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Snape leaned lightly against the warded classroom wall and reached up to adjust his wizard hat, keeping the brim from blocking his view.
He watched Lucien raise his wand.
The wand traced a smooth arc in the boy's steady hand, leaving faint silver traces in the air like a pen gliding across paper.
Snape mentally gave the casting motion a score—not perfect, but close enough.
At the same moment, Lucien's lips parted and he spoke the incantation.
The final syllable and the final stroke of the wand ended together.
A warm silver light suddenly bloomed at the tip of Lucien's wand.
It wasn't harsh. Instead it carried a gentle, soothing quality.
Snape narrowed his eyes. Even from halfway across the classroom, he could feel a faint warmth radiating from that direction—like a sudden beam of winter sunlight landing on his skin.
It felt like power that touched the soul itself.
The next instant, silvery-white mist poured from the wand tip.
At first it was only a thin thread, trembling like a fragile seedling just breaking through the soil.
But the "seedling" grew at an astonishing speed—almost instantly swelling dozens of times larger. Thick mist erupted outward in every direction, flooding the room.
Snape's eyebrows twitched.
He flicked his fingers. The protective runes on the walls responded at once, glowing faintly before spreading across his body in a transparent, nearly invisible film that wrapped him from head to toe.
Now the mist wouldn't touch him.
Lucien's Patronus mist made anyone who contacted it recall happy, positive memories. Most people wouldn't mind that at all.
Sweet candy. Perfect test scores. Friends laughing… Who would object to feeling happy?
But Snape refused.
Or rather—he was afraid to.
He knew that if the mist reached him, he would see it again: that vivid red hair, those bright green eyes, and that gentle, sunlit smile…
They would surge up from the depths of his memory under the mist's pull, as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
It was the happiest memory Snape had—without exception.
The first time he met Lily Evans.
That summer. Sunlight filtering through the leaves onto the grass. A little girl sitting on a swing, turning to look at him.
Her eyes held no fear, no disgust—only pure curiosity and kindness.
Those eyes had lit up a life that had been nothing but darkness and pain for as long as he could remember.
But now all Snape could see was the memory.
That light had gone out long ago.
The happiest memory also brought the most painful aftertaste.
The silvery mist kept spreading like a tide, washing over desks, the blackboard, every inch of the classroom.
Snape watched it draw closer, thicker, almost pressing against his barrier.
He lowered his gaze slightly.
"Still having trouble—"
The words had barely left his mouth when the mist, already about to crash into the barrier, suddenly stopped.
It was as if someone had grabbed it by the tail. The churning cloud trembled violently, straining forward with everything it had—yet it couldn't advance another inch.
The mist hovered less than a foot from the barrier, rolling and twisting like it was being held back by invisible hands.
The corner of Snape's mouth lifted in the tiniest, almost invisible smile.
His black eyes stayed fixed on the boy faintly visible through the mist.
Lucien's body trembled slightly, but the tip of his wand remained perfectly steady.
Slowly, the mist began to retreat.
First the edges pulled back a few inches, then the entire tide started reversing.
It was as if countless invisible hands were tugging from the center outward, drawing the spilled mist back in bit by bit.
Arms crossed over his chest, Snape simply watched.
The mist kept shrinking, compressing, reshaping.
No longer loose and flooding the entire room, it grew denser and more solid with every second—like a great mass of silver-white dough being kneaded.
It expanded and contracted again and again.
Finally the mist condensed into a single hemisphere, the silver light completely enveloping Lucien's form.