The Mortal

.He stroked the rim of the milk glass with his fingers, thinking of the fire that had been burning for a long time, and the little girl with an innocent smile, and the dull pain in his back - it hurt for so long that it was often forgotten because of numbness.

Perhaps Snape's gaze itself had the ability to interrogate and order, he finally compromised with a sigh.

"I was on the trail of a very powerful dark wizard. We lost track of him a few times, and each time the results were... bad. He took pleasure in slaughtering Muggles, and it seemed like he was deliberately demonstrating against us."

Hermione slumped back on the sofa, silent.

"I found him in the wooden house behind the hill, and the girl who was used as a hostage. He said there was danger in the town, I didn't know whether to believe it, and finally decided to save the child in front of me-she was only nine years old, She was showing me the way the day before, with a hand-woven garland on her head." Teresa, he murmured her name, the girl who looked like an angel. Harry smiled - if the twitching of the corners of his mouth could be called a laugh, "But my judgment... By the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late, the flames burned down many buildings and residents who didn't have time to escape."

When he rushed back, Fiendfire had spread into a huge wave, and when everything was over, he couldn't help but bend over and vomit, as if he wanted to vomit out his stomach at the same time.The thick gray-black smoke lingers for a long time, and there is also a pungent burnt smell.He saw the black and horrific corpses falling on the ground in a strange posture, like a prisoner running wildly in place and finally unable to break free from a cage. They were just ordinary people who were supposed to live in this remote and peaceful town. A life of peace and tranquility.

"Later, someone said that I was unfair in my choice - when faced with a situation that cannot be balanced, it should be based on abandoning the few and preserving the many." Harry staggered Snape's gaze and shrugged pretending to be relaxed. "Later, some rumors became more and more exaggerated. The reporters could only know that the Muggles in the town were being persecuted, so various speculations arose: I was influenced by the mysterious person and deliberately neglected my duties, and I was just short of being labeled as the third-generation Dark Lord."

"Nonsense idiots." Hermione seemed to have regained her composure, but her words were still full of gunpowder. "The Auror in town was a jerk, and you did nothing wrong," she emphasized, "You made the best judgment you could with the information you had, and no one would have thought that girls will-"

"But the trend of public opinion is not all because of this incident. It was true that I was in a bad state of mind at that time." He changed the subject before letting her finish speaking. "Yesterday Kent said that someone questioned me because of this, so that someone from another department had to be sent to monitor it. This made me wonder if the enemy deliberately used this to put pressure on me, or to confuse the public."

Snape understood immediately what he meant. "You think the enemy is from within the Ministry?" he pointed out.

"How is it possible?" Hermione retorted immediately, and she was indeed the smartest witch, completely following the thinking of these two people who thought the truth too badly. "Maybe it's just a coincidence, why would the Ministry of Magic - not all bad things come at you, Harry."

"I hope so too." Harry shrugged. "But the reason why the savior is sought after is that people promote him as a hero because they need it. And the media responsible for shaping him don't care whether he is a hero or not-as for me, I am just a consumer product in the middle... I can't escape As long as I bear this identity for a day, I will always be the one who bears the brunt."

There are probably no heroes in this world.If there is, it will never be a well-known name, or a child's bedside stickers and bedtime stories, a long-standing myth and a throne on the throne-the one after peeling off these gorgeous and dazzling shells Mortals are no different from any human essence in this world.

The look on Hermione's face softened, soft and resigned - she knew he was right.

"This is too bad," she murmured. "Terrible."

Snape was the usual on the armchair - hard and serious, as if running some sort of stern logic - and when he didn't want to be seen, he could do it better than anyone else.

And Harry smiled and brought the conversation back on track.

It took a lot of work to integrate the information from both sides, and then to find clues from the seemingly disjointed information - it was an interesting situation: the suspects in the Muggle incident were wizards, and the suspects in the wizarding incident were closely related to Muggles.

Most of the time it was two young men talking, and Snape certainly wasn't happy to participate in discussions of this magnitude and form - if he hadn't been involved himself, he'd probably prefer to go back to being the company of the Cauldron instead of listening to two of them here. Gryffindor muttered. Harry would glance at him involuntarily from time to time, only to be drawn back by the female voice next to his ear, and began to experience another round of her analysis of various situations - it was hard to tell if he was distracted, because Snape pursed slightly Straight lips seem particularly attractive, even those harsh words can not stop.

"...these are the officials who are not very friendly to you, but I don't see anyone who deserves special attention at the moment." Hermione took a swig of Coke - from the refrigerator, she really missed this drink. "Do you have any goals?" she asked with a headache.

She tactfully didn't point out that if you add the people who were not kind to Snape, it would be more than three times larger.

"You look like you have a paper due in 10 minutes and you haven't written yet." Harry tried to loosen the line between her brows. "Fortunately, I still have."

Hermione eyed him suspiciously with wide eyes. "Tell me."

"Gawain Robards," he thought for a while, and added, "He is the director of the Auror Division, and my predecessor is directly superior."

"I'm not old enough to have amnesia." Hermione rubbed between her brows, "And I remember you saying he was nice to you. So why?" she asked.

"I'm not saying that he did it... I don't know. When I met him last time, he reminded me that something will happen to the wizard." He recounted the brief conversation between them (*see Chapter [-]). "At least he knows something, I guess. I was going to find him today."

"You mean going to meet a wizard alone, without a wand, who was most likely involved in the murder." Snape's voice suddenly came from the other side, which made Harry's throat dry, and he didn't know what the sound was. Where did it suddenly become so... so- well, although he could still hear the sarcasm probably saying something like "sadly, Potter, your recklessness and impulsiveness have gone nowhere in years." It didn't stop him from glancing at the older man's vibrating throat from the corner of his eye.

"Actually, my wandless magic can still be used." He tried to save himself a little impression point, "But others don't know, so I deliberately use the wand to make a deal. But I'm sorry for your wand. , I promise I'll get it back - I've put a Tracking Charm on it."

"So if someone really wants to do something to you, it's a perfect opportunity - ah, so insightful, Potter, I want to give Gryffindor ten points."

Clearly the explanation backfired, of course.But Snape didn't even question the improbable fact that he could use wandless magic...

"You're caring about me." Harry said in a statement tone.Yes, he just wanted to say it.

Snape glared at him immediately and let out some obvious sneers.

"Your capacity for self-importance is simply unique."

"Thanks, I'll be careful."

Hermione looked left and right, then blinked thoughtfully, choosing the best tactic of momentary silence to deal with the indescribable situation before her - to be honest, the scene was still…

"But to be honest, I can't guess why the Director would do this." Harry deliberately ignored Snape's vehement denial - who could say that this man didn't care about his life at all, no matter what the reason was. "I've always felt that he had a purpose for me, I mean, he helped me - even though he pushed me to be an Auror against all odds, he also taught me how to deal with those tasks more appropriately. and ideals... But now that I think about it, I always feel that there is something inconsistent."

He hasn't recalled that time for a long time, especially after he was able to control his emotions and look back with an absolutely rational and objective standpoint.

"You've been assigned to do those tasks?" Snape asked after a moment's hesitation.

Harry couldn't keep up with the rhythm this time, "You mean-"

"Meaning that if you have even the slightest bit of common sense, you should find it extremely irrational and outrageous to send an untrained idiot under the age of 20 to the front line," Snape said. It sounded really calm and furious at this point - Minerva's reply, mission report refused to read (*see Chapter [-]), "And your antics these days - those cover-ups - make it difficult for me to make an accurate judgment so obvious that it's not until today that it catches on to such an obvious point." He almost scolded him (or anyone else who failed to point it out)