Chapter 19
"Professor Snape?" I flinched in surprise, turning toward the potions master who was rushing somewhere down the corridor. Severus Snape wasn't the sort of man who simply ran through castle hallways. And his already pale face looked, this time, especially sickly and even… drained?
"Did I imagine it, or was he limping?" Daphne frowned thoughtfully. For the past few weeks she'd been preparing for the upcoming exams with me, and she had noticed the professor too.
"Looks like it," I nodded after replaying what I'd seen, and hurried toward the corridor Snape had just passed through. "Maybe someone cursed him with diarrhea."
"Harry! Don't talk like that in front of a lady," the blonde Slytherin slapped my shoulder in an amused, scolding way. "And our Head of House wouldn't be affected by something that simple."
"Some wizards, I've heard, react to it a lot more sharply than normal," I shrugged, reaching the right corridor at last. "Blood…?"
"Looks like it," Greengrass nodded warily, proving I wasn't seeing things. Several bloody droplets really were scattered on the floor. "But that's strange. As far as I know, Snape is very skilled not only at Potions. He's personally fused bones for Slytherins injured during Quidditch practice more than once. Did he really fail to heal his own wound?"
"He definitely couldn't heal it, and it's probably deep… the blood spatter forms too clean a trail. And the pattern… his shoe is likely filling with blood, which is why the trace is so odd," I analyzed rapidly.
"Wounds inflicted by dark magic or powerful magical creatures aren't so easy to heal," I said distantly, already running through possible explanations. My mental training helped here—my thoughts snapped into motion, assembling into a rough plan.
"You think someone… knowledgeable in that kind of magic might have attacked our professor?" the young witch wrinkled her nose skeptically, not even considering the possibility of some monster in the castle. Which made sense—no one had ever confirmed the troll incident publicly, and without it… the idea of a monster getting into Hogwarts really did seem impossible.
"I don't know. But we need to get out of here," I shook my head, not quite sure when my voice had turned… so cold, with a hint of steel. "Snape won't appreciate it if we chase him, and if we go the other way…"
"We might run into something he couldn't handle," Daphne understood immediately. She grabbed my elbow and tugged me back the way we came. "Let's return to the library. There are still plenty of people there."
"Curfew is still far away," I nodded, agreeing with the destination. "Do you want to tell anyone what we saw?"
"No… I don't want to stick my nose into someone else's business," the Slytherin answered sharply, then immediately looked embarrassed and turned her eyes away. "The professor can handle his own problems."
"I'll take your word for it," I smiled, settling on what I'd do next. More precisely—on doing nothing at all. If even a small girl understood that getting involved was a bad idea, then I certainly shouldn't be fraying my nerves.
Despite a full year of hard, productive training and my developing trump card of strange wandless magic, I was still nowhere near an adult wizard. Charging into a situation whose broad outlines I could only guess at through my old-life memories—and through Quirrell's weakening defenses, because lately I'd begun sensing something… double about him—would be stupid. And making noise in other ways… no. I wouldn't even tell my Head of House.
Maybe it was paranoia, but for my own peace of mind I preferred to pretend I hadn't seen anything at all. The only exception was that after a couple hours of calm talk in the library, I decided to escort Daphne straight to her common room. "Knowing" snickers from older Slytherins weren't a problem worth leaving her to walk alone back into the dungeons.
No matter how you looked at it, the sight of fresh blood had affected Daphne. She didn't show it much in her face or voice… but her grip on my elbow and her clear reluctance to move away from me said more than any words. A sheltered, slightly spoiled girl had gotten frightened from nothing more than the sight of someone else's blood.
And I was partly to blame. I'd reacted too sharply and too seriously, infecting her with my mood. Because for me, unlike her, blood wasn't new. In my first year of university, I'd had to tie a tourniquet around some idiot classmate's leg after he crashed his "iron horse" at speed…
"No, it's not about a few drops of blood. After dealing with that torn meat and broken bones, a bit of blood can't shake me. It's something else—I can picture too clearly what might have happened to Snape, and I remember that in the films it was my counterpart who had to deal with problems Severus couldn't handle," I kept looping the same thoughts, almost breaking into a run on the way back to my common room.
