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Inside the classroom, the silver hemisphere slowly rotated.
Snape watched the mist that still wrapped around Lucien, knowing the boy was trying to condense it into a full Patronus.
Honestly, he didn't think it was necessary to rush.
Mastering control of the mist first, then moving on to forming a complete guardian, would be far more stable.
It would feel more natural—and besides, the Patronus Charm's main use was against Dementors, Lethifolds, and other dark creatures. A fully formed Patronus was stronger than loose mist, but unless you deliberately went looking for trouble in certain places, you rarely encountered those beings.
The spell wasn't something most wizards needed in daily life. There was no reason to push so urgently for the final step.
Still, sometimes magical progress happened in a single fleeting "feeling."
That feeling could vanish in an instant, hard to catch. But if you seized it when it appeared, the leap forward could be enormous. Lucien's sharp intuition and his growing mastery of the spell told Snape the boy was probably in exactly that state right now.
After all, Lucien wasn't reckless. He wasn't a Gryffindor who would charge ahead without any certainty.
So Snape didn't stop him.
He had already prepared a full set of potions anyway—blood-replenishing, magic-soothing, mental-trauma relief…
If Lucien got hurt, Snape could pour every last drop down his throat and fix it.
The slowly rotating hemisphere of Patronus mist suddenly went still for a split second.
Snape caught the tiny change. His eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his hat.
The next moment, ripples spread across the surface of the mist.
A silver-white bird emerged from the cloud.
It had a half-translucent quality. Its wings stirred faint trails of mist as it flew, like a fish leaping from water and scattering droplets.
Round, plump body. A pair of enormous eyes that took up half its face. Two tufts of feather-like "ears" sticking up from its head…
It was, unmistakably, an owl.
Snape's brow furrowed.
An owl?
Just… an owl?
To be honest, with the level of talent Lucien had shown, Snape had expected something rarer—a magical creature, an ancient beast, or something even stranger.
A phoenix. A fire dragon. A unicorn. Even a legendary being—he had considered all of them.
But a plain, ordinary owl?
Not that he looked down on owls.
Owls were perfectly respectable animals. It was just…
"Hmm. Wrong."
Snape's gaze suddenly sharpened.
He noticed that the mist still surrounding Lucien showed no sign of fading.
The silver hemisphere kept rotating steadily. The color hadn't dimmed. The volume hadn't shrunk. If anything, the rotation was speeding up—faster and tighter than before.
Once a full Patronus was summoned, the remaining mist should dissipate. That was basic spell theory. The caster condensed the mist into a solid animal form, and any leftover energy was either absorbed by the guardian or faded naturally.
No one had ever kept such a massive cloud of mist after successfully forming a complete Patronus.
The thought had barely formed when Snape's pupils contracted sharply.
Another bird burst out of the mist.
This one was much larger than the owl.
It spread its wings and rose gracefully from the cloud, elegant and unhurried. Long tail feathers trailed behind it like a flowing silver waterfall.
Even without the vivid red coloring, Snape recognized it instantly—mainly because every time he visited Dumbledore's office he saw the real version of this bird.
A phoenix.
A silver-white, translucent phoenix.
It circled once above the classroom, wings beating and scattering tiny silver sparks that drifted down like broken stars across the floor.
Snape was momentarily speechless.
If Lucien's Patronus had simply been a phoenix—a rare magical creature—he wouldn't have been shocked at all. He would have thought it only fitting.
But that was before the owl had appeared first.
How could one wizard have two Patronuses?
Snape's eyes stayed locked on the mist.
It still hadn't dissipated.
If anything, the signs of change were growing stronger.
More obvious ripples spread across the silver surface, as if something inside was churning violently.
The mist looked like boiling water—trembling, swelling, contracting—like countless hands were pounding against the silver membrane from within.
As if even more creatures were trying to break free.
Snape couldn't help muttering under his breath:
"There's more?"