Chapter 252

The next day was Sunday. Harry got up early, then brought the painting to the entrance of the headmaster's office.

The stone statue at the entrance automatically gave way. Harry walked into the office unimpeded. This was a very beautiful circular room. Portraits of past headmasters of Hogwarts hung on the walls, and they were all sleeping.

And Deng Buliduo's painting was placed in the last position, but he didn't seem to be a portrait in the general sense, just a moving picture. He maintained an eternal smile, swaying his body slightly.

"Deng Buliduo is not dead, right?" Snape said. "If he died, this portrait would immediately become lively, and the thoughts he injected into it would start to become active."

"Right," Harry put the painting on the desk. "Let me explain to you..."

"He is not in this painting either," Snape rolled up his sleeves. "If Voldemort were in this painting, at such a close distance, my Dark Mark would react."

Harry was stunned instantly. His brain ran at high speed. He had to think of a statement, using time theory combined with some physics that wizards couldn't understand, to fool Snape.

"If you don't want to tell the truth, you don't have to say it yet," Snape said slowly. "Now, you can take a look at Grindelwald's memory. I promised him that I would let Deng Buliduo's favorite student see it."

Snape led him to a black cabinet, inside which was a shallow stone basin. Snape took out a small crystal bottle, poured a silvery-white substance that looked like both gas and liquid into the basin, then stirred it with his wand, signaling Harry to lean forward and watch.

Harry was attracted by the scene inside at first glance. It was a blond boy squatting on the windowsill. He was very handsome, even charming. And in the room, another equally handsome boy was looking at him with a smile. It took Harry a while to recognize that this was Deng Buliduo and Grindelwald—in the memory, they were just teenagers.

They were in a barn, holding hands, making a blood pact, swearing never to harm each other. This was an unbreakable vow. They exchanged their blood, their eyes full of sincere feelings. Harry felt it was strange; this didn't look much like ordinary friendship.

Just before more scenes emerged, the picture changed, and the two were in the room, sitting together discussing something.

"... Wizard's ability gives us the power to rule Muggles, but this also includes responsibility. This is the basis of all our arguments," Deng Buliduo said. "We can only use necessary force when we encounter resistance, absolutely not excessive."

"The essence of magic is the favor of gods, we are born to be kings, Albus," Grindelwald said. "Power is innate, while responsibility is artificially imposed..."

Perhaps this was the starting point of all their disagreements. When discussing the cause of ruling Muggles, Deng Buliduo always emphasized responsibility, while Grindelwald always emphasized power.

Very fittingly, the picture switched to an argument. A rude boy—judging by his blue eyes, perhaps Deng Buliduo's brother—was shouting, saying he hated Deng Buliduo's ambition, saying Ariana needed her brother's care. Grindelwald retorted dissatisfiedly, saying Deng Buliduo shouldn't be dragged down by a weak, unstable sister. The argument quickly escalated into a duel. The three started a melee. A spell whose caster couldn't be seen hit the girl who ran out in a hurry. She fell to the ground and died.

Grindelwald panicked and climbed over the wall to escape. Harry could imagine what a sad thing this was for Deng Buliduo, so much so that countless years later, he would still miss his sister so deeply.

The picture switched, Grindelwald knocked out an old man and snatched a wand from his hand. Harry quickly recognized it; it was the elder wood wand that Deng Buliduo once used, the Elder Wand, one of the Deathly Hallows.

This was the process of him acquiring power, Harry thought. He watched Grindelwald grow stronger day by day, watched him run around establishing an army, saw him standing on a high platform giving generous speeches, and the crowd below responded to every call. They repeated that famous quote countless times: For the greater good.

But at this moment, Harry heard a hint of different meaning. In Grindelwald's mouth, this sentence was an excuse to sacrifice others with peace of mind; while in Deng Buliduo's mouth, it was self-deception when he felt guilty because of his conscience.

In the blink of an eye, Grindelwald became much more mature. Harry guessed that he must have experienced many things, but he didn't intend to put it in the memory to tell him. In this scene, the adult Grindelwald and Deng Buliduo were confronting each other. When he tried to kill a man and Deng Buliduo released a protection spell, the blood pact between them shattered.

Grindelwald and Deng Buliduo wrestled together, and he shouted in grief and indignation: "Who else will love you?"

