Hogwarts Study Panel

Chapter 517, Section 515: A Kind of Misfortune

Dreams are a mysterious phenomenon.

Sometimes it can reveal the future, just as Harry once experienced; sometimes it can connect souls, allowing everything unattainable in the daytime to be revealed in a hazy way.

Dreams are mostly bizarre and unpredictable, but for the lucky messengers of the borderlands...

Dreams are dumplings.

The border area was still shrouded in a white mist. The black cat walked through the familiar fog and found the dumpling from his dream.

Although the black cat rarely looks into other people's dreams—it doesn't want to pry into the wizard's hidden mind—today seems different; it has to invite the guest in the dream out.

In that dream filled with incessant rain, the black cat saw a young Professor Snape, and Spider's End Alley, which was not quite the same as it remembered.

In its memory, Spider's End Alley, though dilapidated, had never seen such a terrifying dispute.

In the cramped room, the man roared in fury, and the woman screamed in agony. Then, the boy ran away.

The black cat met him in an almost deserted amusement park.

A huge chimney stood prominently on the distant horizon. Two girls were swinging on a swing, while a thin boy watched them from behind a bush.

The boy had long black hair, and his clothes were extremely mismatched, as if he had dressed that way on purpose:
A pair of jeans that were too short, a big, long, worn-out coat that looked like an adult's, and a strangely shaped shirt that resembled a maternity dress.

The black cat's ears twitched; its attire was even less impressive than that of the children at Holliss orphanage.

The young Professor Snape had a sallow complexion, was short, and had a lean build.

He watched as the smaller girl swung higher and higher on the swing than the larger one, his thin face revealing undisguised longing.

"Lily, don't do this!"

The older girl screamed.

However, when the little girl swung to its highest point on the swing, she let go and flew into the air. She really did fly, laughing and soaring into the sky.

She didn't crash heavily onto the asphalt of the playground, but instead glided through the air like an acrobat, lingering for a long time before finally landing very lightly on the ground.

"Your mother told you not to do that!"

Penny stopped the swing by scraping her heels on the ground with a sharp, grating sound, then she jumped up and put her hands on her hips.

"Mom said you're not allowed to do that, Lily!"

"But I'm fine,"

Lily said, still giggling.

“Penny, look at this. Watch my skills.”

Penny looked around. The empty playground contained only the two of them, along with Snape and the Black Cat, though the girls didn't know that.

Lily picked up a withered flower from the bushes where Snape was hiding.

Penny walked up, looking both curious and dissatisfied, her heart filled with conflicting emotions.

When Lily waited until Penny got closer and could see clearly, she opened her hand, and the petals in her palm kept opening and closing, like some kind of strange, multi-layered oyster.

"Don't do this!"

Penny screamed.

"I didn't do anything to you."

Lily said, but she still crumpled the flower into a ball and threw it on the ground.

"That's not right,"

Penny said, but her gaze followed the fallen flower and lingered on it for a long time.
"How did you do it?"

She asked again, her voice revealing an undisguised longing.

Isn't that obvious?

Young Snape could no longer restrain himself and jumped out from behind the bushes.

Penny screamed and ran towards the swing. Lily was also startled, but stayed where she was.

Young Snape seemed to regret his sudden appearance. He looked at Lily, a faint blush rising on his ashen cheeks.

"What's so clear?"

"Lily asked."

Young Snape appeared both nervous and excited. He glanced at Petunia, who was lingering by the swings in the distance, and said in a low voice, "I know who you are."

"What do you mean?"

"You are...you are a witch."

Young Snape said softly.

Lily looked as if she had been insulted.

"It's very impolite to say that to others!"

She turned around, tilted her head back, and strode towards her sister.

"No!"

"Young Snape said. His face had turned red, and the black cat saw his hand tremble at the edge of his pocket."

Black Cat no longer wanted to think about why he didn't take off that ridiculous oversized coat—he didn't want to reveal the maternity clothes underneath.

He chased after the two girls, flicking his sleeves, looking like a bat.

The two sisters scrutinized him with equally disapproving looks, each clinging to a swing post as if it were a safe zone in a tag game.

"You are,"

Snape said to Lily,
“You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. There’s nothing wrong with that. My mother was a witch, and I’m a wizard.”

Penny's laughter was like cold water.

"wizard!"

She screamed.

The boy's sudden appearance had startled her quite a bit, but now she had regained her composure and her courage had returned.

“I know who you are. You’re the Snape boy! They live in Spider’s Tail Lane by the river,”

She told Lily, her tone clearly indicating that she considered it a sleazy place.

"The people there are all vulgar, stupid idiots!"

No, that's not true.

The black cat gave a soft rebuttal, unaware that a tall figure suddenly stared at him from the shadow of the tree trunk.

Then, the dream suddenly changed, turning into nothingness. The black cat turned its head, and Professor Snape was looking it over.

"what are you doing here?"

Snape's tone was unusually dangerous as he stared at the fading dream scene, then turned to those green eyes.

"Looking for you."

Black Cat speaks the truth.

Snape was taken aback by this, then snorted and said nothing more.

His dream collapsed rapidly, a price that the waking man had to pay. In the last second before the dream collapsed and they fell into the boundary, the black cat saw a pair of green eyes.

Somewhat strangely, they don't quite resemble the pair from before.

In the white expanse, the vigilant Potions professor kept looking around. He saw a half-ruined Victorian building with a faded "Children's Home" sign on the door.

The streetlights flickered on and off along the extended road.

Snape also saw some houses and black cat statues beside them, but he thought they were far from the real thing:
"ugly."

He gave a sneer.

Then, as if he had suddenly realized something, he seemed to understand.

The statue is ugly because it is unrealistic, not because the statue itself is ugly.

But he said nothing, only let out another cold laugh—he was thinking, "It's not too bad," but the words that came out of his mouth were yet another sarcastic remark.

The black cat didn't care; the professor's tongue and thoughts were never consistent.

Just as it knew, the inability to love is an acquired deficiency, like a mute. Very few people are born mute; they cannot speak because they cannot hear.

(End of this chapter)