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The icy lake water hit like needles, thousands of them driving into his skin at once.
Jiang Fengyue jolted and, on pure instinct, tightened his grip around the only solid thing he had.
Voldemort’s body stiffened for just a fraction of a second.
Beneath the dark water, those scarlet eyes burned like twin flames, cutting clean through the murk.
The Dark Lord’s robes had soaked through the instant they hit the surface.
His broad shoulders, his narrow waist, the lean and powerful frame beneath, all of it laid bare.
His black hair, usually falling in elegant waves, was plastered wetly to his pale temples and cheeks like something out of a water spirit’s legend, strands winding past the high bridge of his nose.
The effect was merciless.
It stripped away nothing, only amplified: that inhuman beauty, that bone-deep sinister allure, presented without restraint.
He did not push Jiang Fengyue away.
He only lowered his gaze, watching the young body in his arms tremble with cold.
Jiang Fengyue’s shirt was long past soaked, it clung to him like a second skin, tracing the lines of a figure that was slender, almost slight, but cleanly proportioned.
His platinum hair had come loose entirely and drifted in the water like pale seaweed.
Moonlight pushed down through the surface in struggling, swaying columns that settled over him like something faint, as though he were generating light from within.
He reached for his wand, trying to cast a Bubble-Head Charm.
The Dark Lord’s arm wrapped around his waist and locked him in place.
Jiang Fengyue opened his mouth to protest.
A stream of tiny bubbles escaped instead, spiraling upward toward the surface.
He shut his mouth.
Held what little air he had left.
He looked down at his wand, then looked back at Voldemort and pointed at his own lips, clear enough: I cannot breathe.
Let me go.
Voldemort did not move.
He raised his hand instead.
With deliberate, almost gentle slowness, he brushed the hair from Jiang Fengyue’s cheek.
His long fingers drifted downward and came to rest against those tightly closed lips.
He didn’t press.
He only rubbed, unhurried, using the pads of his fingers against the soft skin until the color returned, until they were flushed and vivid.
Jiang Fengyue didn’t move.
He stared.
His vision was going dark at the edges.
No oxygen since the fall, and the darkness was pulling at his consciousness now, dragging it toward something deep and silent.
The Dark Lord leaned down.
A surge of magic hit him, mixed with that sharp, cold, distinctly Voldemort-ness that Jiang Fengyue had come to recognize, and forced its way into his suffocating body like a lifeline delivered at knifepoint.
Jiang Fengyue’s eyes flew open.
Through the rippling, wavering underwater light, he was looking directly into scarlet irises less than an inch from his face.
His heart slammed against his ribs with everything it had.
As the Dark Lord began to pull away, Jiang Fengyue pushed forward to meet him.
Voldemort went still.
He stared at the face before him, and saw it clearly, the cunning, the deliberate seduction in those eyes, arresting as a Siren’s call.
A battlefield with a single prize.
Oxygen.
Neither would concede.
Neither was willing to let go.
,
Slytherin Dungeon.
Common room.
Beside the wall near the blazing fireplace, a crack split the apparently seamless stone.
A platinum-blond head eased through the gap, swiveling left and right.
Only when the coast was clear did he carefully pull the perfectly composed figure behind him out with him.
The Dark Lord strolled with one hand in his pocket, entirely unbothered by the prospect of being caught, content to let the person ahead drag him wherever they were going, apparently toward the Prefect’s dormitory.
Between them, Drying Charms had taken care of the evidence.
No trace of the lake remained.
“My Lord,” Jiang Fengyue muttered, scanning the corridor as they walked, “why didn’t you mention there was a passage that goes straight to the dungeons?”
“You’re mistaken,” Voldemort said, flat and unhurried.
“There’s more than one.”
Right.
Voldemort, legendary master of the nocturnal castle tour.
Jiang Fengyue shifted the soaked potion ingredients in his arms and exhaled.
“What are we going to do?
