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"No need… let's go back together," Aberforth's voice came from within the forest.
He emerged carrying a deathly pale Aurelius on his back. Aurelius's eyes were shut, but thankfully, he was still breathing. It seemed he had only fainted. As he himself had said—he could still hang on, he wasn't going to die just yet.
"...Very well."
Snap!
In the blink of an eye, they all Apparated back to the Hog's Head Inn.
Aberforth carried Aurelius back up to the attic.
Meanwhile, Wade was left downstairs with Dumbledore, sitting together at the bar.
"I believe you may have a few things to explain," Dumbledore said calmly.
Wade sighed. "What a night, Professor. Truly… a very thrilling night."
He wasn't lying either—if his magical abilities hadn't improved significantly lately, he'd already be inside Nagini's stomach by now.
Dumbledore didn't interrupt. He simply continued to listen quietly.
"Look at this." Wade placed the cage containing Nagini onto the bar counter.
"What is this?" Dumbledore asked.
In truth, he had wanted to ask the moment he saw Wade carrying the cage—since Wade had been holding onto it this entire time without letting go.
"There's a shrunken Nagini inside," Wade replied.
"Hm?" Dumbledore immediately leaned closer to examine the cage.
Sure enough, through the narrow gaps in the bars, he saw a small green snake curled up inside.
"What exactly happened?"
"I ran into her in the Forbidden Forest," Wade explained. "She attacked me, so I subdued her, used a little transformation magic to shrink her down, and then locked her in the cage."
Dumbledore stared at Wade in astonishment.
The calm way he'd just said all that… it was as if he had no idea how shocking his words were.
Dumbledore still remembered finding one of Nagini's scales in the sewers—he knew full well how much her size had increased since back then.
An eleven-year-old wizard, facing such an aggressive and massive serpent, shouldn't have had the slightest hope of survival—by any reasonable measure.
And yet, Wade was now claiming not only to have subdued her, but to have used a Transformation magic to shrink such a giant snake down to this tiny size?
Just thinking about it sounded absurd.
But Dumbledore wasn't the type of professor to dismiss his students lightly.
"By all logic, you shouldn't have had the power to escape from Nagini… Was it Aurelius who helped you?"
Wade shook his head. "No, he'd already left by the time I confronted Nagini."
"So you faced her alone, and still managed to subdue her?"
"Yes." Wade nodded without hesitation.
Dumbledore didn't press him further for the moment. Instead, he reached out and gently touched the cage made of vines.
Instantly, the cage unraveled, the vines retreating and collapsing into a pile of dried yellow leaves scattered across the bar counter.
Clearly, these fallen leaves were the original form of the Transfiguration used to create the cage.
Dumbledore guessed that if Wade was telling the truth, then he must have used the fallen leaves scattered across the Forbidden Forest floor to transfigure them into sturdy vines, which he then used to restrain Nagini. Only after immobilizing her could he have safely performed the spell to shrink her.
Dumbledore silently observed the tiny snake, still unconscious atop the bar counter, occasionally prodding her body gently with a finger.
The longer he examined her, the more surprise grew on his face.
Because after careful inspection, Dumbledore realized—this really was Nagini.
And the Transfiguration spell that had reduced her size was so forceful, so aggressive, that even Dumbledore found it startling.
How could someone like Wade have performed such a high-level Transfiguration?
"This is indeed Nagini… How exactly did you manage it?" Dumbledore looked up from the snake, fixing his gaze back on Wade.
As he shifted his focus, the fallen leaves on the bar suddenly stirred again, twisting and curling back into the shape of a sturdy cage that enclosed Nagini once more.
Dumbledore's flawless, gestureless Transfiguration left Wade deeply impressed.
"It all goes back to the reason I entered the Forbidden Forest tonight," Wade said, pulling a certain lighter from his pocket. In his eyes, the lighter still glowed with a soft, eerie blue light.
"Professor, can you see the blue light on it?" Wade asked.
Dumbledore shook his head. He saw no blue light on the lighter.
"I thought so… Even you can't see it?" Wade said, sounding a little disappointed.
