From Hogwarts to Sturhaven

A figure dressed in a black robe and wearing a cloak stood there, facing the end of the street.

"Follow him." Dumbledore didn't explain, his steps were faster than those of a centenarian.

Even so, Dumbledore still tried to remain quiet, as if afraid of waking the sleeping spider.

“We’re in an illusion created by ancient magic.” Ivy walked past Dumbledore, who was trying to hide himself in the shadows of the hedges. “No one here will notice us, not even Harry.”

Ivy caught up with the figure hiding under the black cloak and ripped off his hood.

A bald head, like that of a dead man, was exposed to the air. His face looked burned, his features blurred, twisted strangely like wax, and the whites of his eyes seemed to be permanently bloodshot.

"Voldemort?" Ivy hadn't expected to see him here. For the past year, he'd been constantly entangled with Ivy, sometimes firing killing curses at him, and sometimes sending him gifts of soul fragments.

This is Godric's Valley. Ivy immediately understood everything.

No wonder Dumbledore seemed so familiar with this place, because the Dumbledore family had lived here for quite some time, and even his mother and sister were buried here.

“Ah… Harry.” Dumbledore came to Ivy’s side and sighed softly.

Following his gaze—that was also the direction Voldemort was staring in—a heated argument was erupting in the living room.

"Listen to me! Dad! Mom!" This was Harry's roar, which Ivy had heard once when he jumped off his broomstick to fight the Golden Snitch.

“We’re listening…” Ivy didn’t recognize the woman’s voice, but he knew that the woman making the voice was Lily Potter, Harry’s mother.

“We must! We must get out of here immediately!” Harry’s voice was slightly calmer, but still filled with fear. “Voldemort!” he then changed his name, “The Man from Nowhere is on his way!”

Voldemort, who was standing by the hedge, had no intention of watching any longer. He drifted past the iron gate like a wisp of smoke and came to the wooden door.

With a flick of his pale fingers, he drew his wand, and the wooden door swung open with a bang.

"Who's there!" a tall man shouted from the living room as he walked toward the foyer.

"Don't go, Dad!" But Harry was only met with a nasty laugh and a bright green spell.

“Avada Kedavra!”

James fell heavily to the ground, and Harry roared as he tried to rush out, but his mother grabbed him tightly, holding him in her arms, and shouted at Voldemort, who was stepping over James's body, "Don't kill Harry! Don't kill Harry! Please, don't kill Harry!"

“Avada Kedavra!”

The pale green spell flashed a second time, and the woman with deep red hair fell down like her husband, her face still bearing the lingering fear and pleading.

"Ahhhhhh!" The sound coming from Harry's mouth was utterly otherworldly as he howled and charged toward Voldemort.

“Avada Kedavra!”

This was the third time Voldemort had uttered this spell, the spell, filled with boundless hatred, flying towards Harry, but it did not succeed as it had the previous two times.

Ivy and Dumbledore, standing nearby, could see it clearly: the green Killing Curse backfired the moment it struck Harry.

Voldemort's Death Curse shattered his own body, like a pale plaster statue being thrown to the ground, leaving nothing but pain and fear in the blink of an eye.

“I never imagined… I never imagined it would be like this…” Ivy saw the tears in Dumbledore’s eyes. “This is truly amazing magic…”

Ivy didn't know what he was talking about—whether it was Lily Potter's "love" to protect Harry, or whether Ivy had recreated all the ancient magic.

Before he could express his opinion, a thick fog appeared out of nowhere and engulfed everything.

This is the inherent logic of illusion magic. It will continuously cycle through all of this until the person entering the illusion passes through. This was a result that Ivy set up when she used ancient magic to create that wall.

The thick fog dissipated again, and Ivy and Dumbledore had returned to the small square in Godric's Hollow, where Harry was also present.

Ivy and Dumbledore watched him get up from the ground, wipe away his tears, and rush into the darkness without looking back.

“How can Harry get through his illusion…” Dumbledore asked softly, “Does he have to defeat Voldemort?”

“This illusion originates from the intruder’s deepest desire, or rather, obsession,” Ivy explained.

