HP North Star's Radiance

“Sir, I prefer another epitaph,” Prareus said slowly, looking at Dumbledore. “Where the treasure is, there the heart is. It’s from the Gospel of Matthew, isn’t it?”

Under the influence of the compound decoction, Dumbledore's eyes were no longer blue, but they still shone brightly.

He said gently, "I like it too."

To avoid running into Voldemort and the Death Eaters who might also be digging up graves, the two did not linger in the village of Godric's Hollow and quickly entered the forest of the valley.

Prarese began to consider where they should go.

First of all, Black Moon Alley is definitely not a place to stay.

In the school clinic, Winnie told her that Narcissa Malfoy also knew the address of Black Rose Lane, but had never revealed it.

Prarese suspected that Mrs. Malfoy simply didn't want others to know that she had been in contact with the traitor.

Diagon Alley is not even considered; it's a very dangerous place with lots of people coming and going.

Thus, the only remaining place is Praris's birthplace – Southend-on-the-Sea.

Pralis was about to ask Dumbledore for his opinion when she noticed something was wrong with him. According to the potion of feigned death that she and Professor Snape had worked day and night to develop, Dumbledore should have already returned to normal. But he still looked so weak, his lips pale.

“This isn’t right!” Prareus found a crooked tree in the forest and had Dumbledore sit down against its roots. “Sir, were you attacked again that night?”

Aside from Professor Snape, who was instructed by Dumbledore, there was someone else who had the audacity to attack the most powerful white wizard that night.

Dumbledore sighed: "It seems I'm getting old..."

"Let's get down to business," Praris interrupted his musings.

Dumbledore told Praris about how he bled himself to enter the cave and drank the potion in the cave, which made Praris burst out cursing.

"Do you think you're still in good health?" Praris rebuked him sternly. "Do you even care about your own body?"

“It’s just Harry and me there. I’d rather drink it myself than Harry,” Dumbledore said weakly. “I’m very old, but Harry is still young…”

"Isn't it possible," Praris sneered, "that Harry would rather have drunk those potions himself, and if it weren't for your orders, he—"

Dumbledore's gaze was very gentle as he said, "Of course, but I will not allow him to do so."

In fact, Dumbledore knew those potions were harmful, but he hadn't imagined the damage they would cause would be so severe. Prader's invigorating potions made it easy for Dumbledore to forget what he had endured over the past year or two.

“Plares, in my eyes, you and Harry are both remarkable people,” Dumbledore said slowly. “At the Christmas lunch table, you didn’t eat, but stood up for me. At that moment, I felt that your attitude towards fate impressed me.”

"What I didn't expect was that you would save my life more than once later." His eyes shone with unprecedented admiration. "You know, I didn't really care about this life anymore. Perhaps dying in accordance with everything would be a kind of luck, but..."

“But you must live!” Praris commanded the elder in an extremely rude tone. “Don’t even think about ending it all with your death; you haven’t repaid what you promised me!”

Pralis opened the briefcase again. Looking at the potions, she felt a surge of frustration, regretting that she was a talented potion researcher. She casually pulled out a bottle of potion that Dumbledore recognized and shoved it into his hand.

“Drink!” Praris said firmly. “We’re going to Southend-on-the-Sea!”

That was the tonic Dumbledore drank after his limbs regenerated. Prareas planned to let Dumbledore rely on his physical strength to hold on a little longer, and then figure out a way to save him after he settled down.

Dumbledore drank it without hesitation, showing Prareas that he did not really intend to be a scoundrel and end his life.

“You’ll probably be the first person I’ll bring along to manifest as an attendant,” Praris said quickly and frankly. “Besides, I don’t have a strong impression of Southend-on-the-Sea.”

"I believe you," said the blond, younger version of Dumbledore, so dazzling that it was impossible to look directly at him.

The Muggle whose hair was plucked by Prader wasn't exactly handsome, but with Dumbledore's soul in his body, he became exceptionally dashing. Perhaps what truly makes a person charming is the soul beneath the surface.

Praris closed her eyes and recalled the beach at Southend-on-the-Sea—she was certain that such a place wouldn't easily change much over time.

After a dizzying spin, Prairie and Dumbledore both fell onto the beach, their skin scraped by the sand.

Ignoring his own wounds, Prarese quickly got up, checked on Dumbledore's condition, and then immediately helped him leave the beach, staggering towards the old house.

To her surprise, the neighbors' houses were still there, but William's house had inexplicably disappeared between the two houses!

