"Mm. It's called a Totem of Undying. Does that mean it can keep someone from dying?" Harry asked instead of answering directly.
"You could say that, but it only works once," Kasen replied.
"Professor, I don't want it anymore. You should use it yourself."
The beacon necklace in Harry's hand instantly seemed to turn into a red-hot coal. He dropped it onto Kasen's desk as though it were burning him.
"It's useless even if you return it now. The Totem of Undying has already bound itself to you. It will only work for you," Kasen said, both annoyed and amused.
"Maybe we can ask Dumbledore! He'll definitely have a way!" Harry said.
"Even Nicolas Flamel wouldn't be able to help. When it comes to alchemy, no one is more authoritative than me," Kasen said, raising an eyebrow.
After speaking, he looked at Harry, who had fallen silent.
"What did you mean when you said you didn't understand?"
Harry slowly pulled over a chair. Recently, he had grown fond of having these deep conversations with someone. They allowed him to vent some of the frustration in his heart and gave him the satisfying feeling of glimpsing his true self.
"I don't understand why all of you are always so unconditionally kind to me. You, Professor, Sirius, Lupin, Mr and Mrs Weasley, Mr and Mrs Longbottom, Professor Dumbledore... and my parents."
"In short, it feels as though all of you would be willing to sacrifice your lives for me at any moment, but I'm clearly not worth that."
Harry leaned back in the chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.
He was afraid that if he accidentally looked at someone, it would be like suddenly receiving concern while feeling wronged, and he would instantly lose control and start crying.
"Your parents acted out of their love for you as your mother and father. Sirius's feelings towards you are somewhat complicated. On one hand, he sees you as his godson, and on the other, he sees you as his friend. Lupin and the others see you as a younger member of the family."
"As for me, forget about you. Even Filch, the man all you students hate most, if he were in danger, I would do everything I could to save him, even if it meant sacrificing myself."
"This kind of instinctive action cannot simply be broken down like a business transaction or a maths problem. You cannot refuse to save Filch merely because staying alive would allow me to save more people. When a crisis arrives, it will not give you time to think."
Kasen explained.
"Professor, what about Professor Dumbledore?" Harry asked next.
"Dumbledore views everyone equally, including himself."
Kasen instinctively used some verbal artistry to preserve a little dignity for Dumbledore. It would hardly sound pleasant to say outright that Dumbledore treated everything, including himself, as a chess piece.
"Then, Professor, I refuse this... impulsive sacrifice of yours," Harry said, still unwilling to accept the necklace.
"Forget Nicolas Flamel. Even I can't undo this binding curse. So stop wasting your effort and just wear it. It would be useless on anyone else, so leaving it unworn would be a complete waste," Kasen advised.
"I just think you need this more than I do, Professor. I would willingly give my life for you, so naturally, I don't want you to waste a chance to save your own life on me."
Harry suddenly opened his eyes wide and bright, staring at Kasen as he spoke each word clearly.
"You don't need to give your life for anyone. You're still a young wizard. You're still a child. Also, please stop being so sentimental. I don't like it."
Kasen rolled his eyes, picked up the necklace from the desk, and directly used a binding curse to attach it to Harry.
Then he waved his hand, and Ender magic teleported Harry outside the office door.
"Why can't any of them give me a moment's peace?"
Kasen sighed helplessly, pushed both the Transmutation Table in front of him and thoughts of Harry out of his mind, then took the pocket watch from his pocket.
A pocket watch capable of sending someone through time was already immensely powerful. Even if it could not change history, merely allowing someone to witness it was more than enough.
For example, he could use this pocket watch to do many things. After all, every rewind sent him six years into the past. No matter how you looked at it, that was far more powerful than the Time-Turners in the Department of Mysteries.
It was also much safer to use.
The only flaw was that after returning to a vanished part of history, if one had no other way to return or break out of that history, one could only wander through the past and quietly wait for time to catch up with the present again.
The reason was that the pocket watch's time-adjusting crown could only turn anticlockwise, not clockwise.
No sane person would ever design something this idiotic, yet the occult object manifested by occultism had somehow produced exactly that.
In other words, this was one enormous pile of shit.
"If I repair the crown, could it manipulate history in both directions?"
Kasen muttered to himself, then immediately got to work and began dismantling the pocket watch.
He once again used the key, his hand, and blood to open the back cover through an occult ritual, then began studying the exact structure of the crown.
.......
In the end, he reached a conclusion.
The existence that had manifested this pocket watch from the concept of that period of history had either done it deliberately, intending only to let people return to the past to witness and revisit history while preventing them from travelling to the future and foreseeing events...
Or that existence was an idiot who had designed the pocket watch without first checking how a proper watch was constructed, then foolishly built the entire thing wrong.
However, at this point, it no longer mattered which possibility was true.
Because Kasen was now facing an extremely awkward problem.
It was like an experience almost everyone had as a child, where they would save the rounded end of an ice pop until last, then wait for it to melt into liquid and feel like a chemist.
Or when they got hold of a broken electronic device and tried every possible way to take it apart, only for the usual result to be that they should not have opened it at all.
Kasen was now facing the exact opposite problem.
After opening the pocket watch with the key activation ritual...
He could not put it back together.
Still bewildered, Kasen slowly tried winding the crown, hoping to return to the previous day. Even if he had no way to come back quickly, at least it would prove that he had not completely broken the pocket watch.
But...
"Is this thing really broken?"
Kasen stared at the pocket watch in front of him, on the verge of tears.
Before dismantling it, he should have made a backup with the Transmutation Table.
Wait. The Transmutation Table... Equivalent Exchange... the Watch of Flowing Time?
I really am a genius!
...
(～￣▽￣)～Read 12 Chapters ahead:
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