A day at Hogwarts.

Chapter 599 The Prophecy Came True

Penny Dursley felt as if the ground beneath her feet had disappeared, and she could no longer feel her own weight.

Prophecy... Snape... Mysterious Man... Lily...

These words were like steel needles, piercing Penny's ears and going straight into the depths of her brain, causing a wave of dizziness.

"Severus Snape."

Penny murmured the name softly.

The gloomy boy with greasy hair, thin shoulders, and always wearing ill-fitting old clothes stood out conspicuously in that area.

The monster who was almost always by Lily's side, whispering to her in a "secret language" that she couldn't understand, always had a contemptuous smile on his lips.

It was him!

He was the one who pushed things behind the scenes, leading to Lily's death!

The thought was like a noose around Penny's neck, suffocating her.

Penny walked back to her home at No. 4 Privet Drive, feeling dizzy and unsteady on her feet as if she were walking on cotton.

Her fingers were icy cold and trembling slightly uncontrollably as she finally managed to open the door.

Vernon's heavy snoring came from the living room sofa, accompanied by the sound of the television.

When Dali saw that his parents didn't bring him treats after beating him as usual, he stopped pretending and started playing video games in his room upstairs.

Everything was as usual, except for Penny's heart, which was in turmoil.

She slumped into the cold chair next to the dining table, staring blankly at the clean surface. The glass bottle on the wall cabinet reflected her pale, distorted face.

Her younger sister, Lily, who had bright green eyes and always had a smile on her face, died because of a secret leak from her childhood playmate.

A strong and twisted emotion welled up in Penny's heart, a mixture of immense grief, belated regret, and a burning, betrayed rage.

She always blamed Lily's death on the dangerous magical world they lived in, a world she couldn't understand and refused to understand.

But now, she has found a specific, hateful target—Severus Snape.

The boy she had hated since childhood, his image magnified in her memory, becoming grotesque and terrifying.

She had to find out the truth.

She needs to look him in the eye and hear him admit it himself.

Once the thought arose, it grew wildly in her heart like weeds, overwhelming fear and reason, its roots penetrating deep into her marrow.

She didn't tell Vernon.

She simply picked up her car keys and calmly told her husband she was going out to buy something. Vernon gave a mumbled reply without even lifting his eyelids.

Then she walked straight to the garage, the car door creaked open, and dust danced in the sunlight.

Penny floored the accelerator, and the car soon began to bump along the dilapidated Spider's End, the tires groaning as they rolled over the potholes and gravel.

The closer Penny got to that area in her memory, the faster her heart beat, and the paler her knuckles became as she gripped the steering wheel, with veins bulging.

With an almost obsessive memory, she parked the car at the alley entrance.

Ahead lay a blurry scene, seemingly an open space, or perhaps a wall piled high with debris. The distorted image made it impossible for her to focus, as if a voice was telling her to ignore the place.

She knew it was magic at work, an invisible barrier keeping those without magic out.

A few years ago, Penny had Charles take her here once, into a place that only wizards could go.

As she was leaving, she threw a stone in that direction, which hit Snape's window.

Now, she's resorting to the same old trick.

She took a sturdy rope from the trunk and picked up a sharp-edged stone from the ground.

She carefully tied the rope securely to the stone, made a tight knot, then took a deep breath, swung it around, and threw it with all her might towards the direction of the house she remembered.

The rope drew an arc in the air, creating a whistling sound.

"Wow!"

A clear, sharp sound of glass shattering rang out.

The rope behind the stone did not fall back to the ground she could see, but hung in mid-air like a dying snake.

Successful.

Penny closed her eyes, gripped the rope tightly, and regarded it as her only guide to another world.

Relying on the rough friction from her fingertips, she groped forward step by step, struggling through a cold, greasy film-like sensation, the air filled with the smell of rust and decay.

After passing through the barrier, she opened her eyes.

A dilapidated, crooked house suddenly appeared in front of her, as if it had always been there, with peeling paint revealing dark red bricks.

Sure enough, the glass in one of the windows was shattered, its sharp edges reflecting the azure sky.

This is it, Severus Snape's house. A deathly silence hangs over the place, broken only by the howling wind.

Penny stepped forward and pounded on the peeling wooden door, the dull thud echoing through the alley.

"Snape! Severus Snape! You come out here!"

"You dare kill Lily? You dare open the door!"

"Don't hide inside and keep quiet, I know you're home!"

"Pah! Open the door! Open the door! Open the door! Open the door!"

"Snape! Snape! Don't hide inside and keep quiet!"

