"..."
In the silence, William raised his hand and pointed his magic wand at Snape. He now had reason to suspect that this Death Eater had not given up his evil intentions.
Yet Dumbledore trusts him...
Bah, that old fool's eyes are indeed damn blind.
I'll have to find an opportunity to remove him from the headmaster position; this is too harmful.
In the dream, Snape, who appeared as a chemistry professor, was still wearing a white lab coat. He stared at William for a while, and then his gaze shifted to the side of William.
"...Do you two have a grudge?"
William also turned his head to look.
"Uh, that was all stuff from student days."
James also stared at Snape for a long time. He had noticed Snape standing on the other side of the corridor when that handsome man started screaming, and of course, he recognized his high school... nemesis.
Of course, he also saw the smoke that poured into his son's mouth, but as someone not familiar with the wizarding world, he didn't know what it was. He wanted to ask just now, but the silent staring between William and Snape made him drop the thought. Now, seeing that the topic involved him, he finally spoke up.
"You really recognize... uh, what's with those looks? Tsk, did you steal his wife?"
William looked at the two, whose atmosphere was getting tense, but didn't expect that just as he spoke, the atmosphere, which had dropped to freezing point, instantly warmed. James even coughed awkwardly twice.
"?"
Really, bro?
"Lily..."
James stared at William awkwardly for a few moments and sighed helplessly, preparing to explain.
But at the moment this name appeared, Snape, who had just been immersed in memories, suddenly reacted like a porcupine with its quills raised. He unhesitatingly waved his hand, and the next moment, James was sent flying, but William was quick, waving his wand, "Accio."
In the next moment, James was pulled back with his tie at his neck.
"Shut up, if you won't, I can help you shut it."
Snape's voice was cold, with a slight tremble, and the sadness and fury in his heart were even more intense than when he had just seen Voldemort.
"Is this in Harry's dream? Are you mad?"
William was a bit puzzled. He almost guessed why Snape had that attitude towards Harry: after all, Harry's face was not entirely identical to James's, but pretty much the same. James was really just a larger version of Harry, with the only difference being Harry's slightly messy hair.
"..."
Taking a deep breath, Snape closed his eyes. After a long time, he finally put away the malice that was almost palpable around him, but the man still had a tense face. Without a word, he turned and walked towards Harry, who was standing with eyes closed.
"Professor..."
Hermione instinctively protected the boy behind her. The development of events left her a bit flustered. A professor using the Killing Curse on another person, another senior directly using the Cruciatus Curse to torture the Dark Lord, and now she was most inclined to trust the completely unknown James, mostly because he and Harry looked identical.
"Step aside." Snape's voice was still cold.
"...What happened to my son?" James crowded over as well.
"Wait—"
"Alright, Miss Granger, you should leave now and make space. Tell Dumbledore that things are more or less as I expected."
William stepped forward. After a pause, he gently waved his hand. Before the girl could struggle, a sense of suffocation suddenly overwhelmed her. She instinctively wanted to take a deep breath, but a strangely flavored liquid surged into her stomach within moments.
"Hermione, are you awake?"
A hand pulled the unconscious Hermione up, and the flustered girl instinctively latched onto it.
"Wait, wait..."
The boy she clung to struggled for a moment, but didn't break free.
"...Ron?"
Finally emerging from the sense of suffocation, Hermione stepped back, only to see the flushed-face boy she had been holding onto.
"Of course, it's me."
Ron felt his ears burning, but then he remembered something, turning to look behind him, "Professor, Hermione is awake."
"I noticed."
The cat perched on the niche jumped down, and Professor McGonagall walked slowly to the two of them. She stared at the still-breathing Hermione for a long time, finally confirming that she was unharmed, and barely breathed a sigh of relief. With her face tense, she squeezed out a sentence through clenched teeth—
"You've been asleep for three days; the Mandrake matured the day before yesterday. Good, there's no problem. Now tell me, where are William and the others?"
As a deputy headmistress, Professor McGonagall naturally knew the entire process, after all, William didn't know how long this journey would take, and it wasn't possible for Dumbledore to stay all the time, so of course, they needed someone who could handle the situation, and Professor McGonagall was naturally the best candidate.
"But I clearly felt like only half an hour passed—"
Hermione paused, with the image of the expressionless boy tormenting Voldemort flashing in her mind, but she quickly shook her head, putting those thoughts aside—
"William told me to tell Dumbledore that things turned out more or less as he predicted—"
Dumbledore arrived two and a half minutes later. When the elderly man burning with flames appeared in the center of the room, he instinctively glanced at William, who was still lying on the bed next to Hermione, eyes closed and unawakened. The old man's eyelids twitched noticeably.
"What's the situation?"
He turned his gaze to the only three people still awake in the room.
Hermione quickly raised her hand, as if answering a question in class, and she quickly summarized the events without mentioning the Unforgivable Curses. After the girl finished speaking, Dumbledore finally nodded. Although his expression hadn't improved at all, he still said, "Well done, Gryffindor gains thirty points."
"But, Professor, what about Harry's situation, and Voldemort—"
"Hic—"
Ron was so startled by the name that he hiccuped.
"Don't worry, we anticipated this kind of situation—" Dumbledore shook his head, "Or rather, it's what we initially predicted."
Indeed, before William went into the dream, it was anticipated—"There's a high possibility that Voldemort is residing inside Harry, and if he intends to consume Harry's mind—but he could also be an independent entity... After all, his actions always give me the impression of having a madness, curious about Harry to the point of not wanting to resurrect so much anymore."
With this in mind, Dumbledore walked over to the "Pensieve" in the center of the room, bypassing the bright gray pipes connected to the sickbeds, and took out his magic wand, gently stirring the gray mist floating above the Pensieve, drawing a wisp into his temple—
The next moment, a few voices of argument reached his ears.