If you want to move the plot forward, don't be too gentle

At that moment, Gavin was buried in a pile of books in the library.

Lately, he had started researching intensively again.

His focus was clear, too:

"How to influence someone else's consciousness."

Not their memories.

The Wizarding World had a well-developed system for that. From extracting memories to modifying them, along with various fringe spells and less reputable methods, most of it was hardly respectable, but at least there were leads to follow.

The problem was that this wasn't what Gavin needed now.

What he needed was—

"To influence consciousness itself."

To affect the little figure representing consciousness within someone else's mental space.

But the Wizarding World's books never mentioned any of this.

You could find a mountain of material on memories:

How to read them, extract them, hide them, and alter them.

But the moment the question moved toward "consciousness itself" or "the structure of self-perception," the available information dwindled to practically nothing.

"Why can wizards only manipulate memories?" Gavin murmured. "Doesn't anyone care about consciousness?"

Naturally, the books didn't answer.

He had even seriously considered whether he should look into something more obscure and dangerous.

Such as—the Imperius Curse.

That thing clearly had something to do with "manipulating consciousness."

At least on the surface, it came very close.

The problem was that he didn't really dare ask Dumbledore.

First, it was one of the Unforgivable Curses.

Second, he had no way to explain how he knew about the Imperius Curse. There was nothing on the Unforgivable Curses at Hogwarts outside the Restricted Section.

Third, even if he could explain it, he wasn't planning to pursue dark magic right now. The Imperius Curse could cause irreversible harm.

This wasn't a matter of principle, either.

It was mainly a practical concern.

He already owed three thousand five hundred and eighty Galleons, while also being supervised by Pipi, serving detention with McGonagall, and receiving Dumbledore's special attention. Taking the initiative to investigate the Unforgivable Curses now would be practically the same as writing "Please immediately raise your suspicion level of me" across his face.

So for now, white magic is my only option, Gavin thought.

There was nothing he could do about it.

And so, as he slid a copy of Mental Magic and the Boundaries of Memory back onto the shelf, another thought slipped naturally into his mind for the first time.

If I compare mental space to a computer system, does some kind of "superuser access" exist in the Wizarding World?

The moment the thought occurred to him, he chuckled.

Superuser access.

Something that could bypass the usual rules and directly rewrite restrictions that shouldn't have been alterable.

The analogy was far too Muggle, making him wonder whether he had been writing too many papers for fun lately.

"You ask!" "No! You ask if you want to!"

Before he could follow that line of thought any further, he noticed that the protagonist trio had come up beside him at some point.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were shoving one another around beside him, talking about something.

Only when he looked at them did they quickly drop their hands. Ron gave Harry one last shove, pushing him to the front.

"Um... Gu."

"What's wrong, Harry?" Gavin looked at the fidgeting Harry, unsure what he wanted.

"We wanted to ask you." Harry finally made up his mind to speak. "Do you know... Nicolas Flamel?"

"Nicolas Flamel?"

Gavin repeated the name, only then remembering that this year's main plot revolved around the Philosopher's Stone.

And the moment he thought of that name, another term sprang into his mind almost immediately:

"The Philosopher's Stone."

In other words, what Hogwarts currently called the Philosopher's Stone.

Gavin looked up at the pale winter light beyond the library's tall windows, and a whole collection of information about the Philosopher's Stone instantly fell into place in his mind.

The Philosopher's Stone's two most famous uses:

First, turning stone into gold.

Second, producing the Elixir of Life.

Those two properties alone already sounded a great deal like "superuser access."

Among the five principal exceptions to Transfiguration, pure gold couldn't be created.

But the Philosopher's Stone could do it.

Immortality, that eternal pursuit, theoretically didn't exist either.

But the Philosopher's Stone really could produce an elixir that prolonged life. Whether it prevented aging was another matter.

What did that mean?

It meant that something really did exist in the Wizarding World that could cross the boundaries of ordinary magic.

And what he lacked most right now was precisely that ability to cross boundaries.

But a problem quickly followed.

If events followed the original story's timeline, Quirrell wouldn't actually try to steal the Philosopher's Stone until June, after the exams.

