Recaps

Murphy expanded Beauty Potion production and planned an assembly line for Amortentia, which he intended to sell as perfume. He also recruited staff for Wizard Security Stores and assigned some of them to research the first stage of the Animagus Potion, leaving the stores’ name undecided.

• Murphy told Isaac to expand the Beauty Potion factory and establish an Amortentia production line at the Knockturn Alley shop with Ms. Zoreni.
• Murphy decided to export the Amortentia as perfume to fund his plans to build a computer product suite.
• Locke showed Murphy shop premises and applicants for the Wizard Security Store, and Murphy ordered him to hire applicants with at least six O.W.L.s.
• Murphy selected thirty applicants with strong Transfiguration grades to keep mandrake leaves in their mouths and submit them for Animagus Potion research.
• Murphy asked Locke to keep recruiting, including retired Aurors as instructors and young wizards skilled in the Engorgement and Shrinking Charms, and Locke asked what to name the stores.

Murphy chose Watchmen as the name for his planned security store while arranging funding for a costly chip and software venture. At the Mind Magic Research Group, Serika objected to experiments using the Seed of the Mind, and Murphy argued that harmful habits came from the feedback of using magic rather than Dark Magic alone; Serika remained worried about the spell’s power.

• Murphy rejected Avengers and Justice League and named the security store Watchmen.
• Patrick warned Murphy that the semiconductor and software project could require billions of pounds, and Murphy told him to begin raising funds and invest available cash.
• Murphy planned to develop a luxury brand under Camelot, starting with perfumes, clothing, and accessories.
• Funes explained that Serika had stopped using the Seed of the Mind on animals after experiments caused them to suffer or die.
• Serika condemned the Seed of the Mind as dangerous, while Murphy argued that ordinary spells could also train wizards to solve problems through coercion and force.
• Serika asked whether frequent use of the Seed of the Mind would make Murphy dependent on controlling others.

Murphy and Serika debated the dangers of the Seed of the Mind as Omid Abbott explained that the spell could be resisted and might work only on willing targets. Omid asked to begin human experiments, offering himself and Funes as volunteers.

• Murphy asked Serika whether she would use the Seed of the Mind to control him or others, and she firmly refused.
• Murphy argued that Serika's past use of the spell had not corrupted her, but she warned that he might grow accustomed to enslaving people.
• Omid Abbott reported that animals could resist commands that clashed with strong desires and that the Seed of the Mind might require a willing subject, unlike the Imperius Curse.
• Omid said he and Funes wanted Serika to test harmless commands on them, but Serika had refused their repeated requests.
• Omid asked Murphy for permission to conduct human experiments, offering himself and Funes as volunteers.

Murphy rejected using the Seed of the Mind on himself or his researchers and considered experimenting on magical creatures instead. Meanwhile, he used booming perfume sales to fund Sophon Technology’s expansion into chip manufacturing, then visited Malfoy Manor in September.

• Murphy advised the researchers not to experiment on themselves with the dangerous mind-altering spell and considered using creatures with rudimentary intelligence for tests.
• Camelot launched Medis’s Eros perfumes in France, using small amounts of Amortentia to make the products alluring and highly profitable.
• Murphy revamped the Venus Series into Medea’s Helen cosmetics, and the resulting sales eased Umbrella Corporation’s financial pressure.
• Umbrella Corporation established Sophon Technology in May, with divisions covering chips, consumer electronics, software, and internet technology.
• Sophon Technology acquired chip-design firms, ARM, Inmos factories, and an eighty-five percent stake in ASML, then began developing new processor designs and an advanced lithography machine.
• Murphy visited Malfoy Manor again in September.

Murphy rejected Lucius Malfoy’s plan to install Rasim Selwyn as Head of the Auror Office and ordered a campaign to cripple the Selwyn family’s businesses. He left Lucius with a warning to choose his real friends.

• Murphy told Lucius that Barty Crouch had appointed Gawain Robards because he lacked better candidates, and that Robards posed little threat.
• Murphy pointed out that Rasim Selwyn had repeatedly ignored invitations to meet and questioned whether he was truly an ally.
• Murphy ordered Lucius to undercut the Selwyn family’s shops, seize their suppliers’ stock, and slash the prices paid for their potion ingredients.
• Murphy said the Selwyn family would have a year to endure the pressure before he stopped, and told Lucius to make the terms clear.
• Murphy called Lucius a peacock in the eyes of others and urged him to choose his real friends.

