The man was short and stout, his round face now deathly pale.
"Best, are you certain you didn't experience a hallucination, or perhaps see things incorrectly?" Grindelwald asked sternly.
"No! Sir! No! I really saw it… no, not just saw it. I was hit by a spell!" Best said in panic.
Grindelwald turned and noticed Dumbledore and Wade, but he seemed to have no mind to deal with them at the moment.
Instead, he looked at the other supporters nearby with a questioning gaze.
"Best isn't mistaken. We all saw it. We saw three Bests, and one of them cast a Severing Charm at him that nearly cut his throat."
"Yes, we all saw it."
"But the strange thing is that although the man looked almost exactly like Best, his hair was red."
"Red? What are you talking about? Best's hair is clearly blond!"
"…There was also one with black hair who didn't attack."
"The one with black hair appeared later, but he looked even more terrified than Best."
Grindelwald raised a hand to stop them. The bizarre situation had already given him a headache.
He had only just returned. He had barely warmed the chair in his office before something happened again.
Two Obscuruses appearing was bad enough, and now several identical copies of his own subordinate had shown up.
The key point was that these extra, duplicated people had vanished after only a second.
Even if Best had been mistaken, or if everyone present had seen things incorrectly, the wound on Best's neck was undeniably real.
Moreover, after examining it, Grindelwald discovered that the magical residue left on the wound was exactly the same as Best's own magic.
Yet when Grindelwald suspected that Best might have hallucinated and attacked himself, he used the Reverse Spell Revealing on Best's wand and found that Best had not cast a Severing Charm for a long time.
In the end, Grindelwald even discovered two additional pairs of footprints where the other two Bests had stood.
A comparison showed that they were exactly the same as Best's footprints.
Even a mind as brilliant as Grindelwald's was completely baffled by this.
"Could it be that someone used Polyjuice Potion to play a trick on me?" Grindelwald muttered. Then his suspicious gaze fell once again on Dumbledore and Wade.
By this time, after questioning the nearby supporters, Dumbledore and Wade had also learned what had just happened.
Both of them wore grave expressions.
In other words, the appearance of three Best Williams on the Marauder's Map earlier had not been a mistake on the map. It had truly happened.
"Dumbledore… and… oh, you…" Grindelwald stared at the two of them and spoke slowly, word by word.
It was obvious that he suspected Wade and Dumbledore.
After all, if something major went wrong here, the ones who stood to benefit the most would be those on Dumbledore's side.
Especially since Wade seemed unusually capable when it came to dealing with strange phenomena like this.
Naturally, Grindelwald suspected that they had something to do with it.
"This wasn't our doing," Dumbledore said.
"Ha! A thief never has the word thief written on his forehead," Grindelwald replied with sarcasm.
"I told you, this wasn't our doing," Dumbledore repeated.
Grindelwald clearly did not believe him.
He turned to Wade and said, "If it wasn't you, then have you noticed anything unusual?"
"Just now, Mr. William here saw two versions of himself, right? And although those two looked very similar to him, there were subtle differences. For example, their hair colors were different. Is that correct?" Wade asked.
"That's correct," Grindelwald replied impatiently.
"So.. Do you think I would brew a Polyjuice Potion that fails to work properly?" Wade asked in return.
Grindelwald was momentarily speechless.
Indeed, if this had truly been their doing, they could have made it flawless. Why would they use such a defective Polyjuice Potion?
Seeing him fall silent, Wade stepped closer to the tent's perimeter and raised his head to look at the top of the tent.
In his vision, the multicolored vortex above it had grown larger than before.
Grindelwald walked over. "So it really wasn't you, huh?"
"Heh~ I told you. If it had been us, you wouldn't be able to spot any flaws. It's not as if you haven't experienced that before, right?" Wade said with a smile.
"Ugh.. this brat.." Grindelwald immediately remembered the time he had been tricked, and his mood became even worse.
However, just as he was about to continue questioning Wade, his eyes suddenly widened.
"What the!!?"
Because he abruptly realized that another Grindelwald had appeared opposite him at some unknown moment.
Grindelwald reacted with incredible speed.
While everyone else was still in shock, a green flash had already illuminated the area around the tent.
Swoosh!
Swoosh!
Boom.
Two identical Killing Curses collided.
The spells held against each other for only a second before the other Grindelwald suddenly vanished.
"What exactly is going on!" For the first time, panic entered Grindelwald's voice.
If it had only been something he saw, it could have been dismissed as an illusion. But after exchanging spells directly, Grindelwald understood.
That other Grindelwald had been real.
No one understood his own strength better than he did.
After all.. Polyjuice Potion could imitate a person's appearance, but it could not imitate their power.
The Grindelwald on the opposite side was exactly the same as him in both casting habits and casting speed. It was like looking into a mirror.
However, what shocked Grindelwald the most was that his own magical power was actually weaker than the other's.
By comparison, he felt like the impostor. Fortunately, that other Grindelwald had only appeared for a second.
While everyone was still in panic, Wade tugged at Dumbledore's sleeve. "Professor, did you notice anything different about the other Grindelwald?"
"It happened too quickly, and the scene was too shocking. I didn't have time to observe," Dumbledore said with a frown.
"I saw it," Wade said in a low voice.
"What did you see?" Grindelwald asked urgently.
"That Grindelwald… was holding the Elder Wand."
"Oh shii—"
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