Snape didn't seem to feel how terrible his expression was. His face was pale, his big nose was sharper, and he asked word by word, "Are you sure?!...... Are you not mistaken?!"

Hermione shrunk her neck. I can't be mistaken, Muggle schools teach Shakespeare, he's very important, he's very famous—she wanted to say that, but after thinking about it, she swallowed it back and nodded heavily.

"I can't be mistaken, Professor. Swear to Merlin. ”

Then she found that the current Headmaster of Hogwarts, who had always been so menacing, with straight shoulders and a sense of oppression, had always been like an indestructible disguise in his black robes and cold and rigid expression, but now the perfect disguise cracked, and though the crack was so small that it was almost imperceptible, But from that tiny crack escaped a certain gloom and deep exhaustion, For a moment, the air in the room was almost frozen, turning into a dark cloud hovering over people's heads, and the black pressure pressed down on the people in the principal's office.

But she didn't feel any inhibition or disgust. All she felt was a certain sadness and sadness, and at that moment she could suddenly perceive with the acumen of an adult woman that what was wafting in this room was not a powerful and threatening magic pressure, but the dazed and sentimental loss of someone very important. Especially, when they now realize that the person they have lost is actually important to them, very indispensable. But they had no chance of redress.

Hermione seemed to understand something, and the surprise in her eyes slowly turned to pity and sympathy.

She noticed that at this time, the former old headmaster, who had been closing his eyes in the frame and pretending to sleep, suddenly opened his eyes. He had been in a position of resting his elbows on the armrest of his chair, half of his face still under the cover of his hand, and between his open fingers, he suddenly and imperceptibly winked at Hermione, his blue eyes showing appreciation, as if to say to her: You answered very well, Gryffindor ten.

After Hermione left the Headmaster's office, I don't know how long it was, Severus Snape was still sitting in the chair under Dumbledore's portrait, motionless, as if thinking about something.

Finally, he slammed to his feet, strode towards the door of the principal's office, pulled it open and walked out.

Behind him, the people in the magic frame were talking in amazement.

"Hey, where are you going at this late hour, Severus—" Dumbledore, dressed in a robe of the stars and moon and wearing a tall purple nighthat, pretended to be surprised, and shouted against the wall behind Snape.

...... But by this time, Snape had already slammed his hand back against the door, and naturally he didn't hear his shout.

Dumbledore pretended to sigh and said to Miss Dalyse Derwent, who was framed on the opposite wall, "...... Young people are always easy to be dominated by emotions and do impulsive things - but it is precisely because of this that we can see the inheritance of the word 'love' in the world, isn't it?"

Lady Duris Derwent smiled and nodded in agreement.

Snape, on the other hand, was walking in a black-robed hallway on the eighth floor.

He didn't want to stay in the principal's office any longer. He didn't want to hear Dumbledore babble about that Lily to him over and over again, or to instruct him to use the meditation basin. Everything in that room suddenly became so heavy and oppressive that it was hard to breathe. So he left there and walked down the hallways of Hogwarts, thinking that in this way his tight throat and oppressive ribcage would be relieved for a moment.

It was already nightfall and there was silence in Hogwarts Castle. Under his strict management, there were very few young wizards who dared to wander at night - even the troublesome boy no longer came out at night to break the school rules.

That's good. Filch had reduced his workload a lot, and he didn't have to worry about labor services that couldn't be arranged at all—he walked straight up to the painting of the stupid Barnabasa beating the troll, and hesitated, as if he were thinking about something in his mind. However, he stood there for a long time without moving, and not a single door appeared from the wall in front of him.

Snape didn't really want to enter the Room of Requirement. He just remembered that there was a tunnel in the room that led to the pig's head bar.

He remembered that on the day of the final battle at Hogwarts, the impostor had sneaked back to Hogwarts and met him there.

At that time, the imposter had actually set it up as a Muggle street scene for Christmas, with a mistletoe wreath hanging above the doorframe of the door of the Room of Requirement, and the Muggle songs that accompanied them when they were forced to dance together at the Ball, and then the impostor rushed up with his head in disregard and almost pinned him against the door—

Finally, she said: You can doubt that the stars are flames, that the sun moves, that the truth is a lie, but ......

But what? Why didn't she tell the truth?

Snape walked a few times up and down the hallway outside the door of the Room of Need, with a little irritability, and at last he felt like a little troll with a brain full of sage, and he turned around quickly, and strode up the stairs as he had come, intending to return to the Headmaster's office.

However, his luck was not so good today. The convenient staircase always refused to turn to his side. He had to choose a staircase that was not so convenient to get around, and then he found that he was still standing on the seventh floor, only one floor down.

He angrily walked down the corridor to the other side in search of a more obedient staircase, but he had barely taken a few steps before he stopped.

