"We're here!"
Barty Crouch Jr.'s voice rang out. He was already standing before an enormous Fire Dragon Skull.
"Great Dark Lord!" he called out the password expressionlessly. The Fire Dragon Skull immediately opened its massive jaws, revealing a hidden stairwell.
The stairs in the stairwell stretched upward. Barty Crouch Jr. stepped aside, indicating with both his gaze and gesture that Snape should go first.
Snape silently climbed the stairs and arrived at a short corridor. At its end stood the door to the Headmaster's Office.
He reached the door and had only just raised his arm, not yet able to knock, when it opened from within, revealing a figure behind it.
At the sight of that figure, even though Snape had prepared himself for everything, his breath still caught in his throat.
He saw that familiar head of red hair. Yet what suffocated him most was the pair of eyes meeting his gaze—the emerald-green eyes that had haunted his dreams.
Harry Potter had eyes like these too. In the corridors of Hogwarts, in Potions Class, beside the long tables in the Great Hall, he had met Harry Potter's gaze countless times.
But it felt completely different!
Even setting aside Harry Potter's face, which was so much like James Potter's, the light shining in those eyes always made him catch a glimpse of James Potter's shadow.
That unyielding, ever-provocative look, as though he were ready to resist at any moment, only made him feel revulsion and longing again and again after every exchange of glances.
That utterly contradictory feeling did nothing but torment him unbearably.
Harry Potter's appearance was like the most dreadful curse, forcibly blending together the two faces he desired most and hated most, making every glance feel like enduring the Cruciatus Curse.
But these eyes were different now.