"Ravenclaw!!"
The word did not seem to be shouted from the Sorting Hat's mouth, but squeezed out from the deepest recesses of its soul—an echo wrung from its final shred of magic and sanity.
The moment the sound fell, the battered hat completely collapsed. Its tip drooped over Eric's head like a rag stripped of all bones.
Eric calmly removed it, without the slightest pause or hesitation, and casually tossed it back onto the four-legged stool.
The hat hit the wooden surface with a dull thud.
That sound became the sole signal breaking the deathly silence of the Great Hall.
After a brief, suffocating stillness, scattered applause rose from the Ravenclaw table. It was hesitant, restrained—carrying the particular politeness of scholars unwilling to lose decorum.
Their minds were still processing the terrifying five-minute anomaly they had just witnessed.
Yet logic told them this much:
a first-year capable of forcing the Sorting Hat into such prolonged agony—whether monster or genius—was precisely the kind Ravenclaw should claim.
The applause gradually grew more uniform, a little warmer.
Eric paid it no heed.
All sensory input—applause, whispers, and the mixed gazes of shock, awe, fear, and confusion from the other three tables—was tagged as irrelevant data and filtered out of his awareness.
He stepped forward, heading straight toward the blue-and-bronze table beneath the eagle banner.
His stride was steady, each step measured to the millimeter, as if the ancient stone floor were not uneven flagstones but a perfectly plotted rail.
Yet among the hundreds of gazes flowing toward him, one carried a temperature far below freezing.
It was no longer mere shock.
It was the fury of a violated taboo—the venomous cold of desecration, a killing intent nearly solid enough to become a curse.
At the professors' table—
Severus Snape.
His face was darker than his ever-present black robes, black as the bottom of a failed potion brewed in a dungeon cauldron.
Those pitch-black eyes were locked onto Eric's retreating back, pupils constricted into lethal pinpoints, as if he meant to burn holes through the boy's spine with sheer willpower.
What had driven him to the brink was not the Sorting Hat's unprecedented behavior.
It was that cursed surname, echoing in his ears like a hex—
Prince.
Snape's fingers had gone completely white as they crushed the stem of his goblet, the crystal whining under the pressure.
His mother.
Eileen Prince.
The final heir of an ancient, noble, and ultimately extinguished pure-blood family.
That name was his sole link to that higher world—and the root of all his pain and humiliation. It tied him to his hatred for his filthy, foolish Muggle father; to every bleak day of his childhood in Spinner's End.
It was a festering wound in his soul.
A reverse scale he would rather hide in the deepest dungeon than let anyone touch.
And now—
Some unknown first-year, emerging from nowhere and provoking such a horrifying phenomenon—
Dared to bear the name Prince?
To Snape, this was no coincidence. No accident.
It was a blatant profanation of his mother's bloodline.
A merciless mockery of the painful nobility he kept buried.
Eric took a seat at the end of the Ravenclaw table.
He could clearly sense the rapidly intensifying negative energy field radiating from the professors' table. That gaze clung to the back of his neck like a parasitic curse—cold, piercing.
He had expected this.
Everything lay within the projections of [Perfect Logic].
The Welcoming Feast formally began.
Dumbledore rose, his trademark white beard trembling with his deliberately light tone as he attempted to dispel the near-tangible unease with a few warm words.
The effect was minimal.
Professors lifted their glasses distractedly. Students spoke more softly than usual. Every gaze drifted, again and again, toward the quiet black-haired boy at the end of Ravenclaw's table.
Eric calmly cut into his roast chicken.
With [Perfect Logic], the tentative, curiosity-laced attempts at conversation from nearby Ravenclaws were reduced to meaningless background noise.
He was simply eating—replenishing bodily energy.
In his eyes, the banquet was nothing more than a long, inefficient transition.
Time passed.
That murderous intent from the professors' table did not diminish—it fermented, condensed.
Finally, when the pumpkin juice had begun to lose its warmth, the source erupted.
Snape shot to his feet.
The abruptness startled Quirrell beside him into a visible flinch.
His billowing black robes swept behind him like a storm as he strode down from the dais, long legs cutting ruthless lines beneath the fabric.
He marched between the house tables, purpose absolute, hesitation nonexistent.
Conversation froze wherever he passed.
The Great Hall fell once more into eerie silence.
Every eye followed the black figure until it settled upon Eric.
Snape stopped beside the Ravenclaw table. His tall frame cast a suffocating shadow, swallowing Eric whole.
In his signature voice—oily, venom-cold, as though steeped in dungeon poisons—he spoke down at him, every word heavy with authority.
"Mr. Prince. The Headmaster requests your presence."
Eric looked up, unhurriedly wiped his mouth with his napkin, removing the last trace of grease.
The prelude was over.
The true confrontation was about to begin.
The Headmaster's Office
At the top of the spiral staircase, the circular door slid open without a sound.
Dumbledore sat behind his great claw-footed desk, fingers interlaced into a small steeple before him.
His expression was as gentle as ever—even kindly.
Yet behind the half-moon spectacles, those blue eyes held no warmth at all—only unprecedented gravity and fathomless contemplation.
Snape stood beside him like a statue carved from shadow.
He did not sit.
Every cell of his body radiated fury.
"Mr. Prince," Dumbledore began, voice mild, attempting to control the tempo of the conversation. "Welcome to Hogwarts. I hope you won't mind—Severus and I have a few small questions regarding your… performance at the Sorting Ceremony."
Eric had barely begun to form a reply.
The taut cord of restraint within Snape snapped.
"How dare you use that name!"
He roared—a beast's bellow unleashed after half an evening of suppression.
His pale, sharp features twisted with rage, veins bulging at his temples, flecks of spittle flying.
"Speak! What is your relationship to my mother?! You despicable—"
The final word was swallowed back, but the malice filled the room regardless.
Eric knew Snape's mother bore the name Prince.
The rage was real—drawn from the deepest, most painful memories of the man's soul.
Faced with a furious Potions Master, a powerful wizard, Eric stood calmly.
His heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure—utterly unchanged.
He raised his eyes to meet those black, flame-filled pupils and, in a voice devoid of emotion, delivered the single answer he had prepared through countless [Perfect Logic] simulations:
"Professor, I come from an orphanage."
Snape's roar cut off mid-sound.
Like a full-speed steam engine crashing into an absolute-zero wall.
All momentum vanished.
"I do not know who my parents were," Eric continued evenly.
"'Prince' is simply a surname I chose for myself."
He paused, black eyes unruffled.
"In an old book at the orphanage, I read that the word means 'prince.'"
"It sounded… noble."