Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world

Chapter 179 A Powerful Leader
A very interesting phenomenon.

In any social model, people tend to seek a strong leader. This is not only due to the animalistic instinct to admire strength, but also to the influence of history and reality.

Even from the most basic point of view, a strong leader can more effectively unite forces and concentrate resources internally, and can also protect the interests of the entire group externally.

So, was Vaughn a strong leader?

Clint, Melody, and Zach reviewed his rise to power and the process of creating WAC, and even from the most critical perspective, it cannot be said that he was not!
Before him, who cared what werewolves were?
A marginalized group that is not considered human.

A plague that people should avoid at all costs!

It was Vaughn Weasley who brought these "wild men" together from scratch, creating a force that the English wizarding world could no longer ignore, and even tearing apart the authority of the Ministry of Magic.

In particular, the international trade system for wolfsbane medicine that he proposed at the WAC founding conference half a month ago has spread the influence of WAC to the international stage with just this one agreement.

Recalling the various stories about Vaughn Weasley that they had read in the newspapers over the past few days, Clint and his two companions had very mixed feelings.

"Captain..." Melody's voice was a little hoarse, "Your Greenville family has decided to support him?"

Under the watchful eyes of the three, Oliver nodded solemnly: "We fully support it, and not just Greenwell, Travers as well!"

"Those fence-sitters?"

"Yes, Phil Travers joined WAC a long time ago as a frontline clerk."

The three looked surprised.

Oliver understood their astonishment; in fact, when he first heard about it, he also thought the Travers family had gone mad.

He heard about this at a small banquet hosted by the Travers family, a banquet limited to very close "partners," and the event was about Phil Travers being established as the next head of the family!
This is also one of the reasons why his uncle, George Greenwell, felt so eager. Clearly, Travers had a very high opinion of Vaughn Weasley!
Looking at the three of them, Oliver said, "I don't know what your families are thinking. I'm saying this from the perspective of a friend and partner, hoping you will carefully consider whether your family's attitude is correct, or what your own opinions are."

Clint opened his mouth, as if to speak.

Oliver waved his hand, interrupting him: "No need to answer me right away, think it over. Of course, I'm saying this so you understand that I don't want anything to go wrong in assisting Mr. Weasley this time. We all have to work together, understand?"

After several years of working together, Oliver had gained a certain level of authority within the team.

Given that his words were genuinely for the good of the three of them, Clint and the others, though still wavering between their family's stance and Vaughn's, didn't mind supporting their captain.

"We understand, Captain."

Seeing that the three agreed, Oliver nodded and then looked towards Boston under the night sky.

"Clint, send a message to the Ghost Ship and tell them to hide. We'll deliver the dragon to Mr. Weasley first, and while we're at it, check if there are any blind spots or loopholes in the Dreamcatcher."

The four of them don't need to worry about being discovered by DreamNet, because they all have legitimate identities as Mr. Vaughn Weasley's dragon suppliers.

"Okay, Captain."

Before long, a subtle magical fluctuation traveled from the surface of the sea to the seabed in the deep waters behind.

In the dark depths of the sea, a massive shadow slowly sinks into the seabed.

At the same time, a four-person team also rushed into the city on broomsticks.

The countless "ribbons" were slightly disturbed by their arrival, and some ribbons drifted over and brushed past their bodies.

But even these ubiquitous "ribbons" failed to notice that deep within Oliver's mind, a misty white humanoid figure drifted and wandered among countless fragmented images.

Those fragments are random thoughts, "impulses," and sparks of thought that ignite in an instant.

They are byproducts of conscious activity, which should have been fleeting and then discarded into the dumping ground of the collective unconscious.

However, for a master of memory magic, even the most useless things have a usable value.

A misty white humanoid figure passed through a fragment, leaving a hazy shadow on it, before moving on to the next one.

