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Chapter 580, Chapter 578: Holding a Sword for Her (4.2k)

"Go and fight the dragon, just as she once struggled with the borderlands."

Headmaster Dumbledore, now is the time. Don't back down.

That's what the black cat said.

Dumbledore felt something hot flowing down his bloodstream from his usually calm mind, finally igniting a fire in his chest.

"I've waited too long for this opportunity, Mr. Green."

Dumbledore produced a stone from somewhere.

It was cracked, which didn't look too good on Dumbledore's face.

"You don't need to worry about it—"

The black cat on the mist glanced at him and jumped onto Dumbledore's shoulder.

Then Dumbledore moved, and the man and the cat instantly disappeared into the mist.

The border area was completely silent.

The fog spread as usual.

A long time has passed, and all those things churning in the fog have come knocking on our door.

Strands and wisps seeped out from the white expanse, silvery-gray, carrying a rotten, sweet fragrance, like lilies withering at a funeral.

They clung to Dumbledore's skin, not wet, but cold enough to make the old man's soul tremble slightly.

"They're here."

Dumbledore spoke as if in a soft murmur, or perhaps as a reminder, "Vulcan, clear the way."

Searing flames erupted from the tip of the old wizard's wand, causing even the mist to retreat uncontrollably.

Flames surrounded a person and a cat, clearing a long corridor from the boundary.

But the fog is always all-pervasive, and the wizard's will is always limited.

Am I far from her?

Dumbledore, however, did not care and asked gently.

"Six hours to go, Headmaster Dumbledore."

The black cat warily used its tail to shoo away the wisps of mist that kept approaching.

Time did not pass quickly; after two hours, which felt incredibly long to the senses despite being brief, time had not yet passed.

A cloud of mist still silently reached Dumbledore's side.

The mist surged, condensed, and rose before his weary eyes, gradually shaping into a human form.

Dumbledore would never forget that silhouette.

"It's you."

she says.

Dumbledore paused in his steps.

"It's you—"

More voices joined in—sharp, low, sobbing, sneer—all blending together into a symphony.

The fog churned even more wildly, coalescing from all directions into more figures: Grindelwald's wildly raised arm, Aberforth's furious face, and those timid eyes that never held any reproach.

Their eyes were filled with the same kind of mist, a mist that might be called "regret".

Dumbledore helplessly covered his face, and fine cracks immediately appeared in the mist.

The gathered figures swarmed around him, their arms stretching and deforming into countless gray threads that burrowed into his sleeves, growing against his skin, trying to take his soul as soil.

He could feel his consciousness slipping away, like sand slipping through his fingers. Those threads were drawing out the negative emotions from his soul, fermenting them into a thicker, heavier fog.

This is a vicious cycle with no end: the more guilt he feels, the stronger the fog becomes; the stronger the fog becomes, the more desperate he becomes.

He angrily raised his wand again, but the mist had already enveloped most of his arm.

He could no longer feel his fingers.

"In the borderlands, wizards are given the name 'Faded Ones,' willing to endure torment for fleeting memories, wearing down their minds in the most powerful and sharpest time. They curse the gods here, for they refuse to grant order."

Dumbledore's breathing quickened, fog enveloped him, but he continued walking. "I will come, just as she waited for me. Faded Mist, I have avoided you for far too long."

The flames were as fierce as a wizard's oath, even startling the black cat nearby.

At this moment, it stood on the shoulders of a mountain-like stone giant, almost single-handedly resisting the boiling mist of the entire border region.

"I'm going with him to the border area today."

The black cat's voice was soft, yet it reverberated throughout the boundless mist.

The perennial fog had become their biggest obstacle at this moment.

The black cat knew that a wisp of mist like this was enough to stop a remorseful wizard from moving forward.

A fragment of Voldemort's soul vanished within such a mist.

Oh, right.

Will people die at the border?

Can the wizard's soul dissipate again?

The black cat had time to think of this even as the stone giant's body blocked the wave-like mist.

The flames dispelled her illusion.

It's as if she wasn't determined to begin with.

Even when it was all a mystery, Ariana could never bring herself to criticize him in the slightest.