Andrew Tuke presented the Transfiguration Pathway Research Group’s findings on the difficult Animagus transformation process and the experiments that had begun to reveal how it worked. He described a simplified method for completing its first stage, while the research into the remaining stages was still underway.

• Murphy attended the report meeting with Laura Kruger and Andrew Tuke as the institute’s researchers gathered to hear the Transfiguration Pathway Research Group’s latest results.
• Andrew explained the five steps of becoming an Animagus and emphasized the process’s strict requirements, long duration, and low success rate.
• Andrew said that Murphy had recruited dozens of wizards to attempt the transformation, giving the researchers intermediate samples to study.
• The research group analyzed saliva and mandrake-leaf samples and concluded that the first stage involved saliva fermenting and purifying components of the leaf.
• Andrew reported that carrying a saliva-and-leaf mixture in a dark environment, drinking it regularly, and refreshing the saliva could reproduce the first stage more easily.

The researchers explained how the Animagus Potion connected a wizard to the transformation through the mandrake leaf, incubated the wizard’s traits in a death's-head hawkmoth pupa, and was completed by lightning or electromagnetic change. They left the animal form’s determination tied not only to genetic information but also to the wizard’s personal magical “essence.”

• The researchers found that the mandrake leaf mixed with saliva and linked the wizard to the potion during the month-long ritual.
• They discovered that the death's-head hawkmoth pupa absorbed the wizard’s hair and other ingredients, then dissolved into a solution containing genetic information for the wizard’s future animal form.
• The researchers found that lightning or a strong electromagnetic-field change triggered the unstable potion to completion.
• They explained that Animagus Transformation was a ritual governed by conventions of the Magic Web, and that carefully chosen conditions could shorten the process to within two months.
• They determined that fresh bodily tissue could replace hair in the potion, but it also needed the wizard’s aura, or personal essence, to determine the resulting animal form.

The researchers explained the symbolic nature and unstable properties of Animagus transformation, including its possible links to vampires and werewolves. They outlined five processes in the Transfiguration Pathway and ended by calling for more researchers to help explore the unknown stages.

• The researchers said the Magic Web determined a wizard's Animagus form according to symbolic similarities in their aura, personality, and needs, and noted its resemblance to the wizard's Patronus.
• They explained that Animagus Potions changed unpredictably when disturbed or observed, and that their fluctuations appeared to have quantum characteristics.
• The researchers suggested that vampires and werewolves might have originated from Animagus transformation, while acknowledging that the evidence was insufficient.
• They divided the Transfiguration Pathway into ordinary, Directed, Advanced, Magical, and Polymorphic Animagus processes.
• The researchers described the later processes as largely unexplored and asked more people to join the research.

Murphy supported Andrew’s Animagus research but refused to expose the institute to untrusted wizards before the Seed of the Mind was safety-tested. When chip development stalled without precise magical control, Murphy decided the institute needed to expand and pressed Funes and Omid for progress.

• Murphy praised Andrew’s Animagus research, and Andrew asked to recruit wizards so the group could monitor transformations more closely.
• Murphy declined to bring in outside wizards for now and promised to find a way to give Andrew’s group the monitoring equipment it needed.
• Derrick Preston told Murphy that House-elves’ unpredictable magic made chip fabrication too imprecise, while attempts to teach them wand-and-incantation casting had failed.
• Murphy decided the institute had to recruit wizards to keep chip development moving and visited Funes and Omid to ask about their Seed of the Mind research.

Funes Bachmann explained to Murphy that the Seed of the Mind could implant commands through emotional or logical pathways, each with serious risks. He began describing how the less forceful logical method might be used more safely, but had not yet revealed the tricks it required.

• Murphy confronted Funes Bachmann and Omid Abbott after they spent months on experiments beyond their assigned research.
• Funes told Murphy that the Seed of the Mind could be used in two ways: by implanting an emotional drive or by placing a rule in a subject's logic.
• Funes explained that emotional commands could take over a subject's personality and turn them into fanatics.
• Funes explained that logical commands could cause intense frustration, mental illness, or suicide when a subject's desires conflicted with the implanted rule.
• Murphy asked whether the logical method was the safe way to use the Seed of the Mind, and Funes said it was but required a few tricks.