"Snape, don't hide in there and keep quiet. I know you're home. You're so capable of killing Lily, but you're not so capable of opening the door?"

"Open the door! You dare to kill Lily? Open the door if you dare! Don't hide inside and keep quiet. I know you're home."

Her voice was shrill with anger, tearing through the silence. Her hands slammed together, and sawdust clung to her palms.

No one answered; only the wind in the alley whistled through the broken window, like the low weeping of a ghost.

"He has gone into hiding again, just like before, hiding behind those evil tricks."

Anger completely consumed Penny, burning her until she trembled all over.

Petunia then remembered that when she last came here, Snape said he rushed over immediately after Lily's murder, but as for what he was going to do...

I don't dare to think about it anymore.

Penny turned around abruptly, got back into the car, started the engine, and drove frantically back to the Evans family's old house not far away, the tires skidding on the gravel.

An even more insane plan took shape in her mind, cold and resolute.

Her previous house, the house she lived in before marrying Vernon, was rented to a young couple from Germany many years ago, who opened a German restaurant.

Without explaining, she took a gas cylinder and the pipe attached to it as payment for the rent, stuffed them into her car, and made a jarring metallic clanging sound.

Penny drove toward Spider's End again, speeding so fast she was almost out of control, the street scene outside the window blurring into a gray shadow.

Guided by her memory and the rope still tied to the stone, she returned to the hidden house, carrying the gas canister.

She inserted the pipe into the hole in the glass window, turned on the valve of the gas cylinder, and with a soft hiss, the gas from the cylinder sprayed into the dark room.

Penny listened to the hissing, deadly gas continuously pouring into the dark house, the sound monotonous and terrifying, like the breath of death.

After doing all this, she felt a sense of utter calm, and found a rag in the nearby garbage heap to stuff the hole in the glass.

Penny threw the empty can back into the car, walked away along the rope, and as she passed through the barrier, the greasy feeling returned.

I collected the stones and rope, threw them into the filthy river, returned the empty can, and drove home.

On the way, her hands were still trembling slightly, a tremor brought on by the excitement of avenging Lily.

When Penny got home, she deliberately complained a few times about how her clothes got dirty on the street. She then took a shower and threw her clothes into the washing machine.

Then she acted as if nothing had happened and started preparing dinner.

When Vernon entered the kitchen and saw the sumptuous dinner, he swallowed hard, thinking to himself that tonight would be a test.

That evening, a bright green flame suddenly shot up from the fireplace in the Hogwarts Headmaster's office, sparks flying everywhere.

Snape had just finished talking with Dumbledore about Voldemort and continuing his undercover work when he went home using the fireplace here.

He returned home, stepped out of the cold Floo Powder flame, and habitually waved his wand to light the candles under the ceiling—the first thing he did as soon as he got home, a mechanical and practiced action.

Snape noticed an unusual, pungent odor in the air.

But his first thought was whether any of the bottles in his potion storeroom had fallen off the shelf and broken.

Just as the candle was lit—

"boom!!!"

A loud bang shook the entire Spider's End Alley, the shockwave overturning nearby trash cans and startling several rats into scurrying away.

The already crumbling roof of Snape's house was ripped off by a tremendous force, wooden beams and rubble rained down, and all the remaining glass in the windows instantly turned to dust, whistling as it shot in all directions.

Thick smoke and flames billowed out, orange-red tongues of fire licked the night sky, mixed with countless sharp fragments of broken test tubes and flasks, charred pages of books, and countless herbs and potions, which scattered all around like snowflakes.

A moment later, a dark figure, emitting blue smoke and with its robe blown to shreds, staggered out of the ruins, coughing and exhaling smoke.

Snape was breathing heavily, his face covered in ashes, only his eyes and scalp, wide open in extreme shock and rage, gleamed coldly in the night.

He staggered out of the ruins, staring blankly at his home, a scene of utter devastation and burning flames crackling in the air.

Snape's mind raced as he tried to analyze the causes of the disaster from various angles, including the potion accident and the attack by his enemies. His brow furrowed, and he unconsciously gripped his wand tightly.

Suddenly, a memory surfaced in his mind: Four years ago, in Potions class, Charles said that he was lost in thought during roll call because he saw himself staring blankly next to a bombed-out house...

Following the explosion at Spider's End, the Ministry of Magic took the matter very seriously. Fudge immediately issued important instructions, demanding that a capable team be organized to properly handle the explosion site, swiftly identify the perpetrators, and hold them accountable; he also ordered immediate public awareness campaigns and further strengthening of safety precautions to prevent a recurrence of such a tragedy. Currently, Snape is emotionally unstable.

(End of this chapter)