"Impossible. Absolutely impossible. I have been dead for over a thousand years? That makes no sense at all." Slytherin looked utterly unconvinced.
"How is it impossible?" Wade Reynolds suddenly frowned. "If anything, your appearance is what makes the least sense. Hogwarts has existed for over a thousand years, and the castle has no shortage of ghosts. But tell me, have you ever heard of a ghost that only appears a thousand years after dying?"
"You are not lying to me?" Slytherin's ghost stopped his agitation.
"I have no reason to lie to you, and I could not fool you even if I wanted to. All you need to do is step outside and take a look, and you will understand that this is no longer your era. What would be the point of deceiving you? Besides, do you not find it strange yourself that there are so many things about your appearance this time that feel wrong?" Wade asked in return.
Slytherin's ghost fell silent, because he had indeed noticed many inconsistencies.
"First, when a person dies, if they still cling to the mortal world, they wander in a hazy limbo, hesitate, and eventually turn back, returning to the living world as a ghost. That usually happens almost immediately after death. Since you passed away over a thousand years ago, if you had truly become a ghost back then, how could you only appear now?"
"Second, once a wizard becomes a ghost, no matter how powerful they were in life, they lose the ability to wield even the slightest trace of magic after death. But what about you just now? Even though that confrontation was not real, you were able to pull me into an illusion. That is completely unreasonable."
"And finally, why did you appear precisely at this moment, and why did you appear in this place, along with a whole host of other things that do not add up?"
The entire matter was shrouded in mystery. Even Wade could not list every inconsistency, but he believed that, given Slytherin's intellect, what he had said was more than enough to make him calm down and think.
Sure enough, Slytherin composed himself and began to recall what had happened.
"That day, I was conducting an experiment to verify the various possibilities of bloodline curses. Then I felt a bit drowsy and, without realizing it, fell asleep. Strange. I clearly remember drinking an Invigoration Draught beforehand…"
Slytherin looked at Wade. "I remember now. Earlier, I suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of dread in my heart, and then I woke up. But when I did, I found you tinkering with my basilisk. I was furious, so I intended to ask who you were and why you had killed my basilisk. Yet to my astonishment, the hand I reached out to place on your shoulder passed straight through your body."
Slytherin's ghost took a deep breath of air that did not exist. "That was when I realized I had become a ghost."
Wade immediately understood why he had felt that chill the first time. It turned out that Slytherin's ghost had been patting his shoulder.
"But even as a ghost, I should not have been invisible. Could it be that newly formed ghosts are invisible? I do not know," Slytherin shook his head.
"You do not know?" Wade found that hard to believe.
"I have never studied what happens after death," Slytherin snapped irritably. "Because I never believed I would die. Give me just a little more time, and I would have found a way to achieve immortality. But now… now I am already… dead?"
Wade now understood why Slytherin had still been researching bloodline curses before his death.
The first obstacle in the pursuit of immortality was always resisting the decay of the physical body, and only after that came the corruption of the soul.
"Hmm… our History of Magic professor, Professor Binns, once got up to teach one day and forgot to bring his body with him. Yes, he did not realize he had already died and still went on teaching as usual. Your situation is probably somewhat similar to his. That time when you fell asleep may not have been ordinary sleep at all, but rather… death," Wade said thoughtfully.
"Who? Professor Binns? Do you mean Cuthbert? Cuthbert Binns?" Slytherin asked in surprise.
"Yes. Professor Binns. He is still serving as the History of Magic professor at Hogwarts to this day, in the form of a ghost. To be honest, he may not have even noticed that he is already dead…"
Slytherin was silent for a long while before letting out a sigh. "Cuthbert. Back then, it was Godric and I who went together to invite him to teach at the castle. I rarely encountered a wizard with such a keen mind. To think that, after more than a thousand years…"
Professor Binns had joined Hogwarts as a professor at the very beginning of its founding. At the time, Slytherin greatly admired this wizard for his sharp intellect and vast knowledge.
He had never imagined that after leaving Hogwarts, the next time he would hear Professor Binns's name would be a thousand years later.
"So you simply fell asleep, then woke up and found yourself here? Or were you awakened by the magical fluctuations from the basilisk's corpse?" Wade steered the conversation back.
"I did indeed wake up and arrive here, and I had become a ghost… but whether I was awakened by the basilisk's corpse, that I cannot be sure," Slytherin said with a frown.
"The basilisk I raised, even in death, could not possibly have caused me to feel heart-palpitations. Yet when I woke up, I very clearly felt wave after wave of unease in my heart. That is highly unusual. Ever since I became one of the four founders, no one has ever been able to make me feel such dread."
