Mask of Pain
Skylar wandered around for a while before heading to Flourish and Blotts to buy the textbooks he needed for the semester.
Skylar first grabbed two copies of all the textbooks, including Draco's. Seeing that his parents and brother hadn't arrived yet, Skylar leisurely browsed the books in the bookstore. During this time, he helped the bookstore manager deal with the raging, biting monster book, "The Monster Book of Monsters," and earned a discount coupon for buying books, which saved Skylar 10 Galleon of pocket money.
These 10 Galleon are just enough to offset the amount I used this morning to bribe Draco to keep it a secret.
After a while, the parents and brother arrived late, and the family boarded the Thestral carriage and returned to the Malfoy Manor.
On the way, Narcissa asked Skylar about his experience in Diagon Alley that day. Skylar, of course, didn't reveal that he had sneaked into Knockturn Alley, but instead changed the subject. "I went to Ollivander's wand shop again today and had him give my wand some maintenance..."
Skylar gathered his thoughts and asked, voicing his doubts. "I've noticed his business isn't actually that great—he only sells a wand for 7 Galleon. Keep in mind, wands aren't consumables. There are only about 80 new wizards enrolling each year, and even including those from abroad, it's at most 100. If he's lucky, about 50 adult wizards will need to buy a new wand if it breaks—a wand is a wizard's second life, and 50 such idiots are already a lot. I'd say at most 150, which is equivalent to 1050 Galleon. Assuming half that's for manufacturing costs, he only nets 525 Galleon a year. And that doesn't even include rent, maintenance, and other expenses. I find it a bit unbelievable..."
(Note: According to the Daily Prophet, Hit Wizard in the Ministry of Magic earns 700 Galleon a month, and an assistant manager at Flourish and Blotts earns 42 Galleon a month. This means that the monthly income of a big boss in Ollivander is less than that of a bookstore worker.)
Lucius nodded with satisfaction. "Skylar, you've indeed inherited the family's excellent business acumen, managing to think of this so quickly. Actually, there are many unspoken rules in the wizarding business world. Ollivander as an example; the greatest significance of this wand shop is merely a facade that allows him to maintain his family's prestige—whether the wand shop makes money or not isn't that important to him. He has many collaborative research projects with the Ministry of Magic, mostly related to Wandlore studies, and the research funding is the real source of income. Of course, if it weren't for the reputation brought to him by this long-established wand shop, those collaborative opportunities might not have fallen into his hands..." With that, he gave a cold snort.
So that's how it is. Is Ollivander using the wand shop's low prices to monopolize the market, and then using his market leadership to seek other benefits? Skylar to understand something.
Lucius continued, "Don't let this old man's seemingly respectable appearance fool you. Over the past thousand years, countless talented aspiring wand makers have tried to open their own shops in Britain, but without exception, they've all failed to obtain a license from the Ministry of Magic. I dare say that old man Ollivander's methods are definitely behind this. This tactic has a name in the business world: 'competitive moat.' Its meaning is to build a barrier that prevents new competitors from entering, thus allowing the company to maintain a monopoly on the entire industry. As long as he maintains this monopoly, the Ministry of Magic must cooperate with him if it wants to research Wandlore. How about that? Doesn't it open your eyes to the dark side of the business world?" He finished with a cold laugh.
(Note: According to the Daily Prophet, Willie Wagstaff was warned by the Magical Equipment Control Bureau for selling wands without the "Ministry of Magic Seal," so legally sold wands require the Ministry of Magic's seal of authorization.)
Skylar fell into deep thought. So this is how things work in the wizarding business world. It seems that his previous success in entering the Broomstick market and making a Fawley was due to his ability to foresee the plot and a great deal of luck!
Huh? Didn't all the other transmigrators easily monopolize the entire wizarding business world with just a wave of their arms and a tremor of their bodies? Did they all have an innate aura of dominance? Or some kind of halo that made other wizarding merchants and Pure-blood families automatically lose their intelligence? Skylar was filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred...
During the family dinner that evening, Lucius sternly reminded his two sons to remember the family's honor and reiterated his expectations for their academic performance. He then said, "Especially you, Draco, focus on your studies and don't mess with Potter and his gang anymore. You should know that this term at Hogwarts won't be peaceful. Now I'll tell you some inside information that the newspapers didn't report: Black's real purpose in escaping was to kill Harry Potter!"
"What?" Skylar, who already knew the plot, remained calm, while Draco, who had a love-hate relationship with Harry Potter all along, exclaimed in surprise.
