The red flames disappeared from the chamber, and black flames were summoned from the void. They had the same shape as ordinary flames, but gave off no heat.
A faint blackish-red light shimmered within them.
"Fiendfyre!"
Professor McGonagall gasped.
Just as she was shocked, the scene changed again.
The cold air in mid-air began to condense. Streaks of pale-blue icy air appeared and then crashed into the strange flames.
The legendary Fiendfyre, which could not be extinguished by conventional methods, was now imprisoned beneath a thick layer of ice. The ice melted rapidly, but new ice spread and grew back as though it were alive.
Fire, ice, gale, water, metal, Transfiguration, spatial teleportation—every kind of magic that could be used was transformed and manifested in their hands.
The duel, symbolizing the highest level of magic, was unfolding before everyone's eyes.
Perhaps decades ago, the duel that determined the future of the wizarding world had been just as spectacular as this.
It was impossible not to be captivated by it.
Harry watched the duel unfold with great anxiety. He didn't know how to warn Dumbledore, and everyone present was powerless to intervene or stop the fight.
"Hiss..."
Harry suddenly gasped and covered his forehead with his hands.
Nobody noticed him.
Harry felt as though his scar had suddenly burst open. An unimaginable pain was like a sharp blade plunging into his chest, piercing his heart and carving into him.
Fortunately, the unbearable pain lasted only a moment and subsided as quickly as the tide receded.
Then he discovered something.
He was blind.
No—his blindness was an illusion. He could still see everything in front of him.
The information received by his eyes was simply no longer colourful.
There was no colour.
A world reduced to black and white.
Not far away, spells—some dazzling, some ancient—were interacting and colliding. Sharp wind blades and rising flames clashed, dissipating and spreading.
In Harry's eyes, he could see the flow of energy within every spell.
All those elaborate and seemingly ordinary spells appeared to break down into extremely tiny particles.
As the wizard manipulated them, they gathered at will.
Then they scattered again.
That was the origin of everything.
Harry seemed to understand why Dumbledore was so powerful.
It was because of his extremely high level of understanding of magic.
He had complete control over everything.
Then Harry suddenly realized why he had acquired such powerful abilities.
The feeling of having everything under his control caused his ego to swell. He felt as though he controlled everything.
A surge of frenzied killing intent rose in his heart.
Harry subconsciously sensed that something was wrong, but he didn't know how to suppress it.
This wasn't Lord Voldemort's mental invasion.
The trajectories of their movements appeared and were reflected in his emerald-green eyes.
As a pure observer, this gave him ample information to speculate.
To make predictions.
Harry raised his hand in alarm.
Slowly and gently, he aimed at an empty space—the place where he guessed Dumbledore's next foothold would be.
Only then did Harry realize that his arm was no longer under his control.
"Ah..."
He began chanting the most evil incantation, the symbol of death.
"No, no!"
Harry screamed desperately in his heart.
Yet the syllables of the incantation continued to escape uncontrollably from his mouth, one after another.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry used every ounce of strength he possessed to force his wand aside and, at the last moment, changed the spell to Expelliarmus.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
He watched with his own eyes as the beam of light shot from the tip of his wand, swiftly striking a centaur that was fighting the goblins in the chest and producing a distinctive metallic clang.
Just as he relaxed, he discovered that his vision had returned.
The scene before him suddenly regained its colour.
Harry quickly turned around and looked toward the place he had predicted, only to find that it was now empty.
But a glimpse from the corner of his eye made Harry's heart clench, and his stomach began to churn.
Dumbledore had been struck at some point.
His aged body was falling, his long silver beard standing on end as the impact sent air rushing past him.
His white robes rustled loudly.
From this angle, they couldn't see the old man's expression.
They could only see Dumbledore's hands hanging limply at his sides.
The wand in his hand had disappeared somewhere.
Had he been struck by Grindelwald's curse?
Harry tried to rush over, but Hermione grabbed his sleeve tightly from behind.
Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she bit her lip as she shook her head at Harry.
Beneath Dumbledore was a passageway that had been cleared into the Death Chamber.
The curtain symbolizing the boundary between life and death quietly awaited the departure of a living person from this world.
Fawkes let out a clear, soft cry.
The golden phoenix flew out from the wide sleeves just as Dumbledore's body was about to be completely swallowed by the curtain.
The usually intelligent bird, which had been hiding on Dumbledore's body, failed to fulfill its intended purpose.
At the most critical moment, it abandoned its master.