Funes explained how the Seed of the Mind could safely reinforce agreement-based commands, while Omid Abbott described how Joachim’s plague bacillus had been affected by his spell. The researchers concluded that the bacteria had relied on Joachim’s brain to understand complex commands, leaving them to consider how such organisms could be reproduced.

• Funes explained that the Seed of the Mind could make a person prioritize an accepted command, such as obeying a confidentiality agreement.
• Murphy considered using this approach as a Mental Seal to protect secrets, but asked how it could prevent passive leaks.
• Omid Abbott revealed that the researchers had traced the plague bacillus’s mutation to Joachim’s use of the Seed of the Mind on himself twice.
• Omid theorized that Joachim’s spell had affected the bacteria in his body, killing more lethal strains and binding the survivors to commands.
• The researchers tested whether microorganisms could follow commands, then learned from Harada Minyou that Joachim may have suffered meningitis.
• Omid concluded that the plague bacillus had used Joachim’s brain to comprehend complex commands, prompting the researchers to fear bacteria with consciousness.

Omid and Funes revealed that the Seed of the Mind could make meningococcus carry behavioral commands, so Murphy halted their research and redirected them to conventional spells. He then visited the Watchmen Wizard Security Store to recruit trained wizards for a new project.

• Omid explained how experiments showed that meningococcus altered by the Seed of the Mind could transmit commands that controlled infected creatures’ behavior.
• Murphy forbade further research into using pathogens for behavioral control or bodily enhancement and ordered the Seed of the Mind research paused.
• Murphy told the scientists to focus instead on conventional spells’ effects on the mind and brain.
• Murphy visited the Watchmen Wizard Security Store and asked Blanco Lloyd about its ten wizards trained in Enlargement and Shrinking Charms.

Murphy explained that the security shops’ charm-trained recruits would help manufacture a remarkable new product, then assessed ten wizards on how accurately they could enlarge wafers. Winston Robinson, a struggling former classmate of Murphy’s, volunteered first, leaving the test about to begin.

• Murphy’s security recruits handled pest-control work, Animagus Potion preparation, and daily Engorgement and Shrinking Charm practice for future chip production.
• Murphy told ten charm-trained wizards that their magic would help create a product capable of calculations, communication, news, and entertainment.
• Murphy set up a wafer-enlargement test, offering the three most accurate wizards priority in joining his project.
• Winston Robinson volunteered to take the first test, while recalling his difficulty finding steady work since graduating.

Murphy recruited three wizards with precise Engorgement Charms for confidential chip work at the Magic Research Institute, where they would enlarge and shrink wafers. After initially fearing that they had joined a dark wizard’s secret base, the recruits settled into the respectful workplace, and Murphy instructed staff to value wizarding talent.

• Murphy tested ten candidates' Engorgement Charms and selected Winston Robinson and two others for their accuracy.
• Murphy had the three sign yearlong nondisclosure agreements, paid them a year's salary in advance, and cast the Mental Seal version of the Seed of the Mind on them.
• A house-elf brought the recruits to the Chip Research Group, where Derrick Preston assigned them to cast Engorgement and Shrinking Charms on smooth, round mirrors.
• The three wizards feared Murphy was collaborating with Muggles in violation of wizarding secrecy, but relaxed after seeing their rooms, cafeteria, and recreational facilities and beginning their work.
• After hearing a researcher’s report, Murphy praised the staff and stressed that wizards deserved respect as valuable talent.

In November and December, Murphy reflected on the fall of the Soviet Union and restored his magic by replacing the Magic Research Institute staff's Thorn Oaths with Mental Seals. He reviewed new data from the Magic Power Tester, learned his own scores, and discovered that Hogwarts professor Quirinus Quirrell had the highest overall score recorded.

• Murphy saw the Berlin Wall come down and considered how he might eventually benefit from the Soviet Union's collapse.
• Murphy lifted the Thorn Oath from each Magic Research Institute staff member and replaced it with a Mental Seal enforcing confidentiality.
• Hordan presented findings from 789 subjects, describing how magic power varied with age, profession, and six independent dimensions.
• Murphy tested his magic power and scored an average of 15.29, placing him near an ordinary Auror's level.
• Murphy compared the data with the highest-scoring wizard and learned from Hordan that the subject was Hogwarts professor Quirinus Quirrell.

