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These were the great turning points of history.
But beyond them, Ian also witnessed the stories of wizards.
A Madonna cradled a newborn student in her arms, shepherds and three wise men kneeling in worship all around. He could hear the infant's breathing and even felt the baby's gaze pierce through reality and illusion alike, locking onto him.
"Bloody hell!"
The newly crowned Legend felt his scalp tingle. Flustered, he hurriedly shifted his gaze elsewhere. In the depths of a dark forest, he glimpsed a gathering of many robed wizards.
They sat around a bonfire, conducting an ancient ritual. On the night of a lunar eclipse, twelve wizards hunted a white dragon, only to perish, cut down before they ever reached the threshold of legend.
A colossal dragon ravaged the city-states.
Ian saw it, saw the flames spewing from its jaws, lighting the night sky. And he saw, when the Sword in the Stone, soaked in dragon's blood, was drawn from the Dragon's body, how the starlit fragments in its hilt cut into the youth's palm.
"Yes, yes, yes! This is the ironclad proof, right before my eyes!" Ian's pupils reflected the phantoms of history. He fumbled for his camera, ready to capture the face he recognized so well.
But, within the corridor of time, no matter how many times he pressed the shutter of his magical camera, the vision before him refused to be captured. Unwilling to give up, Ian even tried a Muggle camera, but that too had no effect.
Magic. Technology.
Here in this passage, both seemed to lose their power.
"My memory will be the proof then!"
Ian had no choice but to rely on his mind to imprint the scenes into memory. He had suspected as much before, but having evidence in front of him was vastly different from Sherlock-Holmes-style deduction.
And so, as Ian set his memory into "ultra high definition" mode with mental emphasis, the temporal power enveloping him, Riddle, and Malfoy began to weaken.
"Are we already at the stop? So soon? I haven't even seen the Four Founders yet." Ian felt the sudden, violent tremor of the time passage, with regret stirring at how quickly he had reached the destination.
As the phantom light and shadows began to solidify, Ian drew in a deep breath.
He began preparing in his heart the words he would use upon returning to Hogwarts. Riddle, too, seemed to sense the dissipation of the time stream, finally raising his head with a faintly tense expression.
As for Malfoy… he remained as stunned as the dead. Thanks to lingering influences of Herpo's "modifications," Ian still hadn't found a way to awaken this unfortunate classmate.
"I will leave it to Dumbledore, he always finds a way to sort out these messes. Let him suffer a bit, Malfoy will end up surviving anyway." Ian was ready to once again resume his role as a student.
This did require some psychological adjustment. After all, not long ago, he had been involved in matters of gods, legends, Herpo, saving the world, yet now he had to return to being a student worried about classes and exams. Such a drastic shift in roles would feel surreal to anyone.
Just as Ian was adjusting his mentality, the illusory scenery around them began to settle.
However, as the overlapping mirages faded into solid clarity, the expected cozy office did not appear, causing Ian's smile to gradually freeze on his face.
"What is going on?"
Ian was stunned.
He saw neither familiar people nor familiar surroundings. Instead, the only sound was the snorting of the "his Older brother from the Orphanage," while the stench of rotting hay and pig manure assaulted their noses.
Yes.
They were standing inside a reeking pigsty!
A pink piglet was rooting at Malfoy's blond hair with its wet snout, while Riddle was trussed up like a dumpling by magical chains, rolling helplessly in the mud pit, where a boar was eagerly rubbing its snout against his pale face.
"Damn it! Get it away from me! Keep it away!" Riddle screamed shrilly, perhaps looking even more terrified than he had been when facing Herpo.
And for good reason.
The boar's tusks glinted coldly in the dim light. Worse still, the beast's rooting snout had shoved open Riddle's robes, revealing certain things that should not have been "standing at attention."
This pig, seemed to have developed some very strange interest in the great Dark Lord!
"No!!! Kill it! Hurry up and kill it!"
Seeing the boar about to make its move, Riddle immediately began rolling frantically across the ground.
At first he called out to Ian for help, but when he realized Ian was still too stunned by their bizarre surroundings to react, he could only attempt to save himself, thrashing and crawling like a madman.
But there was no way around it.
Riddle was bound up like a rice dumpling, unable to stand or resist. The ropes came from items once used by temple priests to imprison wizards.
"Save me!"
The way he crawled was not unlike a snot-nosed bug.
The scene was oddly familiar, as though it had played out before, again and again, on different fragments of Voldemort's soul.
Perhaps this was fate.
"Stay away from me, you filthy beast!" Riddle, seeing Ian still unresponsive, scrambled desperately toward Malfoy instead.
The Dark Lord employed his usual trick, attempting to use Malfoy as a decoy to draw the boar's attention. Yet the young Riddle did not realize that what works on people also works on pigs.
Their genes weren't too far apart, after all.
The more he struggled, the more he provoked the beast's interest. Completely ignoring the unconscious Malfoy, the boar set its eyes firmly on Riddle and pinned his frail body beneath its four powerful hooves.
To single-handedly challenge the Dark Lord, this pig might very well go down in history.
"Damn it!! Get off me! Get off!!" Riddle tried desperately to thrash free, but how could his strength compare with that of a tusked boar?
After all, pigs are ferocious beasts.
Seeing the enormous boar about to let Riddle experience its brute power, Riddle truly couldn't hold it together anymore. His expression twisted in terror, and he let out a heart-wrenching scream.
"Beast! How dare you!!!"
Perhaps, it wasn't only the power of love that could create miracles, but also the will to survive. At this moment, Riddle erupted with a survival instinct even stronger than when facing death itself. This caused the magical ropes binding him to loosen slightly.
The runes inscribed upon them began to shatter and an invisible force burst forth.
It was as if his magic rioted for the second time.
The surge directly sent the boar flying, slamming it to the ground with a shrill, ear-splitting scream, as its belly was ripped open. Blood and entrails spilled messily across the mud.
"Hah… hah… hah!"
Seeing that the crisis had finally passed, Riddle, drenched in sweat, finally breathed out a sigh of relief.
(To Be Continued…)