Locke looked utterly miserable.
His already ugly face had been beaten into a pig's head, bruised black and blue, with several of his sharp teeth knocked out.
This guy had been tortured pretty badly.
No wonder he had vanished after the attack. Draco Malfoy had taken him away.
"Locke!" Lucius Malfoy looked at the half-blood Goblin. "Did you secretly open a vault for Murphy Darkholme?"
Locke raised his swollen face and looked at Murphy through his bruised, puffy eyes.
The two stared at each other for a while.
Murphy suddenly said, "Locke, just tell the truth. All my property was legally inherited. You did nothing wrong."
Locke's pointed ears twitched. Then he looked at Dumbledore. "Dumbledore, can you guarantee my safety?"
"During your time as a witness, you will not be harmed," Dumbledore said.
"No! I mean afterward. If I tell the truth, can you guarantee that I won't face retaliation?"
Dumbledore pondered for a moment before finally saying, "If telling the truth leads to retaliation, then wizarding law will lose all credibility. Rest assured, the Aurors will ensure your safety."
"Fine!" Locke seemed to have made up his mind.
He looked at Murphy, then at Lucius Malfoy, and suddenly said, "I am innocent! Murphy Darkholme is innocent too! I have done nothing that violates Gringotts regulations! I did not secretly open a vault for him. Everything I did was proper and legal! Mr. Murphy Darkholme's sources of funds are completely clear. This was all Lucius Malfoy's scheme."
Lucius Malfoy was dumbfounded.
"Y-you didn't say that before! You helped Murphy open a vault under the false name Stephen Cumberbatch. You laundered money for him! And that money all came from Muggles!"
But Locke remained perfectly calm. "Those were the lines you taught me, Mr. Malfoy."
Lucius Malfoy was stunned.
He could not understand how this guy had suddenly switched sides.
"Impossible! That's not what happened! Bogrod, bring Bogrod here! He can prove all of this!"
Scrimgeour nodded and was about to have an Auror bring the man over when an Auror stepped up and whispered a few words in his ear. Scrimgeour froze, then said, "Bogrod has already been arrested on charges of attempting to embezzle wizarding property."
"Also, Gringotts has just sent word that Mr. Murphy Darkholme's sources of funds have been verified as entirely reliable and legal." Scrimgeour glanced at Lucius Malfoy. "If your evidence was meant to accuse him on that point, you can give up now."
"What?!"
Lucius Malfoy found it unbelievable. He looked at Murphy, shocked and bewildered.
How had this guy done it?
What kind of magic did he possess?
"All right, Lucius. Let's end today's farce," Scrimgeour said, ordering the Aurors to drag Lucius Malfoy out of the iron cage and prepare to take him to Azkaban.
"No! I refuse to accept this! I still have evidence!" Lucius Malfoy struggled desperately. "Potions! I have samples of the potions he sold to Muggles! I have samples! And raw materials too! I got them from a Muggle factory!"
He broke free of the two Aurors and pulled several items from his bottomless bag. "These! These! They're enough to prove he sold potions to Muggles!"
Murphy frowned. This guy had really come prepared.
If Murphy had not struck first this time, it might really have been troublesome.
But now, after this series of moves, Lucius Malfoy had lost all momentum. No one would believe him anymore.
Still, Murphy walked over to the materials and samples.
They really were potion ingredients he had mixed himself, along with Cloud White Medicine bearing the Umbrella Corporation logo and several bottles of semi-finished products.
"What are these?" Murphy asked.
"The potions you sold to Muggles! Didn't expect that, did you? You thought that after burning down my house and taking the things stored in the cellar, you had destroyed everything. But you never expected that I had kept some for myself!"
Murphy curled his lip. "Let's say they are. Then what potion is this?"
"Essence of Dittany!"
"Look!" As he spoke, Lucius Malfoy opened a bottle of Cloud White Medicine and poured it over the wound on his arm, where the iron brambles had torn his skin. The wound healed in no time.
"Look! This is Essence of Dittany!"
The wizards in the tribunal seats saw the effect as well and began murmuring among themselves.
Yet Murphy still looked unconcerned. "But it says Cloud White Medicine on the label."
"That's the name you gave it! Cloud White Medicine is Essence of Dittany!"
"Setting aside whether these things have anything to do with me," Murphy said, "let me ask you one question. How do you prove that Cloud White Medicine is Essence of Dittany?"
"What?" Lucius Malfoy was stumped. "Their effects are exactly the same!"
"Heh." Murphy laughed. "I heard that Mr. Malfoy has invested in several apothecaries. But you seem to know absolutely nothing about potions."
"If they have the same effect, does that make them the same thing? If Severus Snape were here, he would definitely call you an idiot! Phoenix tears and Essence of Dittany can both heal external wounds. Are they the same thing? Bezoars and Mandrake Juice can both neutralize certain poisons, but are they the same thing?"
"You may not know this, but in the Muggle world, a single illness can be treated with dozens or even hundreds of medicines. Are they all the same thing?"
"You may know how to brew Essence of Dittany, but do you know how Muggles produce this Cloud White Medicine?"
"If you don't, how can you prove they are the same thing?"
"Th-this... as long as there's a potions master who understands potions, they can definitely prove it..." Lucius Malfoy still tried to struggle.
Murphy looked at Dumbledore again. "Professor, you discovered the twelve uses of dragon's blood and have achieved remarkable things in alchemy. You are a potions master. So may I ask, can you prove that these two medicines are the same thing?"
Behind his half-moon spectacles, Dumbledore met Murphy's gaze with his blue eyes in silence. After a long while, he looked away, picked up the bottle of Cloud White Medicine, and examined it. At last, he sighed. "Unfortunately, I do not understand such techniques."
Murphy smiled.
That was exactly what he had expected.
To prove that two things were the same substance, one had to possess a complete and thorough understanding of their properties. Merely "looking alike" was not enough.
Even "smelling alike, working alike, tasting alike" was not enough. Even if one could list a million similarities between them, that still could not prove they were the same thing.
That was merely the process of enumeration. Like Goldbach's Conjecture and many other conjectures about prime numbers, even if one could provide one hundred billion examples that fit the conjecture, without complete, rigorous, and sufficient logical proof, they would forever remain conjectures rather than become truth.
There was only one way to prove that they were the same substance: find a unique and irreplaceable property of that substance, then prove that both things possessed it.
Did wizards possess that ability?
What a joke.
If wizards could understand their own potions to such a degree, why would Murphy need Muggles? Why would he bother with technology? Why would he bother earning pounds? He could just obediently live off magic.
It was precisely because wizards lacked that ability, because their understanding of their own magic could not reach such precision, that Murphy sought the power of Muggles.
Therefore, the very existence of Cloud White Medicine was proof that wizards did not possess such abilities.
It was like a woman who had cheated because her husband was impotent and then gave birth to a child, while the husband wanted to prove that the child was actually his.
Murphy glanced at Lucius Malfoy.
You're not even a Lestrange, so why do you think like some cuckolded hero?
Before you continue