The dungeons were never truly silent. They breathed with the rhythmic ticking of wall clocks and the low, wet hiss of condensation crawling down stone walls.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Maurise Black stood before the heavy oak door of the Potions Master's office, his knuckles still vibrating from the impact.
"Enter," came a voice from within, sounding less like an invitation and more like a threat.
Maurise pushed the door open. He didn't hesitate, though most students would have preferred facing a hungry Mountain Troll over a late-night encounter with Severus Snape. The office was thick with the scent of crushed wormwood and something sharp, almost metallic. Snape sat behind his desk, hunched over a simmering cauldron that let out a rhythmic glub-glub sound, casting dancing green shadows across his sallow face.
He looked up, his dark eyes narrowing into obsidian slits. "It is eight o'clock in the evening, Mr. Black. Give me one reason why you are prowling the corridors instead of preparing for bed."
"Actually, Professor, curfew isn't until nine," Maurise replied, his voice brisk and devoid of the usual student tremor. "I have a question. The Draught of Living Death, is it a fundamentally incomplete potion?"
Snape froze. For a moment, he looked as though he might either deduct fifty points or break into a sardonic laugh. "You disturbed my research at this hour to ask a theoretical question better suited for a textbook you clearly haven't read?"
"I have read it," Maurise said, nodding with terrifying sincerity. "Which is exactly why I'm here. It feels... unfinished. Like a sentence that ends with a comma."
He paused, catching the flicker of annoyance in Snape's eyes, and offered a polite, albeit slightly distracted, smile. "Ah, perhaps my timing is poor. If you are busy with your own brew, I can return at dawn."
Snape let out a long, weary sigh, looking at Maurise as if the boy were a particularly baffling specimen of Diricawl that had just learned to speak. "Incompleteness is not a concern for the first-year mind, Mr. Black. The recipe has stood for centuries. It is stable, predictable, and effective, three qualities that are more than enough for the mediocre masses."
"But I'm right, aren't I?" Maurise pressed, stepping closer. "It is missing something."
The office fell into a heavy silence. The only sound was the bubbling cauldron.
"Yes," Snape said, his voice dropping to a low drawl.
"Then what is it?" Maurise asked, his eyes alight with academic hunger. He knew it. He knew his professor wasn't just following the instructions in the standard curriculum; Snape was a man who lived in the margins of his books.
Snape didn't answer immediately. He rose from his desk, his black robes billowing like ink in water, and moved toward a tall, shadowed cabinet. When he turned back, he held a small, slender glass vial containing a fine, chalky white powder. He didn't hand it over; he simply placed it on the desk between them.
Maurise stared at the powder. "The final component. What is it?"
"Ash," Snape replied curtly.
Maurise went still. "Human?"
"Does that offend your sensibilities?" Snape let out a cold, mocking sneer. "The final catalyst for the true Draught of Living Death: the ashes of one who died while still clinging to the hope of living."
Maurise didn't flinch. His expression remained unnervingly calm. "It doesn't offend me. I just didn't expect it to be quite so... poetic. So, how is it administered? Do I stir it in during the final stage?"
Internalizing the idea that he was about to handle human remains for a school project, Maurise gave himself a quick mental shrug. It's for science, he told himself. Very dark, slightly questionable science.
"It is added to the finished brew," Snape said, his voice devoid of emotion. "But be warned. Once added, the potion is no longer a sedative. It becomes a Draught of Death's Reflection."
"A death experience," Maurise whispered, a note of repressed excitement creeping into his tone.
"It forces the imbiber to witness the systematic stripping away of the self," Snape warned, his eyes boring into Maurise's. "Consciousness detaches. Senses fail. You experience the slow erosion of your own existence while remaining fully aware of the void. It is not a 'fun' experiment, Mr. Black."
"That sounds..." Maurise looked up, a look of genuine rapture on his face that made even Snape pause. "Absolutely magnificent! To experience the one thing in life you're only supposed to do once, and survive to take notes? It's practically romantic!"
Snape stared at him, genuinely speechless. He had dealt with arrogant Potters and bumbling Longbottoms, but this level of sheer, academic lunacy was new.
"I have tried it myself," Snape said, his voice like gravel. "The physiological effects are negligible, aside from a few nights of persistent insomnia. But the experience itself? It is a horror I have no wish to repeat."
Maurise didn't seem deterred. "Professor, may I have a sample?"
"Take it," Snape snapped, waving a hand dismissively. "Seven milligrams for a standard dose. Use a scale, boy. Do not trust your eyes, they are clearly compromised by your delusions."
"Thank you, Professor!" Maurise tucked the vial into the deepest pocket of his robes, right against his chest. He offered a respectful bow and hurried toward the door.
As the door clicked shut, Snape sat back down, staring at the spot where the boy had stood. He had wanted to teach the student a lesson about the weight of the Dark Arts, but Maurise had walked out looking like he'd just been given the keys to a candy shop.
Back in his dormitory, Maurise locked the door and pulled his brass scales from under his bed. Magic scales were wonderful things; they could measure the weight of a secret if you calibrated them correctly.
He carefully weighed out exactly seven milligrams of the bone ash. When the powder hit the surface of the clear purple potion, the liquid swirled, darkening into a murky, chaotic grey. It looked like a storm trapped in a bottle.
"Tin, don't wake me up," Maurise told the undead cat sitting on his trunk.
The cat let out a dry, rattling meow and blinked its glowing eyes.
Maurise sat cross-legged in the center of the room, took a deep breath, and downed the potion in a single gulp. The taste was bitter, like old pennies and cold rain. Almost instantly, the world tilted. He fell backward, his consciousness being yanked out of his body like a thread from a needle.
Warmth.
It was like being wrapped in a heavy, velvet blanket.
When Maurise opened his eyes, he was surrounded by a thick, white mist. It wasn't cold; it felt like the breath of a sleeping giant. He sat up, looking around. As the fog thinned, he realized he was still in his dorm, but everything was different.
The colors were muted, and the air was perfectly still.
"Tin?" he called out.
His voice didn't echo. It just... stopped.
He stood up, feeling a strange lightness in his limbs, similar to the vertigo one feels after a particularly messy Floo journey. He looked at the clock on the wall to check the time.
The pendulum was frozen. The hands were stuck at exactly 9:40 and 52 seconds.
The world had stopped. Or, more accurately, Maurise had stepped out of it.