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Great Hall, Slytherin table.
Jiang Fengyue drained the bitter black coffee before his brain would cooperate.
It was only in the small hours of this morning that Snape had crept up and knocked on his door.
Two days of poor sleep had taken their toll, and he was dead to the world when Nagini prodded his stomach with her tail and dragged him back to consciousness.
He blinked his eyes open.
The Dark Lord beside him had clearly woken the moment anyone came near the room, and those red eyes were already narrowed, head already turning to look at him.
Jiang Fengyue resigned himself to fate and opened the door a crack.
Snape’s face was always pale, but the shadows under his eyes right now were alarming.
He shoved two vials through the gap in quick succession.
Oh, their poor little Severus.
Too afraid to return with nothing but tree snake skin, he’d stayed up all night and brewed the Polyjuice Potion himself.
Jiang Fengyue had to muster what remained of his composure to praise and pat Severus down, something approaching encouragement.
Once the boy left looking considerably less terrified, he shut the door and fell back into bed, fumbling the vials toward the Dark Lord in a half-conscious daze.
The Dark Lord showed no interest in sleeping.
He was leaning against the dark green velvet headboard, his fitted silk robe slightly open at the collar, revealing pale collarbones and the faint suggestion of muscle beneath.
He turned one vial over in his fingers, brow lifting a fraction, a glint of interest moving through his eyes.
No impurities.
Fourth-generation formula.
Perfect efficacy, and seemingly improved.
“Not bad.
You said his name is Snape?”
“Mm…” Jiang Fengyue sank into the down and murmured with his eyes already closed.
The Dark Lord raised an eyebrow.
He reached over and pinched his nose, only letting go when Jiang Fengyue squirmed away in protest.
By the time Jiang Fengyue got up for morning class, the Dark Lord was long gone.
Nagini with him.
Jiang Fengyue set down his white porcelain coffee cup and glanced, apparently without purpose, toward the far right end of the long table.
He met a pair of eyes that hadn’t managed to look away in time.
He held the gaze for exactly one beat, long enough to watch panic flicker through those eyes, then turned back without expression.
“Come on, Goyle.
Crabbe.”
For several days running, the Dark Lord barely set foot in class.
Jiang Fengyue observed a private moment of silence for Argus’s O.W.L.s, the Dark Lord had a genuine gift for truancy.
A few of the familiar young snakes had come to quietly ask him whether “Argus” was away on a mission.
Voldemort hardly appeared in the Great Hall either, and Jiang Fengyue had no idea what he ate.
Surely Nagini wasn’t catching him dead mice.
He asked nothing.
Whatever required the Dark Lord’s personal attention, knowing too much right now was absolutely not in his interest.
Only in those half-asleep hours at night could he catch glimpses, the Dark Lord leaning against the headboard in the dark, watching.
And though Voldemort’s face gave nothing away, Jiang Fengyue’s instincts told him clearly: whatever this was, it wasn’t going smoothly.
He’d spotted that tall silhouette more than once on the upper floors of the castle, and at the treeline where the Forbidden Forest began, there and gone in a blink.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was always well lit.
Brilliant sunlight plus the professor’s droning theoretical lecture had reduced most of the room to varying degrees of unconsciousness.
“…The counter-curse can deflect most jinxes and has an exceptionally wide defensive radius…
This is an advanced core protective technique…
It is mandatory on the N.E.W.T.s and a required examination for Auror candidates…”
Counter-curses, advanced counter-curses, Jiang Fengyue had mastered all of it.
He kept his head slightly lowered, his gaze drifting past the chapter on Dementors to the page beneath: the Patronus Charm, recorded there as the most difficult defensive spell to cast.
The sunlight fell on him with something like preference.
It wrapped around him where he sat by the window, and every pale gold strand of hair caught it and threw back something nearly translucent.
He raised one long, fair hand and tucked a fallen lock behind his ear, revealing a profile without a single flaw.
The focus in his expression, lit from the side, produced something that edged toward the otherworldly.
Eyes that had been half-shut came open.
More and more gazes shifted, drawn without apparent reason toward the window.
