A week had passed since then. The nights spent in the Slytherin common room, the meals in the Great Hall—everywhere felt like being underwater, with sound distant and muffled. The incident on the first day of transfer, when her shadow had stretched in the wrong direction, was still the subject of whispered gossip among the students. Aurelia went through her days moving from classroom to classroom, pretending not to care. Today was her first Potions class. As she descended the stone steps into the dungeons, the air grew cold. Different from the other classrooms. The damp smell of stone mixed with the sharp, distinctive scent of potions. The dungeon corridor—a classroom in the deepest part of Hogwarts Castle. Aurelia opened the door. Bottles lined the entire wall. Formaldehyde-preserved specimens, bundles of dried herbs, feathers, fragments of bone—shelf after shelf, packed densely. The ceiling was low, and torchlight flickered in yellow. It felt several degrees colder than the other classrooms. There were no windows. A closed space where no outside light could reach. Classmates took their seats. Aurelia chose a seat at the edge and sat down. Then the door opened. The air changed. He entered without a sound, yet everyone turned to look. His black robes swept the floor. Black hair reaching his shoulders, with the tips tinged faintly red. A tall frame of 178 centimeters stood before the podium. Dark green eyes slowly surveyed the entire classroom. Severus Snape. The Potions master. A Potion Master with approximately 15 years of experience—an expert in Potions. Only those who achieved the highest marks on the N.E.W.T., the highest-level magical examination, could hold such a position, Aurelia had heard at Durmstrang. The lesson began without a single opening word. "Potions is an exact science and a delicate art." His voice was low and quiet. Everyone fell silent. "We begin with a review of second-year material. State the basic ingredients of Polyjuice Potion." He pointed to a boy in the front row. The boy answered haltingly and received no partial credit, only a deduction. The next student, then the next. Three students were deducted points within five minutes. A tense murmur spread through the classroom. Then Snape's gaze stopped. On Aurelia. "Transfer student." All eyes turned to Aurelia. "How were you taught to prepare naturally black moonwort at Durmstrang?" Naturally black moonwort—formally known as Nightshade Origin. A highly toxic magical plant; improper handling allowed toxins to seep through the skin. At Durmstrang, it appeared in third-year practical work. Aurelia answered without wavering emotion. "[serious] We never use bare hands when breaking the stem. Oil acts as a catalyst, accelerating toxin activation. We cut two centimeters from the base using a ceramic blade, and immediately immerse the cut surface in distilled water." The classroom fell silent. Snape pressed further questions. The temperature for drying leaves after cutting. Methods for disposing of byproducts generated during drying. Aurelia answered each one calmly and methodically. Snape's expression remained impassive. But after the third question, that impassiveness shifted—just barely. The angle of his eyebrows moved, ever so slightly. That was all. "[cold] Very well." He spoke curtly and looked away. In that instant—Snape's eyes glanced at the floor. At Aurelia's seat. At the floor there. Aurelia lowered her gaze without being noticed. She saw it. Her shadow was stretching in the opposite direction from the light source. The torch was on her right, yet her shadow fell to the left. Trembling slightly. (He noticed.) A cold alertness ran through her chest. She suppressed her emotion. Locked it away. The shadow immediately returned to its normal direction. It happened right after. The boy in the next seat—a slightly overweight student with blonde hair and freckles—turned up the heat on his cauldron too high. With a soft *poof*, green smoke erupted. "Whoa—!" The smoke reached the ceiling, and half the classroom was engulfed in a green haze. Snape turned slowly. With emotionless eyes, he confirmed the source of the smoke. The boy student was frozen, unable to move. "Gryffindor loses five points. Checking the temperature before opening a cauldron's lid is basic knowledge even first-years know." He spoke flatly and returned to his explanation. The boy student remained frozen in the smoke, his eyes pleading with his nearby friend to help him. The friend was desperately trying to suppress laughter. Aurelia's mouth twitched slightly as well. —The end-of-class bell rang. Students stood up all at once, beginning to pack their things. Aurelia reached for her belongings. At that moment, a low voice echoed through the classroom. "[cold] Volkov. Stay." Movement stopped. Not just Aurelia's, but the movements of nearby students as well. Several turned to look. Aurelia remained standing, motionless. The students filed out. The last one closed the door. --- "This way." Snape opened a door at the back of the classroom. Aurelia followed in silence. The office was even narrower and darker than the classroom. The walls were entirely covered with bookshelves reaching to the ceiling. Potions textbooks, bundles of old academic papers, handwritten notebooks. The number of books seemed to exceed two thousand. There was a fireplace, but no fire burned in it. A single document lay on the stone desk. Aurelia glanced at it. A transfer record from Durmstrang School of Magic. The line for reason of withdrawal was blacked out. A seal mark was pressed at the edge of the document. Snape began speaking. Without preamble. "[serious] Your withdrawal record is sealed. Dumbledore has ordered silence, but—that is of no concern to me. What are you hiding?" Aurelia met Snape's gaze directly. She was not afraid. Fear would move her emotions. If emotions moved, the Obscurus would respond. So