The disastrous Potions lesson ended with Aurora being sent to detention for a month without question. That means she'll have ample opportunity to be pampered by professors in turn in need of temporary help over the next month.
It's a nightmare.
Why hasn't a tornado blown the school away yet?
Or the Black Lake rising and flooding the school?
Or maybe the earthquake, after all, the power of nature is the greatest magic.
"Aurora thought. She packed up her books and quills and ran as fast as she could out of the classroom toward the Valley drawbridge, where there were few people. She darkly rehearsed how, in the middle of the night, she would cut Salazar's diary by a thousand cuts, using the nearest house-elf cooking knife.
She wasn't sure if the "S.S." was really a coincidence; after all, who would have thought that a thousand years later the head of Slytherin would have the same initials as the founder of his house?
However, the fact that the diary did not automatically disappear in a pinch, as it used to, was definitely intentional by Salazar! This is my revenge for playing snake with him!
Oh, Merlin, she actually read those words, in front of the whole Slytherin and Hufflepuff. At this thought, Aurora suddenly felt that life is dark, maybe after the kitchen knife directly to cut herself more pleasant.
Suddenly she thought of Remus Lupin and his advice when he had sent her to school. Aurora crouched desponsively on the wooden drawbridge, her back slumped against the railing and her face buried in the book in her arms. "Remus, I've messed it all up."
The tea roll crawled quickly out of Aurora's pocket, took hold of the little girl's slightly overlong sleeve and came to her arm, hugging her forehead with its tiny thin body, the little leaf on top of its head shrugging down in a change of mood.
The cool wind falls all the way down the top of the mountain and climbs the drawbridge along the arc of the valley. When it passes over the waterfall and the river, it is full of water vapor. When it blows on the face, it feels fresh and moist, and the clean smell of the forest grass comes to the face.
In rainy England, even the tail of the wind is pale green. It was the color left over from the forest, dim and clear.
After a dozen minutes of immobility, the growing soreness in her arms and spine prompted Aurora to change positions. She got up and shook her soft, sour hands. She neatly opened the bag and pulled out the dark green diary lying inside. The tea roll, seeing the diary as if it were a natural enemy, sprang to Aurora's head, shaking with its tiny PAWS around the girl's croquetted hairstyle.
She slammed the diary down on the bar and opened it, picking up her quill and making her letters as large as possible to express her anger, the letters almost twisted into an imaginary picture. "Dear Mr. Slytherin, you had eleven million choices, but why did you choose a paragraph like this to get back at me?"
Salazar pondered for a moment, then sucked the doodles into his mouth and replied, "At least it distracted your professor from your inattention in class, didn't it?"
The halo of inattention in class is indeed negligible compared to students being caught writing love letters to suspected professors.
"There's no need for that, is there? I'm so sorry, I can't say thank you for that!"
"No, I don't mind."
"..."
Aurora finally realized that she had no way to fight the snake even if only in the form of a diary, so the thought, suddenly a burst of tears. She looked at the leisurely snake with mixed feelings and thought she might as well throw the diary off the drawbridge and be done with it.
A second before she could put her idea into practice, Salazar began writing slowly on the page, her beautiful, plump letters popping under the snake's tail. "And as long as you have me, you're lucky."
Aurora's facial nerves twitched, then quickly folded into a blank expression. She decided that if Salazar didn't have a good reason, she would throw the diary into the valley at the risk of being accused of cheating her parents. Ideally, the waterfall and river below would connect with the Black Lake, which would give the founder a "Salazar Crusoe" or "20,000 leagues under the Lake" experience.
Aren't Slytherins water anyway?
Oblivious to the plans swirling beneath Aurora's impassive face, Salazar went on to write in his diary: "If I am right, little one. Do you have a secret you can't tell anyone about who you are, or yourself, for that matter?"
Aurora froze for a moment, subconsciously remembered that he is actually a different time and space traveler's secret. She read the diary for a long time, then took a breath and began again, this time in a more formal style: "What do you mean?"
"A twelve-year-old boy with no training and no qualifications is immune to the magic I've left here. I think you see how even your professor could have been tricked by me without finding out I was there. How did you do that?"
Aurora thought for a while, unable to find a way to counter Salazar's "mediocre qualifications," but not wanting to be led there, she wrote, "So?"
"If I'm taken away, they'll soon find out what's unusual about you. How long do you think you can keep your secret?"
"I can deny it and say you control me."
"Really? Either way, do you think it's easier for them to believe me, or you? It's easy. They'll find out once they try, and they'll see that your mind is out of control."
Aurora stopped talking. She was waiting for Salazar to continue.
"For whatever reason, you don't want your secret found out, do you? Then you'd better not let me fall into the hands of anyone else, or you'll have a hard time explaining how you got it, and I think they'll be more interested in what makes you special."
Even when she sensed the snake spitting, Aurora wanted to make one last push. Her eyes fell on the valley, green and broken by the mighty white waterfall. "I'm on the drawbridge now."
"So?
"What if I threw you down right now?"
Salazar hesitated for just a second, then continued with his infuriating ease: "... You'll be stuck in Potions for the rest of your life, and I'm sure your Potions professor will remember you well in a hundred years' time."
