Legs a Little Weak, Wrist a Little Sore

"Shut up!" Snape growled, trying to cut off the maddening sobbing.

But his voice had clearly lost its initial absolute coldness, carrying a trace of barely perceptible irritation and scrutiny.

"What... exactly are you playing at, Leoqi?"

Skofot merely whimpered, looking at him through tear-blurred eyes as though he could not understand a word, like nothing more than a child who had been frightened and hurt.

[Emotion Points +120] (From Snape's extreme confusion, the shock of having his understanding challenged, intense vigilance toward the abnormal phenomenon, and a subtle wavering and self-doubt born from the other party's "pain")

[Emotion Points: 1005/100]

Snape looked at the boy before him, who was crying so hard he could barely breathe.

Then he sensed the utterly vanished connection to the Tracking Charm and the emptiness of no longer being able to detect any trace of the curse.

For the first time when facing this "problem student," he felt a stifling frustration with nowhere to direct itself.

He slowly released the hand pinning Skofot down.

Skofot immediately slid down the wall to sit on the floor, clutching the wrist marked with purple finger-shaped bruises. He buried his face in his knees, his shoulders shaking violently as he let out suppressed, deeply aggrieved sobs.

Snape stood before him, his chest rising and falling slightly beneath his black robes.

He watched in silence for several seconds before finally tossing out a cold sentence in an unreadably complicated tone.

"Get back to your dormitory. If I catch you wandering about after curfew again... you will bear the consequences yourself."

With that, he did not linger. He turned and strode away, his black robes whipping up a gust of cold air behind him.

He needed to go back and reassess everything he knew about Skofot Leoqi.

Everything that had happened tonight pointed to a complexity and... danger far beyond what he had initially expected.

Behind him, Skofot, his face buried between his knees, gradually stopped crying after confirming that the footsteps had faded away.

He raised his face. Where was even the slightest trace of tears?

There was only icy calm, along with a faint glimmer of scheming success deep in his eyes.

He gently moved his aching wrist and back.

It hurt a little... but this had been worth it.

Supporting himself against the wall, he slowly rose to his feet and limped for real toward the dormitories.

Leaning against the cold, rough stone wall, Skofot shuffled back step by step to his single dormitory at the end of the corridor.

The door shut behind him, cutting off everything outside.

The damp chill unique to the dungeons wrapped around him, yet strangely cooled the nerves burning from pain a little.

He leaned against the door, panting.

The sharp pain in his wrist came in wave after wave, like red-hot iron pincers grinding it over and over.

For the sake of his act, he had forcibly switched cards and endured Snape's grip. The consequences were far more serious than he had imagined.

Scavenger.

He needed the cold numbness brought by that card. Perhaps it could suppress this damned pain.

With a flicker of thought, he switched cards.

That familiar, icy power carrying the scent of rust and death instantly surged back, filling every limb and bone.

The agonizing pain truly seemed to be separated by a layer, becoming blurred and distant, while an almost frenzied calm took control of his thoughts.

He lowered his head and examined his swollen, purplish wrist, its shape somewhat unnatural.

Dislocated? he judged calmly.

He had to set it back.

The Scavenger's way of thinking was direct and violent.

He stretched out his uninjured right hand, grabbed his injured left wrist without hesitation, tightened his fingers, and twisted with all his strength!

Crack—

The teeth-grating crisp sound was especially clear in the silent room.

The expected reset did not happen.

Instead, a tearing agony abruptly shattered the icy barrier brought by the Scavenger!

He looked down to see that the already bruised skin on the side of his wrist had split open from his rough movement, leaving a wound about an inch long. Bright red blood instantly gushed out, winding down his pale arm and dripping onto the old floor.

He stared at the spurting blood as the Scavenger's frenzy shrieked in his mind.

Waste.

What a waste.

Yet that bloody sight cleared his chaotic thoughts for a moment.

His robe... it was the only decent robe he had.

Using it to stop the bleeding would be such a waste.

Pain battered his sanity again and again like crashing waves.

Scavenger's state began to destabilize. That mad urge to destroy, to see blood, raced through his veins.

He could not keep wearing it, or he did not know what he might do.

He decisively switched back to Rabbit Rhymer.

