Chapter 324

After giving them the Bezoar and the inhibitor.

After a while, Harry twitched violently, then sat up directly, gasping and coughing loudly.

"Pfft cough cough!!"

"Ha... ha... John... what is going on...?"

Before John could answer, the other students also struggled to sit up, gasping for air, their eyes filled with lingering fear, and a burning, stinging pain remained in their throats.

"Don't move yet, you have been poisoned."

"The poison is temporarily inhibited now, but it hasn't been eliminated."

"Strenuous exercise will accelerate the spread of the toxins."

As soon as John finished speaking, the other students who were struggling to get up were stunned, and then immediately lay back down obediently.

Harry was no exception.

Afterward, John walked straight toward the stunned Professor Slughorn.

"Professor, was this bottle of wine given to you by Filch?"

John asked the professor while picking up the wine bottle that had a third left.

"No... no..."

Only this time, Professor Slughorn changed his previous story.

After hesitating for a moment, he said slowly.

"This bottle of wine was sent in from outside the school and was intercepted by Filch for inspection."

"I just happened to run into it, so I asked about it..."

Professor Slughorn looked at the bottle of wine and swallowed again.

"This bottle of wine was meant for Dumbledore."

"For Dumbledore?"

Hearing this, John was stunned for a moment and repeated it.

"... Yes..."

"Filch entrusted me to pass it on to Dumbledore..."

"But because it was a rare bottle of good wine... so I kept it for myself..."

Hearing this, everyone present was speechless.

Especially those who had been poisoned.

They felt they had suffered an unprovoked disaster.

John gently put the wine bottle back on the table; he already knew whose handiwork it was.

In the secret conversation between Draco and Professor Snape earlier, poisoned wine had been mentioned.

He didn't expect Draco to have actually done it.

It was just that he clearly hadn't expected this wine to be embezzled by Professor Slughorn.

And that he would let these unlucky ones drink it.

John let out a light breath.

The second time.

Accidentally hurting others in an attempt to assassinate the Headmaster.

This piece of trash Draco really should be dealt with.

But he was now tied to Professor Snape, and for a moment, he really had no way to deal with him.

Perhaps only by resolving Voldemort as soon as possible could Professor Snape be completely freed from these tangled shadows.

Thinking of this, John turned his gaze to Professor Slughorn.

The key piece of the puzzle to defeating Voldemort lay with him.

"Professor, I suspect this is likely the handiwork of your good student from back then, Tom Riddle."

John suddenly applied pressure to Professor Slughorn without warning.

Harry, lying on the ground, suddenly raised his head.

He had been thinking that with such an accident, there would be no way to get information out of Professor Slughorn.

As a result, John went straight for the jugular?

Professor Slughorn's face also turned gray instantly, because this was the past he least wanted to mention.

"No... John, he was just a student back then, and I was a professor; I only had a normal teacher-student relationship with him."

He didn't deny the fact that Voldemort had been his student, but he denied having a closer relationship with Voldemort.

John looked at him calmly and said.

"Are we the same? A normal teacher-student relationship?"

The change in topic was so sudden that Professor Slughorn was stunned again.

He looked at the students lying on the ground and subconsciously denied it.

"No, you are of course the students I value the most..."

Before he could finish speaking, John's next sentence pressed down on him.

"Then what if I become the next Dark Lord? Would I still be the student you value the most?"

This directly choked Professor Slughorn so he couldn't speak.

But he still spoke tremblingly.

"No, how could you, John... you are a good child... everyone thinks highly of you..."

John smiled slightly.

"Yeah, how could I..."

"Tom back then must have been a good child in your eyes too, smart, humble, with a limitless future."

"But who could have foreseen that he would become the Dark Lord who makes people tremble today?"

Professor Slughorn's lips moved, but he couldn't utter a complete word again.

John continued to apply pressure.

"Do you remember the question I asked you before?"

"The question of who is guilty."

"Back then, you didn't know Tom would become Voldemort, and the other professors didn't know either."

"So you were just fulfilling your duties as professors."

"Clearing up confusion for every confused student, that's all."

John's words seemed to touch Professor Slughorn; this was exonerating him, not holding him accountable.

But he still didn't speak; a few short sentences couldn't make him drop all his psychological defenses.

"But today, one of those students used that knowledge and headed in the opposite direction of everyone's expectations."

"As a former professor, don't you feel any heartache or regret at all?"

"He should have been a rising star in the spotlight, he should have been the next Dumbledore of the Wizarding World."

"Don't you want to pull him back, or end his path of depravity that has already spiraled out of control?"

This sudden accountability shocked Professor Slughorn.

Because the direction of this accountability was completely different from previous ones.

This was an accountability standing entirely on the standpoint of professional ethics for a teacher.

Professor Slughorn, who had never faced such accountability, wanted to escape or drive John away.

But at this very moment, his students were lying on the ground because of Voldemort's poisoned wine.

This moral pressure made him unable to drive them away or escape.

He had to stay here, with the students.

Or perhaps, he was actually waiting for someone who could help him walk out of the quagmire that had trapped him for decades...

"Professor, I don't know what my future will be like."

"But I know that at this very moment, I hate evil, I am righteous, I cannot bear to see suffering, and I am willing to stand up for the weak."

"If one day in the future, I really go astray and become the person I hate the most."

"Then the me of this moment must hope that you, as a professor, as my beloved teacher, can pull the future me back, or personally cut off the source of my depravity."

"Instead of standing by and watching me fall into the abyss step by step."

This last sentence pierced Professor Slughorn's heart like a knife.

John didn't stand from the perspective of the so-called big picture, or so-called saving the world, to demand he make sacrifices like Dumbledore.

Instead, he stood from the standpoint of an ordinary person, the most simple entrustment from a student to a teacher—

Please hold me when I am lost.

Please catch me when I fall.

Please personally cut off my depravity before I sink completely.

Perhaps Voldemort never had these qualities he spoke of from the beginning.

But this didn't hinder a teacher's heart that wanted to save a student.

After all, whether Voldemort had these qualities was his own business.

And whether he, as a teacher, tried to pull back a student who had gone astray was a responsibility he could never shed.