"..."
Aurora is sorry. She shouldn't have threatened Salazar, she should have jumped.
"By the way, I don't know if your immunity would work on a potion like truth serum, but I'm guessing it wouldn't. After all, what makes you special is your mind, and the potion works directly on your body, which is totally different... Wait, did you just get caught in Potions?"
Too late to wait for Salazar's expression of infinite sympathy, Aurora shivered as she folded the diary into her backpack and ran all the way back to Hufflepuff's dormitory.
Merlin Sillie Slemshelga Dumbledore Where are you? The Dean of Slytherin is terrible!
...
Before they had reached the cellar, an origami crane made of parchment glided in through the corridor window and barged right into Snape's view. He reached for the crane to rest on his finger and walked down the deep staircase before him. The faint light sculpted his shadow in motion on the rocky yellow walls.
It was the origami crane Dumbledore had sent. I hoped Snape would be in the Headmaster's office soon.
Snape's frown deepened as he read it, remembering that the Ministry had been here only a few days before, and this time at such short intervals. Perhaps because it is really into the temporary peace of the age, so these guys began to look for nothing to do.
He crumpled up the crane in his hand and turned back toward the principal's office.
To his surprise, however, Dumbledore was the only one there, standing in front of the golden perch in the circular room, teasing Fawkes cheerfully. Dumbledore shook his wrist slightly as Snape approached, and the Burgundy chair, upholstered with golden tassels, slid behind him. "It's not the Ministry, it's about Regulus."
He went to his desk and sat down. "Black tea or milk tea?"
"Neither." "Said Snape dryly, making a mental guess at what the other was up to -- nothing easy, I hope.
"The child has lost his memory, all of it, all of it." Dumbledore reached out his hand and opened the small white China jar in the corner of his desk, and with a silver spoon he stirred into the milk tea in front of him what Snape thought was a suicidal amount of sugar. The smell of warm milk and tea was too saccharine to be soothing. "Besides, his health was very poor, and his sleep was almost as good as his waking hours."
Snape put on a well-timed, reserved look of sympathy that was too unfamiliar to his facial muscles to work well in practice. Instead, it made him look like he had a malicious sense of schadenfreude: "That sounds really sad."
Dumbledore, his blue eyes surveying the young man in front of him without a trace behind his backlit crystal spectacles, took a sip from his teacup. The boy really did not look very pleasant, he thought, as a thin layer of hot air clouded his glasses.
"Yeah, it's sad. I remember when he first came to school, he was so polite and gentle and kind that it was just amazing." Dumbledore went on, adding another spoonful of sugar. Snape frowned again, determined not to watch the headmaster's hand movements, which made his stomach writhe.
Then he caught the words and drew the corners of his mouth sarcastically. With a crowd of secretly competing Death Eaters and his madcap, stupid brother? He really has these fine and noble qualities.
Dumbledore saw his expression, and felt genuinely that it suited him better.
"You're not looking for someone to reminisce with, are you?" Snape was clearly unconvinced, and he knew perfectly well that Dumbledore would not have picked himself if he had wanted to have a chat in his old age. Hufflepuffs have always been good at being chatterboxes, and there's not just one, there's a bunch of them.
At this thought Snape suddenly remembered something that had just happened in Potions. The diary that seemed to have dark magic waves, and the blonde girl who looked up and saw her reflection in her clear eyes.
She had panicked from the moment his wand touched the diary, not daring to look at herself, until she had finished reading it... The poem. She looked like a rabbit with a snake, alert and scared, literally running for her life as she ran out of the classroom.
Snape wasn't sure if there was anything wrong with the diary, even though the results of the silent Spells had shown it to be quite ordinary, but at the same time he didn't think his first instinct was wrong. He knew too much about the dark arts.
As for the poem...
Dumbledore interrupted Snape's memory, saying, "Ah, the tendency of old age to stray. I asked you here to help me see if there's a way to make Regulus better. You ought to go and see him, he's a terrible sight."
Snape pressed his lips together and lowered the corners of his mouth. He had no recollection of anything he had done in the presence of this loving, perceptive headmaster that had made him feel so overwhelmed with compassion. "Why don't you send him to St Mungo's?"
If Dumbledore had been able to drag himself out of the arms of the dementors in Azkaban, it was not impossible to put Regulus in a magical hospital with a convincing identity and reason. Besides, as he said, Regulus's condition was really bad enough to arouse anyone's sympathy.
"It's too risky. His identity will cause a lot of unnecessary trouble." Dumbledore shook his head. He had thought about it, but it was not an easy task. With Snape and a Regulus, the Ministry of Magic would probably have to seal the gates of Hogwarts the next day with a search warrant to see if it was a school or a "former Death Eater camp."
If he had been alone, Dumbledore would have been happy to take Regulus to the hospital at once. But when his first job was as Headmaster of Hogwarts, things couldn't be so neat.
He looked at Snape and added, "I can't risk the school again."
Snape looked slightly darker. Was he reminding himself that he had risked the life and honour of the whole school in bailing him out of the Ministry?