It is "polluting" them in a rather clumsy way that doesn't attract the attention of the conscious mind and the subconscious—those distracting thoughts and impulses are indeed mostly garbage.

But in the vast and chaotic system of the mind, even the smallest probability can always exist, allowing a fleeting thought or impulse to influence the choices of the conscious mind...

……

When Oliver and his team flew into Boston.

In the suitcase space, Vaughn, who was writing something in front of a blackboard, suddenly paused. He turned around and looked at the entrance behind him, near the big oak tree.

"Woo?"

Beside him, the tree bee that had been lying obediently raised its head slightly and looked towards the entrance just like him.

But there was nothing there, and it looked at its owner in confusion.

"It's nothing, it's just that the new experimental materials are arriving soon," Vaughn said, patting the tree bee's head.

Sensing its owner's happy mood, the tree wasp wagged its huge tail and, like a puppy, stuck out its tongue and carefully licked its owner's hand.

Vaughn played with it for a while.

He is more tolerant of pets than people.

Because animals have very simple minds, while humans are far more complex.

Deep down, he didn't like dealing with interpersonal relationships, and he disliked politics even more. If possible, he would rather devote all his energy to magic.

But in this world, there are always too many things that must be done, as long as you still have ideals and unfulfilled goals!
The newly formed WAC, other ideas based on WAC, and the ultimate, distant vision of unifying the magical world.

To achieve this, he must strengthen his power, not only in terms of magical strength, but also in terms of influence and manpower.

So when Dumbledore decided to hand over the leadership of the Wizarding Family Alliance to him, even though he was not interested in Dumbledore's power and even though he knew how many drawbacks there were in taking over a mature power, he still acquiesced to this outcome.

Within the wizarding family alliance, can those who are hostile to him and reject him truly represent the opinions of everyone in their respective families?

In Vaughn's view, this is questionable.

This is another interesting phenomenon: in all social models, when it comes to choosing a leader, the lower the social class, the more they want a strong and powerful leader, but the closer they are to the upper class, the weaker this tendency becomes.

Up to the next level below the leader, their choices become completely opposite to those of the lower levels.

A family is also a small social model, and classes exist. Where there are classes, there is exploitation. It is impossible for a family to consist entirely of exploiters.

As long as exploitation exists, so do contradictions!

So during their last meeting, he took advantage of the gap in releasing the Fog Spell to implant a persona into Oliver.

Because it was hastily manufactured without extracting the target's memories and emotions as raw materials, its function is very simple; it can only amplify some of Oliver's distracting thoughts and emotions.

His goal was simple—to use Oliver as a springboard to gradually incite conflict between the lower classes and the upper classes, and to sow the seeds of conflict among those families!
Although George Greenwell was a supporter of him, there was no way he could be absolutely loyal, and he didn't want those remnants of the old era, those family-centric cliques, to board his ship sailing toward the future!

"I hope Oliver's visit will bring me some good news..."

Vaughn was lost in thought for a moment, then dismissed those thoughts.

Refocus your attention on the blackboard in front of you.

Some time passed, and at a certain moment, the suitcase door opened, and Matthew tiptoed down.

Lupin is on a mission, spending his days wearing a mask of pain and mingling with those weird Muggles, so the responsibility of serving Vaughn falls to Matthew.

Of the entire delegation, only the two of them were capable of serving others.

The other committee members and executive committee members should be thankful if they don't make too many fools of themselves!
“Sir, Mr. Oliver Greenwell has arrived.” Matthew walked up to Vaughn and said softly, “They brought a new batch of fire dragons, along with people from the Magical Congress, who seem to have met by chance along the way.”

Vaughn, who was deep in thought while facing the blackboard, smiled upon hearing this.

Nobody believes in coincidences.

It's highly likely that the Magical Congress discovered Oliver and the others through the Dreamcatcher and deliberately followed them to make their presence known.

“Proceed according to normal procedures.” Holding the chalk, Vaughn wrote on the blackboard as he instructed, “Our relationship with Oliver is a simple dragon trade, nothing else is involved.”

