The sun rose, the moon sank, and time kept moving.
Life in Hogsmeade was peaceful and quiet.
Ever since that bout of food poisoning, Iain had not stepped outside the little cottage once. After one night of wandering through that strange dream palace of his, his body had needed real rest before it could recover.
"Who said uglier mushrooms were less poisonous? Damn it! I would've been better off eating one of those classic red-capped death mushrooms! Either way I still ended up flat on my back!"
It took two full days before Iain finally managed to get out of bed again.
Fortunately, starting on the second day, the mysterious creature resumed delivering fresh ingredients to the cottage, which saved him from making any more bright ideas that might worsen his poisoning.
To be fair, across two lifetimes, this was Iain's first case of food poisoning.
He swore it would also be his last.
His fragile body needed to be taught a lesson.
"Study! I need to study!"
With the little skeleton attending to him, Iain finished a bowl of stomach-soothing porridge and a few soft buns, then immediately pulled out the textbooks he had bought in Diagon Alley.
For the next four days, the little wizard studied with fanatical dedication.
And for reasons no one quite understood, after those same four days, Hogsmeade began discovering an alarming number of giant rats.
Madam Rosmerta was not the first to notice.
The owner of Honeydukes was.
When she opened the shop one morning, she found that one of the candy jars behind the counter had been gnawed open. The edges of the hole were jagged and uneven, as if something had worked at the glass little by little with its teeth, which made the whole thing far creepier.
The jar had originally been packed full of explosive cream sweets.
Now all that remained was a layer of candy dust and a tuft of gray fur.
"Merlin as my witness, I've seen all sorts of rats before!"
She used the exact same dramatic tone on every customer who entered afterward.
"But I've never seen one that big! Its bite marks were as wide as my thumb! It ate all my sweets!"
No one could quite tell whether she was more upset about the missing candy or the existence of the massive rat.
Then the owner of the Three Broomsticks confirmed her story.
"It didn't chew open the ale! It unscrewed the ale! It can twist off bottle caps! I've kept cats for twenty years, and I've never seen a rat that could unscrew a bottle!"
Even by wizarding standards, that was surreal.
As the stories spread, some people even claimed they had seen a dog-sized rat that could breathe fire.
The rumors got wilder by the hour, but one fact remained undeniable.
Hogsmeade definitely had a rat problem.
A very real one.
"Those idiots…"
Severus Snape, looking sour enough to curdle milk, finally appeared on the streets of Hogsmeade one gloomy afternoon, unable to endure the town's endless complaints any longer.
He wore his black robes, his cloak hanging utterly still in the wind as if glued to his body, much like his greasy hair.
No matter whom he faced, the Potions Master of Hogwarts and Head of Slytherin House wore an expression that could not possibly be interpreted as either friendly or patient.
"They're just rats, and this many wizards are frightened by them? The state of magical Britain is truly pitiful."
He did not bother hiding his contempt for the people asking for help.
To be fair, he had come prepared.
In one hand he carried a black leather case filled with custom-made rat poison.
"It's a good thing none of you were in Slytherin," Snape sneered. "Though no, I take that back. Hufflepuff. That does rather explain the incompetence."
Snape was not always this foul-tempered.
He was simply in an especially bad mood today.
The night before, he had dreamed that someone had dug up the grave of the only woman he had ever truly loved.
The dream was no prophecy, but it had left him in a vile state, so much so that since morning he had glared at every cat and dog he passed.
Fortunately, school had not started yet.
The younger students were spared.
The townsfolk, familiar with Snape's personality, did not take offense.
They all knew him. This was simply how he was.
It was not that he chose to be harsh. He had been born that way, and there was no fixing a nature like that.
"Ordinary rat poison hasn't worked. Thank goodness you brought your potions, Professor. This will be a tremendous help."
People thanked him and paid him politely.
Snape's potions were expensive, but not beyond what the local shopkeepers could manage.
"If Dumbledore hadn't asked me…"
Snape was heading back toward Hogwarts, still planning to mutter a few more insults about the villagers under his breath, when he passed a row of squat cottages.
His nose twitched.
As a Potions Master, his sense of smell was extraordinarily sharp.
The air was wrong.
"Hm?"
Snape's steps slowed.
His eyes swept over the cottages, then fixed on one particular door.
His nose twitched again.
"This way."
Frowning, Snape strode forward and shoved open the cottage door without the slightest courtesy.
It had not even been locked.
Inside the cottage stood a little wizard in front of a cauldron.
A fierce fire burned beneath it. The contents churned violently. The liquid was a deep purple, with a layer of silvery foam floating on top.
"Attempt number three hundred and sixty!"
The little wizard was holding something in his fingers and tossing it into the cauldron.
A phoenix feather.
The moment the feather dropped into the brew, a flare of fire burst upward. The potion's color shifted from deep purple to green, then from green to a dark red.
At the sight of that, Snape's face changed.
The very next second:
BOOM!
The foam exploded.
The splattered liquid hit the inside wall of the cauldron with sharp sizzling sounds, leaving streaks of black scorch marks.
"Good Lord, what are you doing?!"
Seeing that the unfamiliar child looked ready to throw in yet another phoenix feather, Snape finally snapped. He lunged forward and seized the boy's wrist.
"Aah?!"
Iain, who had been completely absorbed in brewing, was so startled by the intruder that he nearly dropped half a phoenix feather into the cauldron.
"If that had gone in, would you prefer for this room to turn into a volcano?!"
Luckily Snape had caught him in time.
His roar was full of outrage.
Spit practically flew.
"I was this close, this close, to brewing Chemical Compound Number Five!"
Iain recovered from the shock and immediately launched into an offended defense.
He did, of course, recognize exactly who this gloomy man was.
But even a Potions Master could not stand in the way of his longing to strengthen his body.
It was not that he despised his current body for being too weak.
The real problem was simpler.
That mushroom soup had tasted amazing.
Iain did not want to spend another two days bedridden.
But he also wanted to drink it again.