HP: Wormwood and Lightning Wood

The towers of Hogwarts appeared and disappeared in the thick fog of the night. The Headmaster's office was still dimly lit. Dumbledore quickly searched the ancient texts in the office but still found no similar examples.

According to Muggle terminology, West felt he suffered from schizophrenia, but because of his wizarding status, it was even more severe.

Dumbledore had no choice but to ask Snape to send West back to the Slytherin common room and give him more time to investigate.

After Snape led West away, Dumbledore sat blankly in his chair, then sighed and picked up a pen and paper.

Finishing with the last letter, he put down his pen, folded the letter, and placed it in the envelope. The dim light illuminated a line of cursive English on the envelope—

Recipient: Gellert Grindelwald.

This letter will traverse more than half a century of silent confrontation and be sent to Nurmengard.

West followed behind Snape, staring at the perpetually straight back ahead, walking in silence. Neither of them spoke a word, their shadows stretched long and thin in the dim candlelight of the corridor.

West was heartbroken. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't forget Snape's shocked and furious expression.

"Professor, I'm sorry, controlling you was not my intention..." West put his hands behind his back, nervously clenching his fists.

Snape finally stopped, giving West a dark look. "Go back and rest. Don't wander off again."

West lowered his head. "Yes, Professor."

Just as the stone door to the Slytherin common room closed, he heard Snape's sigh through the crack in the door, "...I don't blame you."

Snape turned and left, his black robes billowing like the silent waves of midnight. After what had happened, what right did he have to blame her child? It was all his fault.

West, on the other side of the door, breathed a sigh of relief, finally at ease.

West lay down on the bed, his thoughts returning to himself. What exactly was inside him? Vaguely, West could feel the connection between him and that thing; they shared this body.

West closed his eyes and whispered in his mind, "Are you there?"

After shouting several times, just as West was about to give up, a mysterious force pulled him into the abyss. His soul left his body and fell from the bed into a strange, alternate dimension.

It was pitch black here, and you couldn't see anything around you.

West raised his hand and found himself surrounded by a halo of white light, faintly illuminating the darkness.

"Hiss hiss hiss—" He heard a snake hissing behind him.

Before he could react, West was pinned to the ground by a massive body, letting out a painful groan.

A giant, dark green snake pinned him down, its massive head tilted back, looking down at him. Its blood-red tongue flicked in and out, and sharp fangs were faintly visible in its mouth.

The giant snake's eyes were green, with a strange ring of snake scales around the pupils.

West recalled the memory of Snape putting the Pensieve in the Meditation Basin—his eyes looked the same when he was mind-controlling Snape.

"...It's you," West said in a deep voice, almost with resentment. He wasn't afraid of the giant snake; he could even sense the invisible but unbreakable connection between them. The snake couldn't truly harm him.

The giant snake continued to press down on West, even shifting its body, trying to coil around him.

West didn't care at all. "Why would you do that to Professor Snape?"

The giant snake paused, narrowed its eyes, and surprisingly uttered human words, "I did what I wanted to do, why do I need a reason?" The voice was strikingly similar to West's, but even colder.

"...You're a madman. You don't want me to have a good time, do you?" West smirked coldly. "You parasite living in someone else's body? Don't you find yourself ridiculous?"

The giant snake seemed to have been struck on a sore spot. It tightened its grip on West's body, gritting its teeth, almost spitting blood in rage. "Shut up! You ignorant fool..."

West was being strangled and was breathing heavily, but he still refused to give in, raising his hand slightly as if to deliver a silent curse.

A clear deer cry and the sound of hooves shattered the silence of the eternal night. The giant serpent abruptly released West, moved aside, and stood upright, staring at him coldly.

West saw a doe and a stag emerge side by side from the darkness.

The doe and stag approached West, stepping through dappled white light. The doe spoke, her voice gentle and familiar, "We've waited a long time for this moment, child."