"Yes."

Matthew agreed.

Before leaving, he glanced curiously at what Vaughn had written on the blackboard.

Those complex symbols would be completely incomprehensible to a wizard who grew up in the magical world.

Coincidentally, Matthew was born a Muggle, and if he hadn't awakened his magical powers, he would have almost been accepted into Eton College when he was a child.

He could tell that what Vaughn had written on the blackboard was Muggle advanced mathematical notation.

"Wasn't Mr. Weasley studying his Disintegration Charm? Why is he suddenly getting into math?"

Feeling unable to comprehend the big shot's way of thinking, Matthew shook his head in confusion and left.

In fact, his understanding was correct.

What Vaughn wrote on the blackboard were indeed mathematical symbols!

Although he has been waiting for the [Spell Development Module] reward from side quest 3, it doesn't mean that his future spell development plans will rely entirely on the module and abandon his own efforts.

That's not the attitude you should have when studying magic!

The reason why Vaughn cannot condense the entire Disintegration Ritual into a Disintegration Spell at present is because it involves two important parts of the spell's composition.

Spells, wand gestures (or, diagrams drawn with a wand).

Excluding silent casting and wandless casting techniques that come with a certain level of proficiency in spellcasting, a true spell must include both of these elements.

The spell represents the effect the magic wants to achieve, and the wand gesture represents the physical manifestation of that effect!
As for how to achieve these two things... because magic itself is a relatively idealistic thing, the descriptions of the process in some wizarding works on spell development in the past were quite abstract and stream-of-consciousness.

The entire text is filled with baffling phrases such as "strong will" and "emotion, still emotion."

Therefore, in the history of magic, there are often records like this: on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year, on a certain occasion, a wizard (witch) unconsciously used a certain spell, and thus the spell was passed down.

Very mysterious!

To be honest, Vaughn finds this so-called "magic spell" development method, which is like a lottery, utterly devoid of any aesthetic appeal!

In his view, everything that exists objectively should be governed by laws, just as the macroscopic moon revolves around the earth and the earth revolves around the sun, and microscopic particles also complete a 360° or 720° spin.

Unable to find the answer in the magical world, it was only natural that his gaze turned to Muggle doctrine.

Then, he actually thought of a subject similar to magic—mathematics!
Yes, unlike natural sciences such as physics, biology, and chemistry, which describe objective phenomena, mathematics, although also a science, is an abstract, formal science.

Simply put, elementary mathematics does describe the world as we can see it, but advanced mathematics, especially after introducing dimensions, describes a world that is difficult for normal people to understand.

"...Mathematics is a discipline of imagination, but it is different from magic. It requires logic, defining concepts, and proving theorems. Moreover, this process is a layered accumulation, like building a framework, with a clear path. Take geometry as an example: the set of objects that can be added and multiplied by scalars is a vector space. Based on this, the inner product is defined as the inner product space, and the complete inner product space is the Hilbert space... Essentially, it is the accumulation of specific elements and specific objects. However, this process is not a complete letting your imagination run wild, but rather a necessity shaped by rigorous axioms and logic!"

"If magic is the wizard's concrete expression of reality and higher dimensions, then mathematics is the Muggle's abstract expression of reality and higher dimensions... Compared to wizards, Muggles simply lack the power to transform the abstract into the real."

.........

"...The Greenwell family's business is really doing well. Even in the current situation, we can still see you actively involved."

"You flatter me. We're just barely making ends meet. As you said, the situation is not good right now, and a big client like Mr. Weasley deserves our utmost effort."

As Matthew left the suitcase area and stepped out of the bedroom, he heard a conversation with a strange undertone coming from the living room of the suite outside.

He opened the door and walked in.

The small reception room felt somewhat crowded because six people were crammed in.

On the left are Oliver Greenwell and his three teammates, including a burly wizard named Zach Baird carrying a bag.

