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The air congealed.
A thick, icy chill swept over Jiang Fengyue from behind.
The Dark Lord slowly raised his scarlet eyes.
The horrifying dead stillness in their depths threatened to swallow the person before him whole.
An aura of bone-deep cold surged at Jiang Fengyue from all directions, carrying with it a calm that froze the marrow.
Jiang Fengyue turned his head away instantly, refusing to meet those spine-chilling eyes.
No more questions.
Done.
Not asking anything else.
Don’t be angry.
Slughorn’s voice booming for everyone to pack up tore through the frozen silence, and Jiang Fengyue practically leapt to gather the items on his table.
He was playing dead, scrubbing at a nonexistent stain on the tabletop with a rag, when,
“Lucius.”
He turned.
The Dark Lord was there, the love potion already gone from his hand.
He slowly raised his eyes, the dead stillness had left them, replaced by something that glinted like shattered starlight in a cold pool.
The Dark Lord narrowed his gaze and stared at him with deep, unhurried meaning.
“What scent did you smell.”
Jiang Fengyue blinked.
“The scent of Galleons.”
“…”
The Dark Lord looked at him with an indescribable expression.
Several long seconds passed.
Then something surfaced in his eyes, indulgent, helpless, reluctant.
“Preposterous.”
He raised one hand, as if to touch something.
In the end, it only lingered for a fleeting instant at the edge of Jiang Fengyue’s ear, barely there at all.
Like a very soft sigh dissolving into the wind.
“Next time, choose a different answer.”
The moment Potions class ended, the Dark Lord’s figure dissolved into the castle’s shadows and was gone.
He didn’t even appear in the Great Hall for lunch.
Jiang Fengyue swallowed his last bite of steak, eyes fixed straight ahead, and swiftly drew his wand to cast a miniature Shield Charm beside himself.
The chicken bone Crabbe had thrown wildly slid off it.
Goyle, quick-eyed, smeared a pizza gnawed down to a hollow ring toward him instead.
Jiang Fengyue raised his wand.
A Levitation Charm caught the splattering bacon scraps mid-air, and a flick sent them straight back onto Goyle’s face.
Goyle and Crabbe spoke in unison: “Sorry, Malfoy!”
“Merlin’s fishnet stockings!
Will you two complete idiots just be quiet!” April Shafiq, visibly nauseated, plucked a fish bone out of her hair and shot to her feet, screaming at both of them.
“He called me fat!” Goyle bellowed.
“You are!”
“Hey, this is all muscle!” Goyle huffed, rolling up his robes to display the quivering flab on his arm, then flexed it with absolute confidence.
The center of the Slytherin table went completely silent.
Then erupted.
Boys doubled over laughing, girls pressed their hands over their mouths and giggled into their sleeves.
“Your husband.”
April dropped back into her seat and cast ten Scouring Charms on her own head in rapid succession.
“I know Goyle has been sneaking slugs during Potions!
His spit landed in my hair!
It stinks, it stinks!”
Narcissa elegantly cast an Orchideous for her.
Sparkling pollen drifted down onto April’s hair like fine gold dust.
“Now you smell like fresh flowers.”
April giggled.
Jiang Fengyue exhaled slowly, straightened his robes, stood up, and walked toward the dungeons.
Passing the lawn by the Black Lake, fractured voices reached him from not far away.
He tilted his head slightly and looked toward a dark figure surrounded by people near the water’s edge.
“Well, look at that — if it isn’t our dear Snivellus.” James’s voice rang out loud, his malice entirely undisguised.
“Such a hurry.
Off to brew more of your disgusting potions, are we.”
“Get lost!” Snape gripped his wand.
But Sirius was faster.
“Levicorpus!” An invisible force snapped around Snape’s ankles and, in the middle of his terrified cry, yanked him up off the ground.
The world inverted.
His robes fell downward with gravity, exposing his bony chest, the old scars on his ribs clearly visible, years old.
His trousers, washed so many times they’d gone white, frayed at every edge, bunched around his legs.
His thin shins hung bare in the open air.
Snape let out a sound like a cornered animal and thrashed violently against the upside-down drag of his robes.