Girls exchanged looks, faces warm with something they didn’t quite name.
Even the oblivious little lions of Gryffindor turned to look with that slightly dazed expression people got at things too clean to make sense.
The person at the center of all of it stared at the page on the Patronus Charm, lost in thought, entirely unaware.
The bell was still ringing through the stone walls as Jiang Fengyue packed his books away.
Goyle, out of long habit, added them to his own bag without comment.
Narcissa took Shafiq’s hand, and the group joined the flow of students heading down the stairs.
They made it as far as the second floor before the staircase entrance came to a full stop.
Something had happened.
Jiang Fengyue’s brow furrowed slightly.
Crabbe grabbed the nearest Hufflepuff and asked.
“Shut your foul mouth, Potter!” A girl’s voice, cutting through the noise.
Lily.
Jiang Fengyue’s face went cold.
He cast a parting charm through the crowd and walked forward.
The little snakes fell in step behind him without being told.
In the middle of the corridor, Lily Evans stood next to Snape and glared at James with the particular fury of someone who had run out of patience entirely.
“Did I say anything wrong?” James’s voice climbed when he saw Lily defending Snape, his face going red with it.
“Snivellus is working that disgusting face again, playing for sympathy?
Or did he spend last night messing with dark magic again and nearly kill himself?” Sirius let out a sharp, derisive laugh.
The color that flooded Snape’s pale cheeks was pure rage.
His grip on his wand went white-knuckled.
James looked extremely pleased by this, never mind that he’d been the one to lose his composure the moment he saw Lily talking to Snape in the first place.
He drew his wand.
Lily cried out and moved to get between them, but Peter stepped forward and dragged her back with both hands.
Lupin followed, voice low and strained: “Don’t, James…”
“Enough, Potter!” A seventh-year Slytherin stepped out of the crowd, tall, expression contemptuous.
“Who gave you permission to touch one of ours?”
James paused.
The smirk that pulled at his mouth was nothing but condescension.
“You’re not qualified, Avery.
You don’t have the rank to lecture me on Slytherin’s behalf.”
“Get out of it!
Slytherin filth — this has nothing to do with you!”
Several Slytherins shouted back.
Nobody moved forward.
Avery’s face went crimson.
Publicly dismissed in front of the whole corridor, in front of the sons of House Potter and House Black, he took two sideways steps, gripped the handle of his wand, and tried to find an answer: “You—”
James had run out of patience.
He saw the Slytherin step aside.
His face split into a nasty grin.
“Stupefy!”
Snape moved fast enough to block it.
But it was obvious two-on-one was a different matter.
Sirius’s spell was already in the air.
“Levicorpus!”
They were going to recreate the Black Lake.
They were going to leave Snape hanging in front of a packed corridor with nothing to protect him, and take their time about it.
Lily, held back, made a short, desperate sound.
“No—”
At that exact moment, a voice came from the back of the corridor.
Cold.
Level.
Smooth as something sliding over ice.
“Protego Totalum.”
A shield snapped into existence in front of Snape, wide as a door.
Both spells struck it at full force and burst apart.
James and Sirius each took a step back, suddenly wary.
The corridor went silent.
Every head turned.
Under every gaze in that hallway, the platinum-haired seventh year walked forward without hurrying and came to a stop beside Snape.
Jiang Fengyue put one hand briefly on Snape’s shoulder, a gesture of unmistakable, deliberate protection, and then stepped in front of him.
The lead serpent’s signal, given without a single word.
Narcissa, Goyle, and the others who’d followed him moved immediately, fanning out to his flanks and rear, wands up, faces blank and cold.
And then, in the space of one stunned breath, as the other three houses watched, every scattered Slytherin in that corridor moved.
First years, seventh years, every year between, they converged and closed ranks behind him like a tide finding its channel.
A green fortress rose without a sound.
At its front, the house standard: a platinum serpent with poison in its veins, watching those across from him without blinking.
“Avery isn’t qualified.” His voice carried down the silent corridor.
“So.
What about me.”
➤ Next: Suppression