Shirley and Adam exchanged a look, but neither of them said anything.
Dumbledore, looking a bit confused, was about to break the silence when Adam suddenly looked up and asked Mrs. Cole with a charming, innocent expression, "Could we possibly see the adoption records from back then?"
"Of course, let me think... I believe they're on the bookshelf downstairs..."
Mrs. Cole led Shirley into the room. Adam, pulling on Dumbledore's sleeve, said with a hint of exasperation, "Professor, you might want to forget about that pumpkin pasty for a minute."
"Oh, all right. What's happened?" Dumbledore looked longingly at the spot where the sweet scent of pumpkin lingered. "Truth be told, I'm not that keen on eating it, I'm just terribly curious about what a Muggle-made pasty tastes like."
Adam sighed, pulling him along. Ever since Dumbledore received that letter from Ariana, he seemed to have turned into a big kid.
"I have some more. I'll bring them back to your office for you to eat later. Just come with us, quickly."
"At least two," Dumbledore said with a smile, holding up his hand. "I think Fawkes would rather enjoy one as well."
Adam clenched his fist in frustration and nodded emphatically.
As the two of them walked into the room, Mrs. Cole was rummaging through the bookshelf, muttering to herself, "That's not right. I remember every child's file being right here..."
Adam, still holding Dumbledore's robe with one hand, pulled his wand from his sleeve with the other and pointed it at Mrs. Cole.
"Stupefy!"
A faint beam of light hit her in the back. He quickly cast another spell, conjuring a soft, comfortable armchair beneath her, gently catching her as she fell.
Dumbledore's brows furrowed, and he looked at Adam sternly. "You shouldn't use a Stunner on Mrs. Cole, not even if..."
"Forget about the International Statute of Secrecy for a moment, Professor. Just come and look at Mrs. Cole. She seems to have been affected by some kind of dark magic."
Standing beside the armchair, Adam was pointing his wand, his expression grim. He kept casting a spell that checked the state of her soul, but it kept coming back as perfectly normal.
Dumbledore's expression softened a little but remained serious. He went over to Mrs. Cole and lightly tapped her forehead with his wand. A powerful surge of magic transformed into a gentle white light that enveloped the armchair.
Shirley was crouched in the corner, her hands tightly gripping the hem of her clothes, looking like a helpless kitten. Adam gently stroked her head to comfort her and whispered that they should trust Professor Dumbledore.
After a long moment, Dumbledore put away his wand and let out a sigh of relief, gesturing for them not to worry.
"Your judgment was correct. There are traces of dark magic on her, but they've completely faded. The spell that's truly affecting her must be a different one."
Hearing this, Shirley's heart leapt again, and she asked softly, "Mrs. Cole isn't in any danger, is she?"
Dumbledore took off his half-moon spectacles and wiped them with a cloth, speaking gently. "Of course not, my dear. This spell has only affected some of her memories. You've probably seen it mentioned in the papers—it's the Memory Charm that Ministry of Magic employees often use."
"A Memory Charm? But I don't recall ever seeing an Auror at the orphanage," Adam said, still frowning as he carefully checked his own memories.
"It doesn't have to be an Auror. Many wizards living in the Muggle world know that spell," Dumbledore said. He summoned Fawkes, and the crimson and gold phoenix nodded on his shoulder before vanishing again in a flash of fire.
"I'm sorry, Professor, but my memories couldn't be wrong. I've seen Aunt Corinna and Lillith often over the past two years. They couldn't all be fakes, could they?"
Shirley, relieved by the sight of Mrs. Cole's peaceful sleeping face, turned to Adam and Dumbledore and began to talk about her time with Corinna, especially the experience of leaving the orphanage two years ago.
Dumbledore listened patiently, nodded earnestly, and put his glasses back on. "From what I know of Memory Charms, even the most skilled Obliviator can only slightly alter memories. Deleting a memory that spans such a long time could cause damage to the brain, which would be irreversible."
He looked at the cluttered bookshelf nearby, where files were stacked. "So, it's clear that only Mrs. Cole has been affected..."
Adam felt like there was a crucial piece of information missing from the puzzle. "If Mrs. Cole just happened to witness a wizard casting a spell, that person could just delete that memory and leave. Why would that wizard go through the trouble of altering Mrs. Cole's memory?"
"Perhaps..." Dumbledore's sentence was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Fawkes, who was clutching a shallow stone basin with a cluster of complex runes carved into it.
"A Pensieve?" Adam instantly recognized the enchanted object.
Dumbledore smiled and nodded, saying softly, "It seems we'll soon find out what was being hidden in that altered memory."
He raised his wand and pointed it at Mrs. Cole, but Shirley stopped him, saying timidly, "I'm sorry, Professor, but you just said that deleting memories from so long ago could cause irreversible harm. If that's the case, I'd rather not know the truth."
"Not at all, my dear," Dumbledore explained gently. "A Pensieve is different from a Memory Charm. It simply stores the memory in a different form. In fact, it's more difficult to use a Pensieve to organize and examine thoughts than it is to relive a memory."
He raised his wand again, and a silver substance slowly flowed into the Pensieve.
"Do we have to put our heads in the basin?" Adam asked abruptly.
"If you're worried about others seeing your memories," Dumbledore said, not stopping his movements, "you only need to touch it with your hand."
After Dumbledore's reply, Adam took Shirley's hand, and they gently touched the silver substance in the basin. In the next instant, they were back in the orphanage, and Dumbledore's form appeared in front of them.
"If my judgment is correct, this should be a memory from two years ago," Dumbledore's gentle voice echoed. He lightly raised his wand, and the scenery around them began to change rapidly, from day to night, over and over, until it suddenly stopped at a specific point.
"This is..."
Before Adam could finish his sentence, the front door was pushed open, and two wizards with obscured faces walked into the orphanage. Mrs. Cole, who was cleaning the hallway, looked at them quizzically. The woman in the lead took off the hat that was covering half of her face.
Seeing that face, Adam let out a heavy sigh of relief. The woman wore light makeup, but from the contours of her face and her subtle movements, she was distinctly different from the "Mrs. Anne" he knew from the other realm. There was only a slight resemblance in her eyebrows.
"Is that Corinna?" Adam turned and asked Shirley.
The young witch confirmed with a nod, pointing at the half-exposed pocket watch on the woman's clothes.
The other person also said a few words of greeting to Mrs. Cole, but when the voice reached Adam's ears, it sounded strangely familiar. He quickly ran to the man and stared at his face, instinctively reaching out to pull off his hat. His hand, however, passed right through the man.
"This is only a memory. We can't change anything that happened here," Dumbledore's voice came from behind him. Adam turned to look at him and said with certainty, "You recognize him, too, don't you?"
The memory around them was still flowing. As the man talked to Mrs. Cole, his hawkish eyes and the neatly trimmed beard on the lower half of his face, which his hat failed to cover, were unmistakable. Dumbledore gave Adam a positive answer. "This is Hogg from two years ago. It seems his appearance hasn't changed much over the years."
"But Hogg's records say that he's been traveling all over the world and hasn't been to London..."
His voice trailed off as his gaze fixed on something in another direction.
Adam followed Dumbledore's line of sight. Corinna was taking a file from Mrs. Cole. Her pale hands emerged from her long sleeves, revealing a black mark on the back of one hand. It was an equilateral triangle with a circle inside, bisected by a vertical line.
He instantly recognized the symbol. Ever since his conversation with "Mrs. Anne," he had been flipping through books on the subject in the Restricted Section of the library. This mark was subtly mentioned in one of them.
It represented the three objects left behind in the world by Death, also known as the Deathly Hallows.