Opposite the four were two wizards dressed in suits, looking much like Muggles.

These two were the Aurors from the Magical Congress who supposedly "coincidentally" encountered Oliver and the others.

Hearing the door open, everyone looked over. Matthew said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley is contemplating some academic matters and cannot receive you personally. Mr. Greenwell, we'll have to trouble you and your team to complete the transaction inside the briefcase." Oliver Greenwell nodded, adopting a friendly and amicable demeanor: "No problem, serving our clients is our principle. Shall we go now?"

"Yes."

He stood up, about to leave with his men and Matthew, when he saw the two Aurors from the Magic Council opposite him also stand up and ask Matthew, "Excuse me, may we observe the transaction from the sidelines?"

Matthew didn't speak, he just stared at them with his lifeless, dull eyes.

The two Aurors felt a little uneasy under his gaze, but they did not back down: "You don't have to cooperate, but I think you don't want another full-scale investigation like last time, with Security Minister Michael Graves making a big fuss, right?"

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Oliver, like a true small businessman, huddled in a corner with his team, glancing at Matthew and then at the Congressional Aurors, looking bewildered and afraid they would start fighting.

Of course, everyone knows that a fight is unlikely to break out.

In every sense.

After staring blankly at the two Congressional Aurors for a moment, Matthew snorted coldly, "Follow me!"

Upon hearing this, Oliver quickly led his men to follow him.

The two Congress Aurors also breathed a slight sigh of relief.

If possible, they wouldn't want to be so tough, but the current climate in Congress is strange. The meeting has been going on for several days, and so far, no clear stance has been reached on the WAC.

Without any orders from above, how to deal with the WAC people became a difficult issue for these top-tier Aurors.

Being too harsh is obviously inappropriate, after all, the WAC is a legitimate foreign mission with the status of envoys from England.

But being too lenient wouldn't work either. Their superior, Minister of Magical Safety Michael Graves, ordered them to closely monitor the WAC, and to monitor and record any of its external activities.

This is really difficult...

With a sigh, the two Congressional Aurors followed Matthew into the bedroom and then into the open suitcase—they were there when Graves came to register last time, and they didn't seem surprised by the existence of the suitcase space.

They didn't even exchange a single word as they went from the bedroom into the suitcase space.

After all, their purpose was merely to carry out orders and monitor the contact between outsiders and WAC, not to provoke them.

Moreover, the owner of this space is a rather powerful wizard.

The space had probably just been used for an experiment not long ago; the bright moon hung overhead, and the immense aftershocks of magic heavily weighed on their senses.

The two Congressional Aurors exchanged a glance, then looked toward the distant, empty grassland, at the source of the magical aftershocks, where Vaughn Weasley stood in front of a blackboard, writing something.

"...Should we go over there?"

"Forget it, it's not worth it."

"Yeah, yeah, even if we get beaten to death, nobody will care about us..."

The sight of his companion's relieved expression left the Congressional Auror, who had been in charge of the exchange, speechless. He ignored him and continued looking towards the grasslands.

"Hey, what is he writing? Can you understand it?"

"can't read!"

The same conversation also took place in Oliver's squad.

Watching Vaughn furiously scribbling away, Melody quietly nudged Clint's shin: "What's he doing?"

“…I don’t know.” Clint shook his head blankly. “Anyway, it’s not an alchemical symbol.”

"No? Is there anything in the magical world that needs this kind of scribbled nonsense?"

“No…” Clint said.

Of all the disciplines of magic, apart from prophecy which requires runes and alchemy which requires alchemical symbols, there are almost no other symbol systems.

As they got closer to Vaughn, Clint hesitated for a moment and whispered to Melody, "Looks like Muggle math symbols."

He had already lowered his voice considerably.

But Matthew, who was leading the way, seemed to have heard him and looked back at him.

"..."

Clint gave an awkward yet polite smile.