Perhaps it couldn't really be called abandonment.
It was merely the survival instinct of a living creature asserting itself.
Finally, the old man's body fell without resistance into the tattered curtains hanging from the archway.
The curtains fluttered for a moment, as though a strong wind had just blown through them, and then returned to their previous state.
Everyone was stunned, staring at the scene before them in disbelief.
The change had happened so suddenly.
As a result, almost everyone had lost the ability to think.
The two armies, which had been evenly matched only moments earlier, suddenly weakened after losing the control of their masters.
They were slaughtered in a one-sided massacre, like cutting melons and vegetables.
A goblin wielded a huge, sturdy iron hammer, furiously smashing its enemy to the ground before stomping on it with its powerful legs.
But this time—
The golden centaur was never able to pick up its head from the ground and put it back on.
A series of eerie, hoarse laughs suddenly filled the entire chamber.
Lord Voldemort!
The man's figure was initially semi-transparent before gradually solidifying in mid-air.
He toyed with the wand he had just taken from Dumbledore.
"The Saviour, Mr Potter. It seems my Expelliarmus is still more powerful."
Lord Voldemort rubbed his trophy with his long, pale fingers, savouring its comfortable feel.
Dumbledore had been struck by Lord Voldemort's Expelliarmus.
But this time, the latter hadn't used his most powerful killing curse for another reason.
The Elder Wand.
However, it now seemed that he had managed to kill two birds with one stone.
"The Elder Wand of Death, a symbol of invincibility..."
He murmured to himself.
He still knew nothing about the wand's ability to resist or counter other wands.
After killing Karkaroff at Durmstrang to vent his anger, he had also looted the library there, hoping to find evidence of the wand's restraint and a way to break it.
He had found nothing.
Then again, it would have been truly strange if he had actually found something.
However, he eventually learned a secret that made him extremely eager to possess the supreme and invincible Elder Wand.
The manuscript left behind by Gregorovitch had revealed to him the origin and whereabouts of the legendary wand.
Since it was invincible, even if there were a wand capable of countering it, that wand would have to be made from the finest material of all. If it could counter the Elder Wand, then it itself would have to be a wand capable of countering every other wand.
Otherwise, how could the Elder Wand be called invincible?
Now, he had achieved his goal.
The wand was in his hands, and his greatest enemy was dead.
Lord Voldemort let out a cold snort, and a chill emanating from the depths of his heart caused everyone present to tremble involuntarily.
His hideous face swept across the surroundings.
"I've found you," he hissed.
Trelawney, who had been hiding behind the crowd, had been spotted by Lord Voldemort.
He felt that he was truly lucky.
The Saviour's luck had probably run out.
His luck had finally turned.
Now that he could hear the complete prophecy, and once Harry Potter was dealt with, there would be no one in the entire wizarding world who could threaten him.
"Come. Tell me the complete prophecy, that terrible prophecy that made me lose everything."
Lord Voldemort coaxed her.
Trelawney's eyes immediately lost their lustre, like a puppet being manipulated.
She began to speak in a completely emotionless voice.
Her words echoed through the empty, spacious room.
"The one with the power to conquer the Dark Lord has approached a family born into a family that has defeated the Dark Lord three times... Born at the end of the seventh month, he is marked as a formidable rival by the Dark Lord, but he possesses an energy the Dark Lord does not understand... One must die at the hands of the other, for neither can live; only one can survive... The one with the power to conquer the Dark Lord will be born at the end of the seventh month..."
Lord Voldemort's Legilimency easily penetrated Trelawney's defenses, and she numbly began to obey his commands.
In their dazed state, neither Flitwick nor Professor McGonagall could stop Lord Voldemort's magic.
Their minds were currently in a state of extreme confusion.
Even after they had arrived, it was of no avail. They were powerless to intervene.
Lord Voldemort's sneak attack on Dumbledore had been so sudden that it had left no trace.
"It doesn't seem to have much to say."
Lord Voldemort laughed heartily.
Then he tightened his grip around the Elder Wand in his hand.
This was power.
This was authority.
This was supreme pleasure and satisfaction.
"You're despicable and shameless. The only person you feared is dead. Are you proud of that?"
Trelawney's empty eyes suddenly regained their sparkle, and she rebuked him sharply.
Lord Voldemort seemed to have been struck where it hurt.
Normally, if he encountered someone who dared to offend him like this, that person would either die instantly if they were lucky, or die after suffering endless torment.
But he didn't do that today.