West stared blankly at the doe before him, and unconsciously stroked her fluffy fur. Long-buried memories surged back.

The uncontrollable magical outburst at birth, the near-death experience of young Harry himself, and the frantic figures of his parents as they searched through ancient texts all night to save him.

One late night, the mother held her son, who was burning hot, and hummed a lullaby with a worried expression, while the father rushed to the mother with an ancient book in his arms.

After a brief discussion, the two resolutely opened the protective array of Potter's old mansion, and with immense pain, severed the guardian spirit connected to their souls, engraving it into his soul as a seal.

The final scene takes place on a quiet, windless night when Voldemort suddenly bursts into their house and kills their parents with two Killing Curses.

A flash of green light left behind only two corpses that were gradually losing their temperature.

Even after Lily collapsed, her eyes remained fixed on him and Harry, her gaze tender and lingering.

"It's you..." West's hands trembled uncontrollably, and his emerald green eyes were already brimming with tears.

"You are a special child, West. You were born strong, you are the master of magic," the stag said softly, rubbing its antlers against West's palm.

"But your young body cannot withstand such a vast amount of magic—in order to protect you and Harry, your father and I had to return to the Potter family's old house to find a way to suppress your magical outburst." The doe, Lily, gently comforted West.

"To keep you alive, we must suppress your power, West," Jaime said softly, his antlers drawing an ancient rune in the air. "We found the oldest soul contract, using our own guardian spirit and a fragment of our soul as a vessel to seal your other half—that is, Little T."

The giant snake chuckled and transformed into a tall, slender young man who looked exactly like West.

"We left our memories on the guardian spirit, firstly to accompany Little Te, and secondly to wait for you to come," Lily said, her eyes filled with shame as she looked at Little Te.

After hearing this, Xiao Te could no longer laugh; he lowered his head with a gloomy expression.

He wanted to say, "Mother, Father, I don't hate you." West gained his freedom, but lost his love. And he, in this dark and hopeless cage, could hear his mother humming lullabies, weaving starlight with antlers; he could hear his father, in a proud tone, telling the adventure stories passed down through generations of the Potter family, and the beautiful memories of how he and his mother loved each other.

These are things that West and Harry could never have, and will never have again.

He sometimes thought that things wouldn't be so bad if things continued like this, but the seal was getting weaker and weaker. He and West would eventually merge back together, and his parents would disappear, just like that silent, windless night. He would die again, leaving them without even a single memory.

Watching the doe and stag grow weaker day by day, his hatred grew ever stronger. Their parents were about to die a second time, while West and Harry were completely unaware, living their happy school life outside.

So when the opportunity arose, he launched a revenge plan, intending to anger Snape and make West be ostracized from then on. It was a plan that would definitely cause West a lot of pain—which now seems incredibly naive.

"...I'm sorry." No matter how composed West was usually, he was still just an eleven-year-old child in front of his parents. "If you hadn't placed your Patronus on me, you and Father wouldn't be so weak, and you wouldn't even have the strength to fight Voldemort..." His eyes were filled with tears.

"Perhaps this is our fate, West." Lily sat down next to West, letting him lean against her, while James used his enormous antlers to push another child toward him.

The two Wests sat awkwardly together.

"For you and Harry, your mother and I have no regrets." James's low, husky voice was incredibly gentle.

West trembled violently, his eyes welling up with tears. He clutched his chest, barely able to breathe, "Why did it have to be like this..."

Lily's soft voice was like the morning light piercing through the night, "Darling, even if death separates us, love will never die. We love you and Harry, and that will never change."

She and James gently enveloped the two frail souls with their warm bodies, and the dark space was gradually illuminated by the light of day. Beneath them, boundless green fields and wildflowers spread out.

West couldn't hold back his tears, which gradually dampened the doe's soft fur.

As the morning light seeped through the surface of the Black Lake into Slytherin's dormitory, West slowly opened his eyes, his face already streaked with tears.