Fortunately, Matthew didn't say anything. He led the group to Vaughn's vicinity, signaled them to stop, and then walked over to Vaughn Weasley and whispered a few words to him.

Vaughn, who was writing on the blackboard, seemed not to have noticed what he was saying at all.

Only after writing another string of incomprehensible words did Melody and Clint vaguely hear a somewhat indistinct voice coming from the other side:

"...You take charge of the inspection...don't bother me..."

Behind Oliver, Clint, Melody, and Zach exchanged bewildered glances. Zach winked at the two of them and mouthed, "Is our future leader a nerd? Or a Muggle-obsessed nerd?"

Melody looked somewhat disappointed and shrugged.

Clint, on the other hand, didn't have as many thoughts as they did. He came from an alchemical family and had been used to burying himself in old books and symbols with his elders since childhood.

He was simply puzzled as to why Vaughn, a wizard, would study Muggle mathematics.
That's definitely a bit of a frivolous thing to do... although he understands to some extent!
It's common for people with a research mindset to become engrossed in things that interest them.

"But it shouldn't be now..."

Noticing Melody's disappointment and Zach's teasing expression, Clint sighed inwardly.

When Oliver previously stated that he would fully support Vaughn Weasley, Clint was already leaning towards his position.

Unlike Melody and Zach, who came from the Baird family, Clint's family, the McLean family, was not as wealthy.

Alchemy is a technology where it is difficult to clearly define costs and profits. On one hand, there are alchemical symbols, which alchemists need to obtain by personally traversing the ether. This means that if you want to create an alchemical item, the alchemist has to be involved in the entire process and can hardly do anything else, so the efficiency is not high.

On the other hand, the materials needed for an alchemical item are not determined by the alchemist, but by the "symbol". This often leads to the fact that after successfully obtaining the symbol in the ether according to the idea, it is only when returning to the reality of the experiment that it is found that to achieve the effect of the "symbol", it may be necessary to use very expensive and rare materials as a base. Expensive and rare means that the cost increases significantly, which means that it is difficult to sell!
Because of this uncertainty, alchemists are generally quite... strapped for cash!
Although Clint was one of the more successful members of the McLean family, he was not a direct descendant, and the family would not invest more in him. In his view, coming to North America and joining Oliver's team to manage the alliance business was the upper limit of his status in his life.

Within his family's social class, he was better off than the bottom, but compared to the true rentier class, he was still in a position of exploitation.

How could a wizard in his early twenties be content with seeing the end of his life so early in his life?

Clint was, of course, unwilling to accept this.

He had no choice before, until Oliver said those words!
but……

Looking at Vaughn, who was still writing and drawing Muggle mathematical symbols on the blackboard not far away, Clint felt himself calmer.

He felt he needed to think about it some more.

A leader obsessed with Muggle knowledge may not be...

"what?"

Just then, Clint heard the captain in front of him let out a surprised gasp.

Melody and Zach, who were watching Vaughn's side, also opened their mouths wide, looking shocked.

what happened?
Clint pushed up his glasses, curiously turning his gaze back to Vaughn Weasley, and then his expression went completely off the rails.

He noticed that Vaughn Weasley had stopped writing on the blackboard at some point.

From the angle from which the others were positioned, they couldn't see what expression was on his face. They could only see that he had his head slightly raised, as if he were looking at his calculation results on the blackboard.

To Clint's shock, the hand that had been holding the chalk just moments before had vanished!

Do not!
It didn't disappear, but rather... it entered a different space!
A distorted sphere in the air, like a viscous, sunken gel, "swallowed" his arm.

That scene of distorted space is all too familiar to any adult wizard.

Apparition!

But they are completely different!
Since the Apparition spell was invented, it has always only allowed wizards to enter as a whole, and there has never been a successful example of it allowing only "one arm" to pass through.

