Chapter 6: The Engines of Progress

Chapter 6: The Engines of Progress

Autumn, 1885

The four years following his graduation from Hogwarts had been a period of quiet consolidation. To the outside world, Corvus Travers was the very picture of a promising young pure-blood. He was a dutiful husband to the elegant Cassiopeia, a proud father to his young son and heir, Lycoris, and a respectable, if somewhat unassuming, junior official in the Department of International Magical Co-operation. He moved through the gilded halls of the Ministry and the drawing rooms of high society with an air of quiet competence, his ambitions seemingly limited to a steady career and the preservation of his family's good name.

This public persona was a meticulously crafted illusion, a smokescreen behind which the true work proceeded at a relentless pace. The passive phase of intelligence gathering was over. Now, with a foundation of wealth from his apothecary enterprise and a network of house-elves operating with silent efficiency, Corvus pivoted to the second, more aggressive stage of his grand design: the construction of an industrial empire.

His time in the Ministry had confirmed his initial assessment: the wizarding world was an economic relic. Its economy was artisanal, its production methods medieval, and its understanding of material science nonexistent. While wizards could enchant a single cauldron to perfection, the concept of producing a thousand identical, high-quality cauldrons at a fraction of the cost was utterly alien to them. They were craftsmen in a world on the cusp of mass production, and this chasm was the vulnerability Corvus intended to exploit on a monumental scale.

Travers Metallurgical & Enchanting (TM&E)

In a remote, heavily warded valley nestled deep within the Cambrian Mountains of Wales, far from the prying eyes of the Ministry or the curious gaze of Muggles, the true engine of the Travers fortune was forged in fire and magic. It was not a quaint smithy or a goblin-run forge, but an industrial complex that would have been recognizable to a 21st-century industrialist, albeit one powered by forces beyond mundane comprehension. This was the headquarters of Travers Metallurgical & Enchanting, a conglomerate poised to drag the wizarding world, kicking and screaming, into a new age of production.

The heart of the facility was the foundry. Instead of coke-fired furnaces, a massive, rune-etched containment sphere housed a perpetually burning, magically controlled variant of Fiendfyre. The cursed fire, tamed and harnessed by runic arrays designed by Archimedes, produced temperatures far exceeding anything a conventional forge could manage. Into this inferno, raw iron ore was fed, undergoing a process that Corvus had lifted directly from the annals of the Second Industrial Revolution: the Bessemer process. Magically-induced jets of air were blasted through the molten iron, burning away impurities at an astonishing rate. The result was steel—high-quality, versatile, and produced in quantities the wizarding world had never seen.

> ARCHIMEDES_REPORT: TM&E_FOUNDRY_OUTPUT_ANALYSIS.

> METRIC: INGOT_PRODUCTION_PER_24_HOUR_CYCLE.

> GOBLIN_FORGE_AVERAGE: 0.5_TONS.

> TM&E_FOUNDRY_OUTPUT: 15_TONS.

> COST_PER_UNIT_ANALYSIS: TM&E_STEEL_PRODUCTION_COST_IS_87%_LOWER_THAN_TRADITIONAL_GOBLIN-FORGED_IRON.

> CONCLUSION: MARKET_DOMINANCE_IS_A_MATHEMATICAL_CERTAINTY.

> 

But steel was only the raw material. The true innovation came from the enchanting division. Corvus had no interest in competing with the artisan wandmakers or bespoke robe tailors of Diagon Alley. His focus was on infrastructure and industry. TM&E produced standardized, modular components imbued with practical, durable enchantments: lightweight structural beams that could support the weight of a stone manor yet be lifted by a single wizard; self-repairing farming implements for herbologists; rust-proof, evenly heating cauldron plates for potion brewers. These were not the elegant, complex enchantments of a master duelist, but the robust, reliable charms of an engineer. They were the magical equivalent of the interchangeable parts that had revolutionized Muggle manufacturing, allowing for rapid construction and repair.

The business model was a masterclass in vertical integration. Corvus used his capital to purchase exhausted Muggle mines across Britain, sites abandoned after the most accessible coal and iron veins had been tapped. His house-elf teams, guided by Archimedes's geological scans, would then apparate deep into the earth, using targeted blasting curses and summoning charms to extract the deeper, purer ore veins that were unreachable by Muggle technology. The raw materials were transported directly to the Welsh foundry for processing.

Distribution was handled with similar ruthlessness. A web of shell companies, fronted by glamoured house-elves or financially indebted wizards, bypassed the traditional Diagon Alley merchants entirely. Sales were made directly to the end-users: ancient pure-blood families like the Malfoys and Notts, eager to renovate their ancestral manors with superior materials at a competitive price; the Ministry itself, which awarded TM&E lucrative contracts for reinforcing ministry infrastructure and building new Auror training facilities; and burgeoning magical enterprises that required modern laboratories and greenhouses.

