Hogwarts: I am Snape

Ignoring the several figures in black robes lying haphazardly at his feet, Snape carried an unconscious Death Eater into a huge circular room.

Everything in the room was black, including the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

The surrounding black walls were inlaid with many black doors, all identical, with no markings or handles except for keyholes.

The candles, arranged in branches, adorned the walls, burning with trembling blue flames. Their flickering, cold light cast a shadow on the gleaming marble floor, making one feel as if they were standing on a dark, still body of water.

Snape roughly threw Coban Yaxley onto the cold ground and stopped in his tracks.

At that moment, amidst Yaxley's unconscious groans, a deep, rumbling sound suddenly filled the entire circular room.

The candles began to move to the side, and the circular wall began to rotate.

Within seconds, the scene blurred, and the blue flames stretched into a dizzying band of neon light, spinning wildly around Snape.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the rumbling stopped. Everything returned to silence.

Snape's gaze swept around; all the doors looked exactly the same.

He took a few steps forward, reached out his hand, placed it on the cold, shiny door, and gently pushed it open—the door opened instantly.

The room behind the door was much brighter than the round room, with several lamps hanging from the ceiling by thin gold chains, emitting a soft glow.

This is a rectangular room that appears somewhat empty, with only a few tables. The most striking feature is a huge glass water tank placed in the center of the room.

The tank was large enough for several people to swim in, and it was filled with a dark green liquid, with many pearly white things lazily floating and sinking in that dark green.

Upon entering the Hall of the Brain, Snape immediately knew where he was.

He moved closer.

Now he could see more clearly that those pearly white things were actually complete human brains.

They wriggled slowly under the eerie light, their surface grooves sometimes clear and sometimes blurry, looking like sticky cauliflower.

As Snape approached, the thin, nerve-like tendrils hanging from beneath his brain seemed to sense something and began to writhe restlessly.

The surface of the green liquid rippled with tiny, ominous waves.

"Damn it," Snape muttered under his breath, "what the hell are these people working on here?"

He took two steps back in disgust, no longer looking at the unsettling floating objects, and instead raised the Elder Wand, carefully scanning the entire room with the complex incantation Dumbledore had taught him, specifically for detecting powerful dark magic objects.

There was no special reaction from the tip of the wand.

The Horcrux is not here.

Having confirmed this, Snape retreated into the dark, round room and waved his wand, leaving a clear magical mark on the door of the Brain Hall that had just closed.

Immediately afterwards, the familiar rumbling sound rang out again, and the walls, along with the blue flames, began to spin rapidly once more.

Once everything was settled, Snape chose another door.

He noticed that the lock on the door appeared to have been forcibly damaged.

After a slight hesitation, he stepped forward and pushed open the door.

The room behind the door was chilly, as if it had been filled with cold for years.

In the center of the room was a pile of ruins, which looked like the remains of a fountain, but now only broken stones and broken pipes remained.

The walls and floor were splattered with some dried, blackened substance, but through some cracks, one could vaguely glimpse the original pink hue underneath.

The air still carried a lingering, unpleasant smell of burning, and... a faint, almost imperceptible floral scent that Snape found somewhat familiar.

Snape frowned, trying to catch the fleeting scent.

But it was too faint and was quickly masked by the burning smell of magic in the room.

Without much thought, he raised his wand again to probe, but still found nothing, so he decisively retreated.

As he watched the wall rotate, amidst the blue halo, two large, blurry red marks were mixed in, and Snape suddenly had a guess.

That room, which was just now filled with mess and lingering with a strange floral scent... perhaps it was...

"The Love Hall?" he muttered to himself, but he immediately dismissed the thought; now was not the time to explore that.

Next, Snape entered two more rooms.

The first room was filled with a constant, busy ticking sound, and contained all kinds of clocks, large and small, from different eras and regions.

He quickly passed through the Time Hall and entered another, much larger room, towering like a cathedral.

The divination hall was filled with countless tall shelves, each displaying many small, dusty glass balls.

Unfortunately, in these places filled with mysterious magic, he was unable to sense the cold and evil resonance of the Horcruxes.

There are not many unexplored rooms left.

Back in the rotunda, after casting a Stunning Curse on Axley, Snape opened the next door.

The Hall of Death.

This is the largest room he has ever been to.

The room was dimly lit, with a central depression forming a huge stone pit twenty feet deep.

The surrounding area is lined with tiered stone benches, resembling an ancient Roman amphitheater, extending downwards at a steep angle.

Snape stood at the very top of the row, looking down into the center of the pit.

There was a high stone platform with a stone archway standing on it, which looked very old, dilapidated and decaying.

The archway stood alone, unsupported by any walls, with a tattered black curtain or drapery hanging above it.

Although there wasn't a breath of wind in the cold air, the curtain was gently swaying and rolling, as if it had just been touched.

Snape felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up slightly.

He raised the Elder Wand again and whispered the detection spell.

This time, a faint but clear light burst forth from the tip of the wand, pointing towards the ancient archway in the center of the pit and towards the gently swaying black veil.

He gripped the Elder Wand tightly and walked down the steep stone benches, step by step, until he reached the bottom of the deep pit.

He slowly walked towards the platform, his footsteps echoing loudly.

