Hermione's strength flowed from her arm, carrying a familiar warmth and steadiness, pulling Lia back to reality from that cold phantom and leading her steadily onto the train.
The train door slammed shut behind them with a "clank," cutting off the clamor of the platform but failing to sever that crimson gaze branded deep within her soul.
Lia stepped onto the train following Hermione's lead, as if that cross-temporal eye contact from just moments ago had never happened.
But her senses felt like steel cast into lava, undergoing a violent reforging.
"Let's find a compartment," Hermione's voice carried a hint of tension as she tightly held Lia's slightly cool little hand, navigating carefully through the crowded corridor.
Her gaze fell on Lia's pale profile from time to time; that excessive calmness only made the worry in her heart grow stronger.
Harry and Ron followed behind. Harry was still immersed in his resentment over being isolated by the Order of the Phoenix, radiating a low-pressure aura that made him difficult to approach, indifferent to everything around him.
Ron seemed somewhat at a loss. He wanted to say something to break the oppressive silence, but looking at Hermione's tense back, he wisely kept his mouth shut.
They soon found a temporarily empty compartment.
Lia went in first and chose the innermost seat, her "fixed coordinate" in the carriage.
Hermione sat down right next to her. Almost instantly, Lia leaned her head against Hermione's shoulder, seeking that unique sense of warmth and security.
"You saw him, didn't you?" Hermione whispered, low enough that only the two of them could hear.
Hermione had guessed it after all; Lia looked at her in surprise.
"Yes," Lia nodded, her azure eyes calm and rippleless, simply stating a fact. "He came in person. He was right there on the platform."
Hermione's heart skipped a beat.
She looked at Lia's overly calm profile, and a deeper sense of unease seized her.
fear still has an outlet for release, but this kind of calm that suppresses all storms beneath a surface of ice is even more heart-wrenching.
The compartment door slid open, and Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood joined them one after another.
Harry stared out the window, Ron flipped through a Quidditch magazine, Neville fiddled with his Mimbulus mimbletonia, and Luna held a copy of The Quibbler upside down.
Lia closed her eyes, seemingly napping, but in reality, her Eye of Truth had already clearly parsed the magical ley lines of the entire carriage.
Neville's plant green, Luna's silver-blue, Ron's orange-red, and the irritable red on Harry, which was entangled with strands of ominous black thread.
"Potter, how was your summer? I heard you're about to be expelled by the Ministry of Magic?"
Draco Malfoy, accompanied by his two dim-witted lackeys, roughly pulled open the door and spoke in his usual nauseating tone.
A customary sneer hung on his face, but a hint of irrepressible smugness peeked through his eyes.
Harry stood up abruptly, magic wand already in hand. "Get out, Malfoy!"
"Don't be so excited, the savior," Malfoy raised his hands insincerely, his lips curling into a loathsome arc. "I'm just here to deliver a friendly reminder. Some people should probably stop keeping that name on the tip of their tongues all day."
He emphasized "some people" and "that name," his eyes sweeping contemptuously over Harry before flickering briefly toward Hermione and Lia.
Lia's eyelids moved, her eyelashes trembling slightly before she slowly opened her eyes.
She smelled it.
On Malfoy, besides that annoying arrogance and the perfume characteristic of pure-blood families, there was an indescribable, heart-palpitating fear.
"Is your father doing well?"
Lia's voice was very soft, yet it accurately sliced through Malfoy's facade.
Malfoy's body stiffened, and the sneer on his face froze instantly.
He turned toward her sharply, his gaze fierce. "What did you say? You filthy... mudblood's hanger-on!"
"I smell it," Lia looked at him calmly, no sympathy in those sky-blue eyes. "The scent of Crucio. It's very strong. It seems your master is very dissatisfied with him."
She didn't use a question; she stated it as a fact.
The color drained from Malfoy's face in an instant, leaving it even paler than his naturally fair skin.
He looked at Lia as if he had seen a ghost, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.
He couldn't understand how this Cat-girl, whom he called a "mudblood's hanger-on," could know about the inhuman torture his father had endured at the manor—secrets known only to the highest-ranking Death Eaters.
"Get out," Hermione stood up and spat out the word coldly.
Malfoy seemed startled awake by the word, or perhaps terrified by Lia's eyes that seemed to see through his soul.
