Chapter 198. The Capture.
"Severus?!"
"Good day again, Leader. It's a pleasure to meet you in person." Severus greeted him with a playful smile and a slight nod, making Arnold's right eye twitch.
"No. That's impossible. No matter how great a teacher ihiros is, turning a simple Hogwarts student into a wizard capable of approaching me this easily and seizing control of those bricks in just two years is simply not possible." He aimed his wand and his voice went flat. "Answer me: who are you, and why are you following me?"
But that wasn't the only thing that "convinced" him the person standing before him wasn't Severus. It was also the mark: he couldn't sense it on the stranger's chest, confirming that he was almost certainly not looking at Severus at all, but at an impostor.
Severus read his surface thoughts and let out a short laugh.
"I am Severus Snape, Leader. Don't be so harsh. Do you have any idea how much effort I put into finding you? I had to come all the way from London just for this."
"Answer the question: who are you?!" The tip of his wand burned more intensely, hinting that the next such "joke" would be lethal.
"That genuinely hurt," Severus began, but without waiting for him to finish, a beam erupted from Arnold's wand with a thunderous crack, covered nearly twenty meters in under a second, and struck the barrier the stranger had raised.
To his shock, the attack had no effect whatsoever. The moment it hit the dome, it simply dissipated. That had been one of his most powerful spells, one that shattered any defense with ease, which was exactly why his reaction was understandable.
But Severus finished his sentence regardless.
"You could at least have let me finish." He pushed his cloak aside slightly, then the shirt beneath, and revealed the mark to Arnold. Arnold felt the familiar bond immediately: unmistakable, impossible to confuse with anything else. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"But how?"
"Magic." He shrugged, as though that answered everything.
"Then, you bastard. So this was your doing." Arnold's eyes narrowed dangerously as the memory of the recent failure in Britain surfaced.
"I was barely involved." Severus spread his hands. "Until the day you crossed the line, I didn't touch your affairs. If you'd taken the country quietly, I wouldn't have interfered at all. So thank Charles and his tiny brain."
"You little--!" he shouted, sweeping his wand like a whip and sending a vivid crimson ball at Severus. "You had no business getting involved in the games of adults!" But the spell had no effect, scattering against the barrier on contact. Arnold didn't stop. A second ball followed the first, then a third. "You think I'll spare you because of that damned old man?!"
Furious at being played for a fool by a mere boy, he didn't pause for a moment, pressing relentlessly against Severus's barrier, advancing a step with each spell, his movements growing wilder by the second.
Severus simply watched him with a smirk, apparently trying to push Arnold even further past his limit, and doing a very good job of it.
But when barely a couple of meters separated them, Arnold raised his wand again, a far more powerful spell gathering at its tip, fully intending to wipe that grin off this "little bastard's" face. He suddenly staggered. A look of bewilderment crossed his face. He dropped to one knee, and the spell in preparation began to unravel.
"What is this?"
"Wormwood tincture. Draught of the Living Dead bean extract. Valerian root. Asphodel root. And several additional secret ingredients." Severus dropped the barrier and walked toward Arnold with a calm smile. Arnold raised his wand immediately, but to his horror, he couldn't channel magic through it at all. No matter how many times he repeated the incantation in his mind, nothing came. "The first four ingredients go into the Draught of the Living Dead. But with a few additional components, you get what I've named the Hollowing Potion. Beyond the weakness you're feeling right now, it also completely strips away your control of magic. But the base effect remains as well." At those last words, Arnold swayed and fell face-first into the snow, which softened the impact somewhat.
"A wizard at mid-Magister rank. Even for me, that wouldn't have been over in seconds. And I have no interest in destroying several city blocks in a pointless fight. The people here already live in poor conditions." He raised an eyebrow slightly. "Hm." The man lying before him had lifted his head and was staring at him with undisguised hatred. "Surprising. I tested it on creatures that were only slightly weaker than you, and they were unconscious within a minute. You held out for this long, and you still have enough strength to move your head. Impressive. You'll be useful in a future fight, and your destructive magic is quite solid as well."