Clint was quite certain that it wasn't a split, because at the point where the "disappeared" arm connected to Vaughn's shoulder, there was no exposed muscle or bone, nor any blood.

What baffled him even more was that Apparition should appear around a single point, generated in an instant. The wizard who used the spell was pulled into a "coil" by the high-speed movement of this "point," and then both disappeared in an instant.

Instead of what we see now—an invisible, swirling sphere that exists stably.

Just like...

It's like carving a passage through space...

……

Vaughn was already immersed in his own world.

Thoughts are boiling.

“I should have discovered this sooner… Mathematics has always been a discipline that attempts to describe matter, spacetime, and the universe. Numbers are sets, groups of quantities, and measuring tools. Geometry is a framework built on the basis of tools… They abandon the appearance of matter and reality as we see it, delve into its essence, and express it with abstract meanings such as functions.”

"Isn't magic the same? A spell condenses a physical phenomenon into just a few syllables, and the movement of a wand constructs its spatial coordinates. When the two are combined, a physical phenomenon created by magic is born..."

"So whether it's magic or mathematics, they are actually languages. Mathematics uses numbers and geometry, while magic uses spells and wands, both describing a language completely stripped of its physical form. The world under these languages ​​is left with only abstract theorems and definitions, which can also be called... rules!"

Perhaps what they are describing is not something that actually exists in reality, but under the rigorous logic of mathematics, as long as a solution can be found, then it has meaning.

The same applies to magic; as long as a spell can work, it is still meaningful.

Sparks of thought were flying, and Vaughn's inner world was in turmoil, but he had no time to pay attention to them. He didn't even notice when Matthew came in again.

Amidst the clash of ideas, Vaughn picked up a marker and wrote a series of formulas on the blackboard:
This is a static spherically symmetric solution to the Einstein equation. Simply put, it describes a "pipeline" connecting two spacetime regions, through which the distance between two spatial points can be shortened.

Does this sound familiar?
In Muggle society, it's called a wormhole, a celestial phenomenon that exists only in theory and imagination.

In the magical world, magic has already achieved its effect; the spell is called "Apparition"!
Vaughn wrote this formula not to force a conceptual unification between the two, because the scale described by Einstein's equations is based on the astronomical unit.

What he wanted to learn from was the thought process, or rather, the logic behind it.

"This formula describes a Lorentz wormhole. Mathematically, to maintain its existence, strict rules are set: first, Φ(r) must be finite; second, there must be a throat connecting two spacetimes, which means b(r) also needs to be finite..."

Vaughn continued calculating as he pondered.

What follows is still a rigorous definition.

In the concept of a Lorentz wormhole, its entrance is called the Schwarzschild throat, a physically very, very narrow passage that only allows one elementary particle to pass through.

To allow people to pass through this wormhole, its throat would obviously need to be "enlarged" (to avoid being torn apart by tidal forces).

By embedding the metric, the geometry of the wormhole is obtained, and then the energy-momentum tensor around the wormhole is calculated according to Einstein's field equations.

Vaughn gradually put down his pen.

What's described on the blackboard is the universe as seen through the eyes of a Muggle.

In their understanding, magic does not exist!

Therefore, their method of calculating wormholes does not introduce unknowns.

"Apparition is certainly not a Lorentz wormhole, but they are achieved in a very similar way. They both start from a singularity, where a powerful angular velocity deforms matter, stretching it into a strange ring, and then enters a spacetime curvature that has been 'smoothed out' (similar to how the mountains suddenly disappear and become flat, thus shortening the distance). They rely on gliding on a smooth spacetime membrane to reach a point in space on the other side."

Their most similar characteristic is that they glide on the spacetime membrane!
This means that even though they differ in scale, they use similar principles.

The biggest difference between the two is that the Lorentz wormhole can exist stably as long as it has energy. Therefore, by extension—

Could the instantaneous opening and closing of phantom teleportation evolve into a kind of 'channel'?

(End of this chapter)