The Hidden Edge

In Severus Snape and Hagrid's assessment, Amosta Breen had been a low-key, solitary person during his school days. Even he himself did not deny that it was an apt description.

But that was not because Amosta was inherently a wizard who kept everyone at arm's length.

After all, Breen was an outsider. Before coming to Hogwarts, he had always believed he had merely transmigrated to Earth in a parallel world.

During the previous eleven years of his life, he had spent a great deal of time adapting to a country whose lifestyle and customs were completely different from those of his past life. He had also expended considerable effort relearning the cultural knowledge he had acquired as a student, actively preparing for the future.

But that Hogwarts admission letter had thrown all his plans into disarray, rendering his earlier efforts nearly futile.

Why had he seemed so out of place with his surroundings during his first few years at Hogwarts?

The answer was very simple.

First, the existence of magic had directly overturned the worldview and values Amosta had accumulated over nearly thirty years across two lives. During those years, he had remained in a state of confusion. On one hand, he had no choice but to acknowledge that magic was real and work hard to learn magical knowledge. On the other, he had constantly wanted to explain the legitimacy of magic's existence through "scientific methods." It had practically given him a split personality.

Second, the vague fragments of plot memories still lingering in his mind had caused him pain as well.

Amosta knew that he was living in an incomparably real magical world, not in some children's book. Here, there were dangerous and vicious magical creatures, insidious evil curses, cruel and bloody Dark Wizards, schemers who would stop at nothing, and despicable hypocrites.

Although Amosta remembered some names, he could no longer recall the stories surrounding those characters, so he could not directly judge whether they were truly "good people."

Especially after entering the magical world and realizing how weak and powerless he was, remaining wary of everyone became his way of ensuring his own safety.

And according to Hagrid, the coldness and isolation of Slytherin House students had actually been the least of his concerns.

After all, a mature soul resided within his young body.

Severus Snape had been the only wizard at the school whom he had acknowledged back then. The reason, in turn, was inseparable from Amosta's straitened background.

At the time, Amosta had been desperately poor. The school's small scholarship had been enough only to ensure that he could afford secondhand books and teaching supplies; it simply could not support his accelerated studies.

To salvage his terrible financial situation, Amosta had had to find a way to earn some money himself. Starting in his second year, he had secretly begun brewing Potions for sale.

At first, he could only use the cheap ingredients in the student storage cabinets to brew simple Potions, earning meager profits bit by bit.

Then, during the second semester of his third year, he received a large order worth eighty Gold Galleons—brewing a long-lasting Invisibility Potion.

To make absolutely certain nothing went wrong, he had used the Disillusionment Charm to sneak into the Restricted Section several times in the middle of the night to look up information. He had also subtly sounded Snape out about the key points of brewing the potion.

Amosta could not afford to be careless. The buyer did not provide ingredients, and a single Demiguise tail feather, the most valuable ingredient in the Invisibility Potion, cost six Gold Galleons. Brewing that potion required no fewer than five tail feathers, which would nearly drain all of Amosta's savings.

Unfortunately, things rarely went as one wished. If nothing unexpected happened, then the unexpected would inevitably happen.

Due to his lack of experience, Amosta had gotten the amount of Abyssinian wrinkled fig juice wrong, and the Potion brewing had failed.

Because of that, Amosta had been despondent for several days.

Yet before Potions Class a week later, when Amosta went to collect the ingredients needed for class, he discovered a bundle of ten Demiguise tail feathers in the storage cabinet he usually used. They were precious materials that normally would never appear in a young wizard's cabinet!

And during the following lesson on the Draught of Living Death, Professor Snape, acting as though nothing had happened, actually began talking to everyone about Invisibility Potion for no apparent reason!

That made Amosta understand that the stern-faced Head of House had likely been aware all along of his private Potion-brewing business.

Similar things happened several more times afterward, but both sides maintained an exceptional tacit understanding. Neither of them ever brought it into the open.

