HP: Those Years Sleeping with the Half-Blood Prince

Severus's eyes lit up, but he didn't go forward immediately. He stopped and looked around.

"Something's not right." He and Ian whispered almost simultaneously, their voices lowered and wary.

"It's too quiet, and it smells...like something rotten."

Aris frowned as well; the light of the detection spell was swallowed by darkness, confirming Severus's unease.

"There's a strong residual magic here... It's dark and chaotic." Aris's voice was unusually tense.

Kevin was so frightened that he moved closer to Ian.

Severus continued to stare at the few luminous mushrooms, their blue-white glow dancing in his dark eyes.

Need and danger were locked in a fierce struggle. He licked his slightly dry lips, and his other hand had already quietly grasped the wand hidden in his sleeve.

"...The spores must be processed within two hours." He finally spoke, his voice hoarse, less to others than to convince himself, and to state an inescapable fact: "They're there."

Ian quickly weighed the options.

Traces of dark magic, unknown dangers, but the spores are right before their eyes, and Severus needs them.

"Hurry up." Ian made the decision, raising his wand and pointing it at the swamp and the surrounding darkness. "Severus, you go collect it. Kevin, Aris, watch where I'm pointing. If anything gets close, whatever it is, throw a smoke bomb. Then we run back. Don't hesitate."

Severus nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the rotten tree trunk.

He moved quickly and his hands were steady; in no time, he had filled a small bottle with spores.

Suddenly, Kevin let out a suppressed gasp and pointed to a bush on his left: "There... I think there was a flash of red light just now..."

The swamp seemed to suddenly boil, violently bubbling up.

"Withdraw!" Ian ordered decisively.

Severus decisively leaped backward, landing back on the ground, where he was caught by Ian.

"Run!" Ian shouted.

Aris has already thrown out a smoke bomb.

A dark red, pungent smoke exploded with a "bang," quickly spreading and temporarily obscuring the view.

Kevin and Severus ran back as fast as they could, following the route they had memorized on the way there.

Aris followed closely behind, occasionally turning back to flash his firefly to light the way before quickly extinguishing it.

Ian brought up the rear. He could hear something bursting out of the water from behind the smoke, but he didn't dare to look back. He just kept firing obstruction and banishment spells in possible directions behind him, creating noise and chaos.

The four men ran for their lives through the dark forest until the moonlight became clear and bright again, at which point they dared to stop, leaning against tree trunks and panting heavily.

"What...what was that just now?" Kevin's face turned pale, and his voice trembled.

"I don't know," Aris gasped, his glasses askew, "but it's definitely not an ordinary magical creature."

He raised his hand to adjust his glasses. "That kind of magic is too dirty, like black magic or something corrupted."

"That's not something that should be in the Forbidden Forest," Severus said, his voice slightly hoarse.

Ian calmed his breathing, wiped the sweat from his face and the bloodstains from the branches, his expression grave. "It's definitely not."

A suspicion weighed on Ian's mind.

"This matter," Ian said, glancing at the three of them with a serious tone, "cannot be told to anyone, not a single word. We were just curious students who went out at night, nothing more."

Kevin and Aris nodded vigorously, and Severus also nodded slowly.

"Let's go back first." Ian took one last look at the eerie Forbidden Forest and turned around first.

The four returned to the castle in silence, even more cautiously than when they left.

Fortunately, they encountered no further obstacles and managed to slip back to their cellar room without any major incidents.

Only after closing the door did the tension finally ease.

Kevin collapsed to the ground, while Aris leaned against the door, breathing softly.

Severus immediately checked the vial containing the spores, confirming that it was properly sealed and still glowing, and began his research without delay.

Ian sat back on the bed, his brows furrowed, lost in thought.

No one mentioned the strange thing that had happened by the swamp earlier.

Campus life is filled with another kind of urgency—final exams are approaching.

The atmosphere inside the castle subtly shifted.

The library was packed from morning till night, with the rustling of parchment and hushed discussions replacing the usual laughter.

There are fewer people playing chess and chatting by the fireplace in the common room; more people are sighing and holding heavy books.

Even the ghosts drifting in the corridors seemed to slow their pace so as not to disturb the first and second-year students who were muttering runes or potion recipes as they walked.

Ian Burke's spells and herbs are decent, and his transfiguration is above average, but potions... well, Merlin's beard.

After yet another potions class, he looked at his potion, which was strangely colored and emitting suspicious yellowish-green smoke, and then glanced at the perfect finished product on Severus's workbench, which looked like a textbook illustration. He sighed deeply with a sense of desolation.

"Severus..." At dinner, he sidled up to Severus with his plate, his voice trailing off, his gray eyes filled with feigned pitifulness, "My dear roommate, my future Potions Master, possibly my only hope in life..."

Severus was finishing his dinner when he heard this. He paused for a moment, without looking up, but his brows furrowed.

"Speak," he said succinctly.

"The final potion exam and practical test..." Ian leaned closer and lowered his voice, but the pleading (and whining) in his tone was clearly audible.

"Give me a hand? Not much, just enough to pass! You know the look Professor Slughorn gives me, like I've boiled a stinky sock in his cauldron... If I die from a potion, my mom will make me copy 'Potions and Magic' ten times over the summer!"

Severus finally raised his eyes, his dark pupils sweeping across Ian's face, which was filled with "please," without any emotion.

"Your basic operation error rate is as high as forty percent," he stated calmly, his tone neither sarcastic nor simply stating a fact. "You have a confused understanding of material properties, your heat control is arbitrary, and your stirring direction and number of rotations are completely irregular. Passing grade?"

He didn't finish his sentence, but the slight upward inflection at the end of his voice and his subsequent gesture of lowering his head to continue eating conveyed everything.

"That's why I need you!" Ian said, completely unfazed by his coldness. "Look, Kevin has Aris tutoring him in magical history and astronomy, and Aris handles everything himself. So please, have mercy on me, this poor soul struggling in the sea of ​​potions! I promise I'll study hard! You tell me to go east, I won't go west; you tell me to stir seven times, I definitely won't just stir six and a half!"