Harry Potter: The Rise Of Malfoy

Chapter 43 .

Soren first wandered around for a while before going to the Leaky Cauldron to buy the textbooks needed for this semester.

Soren took two copies of all the textbooks, including Draco's.

Seeing that his parents and brother had not yet arrived, he leisurely browsed through some books in the shop.

During this time, he helped the bookstore manager deal with the rampaging "Monster Book of Monsters," and earned a discount voucher for his book purchases, saving him 10 Galleons.

This 10 Galleons was just enough to offset the amount he had bribed Draco with that morning to keep his secret.

After a while, his parents and brother arrived late, and the family took the knight Bus back to Malfoy Manor.

On the way, Narcissa asked Soren about his experiences in Diagon Alley today. Naturally, Soren didn't mention sneaking into Knockturn Alley but instead changed the subject: "I visited Ollivander's Wand Shop again today and had him do some maintenance on my wand..."

Soren organized his thoughts and voiced his confusion: "I found that his business isn't really that great—his wands sell for only 7 Galleons each. You have to know that wands are not consumables; there are at most 80 new students enrolling each year. Even if you add in the little wizards coming from abroad, it's at most 100..."

"If lucky, about 50 adult wizards might need to buy a new wand each year due to damage—wands are a wizard's second life. Fifty such fools is already a lot. All things considered, that's only about 150 people, which amounts to 1,050 Galleons. Assuming half of that goes to the cost of making the wands, he only nets 525 Galleons for the whole year, not to mention the rent and maintenance costs of running the shop. It seems a bit unbelievable to me..."

Lucius nodded in satisfaction, "Soren, you have indeed inherited the family's excellent business acumen to think of this so quickly. In fact, there are many unwritten rules in the wizarding business world. Taking Ollivander as an example, the greatest significance of this wand shop's existence is merely a sign for him to maintain the family's reputation—whether the wand shop is profitable or not is not that important to him. He has many collaborative research projects with the Ministry of Magic, most of which are about wand studies; that research funding is the real profit. Of course, if it weren't for this historical wand shop giving him fame, those collaboration opportunities might not have come his way..." He finished with a cold snort.

So that's how it is; Ollivander is using the low prices of his wand shop to monopolize the market and then leveraging his position as a market leader to seek other benefits, Soren thought.

Lucius continued, "Don't be fooled by this old man's seemingly righteous demeanor. Over the past thousand years, there have been many talented new wandmakers wanting to open shops in Britain, but they have all failed to obtain the Ministry of Magic's certification license—I'm willing to bet that Ollivander's old tricks are behind this. This tactic is known in the business world as 'competitive moats,' which means establishing a barrier that prevents new competitors from entering, thus allowing oneself to maintain a monopoly over the entire industry. As long as he maintains that monopoly, the Ministry of Magic will have to collaborate with him if they want to study wand lore. How about that? Isn't it eye-opening to see the dark side of the business world?" He concluded with a cold laugh.

Soren fell into deep thought; so there are these intricacies in the wizarding business world. It seems that his earlier success in entering the broomstick market and making a profit was due to the benefits of foreseeing the plot and a good amount of luck!

Hmm? Didn't other transmigrators easily monopolize the entire wizarding business world with just a wave of their arms and a show of strength? Did they all naturally have that kind of aura? Or was there some halo that made other wizard merchants and pure-blood families automatically less intelligent? Soren was engulfed in envy and jealousy.

That night during the family dinner, Lucius sternly reminded his two sons to remember the family's honor and expressed his expectations for the brothers' academic performance. He said, "Especially you, Draco, focus on your studies and don't provoke Potter and his gang anymore. You should know that this semester at Hogwarts won't be peaceful. Now I'll tell you some insider information that the newspapers haven't reported—Sirius Black's true purpose for escaping from prison is to kill Harry Potter!"

"What?" Soren, who already knew the plot, remained calm, while Draco, who had a complicated relationship with Harry Potter, exclaimed in surprise.

Lucius coldly glared at Draco and said, "Black was my junior in school. He was very close friends with Harry Potter's father, James Potter, but in the end, he betrayed his friend to the Dark Lord, leading to James Potter's tragic death. His escape this time is clearly to eliminate the threat—kill Harry Potter. I don't want either of you to get caught up in some foolish reason and end up in trouble because of him."

