"We're here!"
Barty Crouch Jr.'s voice rang out. He was already standing before an enormous dragon skull.
"Great Dark Lord!" he called out expressionlessly. The dragon skull immediately opened its jaws, revealing a hidden stairwell.
The stairs in the stairwell led upward. Barty Crouch Jr. stepped aside, gesturing with both his gaze and movements for Snape to go first.
Snape silently climbed the stairs and arrived at a short corridor. At the end of it stood the door to the Headmaster's Office.
He reached the door and had just raised his arm, not yet having time to knock, when it opened from within and a figure appeared behind it.
The moment that figure appeared, even though Snape had prepared himself for everything, his breath still caught.
He saw that familiar head of red hair. Yet what made him feel truly suffocated was the pair of eyes meeting his own—those 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 the feeling was completely different!
Even setting aside Harry Potter's face, which so closely resembled James Potter's, the spark in those eyes always made him catch a glimpse of James Potter's shadow.
That utterly stubborn look, always carrying a hint of provocation, as though he were ready to rebel at any moment, had made him feel disgust and longing countless times after meeting those eyes.
That incomparably contradictory feeling did nothing but torment him beyond measure.
Harry Potter's appearance was like the most terrible curse, forcibly blending together the two faces he longed for most and hated most, making every exchanged glance feel like enduring the Cruciatus Curse.
But these eyes were