"Let me look forward to seeing what this could be, under such protective measures."
The moment the potion touched Lys's lips and teeth, she had to brace her free left hand against the pool's edge.
She felt something being stripped from her body in large, urgent amounts.
She slammed the heavy cauldron back into the pool, scooping out the remaining half of the liquid. She reached out to grab the locket, but her fingertips were corroded in the air above the pool, losing two pieces of flesh. The liquid in the cauldron turned murky for an instant, then became clear again.
The potion was still taking effect—the liquid body that hadn't been drunk was still functioning in the pool.
"Water!"
Lys tried to put down the cauldron in her hands. She felt as if she were in a furnace, all moisture baked out of her. Hallucinations began appearing before her eyes. Her arms and cheeks seemed to become brittle from extreme dryness, and for a moment she even thought she saw her own ear crumbling away.
"I need water!"
She turned and staggered toward where the sound of waves came from. Just one step, and she could touch the place bordering the sea, touch the water she now desperately craved.
But her footsteps seemed chained, stopping before those Inferi reaching out their blue-purple or porcelain-white hands toward her.
"Going to exchange feelings with future colleagues?" Lys mocked herself, turning back to pick up the cauldron and gulp down another large mouthful.
The potion flowed through her lips and tongue into her throat, burning all the way to her stomach, then released a force that surged toward her brain.
She stood there holding that cauldron, pacing and crying out:
"Mum!"
"It hurts so much!"
Her arms seemed to begin festering again, as if pus mixed with medicinal wash was flowing from the wounds.
"I don't want to drink anymore, I really don't want to drink anymore! I want to go home! It hurts so much! I want to go home!"
Those strange potions, spells from people in white clothes! Lys lay on the ground like a child and began rolling and throwing tantrums.
"I just want to go home, wuuuu, it hurts so much!"
The cauldron crashed to the ground, and the moment the potion inside spilled on the floor, it returned to the pool.
She hugged her left arm. "Why does it hurt so much! Why do I hurt so much?!"
"Didn't I already heal my arm?" She suddenly jumped up and frantically slapped her shoulder. "Where's the crack? Where's my snake!"
Lys, already mad with distress, looked toward the pool. In the remaining bit of liquid, there seemed to be a small snake writhing and twisting on that locket.
Lys reached out her left hand and snatched the locket with extreme speed, not caring about the burning, broken flesh on her hand. She shook it casually, calling to the small snake above:
"Crack, why did you get so small?"
But soon she forgot about looking for the snake. She wandered around this cave, searching for something.
"Why isn't there any food? I'm so hungry!"
"Mum! Did you come back?" She staggered toward the seaside. Just as she was about to plunge into the seawater, her expression struggled again.
"Where is this?"
She seemed to want to straighten her back but fell directly to the ground. "Why does it hurt so much!"
With trembling hands, she opened the lizard-skin pouch on her chest and shook out everything inside. However, there were lunch boxes, hair ties, even a new set of clothes—everything except water...
She was so thirsty now... but waving her wand and casting "Aguamenti" had no effect.
Licking her lips, Lys opened a bottle of Tooth-Strengthening Potion on the ground and gulped it down. The cool feeling lasted only an instant before she was again overwhelmed by extreme thirst.
She lost her reason again, opening all the bottles and pouring all the liquids inside into her mouth.
Repeating the swallowing motion, when several bottles of silver mist fell down her throat, she finally breathed a sigh of relief, collapsed on the ground clutching the potion bottles and that ornamental wand, and fainted.
And at this moment, it was exactly when the Felix Felicis effects wore off.
When Lys woke up, her first reaction was wondering if she'd tried to bite the Inferi—what was this taste in her mouth?
"Ugh." She lay on her side and dry-heaved for a while, but discovered potion bottles all over the ground.
She scanned them and found that what she'd drunk was enough to poison five of the largest Nundus to death—there was even a bottle of somewhat expired and ineffective Nundu venom among them.
She secretly sighed. It seemed she needed to visit St. Mungo's—not for detoxification, but to check her brain. Why did she always do such strange things whenever she lost consciousness?
If she couldn't kill herself, she'd torture herself to death... and talk to herself...
She lay on the cold rocky ground, listening to the waves outside and staring at the sunlight streaming in from the hole above, just lying there for a long time.
Only when she felt her body's existence again did she slowly get up.
She felt unprecedented weakness.
She rummaged through her crystal lunch box, forcing herself to eat everything left from these past few days.
Her mouth seemed burned by some unknown bottle's contents. Every bite of food brought the sensation of knives and needles when swallowed.
Including when it reached her stomach—it hurt a lot, but was much better than last night.
Lys secretly regretted that she'd already drunk most of the potion last night but still hadn't persevered, wasting all her previous efforts. She didn't know...
What was that reflecting light on the ground?
Lys looked carefully. Though puzzled about when she'd gotten that locket out, she became somewhat excited.
After paying so much, was she finally about to learn this secret?
But it would be even better if she could leave smoothly after knowing the secret!
Lys picked up a pair of dragon-hide gloves from the ground, put them on, rested a while, then poked that locket with her wand.
While marveling at such dense Dark Magic aura, Lys felt it was somewhat familiar—where had she seen it before?
With her groggy brain, Lys thought for a while before remembering: Malfoy's treasure room—it was a book.
So the Dark Lord had many of these things?
Unable to sit still, Lys simply lay on the ground and poked the thing in front of her with her wand.
"Do you want to gain power?" A leisurely voice came, carrying a trace of sighing and temptation.
Lys held her breath, remembering that the last time something spoke to her in this tone was the Pensieve—she'd nearly died in the library that time.
...Heh, want to gain power? Right now I want to go home alive!
"I don't want power. I want to go home."
Lys's voice was hoarse as if clogged with sand. She used all her strength to scoot backward, trying to get as far away from it as possible.
Obviously, the air stagnated for a moment.
"With power, you can go wherever you want, and you only need to wear me."
"I haven't opened my eyes to see this world for too long. You wear me and leave this damned place, and I will teach you how to master more power. You can go wherever you want—isn't that good?"
Lys hadn't expected this thing would answer her. Using all her body's strength, she bounced up, ran to the farthest place, and sat down again.
After hearing clearly what it said, Lys was stunned. With such tight protective measures, it was a Dark Magic item.
Most importantly, it could think rather than repeat programmatically. Its characteristics seriously overlapped with something from the soul magic she'd been researching for a year:
—Horcrux!
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
The story isn't over...
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