"Like the Mirror of Erised or the Boggart?" Dumbledore looked around, and Voldemort's figure reappeared in the square.

“Like the Mirror of Eris or the Boggart,” Ivy affirmed.

“But that doesn’t make sense…” Dumbledore sighed. “Harry told me he saw his family in the Mirror of Erised… so why is Voldemort here?”

“You really don’t have a single suspicion?” Ivy asked, “even after I told you Harry is a Parseltongue?”

Dumbledore closed his eyes, unwilling to face the reality: "This illusion... also belongs to Voldemort?"

“I think so.” Ivy nodded slightly, watching Voldemort once again embark on his path of no return. “Their deepest desires and obsessions are all here…”

Chapter 138 Living Soul Weapon

Just as the Mirror of Erised revealed, Harry's greatest obsession was with his parents.

As for Voldemort, to be precise, it is the fragment of Voldemort's soul hidden in the scar on Harry's forehead. Its deepest obsession was the moment when the Killing Curse was reflected back by the love magic on Harry.

The emotions of the two people, intertwined within Ivy's ancient magic, constitute this illusion. The two repeatedly clash, yet are powerless to change anything.

Harry witnesses his parents' deaths time and time again, and Voldemort's Killing Curse is repeatedly deflected. Like two snakes biting each other's tails, there is absolutely no way they can escape from this illusion on their own.

Unless one of them dies completely, or the two become one.

Voldemort still has several Horcruxes, so even though he is like a lost soul, he is not truly dead.

Under Lily Potter's magical protection, Harry has absolutely no chance of merging with Voldemort's soul fragments.

After witnessing the Potters' deaths once again, Dumbledore sighed, "A cruel fate has linked an infant child with the most terrifying dark wizard in the world. I don't know what the past ten years have meant to him... but I don't want him to live with this fate for the rest of his life."

“Voldemort’s soul was shattered in that murder ten years ago, and a small fragment attached itself to Harry’s forehead. I think that’s why this illusion keeps looping.” Dumbledore looked at Harry and Voldemort with a sorrowful gaze. “In a way, Harry has become one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes.”

“Perhaps I don’t need to explain the meaning of Horcruxes to you, Ivy?” Dumbledore paused, looking at Ivy beside him.

This was the first time he explicitly used the word "Hornet" in front of Ivy, which may also signify that Dumbledore had truly begun to trust Ivy.

Ivy smiled silently. As long as Dumbledore needed his help, he was no longer difficult to control. As the saying goes, "He who has no desires is invincible." Dumbledore, who was focused on teaching at Hogwarts, was the most difficult to deal with. Perhaps Grindelwald from decades ago was the most qualified to say about this.

“To use evil dark magic to split one’s own soul and then attach it to an object, so as to escape death when the body is destroyed, in order to survive temporarily.” Ivy shook her head. “But I have to say, only the stupidest person would use this method to escape death, let alone Voldemort. He must have split his soul many times and created multiple Horcruxes, otherwise he would not have been forced to create a living Horcrux because of one death.”

"You mean... Voldemort had more than one Horcrux?" Dumbledore's white eyebrows furrowed, his expression unusually serious. Although he had already guessed that Voldemort had used Horcruxes to avoid death, he hadn't expected him to be so depraved as to create multiple Horcruxes. "Your speculation is not without merit... If that's really the case, then his depravity far exceeds my imagination..."

"Don't kill Harry, don't kill Harry, please, don't kill Harry!" Lily Potter's pleading voice rang out again, interrupting Dumbledore's thoughts.

He glanced into the room and said painfully, "They're all good people... Stop, Ivy, stop... Harry has suffered enough..."

“If you’d like, I can help erase that memory,” Ivy suggested. “Once he’s ready to accept it all, then we can return it to him.”

"Thank you, Ivy, thank you." Dumbledore closed his eyes, seemingly unwilling to look at the painful tears on Harry's face.

Ivy pulled out her goblin silver wand and waved it a few times in the air. The air rippled outwards like water, and a new void rapidly expanded until it completely engulfed the entire Godric Valley.

Harry fell through the wall, and Ivy caught him with magic. Before he could cry out "Mama," a gentle spell struck him first. Harry's eyes rolled back, and he passed out.

