"Sectumsempra!"
A faint flash of light flickered past.
Lupin's eyes widened. Without the slightest hesitation, he threw himself in front of Sirius.
In the next instant, blood burst from Lupin's face and chest as if he had been slashed by an invisible sword.
Staggering backward, he collapsed into the standing water on the floor with a splash, sending up a spray of droplets. His wand slipped from his limp right hand.
"You madman! I knew your nature would never change!"
Sirius roared, his eyes blazing, and immediately caught hold of Lupin.
"Come here!"
Snape shot him a cold glance. He showed no concern for either of them, calling only to Sean.
"Stupefy!"
Sirius's attack had already gone out.
Snape twisted aside and avoided the spell.
"Come on, that's beneath you!"
Sirius shouted, his voice echoing through the empty room.
"Don't come over here now…"
Snape warned Sean with his eyes. Looking at Sirius with his wand raised and Lupin fallen on the ground, he let out a sneer.
"Professor."
Sean tried to say something.
In front of him, Lupin had already been hit with the counter-curse, and the bleeding wounds quickly began to close.
"Be quiet!"
Snape snapped without looking at him.
"Tonight Azkaban is going to gain two more inmates,"
Snape said, hatred blazing in his eyes.
"I'd like to see Dumbledore's reaction… he was so certain you were harmless, Lupin… a tame werewolf—"
"You fool,"
Lupin said gently.
"Is a schoolboy grudge really worth sending an innocent man to Azkaban?"
Crack!
Snape's wand spat out snakelike cords that wrapped around Lupin's mouth, wrists, and ankles.
Lupin lost his balance and toppled to the floor, pinned and unable to move.
Sean watched him writhe, then only lightly touched his wand, and Professor Snape's transfiguration unraveled.
In Transfiguration, Sean believed he still had a long way to go, but even so, there weren't three people left at Hogwarts who could still teach him much.
At that moment, Sirius gave a furious roar and lunged at Snape, but Snape only smiled coldly.
"Come on then. Give me a reason,"
he said quietly,
"give me a reason to act, and I swear I won't hold back."
Sirius raised his wand, his face twisted with rage. At that point, it was hard to say whose face held more hatred.
"Revenge tastes wonderful, doesn't it?"
Snape murmured to Sirius.
"I've been longing for the day I'd catch you…"
"Sectumsempra!"
"Protego!"
The duel between them made Lupin's eyes flicker.
He looked at the young wizard about to intervene and caught hold of him.
"Mr. Green, there are some things we must do ourselves."
he said quietly, his eyes full of shame and resolve.
"What?"
Sean kept his eyes on the fight.
He was still only a young wizard with limited magical reserves. To intervene in a fight like this, he would have to strip both men of their ability to fight in a very short space of time.
And in such a narrow space, the magic available to him was even more limited.
"Then we'll have to use that…"
Sean whispered to himself.
He looked at the panel:
[Legilimency: Beginner (19/900)
Legilimency (special enhancement): Master (192/?)]
[Special Transfiguration:
Dragon Wingbeat: Beginner (29/900)
Elemental Activation: Beginner (10/900)
Vine-Stone Warden: Skilled (10/3000)]
Legilimency, under the complete enhancement of the cat-leopard eyes, could rise to Master level.
And Master-level Legilimency was enough to shake a wizard's mind for an instant.
Taken by surprise, it could buy Sean a single second.
Just one second—but for a wizard who was already a double Master in Dark Magic and Transfiguration, that second was enough to do a great deal.
At Skilled, spells could already be cast instantly, let alone at Master, especially with the new branch of Transfiguration Sean had created.
Elemental Activation.
A form of magical transfiguration that transformed any object and granted it stronger material properties. At the same time, more than five layered transfigurations were stacked together to create a powerful transfiguration that could not possibly be undone in the short term.
Its origin had been simple magical transformation—snow giants, magical fire salamanders…
Its true emergence, however, came from Sean's deeper understanding of magical circuits.