He glared viciously at Lia, his eyes a mix of resentment, unwillingness, and an unmaskable, bone-deep fear.
Then, he turned away almost in a panic, fleeing the compartment with his two equally pale and silenced lackeys.
Lia watched his retreating back with some surprise, tilting her head slightly.
Why doesn't this person ever learn? She remembered the last time at the station, this guy had also come to provoke them and then fled in fear with his father...
"Lia, how did you..." Harry asked blankly.
"He has a scent on him," Lia said succinctly, closing her eyes again.
Hermione squeezed her hand. Lia was constantly perceiving the darkness of this world in ways they couldn't understand.
Halfway through the journey, a pair of soft, somewhat calculated footsteps stopped at their compartment door.
A squat woman wearing a fluffy pink cardigan poked her head in with a beaming smile.
She had a broad, toad-like face and a pink bow-shaped hairclip on top of her head.
"Good afternoon, children," her voice was like honey laced with poison, sickeningly sweet. "I am the senior undersecretary to the Minister of magic, Dolores Umbridge."
She looked over everyone in the compartment of her own accord, her gaze lingering longest on Harry.
"You're Harry Potter, aren't you?" Her voice carried an uncomfortable stickiness as she savored the name.
However, in Lia's opened Eye of Truth, this woman was a pink mass of decay composed of lies, malice, and stale rules.
She emitted a sickeningly sweet "sweet poison" aura, like flowers rotting prematurely in a greenhouse. The scent, a mix of decay and pretense, caused Lia a wave of physical discomfort.
Lia suddenly realized that the Troll she had encountered before actually smelled better than this woman.
More importantly, Lia saw dark pink magical thorns, invisible to the naked eye, spreading out from within her, tentatively winding toward everyone in the compartment.
They were like invisible tentacles, trying to probe into everyone's minds, searching for weaknesses and spreading control.
When Umbridge's gaze turned to Lia, greed flashed in those bulging eyes.
She clearly hadn't expected to find a half-human, half-cat creature here.
"Oh, Hogwarts students actually have a Magical Creature. How cute."
Malicious magic silently stabbed toward Lia.
Lia didn't move.
She remained leaning in Hermione's arms, her body as soft as a ball of cotton.
But deep within her azure eyes, a faint green light flashed for a split second.
Crack.
A crisp snapping sound, audible only on the magical level, rang out.
Umbridge's sugary smile stiffened for a moment, and her stout body gave an imperceptible shudder.
She looked at Lia with suspicion and uncertainty, but saw only a pair of innocent blue eyes and a pair of slightly twitching, soft, and harmless-looking cat ears.
An illusion?
"We shall become very good friends," Umbridge said, suppressing the strange feeling in her heart. After speaking to Harry and giving Lia one last deep look, she turned and left.
The pink figure disappeared at the end of the corridor.
"Merlin's checkered skirt," Ron cursed under his breath. "Who is she? She feels even more uncomfortable than Snape."
"Dolores Umbridge," Hermione's expression was grim. "She advocates for strict legislation to deal with 'dangerous part-human beings'."
Her gaze fell on Lia, her eyes filled with worry.
Lia just shook her head, leaning in Hermione's arms to steady her breathing.
Hermione instinctively kneaded her fluffy ears, but she didn't know that this time Lia wasn't seeking protection.
Hermione instinctively kneaded her fluffy ears, trying to soothe her, but she didn't know that this time Lia wasn't seeking protection; she was using that familiar warmth to calm the surge of killing intent within her.
Under Umbridge's malicious gaze, Lia had almost been unable to stop herself from clawing the woman's eyes out.
The green tint in her eyes quietly dissipated under the familiar scent and the faintly glowing silver bell collar.
She looked up, her azure eyes filled with unprecedented disgust.
"Her scent is disgusting, Hermione." Lia rubbed her face hard against Hermione.
"She is a plague."
The train pulled into Hogsmeade station in the dark of night. As they stepped out of the carriage onto the platform, Lia's Danger Intuition began to emit a low hum.
She looked up toward the brightly lit Hogwarts Castle in the distance.
In her perception, that thousand-year-old magical fortress was currently being slowly permeated and surrounded by an invisible layer of pink toxic mist.
This year's danger didn't come from monsters in the Forbidden Forest, nor from conspiracies in the dungeons.
The danger had already taken a seat at the staff table.
And Lia had already marked it as prey.
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