HP: Those Years Sleeping with the Half-Blood Prince

“They’re trying to divide us,” Aris said calmly. “It’s a strategy. They first make Severus seem…special, then they make those close to him feel isolated. That way, people are more likely to gravitate towards places that seem safe and accepting.”

Severus was studying a potion recipe when the tip of his quill paused for a moment.

He's been even quieter these past few days.

Ian toyed with a silver coin, the coin twirling nimbly between his fingers. "Then let's not let them succeed. Let's get on with our business."

He looked at Severus, "Especially you, go to the slug club when you should, listen to the flattery when you should, play dumb when you should. Your value right now is that you haven't made a choice yet. The longer you drag it out, the more chips you seem to have in your hand."

Severus looked up, his dark gaze meeting Ian's. "Drag?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes, stall." Ian stopped the spinning coin, holding it in his palm. "Drag it out until your 'capital' is thick enough that they have to offer a real, respectable price, not just empty promises, and stall it out until..."

He lowered his voice, almost whispering, "The situation is becoming clearer. My dad said things haven't been peaceful in the ministry lately. The more that big shot extends his reach, the more the backlash will start to build."

Severus lowered his head again, looking at the dense symbols on the parchment.

"Got it," he said, then continued proofreading as if the conversation had just been about tomorrow's weather.

But when he dipped his hand in the ink again, his hand was much steadyer.

……

Seeing that the group's relationship had become closer, there was much less gossip in Slytherin.

On Valentine's Day in February, Ian received three anonymous cards while having breakfast. He glanced at them, smiled, and stuffed them into his bag, clearly not taking them seriously.

There was nothing in front of Severus, which was expected, and he was happy to have some peace and quiet.

But when he went to the library in the afternoon, he found a dried, dark green leaf with clear veins in the insert of a book called "Advanced Potion Making," which looked like a specimen of some rare magical plant.

There was no signature, only a line of familiar yet unfamiliar handwriting attached:

"To the Crucible in Silence"

It looks a lot like Ian's handwriting, but it's also a little different. If Ian were to give something, he wouldn't give something so... subtle. He would probably just throw a bag of coconut ice cream at him.

but……

Meanwhile, in his dorm room, Ian was banging his head against the wall. He must have been insane to slip that specimen into Severus's book on Valentine's Day, a day with such special meaning.

……

That evening, when Severus returned to his dorm room, he saw Ian sitting on the edge of his bed, his brown hair a little messy. When he heard the noise, Ian visibly stiffened for a moment, then quickly sat up straight, forcing an overly ordinary smile onto his face.

"You're back? Is the library crowded?" Ian's voice was half an octave higher than usual, and he was holding a copy of "Quidditch Origins" aimlessly, upside down.

Severus didn't answer. He closed the door, walked to his bedside, and put down his schoolbag.

A few seconds of silence stretched between the two, broken only by the soft crackling of the firewood in the fireplace.

Kevin and Aris are probably still playing chess in the common room.

He turned around, looked at Ian, and opened his palm; the leaf lay quietly in his hand.

"Did you put this here?" Severus began.

Ian's smile froze for a moment, his gaze drifting to the leaves, then quickly shifting to the corner of the wall, and finally to the tips of his own shoes.

His Adam's apple bobbed, and the tips of his ears turned red at a visible speed.

"Uh... um." Ian mumbled a response, his fingers unconsciously clutching the hardcover of "Quidditch Origins." "Just... grabbed it."

"Just doing it?" Severus repeated, his tone flat, but it made Ian feel more unbearable than any other question.

"Yes, that's it... Last time I was helping the professor organize materials in the greenhouse, I saw this piece... It looked pretty good, so I dried it and thought... Hmm, you might be able to use it? Or... Use it as a bookmark?"

Ian's words became increasingly incoherent, eventually amounting to almost a monologue: "Anyway... it's nothing special."

After he finished speaking, he glanced quickly at Severus, then immediately lowered his head, pretending to study the gold-embossed title on the book cover, as if it were some ancient magical manual.

Severus looked at the leaf, then at Ian’s hair, which was almost buried in the book, and his burning red ears.

"Today is Valentine's Day," Severus said, stating the fact without any doubt.

Ian looked up abruptly, as if he had been burned by those words.

"Yeah! That's why this stuff is everywhere!" He raised his voice, as if trying to dispel something.

"It's so annoying, the pink confetti floating in the auditorium, and those silly owls... I just got caught up in the atmosphere, you know..."

He paused, his shoulders slumped slightly, and his voice lowered, tinged with a self-deprecating murmur: "It was just a moment of impulse. Don't mind it, really, just think of it as... me being impulsive."

After he finished speaking, he threw the book on the bed, stood up, and seemed to want to walk to the wardrobe, but then stopped halfway, raised his hand and ruffled his hair haphazardly, and finally just turned around, with his back to Severus, facing the leaping flames of the fireplace.

Severus remained standing, watching Ian's tense back.

The words "Don't worry about it" floated lightly in the air, yet weighed heavily on the two of them.

Does he care?

The leaf was quite ordinary; it wasn't the remains of any rare or magical plant.

The handwriting was Ian's, but it was a deliberate attempt to tone down his usual flamboyance.

The description of a crucible in silence made his fingertips twitch slightly.

Silence grew like vines, entangling the warmth of the room.

The firelight from the fireplace cast long shadows of the two people onto the stone wall, swaying gently.

"It's no use," Severus finally spoke, his voice so low it was almost drowned out by the crackling of the firewood.

Ian's back stiffened almost imperceptibly, but he didn't turn around.

“What I mean is,” Severus added, his gaze lingering on the veins of the leaf, “it…isn’t standard bookmark material, and it might leave marks on the pages.”

He paused for a moment, seemingly choosing his words carefully, and finally said only, "But... the leaf is intact, so just give it to me directly next time, instead of pressing it in the book."

Ian slowly turned around, the blush on his face not completely gone, but the awkward flicker in his eyes had faded, replaced by a complex sense of caution.

He scratched the back of his neck and twitched the corner of his mouth.

"Oh, okay," he said curtly. "Next time... just give it to me directly."

Severus nodded, said nothing more, walked to his desk, and opened a drawer where he usually kept scraps of parchment and old quills.

Instead of just tossing the leaf in, he pulled out a relatively clean, blank piece of cardstock from under a stack of scrap paper, carefully placed the leaf on it, and then gently pushed it back into the drawer.

The movements were natural, just like handling any experimental sample that needed to be properly preserved.