"He hasn't changed at all in forty-four years?" Adam asked, completely stunned by the phantom figure before him. In the memory from 1946, Professor Hogg looked exactly the same as he did in the present.
"It appears my own memories are not playing tricks on me," Dumbledore said, a complex look in his eyes. He waved his wand, and the space around them shattered. They were back in the headmaster's office, staring at a thick pile of travel documents on the desk.
"Could it have been a Time-Turner?" Adam looked up and asked.
Dumbledore shook his head, immediately dismissing Adam's theory. "That's not possible. The greatest length of time travel that any known Time-Turner can achieve is no more than thirty years." He paused, then added, "To avoid serious damage to both the traveler and time itself, the longest a person can travel back is about five hours. Going beyond that time could have extremely severe consequences."
"Like what?" Adam pressed.
"You could return to your original timeline only to find your body aging before your very eyes, perhaps even turning to dust in an instant," Dumbledore said in a low voice, unconsciously looking at the wrinkles on his own hand. Noticing Adam's gaze, he gave a weary smile. "Yes, it's just as you're thinking. I once tried to mend a mistake I'd made, but no matter how hard I tried, it was all for naught. That is why I hope you will respect time. No matter what you do in the past, the course of history will not be altered."
Adam frowned, full of doubts. "But I once read in a book about a wizard who was killed by his past self after time traveling..." he said softly. "And in the late 19th century, a Silencer from the Department of Mysteries named Eloise Mintabble used a Time-Turner to go back five centuries and was trapped in the year 1402 for five days. The ripple effect she caused resulted in nearly twenty of her descendants completely vanishing from the present day."
Dumbledore was silent for a moment, then asked gently, "I seem to recall that book being in the Restricted Section, wasn't it?"
Adam's face flushed, and he nodded slightly.
Dumbledore didn't scold him. Instead, he explained patiently. "The incident you mentioned, and the Silencer named Eloise, were actually fabricated by the Ministry of Magic to cover up a scandal. The Minister of Magic at the time, a Mrs. Cackle, used her authority to bully the Department of Mysteries into giving her a Time-Turner to help her magical greenhouse plants grow. An accident occurred, which led to many casualties, and she herself died in the incident because a Mandrake seed had gotten mixed in with her other plants."
"But..." Adam still had more questions.
Dumbledore sighed heavily and pushed a glass of watermelon juice and a few delicate desserts toward Adam. His gaze shifted to the portrait of Ariana on the wall, and he said forlornly, "You don't need to doubt the truth of these matters. I don't believe anyone in the wizarding world is more aware of the events of 1899 than I am."
Fawkes seemed to sense his sadness and flew down from his golden perch by the door, nuzzling Dumbledore's cheek and letting out a soft trill. "Thank you, Fawkes. You don't need to be sad for me," Dumbledore said, stroking the phoenix's feathers. He took a sip of his tea, then reached for a dessert but found the plate empty. He looked down in surprise and saw Adam taking the last small cake, chewing it with satisfaction and patting his stomach.
"Would you like some more?" Dumbledore asked with concern.
Adam thought for a moment, then whispered uncertainly, "Can I get some fried chicken legs and veal steak?"
Fifteen minutes later, Dumbledore's gaze froze, and even Fawkes tilted his head in shock. In front of them, a teetering mountain of over thirty plates stood tall, the clinking of the porcelain plates echoing in the quiet office. Adam swallowed the last tender bite of steak, carefully placing the final plate on top of the pile. He stood up to grab a napkin, but his robes showed no hint of a bulge, as if the cream-covered puddings and steaming steaks had all been thrown into an undetectable extension charm bag.
"Oh, Professor," Adam said, wiping his mouth with the napkin, "I just remembered, Professor Hogg was a Ravenclaw student before, wasn't he? After teaching here for so many years, do you truly have no memory of him?"
Dumbledore's eyes, a deep ocean of blue behind his half-moon spectacles, retracted from the pile of plates. "That is the most intriguing part. His Hogwarts records are flawless," he said. "But when I asked his former classmates, every single one of them swore they had no memory of him. It wasn't until I showed them a picture of Hogg that they suddenly 'remembered' his existence, as if waking from a dream."
"He used a Memory Charm to erase everyone's memory!? Even yours, Professor?" Adam's expression grew serious, but he subtly glanced at the Elder Wand on the desk and quickly discarded the idea. If Hogg could silently alter Dumbledore's memory, why wouldn't he have taken the Elder Wand? And there would have been no need for him to become a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.
Adam suddenly remembered what happened on the Astronomy Tower on Halloween. "It shouldn't be a Memory Charm. As I mentioned before, modifying memories from decades ago and ensuring the person is unharmed is something even a master Obliviator can't do."
Dumbledore, unaware of Adam's gaze, continued to speak to him softly. "It feels more like some kind of power affecting everyone's perception, reducing Hogg's presence in their memories to the bare minimum."
"But it's not all-powerful," Adam looked up, glancing at Fawkes. "This new clue explains Mrs. Cole's confused memory. That fragmented memory might not have been a deliberately left flaw, but an accidental coincidence."
Dumbledore frowned slightly, slowly poured himself a cup of tea, and sat quietly, his eyes full of patience as he waited for Adam to continue.
"Hogg was at the orphanage and tried to use this power to hide both his and his companion's presence," Adam said. "But he overlooked one thing: he didn't know his companion's true name. For some reason, Corinna was calling herself 'Anne' at the time, which is why that particular memory was so fractured." Adam laid out his theory, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something.
Just then, Professor McGonagall's voice could be heard calling the password from the staircase. She soon walked in with a stack of papers. She was clearly stunned for a moment when she saw Adam and the high stack of plates, then apologized. "I'm so sorry, little Adam. I thought you had already left. Am I interrupting your conversation?"
"Of course not," Adam said, shaking his head. He pulled the short letter from his purse and placed it in front of Dumbledore. "I was just showing Professor Dumbledore a letter."
Dumbledore's face went pale when he saw the handwriting on the letter. When he looked up, he saw Adam was already at the door. "Wait... perhaps Gellert just wanted to thank you..."
Adam turned at the door, the light from the corridor casting his face in light and shadow. "You can talk to Ariana about it," he said. "And also, next time, what I send might not just be a pumpkin pasty."
McGonagall frowned, her eyes darting between the two of them. It wasn't until Adam's footsteps had faded that she finally couldn't help but ask, "What pumpkin pasty?"
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