In snow giants and magical fire salamanders, he had borrowed the natural magical circuits of magical creatures.
And where there was nature, there could also be something artificial.
Elemental Activation was the result of that study.
In the distance, the duel had reached a crucial point.
"This time, the one making a fool of himself is still you, Severus."
Sirius laughed, his eyes gleaming dangerously.
In his view, Snape's face began to distort, and Sirius thought he could hear him whispering like a demon:
"I fooled Dumbledore, Sirius, with one excuse he could never doubt.
When my great master rises again, I will offer him two sacrifices…"
Sirius understood with absolute clarity that no moment had ever been more dangerous than this.
They had no room to gamble on whether a man had really changed his heart.
Especially not after what he had done.
And tonight, they had brought plenty of Veritaserum.
"Moony—"
Sirius shouted.
Sean, wand already raised, was startled to find it knocked from his hand. Lupin slowly climbed up from the ground.
He did not look surprised in the least, almost as though he had known Professor Snape's Sectumsempra would not do him much harm.
As though he had known Sean would counter it too.
"Sorry, Mr. Green."
Lupin raised his wand.
"I hope you've grown into your abilities all these years."
Snape said with a snarl.
"Expelliarmus!"
Lupin shouted—but he was not the only one.
Sirius attacked together with him.
A wave of force made the door rattle violently, and Snape's body shook, but a transparent shield still held.
The three of them fell into fierce battle at once.
The already ruined room shook harder and harder as spells flew in every direction.
Sean thought in silence for three seconds, then concluded that he could handle all three of them. Only then did he calmly draw the spare wand Grandpa Marcus had given him.
"By wizard will—Elemental Activation."
Sean spoke softly.
In an instant, the earth shook and the three fighting men realized that the house itself seemed to have come alive.
In the literal sense.
The stone walls extended arms, vines wove themselves into nets, and even the extinguished fireplace sprouted flames again, forcing the three of them instinctively closer together.
"Reducto!"
Snape fired at the vines on reflex.
But the stone walls surged outward. The curse struck only a shallow crater into them.
Snape's face turned ugly at once as he stared at Lupin and Sirius, only to find the same bewilderment in both of their eyes.
Then all three of them turned to the young wizard.
The moment their eyes met the green vertical pupils, dizziness crashed over them.
Snape was the first to come back to himself.
He instinctively tried to tighten his grip on his wand, only to find he couldn't move at all.
He looked around again. The room had been completely transformed.
Stone walls pinned their bodies in place, vines strengthened their restraints, and flames burned all around, lighting the young wizard's figure.
He sat high above them on a towering stone seat of vines and rock, his gentle face covered in firelight, his skin pale to the point of looking sickly.
He seemed to be saying something, but his lips moved without any sound coming out.
The effect was eerie, almost unfathomable.
The young wizard—Sean—was utterly spent.
He no longer even had the strength to speak. If not for the chair supporting him, he would have pitched forward onto the floor.
But the good news was that his judgment had been accurate.
Elemental Activation, which only needed one second to bring a whole small area under control, combined with Legilimency's one stolen second, really did let him subdue three powerful wizards in an instant.
Sean silently reviewed its flaws and strengths and concluded that, in real combat, it still had a long way to go.
Elemental Activation was powerful, but it required several minutes of preparation.
And with Sean's mental reserves, it could last no more than a minute.
"Professor."
Only after quite a while did Sean finally manage to speak.
"Heh—"
On Snape's face there was both humiliation and anger—and a thread of pride too faint to name.
By then, Lupin had also regained consciousness. Looking at the spare wand in Sean's hand, he let out a low sigh.
Thinking of the gigantic hand that had risen beside the Whomping Willow, and of the terrifying transfiguration just now, he realized yet again that they had all underestimated this "god."
"Mr. Green,"
Lupin said quietly,
"this should have been done by us—but, sir, now only you can decide it."
At the same moment, Sirius came to as well. He had been silent, but the moment he met Snape's eyes again, the disgust in his own was completely undisguised.
"Do you trust him, Mr. Green? Do you really trust him?"