The Potions Professor was silent for a moment, then nodded. "I'll pay him a visit, soon." Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Then I will let you know at a convenient time and go with you."
Snape sneered to himself. Was he afraid that if he went alone, Regulus, who was "pitiful enough to arouse anyone's sympathy," would be skinned and eaten alive or something?
But he agreed to do it for his own sake, because he wanted to see what kind of decline this fellow Black, who had had only a nodding acquaintance in the past decade or so, had come to, whether he really did not remember anything or whether he pretended to be too good.
If it was the latter, Snape was in great admiration.
...
At dinner, Aurora chose to start her detention early in the library instead of the usual dining room. Compared with Mrs Pince's fastidiously fierce gaze and almost pathological love for the old books, the table filled with students, especially Hufflepuffs and Slytherins, was hell.
She didn't even have to simulate it, and within half a meal her afternoon's exploits in Potions were all over the room. By the end of the meal, you will have heard no less than five or six versions circulated among the students.
Even the cranky, skinny lady librarian was as kind and lovely as a Raphael angel.
The Angel looked at the little girl with her chin raised in disgust, her dark brown eyes horribly sunken in, her arms strangely slender because of her emaciation stretched out and pointed to an area where the bookshelf was clearly much darker than the one where they were standing. A shrill, shrill voice came out of her shrivelled mouth: "That area is the □□ area. You'd better not go if you don't want to extend your working hours. Your job is this way."
Her arm turned one way, and the lack of softness in her body movements reminded Aurora of the Scarecrow swaying in the wind outside Hagrid's cabin. "Put back all the books that the students have misplaced, in alphabetical order with their call numbers."
Aurora followed her arm and saw a pile of books, full of several long desks, jammed incoherently against the stained-glass window, shielding most of the faces above. Were it not for the knowledge that this was a library, Aurora would more likely have assumed that it was a failed pyramid or a realistic reconstruction of human habitation in the age of Homo sapiens.
All in all, combined with the fact that I'm not allowed to use magic because of my punishment, and the bookcase here is almost next to the curved painted dome overhead, it's not a good sign.
"What are you waiting for?" Madame Pince waved her hand, walked out a few steps and turned back to look at Aurora with her cloudy, sunken eyes. "Don't break any of these books, or you'll be sorry, I promise."
"Yes." Aurora nodded, then asked, "Where is the ladder?"
Madam Pince cocked her chin towards the corner of the corner and looked at her with large, bloodshot whites. "Good luck. Go back when you're done."
Seriously, given the amount of work, this message is more fragile than air.
She sighed and began to walk over to the pile of papers and sort them by the first letter of the call number. After bowing her head for a long time, the bones of her cervical spine began to sour. Aurora turned her neck and saw the full human form reflected in the stained-glass window.
The strong warm yellow light takes the dark night outside as the background color, stripping out the fresh and strange characters. The corners of his mouth were pulled down by an invisible emotion, and the corners of his eyes were full of that sad breath. His colored eyes turned upward, as if he were unwilling to accept unfair treatment.
Aurora touched her face, and she felt that it wouldn't be long before she felt the same.
She walked around the vast, empty library and found every window looking so sad and unloved, with its eyes turned upward.
I don't know what the people who designed this place were thinking, weird Gothic aesthetics? In such a bitter and hostile environment, it is strange to have access to books.
"Aurora? Volquez's voice came from the door. The girl looked back and saw her golden-brown friend standing in the doorway with his red-haired roommate, Bill, and Beverly, who was always silent.
'Why are you here? 'she asked.
Volquez replied: "To bring you food, you haven't eaten yet?" He looked cautiously around and lowered his voice. "Madame Pince isn't there?"
"If she was there, you'd have been thrown out the last time you spoke." "Reminded Beverly faintly. Then she opened the silvery green scarf in her hand to reveal some bread with cheese and some jam biscuits and pudding.
Volquez touched the tip of his nose. The memory of being yelled at by Mrs. Pince for eating while reading was vivid, and Bill later told him he was wanted by Mrs. Pince.
Then several children squatted on the stairs next to the library door and huddled together.
"I hear you did something serious this afternoon." Bill smiled brightly, with some teasing and scoundrel, his blue eyes shining. "You were right not to go to dinner. Everybody's talking about it." "Aurora Field, a Hufflepuff second year, wrote a love letter to the Bat Lord in class and was caught reading it to the whole class."
The death gaze that Volquez and Beverly cast at the same time.
As soon as Aurora took a bite of what was in her hand, she felt that the pudding was poisonous.
"What's the matter? That S.S... Really?" Beverly sounded rather uncertain, but could think of no other explanation.
"What makes you think it was Professor Snape?" "Said Aurora." Haven't you thought about Salazar Slytherin?" It's all the same. It doesn't sound good. It doesn't matter, right?
The three children were silent for a moment, then shook their heads at the same time.
Vox: "... I don't think my imagination has broken free of the human level."
Bill: "... Why are you daydreaming before dawn?"
Beverly: "... Be objective. In terms of difficulty and technology, the two are similar. There is no decreasing relationship."
"..."