Hogwarts Wasteland: The Witch from the Borderlands

When Hermione entered the headmaster's office, the dimly lit room made her uncomfortable; it was darker than most places in the castle, as if they couldn't bear to light candles.

The first thing she saw was Professor McGonagall lying on the stretcher, her body charred black. Phoenix was squatting beside her, tears of life streaming from her eyes. As the tears fell, wisps of smoke rose from the charred body, and the faint sounds of flesh growing and the shell breaking could be heard.

"Her condition is very bad, but fortunately, Voldemort did not use the Killing Curse." Dumbledore's hoarse and weak voice came from the darkness. Hermione could only see a long white beard and a figure sitting in the shadows behind a desk.

The flames of anger and hatred were almost uncontrollable the moment Hermione saw the professor's miserable state. Hermione's magic gradually rose, and a scorching blue light emanated from her eyes and her staff.

"Voldemort, I have more and more debts with him." She gripped her staff tightly, her fingers turning blue.

"I swear, one day I will kill him!"

The walls around the school were covered with portraits of the principals, but they all seemed to be asleep, quiet and making no sound.

"Don't let hatred consume you, my child. Come, come closer, let me see you more clearly." Dumbledore's gentle voice startled Hermione awake.

She stepped forward so that Dumbledore could see her clearly, but at the same time, she also saw Dumbledore.

What a human form it was! He sat reclining in a high-backed chair, half of his body still retaining the image of an old man, but the other half had turned into bare bones. Complex magic circles spread from the chair to his feet, seemingly chains binding the old man and preventing him from truly dying.

He saw Hermione's shocked expression and gave a helpless grin. This was seen from the half of his face that still had flesh and blood, while the other half, consisting only of skull and beard, only revealed the shimmering, pearly white behind his eye sockets and teeth.

It was ghosts, all those ghosts gathered inside Dumbledore. Hermione suddenly understood the purpose of Lucius's bell.

"Surprised? But perhaps better than Rupert?" Dumbledore joked, slightly offensively.

"I'm sorry to show you this, but this is the truth." He gestured for Hermione to sit down with his fleshy right hand and then handed her a plate of candy.

"In fact, I should have died decades ago." He looked at the brilliance stone at the top of Hermione's staff: "It is the Philosopher's Stone that is keeping me alive, but it can only keep me alive, not heal the injuries caused by Gellert's dark magic."

"Is that Dark Lord stronger than Voldemort?" Hermione couldn't help but ask. She knew that Dumbledore was known as the strongest white wizard, and his only defeat was against the Dark Lord Grindelwald, but he was also the only one who could stand up to him head-on.

"He is far superior to Tom, and the Elder Wand has chosen him; he is invincible in this world," Dumbledore said in a complex tone.

Hermione found it hard to imagine. Just observing Voldemort's imposing presence from afar made her feel breathless. How powerful could the Dark Lord, who caused the end of the world, be? And how strong would this White Wizard, the only one who could rival him, be in his prime?

"Don't just stand there, isn't Lemon Olaf your favorite?"

Hermione was indeed hungry; it was quite an achievement to have lasted this long with only half a rock crust.

She picked up the candy, ate it, and asked, "If I'm not mistaken, those ghosts are another way to prolong your life?"

Dumbledore answered without hesitation, nodding and saying, "In order to protect Hogwarts, I had to use the Philosopher's Stone to absorb the nuclear explosion, which also caused the Philosopher's Stone to be unable to produce the Elixir of Immortality."

"But the circumstances were too dire: war, Fiendfire, ubiquitous nuclear explosions, and goblin rebels. Hogwarts needed me; I couldn't die yet."

The old man was as dejected as a piece of rotten wood. He looked at his left hand, which had turned into nothing but bones, and slowly said, "The other professors came up with another idea. After obtaining the consent of all the ghosts in the school, they absorbed them all into my body."

"A ghost is a dead person who lingers in the world, a wandering shadow that resists taking the next step. When a large number of ghosts gather in one place, the boundary between life and death becomes blurred. With a powerful enough Confusion Charm, Death will think that I am already dead and therefore spare me from reaping my soul."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully, but she knew that resisting death was doomed to fail, just as the seemingly perfect Golden Law would eventually crumble with death.

Sure enough, Dumbledore continued, "But if a large number of ghosts gather in a high density over a long period of time, the gathering place will gradually turn into a dead land and eventually become part of the other world. This result will gradually spread outward from my headmaster's office until the entire castle. I cannot let Hogwarts become like that, so I have no choice but to let Hogwarts continue to wander, using spatial movement to disperse the impact caused by the ghosts."

So that's why Hogwarts has been a place for fifty years of wandering. But this castle is really starting to resemble a mausoleum, housing the corpse of a near-godlike being...

Hermione looked around and noticed a tall mirror placed to the side, reflecting both Dumbledore's and her own image.

"What did you see?" Dumbledore asked with interest.

Hermione noticed that the scene in the mirror had changed, and a gentle suction was drawing her mind into it. She did not resist; Dumbledore clearly wouldn't harm her.

"I saw... a tree, bright and warm, shimmering with golden light, with endless roast chicken, steak, lemon sorbet, and rock cakes hanging from it! Under the tree, the professors, and Mom and Dad, Harry, Ron... everyone was in the huge castle under the tree, laughing and talking..."

"Hahahaha!" Dumbledore laughed heartily.

"It's called the Mirror of Erised, and it can reflect what people desire most in their hearts."

He lamented, "It's a deception in the mirror, a perfect lie that keeps people immersed in a false dream, unwilling to wake up."

"In the past, it was just a mirror used to warn others, but now, I depend on it to make a living."

Seeing Hermione's puzzled expression, Dumbledore continued, "Using ghosts to deceive death can only deceive the world, but how can it deceive oneself?"

"In previous years, I could still stand up and move freely, and even go out of the castle to participate in outside affairs, but as my heart gradually died, even the ghosts could no longer force me to stay."

Hermione remembered that Harry had said that Dumbledore had held him when he was a child. Perhaps Dumbledore was still able to move around back then?

"Therefore, McGonagall brought me the Mirror of Erised and placed it here. I will gaze at my still-living self in the mirror for a long time, thus deceiving my own heart and allowing the flame of my life, which should have been extinguished long ago, to continue."

No wonder we can only see the phoenix in Dumbledore's place at various events later on. He himself has lost the ability to leave the headmaster's office and can only exist in people's minds as a deterrent.

"Is the professor's greatest desire to continue living?" Hermione asked.

Dumbledore gazed at her with his good eye, the half-moon spectacles reflecting the dim candlelight. In a tone that betrayed neither joy nor sorrow, he said, "What I long for is for the world to return to what it was before the war, for this school and the children to be happy and joyful, but for all of this, I cannot die yet."

Hermione could hear the heavy weariness in the old man's voice. The burden of half a century had long since crushed him, yet he still struggled stubbornly on the edge of the cliff, dragging his half-dead body, to hold up a relatively safe blue sky for the beleaguered Hogwarts.