allendalepharm Chapter 153 Expanding Our Understanding of Life
Chapter 153 Expanding Our Understanding of Life
Chapter 153 Expanding Our Understanding of Life
How fast does news travel in the wizarding world? Lockhart soon found out.
Compared to ordinary gossip, this kind of news, which leans towards the mysterious realm, spreads at an absurdly fast speed within the wizarding community.
Of course, this is also due to Gilderoy Lockhart's global fame during this period.
A few days later, he received a letter from Ms. Mary.
The witch earnestly pleaded for help.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry may seem like a place one can come and go as one pleases to some important figures, but in reality, it is extremely mysterious to the vast majority of wizards. Even wizards who have studied at the school cannot find its location without permission to enter.
Ms. Mary has been going crazy these past two days. She was completely stunned when she heard about "Life Thief" Coban Yaxley from other people.
ha~
That's absolutely ridiculous!
She actually sought out this person who stole her life to help her find her lost past!
Is there anything more absurd than this?
She desperately wanted to visit Professor Lockhart at Hogwarts in hopes of getting help, but no matter how powerful this Haitian wizard was, and how wondrous her ability to communicate with the spirits, she still came up empty-handed.
She had to rely on the owl postman to write letters, anxiously checking the mailbox at her doorstep every day. Even when she was asleep, she would often wake up in the middle of the night and frantically search for the owl's tracks by every window in the house.
at last!
Several days passed in this agonizing way, until she finally received a reply from Professor Gilderoy Lockhart.
Dear Ms. Mary: As a respected professor at a magic school, I am happy to assist you.
However, this concerns the regulations of the Ministry of Magic. As a member of the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic, responsible for matters concerning the criminal Coban Yaxley, I must remind you that you must submit your application to the Ministry of Magic through proper channels.
The contents of the letter were roughly as described.
So Ms. Mary went to the Ministry of Magic for help, but, but! Heaven knows how bloated and outdated this huge wizarding administration was, her request seemed to sink without a trace, and she received no news for several days.
The Ministry of Magic is utterly inefficient!
She sought help from someone knowledgeable, only to be told that for matters like hers, especially those involving a department like the Bureau of Mysteries, waiting a year or two was normal.
ha~
One or two years?
The British Ministry of Magic is incredibly efficient!
She had no idea whether, two years later, Coban Yaxley, who had committed so many crimes, would be thrown into Azkaban prison or even sentenced to the Dementor Kiss. By then, it would be too late!
So she had to write to Professor Lockhart again for help, while also using all her connections to find someone who might be able to help.
This was not easy. As someone who lived a secluded life and established a sanctuary for Haitian wizards within the Muggle community, she didn't actually have many connections in the wizarding world.
She was able to get to know a big figure like Coban Yaxley in the past because of some blood ties in her family tree. However, due to the tragedies she suffered in her past life, she was not very close to this blood relative who was actually quite distant, and she had not been able to come into contact with other influential figures through Coban.
Fortunately, she finally found someone who could possibly help.
Rita Skeeter, reporter and author for The Daily Prophet.
This person was somewhat greedy for money, but she really had the means. A personal interview with her attracted a lot of attention and sympathy from the wizarding community. She also arranged for some "readers" to write to the Ministry of Magic, and finally gained the Ministry's attention.
Ms. Mary finally met Professor Lockhart.
That's really not easy.
This long period of time was an ordeal for her.
Lockhart did not do this intentionally; Ms. Mary was waiting for news, and so was he.
He was waiting for the news to spread, for Rita to announce it widely, and then to see how many wizards would come knocking on his door.
The result was interesting.
Just Ms. Mary.
Lockhart compared the differences between the dozen or so powerful wizards who stole the original owner's memories and found that the forest witch and Lady Mary, who were aware of their memory loss, were spiritual types who leaned towards the ancient wizarding path.
The Forest Witch follows the path of communicating with "nature," while Madam Mary follows the path of communicating with "society." Lockhart has only seen two of these types of wizards in Hogwarts, a place with the highest density of wizards.
The students are Professor Trelawney, who is taking over the get out of class, and Luna Lovegood, a first-year wizard.
Memory loss is not so easy to detect. Humans will heal all the gaps in their minds and rebuild self-consistent thinking to help themselves continue to live better.
Based on this fundamental logic, the Oblivion Spell was able to so effectively conceal the presence of a group of wizards.
