Chapter 177 Time and Prophecy

The regular office of the Department of Mysteries is behind a separate black door.

In addition, the compartment in the Time Hall where the Death Eaters held Mrs. Selwyn hostage last time is also an independent office.

Now this office is assigned to Sherlock.

Mrs. Selwyn is right. The Department of Mysteries has few employees and does not have much contact with other departments. Even the Minister of Magic generally has no intersection with it. It is the department with the lowest presence in the entire Ministry of Magic and the most mysterious one.

From the office alone, Sherlock's single office is very large, and it is divided into various areas. In addition, the Ministry of Magic provides three meals a day, so it is completely fine to live in this place all the time.

After packing up some of his things, Sherlock went to the Time Hall outside the office to check the clocks on it.

The entire Department of Mysteries is very large, and there are many places that even internal personnel cannot enter.

Mrs. Selwyn did not specifically remind him which rooms he could not enter, but just said that the doors of confidential rooms were closed by special magic, and any room that could not be opened at will could not be entered.

And in this time hall, there are many doors leading to other rooms.

Sherlock stared at the most conspicuous hummingbird ornament for a long time.

The hummingbird hatched from an egg to a bird, and then from a bird to an egg, just like a biological hourglass, but it also specifically represents two ways of time, forward and backward.

The advancement of time is easy to understand. Every minute and every second that passes now represents the consumption and advancement of time, but backward is not a natural phenomenon.

In a corner of the time hall, a glass cabinet contains many golden pocket watches.

These are the highest level of time research in the magic world now-time converters.

The existing time converters are actually alchemical props handed down from ancient times. The production method has long been lost, and some of the important components have no materials.

Fortunately, these converters are not consumables and can be reused.

But the time converter seems to have incredible effects, but in fact its role is quite useless.

The time that can be reversed can only reach five hours at most. Turning the pointer back one circle can reverse the time by one hour, and no matter who it is, it can only be reversed five circles at most.

And wizards have conducted many experiments in the past.

Even if it can be reversed five hours, the history that has happened in these five hours will not be changed because of the appearance of time travelers.

But this argument was later questioned by a scholar who studies time in the Department of Mysteries.

The conclusion that history will not change is drawn by those who go back to the past and do not change history. Will those time travelers who really change history still appear at the original correct time?

Or if they successfully change history, then in what form will the changed history be transmitted to the time point before time travel, and will it subtly change the cognition of all those who know about history?

Or will a chain reaction occur, and another world with completely different results will appear?

If another world appears, can the people and things that are saved still be regarded as the people and things before?

Regardless of which of these two situations, if it happens, history has indeed changed, then who will know?

So although history cannot be changed, this is still the main theme among wizards who study the field of time, but there are also many other different voices.

Sherlock did not have too much thought about going back to the past. The time converter that brought him back to this time fairy was much more advanced than those in the time hall.

To this day, Sherlock still has to take time out every day to use advanced spells to suppress its self-repair.

In addition to these, there are other things in the time hall whose functions are unknown but very interesting.

On the cabinet to the left of the time converter, there are all kinds of hourglasses. Sand keeps flowing from the top to the bottom of those hourglasses, but there is no reduction in the sand above and increase in the sand below.

It seems that these sands are like the time that is passing, which will never run out and will never be full.

In the center of these hourglasses, there is a huge hourglass with the most primitive shape.

In addition to being large, the "sand" inside this hourglass is also different from others.

In the upper half, some silver particles were flowing down, and after passing through the narrow opening in the middle, the silver particles turned into gold. The gorgeous light filaments changed in the glass hourglass, making people stare at it in a daze.

The time studied in the Time Hall was all the time that had passed. What Sherlock needed was to correct the timeline. He didn't find anything valuable here.

Although he couldn't understand the purpose of most of the things.

After a round in the Time Hall, Sherlock began to try to open the door leading to other rooms in the hall.

There are six doors here. Apart from the black door for entering and exiting and the door of the office compartment, there are four doors leading to unknown rooms.

Sherlock tried to push one of them, but it didn't work. He then tried the other three doors.

In the end, two doors could be opened.

One of them should be a storage room, which was filled with various old hourglasses and clocks. These things seemed to have lost their magic and were thrown into this room.

Behind the other door that could be opened was a room with a completely different style from the Time Hall.

The room was huge and cold, as high as a church, and was filled with towering shelves filled with gray glass balls.

There were small yellow labels on the shelves under each glass ball. Some of the balls emitted mysterious flowing light, while others were vague and dark, like extinguished light bulbs. More candlesticks were embedded in the shelves at intervals, and the flames were blue like the black hall.

Sherlock shuttled between the shelves, while looking at the words on the labels under the glass balls.

[1432, Edward Charles]

[1943, Caron Felice]

[1123, unknown]

[Unknown, unknown]

Some of the small glass balls emit a faint halo from the inside, while other small parts are cold and dim.

After staring at the glass balls for a while, Sherlock knew where this room was.

Prophecy Hall.

These glass balls placed on the shelves store all the prophecies collected by the Ministry of Magic from ancient times to the present.

Some of the glass balls have lost their function, but most of them can still see the prophecies inside.

It makes sense that the Prophecy Hall belongs to a part of the Time Hall.

