"Wow, how did I never notice how interesting the world of Harry Potter was? Looks like I was too young when I first watched it. The novels and movies might be too childish for high schoolers, but they're just right for me..."
His eyes stayed glued to his phone screen, and exclamations escaped his lips from time to time.
Then, suddenly, an enormous suction force came from his phone, pulling his entire body into the air.
He only had time to scream before everything went black.
In an instant, the world turned upside down.
One second, Mo Fei had been watching Harry Potter commentary videos late at night in his rented room.
The next, London's bone-chilling rain and mist slammed into his nostrils, and the cold wind lashed so fiercely that he could barely open his eyes.
Cold, dilapidated, and steeped in decay.
A profound exhaustion instantly locked every part of his body in place. His lower back ached and stiffened, his skin was loose and dry, and his eyes brimmed with an unshakable weariness-his body had changed completely. It was no longer the body of a twenty-year-old.
He was not a boy, nor was he in the bloom of youth.
He had the middle-aged body of a forty-two-year-old.
The bizarre, inexplicable sensation left Mo Fei mentally disoriented for a moment.
His previous body had also grown sore and exhausted after consecutive nights of overtime, with aches everywhere from sitting too long and creaking noises whenever he moved. But a young body was fundamentally different from a middle-aged one. The first and most obvious difference was the decline in vitality.
Fortunately, before he could react, unfamiliar memories abruptly flooded in, battering his mind:
London's East End, a rundown orphanage, an overdrawn account, funding cut off, extortion by local thugs, competition from other orphanages-a complete mess.
He had transmigrated.
He had transmigrated into the magical world of Harry Potter.
Unfortunately, he had neither regained his youth nor gained magic. There had been no revelation of talent, no powerful mentor taking him under their wing, not even the slightest trace of protagonist treatment.
He was now nothing more than the director of a Muggle orphanage, without money, influence, family, or friends.
Under normal circumstances, he would never have any connection to a magical school in his entire life. He should not even learn that magic existed. He was a mortal at the very bottom of this supernatural world.
That thought alone swept away every last bit of joy he had felt upon arriving in this magical world.
The wind wailed through the rainy night, blowing against the old wooden door until it creaked eerily, like a ghost whispering.
Mo Fei's heart sank, and the chill pierced his bones.
His already rather frail body looked even thinner in the cold wind.
Before he could digest this absurd reality, a faint but distinct infant's cry suddenly pierced the darkness outside the door.
Heavy rain and a crying baby-even in a horror novel, those would make for a frightening scene.
Perhaps the moment he opened the door, a monster would open its bloody maw and bite his head clean off;
Or a hideous-looking child might be standing outside, asking him questions that had no answers, and then... someone would discover his dismembered body the next day...
Or perhaps...
All sorts of scenes from horror films and shows he had watched in the streaming era now flashed vividly through his mind like a revolving lantern.
Perhaps ignoring every sound outside the door would be the safest choice right now!
But the crying was faint, on the verge of death, yet carried an eerie stillness utterly at odds with the torrential rainy night.
The rain seemed about to drown out the crying completely, but Mo Fei kept questioning himself.
In an instant, Mo Fei summoned every scrap of his courage and shoved the door open. That action alone took all the courage he could muster!
"Damn it, if I die, I die! I've never heard of those horror monsters being in Harry Potter. It's a fairy tale, okay!"
Those words of self-comfort did ease the chill in his heart a little.
Thankfully, none of the monsters he had imagined stood outside.
He jerked his head down and looked at the ground.
A faded bundle of thin swaddling cloth lay quietly on the cold, waterlogged doormat.
Inside the swaddling, a newborn lay curled up, so frail that he seemed liable to vanish into the wind and rain at any moment.
He had thick black hair and a deathly pale face. Though he was still crying in his swaddling, deep in those eyes there seemed to lurk a trace of cold indifference and deathly stillness that did not belong to an infant, so chilling that it made one's heart tremble, like a snake.
Mo Fei shivered, unsure whether it was from the cold or the sudden cowardice rising in his heart.