Lady Mary arrived at the Department of Mysteries under the guidance of Auronic Fadora Tonks, and was then led by the Murman Gilderoy Lockhart into the Hall of Bloodlines, a place filled with mist and mystery.
"I brought the criminal Coban Yaxley back to Hogwarts, where I taught, for research. After the students discovered this, the news spread everywhere, and I was subjected to a very strict investigation by the Ministry of Magic."
Lockhart, carrying an oil lamp, guided Mrs. Mary through the mist. A gentle voice came from beneath his wide hood, "The relevant departments of the Ministry of Magic have strictly ordered me not to take any more Cobblers out of the Department of Mysteries. Otherwise, you wouldn't have needed to go through all this trouble."
Ms. Mary was taken aback, and a hint of apology appeared on her face. "I didn't know I would cause you trouble."
Lockhart shook his head. "It's not a big problem, and it wasn't your fault."
They soon arrived at a small house with a bright orange-red light that was very conspicuous in the mist. They pushed open the door and went inside, where they saw several young wizards.
"I submitted some applications to the Ministry of Magic, requesting that a few of my students and I be assigned to auxiliary positions within the Department of Mysteries."
"They can be of some help to me, and of course, I can take the opportunity to teach them more." Lockhart extinguished the oil lamp and hung it on the wall, then gestured for Mrs. Mary to sit down. "I hope you don't mind."
Ms. Mary seemed a little flustered and shook her head nervously, "No, no."
In fact, she was somewhat envious. Haiti did not have a wizarding school, and the wizards in her hometown were still in the more primitive tribal wizarding tradition of master-apprentice teaching. Because of her mixed-race skin color, she had lived in a state of being ostracized since childhood and had not met any good mentors in her life.
She could only envy Professor Lockhart's willingness to mentor and teach apprentices while he was still working.
She was seated on one of the sofas, and looking at the six young wizards in the other seats, she realized they were the same people who had stormed into her community earlier, and her expression became somewhat awkward.
"Before helping Ms. Mary find her lost life, I need to tell you all some things about memory," Lockhart said, pulling a blackboard to the sofa and smiling at Ms. Mary. "You can listen in; it might be helpful for the experiment later."
Ms. Mary nodded somewhat awkwardly.
"Memory is an extremely complex thing." Lockhart lowered his hood, looked at the young wizards sitting upright in front of him, and spoke eloquently, "Many people think that it is the collection of all the information that humans experience when they come into contact with the world through their five senses, as well as the information processing inside the brain and the resulting thoughts, emotions and everything else."
Lockhart wrote on the blackboard: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste.
Then it put a big X next to it.
"This is a misconception, which is why many people cannot use the Forgetfulness Spell properly. This is the root cause."
He tapped his head with his wand. "Memory is stored in the brain, that's for sure, but memory is not born there."
"It is born in the mind, active in the mind, and operates in the mind."
"Mind and brain, that's a huge difference."
"Thoughts belong to the brain, so truth serums are often not used as a means of interrogation because they affect the mind, and wizards find it difficult to obtain genuine memory information through truth serums."
It's not easy to get young wizards to understand the difference between mind and brain, because there's a lot of overlap between the two concepts, and explaining it in the English context has many limitations.
If it were his previous life's circumstances, he could still cite ancient philosophies or even widely circulated poems to explain it.
For example, Li Qingzhao's line, "This feeling is impossible to dispel; it just left my brow only to rise again in my heart," is easy to understand.
The conceptual difference between "brain" and "heart".
Ms. Mary listened with rapt attention, completely mesmerized. She had never encountered such a specialized field before. The charm of this academic course lay in its unparalleled depth and breadth, content that traditional ancient wizards could hardly access directly through mystery alone.
She never imagined that the subject of memory alone would be connected to such profound fields as time and space.
"If you look at memory from the perspective of time, it is no longer just a collection of information, but a trace of life's journey through the world. If you observe memory from this angle, you will find that it contains far more information than our brains can access."
Lockhart gestured to the Pensieve placed to the side, "If we extract memories from the brain and put them into the Pensieve..."
We will feel this very clearly.
"Using the Pensieve to organize memories is not simply a process of sorting out information."
"We'll discover something very interesting—." He smiled as he looked at the inquisitive faces of the young wizards.
It is said that "our minds have experienced a richer life than our brains."
"This understanding will broaden your knowledge of life. You will find that many of your actions, despite not conforming to the thoughts that pop into your head, are still carried out with such determination. This is because what truly drives your actions is your heart!"