Dumbledore's hand, which had been holding the wand, looked slightly dejected.

But when he looked up, he saw three more people.

Standing at the very front was his mother.

Candela Dumbledore.

Tall, with black hair, his features were as hard and proud as an Indigenous stone carving.

She was wearing the grey high-necked robe she had sewn herself, with the brass brooch pinned to the collar—Dumbledore remembered the brooch; as a child, he had always thought it looked like a curled-up beetle.

She never allowed her back to bend while she was alive, not even on the rainy night her husband was sent to Azkaban, not even when she carried her three children's belongings alone into the stone house in Godric Valley.

At this moment, she stood in the fog, her back still straight.

But her eyes—those eyes he could never truly see—were looking at him.

"Mother."

Dumbledore's lips moved, but his voice was so soft that he could barely hear it himself.

She did not respond to his call. Her gaze went past his face, past his beard and half-moon glasses, and landed somewhere he could not reach.

Then she spoke.

"You've been at Hogwarts for too long."

The statement was neither particularly warm nor cold: "You're coming home less and less often."

Candela continued, "First, he didn't come back for summer vacation, saying he had a research project at school. Then, at Christmas, he said he had to handle school affairs on behalf of the principal."

Subsequent letters became even fewer.

Her voice remained steady, almost cruelly so, "I told myself, Albus has a bright future. I can't stop him. I've never stopped him."

Dumbledore felt his throat tighten.

He wanted to say "I'm sorry," but the word was too light, so light that he didn't even dare to place it in the empty space in front of his mother.

The borderlands never wrong any wizard, and the trials that wizards who trespass into it undergo are all imbued with a harsh sense of justice.

He didn't owe her an apology. He owed her the evenings a son should have spent with her—the evenings when Aberforth silently cleaned the sheepfold, the evenings when Ariana hummed softly upstairs, the evenings when she sat alone at the kitchen table, a cup of cold tea in front of her, listening to the valley wind seeping in through the cracks in the stone walls.

"After you left,"

Candela finally turned her gaze back to his face. "I missed you so much."

Dumbledore's hand holding the wand began to tremble.

He can't do it.

He remembered a few moments of tenderness—his mother smiled, a rare occurrence, when he came first in his year at Hogwarts;

On the morning he left home for school, she packed three more pancakes she had baked into his suitcase without saying a word; another time, when he was delirious with fever, he vaguely felt someone changing a wet towel on his forehead. The hand was rough, but it was as light as if it were touching something that might break at any moment.

"I must let you go, Albus—"

Candela said, "You wanted to run away. You used your talent and your future as an excuse to escape what your father couldn't escape: the people in the house who needed care, a sister who could no longer leave the house, and a brother who was getting angrier and angrier. You ran away, Albus."

I let you escape because you are my son.

There was no resentment in her words, only a calmness that was even harder to bear than resentment.

That was a mother who saw through her child's light and shadow—and still forgave him.

"Let's go, Albus."

"I just wanted you to know how much I miss you," Candela said.

Dumbledore's expression became noticeably more dejected.

He pressed his thin lips together and remained silent for a long time.

The black cat was almost fighting in front of him.

It's not just trying to block the fog in one area; it even suspects that the fog has arrived over the entire border region.

When they crashed into the stone giant, a large crater would be torn open in its stone chest.

Inevitably, some stray wisps of mist will get close, and the black cat is truly powerless to stop them.

Dumbledore looked at the scene nearby with an almost desolate expression.

Two other figures in the fog.

His father, Percival Dumbledore, was standing in that mist.

He was wearing Azkaban prison clothes, but there was no madness in his eyes, only a silence honed by half a lifetime of imprisonment, and an almost terrifying clarity.

"The last time you came to see me,"

Percival's voice was hoarse, like stones grinding against each other. "You didn't say a word, you just held my hand. I thought to myself, 'Will my son never cry again?' I was happy about it, and sad about it."

He didn't go forward; he just stood there at a distance.

Dumbledore didn't move either. They stared at each other across a gap of not too long, not too short, as if separated by all the iron bars of the human world.

"You are braver than me, Albus, 97"

Percival said, "But I wish you were happier than I was."