James and Sirius laughed loud enough to shake the air.
Peter beside them wheezed along.
Lupin’s expression was something else entirely, uneasy, visibly unsettled, but in the end, he said nothing.
“Finite Incantatem!”
A silver light struck Snape.
He plummeted, and was caught before he hit the ground.
He frantically yanked his robes back into order, and what filled his vision was platinum-blond hair, a few strands falling across his face, catching the sunlight.
Jiang Fengyue helped him upright, stepped between him and the others to give him room to straighten himself, then turned a cold gaze on the four across from him.
Seeing who it was, all four stepped back in unison.
Sirius and James watched him as if bracing for a threat.
Peter tucked his head down.
Lupin looked outright flustered.
Jiang Fengyue’s voice was flat as frozen water.
“James Potter and Sirius Black, bullying a fellow student.
Ten points from each.
I’ll be informing Professor McGonagall.” He turned his head, his gaze sharp as a venom-dipped needle, and fixed it on the prefect badge on Lupin’s chest.
“You are a prefect, Lupin.”
He left it there.
He didn’t acknowledge the insults and jeers that followed.
He glanced at Snape, who was standing rigid and wary, gave the faintest lift of his chin, and signaled him to follow.
Jiang Fengyue walked Snape all the way back to the dungeons.
He softened his voice and told him to go rest.
Snape clutched his books tighter, reached into a fold of his robes, and pulled out a key.
He pressed it quickly into Jiang Fengyue’s hand.
Jiang Fengyue looked down.
Slughorn’s office key.
The boy with the greasy hair hunched his shoulders and spoke quietly.
“Professor Slughorn gave it to me.
For convenience, he gave me a spare.”
He said it with weight.
“He’s always given it to me.
Never once asked for it back.”
Then he dipped his head and walked toward the dormitory.
Jiang Fengyue watched his retreating back and smiled faintly.
What a sharp child.
He must have noticed something missing from the office when he went in today, guessed what it was for, and what it meant.
And he’d said nothing about it.
Just handed over the key, quiet as a pledge.
Jiang Fengyue turned and walked to the prefects’ dormitory.
He was unsurprised to find the room behind the door empty.
He drew a slow breath, removed his outer robes without hurry, and let the bed swallow him.
He slept.
The Dark Lord still hadn’t appeared by afternoon Transfiguration.
He was like a wind that had simply ceased, swept somewhere unknown, leaving no trace.
Professor McGonagall’s heels clicked steadily across the podium.
Her voice was precise and unhurried.
“…Transfiguration is an elegant art.
A precise command of magical power…”
“…We must understand the core’s essence.
Comprehend the inner structure of matter, and the will of the soul being shaped — then reshape its form without damaging it.
Power stems from control.
But beauty is born in the spirit.”
“Every successful transformation is a tripartite unity: the caster’s will, the caster’s soul, and the caster’s magic, working as one.
Use your soul to create.
Use your eyes to truly see.
There is nothing that cannot be changed.”
Professor McGonagall raised her wand.
A point of light pierced a feather drifting in the air.
The feather’s shape shifted and reformed within the glow, and a swan materialized from nothing, head held high, wings already beating, and flew out through the open window.
The students bent over their desks, wands waving at the feathers before them.
Most managed either a simple dead object or set the feather on fire.
Jiang Fengyue raised his wand at the feather.
A pair of cold, mocking scarlet eyes flashed through his mind.
Magic poured out of him.
A shape stretched rapidly beneath his wand tip, as if something alive were struggling free from inside the feather’s soft core.
In his own stunned gaze, a small pitch-black snake dropped onto the desk.
It hissed.
Its tongue flickered.
It surveyed its surroundings with narrow suspicion, turning its head in slow arcs, and then it found him.
Those red vertical pupils went still.
It moved with clear, deliberate purpose, flowing across the desk’s surface, climbing up from the wood onto his wrist.
Its body coiled once, then again, winding upward.
Cold scales pressed tight against the warm pulse beating at his wrist.
The small snake hissed twice.
And held on.
➤ Next: Falling into the Black Lake