Murphy’s chip project reached a working 0.3-micron process, but the cost of photoresist threatened to make production uneconomical. To fund the research, he decided to start a media company and make films based on stories he remembered from the future, leaving Patrick doubtful about the plan.

• Murphy recognized Quirrell as a former Hogwarts schoolmate and recalled that Harry Potter would soon start school.
• Researchers exchanged Puffskeins for Christmas, while Murphy’s team produced sample chips using fivefold photolithography.
• Derrick Preston warned Murphy that scaling up wafers made photoresist costs prohibitively high, so Murphy decided to recruit more materials-chemistry experts.
• Murphy complained to Patrick about the money pouring into chip research, then refused Patrick’s request for an early retirement payout.
• Murphy told Patrick he planned to start a media company focused on films, and Patrick began considering selling his shares.

In 1990, Murphy visited Malfoy Manor and agreed to meet Rasim Selwyn, whose family was suffering losses from Murphy’s businesses. When Rasim insulted and challenged him, Murphy defeated him with powerful spells, wrecked the manor’s hall, and Apparated away with him.

• Murphy joined Draco Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle for Quidditch, then set them the challenge of catching the Golden Snitch while dodging two Bludgers.
• Lucius Malfoy told Murphy that Rasim Selwyn wanted to apologize because the Selwyn family had lost heavily to Murphy’s businesses.
• Rasim Selwyn entered, insulted Murphy and Lucius Malfoy, and challenged Murphy to a duel, declaring that magic was might.
• Murphy overwhelmed Rasim’s spell with Dark Torrent and blasted him through a wall, then used Screeching Blast to devastate the Malfoy manor’s main hall.
• Murphy took Rasim’s wand, told Lucius Malfoy to renovate the manor, and Apparated away with Rasim.

Murphy defeated Rasim, brought him to the Mind Magic Research Group for experiments, and planned to plant a Seed of the Mind in him. At Malfoy Manor, Lucius refused to join Albert Runcorn and the others against Murphy, and Rasim suddenly returned.

• Murphy defeated Rasim with two spells from Tom Riddle's diary and Apparated with him to the Mind Magic Research Group.
• Murphy had Funes Bachmann and Omid Abbott begin mind-magic experiments on Rasim, warning them not to break him.
• Lysander Selwyn confronted Lucius at Malfoy Manor, demanding to know where Rasim was, while Albert Runcorn, Avery, and Corban Yaxley joined him.
• Albert Runcorn told Lucius that they planned to teach Murphy a lesson and asked him to choose a side.
• Lucius refused to side with either group, and Rasim suddenly appeared at Malfoy Manor.

Rasim Selwyn returned from Murphy convinced that Murphy was the wizards’ savior, prompting Albert Runcorn and the others to restrain him before he could warn Murphy. Murphy then visited Andrew Tuke’s research group, where he learned that a wizard’s Patronus could influence their Animagus transformation and revealed his own raven Patronus.

• Rasim told Lysander Selwyn that Murphy had not kidnapped him and urged his father to sell unprofitable magical creature shops to Murphy.
• Rasim praised Murphy as the future ruler and savior of wizards, while Avery and the others suspected he was cursed.
• Rasim tried to Apparate and warn Murphy, but Albert Runcorn and another wizard stunned and restrained him before taking the group away.
• Murphy visited Andrew Tuke and learned that changing a wizard’s Patronus could affect the animal traits in their Animagus potion.
• Murphy cast Expecto Patronum and revealed that his Patronus took the form of a raven.

Murphy worked with Omid Abbott and Hordan to explore using Legilimency to extract and organize memories for a memory-copying project. After practicing on himself, he successfully retrieved a box-office ranking from his memories and spotted The Lion King as a possible film to adapt.

• Omid Abbott and Hordan asked Murphy to recruit a wizard skilled in Legilimency to test ideas for extracting knowledge-based memories.
• Murphy offered to conduct the experiments himself and learned that the researchers wanted to test Legilimency with Pensieve-assisted memory sorting.
• Murphy used Legilimency on himself, endured the disorienting split in perspective, and found that uncontrolled searches surfaced random thoughts and old memories.
• Murphy focused his search on future blockbuster films and retrieved a box-office ranking from his memories.
• Murphy noticed The Lion King on the ranking and considered it a possible choice.

