What was the old bat up to at this moment?
In his dimly lit office, Snape sat behind his desk, thoughtfully turning the Resurrection Stone over in his hand.
It had taken him a considerable amount of time to confirm that a powerful seal did indeed exist upon the Resurrection Stone.
This seal restricted the Stone's true power, preventing it from truly bringing the souls of the deceased back from the underworld.
Under the suppression of the seal, the most the Resurrection Stone could do was summon a false projection of a soul.
Precisely because it was a mere projection, the deceased summoned by the Resurrection Stone would appear with a cold, vacant, and mechanical expression.
If it were a completely whole soul, the state of the deceased under these circumstances would be much closer to that of Voldemort when he lost his body.
For the entire summer vacation, Snape had been researching how to break the seal on the Resurrection Stone.
Through his tireless efforts, he had finally found a glimmer of a lead.
The simplest way to undo the seal on the Resurrection Stone was to acquire another Deathly Hallow.
A Deathly Hallow could not resist the energy of another Deathly Hallow. If he could get his hands on the Elder Wand in Dumbledore's possession, breaking the seal on the Resurrection Stone would naturally be an effortless task.
But that was impossible.
While searching through historical records regarding the Deathly Hallows, Snape had also learned about some of the deeds of those two "close companions" who had once attempted to gather all three Hallows.
Ariana's death would forever remain a profound agony in Dumbledore's heart.
If he wanted to borrow the Elder Wand from Dumbledore, Snape would inevitably have to inform Dumbledore about the Resurrection Stone.
At that point, even if he managed to borrow the Elder Wand, whether the Resurrection Stone would remain in his hands would be an entirely different story.
After trying every possible method, Snape found alternative means to break the seal.
And that was a massive amount of energy.
Absolute power conquers all; brute force works miracles.
As long as there was enough energy, he could simply and brutally shatter the seal on the Resurrection Stone.
However, when utilizing this method, he had to carefully control the energy output. Otherwise, by the time the seal was broken, the Resurrection Stone itself might be destroyed.
Lost in thought for a moment, Snape gradually snapped out of his reverie, his unfocused eyes locking back onto the Resurrection Stone in his hand.
After pondering for a long time, Snape reached out and pulled open his desk drawer, revealing a massive red gemstone inside.
The Sorcerer's Stone.
It was the exact same one saved during Harry's first year from the Explosive Clay puppet created by Dumbledore.
Dumbledore had claimed to the public that it had been destroyed, but in truth, it had not.
Nicolas Flamel had not asked for it back. After more than six hundred years, he and his wife had lived long enough.
Primarily, the Elixir of Life brewed from the Sorcerer's Stone could not grant eternal youth to the human body.
Immortality was one thing, but it could not stop the physical body from aging. Living like that would ultimately turn someone into a sentient mummy, a fate Nicolas Flamel had no desire to experience.
Thus, the couple prepared to give up the Sorcerer's Stone and never asked Dumbledore to return it.
And so, the Sorcerer's Stone remained in Dumbledore's hands.
Dumbledore had not yet reached the age where he needed the Elixir of Life to prolong his days, even though he was already over a hundred and ten years old.
Given a wizard's natural lifespan and Dumbledore's immense power, living to a hundred and eighty without the Elixir of Life would pose absolutely no problem for him.
This was why the Sorcerer's Stone, which was deemed largely a white elephant, had fallen into Snape's hands so easily.
Snape took the Sorcerer's Stone out of the drawer, stood up, and walked over to a trapdoor in the corner of his office.
He stomped his foot, and the locking magic on the trapdoor automatically dissolved. The door swung open, revealing a passageway behind it.
This tunnel had been dug the last time Kyle launched a night raid on his office. Instead of choosing to destroy it, Snape had preserved it for reasons of his own.
As a result, this underground passage leading outside the castle became Snape's secret route for sneaking out of Hogwarts.
Before long, Snape's figure emerged outside the boundary walls of Hogwarts Castle.
He walked a bit further forward until he was clear of Hogwarts' Anti-Apparition enchantments. Then, with a loud crack, Snape vanished into the vast expanse of the night.
When Snape's figure materialized once more, he had returned to his home at Spinner's End.
Entering the living room, which resembled a dim dungeon cell, Snape headed straight down into the basement, which he had expanded countless times over using the Undetectable Extension Charm.
Normally, utilizing the Undetectable Extension Charm required registration with the Ministry of Magic. However, with a certain young Dark Lord leading the charge, this particular Ministry regulation was now practically as good as non-existent.
Various defensive magical runes were carved across the walls of the basement.
These had been set up by Snape only after he discovered the method to break the seal on the Resurrection Stone.
The moment Snape stepped into the basement, multicolored magical brilliance instantly rippled along the runes.
This signified that the defensive runes had been activated.
Illuminated by the magical glow, the pitch-black basement lit up, revealing the scene within—
Completely empty.
Aside from a pile of clutter haphazardly stacked in a corner, there was nothing else but the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
Snape walked straight to the center of the room, unhurriedly casting several more defensive spells around himself.
After reinforcing the room, Snape hauled out several buckets of Hydra blood that he had bartered from Kyle.
To channel the energy within the Sorcerer's Stone to break the curse on the Resurrection Stone was something he could never accomplish entirely on his own.
He needed the assistance of a magic array.
Hydra blood contained exceptionally potent magical power, making it the most suitable material for drawing a magic array.
Before long, an intricate magic array appeared on the floor in the center of the room.
Complex, irregular polygonal shapes branched out around the circular primary array. Seven smaller circular arrays, interconnected by square-shaped lines, flanked the main array in a "seven stars surrounding the moon" formation.
The Sorcerer's Stone was placed dead center in the magic array.
Having finished these preparations, Snape pulled a small vial of Felix Felicis from his pocket and downed it in a single gulp.
A surge of exhilaration welled up from his chest, coursing through his entire body.
Snape raised his head, his eyes burning like fire, and raised his wand high into the air.
The intricate, blood-colored magic array flared with a crimson glow. The Sorcerer's Stone at its center flashed with the same light, seemingly responding to the array's resonance.
Wisps of golden light pierced out from the Sorcerer's Stone, twisting together in midair into several denser beams of energy.
Reaching into his pocket with his free left hand, Snape pulled out the Resurrection Stone.
He opened his palm, and the black, lozenge-shaped stone hovered in midair under the influence of an invisible force.
Guided by Snape, that boundless power surged directly toward the floating Resurrection Stone.
The tips of the golden light beams grew as sharp as drill bits, slamming hard into the surface of the Resurrection Stone.
Under the bombardment of this force, the faint blue, translucent phantom of chains gradually materialized on the surface of the Resurrection Stone.
All of Snape's attention locked onto the chains on the Stone's surface. He noted that there seemed to be three of them in total.
Twirling his wand, Snape drew even more magic from the Sorcerer's Stone, hurling it at the chains with an even more ferocious intensity.
The chains shuddered violently.
Under Snape's expectant gaze, the first chain on the Resurrection Stone finally reached its limit. With a shattering crack that sounded like a roll of thunder, it burst into specks of faint blue starlight and vanished.
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