Secret

"But..."

"There aren't that many 'buts.' Even if you can't understand the meaning of what I'm saying right now, you should remember these things. Sooner or later, you'll understand.

"Now let's talk about something else. Are you only curious about Grindelwald and Voldemort's story?"

Of course, she was curious about more than just that.

But once there were too many things she wanted to know, she no longer knew how to ask. Jon clearly intended to tell her all of it, yet that only made her hesitate.

Because she wasn't sure whether she could bear so much information.

"Ask whatever you want. You only have one chance. Even if you might not be able to accept it all, you can write down the answers first and look at them again when you can, can't you?"

Jon's words always offered the right reasoning at the right time. At least at this moment, he had given Hermione a very reasonable suggestion.

"Then I really do have a lot of questions to ask."

Hermione sat down properly in front of Jon, as though she were attending a tutoring session.

"Earlier, while we were on the way here, you told me that Sirius wasn't dead.

"But I want to know—if Sirius didn't die, why are you so certain that Dumbledore will?"

She had pondered that question for a long time. It had shocked her greatly when she first heard it, because the conditions Jon had offered that snake were simply too strange, impossible to understand. If she had not known that there was absolutely no conflict between Jon and Dumbledore, she might even have thought Jon wanted to kill Dumbledore and take his place.

Of course, that idea was absurd as well.

But she felt that if anyone else had heard those words, their