The gathering had just ended, and the air was still thick with excitement.
Beside the Reading Corner, several younger students were still lost in lively discussion.
"Look at this," a young wizard said excitedly, his nose flushed red as he held up a Muggle comic book. "The pictures don't move, but the stories are way more interesting than The Tales of Beedle the Bard!"
"Looks like your idea worked," Barty Jr. said quietly as he walked up beside Snape. "Even though the most popular Muggle books aren't exactly to my taste."
"The sort of things you like, Barty," Snape said with a faint, mild smile at the corner of his lips, "aren't exactly what most people would enjoy."
"That won't do," Barty muttered discontentedly, curling his lip. "What use is there in them reading these children's books?"
"Different ages have different interests," Snape replied. "But you've reminded me of something, our current Yixin Society structure is rather loose. While that helps us recruit more members, it also makes it difficult for the most outstanding ones to build cohesion."
"You've thought of something?" Barty leaned forward eagerly.
"Perhaps," Snape said slowly, "we should create some distinction within the society, bring together the best members to form a more central organization."
"How do you plan to do that?" Barty pressed.
"Just a moment." Snape's gaze shifted toward the other side of the classroom, where a few students were still chatting animatedly.
The two of them fell into a knowing silence until the last of the students packed their bags and left. The classroom grew quiet.
Snape and Barty stepped outside, closed the wooden door, and descended the stone stairs toward the Slytherin common room.
"My thought is this," Snape said, his voice clear in the corridor. "We need a stricter organizational structure. Only those who pass certain standards should be allowed to join."
"You mean...?"
"Eternal Glory." Snape spoke the password, and the stone door slid open.
"Voluntary participation and honor aren't enough," he continued as they moved deeper underground. "We need stronger bonds, magical contracts, as a means to safeguard trust and mutual benefit. When members receive privileges, they must also bear obligations."
"Like... engraving a mark on the arm?" Barty asked.
Snape shook his head slightly.
Inside the common room, only the firelight flickered. The two sat down in the corner armchairs; the quiet was so deep they could hear each other breathe.
"We don't need that kind of mark," Snape said. "What we need is a shared charter and code. Anyone who agrees must sign it. Everyone, including you and me, shall be bound by it."
"Fourth years and above," Snape added thoughtfully. "Old enough to understand consequences and interests."
Barty suddenly straightened, eyes gleaming. "In my father's study-" he lowered his voice, "there's a book called Ancient Oaths and Blood Pacts, locked in a glass cabinet. But next month he's going to Brussels for the International Confederation of Wizards meeting. I'll find a way to 'borrow' it."
"Be careful," Snape said. "He's not an easy man to fool."
Barty only grinned. "He's never understood me," he said scornfully. "To him, I'm just a child who needs discipline."
Snape nodded, not pursuing the topic further.
His gaze drifted toward the fireplace. "There's another problem," he said slowly. "I'll be graduating next year, and you won't be staying much longer either. Communication among core members needs to evolve, especially once we leave the castle."
"We can't always rely on owls," Barty frowned. "I do know of something called Two-Way Mirrors, but those are expensive, and they only work one-to-one..."
A faint, mysterious smile curved Snape's lips. "We don't need to transmit voices or images," he said. "All we need is to send the simplest message, 'yes' or 'no,' '1' or '0.'"
Barty tilted his head, his straw-colored hair falling over his face. "What good is such simple information?" he asked.
"That's only the first step," Snape explained. "I've bought a few books on 'coding.' If you're interested, you can read them after finishing your primary and secondary courses.
"That way, you'll understand we can use such a simple system to build an entire network, to communicate anything we wish."
"I'll study it with the others," Barty nodded, though there was still a hint of doubt in his tone. "But that sounds like alchemy..."
"It might be complex," Snape said, "but also highly effective. Imagine, if we establish such a system, we could send instant messages from miles away. The Ministry monitors owls, but they'll never understand this."
Their discussion stretched deep into the night. By the time they finally decided to rest, the fire had burned down to faint embers.
The next morning dawned bright and dazzling. Sunlight spilled through the leaves in scattered patches, glimmering across the lake, and the air carried the sound of birds skimming over the water.
In the shade of the trees, Snape and a few friends were sharing breakfast packed from the Great Hall, savoring the rare calm of school life.
"This morning I was in the tower," Pandora said cheerfully, sitting beside Snape on the grass and squinting happily as she bit into a slice of jam-covered bread. "I saw Professor Dumbledore leaving the castle. He was wearing a traveling cloak and looked in quite a hurry."
Snape had been idly listening, twirling a leaf between his fingers. But suddenly, his hand froze. "Dumbledore left the castle?" A vague thought began to take shape in his mind.
"Maybe he went to the Ministry?" he replied casually, but he knew the Headmaster must have gone to Azkaban to find Morfin Gaunt. They'd learned about him last term from Bob Ogden, Tom's uncle, imprisoned in that dreadful fortress in the middle of the North Sea.
The conversation soon shifted to lighter topics, but unease coiled tighter in Snape's chest.
By noon, the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall showed a perfect blue sky, dotted with drifting white clouds. After setting his utensils down, Snape returned to the dormitory.
He lay on his four-poster bed, eyes tracing the patterns on the canopy.