Thoughts that tightened my nerves because they felt too close to truth. Even Snape's direction looked too much like he'd come straight from the third floor… I could be wrong—moving staircases could be wildly unpredictable—but it didn't make me feel better.
It was already May. A little over a month until exams. I'd already started planning my summer schedule…
"Forget this nonsense. I'll pretend I saw nothing and keep my head down," I exhaled hard, trying to convince myself. Luckily, it wasn't difficult. Despite fear and reasonable concern for my life, logic said no one was going to drag me into a fight with a possessed wizard.
The danger was more likely Quirrell himself. Or rather, the Dark Lord trapped in him. He could attack me out of spite—or some other stupid reason I couldn't predict. Even before, it hadn't been comfortable sharing a castle with a possessed maniac whose power had once terrified an entire country.
Now, the incident with Snape—which I'd witnessed purely by accident—only stirred my paranoia further, pulling me between the desire to warn someone and remove the danger, and the opposite desire to hide as much as possible and not draw attention at all.
Daphne's behavior offered a clear example, but… the Dark Lord didn't directly threaten her, in theory. Me? I was in a far more precarious situation. And in truth I had no good way to report danger to the professors. If I ignored my old-life knowledge, I had no real accusation against the Defense professor at all.
Even if I mentioned my magical sensitivity and told Ravenclaw's Head of House that Quirrell's magic felt "double," it likely wouldn't change anything. But it could easily draw attention to me. And assuming the Dark Lord was blind and stupid, incapable of gathering information, would be foolish.
So for now I'd have to endure it… and try not to leave public places or my dorm room. In the company of other students—or behind my own door—I had at least some safety. Possibly illusory, since anyone could enter the Ravenclaw common room by answering the riddle, but… it was something.
And that routine wasn't even particularly burdensome. Near the end of the year, older students and future graduates occupied most free classrooms anyway, cramming for exams at the last moment.
There were almost no places left for proper training in the castle. The sports club had stopped temporarily. And the library, on the contrary, was packed with students.
I didn't even need to try hard to always be among others. Sometimes Ravenclaws, sometimes Slytherins—who over the year had become my main company—were always nearby. In the last week of May, even Draco with Crabbe and Goyle became prisoners of the library.
And that ferret, through some of his connections, consistently managed to find us a free room for magical training. Mostly, though, it was me helping the Slytherin boys with Charms and Transfiguration. Unlike Daphne Greengrass, Draco and especially his squires were clearly struggling in some subjects.
And by my standards, even Daphne didn't learn particularly fast. It wasn't for nothing that since mid-year, after she'd noticed my pace, she often tried to pull me away from Draco's group and shamelessly exploit the modest hero for homework help…
I'm exaggerating, of course. Greengrass was spoiled and raised in a very specific way, but I'd never call her shameless or ungrateful. If anything—if it weren't for that prickly girl hungry for my company, I'd have had to listen to Draco argue about Quidditch far more often. So in a way I was grateful to her, and I helped with homework without complaint.
Seriously comparing the learning ability of a twelve-year-old girl to an adult in disguise was unfair. Not because Daphne was somehow stupid—she grasped everything quickly, with little trouble. It's just that I wasn't worse. And with discipline, broader perspective, motivation, and the simple skill of learning and absorbing new material…
After a very intense period of university cramming in my old life—still not forgotten—studying something genuinely interesting on my own came extremely fast. Thanks to real enthusiasm, it didn't even feel like strain. So the situation where, by the end of first year, I'd effectively become a private tutor for a group of Slytherins didn't feel strange at all.
Even if my "students" were from noble families with strong home education, one school year was enough for me to surpass most of them in depth of magical knowledge and, in many ways, practical skill.
Potions don't count. That just isn't my thing.
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