The slacker professor at Hogwarts

Professor Snape hurried over.

He nodded to Hagrid, who was guarding the door, and strode into the hut. When he saw Amicus's familiar face, his pupils widened in shock. He pursed his lips and handed the Veritaserum to Dumbledore.

After Dumbledore took it, he walked to the chair, lowered his head, and looked down at the Death Eater with a deep, unsettling gaze.

At this moment, Amicus was firmly tied to a huge solid wood chair in Hagrid's room, his face contorted as he gave Snape a strange, eerie laugh, unable to utter a sound.

His insults were so offensive that Professor McGonagall couldn't resist casting a speech-limiting spell on him, restricting his ability to speak.

Dumbledore broke the spell, pinched his jawbone, and poured the truth serum into his mouth.

Then he slowly retreated, waiting solemnly for the medicine to take effect.

In the corner, Lockhart nudged Snape with his elbow and whispered, "Senior, why do we need to use Veritaserum?"

Perhaps realizing the question was too foolish, he added, "What do you want to know? Can't you just extract his memories and throw them into the Pensieve?"

Snape, who was looking lost and with a blank expression, seemed to be thinking about nothing. When he heard the question, he couldn't help but twitch his lips.

He turned around and saw Lockhart looking at him with a probing expression. He could only explain, "A person's thoughts are constantly bursting forth and mixed together, making it difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Past events can even become multiple memories after being recalled under different mindsets. It's just too complicated. Memory is as chaotic and vast as the ocean. We can't accurately find the part of the memory we need unless he is willing to give it up himself."

Lockhart was taken aback. "No, is it really that difficult?"

Snape chuckled. For someone like him, who could use Occlumency so easily in front of Voldemort without anyone noticing, this was the standard answer, leaving no room for argument.

He has that confidence.

Lockhart also had this confidence.

He looked at Dumbledore with some doubt, wondering if this great man who often used the Pensieve to sort out his memories might have other insights. Perhaps Snape was just too weak?

Unexpectedly, Dumbledore overheard their conversation, turned around, looked at him with some surprise, and asked incredulously, "You mean, you can do it?"

He knew Lockhart's secret—that he had stolen the wisdom of so many people—but he never imagined he could go this far.

That's how the magical world is; we never know where something magical might happen, and we should never underestimate anyone.

Professors McGonagall and Snape, who were standing nearby, both turned to look at him.

Lockhart blinked, then shrank back somewhat innocently. "Maybe... I could give it a try?"

That's a good suggestion.

But Dumbledore gestured to the empty bottle in his hand, indicating that given the potion's potion strength, it should have already taken effect.

He only wanted one answer now—"Tell me, Amicus, where is Tom right now!"

Amicus was behaving strangely, swaying slightly in his chair, looking dazed and confused, only muttering, "Tom? Who?"

Dumbledore then realized that he had been too hasty and had not considered that many people might not know that Tom was Voldemort.

He asked in a deep voice, "Voldemort! Where is Voldemort?"

"Master..." Amicus murmured, "Master is not in good condition. He needs someone to take care of him. My sister, Alecto, take him to the safe ancestral home..."

Alecto Caro, Amicus Caro's sister, became Hogwarts' Muggle Studies Professor and Vice-Headmaster after Voldemort's return.

A staunch pureblood supremacist, he frequently used the Cruciatus Curse to punish students during his time at school.

"The ancestral home of the Carroll family..." Dumbledore murmured.

Snape looked excited and strode forward. "Dumbledore, this is an opportunity! They haven't realized Amicus has been exposed yet. We should attack immediately, while he's at his weakest!"

If we were to ask who revered the Dark Lord the most in the past, Snape would undoubtedly be the one.

If we were to ask who hates the Dark Lord the most right now, Snape would definitely be the one.

At least for Snape himself, there was no "one of" to this extent.

The world-changing leader he was determined to follow killed the woman he loved most—Dumbledore experienced the same pain once.

Dumbledore knew Snape's feelings all too well, but war cannot be won by passion alone; he knew how cunning and dangerous Tom was.

He glanced at Lockhart beside him, only to see Lockhart stroking his wand, looking eager to try it out.

Lockhart was also anxious.

Damn it, he captured Amycus. Regardless of whether Voldemort will hold a grudge against him, even if Amycus isn't executed, he can't escape a life sentence in Azkaban.

Then Amicus's sister, Alecto, would definitely become the person in the world who most wanted to kill him.

There's no reason to be constantly on guard against thieves.

He wished he could go back and kill Alecto right now.

"Let me examine his memory?" Lockhart offered.

Dumbledore nodded, stepped aside, and watched with Snape and McGonagall as he went forward to operate.

Then they all gasped in surprise.

The scene before my eyes was too horrifying.

As Professor Lockhart waved his wand, Amicus suddenly straightened his entire body, even his fingers curling upwards. His originally short and stout figure, which seemed to have no neck, now resembled a rooster with its neck stretched out long.

One after another, silver lines kept being pulled out from his head.

This bizarre scene was as if Lockhart were forcibly pulling Amicus's soul out of his body.

Countless eerie silver threads stretched from Amicus’s head into the air, writhing and grotesquely, like an indescribable monster.

Under this silver light, Professor Lockhart's glowing wand seemed like the tentacles of an evil god, slowly sinking into the soul torn into thin strips.

Even Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape, who had experienced a long and brutal war, couldn't help but feel a chilling panic rising in their hearts.

It was a kind of pity for human life being wantonly played with, a feeling of sympathy for one's own kind, like the instinctive fear a mouse feels when it sees another mouse being wantonly played with by a raccoon before it is killed.

"wrong!"

"This is not right!"

Lockhart muttered to himself, as if an evil god were savoring the life of some being, taking a bite and spitting it out, cursing that the taste was wrong.

He turned around urgently, only to see these three top figures of the era all take a step back. He was momentarily stunned, but didn't think too much about it, and anxiously said, "The memory of him and his sister bringing Voldemort back to the ancestral home is wrong!"

"I don't have concrete evidence, but it looks so unnatural!"

"I suspect this memory may have been altered."

Modifying memories is common in the wizarding world. The reason why a powerful potion like Truth Potion isn't used as a direct method in the Inquisition is because memories are truly unreliable.

At least the law enforcement agencies of the various national Ministries of Magic, and the Aurors, are well aware of this, because they frequently and arbitrarily alter the memories of Muggles. Sometimes, in order to hold a wizarding event and have Muggles come to sell the goods they need, it is quite normal to alter a Muggle's memories dozens of times a day.

Voldemort was certainly more adept at this kind of thing. He had altered his own uncle's memories to make him take the blame for killing his own father and grandfather. He had also altered the memories of the rich woman's house-elf to make him take the blame for the murder of his own father and grandfather.

Even with the Ministry of Magic's many powerful figures at the time, including Dumbledore in the Inquisition, no one could find fault with these two memory alterations.

"Can I take a look?"

Dumbledore drew his wand, which was shaped like a skewer of candied hawthorns, and gestured to it. "If you allow me, I'd like to cast a spell on you to help you."

Lohat nodded.

The spell didn't have any visual effects. Old Deng waved his wand at him, and he suddenly felt a tightness in his throat, so he quickly opened his mouth.

A thick cloud of smoke billowed from his mouth.

The smoke was so thick that it floated above the cabin's hallway, as if it were about to cover the entire ceiling.

Amidst the smoke, a brother and sister warily escorted a strange, blood-stained infant through a dark street. Their destination—the ancestral home of the Carlo family—was not far away.