Grindelwald frowned.

"Judging by the legends, that's the most likely explanation."

"Death may truly exist. It's simply almost never shown its face."

Dumbledore pressed the point.

"But that's exactly the question. Why did Death suddenly appear — and why was it hellbent on killing you specifically?"

Hermione looked up.

"Probably because of the Deathly Hallows."

Both men turned to look at her.

Hermione gathered her thoughts and spoke slowly.

"My guess is that the three Deathly Hallows are, on the surface, simply extraordinary alchemical artifacts. But each one secretly seals away a portion of Ancient Magic."

"When held separately, that magic never triggers."

"But once all three are gathered in a single person's hands, they combine. A complete sealing and summoning spell activates. The wielder's magic is instantly suppressed, a link mark is branded onto them, and whatever calls itself 'Death' is summoned to descend."

Dumbledore's eyes lit up.

"Put that way, it does make sense."

He turned the memory of Gellert's experience over in his mind, and the more he examined it, the more it fit.

"Gellert was targeted the exact moment all three Hallows came into his possession."

Grindelwald nodded. "The timing aligns perfectly."

"So the legend, that gathering all three Deathly Hallows makes you the Master of Death — is nothing but a trap."

Hermione let the conclusion land cleanly. "You don't become Death's master. You become its prey."

Dumbledore was quiet for a moment, his brow creasing again.

"That still leaves one question."

"Why? Why would Death do this?"

Hermione raised her head. Her gaze had gone somewhere deep.

More than the motive, what she actually wanted to know was something else entirely.

Why did this so-called "Death" use Ancient Magic?

Ancient Magic was a wizard's craft. A human wizard's craft.

If Death was a deity, or the manifestation of some universal law, how could it possibly wield something like that?

Dumbledore and Grindelwald both noticed the shift in her.

"Hermione, rest for now." Dumbledore's voice was gentle. "There's no rush on this. We investigate slowly."

Grindelwald nodded. "You look awful. You burned through too much."

Hermione waved a hand.

"The drain isn't the problem. A few days of rest will sort that out."

She looked at them both, and her expression didn't lighten.

"The real problem is that whatever we're dealing with is extraordinarily powerful."

"Far beyond either of you. Far beyond me."

Both men went still.

Hermione didn't soften it.

"If that seal hadn't been sitting there for so long that most of its power had already bled away, I never could have broken it."

Dumbledore frowned. "The might of Ancient Magic is indeed beyond imagining."

It wasn't just a matter of raw power.

Hermione kept that part to herself. Her chest felt heavy with it.

She hadn't told them everything.

On the surface, yes, she had undone the dark figure's magic. But if she was being honest with herself, her Ancient Magic compared to that thing's was an absolute joke.

She knew Silence magic too. She understood exactly how it worked.

Sealing another person's magic only achieved total suppression when the target's rank was significantly lower than your own. Against someone of equal standing, the effect dropped sharply. Full suppression became impossible.

That dark figure had stripped Grindelwald, Grindelwald at his absolute peak, of every shred of resistance in an instant. That wasn't a contest of equals. That was a higher tier crushing a lower one from above.

And then there was the link mark.

Hermione's own Link could connect multiple targets at once, but the marks she left had no tracking ability. None at all.

The mark that thing had branded above Grindelwald's head ignored distance, ignored space, and homed in with pinpoint precision. It had descended in an instant.

What did that mean?

Was it possible that advancing Ancient Magic to higher levels wasn't simply a matter of raw power increasing, that it eventually gave rise to entirely different abilities, qualitative changes she hadn't even conceived of yet?

If that was true...

Her mind drifted, almost despite itself, to [Ancient Magic: Sacrifice]. Stuck at Lv 1 since the beginning. Never trained, mostly because there had never been any way to train it, and she had never once poured Soul Energy into its proficiency.

She turned the dark figure's strength over in her mind, weighing it quietly.

At minimum, one full major tier above her.

Hermione was currently Tier 6. Same as Dumbledore. Same as Grindelwald.

By the magic book's scale, that unknown "Death" was at least Tier 7. Possibly higher.

In a world where she had assumed the noseless freak was the ceiling, a terrifying existence had appeared whose upper limit she couldn't even see the bottom of.

Great.

The room had gone quiet. The air inside sat heavy.

Hermione closed her eyes. Her fingertips tapped the tabletop in a slow, even rhythm, tap, tap, tap, as her mind ran at full speed, pulling every thread and connecting them one by one.

Nearly a full minute passed.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald exchanged a glance. Neither of them interrupted.

Finally, Hermione raised her head.

"Albus. Help me look into someone."