Sirius shouted, knowing full well he couldn't break free.
Hearing Sirius address him like that, Snape's expression flickered.
Very quickly, he noticed another figure standing in the corner—a figure he knew all too well.
His eyes widened immediately, and after a few seconds, he seemed to understand.
"You mustn't trust him. He must have charmed you with those same honeyed lies. You need to know—"
Sirius spoke at tremendous speed.
"He's a shameful traitor!"
His eyes were bloodshot now, fixed on Snape.
"Why don't you tell him what you did, Severus?!"
Snape's face suddenly lost every trace of blood, and he stared back at Sirius.
"If you say one more word, I swear I will kill you—"
"Ha! I'm practically dead already!"
Sirius snarled.
"The things you did, Severus—do you think they vanished just because you forgot them?!
Dumbledore vouched for you, and how did you repay him?! You betrayed him! You learned that secret, and then you sold it!"
Sirius's voice was hoarse beyond recognition.
"Let me down—!"
He glared at Sean, but in truth Sean had not yet recovered enough to cast more magic.
"Sorry, Professor."
All he could do was look helplessly at Professor Snape.
He tried to loosen the vines around Snape's legs with a wave of his wand, but they only slackened slightly.
Sean discovered that too many layers of transfiguration had one serious drawback—
undoing them was extremely difficult.
Watching all this, Sirius studied the young wizard carefully.
After a few seconds, he began to laugh. At first it was low and breathless, but then it turned almost wild.
Until tears came.
"Severus, pitiful—truly pitiful… for a being as great as Mr. Green, this is what you brought close with you?"
Sirius stared into Sean's green eyes.
Tears blurred his sight.
"Shut up! I swear—I swear—I will make you suffer forever—
The moment I walk out from under this tree, I'll summon the Dementors.
They'll be delighted to see you, Black—delighted enough to give you a little kiss, Black—"
Snape snarled like a bat with its wings pinned through, spitting out the threat.
"For Mr. Green, I would gladly accept that."
Sirius laughed like a madman.
"Once, Mr. Green… I have to tell you the truth of why the Dark Lord hunted Harry… It was because of a prophecy. The prophecy said a child born at the end of July would become the Dark Lord's enemy… But he wasn't supposed to know that at first, so how did he find out? The answer is the man before you—he sold them out…"
Every word Sirius said seemed to come wet with blood.
"He might as well have killed them himself! And then he repented, did he… Mr. Green… he repented… But who can believe that? Those lives that were lost—how are they meant to come back?"
Sirius's voice was ragged with grinding teeth.
"You know why he was so obsessed with one particular girl? She had the same eyes as you. I think that explains everything…
Severus, you disgust me…"
Snape stopped moving entirely. His face had gone rigid.
He had the sickening sensation of being stripped naked in the middle of the street.
His whole world was collapsing, and once again he felt as though he were losing everything.
After a long while, he recovered that same expression of loathing for the world.
"So what if that's what I thought, Sirius? It changes nothing. I don't care… I don't care… But you can be certain of this: I will never let you die in peace."
He said it without any emotion.
"Only Veritaserum can truly test a wizard's thoughts. Especially when it comes to…"
Lupin shut his eyes in pain. Sirius had said the words after all—the very words they had never intended Mr. Green to hear.
"Oh."
Sean said quietly.
Sirius looked at him with hope. Snape kept his eyes fixed on Sirius and did not dare cast even one glance at the young wizard.
"There may be many people in this world who have reasons not to trust Professor Snape—perhaps even to hate him,"
Sean said softly but firmly.
"But I don't."
He spoke.
He thought of the dark dungeon, of the face beside it that was changeable and temperamental and yet impossible to hide its concern.
Most of the time sour. But sometimes full of relief. Sometimes pride.
"I trust the professor."
Severus Snape—self-loathing, gloomy Snape—had never known how to express love.
His love was a broken poem, obscure, difficult to understand.
But this time, one young wizard knew that the poem's final meaning pointed to him.