The gathering had just concluded, and the air still hummed with excitement.
In a quiet corner, a few younger students were still engrossed in animated discussion.
"Look at this!" one young wizard exclaimed, his nose practically glowing with enthusiasm as he held a Muggle comic book. "Even though these pictures don't move, the stories are so much more interesting than 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard'!"
"It seems your idea was quite successful," young Barty said, stepping up to Snape and speaking in a low voice. "Though the most popular Muggle books aren't the ones I prefer."
"The things you prefer, Barty," Snape replied, a gentle smile playing on his lips, "hardly anyone else would enjoy."
"Well, that simply won't do," Barty muttered, a clear note of dissatisfaction in his voice. "What good will these children's books do them?"
"Different ages have different interests," Snape said. "However, you've reminded me that the 'One Heart Society' is quite loosely structured right now. While that helps us recruit members, it hinders the cohesion of our most exceptional members."
"What have you thought of?" Barty leaned forward, asking eagerly.
"Perhaps," Snape said slowly, "we should make some distinctions within the society, recruiting outstanding members to form a more core organisation."
"How do you plan to do that?" Barty pressed.
"A moment," Snape said, his gaze drifting towards the other end of the classroom where students were still chatting animatedly.
The two fell into a comfortable silence. Finally, the last few students packed their bags and left, and the classroom fell silent.
Snape and young Barty walked out of the classroom, closed the wooden door, and headed down the stone steps towards the Slytherin common room.
"My idea is," Snape's voice was unusually clear in the corridor, "we need a more rigorous organisational structure. Only members screened by certain standards will be invited to join."
"You mean—?"
"Glory endures," Snape uttered the password, and the stone door slowly slid open.
"Voluntary participation and a sense of honour aren't enough; we need stronger bonds." They continued down the stone steps into the dungeon. "Magic contracts, as a way to maintain mutual benefit and trust. Members, while enjoying the advantages, should also bear corresponding obligations."
"Like—like carving a mark on their arm?" Barty asked.
Snape gently shook his head.
Inside the common room, only the fire in the hearth flickered. The two settled into armchairs in a corner, surrounded by a silence so profound they could hear each other's breathing.
"We won't need such markings," Snape said. "A shared charter and guidelines, which those who agree must sign. Everyone, including you and I, should be bound by them."
"Fourth year and above," Snape added thoughtfully, "with a more mature mind, and capable of understanding the stakes involved."
Young Barty suddenly sat up straight, his eyes gleaming. "In my father's study—" he whispered, "there's a book called 'Ancient Oaths and Blood Pacts', locked in a glass cabinet. But next month, he's going to Brussels for an International Confederation of Wizards meeting. I'll find a way to 'borrow' it."
"Be careful," Snape said. "He's not easily fooled."
Young Barty just grinned. "He never understood me," he said dismissively. "In his eyes, I'm just a child who needs discipline."
Snape nodded, not pursuing the topic further.
His gaze shifted to the fireplace. "There's another issue," he said slowly. "I'll be graduating next year, and you won't be here much longer either. Our core members' communication methods also need to be revolutionised, especially after everyone leaves school."
"We can't always rely on owls to deliver messages." Barty frowned. "I do know of something called a two-way mirror, but those things are expensive, and they only allow one-to-one communication—"
A mysterious smile touched Snape's lips. "We don't need to transmit sounds or images," he said. "We only need to magically transmit the simplest information—'yes' or 'no,' '1' or '0.'"
Young Barty tilted his head in confusion, his straw-coloured hair falling across his face. "What good is such simple information?" he asked.
"This is just the first step," Snape explained. "I've bought a few books on 'coding.' If you're interested, you can read them after you've finished your primary and secondary schooling.
"Then you'll understand that through such simple means, we can build a complete and perfect system to transmit any information we wish to convey."
"I'll look into it with the others," Young Barty nodded, promising, though his tone still held a hint of doubt. "This also involves alchemy—"
"It might be more complex," Snape said, "but it will also be very effective. Imagine if we could establish such a system, instantly transmitting information even across a thousand miles. The Ministry of Magic monitors owls, but they'll have no clue about this."
Their discussion continued late into the night. By the time they finally decided to rest, the flames in the fireplace had dwindled to faint embers.
---
The next morning, the sunlight was almost blindingly bright. Speckles of light filtered through the leaves, the lake gently lapped at the shore's rocks, and the sound of birds skimming the water could be heard.
Under the shade of a tree, Snape and a few friends were sharing breakfast packed from the Great Hall, a rare moment of campus serenity.
"This morning, I saw Professor Dumbledore leave the school from the tower," Pandora said, sitting on the grass beside Snape, happily narrowing her eyes and biting into a jam-smeared piece of toast. "He was wearing a travelling cloak and seemed rather hurried."
Snape had been listening absently, twirling a leaf between his fingers. But suddenly, his fingers paused. "Dumbledore left school?" A vague idea began to form in his mind.
"Perhaps to the Ministry of Magic?" he responded, then realised the Headmaster was likely off to Azkaban to find Morfin Gaunt. This was news they had received last term from Bob Ogden: Tom's uncle was imprisoned in that dreadful fortress in the middle of the North Sea.
The topic was soon drowned out by others' chatter, but Snape felt a strange unease spreading in his heart.
---
At noon, the Great Hall's ceiling displayed a perfectly azure sky, with a few white clouds drifting lazily. After placing their cutlery on the table, Snape and his companions returned to their dormitories.
He lay on his four-poster bed, staring at the patterns on the hangings.
Sleep, like a mischievous Fwooper, kept eluding him whenever he almost caught it. Pandora's words echoed in his mind, and the sense of unease only intensified.
He sat up, his dark eyes gleaming in the dim room.