"Who?"

"The person who held this inheritance before me. The transfer student who enrolled at Hogwarts as a fifth-year, over a century ago."

"Find everything that can be found on him."

Dumbledore gave a small start.

"You mean..."

"Yes. That person." Hermione nodded. "I have a feeling everything leads back to him."

Grindelwald's eyes narrowed. "You think the transfer student has something to do with the dark figure?"

"It's more than a suspicion."

Hermione laced her fingers together and propped her chin on them.

"To wield Ancient Magic at that level, he's probably the only person in the entire history of the Wizarding World who ever managed it."

"Even if it isn't him directly, he knows something."

She paused.

"More importantly, after he graduated from Hogwarts, he vanished completely. No trace. No word. Nothing."

"It was as if he had never existed in the Wizarding World at all."

"I used to think he'd simply gone into seclusion with his secrets. But looking at it now, it was nowhere near that simple."

Even the Ancient Magic Keepers who should have been living in the Hogwarts Map Chamber were gone. All that was left was a single book, sitting there alone.

During the month Nicolas Flamel spent repairing the Time-Turner, Hermione had found time to return to the Map Chamber, the same place where she had first encountered traces of Ancient Magic. The result was identical to her second year. Completely unchanged. Whatever had happened in that chamber had happened long before she ever set foot in it.

She hadn't thought to dig into it after first learning Ancient Magic. But now, with everything that had just occurred, she couldn't afford not to.

Ancient Magic.

Death.

And the previous inheritor, the transfer student, the senior who had turned Avada Chain Lightning into an art form, the one person who could grind ten Voldemorts into the dirt single-handed.

There was a connection between those three. There had to be.

Putting it all together, Hermione was certain. Buried in this somewhere was a secret large enough to shake the entire Wizarding World to its foundation.

Dumbledore's gaze sharpened.

"Now that you say it — I do recall something."

He stood and began to pace slowly across the room.

"The matter of that transfer student was strange, even at the time. The significant things he did during his years at Hogwarts were kept under extreme secrecy, but I still caught vague rumors of them."

"And yet, when I first enrolled, he should have been in his seventh year. He hadn't graduated yet. But I never once laid eyes on him. I only ever heard his name in rumors." His voice took on a weight. "That makes no sense."

"Unless something far more pressing forced him to leave Hogwarts before finishing, and whatever that was, it was classified at a level even higher than the feats he'd accomplished inside those walls. So thoroughly sealed that not a single fragment of information survived."

"Or rather..."

A sharp light moved through Dumbledore's eyes.

"Could not be left to survive."

➤ Next: Operation Witch Commences

Chapter 374 - Operation Witch Commences

Hermione's expression sharpened.

Something like this had happened.

There was a massive secret being kept from the entire Wizarding World, one that could bring unimaginable catastrophe down on Hogwarts. That was the only explanation for measures this extreme.

Dumbledore sat back down, his face grave.

"You're right. This requires a thorough investigation."

"I'll mobilize every resource I have to find out everything about that transfer student."

Grindelwald nodded. "The Witch Cult has people inside Ministries of Magic across every nation. I'll have them cooperate with the investigation as well."

"Archives from that era will have left traces somewhere."

Hermione exhaled.

With these two veteran dark lords on the case, the efficiency would be something else entirely.

"One more thing."

Dumbledore suddenly remembered.

"Since we're investigating that transfer student, there's someone who might know something."

"Who?"

"The Headmaster at the time. Phineas Nigellus Black — Sirius's great-great-grandfather."

Hermione remembered him.

The most unpopular Headmaster in Hogwarts history.

"Hasn't he been dead for ages?" she asked.

"The man himself, yes," Dumbledore said, his smile carrying something quiet and dry. "But his portrait as Headmaster is still around. I've had it tucked away at the bottom of a chest."

"It's time to dig it out."

"One more thing," Hermione said, her tone shifting. "Keep the dark shadow quiet for now. The fewer people who know, the better."

"The enemy is hidden and we're exposed. If either of you find anything, don't move rashly — notify me first."

There was no room for argument in her voice.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald nodded in unison.

When it came to Ancient Magic and whatever lay behind it, following Hermione's lead was simply the safest option.

"And..."

Hermione spoke slowly. "Before we go any deeper into all of this, we should unify the Wizarding World first."

Grindelwald looked at her.

"You mean..."

Hermione nodded. "The plan we've been building toward all these years. It's time to set it in motion."

Rather than leaving the Wizarding World scattered and fractured, better to bring it together directly. She wasn't expecting them to be useful against something like the dark shadow, she just didn't want them dragging the effort down when the time came.

