A Glass of Gin

As a Horcrux, Tom might have wanted Voldemort, the original body, to suffer, but he would never have wanted Voldemort dead.

Because Voldemort's death would require all of them Horcruxes to die first. Keeping the number of Horcruxes secret was beneficial to Tom.

So Manus believed that, given the chance, Tom would definitely try to conceal the existence of one Horcrux from him.

The only difference was how deeply the fear of death Manus had instilled in Tom had run, how much effect it had on Big Tom, and whether it had been enough to make him reveal everything he knew without reservation at the time.

"It's fine. When the time comes, we'll capture every Tom and question them separately, keep them apart, and cross-check their answers. That'll reduce the proportion of lies to a minimum."

In any case, Manus would not fully trust Tom's words.

What mattered more now was how to reasonably tell Dumbledore about the Horcruxes. Otherwise, Dumbledore would stumble over this at least once in the future. If he only learned the first time that Voldemort had a Horcrux but did not know there were multiple Horcruxes, then there would be another time after that.

And Voldemort was not some idiot who would stand there and let himself be killed. After killing him once, killing him again would be completely different in difficulty from the first time.

After preparing a few carefully chosen lines, Manus set off for the entrance to the Headmaster's Office on the third floor.

Considering Dumbledore's complexity and unpredictability, those prepared words might not be useful after all, but being prepared was still better than being unprepared.

"Nut honey biscuits."

After he gave the password to the statue, it rotated and revealed a staircase that spiraled upward on its own. Manus rode