Chapter 178: Time and Prophecy

Chapter 178: Time and Prophecy

The Department of Mysteries' regular offices are behind a separate black door.

Additionally, the compartment in the Hall of Time where the Death Eaters once kidnapped Madame Selwyn is also an independent office.

Now, this office has been assigned to Sherlock.

Madame Selwyn was right; the Department of Mysteries has few employees and interacts little with other departments. Even the Minister of Magic rarely has dealings with it, making it the least visible and most enigmatic department in the entire Ministry of Magic.

Just from the office itself, Sherlock's single office is quite large, divided into various sections. With the Ministry of Magic providing three meals a day, staying here indefinitely wouldn't be a problem.

After tidying up his things, Sherlock went outside to the Hall of Time to examine the clocks displayed there.

The Department of Mysteries is vast, with many areas even its own staff cannot enter.

Madame Selwyn didn't specifically point out which rooms were off-limits, only mentioning that the doors to confidential rooms are sealed with special magic. Any door that can't be opened casually is off-limits.

Within the Hall of Time, there are many doors leading to other rooms.

Sherlock stared at the most prominent hummingbird ornament for a long time.

The hummingbird continuously hatched from an egg, then reverted back into an egg, like a biological hourglass, symbolizing the two directions of time: forward and backward.

The progression of time is easy to understand; every passing minute and second represents the consumption and advancement of time. However, time reversal is not a natural phenomenon.

In a corner of the Hall of Time, a glass cabinet houses many golden pocket watches.

These are the Wizarding World's highest achievements in time research—Time-Turners.

The existing Time-Turners are actually ancient alchemical artifacts, and their method of creation has been lost. Moreover, some of their crucial components no longer have the necessary materials.

Fortunately, these devices are not consumables and can be reused.

However, despite their seemingly miraculous effects, Time-Turners are quite limited.

The maximum time that can be reversed is five hours. Turning the hand on the watch once reverses time by one hour, and no one can turn it more than five times.

Many wizards have conducted experiments in the past.

Even if one can reverse time by five hours, the history of those five hours does not change due to the presence of a time traveler.

However, this theory was later challenged by a time researcher in the Department of Mysteries.

The conclusion that history cannot be changed is based on the experiences of those who returned to the past but failed to alter it. But what about those who successfully changed history? Would they still appear in the original timeline?

Or, if they successfully changed history, how would the altered history manifest at the time point before the time travel? Would it subtly change the knowledge of all those aware of the history?

Or would it create a chain reaction, resulting in an entirely different world?

If another world were created, would the saved people and objects still be considered the same as before?

Regardless of which scenario occurs, if history indeed changes, how would anyone know?

Thus, while the belief that history cannot be changed remains the dominant view among time researchers, there are many other differing opinions.

Sherlock has no intention of delving deeply into the study of time travel. The goblin-crafted Time-Turner that brought him to this time is far more advanced than those in the Hall of Time.

To this day, Sherlock still dedicates time each day to use Advanced Disenchantment to suppress its self-repairing capabilities.

Apart from these, the Hall of Time contains other intriguing items with unclear purposes.

On the cabinet to the left of the Time-Turners, various hourglasses are displayed. Sand continuously flows from the top to the bottom, yet the amount of sand at the top never decreases, nor does the amount at the bottom increase.

It seemed as though these grains of sand were a representation of time that would never run out or be fully contained.

At the center of these hourglasses stood a massive, primitive-looking hourglass.

Apart from its size, the "sand" inside it was also different from the others.

In the upper half, silver-white grains were flowing down. After passing through the narrow middle section, they transformed into golden particles, with brilliant threads of light swirling inside the glass hourglass, captivating anyone who gazed at it.

The Hall of Time studied the past, but what Sherlock needed was to correct the timeline. He found nothing of value here, though he couldn't fully understand most of the things in the hall.

After touring the Hall of Time, Sherlock began to try opening the doors leading to other rooms.

There were six doors in total. Excluding the black door for entry and exit and the door to the office, four doors led to unknown rooms.

Sherlock tried pushing one of them, but it wouldn't budge. He then attempted the other three.

In the end, only two doors could be opened.

One appeared to be a storage room, filled with various old hourglasses and clocks, all of which seemed to have lost their magic power and were discarded in this room.

The other door led to a room that was starkly different from the Hall of Time.

The room was vast and cold, as tall as a cathedral, with towering shelves lined up inside. These shelves were filled with dusty glass orbs.

Each glass orb had a yellowed label attached to its shelf. Some orbs emitted a mysterious, flowing light, while others were dim and dark, like extinguished light bulbs. More candlesticks were embedded in the gaps between the shelves, their flames blue like those in the black hall.

Sherlock wandered among the shelves, reading the labels beneath the glass orbs.

[1432, Edward Charles]

[1943, Carol Felices]

[1123, Unknown]

[Unknown, Unknown]

Some of the glass orbs glowed faintly from within, while others were cold and lifeless.

After staring at the orbs for a moment, Sherlock knew what this room was.

The Hall of Prophecies.

These glass orbs stored all the prophecies collected by the Ministry of Magic from ancient times to the present. Some had lost their power, but most still revealed their contents clearly.