And a unified Wizarding World would get things done far more efficiently.

"Fine."

Grindelwald nodded without hesitation.

"Don't make a scene, though. Quietly consolidate resources first," Hermione said. "Once Voldemort's Horcruxes are dealt with, we make the official announcement."

With the direction set, the atmosphere in the room eased slightly.

The three retraced their steps back through the underground passage, arriving at the still water, the inner edge of the Mirror of Erised.

Hermione and Dumbledore stood to the side and watched.

Grindelwald steeled himself, then stepped forward in one decisive stride, walking straight through the mirror's surface.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Silence. Nothing happened.

The tension drained from Grindelwald's body, piece by piece.

Back in the outside world again, and standing here now, he felt a hollowed-out, dreamlike exhaustion he hadn't expected.

27 years.

Hiding like a rat in that sunless mirror world, dreaming every night of the moment he'd finally get out.

And now, at last, he could walk free of this cage.

Dumbledore stepped forward and clasped him on the shoulder, eyes warm with something that had been waiting a long time.

After all these years, the two of them could finally stand side by side again.

Hermione watched and shook her head.

Grindelwald really had terrible luck. He'd only wanted to see if he could trigger a legend, and what he triggered was a legendary-grade ambush that nearly killed him on the spot.

She turned to leave the basement.

Two steps in, she stopped.

"Wait."

Something had just occurred to her. She turned back toward Dumbledore.

"You said Gellert lived here for 27 years without stepping outside once."

"And from inside the mirror world, you can see the basement out here."

Dumbledore nodded.

Hermione's eyes narrowed. The smile spreading across her face was slow and distinctly dangerous.

"So when I was in first year, the first time I ever spoke to you down here, Gellert was watching from the other side of the mirror the entire time?"

Dumbledore: "..."

Grindelwald: "..."

Neither of them said a word.

Grindelwald's expression shifted. He glanced instinctively at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore looked just as uncomfortable, and gave two deliberate coughs.

"Ah, well, you see..."

"What I was looking at in the mirror back then really was Gellert, not any pair of woolen socks..."

"Grindelwald was quite curious about you when you were young, so he was also quietly watching from inside the mirror..."

"And when Quirrell came, the Philosopher's Stone that Harry received was actually slipped to him by Gellert, from in there..."

The air went completely still.

Hermione's eyes filled with contempt.

"Well, well. Two old men with a combined age north of 200."

"And instead of sleeping at that hour, one of you was inside and one was outside, lurking in the dark spying on a twelve-year-old girl?"

Grindelwald's face went dark.

Dumbledore looked like he wanted to disappear.

Neither of them had a single thing to say. But being teased like this, it did something. The shadow the dark entity had cast over all these years lifted, just a little.

......

The three left the basement separately.

Grindelwald cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, took on Snape's appearance, and walked out.

Dumbledore followed close behind.

Hermione brought up the rear.

She climbed the stairs, turned the corner, and walked straight into Harry, Ron, and Draco.

Harry and Ron looked like they'd seen a ghost. The moment they spotted her, they rushed over.

"Hermione, you're not going to believe this."

Ron got there first.

"Snape just smiled at us. He actually smiled and said hello."

"Right? What was that about?" Harry piled on.

Hermione glanced toward the far end of the corridor where Grindelsnape had already vanished, and answered without much interest:

"Oh, maybe you've both misread him all this time. Maybe he's just not good with people and is actually decent underneath."

Harry shook his head hard, physically evicting the image of Snape's warm smile from his memory.

It had to be the stress getting to him. He was hallucinating.

"Hermione — did it work? Did Dumbledore fire Snape?"

Harry looked at her with undisguised hope.

"Oh, that."

Hermione cut him off, a crooked little smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

"Congratulations, Harry. You lost."

She spread her hands.

"Snape is still Head of Slytherin. And he's still our Potions professor."

Harry's face went rigid.

"What? That's impossible! How is that traitor still employed?!"

Draco's reaction was nothing like theirs. She let out a quiet breath, and the relief on her face was unmistakable.

She'd been piecing things together for months, Snape's behavior, the choices he'd been making, everything that hadn't quite added up. She'd had a growing suspicion that her godfather was deliberately enduring Umbridge's authority, biding his time. That his real purpose was to protect the students of Hogwarts.

She hadn't said anything to Harry. No proof, and the last thing she wanted was to push back the progress they'd made with each other over something she couldn't back up.

But hearing Hermione now, it confirmed everything.

"That's just how it is," Hermione said, perfectly calm.

"Your holiday's cancelled."

➤ Next: The Prophesied Witch's Summons