The effect on the wizarding economy was profound and disruptive. Traditional goblin forges and human blacksmiths, who had crafted items by hand for centuries, could not compete. Their products were heavier, weaker, and vastly more expensive. They were artisans being rendered obsolete by an industrial machine they didn't even know existed. Corvus wasn't just building a company; he was introducing the brutal logic of industrial capitalism to a feudal society. He was creating economic dependencies, controlling supply chains, and establishing a new paradigm of wealth based not on inherited land, but on industrial production. He was becoming the wizarding world's first true tycoon, and his competitors never even saw him coming.

The Home Front and the Consolidation of Assets

While his industrial empire grew in the shadows, his domestic life was a carefully managed portrait of pure-blood respectability. His marriage to Cassiopeia Fawley was, by all accounts, a success. It was a partnership built on mutual respect and shared social ambition, entirely devoid of the messy emotional complications he so disdained. Cassiopeia was intelligent, graceful, and possessed the quiet competence of her Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw lineage. She managed Travers Manor and their social calendar with flawless efficiency, content in her role as the lady of a rising house. Corvus, in turn, treated her as a valued partner, affording her every luxury and public courtesy. He provided stability and status; she provided social grace and, most importantly, an heir.

Their son, Lycoris Travers, was now three years old. To his family and their social circle, he was a bright, healthy child, the future of the Travers line. To Corvus, he was the successful completion of a critical mission objective. The continuation of his genetic and familial line for the future colony was secure. Lycoris's education had already begun. While his mother read him tales of Beedle the Bard, Corvus would sit with him in the nursery, using wandless magic to animate blocks into complex, shifting geometric patterns, subtly training the boy's mind to recognize logic and structure from the earliest age. Archimedes monitored the child's cognitive development, designing a personalized educational pathway to optimize his intellectual and magical growth. Lycoris would not be a mere heir; he would be a purpose-built successor.

With his operations expanding, Corvus required a larger, more specialized workforce. His gaze fell upon the ancient house of Burke. Caractacus Burke, a founder of Borgin and Burkes, had once been a shrewd purveyor of dark artifacts, but his descendants lacked his cunning. Their family fortune had dwindled, a decline Corvus subtly accelerated by having TM&E undercut the market for enchanted metalworks, one of their key revenue streams. When the Burkes were finally forced to declare bankruptcy, Corvus was there, a "sympathetic" peer offering to relieve them of their ancestral burdens. He purchased their crumbling manor for a pittance, his true prize being the assets within: their entire staff of house-elves.

These were not ordinary elves. The Burke elves had served a family steeped in the Dark Arts for centuries. They were magically potent, fiercely loyal, and privy to secrets of concealment and covert action that most elves never learned. He integrated them into his existing staff, creating a formal command structure. Tippy, his first and most loyal elf, was promoted to Head of Domestic Operations at Travers Manor. A grim, ancient elf named Kreacher's distant cousin, Grimalkin, was made Head of Security, tasked with maintaining the wards on all Travers properties. A nimble elf named Flicker was appointed Head of Logistics, managing the complex flow of raw materials and finished goods for TM&E. He was no longer merely a master with a few servants; he was the CEO of a multi-departmental organization staffed by a magical, invisible workforce.

Infiltrating the Machine

His position at the Department of International Magical Co-operation continued to be an invaluable source of intelligence. He watched the political currents of Europe with a detached, analytical eye. He saw the rising tide of nationalism in the German and Austro-Hungarian magical communities, mirroring the tensions in the Muggle world. He noted the formation of political blocs and the increasingly militaristic posturing of foreign Ministries, all data points for Archimedes to model and predict future conflicts.

His true political laboratory, however, was the Wizengamot. As a junior scribe, he had a privileged view of the chamber's proceedings. He tasked Archimedes with a complete political analysis, mapping the allegiances, debts, and motivations of every member. The common fanon notion of a simple "Light" versus "Dark" dichotomy was, he confirmed, a childish oversimplification. The reality was a marketplace of competing interests, which he categorized with cold pragmatism.

The Agrarian Traditionalists were the old guard, families like the Malfoys, Notts, and Lestranges, whose power was rooted in ancestral land and blood purity. They were reactionary, fearing the erosion of their traditions and the growing influence of Muggles and Muggle-borns. Their power, while significant, was static and slowly declining.

The Moral Progressives were a small but vocal faction, composed of idealists and intellectuals who championed the rights of magical creatures and Muggle-borns. They held the moral high ground but lacked the wealth and political machinery to enact significant change. They were the future allies of Albus Dumbledore.

