If something is going to go wrong, a tower is a good place

On the second day after Christmas, Hogwarts was still steeped in a rare atmosphere of relaxation.

Dawn had not fully broken. Outside the windows was that shade between gray and blue unique to winter. The glow of snow washed the distant towers and eaves white, and even the wind seemed not quite awake.

Gavin opened his eyes at precisely five.

He did not light a lamp.

Nor did he disturb anyone.

Ernie was still sleeping very properly, his hands folded over his chest as he lay perfectly straight. Justin, meanwhile, had kicked half his blanket off the bed again, and his pillow had vanished too, apparently off in search of freedom. Gavin glanced at them, slipped quietly out of bed, dressed, slung the Dragon Hide Bag over his shoulder, and left the dormitory without a sound.

The corridors were as empty as he had expected.

The wall lamps still burned, their firelight falling on the stone walls and making the passage feel both warm and deserted. Most of the people in the portraits were still asleep. Some had simply wrapped themselves in their painted bed curtains, leaving only a hand sticking out to indicate that they were entertaining no troubles from the real world today.

Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, evidently had not got up either.

Gavin kept heading upward.

For once, the stairs did not work against him. It was as though even Hogwarts agreed that at five in the morning, the castle really ought not to manufacture any additional surprises.

At last, he reached the Astronomy Tower.

High, cold, empty.

Wind poured through the open arched windows, carrying the damp chill left by the snow and gently stirring the hem of his robes. It was high enough and quiet enough, with nothing obstructing the tower on any side and an excellent view. Looking down, he saw all of Hogwarts still asleep. The tall windows of the Great Hall were dark, and the pitch and lake lay shrouded in the drowsy light of morning.

If any place was suitable for a little dangerous experimentation—

Then an empty tower high above the ground was certainly a good choice.

"Are you ready?" Gavin asked softly.

"At your service, anytime."

A House-elf appeared soundlessly behind him.

It was Pipi.

The elf wore a neat little uniform, which was actually a Hogwarts tea towel. With large ears and an equally large nose, but a serious expression, the elf looked quite dependable. After Gavin had spent so much time dealing with the kitchens, Pipi had become one of the first House-elves to get to know him, and was particularly good at following his lengthy spoken instructions to produce reasonably authentic Chinese food.

"Thank you, Pipi," Gavin said.

"Pipi is very happy to help Mr. Gu."

Pipi bowed a little, then added:

"Does Mr. Gu really not need Pipi to notify a professor?"

"Not for now," Gavin said. "If I'm still standing an hour from now, it means the plan is working normally. If I'm not—do what I told you earlier."

Pipi's ears twitched slightly, making it clear the elf did not much like that answer.

In the end, Pipi nodded anyway.

"Pipi remembers."

With that, the elf vanished.

The tower fell quiet again.

Only the wind remained.

And Gavin's own breathing.

He walked to the center of the tower, stopped, and set down the Dragon Hide Bag. From it, he took several things: a quill, a bottle of ink, a Muggle psychology book bristling with bookmarks, a stack of parchment covered in writing, and a separately copied hypnosis induction script in especially clear handwriting.

None of this was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Quite the opposite. He had only reached this stage after thinking it through, breaking it down, and testing his reasoning over and over.

So far, the experiment's progress had not strayed far from his expectations.

A month of avoiding spellcasting.

His magical growth reaching its limit.

His emotions becoming amplified.

The onset of a sense of alienation from magic.

Yet even so, he had not truly become an Obscurus.

The reason was simple.

His ability to control his emotions was too strong.

If an ordinary person's consciousness was like a car prone to fishtailing on bends, Gavin's mental structure was a high-performance machine protected by layer upon layer of stability systems. ESP, ABS, traction control—all switched on. However slippery the road became, as long as he still wanted to control the car, it would never truly spin out.

So now, what he needed to do was strip out every stabilizer, then step on the accelerator to pick up speed.

Gavin glanced down at the hypnosis script in his hand and gently exhaled.

"Let's begin."

Gavin sat cross-legged, laid the hypnosis script on his knees, and lowered his head to begin reading.

The opening instructions were devoid of emotion and thoroughly professional:

"Now, begin progressive attentional narrowing.

Confirm that your posture is stable and your breathing natural, neither deliberately accelerating nor deliberately slowing it.

Focus your attention on internal visual imagery and verbal suggestion. Do not actively resist or judge.

Once the narrative takes shape, allow sensory perception to yield to the cognitive scene.