Then he retreated into the fog, as quietly as he had come.

Aberforth was the last to appear.

He stood the furthest away from the beginning, his arms crossed over his chest, his chin held high, his stubborn posture exactly the same as it had been at Ariana's funeral sixty years ago.

He didn't speak; he simply glanced at Dumbledore with a look that was somewhere between hatred and sorrow.

In that one glance, Dumbledore read everything that couldn't be said: You will always owe me a goat—the one they raised together when Ariana was alive; You will always owe me a blanket—the one he ran out of the funeral with nothing; You will always owe me a beating.

Then Aberforth also retreated into the fog.

He didn't say a single word from beginning to end.

Dumbledore stood alone above the void, the mist slowly receding, like the tide acknowledging its inability to destroy the reef.

He thought it was all over, but the earth-shaking roar made him look ahead, exhausted.

Two more hours have passed.

"I will never let you pass."

In the brief silence at the boundary, Dumbledore heard a sound that was almost like a murmur.

The stone giant, which was as large as a mountain, had collapsed. It swung its stone arms in vain, but the mist pierced through it, leaving hole after hole.

The towering fog made Dumbledore realize how insignificant the few wisps of mist he had defeated were.

"Headmaster Dumbledore, you'll have to run," said the black cat, "while I'm here. You don't need me."

The man and the cat stared at each other, and Dumbledore saw in the black cat's deep fur, in the cracked stone slab.

"I----"

Dumbledore closed his eyes; he was too ashamed to face the child.

"My Gryffindor teacher told me that happiness is like a treasure guarded by a dragon on a magical island, and to obtain happiness, one must go through a fierce battle."

The black cat said earnestly, "And there will always be a moment when we need to wield a sword for the ones we love."

The cat's tail seemed to reluctantly throw out a scarlet sword, which Dumbledore instinctively grasped.

"To clothe her in armor, to hold her sword in hand, and to charge forward without hesitation for her."

The black cat walked alone into the fog of the people with rashes.

Dumbledore froze on the spot.

He felt a fire reignite within him.

A gigantic hand burst forth from the depths of the mist, followed by a mountain-like body. Dumbledore saw the black cat forcefully maneuvering the stone giant toward the mist.

He himself gripped the sword tightly.

"The Sword of Gryffindor —"

Dumbledore murmured.

Thus, Gryffindor's sword was once again wielded by Gryffindor.

The commotion at the border lasted for a long time.

The battle between the black cat and the mist shook the entire vast plain.

Fortunately, the boundary was large enough, perhaps infinitely large, and the commotion there went unnoticed by any being.

Meanwhile, night fell early.

The long night had arrived, and apart from a few wooden houses, the border area was dark and gloomy.

A scarlet sword, gleaming with an unusual luster, moved through the mist.

Thanks to the fact that most of the mist in this area was hitting the stone giants, Dumbledore didn't have to cut through as much mist.

But it's enough to give his old bones a real hard time.

He knew that there was an absolutely sharp sword behind the curtain, but he didn't know that it was in the hands of that boy, Grimm.

What was even more unknown was that it would provide such tremendous help to a disheartened wizard.

Getting closer and closer.

Dumbledore could sense it.

At this moment, the mist in the sky gradually changed from inky black to a pale golden gray.

In a wooden hut with only four wooden walls, a timid witch has just woken up and is holding flowers, performing her daily prayer: "Master of dreams and mists, bridge between life and death, symbol of eternal good fortune—I offer you flowers—with flowers, you possess good fortune—"

At that moment, a scarlet light pierced through the mist.

It stretched out in the mist and fell to the ground like a strangely gleaming bridge.

Ariana's little mind couldn't quite grasp this scene, but the old man holding the sword, his tired eyes shining, was a wizard she never dared to imagine.

He's gotten so much older.

But it doesn't matter, she can still recognize him at a glance.

"Ah————Ah————"

She was probably immobilized by a spell, otherwise how could she not move at all?

She heard someone humming something in her ear, which reminded her of a divine song: "If one day, the night becomes the prelude, and the fog blurs the boundaries, at dawn, the bridge will open for you."

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