The Mercantilists were the faction he identified as key. A small, emergent group of business owners, traders, and financiers, they were pragmatic and ideologically flexible. Their primary motivation was not tradition or morality, but profit and economic stability. They were looked down upon by the old guard as being involved in "trade," but their influence was growing.

Corvus made this faction his own. He did not attempt to buy their votes with crude bribes. Instead, he used the vast resources of TM&E to create a web of mutual interest and obligation. He offered interest-free loans to a wizard seeking to expand his apothecary chain. He awarded lucrative shipping contracts to another who owned a fleet of enchanted barges. He provided a member of the trade regulation committee with confidential, advance knowledge of a shift in goblin tariffs that saved the man a fortune.

He was not asking for their loyalty. He was making his success synonymous with their own. The Wizengamot, for all its ancient pomp and ceremony, was just another market. While the Traditionalists clung to the past and the Progressives dreamed of the future, Corvus was quietly purchasing the present. He was building a political bloc that would vote for his agenda of deregulation, corporate tax reduction, and industrial expansion, not out of ideological alignment, but out of pure, unadulterated self-interest. It was a language he was fluent in, and one he knew, with absolute certainty, that every person in a position of power would eventually come to understand.

Chapter 7: A Cradle for the Stars

Spring, 1892

The world, both magical and mundane, was hurtling towards the precipice of a new century. In the cities of man, the Second Industrial Revolution was in full, roaring blaze. Steel skeletons reached for the sky, electric lights banished the night, and the first moving pictures flickered to life, capturing moments in time for the masses. It was an age of relentless, accelerating progress. For Corvus, this progress was a ticking clock, each new invention another grain of sand falling in the hourglass measuring the lifespan of the Statute of Secrecy.

With his financial empire, Travers Metallurgical & Enchanting, generating a river of gold and his political influence solidifying within the Ministry's Mercantilist faction, he judged the time right to formally initiate the two most ambitious and critical pillars of his grand design. These were the projects that would define his legacy and ensure his family's survival beyond the inevitable collapse. The first was Project Ark: the preservation and transportation of Earth's entire magical biosphere. The second was Project Stargazer: the scientific search for a new world to call home.

Project Ark: The Great Collection

Deep beneath the ancient foundations of Travers Manor, in a space carved out by house-elves and reinforced with TM&E's enchanted steel, lay the heart of Project Ark. It was not a mere basement or cellar, but a breathtaking, dimensionally expanded sanctuary known as the Vivarium. Accessed through a series of heavily guarded, interlocking portals, it was a collection of vast pocket dimensions, each a perfect, self-sustaining replica of a specific global habitat. One portal opened into a sweltering, humid recreation of the Congo rainforest, complete with magically sustained weather patterns. Another revealed a windswept stretch of the Mongolian steppe under an enchanted sky that mimicked the day-night cycle. A third led to a colossal, saltwater environment that replicated the depths of the North Atlantic.

This was not a zoo. It was a lifeboat. Corvus understood with the clarity of a 21st-century mind that simply collecting a male and female of each species, as the biblical myth suggested, was a recipe for genetic collapse. His goal was not to collect trophies, but to preserve entire ecosystems. He needed predators and prey, pollinators and decomposers, flora and fauna, all in sufficient numbers to create a viable, self-sustaining gene pool for seeding a new planet.

His acquisition teams, composed of his most skilled and loyal house-elves, were dispatched across the globe. They were not equipped with simple cages and stun spells, but with advanced gear designed by Corvus and fabricated by TM&E. Their missions were executed with military precision.

The chapter of his logbook detailing their activities read like a naturalist's impossible dream. One entry detailed the acquisition of Diricawls from Mauritius. Known to Muggles as the dodo before they seemingly "hunted it to extinction," the plump, flightless bird possessed the innate ability to vanish in a puff of feathers and reappear elsewhere, a trait it shared with the phoenix. To counter this, Corvus's team deployed a device of his own invention: a Temporal Anchor. The device, a complex runic matrix, projected a localized field that created a fractional time-lag. When a Diricawl attempted to teleport, its magical signature would vanish, but its physical form would remain for a crucial 1.5 seconds, allowing the elves to secure it in a containment field before it could fully dematerialize. It was the first successful counter-measure to a creature-specific form of Apparition.

Another mission took a team to the treacherous Isle of Drear, off the northernmost coast of Scotland, the only known habitat of the Quintaped. These terrifying five-legged predators, also known as "Hairy MacBoons," were notoriously aggressive and possessed a taste for human flesh. The elves, cloaked in disillusionment charms, did not engage them directly. They deployed a series of TM&E-fabricated enchanted steel nets, which snapped shut with crushing force, before releasing a fine aerosolized mist of a potion Corvus had developed—a potent nerve agent that induced a temporary, harmless paralysis. They secured four breeding pairs without a single casualty, a feat previously thought impossible.