By then, Cordelia would have only one month left.

There wasn't enough time.

Not nearly enough.

Even after getting the Philosopher's Stone, he would still need time to study it. One month was far too tight.

But if he went to Dumbledore right now and said—

"Professor, could you lend me the Philosopher's Stone to play around with?"

Just running it through his head made Gavin feel that the proposal probably wouldn't survive five seconds.

Would Dumbledore give it to him?

In Dumbledore's eyes, which carried more weight: Cordelia's life, or the plot arrangement of "giving Harry some planned training while making Voldemort suffer a setback"?

Gavin really wasn't sure of the answer.

And there was another, more practical problem—

Quirrell could act at any time.

No, more precisely, Voldemort could act at any time.

So I can't wait any longer, Gavin decided.

Either he got the Philosopher's Stone early.

Or—

He gave the plot a hard shove forward.

At that thought, another bold idea suddenly popped into his head.

Since Quirrell wasn't ready to make his move yet, was it possible to... give him a gentle push?

He had already provoked him once, after all.

"Gu? Do you know?"

Harry waited a while, then asked again when Gavin didn't respond.

He noticed that Gavin's reaction to the question was strange. He had suddenly frozen, then his expression had started shifting, his eyebrows rising one moment and drawing together the next. Harry had no idea what he was thinking.

"Oh, sorry."

Gavin apologized as though he had only just noticed that there were still people standing in front of him. Then, rather than looking at Harry, he turned to Hermione first.

"You've been looking up modern wizards lately, right?"

Hermione blinked.

"How did you know?"

Gavin looked at her, shrugged, and said teasingly:

"You can look at my borrowing records, so I can look at yours, can't I?"

Hermione flushed slightly.

Harry hurriedly steered the conversation back.

"So?"

"So have you considered," Gavin said, "that this person might not be from the modern era?"

Ron rejected the idea almost instantly.

"Impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because..." Ron faltered.

Hermione picked up where he left off. "Because if someone is very famous, there shouldn't be absolutely no trace of him in records from the modern era. Especially when he's a friend of Professor Dumbledore's."

"Then do you know how old Professor Dumbledore is?" Gavin asked.

Harry and Ron both froze.

Hermione, meanwhile, slowly began to catch on.

"He's over a hundred," she said.

"Right." Gavin nodded. "And in the Wizarding World, that isn't especially unusual."

Harry frowned.

"You mean—"

"What if Flamel is a medieval figure?" Gavin said.

This time, all three fell silent.

The sheer span of time stunned them.

"Medieval?" Ron said incredulously. "That would make him five hundred years old by now. How is that possible?"

"Why isn't it possible?" Gavin asked. "When you looked him up, you assumed he was a 'modern wizard.' If your premise was wrong, of course you wouldn't find him."

Hermione was beginning to waver. That possibility had never occurred to her.

"But if he really is a medieval figure—" Harry said quietly, "how could he still be alive?"

Gavin looked at him without directly telling them about the Philosopher's Stone.

Something they discovered themselves would always be more convincing than something he told them.

So he said quite naturally:

"Isn't that what you should be looking into next?"

The three youngsters exchanged glances.

All of them still wore expressions that said, "This sounds ridiculous, but it isn't entirely unreasonable."

"All right, I've got something to do. I'll be off."

As he spoke, Gavin began packing up to leave. He needed to find somewhere quiet and think over the idea he had just had.

Meanwhile, the trio went over to the shelves holding entries on the medieval period and began searching, still half skeptical.

Before long, Hermione was the first to let out a very quiet but unmistakably excited gasp.

"Found him!"

Harry and Ron immediately crowded closer.

"What?"

"Nicolas Flamel!" Hermione whispered, pointing at the page. "Born in the fourteenth century, a famous alchemist—"

Ron's eyes widened.

"He really is from the Middle Ages?"

Hermione kept scanning the page, barely able to keep her voice down.

"And he—"

She paused and looked up at Harry and Ron, the shock on her face now unmistakable.

"—owns the Philosopher's Stone."

Harry and Ron both sucked in a breath.

At that moment, the plot began getting back on track ahead of schedule, though for now, it was only a little ahead.