Aurelia had always prioritized calm observation over the sensation of fear, no matter the circumstance. She looked into Snape's eyes. Dark green irises. Sharp. But beyond them—she saw something else. A kind of quiet born from exhaustion. The eyes of someone who had carried something alone for a long time. Aurelia answered quietly. "[cold] Is what you want to ask about my secrets? Or—are you trying to confirm whether what I'm hiding is the same kind of thing you're hiding yourself?" Snape's expression froze for an instant. Aurelia continued. "[whispers] In the depths of your eyes, I see the face of someone who has been carrying something alone for a very long time. I have that kind of face too—that's how I know." Silence fell. Complete silence for several seconds. Snape did not move. His expression did not change. But his fingertips—just barely—moved. Unconsciously reaching toward the wand placed at the edge of the desk. Then stopped. The next moment, Aurelia felt it. A sensation of something touching her. A pressure from outside trying to enter her mind. Legilimency—the magic of reading another's thoughts. The technique of a master, performed without a wand. Snape was an expert in this skill, Aurelia had heard at Durmstrang. But. In the next instant, Snape's eyes changed. For just a moment—his expression became as if he had struck something. Not pain. Something closer to shock. The kind of shock one feels stepping into a bottomless abyss. Snape withdrew the spell immediately. His expression returned to normal. But in that single instant, Aurelia understood. Snape had seen something—and it had shaken him. A low voice fell quietly. "[cold] Never lie before me again. Get out." Aurelia bowed. She moved toward the door. As her hand touched the doorknob, a thought occurred to her. About the medicinal herb she had researched last week, the one good for tired eyes. "[gentle] Professor, when your eyes are tired, burning moonlight grass helps. Working underground puts strain on the eyes." There was no response. Aurelia closed the door and stepped into the corridor. Snape stared at the door for several seconds. Then his gaze fell. --- The stone corridor was dimly lit. Torches were spaced at intervals, casting orange light against the walls. As Aurelia walked, she tried to organize what had just happened. (He used Legilimency.) That much was clear. The problem was—how she had responded to it. When someone tried to invade her mind, the Obscurus always responded. Always. When an upper-year student had cast a spell on her at Durmstrang, when the teacher had applied a detection spell during the entrance magical examination, the black power in her chest had swelled. It moved before emotion could, a instinctive rejection. This time. Nothing happened. When Snape's consciousness touched her—the Obscurus did not respond. Rather, the opposite. What was that sensation? Rather than becoming quiet, it was more like—it had calmed. Like waves disappearing. Aurelia stopped walking. The torchlight flickered. No one was in the corridor. She did not understand what this meant. Not understanding—was frightening. A memory from Durmstrang's practice room flashed through her mind. White stone corridors, in front of a cauldron, the voice of the student next to her. "Your magical power is weird, you know?" Just that, and the lid on her emotions had shifted. Black smoke had poured out, reaching the ceiling. Teachers had fled. Three people had been seriously injured. That time, someone had only said something to her. Yet today—Snape had tried to enter her mind. Aurelia clenched her fist. (Don't think deeply. Don't move your emotions. Don't get too close to that man.) Having decided only that, she walked forward. Behind her, the torch flame flickered slightly. The Obscurus was not completely still. But only—that sensation of calm from before—did not sit right with her. --- It was deep night. At a time when all the students in the castle were asleep, Snape sat in his office chair, staring at the document from Durmstrang. The seal on the withdrawal record had been placed by Dumbledore himself. Snape had no authority to unseal it. In his 15 years teaching at this school, he had never seen a single student withdrawal record sealed directly by the Headmaster. Why would the record of a 17-year-old transfer student need to be hidden so thoroughly? Snape stood and pulled an old bundle of papers from the back of the bookshelf. He dusted it off. The cover read "Case Studies of Abnormal Magical Variation and Suppression-Induced Rampage Syndrome." Materials he had been collecting since before he arrived at Hogwarts. He had not opened them in recent years. He turned the pages. His hand stopped. —A parasitic dark energy born from the suppression of the host's magical power. Becoming uncontrollable due to emotional upheaval, manifesting as a dark, smoke-like energy entity that destroys surrounding magical structures— There was a notation: Obscurus. Snape recalled the scene from today's class. The moment he had looked at the floor by that transfer student's seat. Her shadow stretched in the wrong direction. Completely unrelated to the light source. And the temperature around her was lower than the surroundings. He also remembered the sensation of touching her mind with Legilimency. A bottomless abyss. Cold, heavy, a density of darkness utterly unlike the depths of an ordinary human mind. Not the kind of barrier he usually felt when reading minds. That was—something that existed. He read the paper again. Normally, the host dies around age 10. Cases of survival to adulthood are only 7 in the past 200 years— 17 years old. Snape sat quietly in the dark room without a fireplace, thinking. Then he opened a drawer. From the back, he took out a small photograph. He looked at it for only a moment—then put it away. The red-haired woman's eyes in the photograph seemed to overlap with the am