Not all acquisitions were so glamorous. A team was dispatched to an old, decaying wizarding home in Wiltshire to deal with a Bundimun infestation. These foul-smelling pests, resembling patches of greenish fungus with multiple eyes, were known for secreting an acid that rotted the very foundations of dwellings. While the homeowner simply wanted them exterminated, Corvus's team carefully collected dozens of live specimens. He understood that a functioning ecosystem required its decomposers, its parasites, and its pests. To build a new world, he needed the rot as much as the radiance. Each capture, from the majestic to the mundane, was a step towards a complete, portable biosphere, a systems ecology problem being solved with ruthless logic and overwhelming resources.

Project Stargazer: A New Science

While Project Ark looked to preserve the magic of the present, Project Stargazer aimed to secure its future among the stars. On a remote, unplottable mountain peak in the Scottish Highlands, shrouded in perpetual mist and powerful concealment charms, Corvus constructed the Aetheria Observatory. It was a marvel of engineering, a fusion of the most advanced Muggle astronomical principles of the late 19th century with magical theories that were entirely his own.

The centerpiece was the Travers Telescope. While inspired by the great reflectors of the era, like Lord Rosse's six-foot "Leviathan" , its primary mirror was not polished metal. It was a single, flawless crystal, six feet in diameter, grown over five years in his labs under precise magical conditions. Its surface was etched with microscopic runes of scrying, amplification, and light-gathering, allowing it to see farther and with greater clarity than any mundane instrument on the planet.

Attached to the telescope was his most revolutionary invention: the Soul-Light Spectrograph. Muggle astronomers like William Huggins and Angelo Secchi had pioneered spectroscopy, using prisms to split starlight and analyze the chemical composition of stars based on their absorption lines. Corvus's device went a quantum leap further. Using a diffraction grating made of magically resonant crystal—an advancement on the work of American physicist Henry Rowland —it split starlight into two distinct spectra. The first was the familiar physical spectrum, which Archimedes analyzed for chemical biosignatures like oxygen, water, and methane. The second, however, was what Corvus termed the "thaumic spectrum"—the unique energetic signature of ambient magic itself. He theorized that just as life had chemical prerequisites, magic required a specific kind of cosmic background energy to flourish. His spectrograph was the first tool in history capable of detecting it across interstellar distances.

To record the data, he bypassed the cumbersome wet-plate astrophotography of the era and developed his own version of dry-plate photography. The glass plates were coated in an emulsion containing powdered moonstone and silver, making them exquisitely sensitive not just to light, but to thaumic energy. Long, multi-hour exposures allowed him to capture the faint magical signatures of star systems light-years away.

The torrent of data was fed directly to Archimedes. The AI worked tirelessly, cross-referencing existing star catalogs with the revolutionary new layer of thaumic data. The parameters for the search were strict: a G-type main-sequence star similar to Earth's sun , a planet within the liquid-water habitable zone, detectable atmospheric biosignatures, and, most critically, a strong and stable Thaumic Field Index (TFI).

In the spring of 1892, Archimedes presented the first shortlist. Corvus reviewed the data on a shimmering projection in the observatory's control room, the cold starlight of distant suns reflecting in his eyes.

Table 1: Project Stargazer: Initial Candidate Shortlist (1892)

| Designation | Stellar Class | Distance (LY) | Key Biosignatures | Thaumic Field Index (TFI) | Notes |

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

| C-1892-Alpha | G2V | 14.7 | O_2, H_2O, CH_4 | 0.88 | Promising Earth-like atmosphere. High TFI suggests robust magical potential. Prime Candidate. |

| C-1892-Beta | K1V | 21.3 | H_2O, CO_2 | 0.71 | Probable water world. Lower TFI but stable. Potential for unique aquatic magical ecosystems. |

| C-1892-Gamma | G8V | 18.1 | O_2, Silicates | 1.12 | Extremely high TFI. Rocky super-earth. Atmosphere is thin but breathable. Would require significant terraforming. |

The Ticking Clock

Later that week, back in the sterile comfort of his study at Travers Manor, Corvus reviewed a different kind of report. His elves had procured a stack of Muggle newspapers and scientific journals from London, New York, and Berlin. He read of the opening of the first elevated train line in Chicago, a solution to the transit needs of a rapidly growing city. He noted an article about St. Ignatius College establishing a new Scientific Department, complete with modern laboratories for chemistry and physics. He examined early, crude celluloid frames from the Lumière brothers, the birth of moving pictures.