"What exactly is it? And how is it connected to you going into the Forbidden Forest tonight?" Dumbledore asked.
Wade then explained the events of the day he visited the junk shop and stumbled upon the lighter. Of course, he changed the original reason for visiting the shop—from buying second-hand wands to searching for magical manuscripts. He couldn't exactly tell Dumbledore he'd gone there to stock up on spare wands after all.
"A blue glow only you can see… May I take a look?" Dumbledore asked.
Wade handed him the lighter.
Dumbledore took it and examined it carefully.
"While I can't see any blue light… I can definitely feel traces of ancient magic lingering on it," Dumbledore said, handing the lighter back. "There's no doubt—this lighter once held some kind of ancient magical power. It's just that the power is no longer present."
"Is that so… Tom said he couldn't see the blue light, and the shopkeeper couldn't either. I found it odd, so I bought it," Wade said, all the while adjusting his Occlumency. "When I got back, I asked Mr. Aberforth too, and he said he couldn't see it either. So I decided to put it aside and wait until you came to ask you."
Dumbledore nodded, motioning for him to continue.
Wade went on, "While I was sleeping tonight, I vaguely saw the lighter open on its own, and the flame inside floated out and drifted toward the window. So… I followed it. Before I knew it, I'd ended up in the Forbidden Forest."
Dumbledore said sternly, "That was a very dangerous thing to do, Wade. You should have gone to Aberforth. What if you'd run into danger?"
"Sorry, Professor. I was just so curious… I didn't think it through," Wade said, looking embarrassed.
"Sigh… At least you're safe. But I want you to remember this as a lesson. You haven't even enrolled yet, but I have a feeling you're very likely to be sorted into Gryffindor..."
Wade's eyes widened with curiosity. "Do Gryffindor students all sneak out to the Forbidden Forest at night?"
"Er… of course not. I just meant—never mind. You'll understand once you're at school," Dumbledore quickly changed the subject. "Go on."
"So then, I kept following the flame," Wade continued, "and in a hidden part of the forest, I found a glass vial. Inside was a very unusual mist—black with a red tint, and with flashes of blue light flickering within..."
The highest form of lying is blending truth with falsehood—and with the cover of Occlumency, Dumbledore didn't suspect a thing.
When Dumbledore heard about a strange vial, his brows furrowed. Under most circumstances, something like that would inevitably be linked to Dark magic.
"Do you still have the bottle?" he asked quickly.
"Uh… it shattered when I was fighting Nagini…" Wade replied, rummaging through his pocket and pouring out some glass shards onto the bar counter. "As for the mist that was inside…"
Wade's expression shifted slightly—hesitant, as though he wanted to speak but didn't dare.
"Wade," Dumbledore said gently, "go on. You can trust me, can't you?"
"…Yeah…" Wade looked as if he'd just breathed a sigh of relief, then continued, "That mist—it seemed to enter my body. And after that, I felt… like I was filled with some strange kind of power. I had this overwhelming urge to release it all somehow. Then…"
He pointed toward Nagini. "I shrank her."
Dumbledore looked at Wade with a mix of surprise and uncertainty. Then he waved his hand, and the shards of broken glass floated gently up and settled into his palm.
Dumbledore leaned in close to the glass shards, inspecting them so intently that his nose nearly touched them.
After a long moment, he finally exhaled and looked at Wade with a strange expression. "The magical residue on this glass is identical to the one on that lighter... But perhaps—that might actually be a good thing."
"A good thing?" Wade, who had almost started believing his own made-up story, blinked in surprise.
"If I'm not mistaken," Dumbledore said, his gaze growing distant with memory, "you possess the rare trait required to wield Ancient Magic. When I was just starting school, I'd heard of an exceptionally gifted witch who had recently graduated—she made quite an impact on Hogwarts at the time. Later, when I became a professor, I occasionally heard Headmaster Dippet mention her…"
Dumbledore looked at Wade with visible delight. "If my guess is correct, you share that same gift as her—an affinity for Ancient Magic!"
"Huh? Your senior?"
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