The night hung over Hogwarts Castle like a thick, inky shroud. The ancient stone towers were swallowed by shadow, with only a few scattered, timid lights flickering from high windows… pale, fragile glimmers against the vast, unforgiving blackness.
In the distance, the hoarse cawing of a crow tore through the silence, making a few brittle branches rustle like dry whispers… an omen, perhaps, of the doom about to crash down on three young wizards.
"You three! What in Merlin's beard are you doing here?!"
A voice, cold as a dungeon floor and laced with fury, sliced through the dark corridor.
Hermione, Neville, and Ron froze instantly. The shout from behind them sent a spike of pure dread crawling down their spines. They spun around in panic… only to see Professor Snape gliding out of the shadows like a giant, angry bat.
His black robes billowed, a moving void that seemed to swallow the meager light of the corridor. The Head of Slytherin House looked utterly terrifying, his face set in a grim, drawn fury and his eyes glinting with malicious danger.
"It's Professor Snape!"
Hermione's face went white even under the moonlight as she anxiously twisted the ends of her scarf between her fingers. Neville instantly clamped both hands over his face in horror, and Ron's Adam's apple bobbed painfully as he swallowed a lump of fear.
Their minds were suddenly, disastrously, blank.
And sometimes, when a kid's mind goes completely blank, they make the single most idiotic decision possible.
Like this one.
"Blast it! Run!"
Ron's first instinct was pure and simple… don't get caught! It was common knowledge, part of their DNA almost, that Slytherin and Gryffindor had been at each other's throats for nearly a thousand years.
Which meant one horrifying thing:
If three Gryffindor students were caught out of bed by the Head of Slytherin House, even someone with the brain of a boiled turnip could figure out the outcome wouldn't be a polite talking-to. They were in for a truly brutal punishment, without a doubt.
Maybe even public humiliation across the whole of Hogwarts… though Ron had already caused enough embarrassment since term began, he certainly wasn't keen on being stripped and hung up in the Great Hall for all to see.
...At least, that's what his twin brothers had once told him, just to scare him silly.
Ron hadn't believed them at first, but after a few close encounters with Snape...each one worse than the last...he had started to think maybe, just maybe, Fred and George had been speaking the horrifying truth.
What could you say?
He chose to believe what he shouldn't, and doubt what he should. That was Ron in a nutshell… a walking contradiction. Then again, he was only eleven. Being spectacularly irrational sometimes was just a natural part of the growing-up process.
After all… Lots of children are raised on warnings that if they misbehave, they'll be sent to an orphanage or given away to a strange family. Most never pause to question the sheer illogic of the threat.
Ron was no different.
He never stopped to consider that "being stripped and hung up in the Great Hall" was plainly not a punishment any sane parent… or, more importantly, the Ministry of Magic… would ever allow Hogwarts to enforce.
But it sounded scary enough… so he was terrified.
In truth, while Hogwarts might have used harsher punishments in ancient times, the school had long since abandoned anything that would genuinely harm a student. In fact, if Ron had actually read 'Hogwarts: A History' like Hermione kept nagging him to, he would know the disciplinary systems had been reformed centuries ago.
Wizards were human, after all… A society striving for civilization and progress.
Of course, they, too, advanced with the times. Wizards might stagnate in some areas, but when it came to moral and social development, Hogwarts was no less civilized than the Muggle world… perhaps, it was even more ahead than them.
In fact… In this modern age, while Muggle society still carried traces of discrimination toward certain kinds of love, the wizarding world had already embraced a level of tolerance that outpaced it by decades.
And that wasn't the only way it was ahead...
Even decades later, in America, the Muggle world would still have to concede defeat in this regard… admitting that the wizarding world was far more advanced.
After all, the wizarding world had truly achieved what Muggles could only dream of: a man could become a woman, and a woman could become a man. Judging from the potions Snape had once researched, such transformations might have existed long ago.
There were even wizards who identified as "Walmart shopping bags" or other unconventional genders… yes, really. The wizarding world was astonishingly progressive in areas where it perhaps shouldn't have been.
"Run!" Ron bolted immediately.
However… He quickly realized his two companions were still frozen like statues, too scared to move.
"Don't just stand there! If Professor Snape catches us, we're done for!" Ron shouted anxiously. He grabbed Hermione and Neville by the arms and dragged them into a desperate sprint.
The two, jolted back to their senses by the sheer terror, stumbled into motion, their feet pounding desperately against the ground.
For once, Ron was absolutely right.
If Snape caught the three of them, it would end terribly. That much had already been proven by the whispered tales from countless Gryffindor classmates and upperclassmen since the start of term.
"Huff… huff…"
The trio ran as fast as their short legs could carry them, gasping for breath, with their feet clattering frantically in the dark. They were running faster than they ever had in their lives… but out here on the open grounds outside the castle, with no brooms and no magic to aid them, there was no escaping Snape's scornful gaze so easily.
"Fools! Absolute fools!" Snape roared, his eyes flashing with icy anger. He swung his wand, and a streak of scarlet light shot out toward them, freezing all three in an instant.
Their bodies locked up like stone statues. No matter how they strained, they couldn't move an inch.
Ron and Neville screamed in primal terror, while Hermione… despite the chill that ran through her… actually felt a flicker of intense curiosity.
"This isn't a Body-Bind Curse… what kind of magic is this?" She wondered aloud. Her fascination with magical theory momentarily overpowered her fear. Snape's spell felt entirely different from the standard Petrificus Totalus she knew.
Well… It was beyond her scope of knowledge. But that wasn't surprising. After all, Snape was the Half-Blood Prince… the genius who had created Sectumsempra back in his student years.
In fact… If Dumbledore and Grindelwald represented the highest tier of wizards, Snape would certainly rank just beneath them… and would be called one of the most gifted magic users of his generation.
And not just in potions.
Even in charms and spellcraft, his talent was extraordinary.
He might not quite reach Riddle's monstrous level… But he wasn't far behind.
Riddle's talent was immense, yes, but not to the near-mythical degree his followers later exaggerated. That was actually why, in his early years, Dumbledore hadn't paid him much special attention.
No one could have foreseen that Riddle's ruthless ambition… both toward others and toward himself… would drive him to sacrifice his own potential through relentless, obsessive study of the darkest magic, forcing his power beyond its natural limits and turning him into the dreaded Lord Voldemort.
If Snape had possessed Riddle's same pitiless resolve… He might have become nearly as powerful as Voldemort himself.
(To Be Continued…)
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