To any other wizard, these would be disconnected, trivial novelties of an inferior culture. To Corvus, they were data points on a terrifyingly clear graph. The 'L' train represented the future of mass transit and urbanization. The science departments represented the systematization of knowledge and the relentless pursuit of discovery. Moving pictures were the dawn of global mass communication. He could see the future trajectory with perfect clarity: a world connected by rapid transport and instantaneous communication, scanned and scrutinized by scientific instruments of ever-increasing sensitivity. The satellites, the genetic sequencing, the global surveillance networks—they were not yet invented, but their conceptual seeds were already sprouting in 1892. The Statute of Secrecy was a paper wall, a gentleman's agreement from a bygone era, standing in the path of a technological tsunami. His plan was not madness. It was the only sane response.

Chapter 8: For the Greater Good of the Balance Sheet

Summer, 1896

The final years of the nineteenth century were steeped in a peculiar atmosphere of frantic progress and deep-seated anxiety. In the Muggle world, it was the fin de siècle, an era of unprecedented technological innovation shadowed by rising nationalism and the hardening of military alliances that would soon plunge the continent into the Great War. Corvus, observing from his unique vantage point, saw these same currents mirrored in the magical world. The insular, stagnant society of wizards was beginning to fracture under the pressure of new, dangerous ideas.

For most, this was a time of growing unease. For Corvus, it was a time of immense opportunity. The coming chaos was not a threat to his plans; it was an essential catalyst.

The Durmstrang Incident and a New Player

In the early summer of 1896, a priority report landed on his desk, delivered by Flicker, his Head of Logistics. The intelligence, gathered from his contacts within the German Ministry and corroborated by sources in Bulgaria, concerned the recent and highly unusual expulsion of a student from the Durmstrang Institute. The student's name was Gellert Grindelwald.

Durmstrang had a long-standing reputation for its rigorous focus on dueling and martial magic, and it was the only major European school to openly include the Dark Arts in its curriculum. For a student to be expelled from such an institution suggested a level of transgression that was almost unthinkable. The report detailed that Grindelwald, a student of prodigious talent, had been engaged in "twisted, dark experiments" and had conducted "near-fatal attacks on his fellow students". Even for Durmstrang, he had gone too far.

Corvus fed the data to Archimedes, who immediately began compiling a comprehensive psychological and ideological profile.

> ARCHIMEDES_ANALYSIS: GRINDELWALD,_GELLERT.

> AGE: APPROX_14.

> MAGICAL_POTENTIAL: EXTREME.

> PSYCHOLOGICAL_PROFILE: NARCISSISTIC,_CHARISMATIC,_HIGHLY_INTELLIGENT,_LOW_EMPATHY.

> DECLARED_IDEOLOGY: WIZARDING_SUPREMACY_OVER_NON-MAGICALS.

> SLOGAN: "FOR_THE_GREATER_GOOD." 

> ASSESSMENT: IDEOLOGY_IS_A_RATIONALIZATION_FOR_DESIRE_FOR_ABSOLUTE_POWER. SLOGAN_IS_A_HIGHLY_EFFECTIVE_PROPAGANDA_TOOL_DESIGNED_TO_APPEAL_TO_WIZARDING_FEELINGS_OF_SUPERIORITY_AND_PERSECUTION. 

> PREDICTION: GRINDELWALD_WILL_LEVERAGE_GROWING_NATIONALIST_SENTIMENT_IN_CONTINENTAL_EUROPE_TO_BUILD_A_PAN-MAGICAL_REVOLUTIONARY_MOVEMENT. PROBABILITY_OF_LARGE-SCALE_ARMED_CONFLICT_WITHIN_25_YEARS: 92.4%.

> 

Corvus studied the analysis with the detached interest of a sociologist examining a predictable social phenomenon. He did not see Grindelwald as a monster or a "Dark Lord." He saw him as a historical inevitability. The late 19th century was a cauldron of competing empires and militant nationalism. Germany, newly unified and bristling with industrial might, was aggressively seeking its "place in the sun". Grindelwald's vision of a unified, dominant wizarding empire, breaking free from the "oppression" of the Statute of Secrecy, was a perfect magical reflection of the zeitgeist. He was the magical world's answer to the rising tide of fascism and aggressive nationalism that Corvus knew would define the next fifty years of Muggle history. A figure like Grindelwald was bound to emerge. This understanding was crucial, for it allowed Corvus to view the coming war not as a moral crusade to be won or lost, but as a predictable market cycle to be exploited.

The Travers Institute for Magical Advancement

With war on the horizon, Corvus knew that the number of orphans and displaced magical children would soon skyrocket. This tragic externality of the coming conflict provided the perfect cover for the next phase of his plan: Project Legacy.