Supported by Prarese, Dumbledore patted her shoulder and said through gritted teeth, "Your mother does not want anyone other than you and Severus to take over your home. In her letter, she pleaded with Severus to accept you."

The "you" here refers to Praris and the villa in Southend-Maritime. Perhaps in Sylvia's eyes, she still hopes that Praris can grow up in this house, without truly having to live under someone else's roof.

"So?" Praris was surprisingly calm.

"So, thank you to myself from ten years ago, who cast a spell here." Dumbledore didn't have a wand, but he raised his hand, and the neighbor's house pushed open to reveal William's two-story villa.

The house had fallen into disrepair over the years, and no one had taken care of it for more than a decade; a thick layer of dust had accumulated on the furniture.

The living room on the first floor was in complete disarray, with signs of a struggle. These signs might have been left by Sylvia when she killed Dipple, or by the Aurors when they captured her.

Prareas used magic to clean the sofa, laid Dumbledore on it, and began to figure out how to make him better. This alone took Prareas almost a week—and the end of July was fast approaching.

In just over a decade, Southende has transformed from an ordinary fishing village into a bustling seaside tourist town.

Prarese uses her shapeshifting abilities to transform into the clothes worn by tourists, blending into the crowds to buy food. Fortunately, she spends her summer holidays in the Muggle world every year and always has savings in pounds and pennies.

"It's really hard to get medicinal herbs here!" Praris hung his straw hat on the coat rack in the entryway. "How are you feeling today?"

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said easily. “How about becoming a Potions professor after the war—to help Severus with his work?”

"Don't even think about it!" Prareus threw the bread in front of Dumbledore. "That's called repaying kindness with enmity!"

“Harry’s birthday is getting closer and closer, Voldemort will definitely take action…” Dumbledore’s face scrunched up as he looked at the hard white bread.

Praris said softly, "You want to save him? I thought you were just going to kill that giant snake before that!"

Because Dumbledore had told Harry that Prader had indirectly destroyed two Horcruxes, Harry chose to believe that Prader belonged to "one of their own".

During this opportunity, Prarese learned from Harry that Voldemort would have seven Horcruxes.

Think about it! Prader was involved in the destruction of the diadem and the cup. Harry solved the diary in his second year, Dumbledore's curse came from the ring, the potion in the cave belonged to what is roughly the fifth Horcrux, and the giant snake Nagini was the sixth.

What is the seventh Horcrux?

Praliss recalled the principle behind Horcrux creation—murder. And Voldemort's most infamous murder was against the Potter family.

Why is there a connection between Harry and Voldemort in terms of consciousness and dreams? Why could Harry see Nagini biting Arthur Weasley? And Nagini... wasn't she the Horcrux Voldemort created after killing Bertha Jorkins?

Horcruxes connect with each other in the ocean of consciousness through the links between fragments of the soul. Inanimate objects, however, have no consciousness, so the only ones who can see each other are Harry, Nagini, and Voldemort.

This is what Dumbledore didn't want Prares to know immediately—Harry Potter is the seventh Horcrux.

When Voldemort slaughtered the Potters, he inadvertently fulfilled his condition for murder, and was then struck by Lily's magic, resulting in a fragment of his soul. Perhaps this fragment lies hidden within Harry's wound, which is why Harry senses Voldemort time and again. And each sense is accompanied by the pain of the scar.

During the night in the forest of Godric's Hollow, Prarese learned that Dumbledore had drunk the potion for the Horcruxes, and she immediately realized that this was the fifth Horcrux.

But it wasn't until she returned to Southend, a seaside town she hadn't seen for many years, that she understood the whole story—the one who truly deserved sympathy was Harry Potter, who was doomed to die.

Dumbledore, holding the bread, said calmly, “You are very similar to Severus; you are both kind at heart—he once questioned me about this, accusing me of cruelty.”

“But I don’t think you want Potter to die,” Praris said calmly. “If you wanted him dead, why did you drink the potion in the cave?”

Chapter 195 The Two-Person Meeting in Southander

"Perhaps I'm doing this so that Harry lives to the time I've planned," Dumbledore said calmly. "What if Harry drinks the potion and doesn't survive until Nagini dies?"

Prareas's lips twitched, and he pulled a bronze mirror from his pocket, holding it up to Dumbledore. "Alright, let's contact Professor Snape and prepare to deal with Nagini!"

A hint of surprise finally appeared on Dumbledore's face.

"Is that so strange?" Praris shrugged. "Do you think it should be in someone else's hands? Hermione? You'd be very wrong!"

