Chapter 204. The Vision.
Severus lifted his palm from the Qilin's head and opened his eyes. The calf simply blinked at him in puzzlement, not understanding what had just happened.
This is… interesting. A smile spread across Severus's face on its own, slightly unnatural, crooked. Very interesting.
"What did you see?" Nagini asked with barely concealed impatience. It was rare to see him this tense and serious.
"I can say one thing with certainty: I've done it." He met her eyes and said it with quiet confidence. "One of the visions, lasting only a second, had belonged to her in human form. She was stroking the head of a Qilin that had grown considerably, and by the familiar veranda visible behind her, it wasn't difficult to work out where they were."
"I already knew that." Nagini gave a small huff. In her emotions there was nothing but certainty in those words, though a trace of genuine happiness was present as well.
"You know: it really is good to hear."
"Stop keeping me in suspense. What else?"
"Me, standing before children in Hogwarts school uniforms. And based on the notes on the board and the ingredient cabinets, it was a Potions lesson. And that's strange. I never considered becoming a teacher at Hogwarts."
"I'd love to see you as a teacher." She pictured the scene with a hint of amusement in her voice. "A dead ringer for Vlad Dracula, only missing the fangs!"
"That doesn't interest me. I doubt it would happen at all, unless there were a very compelling reason."
"What else?"
"A couple of battles involving this little one, and something about the Magical Jungle. But that was just me standing in front of the barrier. That's all." He looked at the three Qilin. Two of them stood about a meter away, no longer trembling, though the wariness in their eyes was plain. Understandable. They had only been taken from their mother the day before, and without Nagini, they most likely wouldn't even have dared come close. "By the way, what do we feed them?"
"That's a lot to take in." Nagini exhaled with quiet relief, having registered the absence of a certain other person from any of the visions. "I genuinely don't know. Milk, maybe?"
"That might work. Let me go to the nearest shop and pick some up. You keep an eye on them." He stroked his chin thoughtfully, then added, "I can look into their dietary needs while I'm out."
"Fine by me." Nagini nodded eagerly, uncoiled from him, and the moment she lowered herself to the ground, the calves surrounded her in an instant, pressing against her with cheerful little sounds, like puppies discovering someone new. Nagini was practically melting, her tail moving over them gently. Because their backs were covered in scales, and sturdy ones at that, they felt no discomfort from the contact. If anything, they seemed to enjoy it.
"I'll be off, then." He watched the scene with a tender smile, then vanished. A few seconds later, Nagini looked at the spot where he had been standing with an unreadable expression. It was difficult to say what she was thinking in that moment.
The only one who hadn't changed was the Phoenix, still regarding every creature below him with the same undisguised contempt. The she-wolves, having finally tired of growling at him, had tucked themselves against their pack leader, who was still hiding behind the white wall.
When Severus reappeared in the hotel room, he let out a slow, tired breath, and the smile faded from his face.
"She noticed right away that I tried to change the subject. She really has learned to read me." His gaze went cold. His face tightened with barely suppressed fury as the vision surfaced again in his mind.
Columns of smoke rising from a house almost entirely in ruins, the bloodied bodies of wolves scattered through the wreckage. Where the gazebo had stood, there were bodies: the Thunder Tiger, and beside him, the bear and the Black Hound. Five meters to their left, the King of Chimeras, his fawn pressed against him, trembling, covered in her father's blood, which seeped from a massive black wound across his chest.
In front of them: Nagini in human form, her own body covered in severe wounds, yet still on her feet, staring upward with hatred. Behind her lay one of the Qilin. He recognized it as the small one with the gift of foresight by the lighter shade of its scales. The others, along with the house-elves, were perhaps somewhere under the rubble, or there might have been nothing left of them at all.
And finally, the one who had ignited this fury in him, a feeling he had not experienced in a very long time. A young-looking man of perhaps forty, in a leather coat and tall boots, holding a black book. Short dark hair. An entirely ordinary, slightly round face, the kind you glance at once and forget within seconds. But Severus stared at every millimeter of it with cold intensity, committing every detail to memory: the brown eyes, the near-invisible mole hidden beneath his fringe. He would not forget.