In a grand ceremony attended by Minister for Magic Faris Spavin and reporters from the Daily Prophet, Corvus announced the founding of the Travers Institute for Magical Advancement. Publicly, it was presented as the pinnacle of pure-blood philanthropy—a state-of-the-art orphanage and school dedicated to caring for magical children left destitute by fate. He spoke eloquently of his family's duty to the less fortunate, of providing a safe haven for war orphans, impoverished Muggle-borns, and any magical child in need. The project was met with universal acclaim. The Ministry lauded his generosity, and the pure-blood elite saw it as a commendable act of noblesse oblige.

The reality was far colder. The Institute, located on a sprawling, warded estate in the Lake District, was a highly selective indoctrination center, the crucible in which he would forge the first generation of citizens for his new world.

The selection process was covert and ruthless. His house-elf teams, now expert talent scouts, traveled the country in secret. They didn't look for children in need; they looked for children with potential. Using passive Legilimency, they screened candidates in Muggle orphanages and impoverished wizarding communities, testing for raw magical power, intellectual aptitude, and psychological resilience. Blood status was irrelevant; talent and malleability were everything.

The curriculum was unlike anything offered at Hogwarts. It was a fusion of the highest levels of magical training with the rigors of Muggle science. A student in their third year would spend their morning mastering the transfiguration of inanimate objects into complex mechanisms, and their afternoon studying the principles of Newtonian physics that governed them. They brewed potions to precise chemical specifications, their measurements guided by Arithmancy and calculus, not the vague instructions of a medieval textbook. They were taught logic, economic theory, military strategy, and critical thinking—all subjects completely absent from the stagnant, tradition-bound Hogwarts curriculum.

Most importantly, they were systematically indoctrinated. The core ethos of the Institute was not loyalty to the Ministry or the preservation of blood purity, but loyalty to the institution, its meritocratic ideals, and its benevolent, visionary founder: Corvus Travers. The children were taught that the old world was failing, trapped in prejudice and ignorance. They were taught that a new, better world was possible—a world built on knowledge, power, and logic. They were being raised to see Corvus not just as a benefactor, but as a savior.

The first student to arrive was a nine-year-old girl named Elara. Found in a London workhouse, she was a Muggle-born whose accidental magic had terrified the matrons, leading to her being beaten and locked in a cellar. She was small, underfed, and frightened, but his elves' assessment had revealed a magical potential that rivaled some of the most powerful adult wizards Corvus had ever met. As she stood in the grand entrance hall of the Institute, staring with wide, unbelieving eyes at the clean rooms, the well-stocked library, and the smiling house-elf offering her a warm meal, Corvus watched from a high window. She was the first brick in the foundation of his new civilization.

The Business of War

As Grindelwald's movement began to gain traction on the continent, Corvus finalized his strategy of profitable neutrality. He was a nation of one, and he would be the sole beneficiary of the coming conflict. He established two new, completely firewalled corporate entities, their ownership untraceable even by the sharpest goblin accountants.

"Aegis Enchantments" was registered in Britain, with its public-facing offices in Diagon Alley. It quickly became a primary defense contractor for the Auror departments of the British, French, and other established Ministries. Aegis sold his patented, vastly superior healing potions, which could mend wounds in seconds that would normally take days at St. Mungo's. It sold reinforced battle-robes woven with TM&E's lightweight steel thread, capable of deflecting stunning spells and minor cutting curses. It sold long-range, two-way communication mirrors that were securely encrypted using runic arrays, making them impervious to interception.

"Nox Solutions" was its dark twin. It was an entity that existed only on paper in a Gringotts vault in Geneva, its operations conducted entirely through goblin intermediaries and a network of discreet agents. Nox Solutions began to quietly supply Grindelwald's burgeoning Acolytes. It did not sell weapons. Instead, it offered services essential to a growing insurgency. It provided untraceable financial instruments for moving large sums of gold across borders. It supplied rare and restricted potion ingredients in bulk, sourced through his global house-elf network. It sold secure, untraceable communication devices—dark mirrors that were the technological twin of the ones sold by Aegis, but operating on different magical frequencies.

Corvus understood a fundamental truth that the wizards fighting their petty ideological battles could not grasp: war is the ultimate market catalyst. The Second Industrial Revolution in the Muggle world had been driven by the insatiable demand for steel, for railways to move troops, and for new technologies to kill more efficiently. He was applying the same principle to the magical world. By arming both sides, he achieved multiple strategic objectives. First, he would generate profits on a scale that would make the Malfoy and Black fortunes look like pocket change. Second, he gained leverage over both the established governments and the revolutionaries. Third, the conflict would serve as the ultimate field test for his enchanted technologies, a brutal but effective R&D program paid for by his customers. Finally, he ensured that no matter who won, the combatants would be left weakened, their resources depleted, while he emerged stronger than ever. It was the pinnacle of his ruthless, capitalist philosophy, played out on a continental scale. They were fighting for the greater good; he was fighting for the good of the balance sheet.

