The Room of Requirement
Ernst held the skull he had bought from Borgin.
To a wizard, it was a cursed object.
To Ernst, it was a hard drive.
"The soul isn't magic," Ernst muttered, adjusting the frequency of his magnetic containment field.
"It's data. Memories, emotions, personality, it's just bio-electric information stored in a localized magnetic field that persists after death."
He increased the power. The skull vibrated.
A wisp of black smoke, the fragmented soul, drifted out, trapped within the invisible walls of the field.
It was damaged. Fragmented. A man with no name and no past.
"Let's see if we can defrag the drive," Ernst said.
He bombarded the soul with varying frequencies of light and radiation.
It was delicate work. Too little, and nothing happened. Too much...
Zzzzt.
The black mist shrieked silently.
It began to unravel, the magnetic cohesion failing under the intensity of a high-frequency light test.
"Stabilize!" Ernst ordered, his hands flying over the controls.
But the soul was fading. It was dying a second death.
Ernst felt a pang of regret. The entity had been cooperative, docile.
He couldn't let it perish due to his clumsiness.
Reality Stone.
Ernst grabbed the red gem. He didn't use a spell; he used his will.
He commanded reality to rewrite the nature of the soul.
He fused the dissipating spiritual energy with the high-intensity photons bombarding it.
Fusion.
A blinding flash filled the room.
When the spots cleared from Ernst's eyes, the black mist was gone.
Standing in the containment field was a figure made of pure, white light.
It was translucent, humanoid, and humming with power.
The figure looked at its hands.
It shifted, turning invisible, then solidifying into a hard-light construct that punched the containment wall with a metallic clang.
"Fascinating," Ernst breathed.
"You aren't a ghost anymore. You are a photon-based lifeform. You can phase like a spirit or strike like a solid object."
The entity bowed to him.
"I will call you Ghost," Ernst decided.
"My invisible hand."
With the soul experiment a success, Ernst turned to biology.
He studied the magical creatures he had acquired: Crup dogs, Kneazles, and a small, depressed-looking dragon hatchling Borgin had smuggled in.
"They are weak," Ernst noted, scanning the dragon's DNA.
"The history says dragons as city-destroyers. This thing is barely a threat to a sheep."
"Red Queen," Ernst asked.
"Analysis."
"Environmental entropy," the AI reported.
"The ambient magical energy of Earth has decayed over millennia. These creatures are starving. They have devolved to survive on lower energy levels."
Ernst smiled. "They need a better habitat. Of to Skull Island."
The island was saturated with the cosmic radiation of the Star Whale.
It was a primordial soup of high-energy biology.
"Azazel," Ernst ordered.
"Take the test subjects to the island. Let's see what happens when a dragon eats a diet of Skullcrawler meat and Star Whale radiation."
A month later, the results came back.
The mice he had sent were now the size of cats, with telekinetic abilities.
The dragon hatchling had doubled in size and was breathing blue fire.
"Evolution," Ernst grinned.
"Borgin! Get me more. I want breeding pairs. Dragons, Phoenixes, everything."
—--------
The Headmaster's Office
The school year ended.
Ernst had stripped the library of every secret it held.
He stood in Dumbledore's office, his trunk packed (shrunk into his pocket).
"You are leaving," Dumbledore said.
He looked relieved.
"I have what I came for," Ernst replied.
"The theory is sound. The application... we shall see."
"Dr. Ernst," Dumbledore paused, his expression guarded.
"Before you go, there is a message from the Palace. His Majesty, King George VI, requests an audience."
Ernst raised an eyebrow.
"The King?"
"The Government," Dumbledore corrected.
"They are... impressed by the partial nuclear data you provided. They want the rest. They are prepared to offer you a Title. An Earldom."
"An Earl?" Ernst laughed softly.
"They want to buy me with a title?"
"They want to bind you to the realm," Dumbledore said gravely.
"They fear you will take your knowledge to the Americans or the Soviets. They are offering you a domain, land, status, and immunity, in exchange for your loyalty. And the Bomb."
Ernst calculated. An Earldom meant territory.
It meant a legal standing in the mortal world that Hydra could never provide.
It meant he could build his empire in the open.
"And you, Albus? What do you think?"
"I think they are handing a torch to a man standing in a powder keg," Dumbledore said honestly.
"But I refused to interfere. Your path is your own."
"Smart man," Ernst said.
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