Although the word "love" made Harry feel a bit strange, he admitted that Grindelwald's sentence was right, even saying that it was the same for both of them. The story behind was the legendary duel between the two of them, which was content that Harry, or the world, had long known.

When the two great wizards shot spells at each other, Harry felt a hint of sadness. After that, Deng Buliduo dedicated everything he had to the cause of anti-Dark Magic. He worked hard to lay out, fighting Voldemort, living like a saint. Because he had indeed become a loner, people respected Deng Buliduo, but no one loved him.

In the blink of an eye, Grindelwald was already sitting in a prison cell. He maintained the same posture. Harry felt that this part shouldn't be a real memory, but woven by Grindelwald. He watched the person sitting on the bed go from middle age to old age, and his expression also changed from resentment to regret, and finally to relief.

He, who was sitting on the bed, suddenly spoke: "I finally understood a fact: when you pursue a great goal, don't forget why you took the first step. If you want to benefit the world, you must never let the people around you be sad first. Otherwise, it will be like me, realizing only when it is too late: it turns out that compared to the whole world, I care more about that person."

At this time, another person, Harry recognized it was Rodolphus, pushed the door and walked in, saying in a panic: "Deng Buliduo has been poisoned, he is very weak now. Hogwarts' Deputy Headmaster McGonagall wants to secretly kill him to seize the headmaster position. Students and professors have all been bewitched. You are the only one who can save him now. I request—"

"Shut up," Grindelwald suddenly stood up. "Stop your clumsy lies."

"I see all your little moves, Rodolphus, I just don't want to care," he said. "Call me the first Dark Lord, call those followers Acolytes, this is all to integrate all forces opposing Deng Buliduo and serve your master."

"My loyalty to you—" Rodolphus still wanted to argue, but Grindelwald interrupted him.

"I said, I didn't want to care before," Grindelwald said. "Because I was still thinking about whether I could continue my previous claims and whether there was a possibility of success. However, even if I possessed the whole world, who could I share it with? Let those misplaced ambitions rest. I just want to see him one last time now, say sorry, and then tell him I figured it out, tell him I still love him."

"Originally, I shouldn't have walked out of this prison," Grindelwald took a wand from Rodolphus's hand. "But I have a premonition that perhaps the story between us is about to end."

"You have already been hit by the Dark Lord's curse. If you intend to be his enemy—" Rodolphus suddenly shouted with a ferocious face.

Grindelwald pointed backhand, and Rodolphus was pressed against the wall instantly.

"You think death is a threat to me?" He shook his head. "I won't kill you, I won't hurt anyone, but, no one can stop me."

"I leave these memories to Deng Buliduo's favorite student. I once thought that person would be Newt, but now perhaps it's Harry," in the next scene, Grindelwald stood in a secret room, extracting some silver light like silk from his own mind. "You have talent, and you will soon have power and status."

"I want to give you a piece of advice through the story between me and Deng Buliduo, which is not to go on the road of hatred without returning. If you hurt someone who loves you, please apologize to him in time. A person who is not loved cannot possess this world," he showed a relieved smile. "As for Rodolphus and his conspiracies, please help worry about them, because the world belongs to young people after all."

Harry found that Grindelwald began to move away from him, but soon he realized that it wasn't Grindelwald moving away, but he was moving away from the whole scene. He gradually rose into the air, and suddenly, he was standing in that sunny headmaster's office again.

"You've finished watching," Snape was sitting in a chair on the side. "Actually, I've watched it once too, there's nothing special."

"It's a pity that even if I want to apologize, it's already too late," Snape said in a low voice. "It's just that someone also owes me an apology, and it's also too late."

Harry guessed he was talking about his parents.

"Your eyes are like your mother's, and your face is like your father's," Snape sighed. "And your personality is like Deng Buliduo's."

"If the one you love is Zhang Qiu, and the lie about the painting is to guard against enemies outside Britain," Snape said somewhat dejectedly, "then you will sooner or later discover that Ge Xuan is also an object Britain needs to guard against. Grindelwald's advice will play a role."

"But before that, I will first help you defeat the enemies inside Britain, those Death Eaters," Snape concluded. "This is all I want to do, because I don't want anyone else to owe someone an apology."