Chapter 9: The Soul as a System

Winter, 1899

The nineteenth century was breathing its last. As the Muggle world stood on the threshold of a new era of machines, global empires, and simmering conflict, Corvus Travers turned his formidable intellect to the most ancient and fundamental challenge of all: death itself. With his empire secure and his long-term logistical projects, Ark and Legacy, now operational, he initiated the most personal and vital phase of his plan. Project Immortality was not a quest for eternal youth or a desperate pact with dark forces; it was a clinical, scientific endeavor to solve the problem of mortality. He would treat the soul not as a sacred, unknowable mystery, but as a complex biological and thaumaturgical system to be understood, backed up, and reinstalled.

Project Immortality: The Engineering of Forever

Deep beneath the sprawling, dimensionally-folded habitats of the Vivarium, in a sub-level shielded by every ward known to wizarding kind and several more of his own design, lay the Sanctum Sanctorum. It was not a dark, torch-lit chamber for forbidden rituals, but a sterile, brightly lit facility that was part genetics laboratory, part surgical theater, and part data center. Here, magic was not an art; it was engineering.

The project began with a final, definitive rejection of the wizarding world's most infamous method of life extension: the Horcrux. Corvus had his elves procure every known text on the subject, including the blasphemous Secrets of the Darkest Art. He and Archimedes analyzed the process with the cold detachment of systems architects examining flawed code. Their conclusion was scathing.

> ARCHIMEDES_ANALYSIS: HORCRUX_METHODOLOGY.

> PROCESS: SOUL_FISSION_VIA_TRAUMATIC_EVENT_(HOMICIDE). 

> MECHANISM: THE_ACT_OF_MURDER_VIOLENTLY_TEARS_THE_SOUL,_A_FRAGMENT_OF_WHICH_IS_THEN_ENCASED_IN_AN_EXTERNAL_OBJECT.

> RESULT: UNCONTROLLED_FRACTURING_OF_THE_PRIMARY_METAPHYSICAL_SUBSTRATE. SEVERE_DATA_CORRUPTION_IN_BOTH_THE_PRIMARY_UNIT_AND_THE_FRAGMENT. EXPONENTIAL_INCREASE_IN_SYSTEM_INSTABILITY_AND_PSYCHOLOGICAL_DEGRADATION_WITH_EACH_ITERATION.

> ANALOGY: ATTEMPTING_TO_CREATE_A_BACKUP_OF_A_COMPUTER_BY_SMASHING_THE_HARD_DRIVE_WITH_A_HAMMER_AND_STORING_ONE_OF_THE_SHARDS.

> CONCLUSION: CATASTROPHIC_SYSTEM_FAILURE. METHOD_IS_CRUDE,_INEFFICIENT,_AND_LOGICALLY_UNSOUND. UNACCEPTABLE. 

> 

Voldemort's path was a fool's errand, a corruption of the hardware in a misguided attempt to preserve the software. Corvus's approach, the "Travers Method," was infinitely more sophisticated. It was a three-stage protocol designed not to fracture the soul, but to migrate it.

Stage 1: The Vessel. The first requirement was a new, healthy host body. Using a combination of advanced human Transfiguration and ritualistic blood magic—a field he had studied extensively from both academic texts and obscure fan-written theories stored in his memory —he began the process of growing a perfect, inert clone of his own body. The process was painstaking. A sample of his own tissue was placed within a nutrient-rich, magically-charged matrix inside a crystalline growth tank. Over months, guided by complex transfiguration spells and sustained by blood-magic rituals that fed it his own life force, a new body took shape. It was biologically identical to his own, but utterly mindless—a blank slate, a perfect piece of hardware waiting for an operating system. His early, horrific experiments involved perfecting the process on magical creatures, successfully growing a perfect copy of a Kneazle and then attempting, with mixed results, to transfer its simple consciousness.

Stage 2: The Backup. While the clone matured, Corvus began the most arduous task: creating a complete backup of his own mind. He developed a device he called the "Psyche-Matrix," a helmet lined with hundreds of hair-thin silver probes that combined the principles of Legilimency with advanced runic sensors. For hours each day, he would sit within the Sanctum, the helmet active, as Archimedes guided the probes through his neural pathways. The device was not just reading memories; it was mapping his entire consciousness. Every memory, every learned skill, every subconscious bias, every nuance of his personality—all were being translated into quantifiable data and stored on a series of massive, magically-shielded crystalline data cores. It was the ultimate act of self-analysis, a bit-for-bit copy of the soul's data.

