touchnovel Chapter 312 Your Wrong Path
Chapter 312 Your Wrong Path
Chapter 312 Your Wrong Path (5K) (2/2) (Seeking monthly votes at the end of the month)
The name Lily was like a red-hot dagger, precisely piercing through all the cold shells Snape had just built, reaching the deepest, never-healed, and perpetually bleeding wound.
Snape's body shuddered almost imperceptibly, and something seemed to suddenly crack in the depths of his lifeless eyes, revealing an undisguised, intense pain.
After the excruciating pain comes the awakening of reason.
Reason, like a cold suit of armor, quickly donned again.
He realized that Lynch's presence here tonight was not merely to enjoy his lapse or to inflict pointless humiliation. This man's every move was purposeful, and his ambitions were far from insignificant.
The emptiness in Snape's eyes was replaced by a sharp and wary light; his fighting spirit returned, like a lurking viper raising its head.
He took a small step back, creating some distance, his voice still hoarse, but now possessing its usual cold and hard tone: "What's wrong with Potter?"
Lynch didn't answer the question directly; his gaze, like a scalpel, continued to dissect: "In that clearing outside Hogsmeade, you had a period of time—brief, but incredibly real—"
"You're sure he's dead." His tone was as flat as stating the result of an experiment. "I want to know, at that moment, how you felt."
Snape's jaw tightened; this blatant probing made him extremely uncomfortable, as if his wounds were being reopened for examination.
He almost immediately shifted the blame defensively: "That's because your damn protective magic created an illusion!"
He growled, his voice filled with barely suppressed rage.
However, as soon as the words left his mouth, seeing Lin Qi's expression—completely unsurprised and almost tacitly agreeing—the doubts that had been obscured by his overwhelming emotions suddenly and perfectly pieced together like scattered puzzle pieces.
Lynch's superhuman speed and strength meant he should have arrived much earlier, yet he "just happened" to appear at his most desperate moment; the protective magic of that badge was activated with excessive precision in both timing and shielding effect, as if—as if it had been calculated precisely to bring Harry to that critical point of near death, only to forcibly keep him alive at the last moment; and then there was his calm, detached demeanor as he watched Harry crumble—
None of this is a coincidence.
A chilling, suffocating truth suddenly gripped Snape's heart.
Lynch didn't just delay revealing the truth; he completely manipulated the entire process!
He deliberately controlled the activation of the protective magic, allowing—or perhaps even guiding—Harry to fall into a near-death state that was convincingly realistic!
The impact of this realization is far greater than mere humiliation.
This is using Harry Potter, Lily's son, as a test subject, an experiment to observe his Severus Snape reaction!
The anger of being deceived, manipulated, and observed, intertwined with a shock and rage he himself was unwilling to admit stemming from Harry's exploitation, transformed his voice from a tremor into a chilling, venomous whisper, as if ground from between his teeth: "You—did this on purpose?" His gaze was fixed on Lynch's face, trying to find a crack in the calm. "Not just the timing of telling me the truth—you manipulated all of this. You let him go—you let him go that far—just to—observe me?"
The last few words, "Observe me," were so soft they were almost inaudible, yet they carried an overwhelming rage and an unbelievable chill.
He realized that the man before him was far more ruthless and calculating than he had initially imagined.
Lynch did not immediately answer Snape's chilling question.
Instead, he calmly raised his glass and drank the remaining amber liquid in one gulp.
In the brief moment he tilted his head back to drink, the darkness of that forest clearing flashed uncontrollably back into his mind—
Surrounded by Dementors, Harry futilely raised his wand. The unstable silver light flickered and died out like a candle in the wind. The color drained from the boy's face, and the breath of life vanished rapidly, as if being peeled away layer by layer. Finally, he collapsed to the ground, cold and silent—the last thing remaining in his eyes, so similar to Lily's, was utter despair and helplessness. That scene was vividly imprinted in his memory.
The strong liquor burned his throat, then went down into his stomach, bringing a warmth, but also a sense of resolute determination.
When he lowered his head again to look at Snape, all the memories and any subtle fluctuations were completely suppressed, and his eyes regained their unfathomable calm, even colder than before.
He met Snape's piercing gaze head-on without flinching, and readily admitted, "Yes. I let it go, I stood by, I controlled the timing of the protective magic activation to ensure he reached the brink of death."
This blunt admission was like pouring oil on Snape's boiling rage.
"Why?!" Snape's voice was ripped apart by extreme anger and incomprehension. "Why did you do this?!"
Answer me, Lynch!
Lin Qi looked at him, his gaze seemingly piercing through appearances, reaching the deepest wound in his soul that had never healed.