Most of the materials are still salvageable, but the African tree snake skin is completely ruined.
Tomorrow I’ll have to, ”
He stopped dead.
Down the corridor, pacing back and forth in front of his dormitory door, was a boy with greasy hair, who was now staring at them in open, wide-eyed shock.
More precisely: staring at the inhumanly beautiful man standing behind Jiang Fengyue.
Voldemort’s red eyes passed over him once.
One sweep, unhurried, absolute.
Snape’s gaze dropped to the floor immediately.
His entire body seemed to fold in on itself, shoulders shaking, every line of him shrinking.
Jiang Fengyue practically vaulted forward to release Voldemort’s hand.
He grabbed Snape by the shoulders without a word and shoved him through the dormitory door, moving at a speed that suggested something far worse than detention was chasing him.
The Dark Lord followed at his own pace.
He stepped inside, closed the door with quiet elegance, crossed to the high-backed armchair beside the window, and sat down.
He watched Jiang Fengyue round on Snape with the mild interest of someone watching weather change.
Jiang Fengyue raised his wand and layered Notice-Me-Not Charms and Privacy Charms across the door.
“Why were you at my door?
It’s past curfew!”
“I — I —” Snape flinched hard, curling tighter.
A few broken syllables came out.
He was fighting visibly, desperately, not to look toward the chair by the window.
Terror had him by the throat.
He couldn’t think.
He was too frightened.
Or more precisely, Snape was clever enough to have already worked out who that man was, and knowing had locked him up entirely. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Jiang Fengyue swallowed his frustration and shifted to something gentler.
“Don’t be afraid.
Kneel.
Kneel first, Severus.” He kept his voice soft, pressing down on Snape’s shoulder with a hand that was firm but unhurried.
Snape’s legs folded.
He sank to his knees before the black-haired man in the chair, head hanging low, spine curved into an arc of terror and submission, the whole of him pulled small.
Jiang Fengyue looked at Snape on the floor, then glanced at the figure in the armchair, seemingly removed from the entire situation, yet somehow controlling every inch of it.
He took a slow breath.
He could cast a Memory Charm.
That was an option.
But it felt unnecessary.
Snape had walked into this; he might as well walk further.
The boy was sharp, already reading rooms and people with an instinct most adults never developed, and he would never breathe a word of it to anyone.
After being saved twice, Snape had also started looking at Jiang Fengyue the way a person looks at someone they’d like to stand behind.
He was going to end up sworn to Voldemort eventually anyway.
Sooner changed nothing.
And the Dark Lord needed potions.
If Snape was in, Jiang Fengyue wouldn’t have to slip out in the middle of the night anymore.
His mind clicked into place.
He dropped to one knee before Voldemort.
“My Lord.
This is Severus Snape, Slytherin, fifth year.
He is currently one of Professor Slughorn’s most prized students.
The talent he has shown in Potions has impressed even the professor.
He is meticulous, precise, and toward power —” Jiang Fengyue paused, choosing the word with care, “, toward knowledge, he possesses a hunger that borders on obsession, and the drive to match it.”
“I believe he could be of use to you.
Tonight was an accident.
But perhaps it is also an opportunity.
I beseech you to accept him, to give him the chance to serve you and become your loyal servant.”
Voldemort looked at the kneeling Jiang Fengyue with casual indifference.
His long fingers tapped once, twice, against the smooth wood of the armrest, each tap soft and deliberate.
He did not glance at Snape.
Silence settled over the room.
Thick.
Unmoving.
Jiang Fengyue gritted his teeth.
He rose, crossed to the Dark Lord’s side, and knelt again at his feet.
He laid one pale hand on Voldemort’s leg and gave it a small, careful shake.
Then he tilted his face up, that face that was, by any honest measure, almost unfairly beautiful, and blinked at the Dark Lord with guileless, clear eyes.
“My Lord.
Say something.”
➤ Next: Miss Nagini