"You thought destroying the ring would break the curse?"
"Something like that—I must have been mad—well, that just makes things simpler."
Snape's breathing quickened.
For a long time, he had believed that the Headmaster had destroyed Slytherin's ring before putting it on.
"Something like that," Dumbledore's future words swirled in his ears.
But what if... what if Dumbledore thought destroying the Horcrux would render the Resurrection Stone useless? Would he choose—"The Gaunt shack!" Snape abruptly stood up, his heart pounding like a drum. Abbot stirred, grunted, and continued sleeping.
He had to act, now, immediately.
---
As the gates of Hogwarts closed behind him, the hot summer breeze brushed against his cheek.
Snape had never been to the Gaunt shack in person. He had only seen the dilapidated stone house in Ogden's memories.
But time was short; he had to take the risk. He closed his eyes, concentrating all his energy on recalling every detail of the location—the moss on the walls, the nettles everywhere, the twisted trees, the filthy doorframe. He felt magic surge within him, then sharply twist.
This time, the suffocating sensation of compressed air was even more intense than before.
When his feet touched the ground again, Snape stumbled, grabbing onto a tree trunk to keep from falling. The side effects of Apparition left him dizzy, his stomach churning.
"Good thing no one built a new house here," he thought, trying to steady his breathing. "Of course, it's also possible Tom placed a Muggle-Repelling Charm here."
When he looked up, he found himself standing in the woods of Little Hangleton. Not far off, the Gaunt shack looked even more ruinous than in his memory, like a forgotten skeleton.
Stepping from the shadows of the trees into the sunlight, he saw a large tree branch piercing through the roof, dislodging most of the tiles. The walls were covered in dark green moss, almost black in the sunlight.
The appearance of the old shack gave no hint of its connection to the notorious descendants of Slytherin.
Snape paused, raised his wrist, and looked at his watch—the dial still showed a calm blue sky with white clouds and birds flitting about. That was at least a good sign.
"Perhaps it's not that dangerous—" he murmured to himself, but his wand was already gripped tightly in his hand. After all, it could also be that Tom's magic was too profound for ordinary detection methods to perceive.
He cautiously approached the stone house. The rotting wooden door hung precariously on its hinges, swaying. There was no longer any sign of small snakes, only a barely discernible, distorted, blurry mark that made it impossible to tell if it was a remnant of the past or simply the wood's natural grain.
Snape took a deep breath and gently pushed the door open with his wand.
The door's hinges let out a dying groan, and dust danced in the sunlight.
The tip of his wand glowed softly. The house was empty, everything covered in a thick layer of dust.
He exhaled slightly, though he couldn't tell from the current signs whether Dumbledore had already been here—after all, the Headmaster was perfectly capable of restoring all traces—but he had calmed down now.
From his previous experience, the journey to Azkaban couldn't be done by simple Apparition. Even at its fastest, Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to make a round trip in half a day.
After casting a powerful Iron Shield Charm, Snape cautiously stepped inside. The rotten wooden floorboards creaked ominously under his feet. Every step he took raised a cloud of grey dust.
Snape covered his nose and mouth, his eyes quickly scanning the room: rusted cauldrons, filthy pottery shards, broken furniture—
It looked like an ordinary abandoned house, with no signs of magical disturbance.
"Revelio!" He waved his wand, and a silver-blue light swept across the room, but no hidden magic was revealed.
"Homenum Revelio!" He tried another detection spell, still to no avail. The failure of conventional detection magic was, to some extent, within his expectations.
Next, he cast several other detection spells, but still found nothing. He sensed no disturbance in any magical field, nor did he see any magical traces.
"I wonder how Professor Dumbledore discovered Tom's magical traces," he shrugged self-deprecatingly. "No wonder the Headmaster always said he understood Tom so well, knew his style—"
However, he had his own advantage: he knew for certain that the ring was hidden in a hole beneath the floor, placed inside a golden box.
Snape retreated outside the house, standing in the sunlight to consider his options.
Digging up the floor piece by piece would be too time-consuming and might expose him to unknown risks; Voldemort wouldn't leave his Horcrux unprotected by curses. He needed a more efficient and safe method.
He quickly reviewed the most powerful protective spells he knew and suddenly thought of something, pulling a black-covered diary from his robes—Tom Riddle's diary.
"Horcrux against Horcrux," he said, looking at the diary in his hand. "You can only be destroyed by something of immense destructive power; don't disappoint me."
Snape swiftly cast a Muffliato Charm and a Muggle-Repelling Charm around himself, then layered on multiple protective enchantments: a Shield Charm, a Sticking Charm, and a Protego Totalum.
Finally, he clutched the diary tightly to his chest, pointing his wand at the crooked stone house: "Confringo! Bombarda Maxima!"
A blinding red light shot from his wand, followed by a second, then a third. Amidst the deafening explosions, the Gaunt shack collapsed like a house of cards. Stones and wooden beams flew everywhere, and dust billowed into the sky.
Just then, amidst the chaos, a murky black light shot out from the ruins, like a venomous snake's fatal strike.
The transparent barrier of the protective spells was pierced like thin paper. Snape only managed to shift the diary upwards, and the green light heavily struck the diary against his chest. The immense impact flung him backwards.
"Thud!" He crashed into a row of bushes, branches tearing at his robes.
When Snape struggled to his feet, the diary in his hand was trembling violently, its black cover visibly fading and aging before his eyes.
The trembling finally ceased after a full minute.
Snape carefully broke the seal, opened the diary, and found a faint, scrawled line of text on the previously blank pages: "What are you doing, Snape?!"
"I've been attacked, Riddle," Snape wrote, pulling a quill from his pocket. "I need to escape quickly. Listen to me, thank you!"
After writing, he sealed the diary and tucked it back into his robes.