Wade looked at Slytherin, unsure for the moment how to resolve the situation before him.
There were too many suspicious points, and too many answers he wanted to extract from Slytherin himself.
But Wade's cautious nature told him that simply destroying the ghost before him would be the safest choice.
Even if Slytherin's ghost claimed that he had only just awakened and might not have seen those experiments of his.
Still… could everything Slytherin's ghost said truly be trusted?
Moreover, the moment he appeared, he had attacked him.
"Heh, boy, I see killing intent in your eyes," Slytherin sneered.
"You are mistaken," Wade Reynolds said calmly.
"I do not make mistakes," Slytherin replied coldly. "Do you know what the world was like a thousand years ago? When the four of us founded the school, do you know how many wizards felt threatened and tried to destroy our castle?"
"Do you know how many people we killed in order to establish it? Compared to those truly vicious and ruthless wizards, the killing intent you carry is still far too raw." A trace of reminiscence flashed through Slytherin's eyes.
Before Hogwarts was founded, wizarding education and inheritance were mostly passed down within families.
A father taught his son, the son taught his own child. This meant that a wizard's strength was closely tied to their family background and lineage.
Powerful wizarding families were generally able to remain powerful, while weaker families, no matter how they passed things down, remained weak, simply because they lacked strong magical traditions to begin with.
The founding of Hogwarts shattered that balance.
It allowed all young witches and wizards to receive an education, even those born to Muggles.
The monopoly on knowledge was broken, and weaker wizarding families were given a chance to rise.
How could the powerful wizarding families possibly tolerate such a development?
Thus, in the early days of the school's founding, many powerful wizards came to attack the school…
In that chaotic and brutal age, when there was not even a Ministry of Magic, every battle was a fight to the death, utterly merciless.
Otherwise, how could Hogwarts, a single school, have so many combat constructs left behind to defend against external enemies?
Even if magic today may have advanced compared to the past, so-called wizard duels now felt, in comparison to that era, like children playing at games.
Slytherin once more surveyed everything in the laboratory. "If I am not mistaken, this is your laboratory, is it not? How crude… even the worst of my students had a better laboratory than this."
"I need to make sure you do not tell anyone about anything here," Wade said.
"About anything?" Slytherin looked puzzled. "Do you mean… you do not intend for others to know about your laboratory? Why?"
"This is my secret laboratory. I do not want others to know about it. And I do not know whether you truly only awakened today. If you witnessed my experiments…"
"Wait. Do you mean that even a student like you is not permitted to have their own laboratory, to the point that you need to set up a secret one? Have Hogwarts students become this formidable now?" Slytherin exclaimed in shock.
Although Slytherin had already seen through the fact that Wade was Muggle-born, he still acknowledged Wade's ability.
After all, even in his own era, there were very few students of Wade's age who possessed such capabilities.
In Slytherin's time, a student as talented as Wade would have been treated as a treasure. Forget one laboratory, he would have approved ten or eight without hesitation, and if there were none, he would have been willing to build them with his own hands.
Moreover, unless a student sought help, he would never interfere in what his students were researching.
Because careless interference would only restrict a student's innovative thinking in magic.
And yet now, a student like this could not even have a laboratory of his own? He had to build one in secret, conduct experiments in secret?
Could it be that the other students were all more capable than Wade Reynolds?
Wade knew that Slytherin had likely misunderstood something.
"It is not quite like that… I have carried out some experiments here that are not exactly appropriate, so…"
"Not exactly appropriate experiments?" Slytherin frowned. "Were you researching a plague curse capable of destroying a nation?"
"No."
"Then… were you researching how to rapidly exterminate Muggles?"
"I am not that fuckedup."
"Hiss… then were you researching how to summon demonic servants? Back in my time, I had not yet been able to prove whether demons truly existed. Has that already been confirmed now?"
"That is not it either."
"Then what exactly are you researching here that would provoke such outrage, to the point that you are so afraid of others finding out?" Slytherin asked in confusion.
"I conducted human experiments here. I dissected two people alive," Wade said fiercely.
"Huh? That is all?" Slytherin looked utterly puzzled.
Wade closed his mouth. He knew it.
He had already realized it when Slytherin started questioning him earlier.
Times were different now.
What he was doing, these so-called Dark Arts experiments, if placed in Slytherin's chaotic and brutal era, probably would not even count as children playing games.
Especially when he recalled Slytherin's experimental notes. Which of those experiments had not involved tearing apart a few people?
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