Yes, the two-way mirror was in Hermione's possession before the Astronomy Tower murders.

But after that, if Professor Snape and Draco are safe and sound, half of the people Praliss cares about will be in Voldemort's territory. How can she be completely at ease about this?

It seems that Dumbledore's original plan was to use Prarese and the Two-Way Mirror to help Harry escape home safely on his seventeenth birthday. But this plan has been thwarted at a crucial point.

“Aren’t you using Harry as a tool?” Praris asked softly. “Isn’t the best plan to kill Nagini now?”

"The Man from Nowhere won't pass up the chance to kill Harry himself when he comes of age. If we kill Nagini first, and then he kills Harry, it's equivalent to destroying the last Horcrux—and then you can appear and completely destroy Voldemort. Why are you making that face?"

Dumbledore sighed helplessly. This helplessness stemmed partly from his bluntness with Prasris and partly from having his true thoughts exposed. He said, "It seems I've lost to love, and there's no shame in that."

“You didn’t lose to my love for Professor Snape and Draco,” Prarese said, putting the two-way mirror back in his pocket. “It was your love for Harry.”

“Harry deserves to be loved,” Dumbledore said gently. “We are all fighters drawn into the arena by fate, but only Harry—only he was not forced to face fate when there was no other way out.”

Everything in the world becomes insignificant in the face of life and death.

When it came to facing Voldemort, Harry never considered running away. Before he fully understood the matter, he chose to bravely face the mission that fate had imposed on him, a mission far beyond his capacity to bear, and he was proud of it.

Even knowing it might cost him his life, he resolutely embarked on this path. Everyone believed that even if Harry died for it, he would be proud of what he had done.

“You guided him to this point,” Praris said quietly. “And haven’t you seen yourself? You are the one who didn’t have to choose to fight the Mystic. Yet you still tied yourself to the relentless, brakeless race against evil, a race that never stops until death.”

From Dumbledore's perspective, he was trying to fill the void in his heart caused by certain events that occurred during his youth.

From the perspective of Prader and the general public, Harry had already been chosen by Voldemort, and there was no way for him to avoid it. But although no one stipulated that Dumbledore had to fight Voldemort, Dumbledore still chose this path without hesitation.

Prarese believes that Dumbledore may have had some self-loathing and was unable to acknowledge that he possessed some admirable qualities.

"You want to save the world, and me?" Praris scoffed. "Don't flatter me! I just want to live a good life myself, and for the people I love to live a good life too. As for everything else? That's other people's responsibility!"

Dumbledore and Harry Potter are noble people; they deserve to go to heaven.

Praliss was different; she always remembered her original intention for coming to the wizarding world. She didn't want to go to heaven, nor did she want to go to hell. She just wanted to selfishly live on earth and enjoy peaceful happiness, just like she did during her first three years at Hogwarts.

Dumbledore shook his head: "You know, I can't think like that."

Talking to Praris was both easy and difficult. Dumbledore didn't need to explain anything; he only needed to assume that Praris understood and felt most things. The trouble was that he also had to carefully conceal his own past, which he didn't want to reveal.

"So you've decided to protect Harry?" Praris asked curiously. "What's your plan to keep him alive from the Man of Void?"

“It is love,” Dumbledore said gently and firmly.

Dumbledore sometimes prefers to be even more ambiguous than Praliss himself. And now he's saying things that Praliss will find difficult to understand!

She said with some annoyance, "Fine, so you've decided to save Harry? They're going to move on the night of the 27th, and the plan is still yours to decide."

“Severus told you,” Dumbledore said with certainty.

Praris said sarcastically, "Who else but the 'traitor' himself would believe me, the 'traitor's' beloved disciple?"

She had always opposed Dumbledore's plan to fake his death, but she had no choice but to accept it all.

The curse of the Horcruxes eroded Dumbledore's life force, making him increasingly weak. Even with limb regeneration potions, nothing comes without a price. The birth of new limbs was accompanied by enormous depletion, forcing Dumbledore to take more than two supplements daily.

He could no longer sustain the expenditure of continuing to operate openly.

Secondly, since entering the wizarding world, Harry had never truly experienced death. He had some understanding of the cruelty of war, but not a deep one, and Dumbledore volunteered to be the one who allowed Harry to grow.

This is also why Dumbledore felt increasingly guilty towards Harry.

Ultimately, this was a task Professor Snape was willing to undertake, and Draco's only chance to survive without murdering anyone.