His voice was steady, yet carried an almost cruel penetrating force: "For you, Severus Snape, I went to great lengths to stage this whole charade to fool Dumbledore."
This answer completely surprised Snape, leaving him frozen in place.
Lynch continued in that calm tone, each word like an icicle: "It's so that you can truly experience the fact that Harry Potter, Lily's son, died before your eyes. So you can feel what that feels like."
The anger on Snape's face froze for a moment, then was replaced by a pure, unbelievable sense of absurdity.
He felt as if he had heard the most incomprehensible madness in the world, and his pupils contracted in shock.
"For—me?" He repeated the words, his voice dry, filled with extreme irony and incomprehension.
He couldn't believe that someone would meticulously design such a cold and dangerous "performance" for such a reason, putting his friend's son in such peril, just to let him "experience" it?
This is crazy.
This was more incomprehensible than any conspiracy he could imagine.
Ignoring the mixture of absurdity and rage on Snape's face, Lynch continued in his calm yet penetrating voice, "Because people often only understand the value of something after they've truly lost it. Only then do they realize what they once possessed, and—how foolish they were doing."
His light, as substantial as a physical object, pressed down on Snape.
"Therefore, only by experiencing firsthand the absolute loss while everything is still salvageable" can you truly understand the profound impact of it all.
He leaned forward slightly, his tone becoming more forceful, 4
How utterly wrong is the path you're walking on right now?
Snape's brow furrowed deeply. Lynch's words were like a fog; he caught the accusation but couldn't understand its meaning.
Which road did he take?
Protect Porter?
Atonement?
Where did he go wrong?
"What do you mean?" Snape's voice was deep and wary. "Explain yourself, Lynch. What exactly are you referring to?"
However, Lynch did not answer immediately.
Instead, he made a "please" gesture, pointing to the two chairs next to the fireplace where people sit to drink tea.
The fire cast a warm glow beside the chair, contrasting with the chill of the rest of the cellar.
"Sit down and talk, Severus." Lynch's tone left no room for refusal, carrying a calm confidence that commanded the situation. "We both need to stay level-headed, and anger won't help you understand what I'm about to say. About you, about Harry Potter, and about your—that 'protection' based on guilt and misconceptions."
This last sentence was like a needle, once again precisely piercing Snape's hidden secret.
He stared intently at Lin Qi, then glanced at the chair, his mind in turmoil.
He loathed the feeling of being guided and directed, but the information revealed in Lynch's words, and the phrase "false protection," hooked him like a hook.
Ultimately, the urgent desire for the truth overcame the aversion to a comfortable posture.
He strode forward with extreme stiffness and reluctance, and sat heavily in the chair by the fireplace, his body still ramrod straight, as if sitting on pins and needles, awaiting Lynch's "judgment" or "explanation."
Inside the cellar, the firelight cast dancing shadows between the two men.
Snape sat stiffly in his chair like a prisoner awaiting judgment, while Lynch resembled a judge holding crucial evidence.
"Severus, all your questions, all the pain you've endured, even this seemingly endless, self-punishing path beneath your feet—" His voice was exceptionally clear in the quiet room, "can all be traced back to one person."
Snape raised his sinister eyes and asked silently.
"Tom Riddle. Or, as we know it better—Voldemort." Lynch said the name calmly, as if it were not a terrifying taboo, but simply a technical problem that needed to be solved.
Snape's lips pressed into a pale line; he did not deny it.
Lynch continued, his tone tinged with admiration: "You're very perceptive. Two years ago, or even earlier, you should have sensed something—Dumbledore, and I, have been keeping something from you. We didn't tell you not because we didn't trust your loyalty, but because the secret itself was far too important."
Snape's eyes flickered slightly, confirming his long-held suspicions and realizing that Lynch was about to reveal the secret to him.
He asked hoarsely, "—What is it?"
"It's about the truth of Voldemort's immortality." Lynch finally got to the heart of the matter, his gaze like two cold flames. "It's not simply about strength, nor is it luck. He truly, as he himself claimed, has gone further on the path to immortality than any of us."
"He used an extremely ancient and dark magic, tearing his own soul apart to forcibly anchor himself to this world."
"This magic renders killing in the conventional sense meaningless to him. As long as that anchor point, or rather, those anchor points, are not destroyed, he can return from destruction time and time again. We are not facing a powerful wizard, but a deformed, cursed creation—twisted by himself."
Lynch paused briefly, allowing Snape to process this terrifying concept, before uttering the crucial term Snape had never heard before: "The creation of those anchors requires him to seal his fragmented soul within specific objects. These objects that hold his soul fragments are called Horcruxes."