Weakness and searing pain swallowed him like a tsunami. He could barely remain standing, and cold sweat instantly soaked through his undershirt.

It hurt... hurt so badly that he wanted to chop this hand off.

Yet amid that extreme pain and weakness, a thought flickered through the darkness like a firefly—faint, yet clear.

A persona... the persona of someone fragile and helpless, someone who needed protection.

Snape's suspicions hung over him like a sword. He needed a flawless disguise to divert attention and lessen the perceived threat.

And what could make people let down their guard more than a pathetic wretch who could break his own wrist, bleed without stopping, yet could not even bear to use his robe to wrap the wound?

The Hospital Wing.

He had to go now.

He looked around, and his gaze settled on a rough linen sack in the corner, one that had previously held shriveled apples and now lay empty.

He walked over and, somewhat clumsily, used his uninjured right hand to pull the sack over his left. He barely managed to tie the opening shut just above his wrist.

The coarse cloth was quickly soaked through with blood, turning dark red. Beads of blood seeped through the gaps in the fibers and began dripping faster.

Good. This was exactly the effect he wanted.

He drew a deep breath, dragged his weak, aching body along, and once again slipped silently out of the dormitory, melting into the shadows of the castle at midnight.

He was quite experienced at avoiding the patrolling professors and Filch, and he made it to the Hospital Wing without incident.

He did not knock on the door to the main ward. Instead, he headed straight for the small door beside it, leading to Madam Pomfrey's sitting room.

He stopped and looked at the hand wrapped in the rough, blood-soaked sack. He adjusted his breathing and arranged his face into Rabbit Rhymer's distinctive expression, a mixture of pain and panic. Then, with the fingers of his still-functional right hand, he gently knocked on the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound rang especially clearly through the silent corridor.

After a while, footsteps sounded from inside, followed by a sleepy question. "Who is it? At this hour..."

The door opened with a creak. Madam Pomfrey stood in the doorway, dressed in nightclothes beneath a plain robe, her face carrying irritation at being disturbed and a trace of professional vigilance.

Her gaze first fell on Skofot's pale, sweat-damp little face, twisted with pain, then swiftly moved downward—

Her breath caught sharply.

The boy's left hand, along with half his forearm, was stuffed inside a grimy-looking linen sack.

But more than half the sack had already been soaked through with blood. Dark red stains continued to spread, and the thick smell of blood hit her full in the face.

Drops of blood fell from the sack's rough bottom edge, one by one, splashing onto the polished floor and gathering into a small, glaring pool of red.

"Merlin!" Madam Pomfrey gasped, all traces of sleep vanishing instantly.

She instinctively reached out to touch him, but did not dare act rashly. "Child! What happened to you?!"

Skofot raised tear-filled eyes, his voice weak and trembling with sobs, as though he were using the last of his strength. "Madam... my hand... it hurts so much..."

Under Madam Pomfrey's horrified, intent gaze, he slowly, with extreme difficulty, pulled his left hand out of the rough sack that continued to drip blood, bit by bit...

The first thing to emerge was a set of fingers smeared with sticky blood, their skin frighteningly pale.

Then came the ghastly wound, flesh torn open and curled back, deep enough to expose bone and still gushing blood, along with a wrist bent at an obviously unnatural angle and swollen terribly high.

Blood dripped from his fingertips, forming fresh red spots at his feet.

That hand hung limply, as though it were only barely attached to his arm.

Madam Pomfrey's face instantly turned even paler than Skofot's.

She looked at that horrifically mangled hand, then at the boy's fragile appearance, as though he might faint at any moment. A surge of professional shock, worry over his injuries, and fierce pity welled up inside her.

"Quick! Get inside!" she practically screamed, grabbing Skofot and pulling him into the room.

She did not care that the streaming blood would stain the floor and her nightclothes. "Sit on the bed! Now! Merlin above, how did this happen?!"

Skofot obediently let her pull him along. His steps were unsteady, but his heart was coldly calm.

See? How perfect.

A porcelain doll too frail to protect himself, so delicate that he could shatter at any moment.

Who would suspect that a child like this could possibly pose any threat?

He lowered his eyes and let Madam Pomfrey hurriedly begin preparing a hemostatic treatment and Essence of Dittany. His long lashes concealed the hunter's gleam that flashed briefly in the depths of his eyes.