Murphy pushed Legilimency beyond its limits to reconstruct his memories of The Lion King, leaving him unconscious with brain damage. After recovering, he learned that his method overloaded his brain, raising doubts about how he could use memory copying to gain vast knowledge.

• Murphy used Legilimency to rebuild a vivid memory of watching The Lion King as a child, but collapsed when he tried to interact with his past self.
• Laura told Murphy that he had been unconscious for three days and that doctors had treated his brain damage and cerebral edema.
• Murphy realized his experiment had taught him to recall The Lion King in perfect detail and named the method Total Recall.
• Three days later, medical experts linked Total Recall to rapid synaptic growth and brain damage, while Funes explained that Pensieves normally process memories for wizards.
• Murphy worried that Total Recall would prevent him from expanding his knowledge through memory copying unless he found a safer way to use a Pensieve.

Murphy endured several days of symptoms after using Legilimency on himself, and Omid Abbott explained that the spell had overloaded his brain with memories and neural connections. Murphy sought a way to improve his brain’s capacity and visited the Potions laboratory, where he found Pex Morey researching the Wit-Sharpening Potion.

• Murphy told Omid Abbott about his drowsiness, slow reactions, sweet cravings, and vivid recollections, and Omid attributed them to a sudden increase in neural connections.
• Omid explained that Total Recall exposed Murphy to far more detailed information than ordinary memory and that his brain needed time to adapt without forgetting.
• Murphy asked about easing the symptoms without using an external Pensieve, and Omid suggested enhancing the brain’s capabilities.
• Murphy took Omid to the Potions laboratory, where researchers studied the Beauty Potion, Amortentia, and other potions.
• Murphy found Pex Morey, who said he was researching the Wit-Sharpening Potion because he believed it could make the mind more agile.

Murphy discovered that Developing Solution could generate intermediate frames for film and animation, opening a new research opportunity. In April, he pitched an animal-animated adaptation of Hamlet to Pickett’s executives, then urged them to make it faster than their proposed year-and-a-half schedule.

• Murphy drank a Wit-Sharpening Potion, felt his headache and drowsiness disappear, and assigned Pex to exchange research with Omid’s Mind Magic Research Group.
• Georgi Tavares told Murphy that Developing Solution could fill in changes between photographs, and Murphy asked him to test whether it could add frames to animation.
• Georgi demonstrated that Developing Solution could make a drawn dog move naturally between two cartoon images when its path was constrained.
• Murphy pitched Pickett’s executives an all-ages animated story about a young lion whose uncle murdered his father and took the throne.
• Pickett’s executives praised the idea and estimated that the animation might be released in about a year and a half, but Murphy called that too long and urged them to seize the day.

Murphy oversaw Pickett Company’s rapid progress on The Lion King while developing a new chip architecture. Meanwhile, pure-blood wizards plotted to use Greyback against Murphy, and Murphy learned that a shop assistant at the Supreme Potion shop had been bitten by a werewolf.

• Murphy gave Pickett Company’s producers the script and designs, then ordered them to hire more artists and complete the keyframes and music within a month.
• Albert Runcorn told pure-blood wizards that Rasim had been placed under a powerful Imperius Curse and had become Murphy’s lackey.
• The pure-blood wizards rejected the idea of bringing Murphy into their circle and decided to use Greyback and his werewolves against him.
• Pickett Company completed most of The Lion King’s keyframes, while Murphy turned his attention to ARM and the design of a new chip architecture.
• After receiving an owl from Locke, Murphy went to the Supreme Potion shop and asked what had happened after its shop assistant was bitten by a werewolf.

Murphy investigated the werewolf attacks on his shop clerks and challenged St Mungo’s Hospital’s inability to heal their injuries. He recruited trainee Healer Elodie to research a cure and left determined to establish a better alternative.

• Isaac Beedle told Murphy that werewolves had bitten five of his clerks, prompting Murphy to visit them at St Mungo’s Hospital.
• Healer Hippocrates Smethwyck explained that the clerks’ werewolf bites would leave scars, and argued with Murphy over his suggestion to remove the magically contaminated tissue.
• Trainee Healer Elodie supported Murphy’s proposal, and he invited her to investigate why magical wounds resisted healing.
• Murphy offered Elodie double her hospital pay, and she took his hand and joined him.
• Murphy announced that he would take his injured employees away from St Mungo’s and told Hippocrates that the hospital would soon no longer be Britain’s only or best wizarding hospital.