Because of that, Amosta gradually began trusting Severus Snape. Before then, he had always remained wary of Snape, because he had learned from conversations among students in his House that Snape had apparently once been a follower of the great Dark Lord. When the Dark Lord fell, he had escaped Wizengamot judgment only because of Headmaster Dumbledore's protection.

However, his close relationship with his Head of House did not change Amosta's philosophy of keeping a low profile. At school, he still remained silent, avoiding conflicts with others as much as possible and refraining from appearing too outstanding lest he invite jealousy. This continued until his fifth year, when an accident broke the pattern.

It happened at the end of November in 1986.

That year's winter had been especially cold, and Grandma Felena, already eighty-four years old, ultimately did not live to see the arrival of Christmas in the New Year.

Grandma Felena had carefully raised him in this life and devoted her entire life to charitable work. She had always been the elder Amosta respected most, and her death dealt him no small blow.

But since that year was his O.W.L.S year, the schoolwork was exceptionally demanding, leaving Amosta little time to grieve. So after hastily attending the old woman's funeral, he had no choice but to return to school without delay and continue his studies.

Time returned to a late night in early December 1986.

The pitch-black night draped the earth like an enormous curtain, sealed tight without the slightest gap. Fierce cold winds swept across the Black Lake, which had begun to freeze, and the crackling of colliding ice shards sounded like Inferi chewing white bones.

After confirming that his roommates had all fallen asleep, Amosta sat up expressionlessly. He quietly dressed, then took a framed black-and-white photograph from a hidden compartment beside his bed.

The common room was silent. The sickly green light, rough stone walls, and numerous empty carved armchairs made the long, low-ceilinged room look more like a tomb.

Slytherin House students were not as keen as Gryffindor House students on exploring the castle in the middle of the night. Thus, as Amosta passed through the maze-like, dizzying corridors, he did not encounter a single student.

Still, even if he had, there would have been nothing to worry about.

Amosta was very confident in his mastery of the Disillusionment Charm. He could completely conceal himself even while moving; not even Filch's underfed cat would notice anything unusual if it passed right beside him.

"Hey, little one, I think you must be lost!"

As he passed through the Entrance Hall, a voice from above the marble staircase caught Amosta's attention. He stepped closer and looked up, only to discover that it was Gryffindor's prefect, Bill of the Weasley family, speaking to a young Hufflepuff wizard.

"Get back to bed, little one, or I'll send you to see Professor Sprout."

"Y-Yes, Prefect Weasley, I'm going back to my dormitory right now!"

Hearing that he would not lose points or be sent to a professor for detention, the young wizard Bill had caught was profoundly grateful. He hurriedly bowed to Bill in apology, then ran off in a flash.

After dealing with the rule-breaking young wizard, Bill touched the long hair flowing behind his head, hummed a tune, and headed up the marble staircase to continue carrying out his prefect duties.

Amosta stood beneath the stairs and watched Bill's back vanish from sight. The eldest son of the Weasley family, whom Dumbledore trusted deeply, Bill Weasley was admired by both teachers and students throughout the school not merely because of his exceptional grades, but because he truly possessed extraordinary personal charisma.

But among Slytherin's upper-year students, Bill Weasley had a terrible reputation.

They believed that Bill Weasley, who spent all day associating with a group of Muggle-born wizards, had betrayed the glory of ancient wizarding families. In private, they had often planned to teach Bill a lesson.

But every time, Bill Weasley and his burly Chaser brother had beaten them badly, no matter how many people they sent.

As a result, Bill Weasley had practically become the public enemy of every Slytherin student above fifth year. Especially after rumors spread that Headmaster Dumbledore intended to give him the position of Male Student Council President when he reached seventh year, the hostility against him became even more obvious.

Amosta smiled soundlessly, turned, and headed through the Entrance Hall toward the Forbidden Forest.

None of this trouble had anything to do with him. After all, no one would be foolish enough to expect an unnoticed, transparent figure from Slytherin to defeat Gryffindor House's dazzling prodigy, radiant as the sun.