Hogwarts Castle, the dungeons' Potions classroom.
Trailing a massive black cloak and resembling a giant bat, Snape paced back and forth incessantly among the workstations of the first-year students.
His icy gaze swept across the cauldrons before him; the old bat was looking for any opportunity to unleash his venomous tongue.
Much to his disappointment, unlike the clumsy students of previous years, very few in this current batch made operational errors or managed to injure themselves.
Truth be told, Kyle deserved the credit for this.
Back when the Little Dark Lord was still a green first-year, he had already grown dissatisfied with Snape's teaching methods.
What did a first-year student even know?
Kyle could wager that ninety-nine percent of these pampered young lords and ladies had absolutely zero experience handling a single piece of kitchenware.
And what did Snape teach in their very first Potions class?
Though the Cure for Boils was the simplest of all potions, it was still far too difficult for a bunch of kids who had zero experience lighting a fire or setting up a cauldron. Consequently, every year during the first-years' inaugural Potions class, blown-up cauldrons were a common sight.
Snape never held particularly high expectations for their performance anyway.
However, things were different this year.
Thanks to the two-week military training at the start of the term, every student now had several experiences hosting wild cookouts in the Forbidden Forest.
Washing pots, starting fires, boiling water, preparing ingredients...
Bah, preparing potion ingredients.
From there, tossing the ingredients into the cauldron in a specific order to stew over a high flame—these young wizards had already gained a fair amount of experience.
Even though they still appeared clumsy to a master chef of Potions like Snape, it was a massive improvement compared to the constant explosions of previous years.
Furthermore, after Kyle was dragged in to serve as a Potions teaching assistant, he completely renovated the old bat's classroom.
Take the workstations the students were using right now, for example.
In the original Potions classroom, the so-called workstations were just battered wooden tables imbued with Flame-Freezing Charms. Aside from providing a flat surface to place a cauldron, they offered absolutely no help to the students brewing their potions.
The very first thing Kyle did upon becoming the teaching assistant was to drastically overhaul these workstations.
He dragged over kitchen equipment from the Hufflepuff common room, making the current Potions classroom look more like the New Oriental Culinary School than Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The Grindelwald-brand gas stoves, built around fire runes, allowed the students to control the flame size much better.
Appliances like blenders and dishwashers helped them process ingredients and clean their cauldrons more efficiently.
Coupled with the "Potions Classroom Safety Management Regulations" that Kyle had formulated by referencing high school chemistry lab rules from his past life, the old bat couldn't find a single flaw to nitpick even if he wanted to.
Beyond that, there were also reforms in the teaching material itself.
Originally, Snape believed the brewing instructions he left on the blackboard were detailed enough.
But in Kyle's eyes, it was nowhere near sufficient.
What Snape considered "detailed" was strictly from the perspective of a Potions Master.
It was just like an advanced mathematics professor in a university. At the mere mention of a dizzying formula's name, the professor could write out its entire derivation on the blackboard.
Yet for the miserable college students encountering advanced math for the first time, let alone just hearing the name, even if the complete formula was laid out right in front of them, they would still be utterly clueless.
To make them understand, the formula had to be broken down piece by piece and explained thoroughly.
Therefore, Kyle had unceremoniously taken the old bat's lesson plans and refined the brewing steps for every potion to such an extent that anyone who could read English words could successfully brew them.
He had even thoughtfully provided an instruction manual for every single utensil on the stove—no, the Potions workstation.
Thanks to this multi-pronged approach, the current Potions class saved the old bat an unprecedented amount of worry.
At the same time, however, the old bat lost the joy of spitting venom at the students.
It could only be described as a bittersweet torment.
Once Kyle, acting as the teaching assistant, finished all of this for him, the utterly ungrateful old bat immediately waved his hand and kicked Kyle out of the position.
He didn't want to see the Little Dark Lord, and the Little Dark Lord had no desire to look at this old bat who wore a deadpan expression all day long.
Otherwise, why would Kyle have put so much heart and soul into helping Snape remodel the Potions classroom?
It wasn't like he had nothing better to do.
After inspecting the entire classroom once more, Snape still couldn't find a single reason to tear the students to shreds.
Nodding in satisfaction, he paced unhurriedly back to the podium and began to study his own magic.
Only after undoing the first seal on the Resurrection Stone did the stone truly gain the ability to recall the souls of the deceased.
On this basis, Snape had developed a spell capable of resurrecting the dead with the help of the Resurrection Stone—Impure World Reincarnation.
By wiping out the original soul from a living person's body to use it as a vessel for the deceased, he could then summon the dead soul from the Pure Land back to the living world, binding the soul to the vessel...
This magic, which he named Impure World Reincarnation, was still just an imperfect prototype.
Those brought back by Impure World Reincarnation still bore the faces of their vessels; to restore the resurrected to their former appearance, one had to rely on Human Transfiguration.
What Snape found even more unacceptable was that, although the resurrected possessed clear consciousness and the ability to act independently, they were missing certain things compared to a normal living being.
For instance, their sense of taste, smell, and touch.
Snape did not want a Lily like this. He wanted a perfectly resurrected Lily, indistinguishable from a normal living person.
However, that was something the current Snape could not achieve.
Snape wasn't in a desperate rush either; after all, there were still two chains left unbroken on the Resurrection Stone.
Perhaps once all three chains were broken, the Resurrection Stone would grant him the power to perfectly resurrect Lily.
Of course, Snape wouldn't pin all his hopes on a single Resurrection Stone.
What if the Resurrection Stone still failed even after all its seals were undone?
Then, the only path left would be to collect all three Deathly Hallows and become the Master of Death.
When that time came, a conflict with Dumbledore would be inevitable.
Snape was reluctant to take things that far, but a certain level of planning ahead was necessary.
Just because Impure World Reincarnation couldn't perfectly resurrect Lily didn't mean the magic was useless.
By gathering a large number of corpses and utilizing Impure World Reincarnation, Snape could quickly raise a powerful Impure World Army.
If it truly came to a point where he had to cross swords with Dumbledore, the existence of an Impure World Army would be highly necessary.
Therefore, the most critical matter before Snape right now was to strengthen his absolute control over those resurrected via Impure World Reincarnation.
The spell Snape was currently developing was precisely his method for controlling the reincarnated dead.
By inscribing magic runes onto the back of the deceased's head, he could completely obliterate their will, turning them into utter puppets...
Snape called this magic—the Cursed Seal.
Of course, besides controlling those brought back by Impure World Reincarnation, the Cursed Seal had other uses.
For example, controlling the living...
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