The Mind-Parasite Demon

Hagrid was an honest, straightforward man. Since he had accepted Roger's commission, and was genuinely fascinated by breeding new magical creatures,

he naturally devoted himself to it wholeheartedly.

Ever since reaching a verbal agreement with Roger nearly two months ago, he had been running around for this matter.

At first, he conducted several experiments.

But they all failed.

Those failures made Hagrid realize that the magical creatures in the Forbidden Forest were not enough to support his experimental needs.

He needed more unusual species of magical creatures, but the ones Hagrid required were all relatively rare and difficult to obtain, so his experiments had stalled.

Even though Roger had been sharing his non-confidential materials on cellular transformation and modification with Hagrid throughout this time, it was no use. Breeding magical creatures required raw materials.

That was until Hagrid met two people.

The first was someone he encountered two weeks before Halloween. As usual, he had gone to Hogsmeade Village, the wizarding settlement near Hogwarts, to look for new sellers of magical creatures in the taverns.

And he really did find one. Though the other person had concealed their body tightly and disguised their voice, putting on a mysterious air, Hagrid had not been particularly suspicious... the magical creature trade itself operated on the edge of the law.

The sale of certain highly dangerous magical creatures was an especially serious crime, so that sort of attire was perfectly normal.

The seller had brought a Boggart, which Hagrid had been trying to buy recently... unfortunately, it was only a Boggart. As for the tiny magical creatures Hagrid wanted, the seller said they had never seen any.

After the deal was completed, that person insisted on drinking with Hagrid. Pressed by the seller while they drank, Hagrid, emboldened by alcohol, boasted at length about how he had tamed a rare Three-Headed Dog.

"You need to learn how to make them calm down. For example... music."

"Music?"

Once the gathering ended and everyone left, Hagrid encountered his next stroke of luck.

After asking many friends in the magical creature trafficking business and still failing to find the tiny magical creatures he wanted, Hagrid simply paid out of his own pocket to post rewards in various newspapers.

Before long, someone came knocking.

At first, Hagrid did not quite believe what she said, because... she was simply too young, and what she said was somewhat beyond Hagrid's understanding.

But seeing how utterly certain she was, Hagrid, who was especially tolerant of children, decided to give her a chance.

"Does such a creature really exist?"

"Of course Pestering Mites exist. They're right there." The blonde little girl, who looked no older than ten, answered firmly.

Still half-doubtful, Hagrid put the Boggart and the "Pestering Mites" together as instructed by the little girl, Luna Lovegood.

When it came to breeding magical creatures, Hagrid was one of the few true masters in the world.

He had even made a Manticore, a XXXXX-class dangerous creature—the highest danger rating—breed with another dangerous magical creature, a Fire Crab, producing offspring and creating the entirely new species known as Blast-Ended Skrewts.

There was no questioning his skill. What came next was Hagrid's performance.

Boggarts were Dark Magic creatures, shapeshifters that lived in dark, cramped places and transformed into whatever the person who encountered them feared most. No one knew what a Boggart looked like, because no one had ever seen its true form.

According to the little girl Luna, Pestering Mites were tiny, invisible creatures that drifted into people's ears and muddled their thoughts.

Hagrid wanted to use the similarities between the two to create a creature small enough to sense human thoughts and alter itself according to the wishes of the thinker.

Hagrid intended to breed it generation after generation, until it became so small that it did not even possess thoughts, completely obeying a wizard's commands.

In Roger's terms, it would be a "Parasitic Beast" that humans could control at will and that possessed the ability to reorganize its own physical structure.

But by this point in time, Hagrid had failed to breed his "Parasitic Beast" and instead produced something strange...

After conducting a systematic observation, Roger summarized the creature's traits.

Under normal circumstances, it was transparent, roughly the size of a grain of sand, and emitted a faint yellow glow. It looked like a powerless firefly floating in midair.

At this stage, it was not powerful. It was even somewhat fragile.

But once it came into contact with a human or another intelligent lifeform, it became entirely different.

Its life form would transform from a material state into a semi-soul state, attaching itself to the brain and soul while frantically creating terrifying illusions in the victim's mind.

The fear of living beings seemed to be the "nourishment" it needed. The more fear it devoured, the stronger it became.

As it grew stronger, it began the next stage of its metamorphosis, preparing to change from a semi-soul form into a kind of "thought-form."

That might sound a little abstract, but anyone sufficiently familiar with Chinese culture would likely understand if it were described as an "Inner Demon."

Roger had not allowed the creature to complete its metamorphosis, but he believed that the "Inner Demon state" was most likely not the limit of this creature's evolution! After writing the final stroke of his observation report and casually naming it the "Fear Demon," Roger looked at Hagrid with unprecedented gravity. "Hagrid."

"Destroy them."

"I'll archive and seal the data from this experiment. Every new creature you bred will be destroyed. Not a single one will be left." Roger's tone was not impassioned in the slightest, but Hagrid could feel that Roger's words carried immense weight and allowed no argument.

"Today. I'll personally oversee their destruction."

Hearing Roger's words, Hagrid was immediately startled. "What?!"

"But..."

"No buts." Roger took out his wand and pressed it to his temple.

Roger had become extremely proficient with magic like Legilimency while researching modifications to his own brain and the creation of alchemical brains.

With ease, Roger extracted a portion of his thoughts from his brain.

The wizarding world did not have a place like the Warp, an environment that could allow thought-based lifeforms to grow without limit and potentially become a cosmic-scale disaster.

But the sea of collective unconsciousness shared by all living beings did exist! Why was it that once a spell had been invented, anyone who recited it could use magic, rather than needing the same degree of understanding as the spell's creator and an overwhelmingly strong will to cast it? The collective unconscious played a major role in that process. This was discussed in Ritual Magic is More Than Just Blood Sacrifice.

What would happen if the Fear Demon bred by Hagrid grew to the point where it could follow human thoughts into the sea of collective unconsciousness and reproduce there? Roger remembered something similar from his previous life.

Dream Man.

A certain story in Tales of the Unusual had covered it. Put simply, it was an inescapable nightmare that could spread through memes, causing massive social chaos.

And that was only the optimistic possibility. This world had magic and magical power. If the Fear Demon continued to evolve... it was not impossible for it to become something like Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street, killing people in the spiritual world!

In the wizarding world, there were already few people proficient in magic concerning souls and thoughts, and most of them were Dark wizards like Voldemort.

If disastrous consequences truly arose, whether they would lend a hand, stand by and watch, or even fan the flames... was impossible to say! Roger condensed the scenes of the grave consequences he had deduced into a strand of thought drawn out by his wand, then poured it into Hagrid's mind.

Roger believed this was a more efficient means of persuasion than words.