But fate clearly had not favored him. He saw the most fatal thing of all-a folded, yellowed note pinned to the infant's chest.
The handwriting was scrawled, but every word was lethal.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Boom!!!
Thunder exploded, and his mind went blank!
Mo Fei's breathing stopped short, his blood all but freezing!
Tom Riddle!
To a veteran Harry Potter fan, this name was no mystery, but a fact laid bare before his eyes.
This little infant who looked on the verge of breathing his last should be Harry Potter's great villain-Voldemort!
The ultimate Dark Lord who would one day sweep across Britain, slaughter wizards and Muggles, unleash a devastating wizarding war, and leave the entire Wizarding World living in fear!
And now, he had been abandoned on Mo Fei's doorstep.
But that wasn't right. If I remember correctly, this Dark Lord should have been abandoned at Wool's Orphanage, and the matron and director there were part of the reason he sank into darkness.
He hurriedly searched his memories. No matter how he looked at it, this place was not Wool's Orphanage... Could this be the so-called choice of Steins;Gate?
Mo Fei gave a bitter smile as he tried to comfort himself.
At this point, he faced a choice. For some unknown reason, the future Dark Lord had now been abandoned before him.
And he was the only person who could take him in, raise him, and stay with him as he grew up. Then, once the boy had fully integrated into the magical world, he would have to face a purge of Muggles.
Of course, there was another, simpler choice: leave him to die outside the door, then dig a hole in the garden and bury him after daybreak. In the London of this era, that could count as something quite normal.
Looked at that way, he seemed to have a very easy decision to make.
Yet the hand with which he meant to shut the door remained against it, as though frozen.
Other people transmigrated into the HP world, got cheats, enrolled in school, received guidance from renowned teachers, and possessed heaven-defying talent.
He transmigrated into the HP world with a useless middle-aged man's starting build, watched over a decrepit orphanage, and picked up a swaddled Dark Lord right at the start!
How was this merely hell difficulty?
This was a fate of certain death from the outset!
One wrong step, and a dozen or so years later, the darkness he had raised with his own hands would turn back and devour him first!
That terrifying future seemed to keep reminding him of the future he could plainly see.
The infant's cries lingered in his ears. Beneath that frail sound lay the ultimate choice that would decide his fate.
Cold sweat instantly soaked his clothes. The cold, sticky sensation chilled his entire body, and utter despair clenched his heart in a death grip.
Just as he was caught in this agonizing conflict, a cool, steady mechanical voice suddenly sounded deep within his mind!
[Stable host consciousness detected. Belief Sublimation System successfully bound.] [Gain others' trust, recognition, and gratitude to accumulate Belief Points.] [Spend Belief Points to sublimate any skill.]
Mo Fei's pupils contracted sharply, and the breath trapped in his chest finally began to ease out!
Amid the boundless darkness, a dazzling path to survival suddenly lit up.
Belief Points? Trust?
Wouldn't everything be fine as long as I became stronger than Voldemort? Then I wouldn't have to worry about dying when Voldemort turned on me in the future.
Right now, he's still a child, an infant in swaddling at that. Casually watching him die would really go against the education I received.
That would do. I just had to become stronger.
Besides, children in an orphanage were the most starved for love, the purest, and the most willing to give their hearts!
How was this a dead end? This was the perfect soil for using a cheat!
Mo Fei raised his eyes, his gaze passing through the wind and rain to settle once more on the fate-bound infant in the swaddling.
The night wind howled, and the cold remained, but the lifelessness in his eyes faded completely, replaced by blazing sparks.
If I couldn't escape, then I wouldn't run.
If I had to accept a hellish start, then I would defy the heavens and change fate!
If fate intended to raise a Dark Lord, then I would teach him to become The Chosen One with my own hands.
A gloomy orphanage didn't have to breed only darkness.
Tom Riddle's fate would be rewritten by me, starting today.
Mo Fei bent down and reached out, taking firm hold of that tiny life that bore the world's ultimate darkness.
Warm against his palms and fragile in body, yet as heavy as a mountain.
"From today onward, I'm your director."