"I'll. Kill. You." Arnold forced it out through clenched teeth. Severus answered with a radiant smile and a sympathetic nod. That was the last thing Arnold saw before sleep took him.
Standing over the Black Star's leader, Severus held a small box in his hand. He opened it. A powerful suction burst from within, swallowing the man instantly, and the box snapped shut and vanished.
"And that problem is solved."
"That went almost too easily." Surprised, Nagini watched the spot where Arnold had lain, then quickly retreated under the cloak, leaving only her head visible over his shoulder. "It's cold," she muttered with mild displeasure, watching the snow fall.
"You're a magical creature that rivals a Basilisk in power, and you're frightened of a little frost." He looked at her with amusement.
"Hmph! It's just instinct. Before we met, I used to hibernate every winter." She turned her head away with a sniff.
"Fair enough. I was actually thinking: if you were actively involved in the war against Grindelwald, you were probably born around 1910 or 1920, which means…"
"If you continue down that line of thought, there won't be a scrap of skin left on your shoulder within the next minute." Nagini's bloodlust was palpable as she narrowed her eyes dangerously and bared her fangs, drawing another laugh from him.
"That isn't what I meant. Don't worry. For a Lamia, who can easily live five hundred years, or a Basilisk, who can live a thousand, you're practically a child. And when you become human again, you'll most likely be stuck at eighteen for about a hundred years. So don't get caught up in nonsense like age." He stroked her head gently and continued, "That's not what I wanted to talk about."
"Then what?" She gave him a suspicious look.
"I want to help you find out about your past."
That answer genuinely surprised Nagini, but:
"Why? I already said you didn't need to bother with that. The past is the past. There's no point." Before she could continue, Severus tapped her on the nose.
"Hey!"
"Don't lie to me, at least. Or have you forgotten our bond? You've learned to hide your thoughts and feelings reasonably well, but not enough to fool me. And by the way, did you think we came all the way to this country just for Arnold?"
"What do you mean?" Nagini tilted her head, puzzled. Severus responded with a quiet smirk, and a photograph appeared in his hand. She saw a young woman: black, wavy hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, with two long strands framing a delicate face. She had dark, straight brows and lashes, and small but full lips. She could be described in one word: beautiful. Most striking of all were her eyes, bright amber, with something genuinely captivating about them. "Who is this?" Nagini looked at the image with a slight sense of recognition, as though she'd seen that face somewhere before, though she couldn't quite place it.
"That's you." His answer left her speechless, and she stared even harder at the face: her own face.
"But how?"
"Dumbledore gave it to me. He had a great many photographs from the war period. And now I'm even more eager to get your human form back." He gave her a conspiratorial wink, and she flooded his mind with sheer embarrassment.
"You pervert!" She sounded indignant, but there was more than a trace of satisfaction beneath it. I'm far more beautiful than that woman. And if I actually get younger when my form is restored, she won't stand a chance.
"That was the second reason we came to this country." He gestured toward her narrow eyes. "Dumbledore himself doesn't know where you were before you came to Britain, but you definitely weren't born here. You're not in the Muggle records, the wizarding records, or even the Book of Admittance, which lists every newborn wizard in the United Kingdom since its creation over a thousand years ago. Your name simply isn't there, which means you came from somewhere else. And by the way, you worked in a circus."
"A circus?"
"Yes. One you escaped from with someone. I tried to find the owner of that circus, but he's been dead for ten years. I considered raising him using Necromancy, but after ten years nothing usable remained of the brain, and the soul had most likely already moved on. In short, nothing conclusive there. So we'll have to search for your homeland ourselves." He stroked her head once more, then produced the familiar white mask. "So we have one more goal to add to our plans for after we finish school. That is, if we don't find anything useful here first."
"Severus. I..." She caught his mock-stern look and gave him a warm nod instead. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. And stop thanking me." He gave her that same stern look again, and she lowered her head in a shy, quiet nod.
"Mm."
"Good. Now let's slip into the CWG and look into things." He put the mask on, and as Nagini stared with wide eyes, it slowly shifted, taking on a human skin tone.
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