Chapter 12: You Will Regret This, Dumbledore!
"That boy should never have been admitted, Dumbledore!"
The perpetually unlucky Severus Snape spoke in a low voice to the old man who had come to visit him.
"Has the wound not yet healed, Severus?" Dumbledore did not answer Snape's statement, his voice filled with a hint of concern.
"It's almost there," Snape sneered. "That boy's weapon is certainly a Dark Magic artifact imbued with a vile curse. If it were a simple puncture wound, my arm would have healed a month and a half ago. But after the wound recovers, it slowly splits open again. How can you possibly think someone who uses such a vicious thing is a redeemable soul?"
"His nature is malicious and cruel. You ought to take a good look into those eyes!"
Even his breathing was laced with anger. Snape had been tormented for the past month and a half, often waking up in the middle of the night from the pain of the puncture wound in his arm. The broken spear that had pierced him had left behind a residual power that clung to his bone like a maggot, plaguing him for a long time.
"I have, of course, looked into those eyes, Severus," Dumbledore said reassuringly. "He cares deeply about his father's death, but I could also see that he has not been blinded by hatred. He is a calm child who will not act impulsively."
"Then what about my injury? I hadn't even had a chance to knock on the door before he attacked me! Do you need me to pull out my memory for you to believe that he intended to sever my head at that moment?!"
The more he thought about it, the angrier the furious Snape became.
"He mistook you for the murderer who killed his father and had come to kill him as well." Dumbledore shrugged. He mostly believed this explanation. After all, with Snape's gloomy appearance and greasy, dark attire, anyone would assume he was up to no good.
'Personal grooming is very important, Severus. You should have paid attention to it long ago.'
"We should try to understand a child who has just lost his father and is enveloped in grief. He didn't mean it. And besides, didn't he take the initiative to explain the misunderstanding to you afterward?"
"Yes! A 'misunderstanding'!" The mere mention of it made Snape want to vent his emotions. His arm was beginning to hurt again. Although the wound was mostly healed, it would still crack open into a fissure two fingers wide, feeling as if the flesh was being carved away. It wasn't as deep as before, just a minor flesh wound now.
"It's all the fault of that damned magic and that owl, isn't it!"
Skillfully rolling up his sleeve, Snape poured a few drops of potion onto the bloody wound. It healed in an instant. This should be the last time it split open.
"You will regret this, Dumbledore!" Snape declared, his voice cold as he swished his robes. "If you only came here to ask about my wound, you can leave now."
"Actually, I came here because…" Dumbledore looked at Snape for a few seconds, then said slowly, "You are aware, of course, that Harry will be attending Hogwarts this year. I hope you remember our promise."
Snape paused.
"Of course. Of course, I remember." A complex emotion, difficult to describe with words, flickered in his eyes.
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On the Hogwarts Express, Ezio and Harry passed the time quite pleasantly. They discussed many things about Hogwarts and tried out many interesting spells. Harry also generously bought every type of snack from the trolley.
"You should try some of these. These are a bit too sweet for me, but you might like them." Ezio handed him a bag of Fizzing Whizzbees, something not sold on the train's snack trolley.
"Oh, thanks!" Harry accepted the candy happily, then turned his head to the girl beside him. "Hermione, would you like some?"
A short while earlier, a girl with large front teeth had appeared at their compartment door with a crying, round-faced boy. She explained that the boy's toad had gone missing.
Ezio had then used the Summoning Charm to find the round-faced boy, Neville's, toad, Trevor. This display of magic had made the girl, Hermione, exclaim loudly, but his subsequent words had stopped her lecture in its tracks.
"I've already finished learning all the spells up to the fifth year. Are they really that hard?"
Hermione, a self-proclaimed top student, fell silent. She suddenly felt that she had nothing to be proud of, especially after learning that Ezio, like her, was not from a wizarding family and was encountering magic for the first time.
"No, thank you. I'm not very fond of sweets," Hermione said without turning her head. "You said just now that the key to the Summoning Charm is a clear perception of the object being summoned. But you've never seen Neville's toad."
"Does Neville's toad have eight legs?" Ezio asked while chewing on a Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean. He quite liked these things where every bite was a new experience. Mainly, his assassin's perception allowed him to avoid the beans with unsavory flavors when choosing, so it was all enjoyment for him.
"Well, no," Hermione said, shaking her head, but her face still held a trace of confusion.
"Exactly. Just because I haven't seen Nevilles' toad, does that mean I don't know what a toad looks like?" Ezio spread his hands and then grinned at Harry. "See? This is the result of studying by the book. Ravenclaw would suit you well, Hermione."
"Being called a bookworm doesn't make me happy, Ezio, even if I do love to read." Hermione snapped the fourth-year textbook shut and rubbed her dizzy temples. In front of a top student who was even better than her, she couldn't feel the slightest bit of pride.
"It seems I need to go back and study some more. Blindly learning advanced spells is not what I should be doing."
Returning the textbook to Ezio, Hermione took her leave.
"Looks like she's a bit competitive," Harry mused, chewing on his candy.
"Competition is a good thing. It helps people improve faster. You don't want people pointing at you and calling you a dunce, do you?"
"Of course not," Harry nodded firmly. "But I've already learned several spells. I shouldn't be too embarrassed, right?" he asked, a little uncertain. Never mind comparing himself to Ezio; from his brief interaction with Hermione, he knew she had already read all the first-year textbooks. The pressure was on.
"Here, you can have this Chocolate Frog. I feel like I should go and learn another spell." After a moment's hesitation, Harry put down his snack, as if something was prodding him, reminding him that if he didn't work hard, he'd become an idiot.
Just as Harry opened his Charms textbook to find a new spell to learn, the compartment door was pushed open again. It wasn't Neville or Hermione, but a trio of varying heights and builds.
One of them was a boy Harry recognized—the one he had met when buying his robes was standing at the front.
"Is it true?" the pale-faced boy at the front said, speaking as if no one else mattered. "Everyone on the train is talking about it. They're saying Harry Potter is in this compartment. So that's you, is it?"
Harry looked up slightly, giving the boy a strange look, as if he were looking at some kind of idiot.
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