The sickly, iron-fisted beauty in Harry Potter

"But Professor, do you remember the question I asked you before?"

Dolly looked intently at Snape and said, "Professor Dumbledore has no intention of helping me pursue the responsibility of the mastermind behind this."

"In other words, this mastermind may attack me again next time."

“Even though home and Hogwarts are safe, there will always be times when I have to leave those two places.”

There is an old Chinese saying: "You can only be a thief for a thousand days, but you can't guard against thieves for a thousand days. Over time, there will always be times when you are lax."

Dolly continued, "Halloween in first grade, back then you could say I was young and naive."

"The Christmas surprise attack in second grade was the result of my laxity."

"And what about third grade, and fourth grade?"

Dolly shrugged and said, "Professor, my personal safety is threatened, and I want to protect myself."

“This is my legal right, but it has not been satisfied. Since no one is upholding justice, I have no choice but to take action myself.”

"I just call it all revenge."

Snape shook his head, though he had to admit that Dolly had a point.

But no matter how you look at it, facing these dangerous guys head-on is much more dangerous than obediently attending Hogwarts.

Moreover, Dumbledore may not say he wants to catch the mastermind, but he certainly won't ignore it.

After all, Dumbledore would never let anyone who tried to harm Hogwarts students get away with it, but there are always priorities in life.

Just like when we faced Grindelwald back then.

Although the final showdown was destined to be a one-on-one duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

But the two sides engaged in a back-and-forth battle of wits and courage for many years.

Of course, Snape couldn't explain these principles to Dolly, nor did he think Dolly would listen.

He had to come up with a more reasonable way to dispel Dolly's doubts, so he said, "You are a smart person. A smart person should not put himself in a dangerous situation, let alone cross the line of the law."

"Even if you do manage to capture your opponent, is it really appropriate to be sentenced by the Ministry of Magic for it?"

"Dolly, good people are always threatened by bad people, not because good people are not proactive or strong enough."

"It's because if bad people have even the slightest flaw, they will become prisoners. Do you understand?"

Dolly chuckled.

She had initially thought that using the word "revenge" would resonate deeply with Snape.

But things have turned out differently than expected.

Snape certainly had a deep understanding of the word "revenge," but his feeling about it was that he would go to hell alone, and the rest of the people would just have to wait for his good news.

So when Snape saw Dolly about to take revenge on someone, he did his best to stop her.

Because he didn't want Dolly to become like him in the future.

"Alright, Professor, let's put this topic aside for now and talk about something else."

"How's the escape room going?"

When Snape heard Dolly say she wanted to change the subject, his expression relaxed a little, but when he heard about the Chamber of Secrets, his face turned even uglier.

Clearly, he didn't want to discuss this topic either.

“Miss Dursley, it is clear that you are not qualified to discuss this topic…”

“I do, Professor.”

Dolly laughed and said, "Yesterday I was sitting face-to-face with a mouse that had lost a finger on the train."

"Don't you guys really think this is dangerous?"

Snape took a deep breath.

He now knew perfectly well who the so-called "rat" was—Peter Pettigrew, the one who had truly betrayed Harry's parents.

Snape naturally hated Peter Pettigrew to the core.

Although Snape himself bears some responsibility for the leak of Harry's parents' residence.

But Snape had already decided to die for Lily.

Those responsible for that incident should have died, but Peter Pettigrew is still alive. How could Snape possibly tolerate that?

So when Snape learned of this information, he immediately wanted to capture Peter Pettigrew and make him atone for Lily's death.

Unfortunately, he followed Dumbledore and swore to obey Dumbledore's orders in everything, so he could only endure it.

"Regarding it, Peter Pettigrew, I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

Dolly was amazed by Snape's suspenseful demeanor.

It's not that I'm amazed that Snape doesn't keep things in suspense; in fact, Snape's ability to be sarcastic and unpredictable is by no means weak.

He could use similar words to humiliate Harry.

For example, Dolly heard him say to herself: "The bad news is that you lost five points for Gryffindor, but the good news is that your friend Mr. Longbottom lost ten points. You are not the dumbest little lion."

Dolly was amazed that Snape was still keeping things mysterious. Did he not hate Peter Pettigrew as much anymore?

"good news?"

Dolly obediently replied.

