Inside the Potions Professor's private stores.
Severus Snape stared at the stiff black dog, a twisted smile fixed upon his face.
"Padfoot, you've finally fallen into my hands."
"Did you think your illegal Animagus form would allow you to remain at large forever?"
"You despicable traitor! You will pay for the deaths of Lily and her family!"
Snape covered his face with his hands, his lips curling upward in delight, yet tears trickled down through the gaps between his fingers. He remembered that he, too, was an accomplice in the death of Lily Potter...
He poured a reviving potion over Sirius Black's body and pulled out a rope reinforced with Mantura metal, binding the black dog tightly.
As Sirius gradually regained consciousness, the first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was Severus Snape's distorted, almost psychotic expression.
"Woof, woof, woof?" [How is Harry?]
Snape naturally could not understand the language of dogs. He laughed maniacally.
"Are you begging for mercy? Sirius Black!"
Black struggled to revert to his human form. Mantura metal suppressed external magic, but internal magic like the Animagus transformation was not restricted—unless the metal was inhaled as a powder.
"Snape!" Sirius shouted, despite the pain of the bindings. "How is Harry? Is he alright?"
"Why do you care about him?"
Snape struck Sirius with a Cruciatus Curse, all the hatred accumulated over a dozen years channeled into that single spell.
"AAAAAAH!"
"Was killing Lily not enough? Do you want to kill her only son as well? You bloodthirsty beast!"
Sirius roared, "I didn't kill Lily! The one who leaked their location was Peter Pettigrew!"
"Ha!" Snape sneered. "A pathetic lie!"
He pocketed his wand and turned to leave. "Just wait for your end! This time, the Dementor's Kiss awaits you! Enjoy your final moments, Mr. Padfoot!"
The storage door slammed shut with a bang.
Sirius lay there, enduring the rhythmic waves of pain from the curse, his heart cold as ash. It seemed it was truly over this time.
Suddenly, two ornate golden vines rose from the floorboards. They grew rapidly to two meters in height before intertwining to form an arched gateway. A magical curtain of light, shimmering like a starry sky, floated within the arch, and a playful voice drifted through:
"I told you not to act rashly, but you just wouldn't listen! Caught again, aren't you? You silly uncle!"
"Hydrus!"
Sirius gasped in surprise. He hadn't expected Hydrus to have become so powerful.
Audrey stepped through the gateway. She looked at the disheveled Sirius, shook her head, and sighed in disappointment.
Sirius argued with a flushed face, "This was a complete accident! I was trying to save Harry!"
"Save Harry?" Audrey could not see inside the hospital wing, so she didn't know what had happened there.
"Yes, someone wanted to kill Harry!"
"Tell me everything." Audrey summoned a chair and sat down casually.
...
"Viggars Carrow? Could he have the eyes of a Basilisk in his hands?"
Audrey surveyed Snape's private stores. She saw the snake skin and bones, but the massive head was gone.
"Teaching him advanced Dark Arts..."
So that was it. The little diary had fallen into Carrow's hands!
Having understood the cause and effect, Audrey struck a pose like Kudou Shinichi and began to think. Sirius kept his eyes closed and said nothing. Partly, he was waiting for the lingering effects of the Cruciatus Curse to pass, and partly, he had absolute trust in his niece's abilities. If she could swallow Gringotts whole, her brain was surely more useful than his own reckless one.
After a moment, Audrey spoke. "Don't resist. Let them take you to the Ministry."
"What?" Sirius turned pale with shock. He had thought Audrey was here to rescue him. "Hydrus, I'm your uncle!"
"Don't worry," Audrey laughed. "The Ministry won't sentence you." She crossed her arms, looking completely confident. "As long as the money is right, I can delay your trial for a hundred years."
"But why do this?" The dog-brained wizard still couldn't understand why Audrey wanted the Ministry to take him away.
"Right now, Peter is nervous because of you. He'll flee at the slightest sign of trouble. Only after you have been 'caught' for a while will Peter Pettigrew slowly lower his guard. That will be the best time to catch him!"
"You... you are so resourceful. Why not just go and catch Peter now? Wouldn't that solve everything?"
Audrey shook her head. "I haven't been to the Gryffindor Common Room and I don't know the location of Ron Weasley's dormitory, so I cannot Apparate there. I haven't secured the castle permissions for the Gryffindor side yet."
Castle permissions? What was that? Sirius was baffled. He opened his mouth to ask, but Audrey cut him off.
"Alright, don't worry about the details. It's time to end your mess, or I'll spend my life worrying about my incompetent uncle! For now, let the news of your arrest fly for a while."
Sirius nodded blankly. Fine, he would just listen to Hydrus. Why worry? His little niece wouldn't hurt him. Was she after his inheritance? Don't be ridiculous. She was the master of the Heaven and Earth Bank; the money she had gifted to the Great Families alone amounted to billions! It would be a miracle if she cared about the Black family estate.
Audrey returned the way she came, and the magnificent golden archway vanished. Sirius looked at the empty floor, overwhelmed with emotion. Exhausted and weary, he gradually fell into a deep sleep.
An hour later, Snape walked back in, holding a potion as clear as water. Seeing Sirius asleep made him furious. He kicked him awake.
"Padfoot, you can actually sleep? It seems the Cruciatus Curse earlier wasn't enough!"
...
Sirius's situation wasn't actually the biggest problem. What was currently giving Dumbledore a headache was that the school year had only been active for two months—Christmas wasn't even here yet—and the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had already croaked.
Dumbledore knew exactly what kind of man Lockhart was. He had planned to use him as a placeholder for the year and then expose him for stealing other people's achievements, sending him off to Azkaban.
But now...
Snape was desperate for the DADA position, but there was no one to replace him as the Potions professor. The situation was awkward.
"Severus, if you take on both courses, you will be overwhelmed."
"Dumbledore, if I don't, what will happen to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes?"
"Do you think there is a possibility that I let Audrey Astley take over DADA for years one through four, while you handle years five through seven?"
"What?" Snape's eyes widened so far they looked ready to pop. "Have you gone senile? Letting a student serve as a professor?"
"Miss Astley is the most talented witch I have ever seen. Only today, she killed a Basilisk single-handedly; you know this," Dumbledore continued. "Furthermore, Mr. Gael Depp has been teaching her combat techniques for the past two years. In his words, among our Hogwarts professors, excluding myself, no one is necessarily her match!"
"Nonsense!" Snape snapped. "An underage witch better than us? You believe that? It was just a Basilisk. If I had encountered it, I could have killed it easily!"
"She only used one move."
Snape fell silent.
After a long while, he looked up. "I don't believe it. Unless she can defeat me in a duel, I will take over the DADA position even if it kills me!"
Snape, the Hogwarts Potions Professor, was a remarkable genius. Even as a student, he had created powerful dark magic like Sectumsempra. Now, he possessed a combat strength of eighteen Lu, making him a master-level force in the wizarding world.
However, Audrey Hydrus, whom he wished to duel, had inherited the knowledge of Slytherin. Her normal combat strength was twenty-seven Lu. If her special magical constitution was fully activated, she could reach thirty-two Lu! Though not quite equal to Dumbledore or Grindelwald, she was not far behind.
Dumbledore shook his head inwardly. "Very well, I agree. But... are you sure? It would be quite embarrassing if you lost!"
Snape sneered. "I, lose to that little girl? If you have time to worry about me, you'd better find someone to replace me in Potions. I've had quite enough of those students who are stupider than trolls!"
[Reviews - Power St0nes - Comments are highly appreciated to keep me going.....(+50 chapters) patre0n.c0m/talecrafter]