“Forget everything,” Ivy murmured, reaching out to pull a thin wisp of silver mist from Harry’s temple and placing it into the small vial Harry had been clutching. It was the one Snape had used to store potions, which Harry had brought with him when they rushed into the final checkpoint.

Ivy handed the vial to Dumbledore, who stared at it for a long time before putting it in the pocket of his robe.

"Miss Worley seems to have also reached this stage. How is she?" Dumbledore didn't continue the previous topic, but instead asked about another student who had come here.

“She’s gone.” Ivy waved her wand again, and a door outlined in gold thread appeared on the wild wall of the grassland, revealing the scene on the other side.

Wearing her school uniform and the Slytherin badge, Cassandra stood before the Mirror of Erised.

"Headmaster Dumbledore, Professor Victor, good evening." Cassandra turned around and greeted the two men upon hearing the noise.

“Congratulations, Miss Volay. You have passed all the tests.” Dumbledore passed through the wall that Ivy had built with ancient magic and came to the Mirror of Erised.

He stood in front of the mirror for a long time before speaking clearly, "I will announce your scores in this test at the year-end banquet. Now leave here and go back to bed. Professor Victor, please see them off."

Ivy nodded and led Cassandra and Harry, who was still unconscious, back the way they came.

Upon arriving at the room where Fulvi the Cerberus had once stayed, Ivy immediately saw the three young wizards, Malfoy, Ron, and Hermione, confronting Filch.

It turns out that after Ivy and Dumbledore passed through Snape's Black Flame Gate and entered the final barrier, the three young wizards did not heed Dumbledore's instructions to go back to bed, but instead waited at the door for their friend to return.

For some reason, the three of them started arguing, which was so loud that it attracted Filch's cat, and then Filch himself came running after them.

As a Squib who cannot cast spells normally, Filch cherishes every opportunity to punish the young wizards, and therefore wants to take all three of them away.

But the three young wizards who had just met the headmaster and the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor underground did not think they had done anything wrong.

Since they have already passed part of the hurdles, they should be exempt from point deductions, just as Dumbledore announced at the banquet.

The two sides argued endlessly, and the situation remained deadlocked until Ivy returned with the unconscious Harry.

"Harry!" Ron and Hermione both rushed over to check on their friend, asking worriedly, "Is he alright, Professor Victor?"

“He just fainted,” Ivy replied gently, then turned to Filch and said, “The headmaster told me to send them all back; leave this to me.”

Although Filch seemed reluctant, he was, after all, a Squib. He could be tough on underage wizards, but he didn't have much courage when facing a professor like Ivy.

Chapter 139 Casual Chat in the Ward

The next morning, the story of the five little wizards' adventures spread throughout the castle.

"Did you hear?" a few Ravenclaws whispered among themselves. "Malfoy from Slytherin, the first-year student who always carries around a ceramic dragon! He and another first-year Slytherin girl, along with three other Gryffindors, stormed into that classroom on the fourth floor! He had the dragon burn off a troll's head! And with the help of another Slytherin, he passed Dumbledore's test!"

"Only trolls? Nothing else?" someone objected. "I heard that the Slytherin girl was the main force. She blew up the giant chess piece, cut open the troll's stomach, and even met Dumbledore himself in the final level."

"Ha! The version I heard is completely different. The main characters are Harry Potter from Gryffindor and his two friends!" A passing Hufflepuff student joined the discussion. "They encountered the Devil's Web set up by Professor Sprout, the Flying Key Room set up by Professor Flitwick, and the Potions Room set up by Professor Snape. But when they passed the last obstacle, Harry Potter was seriously injured and is still lying in the school hospital!"

Curled up on the hospital bed, Harry was completely listless. He had no memory of what happened after entering the Blackfire Gate that day; he had woken up to find himself lying here.

His classmates brought him lots of candy, but he wasn't interested at all. The magical candies he used to never tire of seemed to have lost their flavor, and Harry had absolutely no urge to put them in his mouth. Lately, he'd been having nightmares, and sometimes he'd even wake up in the morning to find his pillow soaked with tears.