Snape immediately replied, "The rat in Ron's hand is not the real thing; it has turned into a real rat. Dumbledore discovered this yesterday."

Dolly was taken aback, then realized what she meant and said, "Peter Pettigrew has already left Ron's side and is carrying out his activities in secret?"

"That's it."

"How could Ron not have noticed?"

"Actually, he didn't realize that, probably because to his stupid brain, all mice are pretty much the same, and I heard that he was extremely averse to other pets getting close to his mice."

"If this mouse had a familiar pet friend, it would probably have been exposed long ago."

Dolly couldn't help but think that if Crookshanks could get close to Ron's rats, they would most likely discover something was amiss.

Unfortunately, Ron was even more wary of Crookshank than his pet mouse, and the intelligent Crookshank was too lazy to bother Ron's mouse, which allowed the mouse to slip through the cracks.

Dolly also remembered Ron's words.

That is, all this mouse has been doing lately is eating and sleeping. Ron is too worried that the mouse is about to die of old age to pay attention to the details of the mouse's behavior.

"Let me guess, if it's bad news..."

"A dangerous Death Eater who can turn into a rat, wandering through Hogwarts' sewer network with a dangerous diary?"

"Is this also the reason for the new school rules?"

Snape nodded, while Dolly held her forehead.

"Isn't there any other way, like the Marauder's Map? Back then, even three students could modify it, so why couldn't Dumbledore modify it?"

"Dumbledore tried it."

Snape said calmly, "That map relies on the construction maps left by the founders."

"Unfortunately, the Hogwarts underground water network was added later and is not on that construction map."

Before Dolly could say anything more, Snape interrupted, "We've mobilized the house-elves, and even the owls."

"In the end, we still couldn't find Peter Pettigrew... or rather, we found a lot of mice, but we couldn't tell which mouse in the sewer was him."

Dolly remained silent, accepting everything in her mind.

As expected, the situation has become very difficult to handle.

Yes, it's troublesome, not dangerous.

That means everyone has basically revealed their hand, but Voldemort won't just obediently retreat, and Peter Pettigrew will most likely listen to Voldemort.

Anyway, Peter Pettigrew has been a mouse for over ten years, so he doesn't feel any pressure to continue being a mouse in the sewers.

With Dumbledore's tight security, even if Peter Pettigrew, as a mouse, could appear and disappear without a trace, it would be almost impossible for him to open the Chamber of Secrets again and release the Basilisk to harm the students.

After all, Dumbledore could use magic to seal off every secret passage that a mouse could enter.

Of course, this is a very arduous task, but judging from Dumbledore's proficiency in casting defensive magic on Dolly's family, he is probably quite skilled at it, so Dolly doesn't need to feel sorry for him.

In this way, compared to the situation in the original story where several students were on the verge of death and only survived thanks to the author's blessing, Hogwarts is indeed much safer now.

There should be virtually no more student injuries.

This means that Dolly's efforts in the first half of the semester were not in vain; at least she prevented Hermione from colliding with the Basilisk again.

But this situation is clearly not what Hogwarts wants.

Peter Pettigrew is a very patient opponent; Dumbledore can't possibly spend years trying to outwit a mouse.

So this matter still needs to be resolved eventually.

Capture Peter Pettigrew, destroy the diary, then capture the Basilisk and imprison or make it into a specimen to completely resolve the locked-room mystery.

Only in this way can it be considered a complete victory for Hogwarts.

But now it seems that achieving this goal is very difficult.

The difficulty here isn't so much in terms of sheer difficulty, but rather the lack of any clear direction or clue...

"Would Professor Dumbledore really be luring the rat out of its hole?"

Dolly suddenly realized something and asked Snape in surprise.

Snape glared at Dolly, as if to ask, "How did you know?"

It turned out that Dolly had only guessed, not foreseen, and she breathed a sigh of relief, saying, "Dumbledore has already arranged this matter. Don't cause him any trouble. It will be resolved in a few months."

Dolly's lips curled into a smile. "A few months?" she asked.

"too slow."

"Dolly!"

Snape tried to persuade her further, but Dolly made a gesture to stop him, saying, "Dumbledore has his own plans, I know that very well, I accept that, and I will not disturb him."

"But I must get my revenge. I need to find out what the guy who threw me into France was thinking."