Dumbledore's reaction was fierce.
Snape caught every bit of it. He had never seen Dumbledore like this before. The old man had always faced everything with composure, no matter how grave the matter.
Even at the height of the Dark Lord's power, Dumbledore had seemed permanently unshaken. But now, staring at the phantom image of the young wizard, the old man looked outright horrified.
"Dumbledore, what is it?"
Snape could not stop himself from asking. A cold knot of fear had formed in his stomach. He was afraid that this reaction meant the great White Wizard had realized, at last, that Voldemort could not be defeated.
There was no answer.
Dumbledore snapped out of his daze, pushed back his chair, and strode straight toward the apparition.
"No... no, that can't be..." His breathing grew heavier. His chest rose and fell. He did not blink. His face was full of shock and disbelief.
"Damn it, what did you see?"
Snape's voice rose sharply, edged with tension.
Still Dumbledore did not answer.
He kept staring at the boy's image, as though trying to read some buried truth from his chest. The expression on his face shifted more and more, uncertainty tangled with alarm.
"Answer me!"
Snape finally lost patience. He flicked his wand, and the image vanished. He had canceled the spell outright, breaking whatever strange hold it seemed to have cast over the Headmaster.
"You want me to trust you, then stop hiding things from me. You have to, and you should, tell me..."
Sadly for him, the sentence never finished.
Because the instant the projection disappeared, Dumbledore wheeled around and looked straight at him.
Those pale blue eyes were no longer gentle or calm.
Snape's throat bobbed hard.
It felt as though an invisible hand had closed around his neck.
It was that frightening.
This was nothing like the Albus Dumbledore Snape thought he knew. In fact, it reminded him far more of the terror he had felt not long ago when facing the Dark Lord.
"Severus. Show me again. Just once. Please. Don't make me force the issue."
Dumbledore's tone carried a trace of pleading, but the power and strain moving in those eyes only made Snape colder. It felt as though his mind could be invaded at any second.
Thankfully, the other man was showing restraint.
"You... you've gone mad too..."
Snape did not dare gamble. He hurriedly recreated the image.
The mist took shape once more. The young wizard stood there in that odd posture, wand raised, his expression sharp and dangerous, though he looked like he might break into strange laughter at any moment.
Dumbledore's breathing turned ragged again.
Slowly, he lifted a hand and stretched his fingers toward the image's chest. His fingertips passed through the mist and touched nothing.
Of course they touched nothing. It was only magical projection.
The old man's hand remained there, hanging in the air. His fingers curled slightly in empty space, helpless.
Like a man reaching for something he could not possibly grasp.
And all the while, he kept staring at that pendant.
That pendant, plain and inexpensive-looking, with its natural marbling across the surface.
Dumbledore stared at it for a long, long time.
Long enough for Snape's nerves to fray into outright agitation as he began pacing the office.
Long enough for the former Headmasters and Headmistresses on the walls to start whispering among themselves.
Long enough for the fire in the grate to die down into embers.
At last, Dumbledore slowly withdrew his hand and stepped back. His arm fell to his side. By then his breathing had steadied, and the shock had vanished from his face.
"Forgive me. I lost my composure."
When he spoke again, his voice had returned to its usual warm calm.
"Because just now, in the projection drawn from your memory, I witnessed a miracle that even magic should not have been able to touch."
At last, he explained a little.
Snape stared at the old Headmaster, suspicion plain in his eyes.
"Has the Dark Lord really defeated Death?"
Given everything that had just happened, Snape could think of nothing else that could make Dumbledore lose control like that.
Dumbledore's lips twitched.
"The Dark Lord defeating Death? Well, I rather think that is not..."
His voice cut off abruptly.
Something exploded inside his head. Not an image. Not a sound. A memory. A memory he had buried so deeply he had not turned it over in years.
"Brother, I gave my friend the pendant you gave me when I was little."
"He's a really good person. He plays with me all the time. He even told me this silly story about Cinderella selling used stockings-flavored milk tea and ending up rich as the Snow Queen."
"He's funny. And lately I've been feeling much better. That's thanks to the little statue he gave me. I think he carved himself."
"No, he's not some dark wizard with bad intentions. He said he's going to Hogwarts soon. Could you look after him while he's there?"
...
In the memory, it was Ariana's voice.
His sister.
The sister who had died in that three-way duel in Godric's Hollow, the one death that had left him forever carrying the curse of the Elder Wand, the person he had wronged most in all his life.
"There's no way I'm wrong..."
Dumbledore muttered the words under his breath, sounding half deranged.
Without another glance at Snape's baffled expression, he rushed toward the bookshelves.
On the way he stepped on the hem of his own robes and stumbled, but he did not care. He went straight to the shelf he had moved into his office only recently.
"Dumbledore, if that boy did not defeat Death, then explain to me how he's back in the body of a child, and a child from your family, no less."
"Aberforth Dumbledore's descendant, right? I knew it. Your secretive brother wouldn't stop at goats, so how could he possibly leave no offspring behind?"
Snape took a sharp breath, imagination spinning out of control.
"And Satan, according to some stories, was born of a black goat. If that's true, then the Dark Lord may have come back carrying some other terrifying force with him."
As a double agent, Snape knew a great many secrets.
As a Potions Master, he also had no shortage of imagination.
That combination was becoming a curse in real time. If he had known less, perhaps none of these horrifying conclusions would have occurred to him.
Dumbledore paid none of that any attention. His fingers moved along the spines and pulled out an old volume he had acquired only recently.
Merlin: Myth and Truth.
Beside it stood The Matter of Arthur, The Round Table and Alchemy, and Merlin and Arthur: A Forgotten Friendship.
The whole shelf was filled with books tied to the medieval period.
Pages began flying.
Dumbledore flipped through them at speed.
Snape, thoroughly exasperated by the man's attitude, kept demanding answers, while the portraits on the walls had now joined in with commentary of their own.
"Dumbledore has been like this for days. You get used to it."
"He's been researching Merlin's era nonstop. Barely eats, barely sleeps."
"That old fool has clearly picked up some very bad habits from that far too competent student of his."
The portraits sniped and muttered among themselves.
Dumbledore ignored all of it.
His mind was sunk deep in reading and thought.
"If that really is true, if it really can be done, then..."
A wild, ridiculous possibility began to form in the old Headmaster's mind.
"Count me in..."
He turned back toward the center of the office once more.
And in that moment, Snape saw a look in Dumbledore's eyes unlike anything he had witnessed in his life.
A look of utter, unwavering resolve.