"Merlin's fattest briefs, what the hell is going on?" Ron forgot about Professor Lily Evans' whereabouts for a moment, glaring at Hermione's actions.

"Phineas Nigelles. Hermione explained, tossing the bag on the kitchen table, making the usual loud, heavy thudding sound. "His portrait can be freely moved between the two frames in the Headmaster's Office at Hogwarts and 12 Grimmauld Place. Snape could send Phineas Nigelus to the house to find out. Hermione explained to Ron and sat down, "Now let him peek, Phineas Nigelus can only see what's in my handbag. ”

"High!" Ron said admiringly.

"Thank you. Hermione smiled and pulled the soup bowl in front of her, "Harry, what's going on today?"

Harry grimaced, pushing the newspaper back in front of Hermione. "We've just figured out something is wrong - the Death Eater Alecto Caro is going to take over as a Muggle Studies teacher, and the newspapers say 'the former Muggle Studies teacher has resigned'. But we don't believe that this resignation was a voluntary decision by Professor Evans - so what has happened to her in the time since we last saw her at Bill and Fleur's wedding, and where has she gone?"

Hermione's face suddenly became heavy, and she dragged the newspaper over, and carefully flipped through it and read all the pages, but unfortunately she found nothing.

Snape ...... He wouldn't do anything bad to Professor Evans, would he......" she said uncertainly, "You know...... You know, they've been ...... before. Nearly...... I mean, somebody would have a relationship with a woman they almost married...... Poisoned?"

Ron choked for a moment, then snorted contemptuously, Harry swallowed, not believing her reasoning, and he was clearly hesitant to warn Hermione that Professor Evans might have been the fiancée of that villain in Snape, but now that she had accepted Siris's proposal and inherited the Black family mansion as Siris' fiancée—even for the most ordinary reasons of love and hatred, Snape had plenty of reason to take revenge on Professor Evans—

They looked at each other a few times, and finally Harry reluctantly replied, "...... You must know that Dumbledore used to trust Snape so much, but in the end...... We all know what Snape did to him. Moreover, he has now fully expressed his loyalty to the Dark Lord, and Professor Evans is a Muggle ......"

He stopped talking. A sense of foreboding rose in their midst. A hemp wizard who teaches Muggle studies - by all accounts, should be at the top of the list of Death Eaters and now the Ministry of Magic to be cleared!

Hermione suddenly blurted out, "...... And Professor Evans broke up with him! She agreed to Siris's proposal! So the house is now hers! Did Snape forget about it?"

Seeing that Hermione himself remembered this reason, Harry grinned in relief and immediately chimed in, "I think it makes sense—I think ...... We have to do something about it. Otherwise, things will only get worse and worse—"

Harry paused for a moment to think about it, and finally said, "I think we should go tomorrow." ”

Hermione was dumbfounded. Ron choked on the soup.

"Tomorrow?, you said going to the Ministry of Magic?!" Hermione asked incredulously, "You're not serious, are you, Harry?"

"I am," said Harry, "I don't think we would be much better prepared than we were to be in the Magic Department for another month. The longer it drags on, the farther away it will be from the locket......"

After some debate, they finally came to an agreement: go to the Ministry of Magic tomorrow and get the real Locket Horcrux.

Around the same time, Severus Snape sat at the long table in Hogwarts Great Hall, presiding over the opening and sorting ceremonies for the first time as Headmaster.

The annoying Caro siblings sat on either side of him. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout sat away from them with straight faces.

The Sorting Hat's song this year was extraordinarily short, and the lyrics were so simple that it sounded like it was just a shrill and unpleasant repetition of the history of Hogwarts, and then the torturous singing stopped. When it was in the Sorting House, it no longer stayed on top of a young wizard for long periods of time. Its Chambers decided to be extraordinarily swift. Unfortunately, due to the pedigree and registration policy introduced this year, it seems that more students have been assigned to Slytherin.

Snape's speech as headmaster was also extraordinarily brief, nothing more than a reiteration of what Voldemort had called him before the opening of the school year and asked him to faithfully convey to the group of young wizards at the opening ceremony, without adding anything superfluous.

His speech took almost two or three minutes to finish. As he left the podium, which had now turned into a serpentine sign in front of him, his gaze glanced imperceptibly over a spot in the teacher's seat.

The spot was vacant.

Right next to Sybil Trelawney.

Muggle studies classes are a must-have in the Hogwarts schedule, but they are not that important, so she always sits with Professor Trelawney, who also teaches electives, and enjoys the delicacies cooked by the Hogwarts house-elves in a corner of the teacher's seat, in a place that is not easy to attract attention-

Now her teaching position has been taken over by a female Death Eater. And her seat was still empty because the female Death Eater thought she deserved to sit in a more prominent, important place - but where did she go?

