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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Snape's hissed question, "Who's there?" was a physical force in the crushing silence. For a single, frozen moment, Kaelen was a statue carved from shadow, his mind a whirlwind of calculations. Running was illogical; Snape was faster. Fighting was suicidal. Silence would only confirm his guilt. That left only one viable path: deception.
In the space of a single heartbeat, he acted. He let the slim, black volume, The Occluded Mind, slip from his fingers. It hit the stone floor with a soft thud, a sound that drew Snape's attention, anchoring Kaelen's location and providing a crucial piece of his manufactured narrative.
Simultaneously, he poured his will inward. The subtle, sharp angles of his face softened into a childish roundness. His skin paled to a sickly, terrified white. His grey eyes widened, the pupils dilating to black pools of manufactured fear, shimmering with the beginnings of unshed tears. He forced his posture to slump, his shoulders to hunch inward, transforming from a predator into the very picture of a cornered, pathetic animal.
He took a shuffling step out from behind the towering bookshelf, his entire body trembling. He was no longer Kaelen, the unnervingly composed Slytherin. He was just a small, lost boy who was about to have a very bad day.
Snape's wand was instantly level with his chest, its tip glowing with a faint, malevolent light. The professor's face was a mask of pain and fury, his eyes boring into Kaelen.
"You," Snape breathed, his voice a low, venomous thing. "What in Salazar's name are you doing in here?"
Kaelen flinched back, a perfect imitation of a startled fawn. "I-I'm sorry, Professor," he stammered, his voice a high, reedy thing he'd copied from a particularly timid Hufflepuff. "I got separated from the others. When… when that thing started roaring." He pointed a trembling hand vaguely in the direction of the dungeons. "I was scared. I ran. I… I just came in here because it was quiet and dark. I didn't know where I was."
It was a plausible, pathetic lie. Snape's gaze flickered from Kaelen's terrified face down to the book on the floor, then to his own bleeding leg. He was caught between suspicion, pain, and the sheer, infuriating inconvenience of it all.
"You chose to hide," Snape hissed, taking a limping step closer, "in the single most forbidden section of the school library?"
Kaelen's eyes darted to the dark, spreading stain on Snape's robes, and his manufactured fear found a genuine-looking target. "Professor, you're… you're bleeding!" he gasped, his voice filled with a convincing horror. "Did… did the troll get you?"
The deflection was perfect. It shifted the focus from his transgression to Snape's vulnerability, a subject the Potions Master clearly had no desire to discuss. Snape's face tightened, his hand instinctively going to his injured leg.
"That is none of your concern," he snarled. "Ten points from Slytherin for your flagrant disregard for the rules. And a month's detention with me. You will be scrubbing cauldrons until your knuckles are as raw as my temper." He gestured with his wand towards the book on the floor. "And what, precisely, did you think you were doing with that?"
"Nothing, sir, I swear!" Kaelen cried, shrinking back. "I just… I picked it up. It looked old."
Snape levitated the book into his hand, his eyes scanning the title: The Occluded Mind. A deep, unreadable expression crossed his sallow features. He stared at Kaelen for a long, piercing moment, his mind clearly working, connecting this boy's presence here with Dumbledore's warning of an impenetrable mental fortress. Was it a coincidence? Or was this orphan far more than he appeared?
The professor was in too much pain, and in too much of a hurry, to conduct a proper interrogation. He made a decision.
"Then perhaps," Snape said, his voice a silken threat, "you should read it." He thrust the book into Kaelen's chest, forcing the boy to take it. "Perhaps it will teach you to keep your thoughts to yourself and your body where it belongs. Now get back to the dungeons. If I see you out of bounds again, I will personally pickle what's left of you and display it in my classroom."
Kaelen needed no further encouragement. Clutching the book, he turned and fled, not forgetting to stumble once for effect. He didn't stop running until he was two corridors away, his heart beating not with fear, but with the cold, triumphant rhythm of a successful mission.
When he finally slipped back into the Slytherin common room, the chaos had subsided. The troll, according to the hushed whispers circulating the room, had been dealt with. But the story was far stranger than anyone could have predicted.
"…in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," a third-year girl was saying to a rapt audience. "Apparently, that Gryffindor know-it-all, Granger, was in there crying all afternoon and didn't know about the troll."
"Serves her right," someone muttered.
"That's not the half of it," the girl continued, her eyes wide. "Potter and the Weasley boy went after her. They fought the troll themselves. Just the three of them! They say Potter jumped on its back and stuck his wand up its nose!"
A ripple of disgusted disbelief went through the crowd.
Kaelen sank into his preferred armchair in the darkest corner of the room, the slim black volume held tightly in his hands. He listened, his mind dissecting the information with cold precision. He had used the troll as a diversion to acquire a weapon. Potter and Weasley, on the other hand, had confronted the diversion head-on. An act of supreme, illogical, emotional stupidity. They had risked their lives, expulsion, and the House Cup for a girl they openly disliked.
And they had won.
He glanced at the Gryffindor hourglass. It was down, but not nearly as much as it should have been. Dumbledore, no doubt, had rewarded their reckless brand of heroism. He had not been there to see it, but he could perfectly imagine the scene: the three of them, bound together by the shared trauma and the adrenaline of victory. A powerful, emotional bond forged in the stinking refuse of a troll's club.
It was a bond built on weakness, he mused. A vulnerability he could one day exploit.
He opened The Occluded Mind. The pages were filled with dense, spidery script, detailing exercises that made his own self-taught mental discipline seem like a child's game. It spoke of creating false memories, of building labyrinths within the mind to trap intruders, of projecting thoughts so subtle they would be mistaken for the target's own.
This was true power. This was a real weapon.
The Gryffindors could have their smelly bathrooms and their heroic, idiotic adventures. They could forge their friendships in the fires of recklessness.