Retain basic observational functions without triggering outer-layer analysis.

..."

Wind blew through the high windows, gently lifting the edge of the script.

Gavin carried out each step with focused care.

He was like someone rebuilding a house.

First, tear down the old walls.

Then, raise the new beams.

Finally, actually step inside this new house and live in it.

When Elias Thorne opened his eyes, his first reaction was to feel cold.

The cold wind was like a rusty knife, scraping dully across his face and the backs of his hands.

The sky was pitch-black, the dark clouds hanging oppressively low. A line of ghastly white light gleamed in the distance, illuminating the whole world like a sheet of old paper that might tear at any moment. The wind smelled of rust and wet stone. The ground was cold and hard against his palms, grinding his flesh until it went numb.

Elias was panting heavily.

Because of the pain.

He could no longer feel his legs.

Below the knees, they seemed to have been brutally smashed, the bones displaced and the flesh swollen. Every little movement forward seemed to draw out a piercing agony.

He remembered only that he had crawled into this castle.

A tall, gloomy Scottish stone castle that seemed to have grown straight out of the mountains, its outline blurred and heavy in the night.

He remembered crawling without stopping, afraid to stop and unable to stop, dragging himself forward inch by inch with his elbows and palms, leaving two long, wretched trails through the snow.

The people behind him had kept hunting him.

If they caught him, they would carry torches, drag him out, tie him to a stake, and let the flames slowly climb. He knew what that looked like. He had seen it. Far too many times.

He was a wizard who had been discovered.

In the Middle Ages, wizards were considered the source of evil and chaos. In this age rife with the Black Death and plague, people could not find the cause and could only blame everything on beings they did not understand. As though burning every wizard to death would free their families from the plague.

Elias remembered his shattered family.

His father.

His uncle.

His cousin.

And his mother's final face, contorted by the flames.

They were all dead. They had died before his eyes.

Not of hunger, not of disease, and not in some accident.

They had all died because of him, because of his ill-omened existence.

They had died for the "absurd" reason that they were related by blood to a "wizard" and might therefore be wizards themselves.

They had died because of this ill-timed gift within him, which had suddenly revealed itself.

This damned magic.

If there had been no magic—

If there had been no magic, everything should have been different.

He should have had a warm, loving home.

He should have had elders who were still alive, a house that did not leak, a mother who would warm his hand warmer for him in winter. In spring, he should have become engaged to the girl at the village entrance whom he had grown up with, then lived out his days in peace.

She had been willing.

She had clearly been willing.

But afterward, the way she looked at him had changed, as though he were something filthy that should not be alive. She backed away, covered her mouth, and cried as she called him a monster. She said he had killed everyone, that if he had not been able to use magic, they could have lost nothing at all.

His friend had fled too.

Or rather, it had not been flight.

It had been betrayal.

His friend had handed over his name, his hiding place, and everything he had not yet managed to burn to those people carrying crosses and chains.

He remembered the sounds when they broke in.

Remembered the instant the wooden door was smashed open.

Remembered the sound of the bones in his legs being broken as he was dragged along the ground.

Remembered rain, fire, screams, prayers, and those faces.

All mixed together.

Like a nightmare he could never wake from.

Though he had finally escaped with every last ounce of strength, he had lost his home and family forever, along with all hope and motivation to live.

"If only there were no magic..."

He heard himself whisper into the cold wind.

His voice was so hoarse it hardly sounded like his own.

"If only... there had never been..."

"Never been... this damned magic..."

As he pounded the ground with both hands and sobbed, he suddenly felt something stir inside him.

Something cold and oppressive slowly seeped from deep within his chest. Like black water, yet also like smoke, it flowed against his flesh, bearing no resemblance to any normal wizard's magic he remembered.

He froze.

The rain was still falling.

But the sound of the wind around him seemed suddenly farther away.

That black substance was slowly escaping from his wrists, shoulders, and chest, carrying an instinctively unsettling, almost living sense of shadow. It seemed to have a consciousness of its own, beginning to drift and disperse in every direction.

It was more like—

Some part of him that, compressed to its utmost limit, was gradually splitting away from his body.

Elias instinctively raised his hand.

He wanted to look.

To see more clearly what that mass of black magic actually looked like.

And at the very instant his gaze truly fell upon that black magic in the form of an Obscurus—

The world suddenly began rushing backward, as though he had abruptly awakened from a dream.

He remembered. He was not Elias Thorne.

He was Gavin.

Gavin Gu, Gu Wen.