For some reason, he wanted to keep listening.
"So what? The noble die ugly, while I, whom you call despicable, am now enjoying the fruits of victory."
He laughed in a hissing voice, speaking smugly.
"It's so ugly it's nauseating."
Trelawney spoke dismissively, her expression gradually becoming manic.
Lord Voldemort frowned.
At that moment, the woman had told him the entire prophecy from that time, yet he wasn't as satisfied as he had imagined he would be.
"Then I'll tell you something."
Trelawney's voice suddenly sank into a terrifying emptiness.
Her eyes focused on the void ahead, as though the ghost of Dumbledore were speaking through her.
This was not the mindless state of someone being manipulated, but rather an extreme emotional mutation.
"That prophecy has been invalidated."
"Harry Potter will have nothing to do with you anymore. You're right. He was just a lucky kid, not some Saviour."
"Your so-called career will reach its peak."
With every word Trelawney spoke, the faces of those present grew paler and grimmer.
Sirius even raised his hand and pointed his wand at Trelawney. What she was saying now sounded just like something a Death Eater would say.
"Dumbledore is dead. No one can defeat you now!"
Trelawney screamed, descending into a frenzy.
This only made Lord Voldemort feel more uneasy.
His intuition told him that he couldn't allow this woman to continue.
"Except for yourself."
The middle-aged woman finally uttered those words slowly.
"Ridiculous!"
This eccentric old woman, who had once ruined his plans, had now successfully enraged him.
"Avada Kedavra!"
He decisively raised the wand.
A strange green light shot from the ancient wand he had captured and flew straight toward Trelawney.
This woman had become completely useless to him.
Keeping her alive would only provoke his anger.
Lord Voldemort could feel a more powerful force emanating from the wand—a power far greater, more violent, and more mysterious than that of his own yew wand.
Yet the spell that symbolized death was something he cast with astonishing ease.
Trelawney closed her eyes again, lost consciousness, and was unable to resist.
Of course, they were powerless to resist.
Many wizards were so vulnerable to the Unforgivable Curses that the slightest mistake could cost them their lives.
Just then, the dazzling crystal chandelier high above suddenly fell.
The densely packed crystal pieces abruptly gathered together, forming a glittering square shield with sharp edges, resembling a ferocious weapon.
It suddenly blocked Trelawney's path.
With a muffled thud, it deflected the curse symbolizing death, sending it crashing into the golden fountain beside them.
The uncontrolled water immediately erupted, filling the room with a misty fog.
Everyone's vision was obscured.
"Who interfered with my duel?"
Grindelwald asked grimly.
"It looks like it was you. You ruined a fair duel, Lord Voldemort."
Grindelwald's figure suddenly appeared in front of Lord Voldemort.
"I never imagined that Grindelwald, the former devil who once dominated Europe decades ago, would be so bound by such rigid rules and regulations."
"Instead, you should thank me. I took care of the hateful enemy who imprisoned you for decades."
"Then this wand should be my spoils of war. Or rather, it should be returned to its rightful owner."
Grindelwald spoke coldly.
"The supreme wand is, of course, something only those with the ability to wield it are qualified to possess."
Lord Voldemort spoke dismissively while feigning politeness toward Grindelwald.
He didn't want to fight Grindelwald right now.
With the new wand under his control, he needed some time to adapt to it.
Something being powerful did not necessarily mean it was suitable for him, at least not yet.
"Our goals are similar, so why can't we join forces?"
Lord Voldemort began to persuade him.
"Put away your ridiculous spells."
Grindelwald continuously waved the wand in his hand.
Blinding, dim, obscure, and incredibly swift beams of chaotic light, each representing a spell, shot one after another from the tip of the wand.
Lord Voldemort blocked them, and they vanished in an instant.
But Lord Voldemort was astonished to discover that the wand in his hand had begun trembling uncontrollably once again, defying his commands.
This was the second time Lord Voldemort had encountered someone capable of resisting his orders.
The first time could be described as a so-called "wand counter," because the wands were afraid and dared not fight against the opponent.
But now, he held the invincible Elder Wand in his hands.
If anyone should have been suppressed, it should have been the other wands.
So why was this happening?
"You're in luck today."
Lord Voldemort spoke coldly, indicating that he had no intention of fighting.
After only a few seconds of hesitation, Lord Voldemort waved his wand.
The entire world immediately became scorching hot, turning the room into a blazing inferno.
Then the man's figure gradually disappeared into the void, vanishing amid the flickering flames.