Ian frowned.
His gaze swept the underground chamber once more, but he found nothing else of note. This only strengthened his conviction that Professor Ronnie Ehrlich was at the heart of this mystery.
"Sorry, that's a secret I can't share with you."
Professor Ehrlich shook his aching head before finally giving Ian a direct answer. Then, with a voice laced with temptation, he added,
"Hogwarts isn't the place for you. I know sowhere better, sowhere your talents won't be wasted."
His attempt at recruitnt couldn't have been more obvious.
Perhaps this was the divide between wizards from different eras.
"Professor, you should save your breath. Nurngard isn't exactly an ideal place for higher learning these days." Ian sighed, rubbing his forehead in exasperation.
Professor Ehrlich's pupils constricted sharply.
"Impossible! Damn it! What do you know?" His voice was taut with tension. Even when he had suspected being under the Imperius Curse, he hadn't shown this level of agitation.
"You're one of Gellert Grindelwald's n, aren't you? That much isn't exactly a secret." Ian hadn't expected such an intense reaction.
Professor Ehrlich first clutched his head, his expression montarily vacant. Then, as if a dam had broken, his cloudy eyes cleared with sudden realization.
"Officially, I was placed here to keep an eye on Dumbledore… but in truth, that was never my real mission…" His pretense fell away, but as he spoke, his expression shifted again.
"I see now! So that's it! The one who cast the Imperius Curse on , it must have been Dumbledore… Of course! Only soone of his caliber could have placed under the curse without my knowledge."
His breathing grew unsteady, his bloodied lips twisting into sothing between a grimace and a smirk.
"No wonder I'm still alive. Dumbledore, the ever-sanctimonious, self-righteous Dumbledore, would never dirty his hands with a clean kill. He'd rather parade around his moral superiority."
Professor Ehrlich's murky gaze darted around the chamber, taking in his surroundings as his thoughts spun faster.
"It all makes sense now. This is a prison, isn't it? Hogwarts's very own oubliette. He couldn't find the answers he wanted from my mory, so now he's using a child, using you to extract them instead."
A dry, humorless chuckle escaped him as he continued to speak. "How pathetic. If he thinks there's so hidden truth buried in my mind, he'll be sorely disappointed. I thought my purpose here was to find you."
His expression darkened further.
"But it seems you've already chosen Dumbledore. And what's worse, he's dragged you into this interrogation. Tsk, tsk… Perhaps, in your eyes, that's proof that he values you."
He exhaled sharply, his voice dropping into a sinister murmur.
"But let tell you this: you'll et the sa fate as all who have ever placed their trust in him. You're only eleven, and he's already teaching you the Killing Curse. Are you so sure you're not just another weapon he's molding to his liking?"
His gaze sharpened, assessing Ian, searching for cracks.
"Let think… You have a Voldemort here, don't you? He was once Dumbledore's treasured pupil too."
Though battered and bruised, Professor Ehrlich still carried himself with an unsettling charm. But now, his words dripped with venom, each one carefully crafted to plant a seed of doubt in Ian's mind.
The young wizard remained unfazed.
This sort of manipulation might have worked on Harry Potter, but to Ian, it was laughable. Dumbledore's house was practically a second ho to him— how could he not know whether Voldemort had ever been the headmaster's cherished student?
"You vastly overestimate yourself, Professor. And you just as greatly underestimate our headmaster… Do you truly believe that if he wanted to see your mories, your feeble Occluncy would be enough to keep him out?"
Ian was beginning to think that having a rational conversation with Professor Ronnie Ehrlich was utterly impossible.
"I don't have any hidden mories!"
Professor Ronnie Ehrlich's voice rose slightly. That might very well be true. Even if he had been assigned so secret mission, Gellert Grindelwald certainly wouldn't have divulged the details to him from the outset.
After all—
While this professor might not have grasped the full extent of Dumbledore's abilities, Grindelwald most certainly had. The only way to keep information safe from Dumbledore's probing mind was to deliver instructions at the very last mont.
"To be honest, I'd rather not resort to force, especially given that I'm a student and you're a professor. All I want is to understand what happened to you."
Ian's patience was wearing thin. He spoke with sincerity and restraint, though his words carried a firm edge.
"Hah! What are you going to do? Try the Killing Curse on again? If you're looking for alternatives, I suggest the Cruciatus Curse. Haven't you learned it yet? I could give you a few pointers."
Professor Ronnie Ehrlich's defiance remained unshaken.
"The Cruciatus Curse won't get the answers I need… but this might. Imperio."
A soft glow flickered from Ian's wand as his gaze locked onto the professor's. An eerie shift in his expression hinted at the silent spell's effect.
In the next mont—
Professor Ronnie Ehrlich's eyes grew distant. He wavered, his expression contorting as though fighting an unseen force. His mind resisted, demonstrating formidable willpower. If Ian's command over the Imperius Curse had been weaker, the spell might have failed entirely.
However—
Imperio was akin to Legilincy in so ways. As Ian pressed into the professor's thoughts, he encountered an unexpected obstacle— Ronnie Ehrlich's mind was a chaotic ss, riddled with fragnted mories.
"How can it be this disjointed?"
Ian struggled to comprehend how soone with such a fractured recollection of events could still function coherently. Perhaps this was why the professor clung so desperately to his belief that all of this was Dumbledore's doing. His scattered mories might have fueled his paranoia.
"I refuse to believe it!"
The young wizard attempted to manually reconstruct Professor Ehrlich's recollections. What he discovered was utterly bizarre; mories of the sa event existed in hundreds of different variations. Take, for example, the breakfast scene from the day before the term began. In one version, the professor ate porridge; in another, he had a sandwich; in yet another, he didn't eat at all. It was as if he, too, had been caught in so kind of temporal loop.
Each mory fragnt felt vivid and real.
Yet all of them seed oddly indistinct.
"rlin help . I hope I don't end up like this…"
A shiver ran down Ian's spine. He glanced at the professor's hands. Thankfully, there was no Ouroboros curse mark.
Lost in the web of jumbled recollections, Ian found himself unable to piece together a coherent sequence of events. Perhaps even Professor Ehrlich himself could no longer discern which of his mories were real and which were fabrications.
"No wonder he was confused about how much ti had passed."
Ian could scarcely fathom the kind of ntal resilience required to remain lucid under such conditions. If his own mories were this fragnted, he wasn't sure he'd still be capable of rational thought. More likely, he'd be reduced to a raving madman, incapable of aningful conversation.
Ti crawled by.
Minute after minute.
Half an hour passed.
"I can't tell! Damn it, I really can't tell!"
Frustration etched across Ian's face as he withdrew from the professor's mind, exhaling sharply.
"I told you, I don't have any hidden mories."
Now freed from the spell's influence, Professor Ehrlich slumped against the cold stone floor.
Despite his exhaustion, there was a glint of sothing in his gaze, a shadow of amusent, almost as if he found Ian's struggle entertaining in so unfathomable way.
(To Be Continued…)
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