Lucius gave Draco a cold look and said, "Black was my junior in school back then. He was a close friend of Harry Potter's father, James Potter, but he betrayed his friend to the Dark Lord, leading to James Potter's tragic death. His escape this time is clearly to eliminate any future threat and kill Harry Potter. Although I wish this bastard would die a horrible death, I don't want you two to be implicated by him for some foolish reason and get yourself into trouble too."
Lucius paused for a moment, then continued, "Although everyone says Black is mad, and he may be, he's smart enough to escape from Azkaban —something no ordinary person could do. If Black can escape Azkaban, I think he can storm into Hogwarts. Black once brutally murdered over a dozen innocent passersby in the street. If you were unlucky enough to encounter him, I don't think he would show you any mercy. More likely, he would kill you to silence you and prevent him from revealing his whereabouts. Do you understand?"
Skylar and Draco both nodded hurriedly to indicate that they understood.
That evening, in his dormitory, Skylar took out the Mask of Pain he had bought that day, slowly put it on his face, activated its effects with magic, and then took it off, looking directly at it. In Skylar's eyes, the mask seemed to transform into a black hole, or a vortex, slowly pulling Skylar's gaze into it.
A sense of dread without any apparent cause arose in Skylar's heart, but within seconds, Skylar broke free from this eerie state.
"Is that all? Or does it only work on people with low magic power?" Skylar muttered unhappily, feeling a sense of absurdity. He hadn't expected that the first person he would use this mask against would be himself.
Skylar activated his Magic Eye, focusing intently on sensing the magical fluctuations emanating from the mask. Unlike the magic used to cast ordinary spells, it seemed to be guided and manipulated by another unseen force.
It was an indescribable, mysterious power, a magic surrounding the mask, formless, weightless, yet seemingly acting directly on the soul.
"If this is soul magic, then it's equivalent to temporarily stripping away a part of one's consciousness to attack another person's soul?" Skylar felt as if he had grasped the essence of soul magic.
He tried to use the Occlumency to clear all his thoughts, and then tried to split off a small sliver of his consciousness and integrate it into magic. He could feel his own magic suddenly become much more powerful after merging with his split consciousness.
He focused intently on condensing his magic into a needle and slowly stabbed it towards the mask, as if he had collided powerfully with a solid wall. Skylar felt a wave of dizziness, and when he came to his senses, he found that his forehead was covered in sweat, and the Mask of Pain had cracked in two.
After a moment of deep thought, Skylar immediately understood the principle of soul attacks. What he had just experienced was a simple and brutal contest with the consciousness within the Mask of Pain. The Mask of Pain's soul power was not strong, so the mask was easily shattered by him.
If the mask were replaced with the Sorting Hat from Hogwarts, which contains the consciousness of the Four Founders, capable of lasting for thousands of years, then with Skylar's meager soul power, which he had never trained, he would surely suffer a crushing defeat and become an idiot.
Skylar suddenly thought of the essence of magic. So-called magic should be determined by the strength of the soul, which determines the amount of magic stored in the magic pool, while the strength of mental power determines the wizard's control over magic and the output rate of magic flow.
From this, Skylar was able to confirm that magic did not increase naturally over time at a fixed rate, as most wizards believed. After all, Grindelwald and Dumbledore, those two prodigies, dominated the Europe Wizarding World in their forties, and the older generation of wizards were far from being their match.
A variety of thoughts raced through Skylar's mind, and a barely perceptible glint flashed in his eyes. He seemed to have discovered the most astonishing secret in the Wizarding World: the secret of how to enhance magical power.
Unlike Voldemort Grindelwald and Dumbledore did not use Dark Arts to completely transform themselves, so there must be some unknown reason behind their ability to grow their magical power at a faster rate than others.
This point wasn't mentioned in the original work, perhaps because neither of them knew the underlying principle. They were simply born with soul strength and mental power far exceeding that of ordinary people, which caused their magic power growth rate to receive an astonishing boost from these two factors.
In other words, a strong soul and mental strength cannot suddenly increase one's magic power like Potions, but they can increase the growth rate of magic power. If one wants to catch up with Voldemort and Dumbledore's strength before the chaos descends, one must find ways to enhance the strength of one's soul and mental strength.
Being able to discover such an astonishing secret, even though the Mask of Pain, worth 29 Galleon, was now ruined, Skylar didn't feel the slightest bit heartache. Upon further examining the fragments of the Mask of Pain, Skylar discovered that the magical fluctuations attached to it had dissipated along with the collapse of the consciousness, and the mask had become two ordinary fragments. So, without hesitation, he threw the fragments into the trash can.