According to various sources, it appeared to be business as usual when she left Hogwarts Castle to attend Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacul's wedding, but after that wedding, she disappeared. Despite the Death Eater attack at the wedding, she managed to escape without being killed or injured, and after that, no one knew her whereabouts, and there was no trace of her. This made the Dark Lord, who was bent on arresting the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts and slowly torturing and killing him, maddened, and he didn't know how much he had spent on the Death Eaters who had been sent to find Lily Evans but had returned in vain.

The Dark Lord even suspected that he was hiding Lily Evans. But he managed to prove that he had nothing to do with the matter - and on this he was not lying. He's also searching for her whereabouts, as he hasn't seen her or heard from her in months since he cast the Avada Curse on Albus Dumbledore from the Astronomy Tower and fought her near Hagrid's hut outside the Forbidden Forest.

The last impression of her in his mind was that she stood a few steps away in front of him, the beautiful face that belonged to the real Lily brightly lit up by the flames that burned from Hagrid's hut behind them, and she pointed her wand at his chest, and said the words again twenty years later—"I can't pretend any longer, you have chosen your way, and I have chosen mine." 】

Looking back now, he had to admit that that words and her expression at the time had caused him some kind of real pain. He didn't care how many people didn't understand what he was doing, not understanding his choices, not even what he had sacrificed and given for the greatest good Dumbledore had said - because these were his own choices, and the price he should have paid to make up for his sins all those years ago, good or bad, but when she glared at him with anger and strangeness, no longer desperately trying to stop him or try to defend him, he suddenly felt a blank emptiness welling up in his heart.

For so many years he had been accustomed to hating her while taking her maintenance or other attempts to show kindness as a matter of atonement, and when he finally lost it all, he would feel unaccustomed, and perhaps a little unwilling—

He'd have to find her. But he hoped that she would never be found until the Dark Lord was finished.

He stood up, and the opening ceremony was over. He was going back to the principal's office on the eighth floor. As he passed by the armor that could open the Room of Requirement, he hesitated in his footsteps. Then he walked casually, as if he had not seen the ugly stone beast at the door of the headmaster's room, and climbed up the spiral staircase, opened the oak door, and entered the room that was almost covered with portraits of the headmasters.

Dumbledore was still asleep in the portrait. Snape wasn't sure if he deliberately didn't want to wake up. Sometimes he was tempted to shake the frame of Dumbledore's picture so that the righteous and cunning old wizard would wake up and give him some helpful advice. But he also knew it was dangerous to do so. So he didn't try that much.

He collapsed into the large, comfortable chair under Dumbledore's portrait and pinched his brow with his right hand wearily.

How long will it take for such a day when there is no hope, a day that lies dormant underground, to see the last light?

His gaze fell on the empty shelf beside him. It was where Dumbledore's swaggering phoenix Fawkes used to hunch on a daily basis, but since Dumbledore had fallen from the tower that night, Fawkes had disappeared.

Same with that fake Lily.

Time passed day by day. The Dementors and Death Eaters almost turned the entire Hogwarts castle into another eerie Azkaban.

But Snape never had to worry about the brave and brainless Gryffindors falling apart.

He caught a couple of trolls in the Headmaster's office—presumably the backbone of the so-called "Dumbledore Army" that the students had formed spontaneously during Umbridge's invasion of Hogwarts during the previous Hogwarts invasion of Hogwarts - and they had the audacity to steal the fake Gryffindor sword he had hidden.

He was very nervous for a while, and then put on the most ferocious expression, and threw them all to the Forbidden Forest to work as coolies, as if he was looking forward to these little monsters dying directly in the Forbidden Forest.

Then he took the fake Gryffindor sword, hurried to Gringotts, and with great caution, hid the fake in the vault.

The portrait of Phineas Nigelles Black on the wall of the Headmaster's Room seemed to have disappeared for a while, and when he returned, he immediately grunted and complained that the little trolls now had no respect for the old Headmaster and dared to kidnap him. Dumbledore was still asleep, and the other old Headmasters had often been absent from the Headmaster's office since he took charge of Hogwarts and the Death Eaters were stationed at the school, leaving Phineas Nigelus with only one listener.

Snape had to deal with other things in the headmaster's office while he endured Phineas Nigelus's chattering complaints. At last he was finally a little distracted, and it was because of this distraction that he heard a little hint of Phineas Nigelus's resentment and grumbling.

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May 25:

I! Feeling! Next Chapter! I have a stale brain hole again! What should I do!

Do you guys want to see hhh

I'm going to try to get a quick run of the plot in these chapters, and then add a cliché brain hole, and then we'll have a showdown at Hogwarts

Then, because the final battle of Hogwarts is the highlight of the main event, and it will last for many chapters, so if you feel that there is too much glass slag in the middle, I can also consider adding an extra fan, how about writing about Ciris, which everyone likes:)

Next update: 0:00 tomorrow.

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

Thanks to the little angels who threw [mines]: 2 bamboo rafts;

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

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