The cauldron's lid trembled under the assault of steam. The cellar was deathly quiet.
Anthony stood there, expressionless, breathing deep. Snape's sallow face wore a malicious grin. He said, satisfied, "Admit it, Anthony. You're just posturing. Like when you pretended to stand up for the students…"
"Shut up, Snape," Anthony said, his voice low.
"Shut up? I don't think so," Snape sneered. "What, have you already tried it? Dear Grandfather, I'm so sorry, your bones were eaten by stray dogs…"
"I said shut up!" Anthony snarled.
His voice boomed in the cellar. From the cabinets storing potion ingredients came a faint, rattling clatter. Things trembled inside massive glass jars and tiny crystal vials. Several jars on the highest shelf toppled. They hit the ground with sharp, clear cracks, shattering. Yellow-green liquid, soaking God-knew-what, spilled across the floor.
Snape went silent. His wand appeared in his hand. He took half a step back. Cold, wary focus had replaced the sneer from moments before.
Anthony's brow tightened. He closed his eyes.
Grandmother's cake. Grandfather's candles. Square patches of sunlight cut by the window frame on the table. He breathed in, deep, deeper, but the mocking voice still echoed in his mind, as if bouncing down a long tomb passage.
No. He didn't want to hurt anything. He wasn't thinking about how to make Snape shatter like those jars. But Snape deserved it. He deserved to be pushed gently into that black river. Then Snape would understand what death was. Understand why Anthony hadn't even tried to bring Grandfather and Grandmother back from Death's grip.
Necromancy nudged at his back, coaxing, winding around his hands, urging him on.
The hourglass on the table suddenly chimed. White steam from the potion drifted in the air. The fire beneath the cauldron was so weak it was about to go out. Anthony opened his eyes. The top of the hourglass was clean. Empty. Like a verdict: You have no time.
…
Suddenly, he wasn't in the dim, gloomy cellar. He was in a sun-drenched room. Grandmother was cooking in the kitchen. He had cleaned the bucket. He poured Grandfather a glass of water.
Grandfather leaned against three pillows, smiling at him, lifting a hand with effort. Anthony placed the cup in his grandfather's hand and closed the thin fingers around it. Grandfather's hand was barely lukewarm, the skin dry and thin, stretched taut over the bone. Anthony held on tighter, lifting the cup slowly to his lips.
"I'm sorry, little brush," Grandfather whispered, his voice rolling with strange, wet sounds. "I shouldn't have snapped at you… I didn't mean… you shouldn't…"
Anthony shook his head, lifted the cup a little higher.
"Really, I'm sorry for getting this damn illness…"
"I know," Anthony said softly. "It's okay, Grandfather."
"Little brush, my boy," Grandfather said. "Those things I said… none of it was what I meant, you understand? Forgive me. And especially don't copy my swearing. Your grandmother would be cross with me." He seemed to mean it as a joke. Anthony just felt utterly heartbroken.
"She wouldn't," Anthony said, his lips trembling. "I'm going to swear."
It was their only peaceful conversation in months. Three days later, on a quiet night, Grandfather passed away. Anthony swore at the funeral. Grandmother slapped him. Then she hugged him and cried.
…
Before Snape could react, Anthony snatched up the hourglass that had so gleefully sung of time's passage and hurled it against the wall.
He took a deep breath.
The room seemed to warp and invert. The door floated on the ceiling. The rug coiled into a ball. The armchair slumped on the floor, soft, like wax melting into a puddle.
Beside him, bottles and jars from the cabinets and shelves toppled one by one, exploding into powder. Fine dust of glass and crystal hung in the air, glittering like a billion stars. The relatively intact potion ingredients—lionfish spines, buckets of dead rats and snakes, corpses of salamanders and horned toads preserved in fluid—twitched and writhed tentatively amidst the shining fragments.
Everything was chaos. Everything was where it shouldn't be. Several jars of bat wings wobbled off the shelf and flew. Shifting dragon claws hooked onto them, tangled together, flying all over the room.
Snape gripped the nearby table, seeming to try and anchor himself. His wand hand strained upwards several times, but simply wouldn't rise.
Like a gale had swept through. Glass shards spun in the room. The chandelier swung violently. The floorboards groaned. The walls of the room wrinkled, like a newspaper casually crumpled and tossed aside.
BANG.
The chandelier shattered like an exploding sun. Anthony felt a dull, burning sensation, then a clatter as a shard of glass embedded in his arm was pushed out by rapidly healing flesh.
He looked down, bewildered, and saw blood on the floor. Strange. He didn't remember being able to bleed that much.
Then he realized it was Snape's blood. Snape was sallow, frowning, teeth gritted as he braced against the table, looking unsteady. Anthony shook his head. Under the black robes, it was hard to see exactly where the injury was, but the chandelier's favor had clearly not been exclusive to him.
Anthony raised his hand.
"Expecto…"
The mocking whisper lingered at his ear again.
Anthony shook his head. Tried once more. "Expecto Patronum!"
Grey-black mist poured out. Thin at first, then quickly coalescing into a massive shadow.
A bear appeared in the cellar. Its huge body looked cramped in the room full of furniture and debris. One hind foot stepped into the empty fireplace, crushing the fire grate flat.
The table was shoved aside, toppling. The fire under the cauldron had gone out. The cauldron itself rolled twice on the floor, its lid sliding off. Potion, a mix of brown and purple, slowly seeped out.
Anthony was under the Patronus's belly. The room was no longer warped. It was square, proper, as it should be. The bear looked left and right, surveying the wreck of Snape's office. Finally, it sat down regardless, lowering its head to tuck Anthony against its chest with its chin. Anthony hugged its massive nose, closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against it. Finally, he felt calm.
Bang. Snape slammed the door shut behind him and was gone. Anthony heard his limping footsteps fade down the corridor.
Going to find Madam Pomfrey, probably… he thought. He lay on the floor a while longer, hugging the bear, until he felt something sticky and unknown soak through his sleeve.
He lifted his sleeve and sniffed it.
"Good God…" Anthony groaned. He got up to clean the room. The place looked like the Skeleton Cat and Norbert had had a fight.
Papers were everywhere. He pulled notes on the Wraith Chicken project from under the bear's foot and found the missing pages stuck to the doorframe.
Several student essays floated on overturned potions and soaking extracts, the ink smeared into blobs. Anthony didn't even know how to handle that. Scourgify, by definition, would clean the ink off the parchment too. He didn't dare risk it.
In the end, he just used a Levitation Charm to spread the essays as flat as possible on the table, hoping they'd dry on their own.
"I just hope Snape doesn't make me pay for every last thing," he muttered, trying to figure out what that dried-up black lump was. Several crystal vials were shattered beyond the help of any Repairing Charm.
He'd need to check his savings at Gringotts.
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────
📖Read up to (100+ ) advanced chapters on Patre\on
🔍 Search:p a t r e o n.com/GoldenLong
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────