Chapter 20: The Smell of Garlic, the Parasitic Remnant Soul Hidden Beneath the Turban (Patreon)

Mid-October, and the cold rain over the Scottish Highlands showed no sign of letting up.

Moisture beaded on the stone walls of Hogwarts Castle, bone-chilling and damp. But in a classroom at the far end of the third floor, the air carried no smell of wet earth. It reeked of garlic, so strongly it was nearly nauseating.

The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.

Quirinus Quirrell was swaddled in thick, deep purple robes, his head wrapped in that enormous, ridiculous purple turban.

He cowered behind the lectern, his face deathly pale, trembling faintly like a leaf in an autumn wind.

"T-today… we're l-learning… the b-basic repelling spells… against… Red Caps…"

Quirrell's stammering voice echoed through the room, thin as the buzz of a mosquito's wings.

Most of the students below pinched their noses, their faces twisted with impatience and disgust. Even the Gryffindors, usually so keen on Defense Against the Dark Arts, were doodling listlessly in their notes.

Raven, however, sitting in the second row of the long Slytherin table, wasn't covering his nose and mouth like everyone else.

His back was straight as a pine. Behind his black eyes, [Magic Circuit Analysis Vision] ran silently at full power.

On the etheric plane, invisible to ordinary eyes, the flow of magic around Quirrell took on a twisted, spine-chilling aspect.

That was nothing like the magical field of an ordinary, timid wizard.

The life-magic inside Quirrell was surging toward the back of his skull in an abnormal torrent, pouring in like a flood!

And just behind that thick, filthy purple turban coiled a dark vortex, dense as pitch, radiating bitter cold and pure malice!

It was a fragment of a soul, ragged and withered, yet carrying the ancient, crushing weight of a higher order.

Like a greedy leech, it had sunk its phantom tendrils deep into Quirrell's spine and central nerves, and with every breath it drained the host's vitality to sustain itself.

Voldemort's parasitic remnant soul.

"Interesting…"

Raven narrowed his eyes slightly. He kept his magic pressed down tight in the depths of his soul, leaking not the faintest trace.

With the supreme insight of [Grand Comprehension], he saw the fatal flaw in this form of possession almost instantly: the rejection between body and soul was extremely violent.

Quirrell wasn't hiding himself behind that reek of garlic to ward off vampires at all. He was masking the stench of a living corpse, the rot creeping through the muscles of his neck as the soul corroded him!

On the dais, Quirrell gave a barely perceptible shudder. The black mist at the back of his head rippled, as if it had sensed something, and he whipped his head around with a nervous jerk, sweeping the room with bloodshot, cowering eyes.

But beneath Raven's flawless concealment, Quirrell found nothing. He could only turn back, jittery, and go on stumbling through his textbook.

*

When the bell rang to end class, the students fled the garlic-reeking room as if granted a pardon.

Raven descended the spiral stone staircase at an unhurried pace. He had just turned into the shadow of an archway linking to the second-floor corridor when he heard low, suppressed voices from around the corner ahead.

"I trust you haven't forgotten what you promised me at the edge of the Forbidden Forest last week, Quirrell."

Severus Snape's voice, cold as a scalpel, echoed through the empty stone passage, carrying an unconcealed warning and scrutiny. "Some secrets are not for a clumsy disguise like yours to meddle with… You understand my meaning. Do not test my patience."

"S-Severus… I-I really was just g-gathering… gathering some glowing moonwort…" Quirrell's tearful stammer trembled in the shadows.

"See that it stays that way." Snape gave a cold snort and spun around, his black robes flaring like the wings of a bat.

But the instant the Potions master stepped out of the shadows, his deep, hollow black eyes collided squarely with Raven, who was leaning against the archway's pillar.

Quirrell seized the chance to scurry off with his head in his hands, vanishing at the end of the staircase.

Only Snape and Raven remained in the stone corridor. The torches guttered in the draft, stretching their shadows long across the ancient walls.

Snape's narrow black eyes slitted as he looked down at the unruffled boy, his tone frosty. "Wandering the castle and eavesdropping on professors's conversations… not a habit becoming of a good Slytherin, Mr. Capet."

"I was only passing through on my way to the library, Professor Snape."

Raven inclined his head slightly, neither servile nor defiant, his voice calm and steady. He even added, with a pointed edge, "Though… the rotting garlic stench on the third-floor corridor is honestly more physically sickening than a cauldron of poisonous slugs stewing in the dungeons. Sometimes an overly deliberate timidity is just there to cover a deeper rot. Don't you think, sir?"

Beneath his robes, Snape's fingers twitched, almost imperceptibly.

This battle-hardened master of Occlumency felt, very rarely, a sharp flicker contract deep in his pupils!

Is he probing me?