The Hall of Prophecies was part of the Hall of Time, which made sense. The main hall represented the past, while the Hall of Prophecies represented the future as seen by wizards.

Compared to the main hall, Sherlock was more interested in the contents and information in the Hall of Prophecies. He spent the entire day wandering around, examining the orbs and their labels, and finally left the Ministry of Magic as it grew dark.

Before he had a clear direction, Madame Selwyn hadn't assigned him any work, so Sherlock's first day at the Ministry of Magic was quite leisurely.

However, such idle days couldn't last long. At most, after three days, even if he hadn't made a choice, Madame Selwyn would assign him a task. After all, he was drawing a salary from the Ministry of Magic and couldn't just sit around doing nothing.

During dinner, Eddie came to the Leaky Cauldron, his expression somber. While eating in Sherlock's room, he said, "The people behind Algie are starting to make moves. Today, someone from the Ministry of Magic approached me, trying to probe my stance and bribe me to keep quiet about any evidence that might harm Algie during the trial."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

"Why didn't they come to me? I'm the key witness, after all. I was the one who caught him."

"They probably know that neither you nor Madame Selwyn, the two crucial witnesses, can be bought, so they didn't waste their time."

Sherlock looked disappointed; he had been looking forward to someone trying to bribe him.

Eddie poured a glass of juice for Amy.

"These people are cautious. They don't expect to completely clear Algie of his charges, but they want to reduce his sentence and shorten his prison term to less than three years."

"If he really only gets three years, the Ministry of Magic will be beyond saving."

Eddie sighed, falling silent.

Sherlock had nothing more to say about that.

Even if Algernon were eventually acquitted, he wouldn't feel anything about it.

These were all internal matters of the Ministry of Magic. Eddie had told him these things, thinking that he really intended to stay and develop his career within the Ministry.

But Sherlock knew best that his purpose for entering the Ministry of Magic had nothing to do with these power struggles.

"Tomorrow, I'll bring Amy with me. If you want to visit her, you can come directly to the ninth floor. My office is now in the Hall of Time."

Amy, who was cutting her sausage with a knife and fork, looked up at Sherlock.

"Is there anything interesting in there?"

Sherlock patted her head and picked up the paper airplane she had folded a few days ago from the table.

"There are many such paper airplanes there, and they can fly in the air just as you imagine."

Amy's eyes lit up instantly, and she swung her legs excitedly, looking forward to it.

In the city of Carlisle, the northernmost part of England.

In the living room of a mansion hidden in the countryside, unseen by anyone, a young man was prostrate on the ground.

The room seemed to be untouched by any light, the dim yellow lamps offering no warmth, only endless cold spreading throughout the space.

Around him stood countless people in black robes, their faces hidden behind grim iron masks.

And those without masks—Bellatrix Lestrange, Igor Karkaroff, Dolohov, Lestrange—these notorious criminals, who had appeared countless times in the Daily Prophet and had hefty bounties on their heads from the Ministry of Magic, were all bowing their heads in deep respect, not daring to look at the man sitting on the single armchair even for a moment.

The man in the black robe gently tapped the armrest with his pale, slender fingers.

"Algernon and the others have all been caught?"

The man's voice was neither hoarse nor deep, but rather soft and delicate.

But no one in the room mistook his gentleness for weakness. Each person held their breath, not daring to make a sound that might disturb the man's words.

The young man on the ground, who was lying flat on the floor, his forehead humbly touching the man's toes, spoke with a voice filled with a fervor and respect he never showed elsewhere.

"Gagerson and the other three were directly sent to Azkaban, and Algernon will be tried tomorrow. The families behind him have already started working within the Ministry to distance themselves from us!"

"This is betrayal!" Bellatrix screeched.

She was the only one who dared to interrupt directly.

"Being alive is more useful than being dead", the man said softly. "He didn't betray our comrades, and this level of loyalty I can accept. However, incompetence is the greatest sin."

His tone wasn't cold, but his words sent a chill through everyone present!

At that moment, Algernon's fate was sealed, and no one could change it.

The young man, who saw the man as his true father, spoke with excitement.

"Let me go! My Lord! Let me deal with that waste of flesh!"

The man gently stroked his hair and said gently.

"You are far more important than he is, so you cannot take such a risk. You have other, more important tasks to complete."

The young man trembled, kissing the man's shoe.

"As you command, my Lord!"

"The room exists, and only the head of the Department of Mysteries knows about it. But such crucial information is rarely shared openly."

"I will make her drink Veritaserum! I will make her reveal everything she knows!" the young man promised.

The man smiled and shook his head.

"No, no, no. The human brain is the most obvious place. She won't be that foolish to keep such things there."

The young man raised his head in confusion, not understanding the man's words.

The man gently caressed his wand, his face smiling but his eyes cold and venomous.

"Find the memory she has hidden. The brain is an unsafe place; the memory must be extracted and hidden somewhere more secure."

"Find it, retrieve that memory, open the room, and bring back what's inside!"

The countless wizards, both masked and unmasked, all bowed on the ground.

They pledged with high, fervent voices.

"We will offer you everything, Great Dark Lord!"

(End of Chapter)

Chapter end