Lucius paused for a moment and continued, "Although everyone says Black has gone mad, he might be mad, but he is smart enough to escape from Azkaban—something that ordinary people cannot do. If Black could escape from Azkaban, I believe he could infiltrate Hogwarts. Black once brutally killed a dozen innocent bystanders on the street; if you unfortunately encounter him, I don't believe he will show you any mercy. There is a greater chance that he will kill you to silence you and prevent you from revealing his whereabouts. Do you understand?"

Soren and Draco hurriedly nodded to show they understood.

That night, Soren took out the pain mask he had bought earlier from his dormitory, slowly put it on his face, activated its effects with magic, then took it off and looked at it. The mask seemed to transform into a black hole in Soren's eyes, like a vortex, slowly pulling his gaze in.

A sense of inexplicable fear arose in Soren's heart, but in less than a few seconds, he broke free from this strange state.

"Is this all it can do? Or is it only effective on those with low magical power?" Soren muttered dissatisfiedly, feeling a sense of absurdity in his heart, not expecting that the first target of this mask would actually be himself.

Soren activated his magical eye, concentrating on sensing the magical fluctuations coming from the mask. Unlike the magic used to cast ordinary spells, it seemed to be guided by another invisible force.

It was a mysterious power that was difficult to describe; it surrounded the magic on the mask, formless and weightless, yet seemed to directly affect the soul. "If this is what soul magic is, it means temporarily stripping part of consciousness to attack another person's soul?" Soren felt as if he had grasped the essence of soul magic.

He tried to use a mental sealing technique to clear all his thoughts, then attempted to split off a small piece of his consciousness and merge it into the magic. He could feel his own magic suddenly bursting with vitality after merging with the split-off consciousness.

He focused entirely on condensing his magic into a needle shape and slowly pierced towards the mask, as if colliding powerfully with a solid wall. Soren felt a wave of dizziness, and when he came to his senses, he found his forehead drenched in sweat, while the pain mask had already cracked into two pieces.

After deep contemplation, Soren suddenly understood the principle of soul attacks. What just happened was a simple and rough contest between him and the consciousness within the pain mask. The soul power of the pain mask was not strong, so it was easily shattered by him.

If he were to replace the mask with the Sorting Hat from Hogwarts, which contained the consciousness of the four founders that had been maintained for over a thousand years, with Soren's meager soul power that he had never trained, he would certainly end up in a disastrous defeat, becoming an idiot.

Soren suddenly thought of the essence of magic. The so-called magic should be determined by the strength of the soul, which dictates the amount of magic stored in the reservoir, while the strength of mental power determines a wizard's control over magic and the output rate of magical flow.

From this, Soren could ascertain that magic does not increase naturally over time at a fixed growth rate, as most wizards think. After all, Grindelwald and Dumbledore dominated the European magical world in their forties, and those older wizards were far from being their match.

Grindelwald and Dumbledore did not transform themselves into grotesque forms using dark magic like Voldemort, so their magic could grow at a speed that surpassed others, indicating that there must be some unknown reason behind it.

The original story did not mention this point, perhaps because neither of them was aware of the underlying principles. The two of them simply possessed an innate soul strength far beyond that of ordinary people, along with powerful mental strength, resulting in an astonishing increase in their magical power growth rate due to the enhancement of these two factors.

Various thoughts flashed through Soren's mind, and a subtle glimmer appeared in his eyes, as if he had discovered the most astonishing secret in the magical world: the secret to enhancing magical power.

The strength of the soul determines the capacity for storing magical power, while mental strength determines the usage rate of magical power. The human body is adaptable; strong mental strength greatly improves the usage rate of magical power, leading to an increased demand for magical power, which in turn stimulates its growth.

In other words, strong soul and mental strength cannot suddenly boost one's magical power like a magical enhancement potion, but they can increase the growth rate of magical power. If he wanted to catch up to Voldemort and Dumbledore's strength before chaos descended, he would inevitably need to find ways to enhance his soul strength and mental strength.

Even discovering such an astonishing secret, Soren felt no regret over the destruction of the Pain Mask worth 29 Galleons. He checked the fragments of the Pain Mask again but found that the magical fluctuations attached to it had dissipated along with the collapse of the consciousness, and the mask had turned into two ordinary pieces. Thus, he unhesitatingly threw the fragments into the trash can.

***

Want to read more of this fanfic [25+ chapters], and support me :- Patreon.com/Theuntamed0