"Hordeal—?" Snape repeated the unfamiliar word unconsciously, his brow furrowed.
As a master of dark magic, he instinctively sensed the extreme evil and ominousness contained in the word's structure and context, but this was indeed beyond the scope of his known knowledge.
"Hordeal." Lynch repeated the unfamiliar word clearly, as if to imprint it deeply into Snape's mind.
"Therefore, our goal—Dumbledore's and my goal—is not simply to wait for Voldemort to return and then try to defeat him. That makes no sense. We must first find and destroy all of his Horcruxes before we can finally kill him."
He paused briefly, revealing some progress and explaining their caution: "In fact, we have located and secured the individual Horcruxes. But we don't know if hastily destroying the known Horcruxes will alert him, causing him to hide the rest even deeper, or take more extreme measures. Therefore, we are waiting, searching, striving to identify and control all the Horcruxes before launching the final reckoning."
Snape remained silent for a long time, with only the fireplace flames dancing in his unfathomable black eyes.
He was processing this massive and dark plan, and the complexity and patience it contained that far exceeded his imagination.
Finally, he raised his eyes, his voice carrying a suppressed, sharp skepticism: "Very well. You two have figured out the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality, and you're proceeding with your grand plan step by step. But what does all this have to do with Bot? You went through all this trouble, even staging that whole scene just now, just to tell me this?"
Lynch didn't answer directly, but instead asked, his gaze fixed on Snape: "So, do you believe in Dumbledore's determination to destroy the Horcruxes and completely end Voldemort's reign?"
Before Snape could answer, Lynch answered himself with a cold certainty: "I believe you." His gaze remained fixed on Snape's face, as if reading his subtle reactions. "He will stop at nothing, Severus. To destroy the Horcruxes and Voldemort, he will pay any price, make any—necessary sacrifice. Even if that sacrifice is something he doesn't want to see, but is considered acceptable on the scales."
Snape didn't speak, but his expression—his tightly pursed lips, the fleeting understanding and tacit acceptance of Dumbledore's hidden iron will in his eyes—clearly indicated that he agreed with the assessment.
Catching this subtle agreement, Lynch knew that the groundwork had been laid.
He leaned back in his chair, his voice deepening: "That's why I firmly believe that the path you're on—blindly following Dumbledore's plan, placing all your hopes on him—will ultimately lead Harry Potter, the son Lily protected with her life, step by step to that predetermined death, the necessary sacrifice in the plan."
"No!" Snape interrupted him almost instinctively and roughly, his voice sharpened by the sudden surge of fear and resistance.
He abruptly stood up from his chair, as if trying to dispel the terrible future Lynch had described.
"Dumbledore—he promised me! He would protect the boy! He kept him by his side, he trained him—" His rebuttal sounded so weak and powerless at this moment, and even he could hear the wavering in it.
Lynch remained unmoved by his agitation. He sat up straight, the light piercing through all his self-deceptive defenses like a cold probe.
His words were clear, cruel, and undeniable: "He protected him so that he could die at the crucial moment, Severus."
The air in the cellar seemed to have been completely sucked out, and even the crackling of the fire disappeared from Snape's ears.
In the deathly silence, Lynch uttered his final judgment, declaring each word slowly and deliberately: "Because Harry Potter—is one of Voldemort's Horcruxes!"
Snape froze on the spot, as if struck by a petrification spell.
All the knowledge, emotions, and cognition in his brain were instantly thrown into chaos, and he tried to forcibly reorganize them to understand this terrifying fact that completely contradicted his understanding.
"————What?" he managed to squeeze out broken syllables from his dry throat.
"That night, in Godric's Hollow," Lynch's voice was calm to the point of cruelty as he recounted the deepest secret hidden for over a decade, "Voldemort tried to kill Harry. Protected by the ancient magic Lily had cast in sacrifice, the Killing Curse rebounded, tearing apart his already broken soul. A fragment—flew away from the main body and attached itself to the only living being present—the infant with the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, creating a Horcrux that even Voldemort himself was unaware of."
Looking at the storm and despair rapidly building in Snape's eyes, he continued, "So, to truly kill Voldemort, we must not only destroy the Horcruxes he actively created—but ultimately, we must also destroy the one he unintentionally created—the fragment that resides in Harry Potter's soul."
"That's why I said you're on the wrong path. You're only thinking about protecting Lily's son and keeping him alive, but you don't know that in Dumbledore's—and perhaps mine—ultimate plan, he himself might be the final Horcrux that needs to be sacrificed."
"This is the heaviest, and most 'necessary' weight on the other side of the scales in Dumbledore's plan."
"Do you understand now? What you've been protecting all along was marked from the very beginning as—a sacrifice."