn noticed something different.
The black lines on the wizard's surface actually fractured slightly under the influx of natural magic.
Not severing black lines to draw in natural magic—but drawing in natural magic to sever black lines?
Dawn did not yet understand the difference, but once again he realized that for natural magic to affect a wizard, it seemed necessary to damage the outermost black lines.
But when a wizard's own magic affected another wizard, why was such a step unnecessary?
As Dawn pondered this, a sudden wave of dizziness washed over him.
He instinctively glanced at a nearby mirror.
Reflected there—
The outermost layer of his own special patterns was also writhing, slowly changing.
___________
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