Professor Snape stopped in the center of the classroom and pointed his slender wand at a cauldron.
He didn't even need words.
Every pair of eyes in the room was pulled toward it.
Inside, something thick and viscous churned like solidified asphalt. An indescribable stench rose from it, burnt toad skin and rotting nettles, hitting the room like a wall. Several students in the front row had already gone green.
"The latest masterpiece..." Snape finally spoke. His voice, oily and serpentine, flowed through the cold classroom at a leisurely pace. "...from Gryffindor's geniuses."
"A kind of... vomit... I cannot even name."
He didn't single anyone out. He didn't have to. Every Gryffindor in the room felt their cheeks burning.
"To brew a standard Boil-Cure Potion." His voice carried contempt he didn't bother to disguise. "One only needs to remember the most basic step: extinguish the flame before adding the porcupine quills."
"A simple step. Even a troll could manage it."
His gaze drifted away from the shame-flushed faces in the front rows, landing with quiet precision on the older students , the ones who had been restless ever since the news about the Triwizard Tournament broke.
"I can sense it."
His voice dropped lower. More penetrating.
"Your ambition is practically oozing from your pores. Longing for glory. Longing to be Hogwarts' champion."
The corner of his mouth curled into a thin, sarcastic arc. The tip of his wand swung back toward the cauldron.
"With this?"
Two words. They punched through every fantasy in the room like a needle through silk.
"However." He dragged out the word, as if turning a genuine possibility over in his mind. "I do have a suggestion."
"You could use this as a secret weapon. Poison your opponents with it during the tournament." A pause. "I believe that might win Hogwarts a victory of... exceptional wretchedness."
The vicious absurdity of it froze the entire room.
He had pressed their self-respect into the floor and ground it to dust , elegantly, unhurriedly, without raising his voice. He had trampled their hopes and their pride into nothing. And then, only then, as if he had simply forgotten to mention it, he delivered the final blow.
"Oh. I forgot."
"You are not old enough to enter."
The words swept through the dungeon like an icy draft through a broken window. Whatever small flame the Triwizard Tournament had lit in those students' chests went out.
He left nothing behind but cold ash.
---
The fire in the Gryffindor common room was blazing.
Warm light soaked the walls orange. Most of the students had long since gone to bed. But the best spot in front of the fireplace — the prime real estate — was held by two people who had no intention of sleeping.
Fred and George. Like two foxes in the middle of a scheme.
The carpet between them was covered in ingredients: wilted white dandelion roots giving off a damp, earthy smell; a few strips of silver-barked wood scraped from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, still carrying the cold and damp; and, most notably, a small vial of sticky dragon's blood "borrowed" from Silvermane Academy. A miniature cauldron sat over the flames, its contents pushing up suspicious purple bubbles.
GURGLE. GURGLE.
Not a promising sound.
"I think we can push the dosage a bit stronger," Fred murmured, eyes bright with the particular gleam of a man about to do something inadvisable.
George grabbed his hand before it could move.
"Are you out of your mind? The instructions say one drop is enough!"
Fred curled his lip. "That's the instructions for ordinary people, George. Our goal is to fool Dumbledore's Age Line." He spread his hands. "That's legendary-grade magic. You really think we get results without going big?"
"I would rather not wake up tomorrow morning with a beard longer than Dumbledore's," George said flatly.
Fred's eyes lit up. "What's the problem? We hobble into class on walking sticks, McGonagall feels terrible for us, and boom — Transfiguration homework excused."
George actually wavered for a moment.
Then a worse thought arrived.
"And then Snape sees we look older than him, gets jealous, and strips every last point from Gryffindor."
They looked at each other. Both shivered.
The image was too vivid. They didn't dare let it develop.
Just like that, the ambition drained out of both of them.
Their real goal was the Triwizard Tournament , the Everest of their magical mischief career, the prize they had been dreaming about for years. The temptation was enormous. The difficulty was equally enormous. That was the problem.
---
The next morning. Defense Against the Dark Arts.
The students knew something was different before they were even fully through the door.
The air felt wrong. Everyone's footsteps grew quieter without any conscious decision to make them so. Even breathing felt like it required a certain amount of care.
Professor Douglas stood by the lectern, looking exactly as relaxed as he always did , like a man who had absolutely nowhere else to be and was perfectly happy about it.
But standing beside him was someone who hadn't been there before.
A man.
Or perhaps a statue.
He wore a dark red velvet suit, the collar fastened with an intricate lace cravat. The tailoring was immaculate. Every seam, every fold, an exercise in classical aristocratic precision. His skin had the pallor of fine porcelain , white enough, in the dim classroom, to be almost stark. Beneath a sweep of jet-black curls was a face of cold, flawless beauty, as though someone had carved perfection and then forgotten to breathe life into it.
He stood quietly beside Douglas, half a step behind and slightly to one side. The expression on his face as he watched Douglas was not the expression of a colleague. It was the expression of someone who answered to someone. Less a fellow professional, more a prized and dangerous piece of a collection , something its owner had chosen to put on display.
"Good morning, everyone."
Douglas's easy voice cut through the stillness.
"Allow me to make an introduction." He gestured to the man beside him. "Starting today, Valerius will be serving as my teaching assistant." He paused, wearing the harmless smile that his students had learned to treat with a certain degree of suspicion. "He'll be offering us... some unique perspectives."
He let the word unique sit in the air just long enough to mean several things at once.
Every eye in the room shifted to Valerius.
He stepped forward and bowed , a shallow, precise inclination that belonged to a different century. Every angle of it was flawless.
"It is an honor." His voice came out low and rich, like a cello at close range. Smooth and full and resonant. "To explore this... fascinating art alongside the future elites of the magical world."
The last word faded into something barely there. A trailing sound at the edge of a whisper , faint enough that half the room might have imagined it.
A soft, unmistakable hiss.
Every person who heard it felt the hair rise on the back of their neck.
➤ Next: Douglas: My Class Doesn't Teach Theory, Only Survival
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