Here, he remembers.

After the Yule Ball, where he was forced to dance with her, he received a note from her in the form of a magic paper crane, asking him to go to the Room of Requirement on the eighth floor to give him the horns of the horned camel. But as soon as he got to the seventh floor, he saw her talking to the pompy boy.

He hid in the shadows of a nearby pillar and heard the Broken Boy trying to convince her of what an untrustworthy, suspicious, and despicable person he was.

Then she sent the broken boy away, turned and gave him the horns of the horned camel, and did not pester him any further, but smiled and said to him, "What a Christmas Eve it could be," and walked up the staircase that led to the eighth floor—

Then, the stairs creaked and slowly swirled, leading her to a new place. And he heard her humming on the stairs, the song they used to dance together.

Snape jerked back and looked at the magic staircase behind him.

The staircase was beginning to roll and turn, turning away as if it were remembered, and the moonlight of the night poured into the castle through a nearby skylight, enveloping it.

Under his long, intent, gaze, there seemed to be a blue-white apparition on the turning staircase, and the man in the apparition was dressed in a dark blue one-shoulder dress studded with sequins and a silver-white robe, which rolled at her feet like waves as she walked, and there she stood, holding on to the railing of the staircase with one hand, looking back at him with a smile, as if still humming.

【I don’t want a lot for Christmas

This is all I’m asking for

I just want to see my baby

Standing right outside my door

I just want you for my own

More than you could ever know】

He blinked, and the apparition vanished—or rather, it never existed, and everything that had just happened was from his imagination.

He unconsciously took a step forward. But the staircase had already been turned away. In front of him was the empty floor slab, and the dark, bottomless space behind the slab.

He suddenly wanted to say something. But he didn't even know her real name. From the beginning, she appeared in Lily's appearance, and until she disappeared, she was Lily, and she was Lily's identity and Lily's face-

But what is the real her, who is she, where does she come from, what is she like, why is there such a surge of kindness and ...... to him from the beginning? Kindness?!

"Imposters," he said softly. Although the noun he said seemed impolite, his tone was soft and low, as if with a hint of sighing.

"Why didn't you have the last laugh this time? Don't you always have the last laugh?"

He stood there blankly, a tiny tingling that he couldn't tell what he felt from his limbs, and spread rapidly, and as the tingling spread throughout his body, he realized something at last.

Even the real Lily couldn't have saved him like this.

She had deliberately wanted Bellatrix's Death Eaters to discover her whereabouts. She's going to Malfoy Manor and then volunteering to take his place on the Death Express.

It was as if she had guessed from the beginning that the Dark Lord would not spare his life. So she threw herself into the net in such a stupid way, and then stood in front of the Dark Lord with a fearless look, and every word she said accurately angered the man who had almost pushed the wizarding world into an irretrievably dark abyss, so that he had gathered enough anger before he could kill someone else to push her into that room at Malfoy Manor, and then assign the great serpent to come forward and kill her, and perhaps even bite her throat with one bite -

Snape felt a sudden, piercing pain. The pain pierced his heart and lungs like an arrow, and he had to bend forward, his shoulders and back tense, and his shoulder blades bulging out, as if he could temporarily counteract some of the pain that the stinging pain had stirred up in his chest and abdomen.

His tall, always straight-backed, black-robed figure was now deeply slumped, as if at last he had been struck down by some deep pain from his heart in the middle of the night, in the corridor through which no one had passed.

In a trance, it seemed as if on the magical staircase in front of him, which turned back and forth, and someone was still softly humming the Christmas song that was popular in the Muggle world.

【I don’t want a lot for Christmas

There is just one thing I need

I don’t care about presents

Underneath the Christmas tree

I just want you for my own

More than you could ever know

Make my wish come true

All I want for Christmas is you】

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July 5:

If you remember, when the professor used to unilaterally quarrel with his sister, he said, "That's because every time you can be the one who has the last laugh."

Tomorrow is expected to be the end of the General Ending chapter of this volume.

And then because I'm moving over the weekend, please give me a day or two to clean up [crying.]

Then next Monday we will officially start the deputy long line!

Of course, if I have time on the weekend, I'll put the stacked part up

The soundtrack of this chapter: Of course, it is the theme song of the movie "Love Actually", "All I Want For Christmas is You", which everyone is familiar with. It's in my playlist, so you can go and listen to w

Ahem, I'm going to say, how well the lyrics of this song fit here

Next update: 0:00 tomorrow.

Thank you to the little angel who voted for me or irrigated the nutrient solution~

Thanks to the little angel who threw [Mine]: Meow Meow 1;

Thanks to the little angel who irrigated [the nutrient solution]:

Magic ☆ Wang Yao, Omi Jiang Shan 1 bottle;

Thank you very much for your support, I will continue to work hard!