Behind the man stood Eileen, staring ahead with empty, glazed eyes. Slowly, she raised her palm and directed it at Nagini. The man's smug smile never wavered.
The vision ended there. What Severus could not understand was where he himself had been when a dead man decided to make himself at home, wound Nagini, and bend Eileen to his will, though how he had done the latter wasn't difficult to guess.
The book in the man's hand was the Necromancer's Scripture, an artifact at the peak rank of Archmage, capable of binding any undead up to the peak of Magister, even a Lich. How it had been enough to defeat the King of Chimeras needed no further explanation.
But what angered Severus most was his future self. Had the death of MacMillan and the wounding of Tobby taught him nothing?
"How utterly infuriating. I've barely finished with one problem and another arrives." He ground his teeth and a small hand mirror appeared in his palm. After a few seconds, the reflection gave way to the frowning face of the Black Star's leader.
"What do you want?"
"Find me this man." He raised a finger and conjured a small projection bearing the face of the stranger. "Don't touch him. Just give me his exact location the moment you have it."
"Yes." Arnold murmured it with visible surprise, a chill running down his spine at the sight of those cold, nearly glacial eyes.
Severus said nothing more. He tucked the mirror back into his coin purse almost immediately, then closed his eyes and drew a long breath, pressing down on his anger. He returned to the Qilin's vision, searching for any detail he might have missed, something that could point to who the dead man was.
But no matter how long he searched, he found nothing. No identifying marks, no distinctive spells that might suggest where the man had come from or where he had trained. He had concealed everything with apparent deliberateness. And there was no guarantee that face was even real, rather than the product of a glamour or an identity-altering potion.
Even so, to assume another person's appearance you needed to go through a specific process, ranging from obtaining a hair to a detailed study of their face. It was possible, as with one particular maniac from his own world, that he wore a mask made of human skin. But then there would be a body. If the body was destroyed, there would be people who remembered the original. If those people were killed or had their memories erased, there remained the possibility that some wizard among them had committed things to memory. Cyclic Memory Charms did not work on wizards. Beyond all of that, there were countless other loose threads. It was simply impossible to kill a person, even a Muggle, and leave absolutely no trace, especially when a wizard was doing the looking.
Still, Severus did not give up. He kept moving through the vision, examining every stone and every shadow, until his eye caught something in the corner: a calendar page, half pressed against the wall. Part of the date was hidden, but the twenty-second of June was clearly visible.
Whether it was the exact date of the event he couldn't say for certain. As if to spite him, the sky in the vision was covered in a hazy overcast that made the sun impossible to find. Its position would have given him a rough sense of the year and month.
But he wasn't out of options. There was one more marker of time. The fawn, the daughter of the King of Chimeras, had been roughly five times larger than she was now. Using her growth rate, he could estimate when the vision would take place. And during that window, he would be home, and he would meet this man when he came.
He had not lied to Nagini about the rest. There had genuinely been a few battle scenes, none of them particularly noteworthy, and one other vision: himself standing before the barrier that held back the Devils from entering this world, and then stepping through it.
So I did manage to reach the next rank. But does that mean… is it possible that I was occupied with that at the time, and couldn't return? No. I would never simply leave without putting something in place to protect them. Which means whatever I did put in place wasn't enough. His fists tightened. His gaze sharpened. Then I'll have to start that project considerably earlier than planned.
The mirror appeared in his hand again. A few seconds later, a young freckled face with medium-length red hair looked back at him.
"Mr. Severus, how can I help?" Shafiq asked, visibly a little surprised by the early call.
"I need you to obtain some materials for me. The Galleons are not an issue."
Seeing how serious he was, Shafiq gave a nervous nod, rummaged in a cabinet, and produced a pen and notebook.
"Ready. Go ahead."
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