The main hall outside represents the time that has passed, while the Prophecy Hall represents the time seen by wizards in the future.

Compared with the outside, Sherlock is more looking forward to the things and information in this Prophecy Hall.

He walked around here for a whole day, and finally got off work when it was almost dark and left the Ministry of Magic.

Before he determined the main direction, Mrs. Selwyn had not arranged a job for him, so Sherlock had a very leisurely first day in the Ministry of Magic.

However, such a leisurely time must not last too long. At most three days, even if he has not made a choice, Mrs. Selwyn will arrange a job for him.

After all, he is paid by the Ministry of Magic, so he can't eat for free there.

At dinner, Eddie also came to the Leaky Cauldron. His face was a little solemn. He said while eating in Sherlock's room.

"The people behind Algy are starting to make efforts. Someone in the Ministry of Magic found me today and wanted to test my words and try to bribe me. In the subsequent court hearing, don't say some evidence that is unfavorable to Algy."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows.

"Why didn't they come to me? I'm the most important witness, right? After all, I caught the person."

"They should know that it's impossible for you and Mrs. Selwyn, the two most important witnesses, to be bribed, so they didn't waste their efforts."

Sherlock showed a regretful expression. He was still looking forward to someone using money to bribe him.

Eddie poured Amy a glass of juice.

"These people are very cautious. They don't expect to completely exonerate Algy. They just want to come in to reduce his punishment and finally shorten his sentence to less than three years."

"If he is really only imprisoned for three years, the Ministry of Magic is completely hopeless."

"Alas." Eddie sighed and stopped talking.

That's all Sherlock said about it.

Even if Algy was acquitted in the end, he wouldn't feel anything.

These are all internal affairs of the Ministry of Magic. Eddie told him these because he thought he really wanted to stay in the Ministry of Magic in the future.

But Sherlock himself knew best that his purpose in entering the Ministry of Magic had nothing to do with these power struggles.

"I'll bring Amy with me tomorrow. If you want to visit her, you can come directly to the ninth floor. My office is in the time hall."

Amy, who was cutting sausages with a knife and fork, looked up at Sherlock.

"Is there anything interesting in there?"

Sherlock touched her head and picked up the paper plane she had folded a few days ago from the table.

"There are many, many such paper planes there, and they can all fly in the air as you think."

Amy's eyes suddenly became brighter, and she swung her calves, looking very excited.

......

Carlisle, the northernmost city of England.

In the suburbs, in the living room of a manor located in the wild, invisible to anyone, a young man was crawling on the ground.

It seemed that this place could not be illuminated by any light. The dim light made people feel no warmth at all, only endless coldness, spreading throughout this space.

There were countless black-robed people with hideous iron masks standing around.

There were also those who were not wearing masks, Bellatrix Lestrange, Igor Karkaroff, Thorfinn Rowle, Rabastan Lestrange...

These villains who had appeared countless times in the Daily Prophet and had a sky-high bounty on the Ministry of Magic's bounty order were respectfully lowering their rebellious heads, not daring to look at the man sitting on the single sofa chair even once.

The man in a black robe gently tapped the armrest of the sofa with his pale and slender fingers.

"Are Algy and the others arrested?"

The man's voice was neither hoarse nor low, but rather sounded gentle and delicate.

But no one in the room took his gentleness seriously. Everyone suppressed their breathing and dared not make any sound to interfere with the man's words.

The young man kneeled on the ground, his whole body lying on the ground, his forehead humbly pressed against the man's toes, his voice full of enthusiasm and respect that he did not usually have.

"Jageson and the other four were directly imprisoned in Azkaban, and Algy will be tried tomorrow. The families behind him have begun to operate within the Ministry of Magic and want to sever ties with us!"

"Their behavior is betrayal!" Bella screamed.

Among all the people, only she dared to interrupt directly.

"It's more useful to be alive than to be dead." The man said softly, "He didn't expose our companions. I can accept this level of loyalty. But incompetence is the greatest sin."

His tone was not cold, but these words made everyone present feel cold!

At this moment, Algy's fate was doomed, and no one could change it!

The young man who knelt on the ground and regarded the man as his real father said excitedly.

"Let me go! Master! Let me deal with that waste!"

The man stroked his hair gently and said gently.

"You are much more important than him, so you can't take such a risk. You have other more important tasks."

The young man trembled and kissed the man's shoe surface.

"As you wish, my master!"

"That room does exist, and only the Director of the Department of Mysteries knows of its existence, but they usually don't put such key information on the surface."

"I'll make her drink the truth serum! Let her tell me everything she knows!" the young man promised.

The man smiled and shook his head.

"No, no, no, the human brain is the most obvious place, she won't be so stupid as to keep those things in her head."

The young man raised his head blankly, he didn't understand what the man said.

The man gently stroked the shaft of his wand, with a smile on his face, but his eyes were full of indifference and viciousness.

"Go find her hidden memory, the brain is an unsafe place, only by extracting the memory inside can it be hidden in a more secret place!"

"Go find it, find that memory, open that room! Bring me back the thing inside!"

Countless wizards with and without masks were all prostrating themselves on the ground.

They swore loudly and fanatically.

"I would give you everything! Great Dark Lord!"