The Gardener Seer and the Reflective Dark Lord

"Longevity, agelessness, deathlessness, indestructibility, immortality..." After finishing his conversation with Harry, Roger returned to the Hogwarts Library he knew so well. With Quidditch over, there were more people in the library.

Roger drafted plans for his future on paper—the steps that would bring him ever closer to immortality.

He had already begun pursuing longevity. With the aid of alchemy, he might see some results within a year or two.

He was still formulating his path to agelessness. Longevity concerned the body and soul, while agelessness was more a matter of the mind. No matter how long one's theoretical lifespan was, if the mind could not withstand the erosion of time and became weary and numb of living, that could not be called agelessness.

There was no rush for that. Besides, no one else could be of much help in the realm of the self. He could wait until the path to longevity was nearly complete before taking it up.

The problem lay with the paths that came after.

How could one become deathless and indestructible?

As for physical deathlessness, if his Transfiguration modifications reached their ultimate state, then even if his body were reduced to ashes, he could easily restore it. But how could the soul become deathless?

Based on some knowledge from his previous life, Roger believed that "time," "concept," and "existence" might all offer viable paths.

He could weave his existence through time and space—so long as time and space endured, so would he. Or he could become a memetic life-form, existing within the sea of all beings' subconsciousness—so long as sentient beings lived, so would he. Or perhaps he could become a conceptual entity, able to resurrect endlessly as long as some concept still remained in the universe...

Right now, merely researching longevity already consumed Roger's every effort. He truly had no energy to consider things that were more than an order of magnitude harder than longevity.

So, just as he had outsourced one path to longevity to Hagrid, Roger intended to outsource the paths of deathlessness and indestructibility as well.

He did not expect the other party to achieve anything. As long as they conducted relevant research, when he entered this field in the future, he would not be completely in the dark and forced to start from scratch.

They would not even need to research deathlessness itself. Simply studying time alone would save him considerable time and effort.

Roger had entertained this idea ever since Hagrid's incident, but he had never found an opportunity to put it into practice.

Magic and scientific research were vastly different.

With scientific research, as long as you threw enough money at it, even if the scientists did not enjoy the subject, they could still produce results through relentless experimentation.

But magic was deeply tied to the mind. If you lacked affinity, obsession, and passion for a particular field, it would be difficult to achieve much in it.

Thus, even if Roger wanted to scatter a few seeds, wait for time to pass, and harvest the results, he had no suitable candidates.

Until this conversation with Harry, when Roger realized that Harry's current mindset might be somewhat compatible.

Still, Roger did not take the matter too seriously. Eleven-year-olds were innocent and changeable. Harry's determination to turn back time for his parents now did not mean that, a few years later, when adolescent feelings began to stir, he would still hold fast to his original resolve.

Once a fearless state of mind was lost, it was far too difficult to recover.

So Harry was merely an idle move on Roger's board. If Harry succeeded, Roger would be very pleased.

If Harry gave up halfway, Roger would lose nothing. After all, all he had done was point him in a few directions at critical moments.

...On the other side of the library, Voldemort, using Quirrell's body to search for material on Seers, had no idea that while he had been absorbed in reading, Roger had redirected Harry's fate.

At that moment, Voldemort's heart was filled with helplessness.

After searching through materials for nearly an entire day, he found that the records on renowned Seers throughout history were fairly detailed. Some books even mentioned ways of dealing with Seers.

For example, Whispers of Fate described how Seers could use prophecies to interfere with other Seers' predictions, making it harder for them to observe the future.

Well, that method required the user to be a powerful Seer capable of making prophecies at will.

There was also Man Proposes, Heaven Disposes. The author of that book had put forward a conjecture: if someone's hatred for fate reached the point of near madness, perhaps they could use magic-fueled outbursts to conceal themselves within "fate."

That was indeed a possible method, but to turn that conjecture into usable magic, Quirrell would first need to reach the level required to cast such a spell...

Voldemort estimated his own talent in the field of fate. Even if he devoted himself to it entirely for twenty years, he might not be able to complete it.

Most other methods were much the same. They either required Quirrell to possess exceptional talent in the field of fate or required prophecy-related holy artifacts that existed only in legends.

There were not many advanced forms of fate magic that did not speak in riddles, and Voldemort quickly finished going through them all.

He summed it up: to fight fate, one either had to use the power of prophecy as well, or possess strength greater than the sum of fate's power and break through finesse with brute force.

There truly was no other clever shortcut.

Did he really have to admit defeat? Unable to find a way to break the deadlock through Quirrell, Voldemort tried to find one through Roger instead.

For instance...

"If Professor Quirrell defeats me in a direct magical duel, the Philosopher's Stone will be yours. Before our game ends, you may not use any other means to attempt to obtain the Philosopher's Stone."

...Tch. Was this within your calculations too, Seer?

Recalling one of the conditions of the Unbreakable Vow, Voldemort cut off that train of thought.

At that moment, Voldemort began to reflect.

A mere little game between himself and a Seer had already put him in such an awkward position.

Could he truly shatter the prophecy of the Dark Lord and the Boy Who Lived as smoothly as he had imagined? Would that bespectacled child really become his gravedigger? He had so many Horcruxes. Surely not?

After realizing that the power of fate prophecies was even greater than he had originally believed, a thought suddenly flashed through Voldemort's mind. "Should I also leave myself some contingency plans regarding Harry Potter?"

He did not have enough time for his wager with the Little Seer. No matter what, it would be difficult for him to win.

But Harry Potter was different. It should still take many years for him to grow up—enough time for Voldemort to make some arrangements to break the prophecy of the Boy Who Lived!

.

.

.

Early the next morning, before Roger could wait for Harry, Hagrid unexpectedly came looking for him first.

"What? Your tiny Magical Creature succeeded?!"

"No, uh, I can't really explain it. It's complicated. Just come take a look and you'll understand." Hagrid looked haggard, as if he had been awake for several days and nights. He scratched his head, looking deeply troubled.

Seeing that Hagrid's ability to put words together had been challenged, Roger said nothing and followed him to the hut beside the Forbidden Forest.

After that...

Inside the hut, Roger stared at Hagrid's creation with a toothache expression, his brow furrowed even more deeply than Hagrid's.

"This thing..."

This strange creature gave Roger the vague feeling that he was seeing Warp demons serving the Four Great Benefactors like Khorne and Tzeentch.

Wizard 40K? I don't want this kind of timeline! "Hagrid... can you tell me how you raised it?"