Chapter 13: Sigh, Can Reconciliation Be Possible? (Patreon)

The next day was the morning of November 1st.

When Yuzo walked into the brightly lit Great Hall for breakfast, side by side with Harriet, Ron and Hermione, word of last night's troll in the first-floor girls' washroom had already spread along the long tables of every House.

The four of them were sitting together, piling scrambled eggs and bacon onto their plates, when Professor Snape, in a black high-collared robe, suddenly came over from the direction of the staff table.

This gloomy mature beauty, with her straight black hair and heavy dark circles under her eyes, had a noticeably odd gait. Her left leg hitched for half a second with every step, and she limped to a stop behind the Gryffindor table.

Her gaze swept across Harriet's face first, then, for some reason, settled on Yuzo, who was drinking pumpkin juice.

"…What a truly astonishing feat, Potter. And our school's one and only male student, Mr. Yuzo."

Snape folded her arms over her chest and looked down at the two of them, the corners of her mouth pulling into a frosty curve. "A handful of first-years, barely two months into their schooling, walk away unscathed from under the club of a full-grown mountain troll, and even win precious points for your House… I suppose the rules of Hogwarts can no longer contain your extraordinary courage?"

This congratulation, which sounded thoroughly sarcastic, made Ron and Hermione beside them instinctively hunch their necks.

Yuzo set down his cup. He looked at Snape's left leg, whose stiffness showed even under the loose black robe, and remembered that last night in the washroom she had been the first to act, shredding the floor with a silent Sectumsempra to save him.

He ignored the barb in her words, turned and lifted his head, and met those deep, gloomy black eyes with sincerity. "Um… last night in the washroom, it was thanks to Professor Snape arriving in time to step in that I'm able to sit here eating breakfast in one piece. Thank you very much."

Snape clearly hadn't expected the boy she kept picking on in Potions class to suddenly lob such a straightforward thank-you at her.

Her pale face stiffened for an instant, and the cutting remarks she had prepared jammed in her throat.

The gloomy Potions professor said nothing. She merely glared at Yuzo, then flung out her black sleeve with a sharp snap and limped away from the Gryffindor table, dragging her injured left leg.

This little interlude at the breakfast table was soon forgotten.

As the cold wind of mid-November swept across the Scottish Highlands, the mood all over Hogwarts was set completely ablaze by the approaching Quidditch season.

At eleven o'clock sharp on Saturday morning, sunlight spilled over the lush green Quidditch pitch.

In his previous life, Yuzo had only ever seen such spectacle as special effects on a movie screen. Now, for the first time across two lifetimes, he was watching this fantastical wizarding sport live, and the excitement and wonder surging in him were no less than that of the Gryffindor girls around him, who waved gold-and-scarlet banners and shouted themselves hoarse.

Yuzo squeezed into the front row of the stands with Ron, Hermione and Nevia, which gave them the best view.

As Madam Hooch blew her silver whistle, fourteen girl players on broomsticks shot into the air like arrows leaving the bowstring. The red Quaffle and two black Bludgers streaked back and forth at high speed, and the fierce physical clashes drove the roar of the crowd higher with every wave.

The match gradually reached the most nail-biting moment of the first half.

Harriet, hovering high above the pitch, suddenly dropped her center of gravity. Her green eyes behind her round glasses locked onto a flicker of golden light near the goalposts: the Golden Snitch, the thing that decided the match!

Just as Harriet urged her Nimbus 2000 into a dive to give chase, the broomstick beneath her abruptly began to convulse in midair, with no warning at all.

The broom slipped completely out of her control. First it sent her tumbling through two perilous somersaults high above the ground, then it began thrashing wildly left and right, trying to fling Harriet off its back from dozens of feet up.

"What's wrong with Harriet's broom?" Ron was so frightened that she grabbed the railing in front of her.

Hermione, who had been holding a pair of brass binoculars, swiftly swung the lenses from the air to the staff stand across the pitch.

Only two seconds later, the brown-haired girl's face changed drastically. She grabbed Yuzo and Ron by the sleeves and cried urgently, "It's Snape! I can see it clearly through the binoculars. She's staring dead at Harriet's broom, and her lips keep chanting a curse!"

Yuzo took the binoculars Hermione pushed into his hands and looked across, then clapped a heavy hand on Hermione's shoulder, which was tight with tension.

He raised his other hand and pointed over the noisy crowd to a spot in the staff stand only three or four seats away from Snape.

"Hermione, take another careful look at the row of seats diagonally behind Snape."

Yuzo raised the binoculars back to Hermione's eyes. "Professor Quirrell, with the purple hijab wrapped around her head, seems to be staring at Harriet without blinking too, and her mouth is muttering away as well!"

Hermione and Ron, who had leaned in, looked through the lenses, and both sucked in a sharp breath.

Just as Yuzo had said, Snape and Quirrell in the stand were both gazing unblinkingly up at Harriet, who was in mortal danger in midair, and both their lips were opening and closing at a rapid pace.

