"No! It shouldn't be like this! He was simply too weak to cast the Imperius Curse! Yes! That was it!"
Barty Crouch Jr. finally jolted awake. He panted violently, and only when he felt waves of chill seeping in from behind did he realize he had returned to the Durmstrang Headmaster's Office, lying on the cold floor.
He turned his head slightly toward the window and found the sky even darker than he had imagined. The surroundings were utterly silent; even the sound of his own breathing seemed exceptionally loud.
Voldemort was not here. In the vast Headmaster's Office, there was only him—and the chill creeping up his spine.
Barty Crouch Jr. struggled to his feet. Yet with just a blink, everything he had experienced earlier surfaced uncontrollably before his eyes.
At this moment, he truly could not tell whether everything he had experienced had been a nightmare brought on by the potion's effects, or... a reality he had once overlooked.
He staggered toward a cabinet, pulled open one of the drawers, and took out a Pensieve.
Facing the smoky, dreamlike silver substance within the Pensieve, he gritted his teeth and raised his wand to his temple.
He understood what he was doing. He needed to verify whether everything he had just experienced had truly happened.
No!
He did not merely need to verify it—he had to!
Barty Crouch Jr. drew a deep breath. The hand gripping his wand slowly pulled outward, drawing out a thin strand of silvery memory.
Looking at the silvery memory strand at his wand's tip, his wrist froze. He could not move it at all, could not let the strand fall into the Pensieve.
His entire body seemed frozen as he stood before the Pensieve in that posture.
Not until the sky beyond the window