Stage 3: The Transfer. The final piece was the ritual of transfer itself. It was not a dark ceremony performed in a graveyard, but a clinical procedure performed in his sterile laboratory. The design was elegant: a complex runic array inscribed on the floor, forming a circuit that connected his current body, the inert clone vessel, and a colossal, flawless diamond that served as a focusing lens. The ritual was designed to be powered by his own life force. At the point of natural death, or a time of his choosing, the ritual would activate. It would painlessly sever the soul's metaphysical connection to the dying body and, guided by the runic circuit and focused by the diamond, re-attach it to the waiting clone. The instant the connection was made, the data from the Psyche-Matrix would flood the new brain, imprinting his complete consciousness and personality onto the blank slate. There would be no degradation, no fracturing, no madness. It was not a desperate attempt to cheat death; it was a systematic, engineered hardware replacement. He was not conquering death through raw power, but solving it as the ultimate systems engineering problem.

The Meeting at Godric's Hollow

As he delved into the fundamental nature of his own soul, Corvus kept a watchful eye on the two men who were poised to define the soul of the coming age. His house-elf intelligence network, now a global operation, alerted him the moment Gellert Grindelwald arrived in Godric's Hollow to stay with his great-aunt, the famed magical historian Bathilda Bagshot. Corvus immediately tasked a specialized surveillance team with placing long-range listening charms and cloaked scrying sensors around the village, focusing on Bagshot's cottage and the Dumbledore family home.

He became a silent, unseen observer of that fateful summer of 1899. He received daily transcribed reports of the intense, intellectually ferocious, and emotionally charged conversations between the two brilliant young men. He read copies of their letters, intercepted and duplicated by his elves before being sent. He watched, via scrying mirror, as they walked through the lanes of Godric's Hollow, their ambition radiating from them like heat.

> ARCHIMEDES_ANALYSIS: DUMBLEDORE-GRINDELWALD_CORRESPONDENCE.

> PRIMARY_THEMES: WIZARDING_SUPREMACY_("FOR_THE_GREATER_GOOD"), THE_DEATHLY_HALLOWS,_THE_LIMITATIONS_OF_THE_STATUTE_OF_SECRECY.

> DUMBLEDORE'S_POSITION: ADVOCATES_FOR_BENEVOLENT_RULE,_USING_POWER_RESPONSIBLY_FOR_THE_MUGGLES'_OWN_GOOD. ATTEMPTS_TO_MODERATE_GRINDELWALD'S_EXTREMISM. 

> GRINDELWALD'S_POSITION: ADVOCATES_FOR_ABSOLUTE_DOMINION._VIEWS_MODERATION_AS_WEAKNESS.

> PSYCHOLOGICAL_SUBTEXT: DUMBLEDORE'S_ARGUMENTS_ARE_INFLUENCED_BY_ROMANTIC_FEELING_AND_A_DESIRE_TO_REFORM_GRINDELWALD. GRINDELWALD_EXPLOITS_THIS_EMOTIONAL_VULNERABILITY.

> 

Corvus saw Dumbledore's attempts to temper Grindelwald's ruthlessness as a fool's errand, a classic case of a brilliant mind being clouded by emotion. He commissioned a full background file on the Dumbledore family and saw the source of Albus's vulnerability with stark clarity. The family was defined by tragedy: the father, Percival, imprisoned in Azkaban for his vengeful attack on Muggles; the sister, Ariana, left mentally and magically unstable by that same attack, a living Obscurial hidden away from the world. Albus's dazzling academic success at Hogwarts was an escape, but he had returned to Godric's Hollow "in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted". Grindelwald, with his grand vision of power and revolution, was offering Albus not just an ideology, but an escape from the shame and powerlessness that defined his family's existence.

When the inevitable end came, Corvus was not surprised. The report from his elves was concise and brutal: a heated argument between Gellert, Albus, and Albus's brother Aberforth had escalated into a three-way duel. Ariana, attempting to intervene, had been struck by a stray curse and killed instantly.

To Corvus, it was the predictable, logical outcome of a volatile equation. He archived the incident, noting it as a key data point on the catastrophic fallibility of emotionally driven leaders. The most pivotal relationship of the twentieth-century wizarding world, the bond that would lead to a global war, was, in his eyes, the ultimate case study in failure. Dumbledore's genius was compromised by his love and guilt. Grindelwald's vision was corrupted by his ego and sadism. Their combined potential, which could have transformed the world, was instead being channeled into a decades-long, destructive feud that would consume the lives and resources of thousands.

A conflict that would, in the end, benefit only one person.

Corvus stood before the growth tank containing his own silent, perfect copy. He saw not a reflection, but a future. Dumbledore and Grindelwald could have their war. They could fight for the soul of a world he was already preparing to leave behind. He would not be defined by love or hate, by glory or by ideology. He would be defined by one thing only: survival. He was not like them. He would not fail.