Looking at the pointed archway from here, it appears much taller than when viewed from above.

The curtains were still swaying silently and gently, as if someone had just passed through them.

Snape had a very strange feeling, as if someone was standing behind the curtain on the other side of the arch. Through the gaps in the swaying curtain, in the dim, flowing light, he could vaguely make out the outline of an object:

A small gold cup with two delicate handles.

Hufflepuff's Golden Cup.

Tom hid it here... behind the boundary between life and death.

"This is... a perfect and insidious hiding place," Snape couldn't help but think. "But how am I supposed to get my hands on it?"

He stared at the archway, mesmerized by the gently swaying curtains.

He had a strong urge to climb up the platform and pass through the thin curtain.

Faintly, murmured whispers could be heard coming from the other side of the curtain.

The murmurs grew louder and louder, and Snape found himself inexplicably stepping onto the platform, his hand involuntarily reaching into his pocket and gripping the cold, hard Resurrection Stone tightly.

Something finally came back to his mind, and he jolted as if he had been burned. He quickly took a few steps back from the platform, pulling the hand holding the resurrection stone out of his pocket. His palm was ice-cold.

"Aren't you going to come in and take a look?" A hollow, echoing voice came from behind the curtain.

Snape paused for two seconds, suppressing the tremor in his heart, and asked, "Who are you?"

The voice gave him a chilling sense of familiarity, yet he couldn't recall where he had heard it before.

"Didn't you call me here?" the voice retorted, with a hint of mockery.

Snape took a deep breath and finally stepped onto the platform.

He stood before the archway, peering through the constantly fluttering, occasionally parting black curtains towards the other side—

A pale, frail face, bearing the marks of years without sunlight, yet all too familiar.

Overly long hair, black eyes, a high-bridged aquiline nose, and tightly pursed lips.

That was himself, or rather, the him from the past.

A cool breeze seemed to blow in from behind the curtains, ruffling Snape's dark hair.

Snape, behind the curtain, stared intently at him with his dark eyes, a look of insatiable hunger in them.

"It's so nice..." the voice on the other end murmured, its tone ethereal, "It's so nice..."

Snape stared warily at the "self" that was not as real as a living person's body, yet far more real than a ghost, and found himself at a loss for words.

But another "Snape" spoke up.

“Do you know?” His dark eyes were fixed on Snape, “there is also a legend on the Hufflepuff’s golden cup, a little-known legend.”

"It is said that drinking water that has been held in it can bring people back to life, or... grant them immortality."

"The Holy Grail?" Snape uttered the word softly.

The figure opposite him slowly nodded, a cold smile curving his lips.

"Unfortunately..." he continued, "it's just a legend."

Another long, suffocating silence followed. Only the faint sound of the curtains swaying could be heard.

“I thought…you were long gone,” Snape said, his voice hoarse. He looked at his other self with a complicated expression. “Why didn’t I see you when I used the Resurrection Stone?”

“I am a part of you.” The smile on Snape’s pale face behind the curtain deepened, yet appeared even more eerie. “The part you no longer need.”

Dark eyes staring into dark eyes.

"Can you help me get the golden cup?" Snape finally asked tentatively, turning his gaze to the faintly visible golden cup.

Snape's smile vanished.

His dark eyes stared long and greedily at Snape's face, churning with an emotion that seemed to devour him.

Just when Snape thought something was going to change, he slowly nodded.

“Thank you,” Snape said.

Upon hearing this thank you, Snape behind the curtain suddenly revealed a look of disgust and violence.

"No!" he hissed sharply, "I don't need it!"

Before he could finish speaking, Snape on the other side of the curtain lunged toward the archway.

Snape's pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively raised the Elder Wand, pointing it at the other person—

However, nothing happened. There was no attack, no collision.

Only a slight, metallic sound, a clear tapping of metal, echoed on the stone platform.

Snape glanced down out of the corner of his eye: Hufflepuff's golden cup had rolled out from behind the curtain and was lying quietly at his feet.

He didn't pick it up immediately, but instead gripped his wand tightly, his whole body tense, watching the hanging black curtain warily.

The murmurs that had been coming from behind the curtains disappeared; the gently swaying curtains seemed to have lost all their strength, and fell completely down, no longer making any sound.

It was as if everything that had just happened was a vivid illusion.

After waiting a few more seconds, Snape bent down, picked up the golden cup as quickly as possible, straightened up, and looked around again.

"Are you still there?" he asked the still curtain.

There was no response. Only his own breathing and heartbeat could be heard in the death chamber.

Snape stuffed the golden cup into one pocket of his robe, then took the black resurrection stone from another pocket.

He closed his eyes and, following the ancient legend, spun the stone three times in his hands.

I opened my eyes, and there was still nothing around me; the ancient archway and the tattered curtains stood silently as well.

Snape waited quietly for a while longer. Finally, facing the empty archway, he murmured to himself, "Goodbye."

Then, without looking back, he quickly left the center of the pit, walked up the steep stone steps, and returned to the dark circular room.

As the walls spun again, Snape walked over to Axley, who was bound to the ground and whimpering softly.

He took the small package out of his pocket, unwrapped the parchment, placed the door key in his palm, and pressed his hand against Yaxley's forehead.

"It's time to end this..." (End of Chapter)