Harry Potter brought Dumbledore to the Forbidden Forest. The scenery here all looked much the same, and it took him quite a while to find the right place.
"Professor, this is where I met Fred."
Dumbledore nodded lightly. Even if Harry had not said anything, he had already noticed something unusual about this place.
As he drew closer, he sensed a dense aura of life.
Moreover, that aura was slowly dissipating. Even after so long, he could still sense it. One could only imagine how intense the life aura here had originally been.
Dumbledore stepped forward to examine the withered roots. He crushed some between his fingers, rubbed them in his hand, and sniffed them.
He quickly identified them. "These are Ruby Flowers... If cultivated with immense life energy... they can grow Life Seeds..."
"Tom... So it really was you..."
Harry asked, "Tom?"
Dumbledore said, "I mean, the sickness among Hogwarts students was probably Voldemort's doing."
"Harry, you encountered Voldemort when he possessed Quirrell in your first year."
"In his current neither-human-nor-ghost state, he would need special methods to recover."
"The students' symptoms are all caused by malnutrition. It was likely the consequence of Voldemort secretly harvesting their life energy."
"He used the collected life energy to cultivate Ruby Flowers, then used the Life Seeds they produced to restore himself."
After seeing the withered Ruby Flowers, Dumbledore quickly pieced everything together. What he could not understand was how Voldemort had collected the life energy.
Voldemort's actions this time had been far too covert. They had not even figured out when he had infiltrated Hogwarts.
Dumbledore suddenly sensed something. He raised a finger and pointed toward a nearby tree.
An invisible blade instantly severed a branch. Falling along with it was a snake cut cleanly into two pieces.
"Harry, we may