The wind was still the wind.

The tower was still the tower.

Beyond the high windows lay the gray-white glow of Hogwarts's morning snow. There was no blood on his hands, nor were his legs broken. There was only the cold stone floor, the spread-out parchment, and his own fingers trembling slightly from his abrupt awakening.

His breathing was rapid.

His heart was racing too.

But Gavin's consciousness was clear.

"It worked." Gavin breathed a sigh of relief.

The anchor point had taken effect.

This was not his first attempt at hypnosis.

He had already spent more than ten days on the actual preliminary preparations.

Reading the books Professor Roscoe had sent had not been in vain.

In particular, Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought had directly provided the theoretical framework for his entire plan. The book mentioned a crucial concept—the "hidden observer."

Simply put, a person's subconscious did not stop working entirely just because their surface consciousness was hypnotized, redirected, or guided. It continued running in the background, retaining a certain degree of monitoring ability, like a system kernel that rarely spoke up but always remained on duty.

For the first time, this concept allowed Gavin to truly understand "consciousness" and "mental structure" as separate things.

And that was precisely why he had dared to design today's experiment.

If the background processes were still running, that meant—

He could plant anchor points in himself before the hypnosis began.

Once an anchor point was triggered, the hidden observer would forcibly take over and drag him out of the entire hypnotic narrative.

This was a safety line.

And to prevent anything from going wrong, he had not left himself just one.

He had set five categories of anchor points in all.

Visual Anchor Points, auditory Anchor Points, tactile Anchor Points, language Anchor Points, and the most crucial kind of all—"cognitive Anchor Points."

The most important one was this:

"The moment I see black Magic in the form of an Obscurus, I'll snap back to full awareness."

In other words, once he truly got close to his target, the sight of it would wake him at once.

So far, the plan had gone perfectly.

So perfectly that he should have been happy.

But the next second, Gavin realized there was another problem.

He raised a hand and looked at his palm.

There was nothing there.

But he could feel it.

That mass of black Magic was still there.

Still inside him.

It was no illusion. He could feel that it was real, something that existed within his body. It lurked there like a small foreign object that had just awakened, quiet, cold, and—

No longer under his control.

Gavin's breath caught.

He immediately reached for his Wand. The moment his fingers closed around it, he instinctively tried the simplest Spell: Lumos.

Nothing happened.

It couldn't have been a failed casting.

There was a more direct sense of severance: he could no longer feel his own Magic.

It was as though the Magic system that belonged to him had suddenly been split in two. The normal, clear, familiar part was still there, but it felt impossibly far away. The part closest to him had turned black, thick and oppressive, and it no longer recognized him.

As if it wasn't his Magic.

As if it belonged to someone else and merely happened to live inside his body.

"...This might be a problem," Gavin muttered.

He closed his eyes and tried to sense what was happening inside him.

He soon discovered that the problem was worse than simply being unable to cast Spells.

The mass of black Magic was constantly being consumed.

And at the same time, it was growing.

The feeling he'd had before—that his Magic was full and had stopped growing—had vanished completely. New Magic was still being generated, but instead of quietly returning to his normal system, it flowed straight into that black mass, feeding it.

The black Magic was slowly consumed, then continuously replenished.

A cycle.

Self-sustaining.

Like a black hole that had been switched on: small and quiet, but supplied by its own system and growing all the time.

Gavin opened his eyes. His face had gone pale.

Because that meant—

He had successfully become an Obscurus.

At least, the mechanism had worked.

The question was, how did he change back?

Only then did he understand why Cordelia had said, "They all say I won't live to see my next birthday."

Once this thing took shape, the danger wasn't whether it would suddenly erupt.

It was that, from then on, it never stopped feeding on its host.

Devouring the host's life.

Gavin soon felt tired.

Not the ordinary fatigue that came from staying up late or thinking too hard, but a weakness, as if someone were slowly drawing something from the deepest part of his body.

Vitality.

This was what it felt like to have his vitality drained.

"...Okay." Gavin stood where he was and let out a soft breath. "Great."

Wind poured through the high windows, making the Parchment in his hand rustle faintly. The tower was still empty, and most of Hogwarts had yet to wake. In the distance, the sky brightened little by little, making the snow look even colder.

Gavin stood in the middle of the tower, holding a Wand that was temporarily useless. He looked at the result he had finally managed to create, but the first thing that came to mind wasn't fear.

It was another thought, one that felt strangely out of place:

So this is how Cordelia lives every day.