Or could it be that this eleven-year-old Capet orphan has seen right through that turban to what's wrong with Quirrell?!

After several suffocating seconds of silence, Snape slowly withdrew his gaze, the corner of his mouth pulling into a cold, fathomless curve. "Curiosity is the common failing of Ravenclaws. But in Slytherin, overgrown curiosity… tends to land people in a morgue in Knockturn Alley."

With a sweep of his black robes, Snape strode past Raven, leaving a low warning echoing down the corridor: "Mind your own wand, Capet."

Raven watched the direction in which Snape had gone, his deep black eyes glinting with amusement in the shadows.

That double agent was clearly keeping a secret watch on Quirrell, but bound by Dumbledore's grand strategy, Snape couldn't act directly.

And that left Raven the perfect gap to maneuver in the dark.

*

In the last ten days of October, the festive mood of Halloween began to spread through Hogwarts.

Thousands of live bats fluttered from the Great Hall's decorations, giant jack-o'-lanterns grown by Hagrid himself floated beneath the ceiling, and the air was heavy with the sweet scents of roasted pumpkin, cinnamon apple pie and molten toffee.

The Slytherin common room.

Raven sat in a leather armchair by the window. Open on his knee lay A Study of Ancient Defensive Ward-Arrays and the Physiological Resistances of Giant Creatures, written in Old Norse, while his quill raced across a blank sheet of parchment, sketching "Concussive Sonic Resonance Runes" aimed at high magic-resistance hides.

Less than three days remained until the "troll disturbance" Quirrell had orchestrated on Halloween night.

Just then, a light, familiar set of footsteps stopped beside his desk, bringing a faint, cool scent of white roses.

Draconia wore a dark green cinched cloak edged with silver fur today, her slightly curled platinum hair brushed to a glossy shine and tumbling casually over her shoulders.

The young lady had her lips pressed together, and in her arms she held two thick, ancient, yellowed volumes embossed with the Malfoy twin-serpent crest.

She cleared her throat, chin lifted out of habit, though her watery grey-blue eyes drifted, unable to meet Raven's.

"Hey, Capet."

Her voice was crisp, with a deliberately prim edge. "I saw you yesterday after class, looking through materials on the magical resistance of ancient trolls and the part-human races."

Raven looked up and closed the old tome in his hands, regarding her with a half-smile. "What, is Miss Malfoy going to mock me for wasting my time on low-grade dangerous creatures?"

"Who has time to mock you!" Draconia retorted at once, like someone whose tail had been stepped on, a flush of annoyed pink rising on her snowy face.

But then she drew a deep breath, as though steeling herself, and set the two heavy volumes down on the corner of Raven's desk with a stiff, awkward thud.

"These are… the originals from the underground library at Malfoy Manor. Handwritten Notes on the Anatomical Weaknesses of Medieval War Trolls and Heavily Armored Creatures."

She folded her arms and turned her head away haughtily, staring at the eerie green flames dancing in the fireplace, words tumbling out fast. "They record thirty paths for conducting blunt-force magic through dense fat layers. Don't get the wrong idea! It's just that those commoners' junk books you borrowed from the library are full of mistakes, and I couldn't stand to watch!"

Draconia bit her lower lip, her voice dropping, tinged with an awkward concern she hadn't noticed herself. "And… at the Halloween feast, you'd better not go running around everywhere like you usually do. There've been strange smells in the castle lately. My father said in his letter… that this year Hogwarts might not be safe."

Raven reached out, his fingertips brushing lightly over the yellowed Malfoy family manuscript.

The edges of the pages were impeccably preserved, and still carried a trace of the faint, cool scent of her fingertips. She had clearly sent an owl in a rush to fetch it from the Manor last night.

"A pure-blood family's ancient collection really does run deeper than the standard textbooks in the second-floor reading room," Raven said, lifting his eyes. His black gaze met her trembling pupils, a warm, deep smile rising in them. "Thank you for the warning, Draconia."

The moment the name "Draconia" came out of the boy's low, gentle voice, the young lady froze as if struck by lightning.

No more distant, polite "Miss Malfoy." He had called her by her given name.

An indescribable heat rushed from her earlobes down into the depths of her neck, and her heart pounded so hard it felt ready to leap out of her throat.

"You… who said you could call me by my name?!"

She stammered out a rebuke with no bite at all, her eyes darting everywhere with nowhere to land. Like a startled swan, she stamped her small leather boot, clapped a hand to her burning cheek, and fled in a panic back toward the girls' corridor.

Raven watched that slender, flustered figure scurry away, then slowly opened the notes on his desk. The smile in his eyes faded, replaced by a cold resolve, like ice that had lain frozen for ten thousand years.

The Halloween night of the troll.

The stage was set, and he, the hunter who had prepared long ago… was waiting for his prey to walk into the trap.