With so little information, Hermione and Ron could no longer tell who was secretly causing the trouble.

"Whichever of the two is behind it, if they keep chanting, Harriet's going to fall and be smashed to death!"

Yuzo decisively took back the binoculars and shoved them at Ron, then turned to the sweat-drenched Hermione and said quickly, "The two of us go over right now, split up and make a mess, and break both their chants. Problem solved, right?"

Hermione, frantic with worry, took the crisp, decisive proposal on board.

Without a moment's delay, the two bent low and sprinted down the wooden steps at the back of the stand. They wove through the packed crowd and ducked into the plank-walled passage under the staff stand across the pitch.

The space beneath the stand was dim and cramped. A few shafts of sunlight fell through the gaps between the crossbeams overhead, and they could clearly see rows of dangling ankles and robe hems above.

"Professor Quirrell is in the third row on the left. I'll deal with her!" Hermione pointed at the wooden ladder on the left and scurried over, crouching low.

"Then leave Snape to me!"

Yuzo volunteered, tightened his grip on his pine wand, and nimbly made his way along the right-hand support post to the spot directly beneath Snape's seat.

Through the wide gap between two planks above his head, Yuzo saw at a glance the hem of that familiar black witch's robe and the slender calf stretched slightly outward because of her injured left leg.

Not far to the left came the alarmed cries and confused shoving as Hermione cast her fire-starting spell and set Quirrell's trouser leg alight. Standing under the boards, Yuzo stared at the black skirt hem hanging above him, and a petty urge for revenge suddenly sprang up in his chest. This gloomy mature beauty not only found every way to single him out in Potions class, but just a few mornings ago, when he had kindly thanked her, she'd had the nerve to glare at him!

The other students would do no worse than singe a robe corner. Since he had to interrupt her casting today anyway, why not give her a prank she'd never forget!

His mind made up, Yuzo's mouth curled slightly. He raised the pine wand in his right hand, pointed the tip at the broad black skirt above, and in a voice only he could hear, firmly intoned the charm he knew by heart:

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

Invisible magic gushed from the wand tip and lifted the inside of Snape's robe hem with perfect precision.

With a soft whoosh, the heavy black robe hem flew upward as if struck head-on by a sudden gust rising from the ground. In front of several professors, with no warning, a big swath of it flipped high into the air, exposing the slender legs in black stockings, and that sliver of 'absolute territory' above them, straight to the cool autumn breeze!

Seeing the stand above him instantly erupt into uproar and chaos, Yuzo thought, What a relief. He tucked away his wand at once, turned and strode off, ready to slip away in the confusion and meet Hermione in the distance as planned.

But Yuzo never dreamed—this skirt-flipping stunt of his, born of nothing but a boy's prankster streak, had set off what kind of terrifying thunderclap in the mind of the gloomy mature beauty above…

In the instant her hem was forcibly flipped and cold air rushed beneath her skirt, Severa's entire body locked up in the stand as if struck by lightning.

The humiliation and psychological scar from fifteen years ago, from a blinding June afternoon by the Black Lake at Hogwarts, when that bully James Potter, who liked to pass as a boy, had hoisted her upside down in midair with Levicorpus and exposed her leggings in front of Lily and countless upperclasswomen of this girls' school, swallowed her reason in that moment like a burst dam!

Her reaction speed and the way she drew her wand were beyond anything an ordinary student could imagine.

In the very same millisecond that her left hand clamped down on her skirt by reflex, Snape's right hand had already whipped out her wand like lightning.

She didn't even need to look down for her target. Going purely by the trail of magical fluctuation left behind, she thrust the wand tip into the gap between the two planks beneath her feet and, with her whole body burning with the shame and chill of a touched nerve, fired an unerringly precise full Body-Bind Curse in an instant:

"Petrificus Totalus!"

A dazzling, pale-white beam shot straight down through the gap in the boards overhead. Yuzo had barely turned and taken half a step. He didn't even have time to think of dodging before the curse struck him squarely in the back.

His arms snapped tight against his sides, and his legs clamped together and went rigid, as if filled with heavy lead. Like a frozen plank, he kept his forward-stepping pose perfectly and toppled onto his back with a thud on the wooden walkway beneath the stand.

Every muscle and joint in his body was locked solid. Only his black eyeballs could still barely turn in their sockets.

The din overhead dissolved into a total mess, with Quirrell being knocked over and cheers rising as Harriet regained control of her broom.

In the shadow directly above Yuzo, a faint rustle of cloth came softly.

Professor Snape, who had just straightened her robe hem, ignored the stabbing pain of her pulled leg wound and slowly crouched down on the stand seat.

She lowered her head, and a lock of slightly oily, straight black hair slid down her cheek and through the narrow gap between the planks.

And those bloodshot black eyes, mixed with a heaven-high rage and some indescribable shame, met the eyes of Yuzo, lying on the ground with only his eyeballs able to move, across a distance of less than half a meter, and the two of them locked in a staring contest…