Sleep teased him like a sly fox spirit, each time he almost caught it, it slipped away again. Pandora's words kept echoing in his mind, that growing unease gnawing stronger.
He sat up abruptly, black eyes gleaming in the dimness.
"You think destroying the ring will break the curse?"
"Something like that... I must have been out of my mind... Still, it makes things simpler."
Snape's breathing quickened.
He had always believed that Dumbledore destroyed the Slytherin's Ring before putting it on.
"Something like that..." Future Dumbledore's words echoed in his mind.
But what if... what if Dumbledore thought destroying the Horcrux would render the Resurrection Stone useless? Would he choose instead to,
"The Gaunt Shack!" Snape leapt to his feet, heart hammering like thunder. Abbott turned over in bed, muttered something, and went back to sleep.
He had to act, now.
As the gates of Hogwarts closed behind him, the hot summer wind brushed against his face.
Snape had never been to the Gaunt home in person; he had only seen it through Ogden's memory.
But time was pressing, he had to risk it. He shut his eyes, focusing all his power on every detail he remembered: the moss-covered walls, the nettles, the gnarled trees, the filthy doorframe... Magic surged through him, then twisted violently.
This time, the suffocating squeeze of Apparition was stronger than ever.
When his feet hit the ground again, Snape staggered, catching himself against a tree trunk. His head spun, his stomach churned.
"Good thing no one's built anything here," he thought, steadying his breath. "Though perhaps Tom cast a Muggle-Repelling Charm."
When he lifted his head, he found himself in the woods of Little Hangleton. Not far away stood the Gaunt Shack, more decrepit than in memory, a forgotten corpse of stone.
From the shade into the sunlight, he saw a great tree branch thrust through the roof, tiles shattered and fallen. Moss crept over the walls in a dark, oily sheen.
It was impossible to imagine this ruin as the home of Slytherin's heir.
Snape stopped, checked his wristwatch, the dial still showed a serene scene of blue sky, white clouds, and darting birds. At least that was a good sign.
"Maybe it's not that dangerous..." he murmured, though his wand was already tight in hand. After all, perhaps Tom's enchantments were too sophisticated for ordinary detection.
He approached the shack carefully. The rotted door hung by a single hinge, long stripped of any snake ornament, only a twisted, faded mark remained, too vague to tell whether it was once a symbol or just part of the grain.
Snape drew a deep breath and nudged the door open with his wand.
The hinges groaned like a dying thing, dust swirling in the slanted sunlight.
The wand-tip glowed softly. Inside was emptiness, everything draped in thick dust.
He exhaled slightly in relief. Though there was no sign Dumbledore had been there, after all, the Headmaster could easily restore everything to its original state, Snape's nerves began to settle.
Based on his previous experience, the journey to Azkaban couldn't be done by Apparition alone; even at best speed, Dumbledore wouldn't have time to make the round trip in half a day.
Casting a strong Protego Totalum, Snape stepped carefully inside. The rotted floorboards groaned ominously underfoot, each step raising a puff of grey dust.
He covered his nose, scanning the room quickly: rusted cauldron, filthy shards, broken furniture... It looked like any abandoned house, no trace of magic.
"Aparecium!" he swept his wand in a wide arc, silver-blue light washing across the room. Nothing revealed itself.
"Homenum Revelio!" he tried another detection charm, again, nothing. He had expected as much.
Then he tried several more spells, all to no effect. No magical fluctuations, no enchantment traces.
"I really don't know how Dumbledore found Tom's magical residue," he muttered wryly. "No wonder he always said he understood Tom, knew his style..."
But Snape had his own advantage: he knew the ring was buried beneath the floor, hidden in a golden box.
He stepped back outside, into the sunlight, thinking.
Digging through the floor would take too long, and worse, it risked triggering unknown traps. Voldemort would never leave his Horcrux unprotected. He needed something faster, safer.
Running through his mental list of powerful countermeasures, Snape suddenly thought of something. He pulled from his robes a black-covered diary, Tom Riddle's Diary.
"Horcrux against Horcrux," he said quietly, looking at it. "You can only be destroyed by something of immense power, don't let me down."
He swiftly laid Muffliato and Muggle-Repelling Charms around the area, then layered Protego, Salvio Hexia, and Repello Inimicum for defense.
Finally, clutching the diary close, he raised his wand toward the crooked shack.
"Confringo! Reducto!"
A blinding red light burst forth, then another, and another.
The deafening explosions shattered the Gaunt Shack like a house of cards. Stone and timber flew in all directions; smoke billowed skyward.
Amid the chaos, a murky black beam shot from the ruins, swift and venomous like a serpent's strike.
The protective barrier shattered like thin glass. Snape barely had time to raise the diary when a flash of green light slammed into it, throwing him backward with brutal force.
"Bang!" He crashed into a hedge, branches tearing his robes.
When Snape struggled upright, the diary in his hand was trembling violently, its black cover fading and withering before his eyes.
A full minute passed before the shaking ceased.
Snape carefully broke the seal and opened it. On what had once been a blank page, a line of blurred, jagged handwriting appeared:
"What are you doing, Snape?!"
"I was attacked, Riddle," Snape wrote quickly, pulling a quill from his pocket. "I have to run. Listen, thank you!"
He sealed the diary again and tucked it safely inside his robes.