The remaining days of the christmas holiday passed in a strange calm. Hogwarts was like a silent fortress wrapped in snow, and the students who had stayed behind enjoyed a rare spell of idleness.
Lin Yanqing and Snape maintained their unspoken arrangement: Snape drew up increasingly advanced and dangerous reading lists, while Lin Yanqing, relying on his Ravenclaw status and the System's occasional conveniences, repeatedly risked "borrowing" ancient volumes that smelled of old parchment and dangerous magic from beneath Madam Pince's watchful gaze.
These books were far more profound than the previous ones—one might even call them sinister. The Shackles and Bonds of the Soul was filled with warnings about soul-rending and eternal enslavement; Bloodline Contracts and Magical Resonance detailed the catastrophic consequences that could result from forcibly linking different magical bloodlines, including mutual magical contamination and mental derangement.
Snape was clearly immersed in them. Through the contract, Lin Yanqing could often sense long periods of intense thought from the other end, along with occasional, almost feverish surges of excitement when Snape reached a crucial passage. Yet these were often followed by deeper confusion and a faint, barely perceptible anxiety. He seemed to be searching for a specific answer—perhaps a way to dissolve the contract, or perhaps a way to block its effects unilaterally.
However, danger was quietly approaching.
One evening, Lin Yanqing had just left the library, carrying the last book Snape had specifically requested—Obscure Connection: On Involuntary Magical Contracts. The instant he stepped out of the library doors, a sharp, piercing agony like being stabbed through with needles suddenly surged from the other end of the soul bond!
The pain was not physical. It felt more like his soul was being forcibly tugged and his magic brutally churned. Lin Yanqing let out a muffled groan and nearly dropped the book in his arms. He braced himself against the cold stone wall and felt a slight disruption in the circulation of his own magic.
It was Snape! Something had happened to him!
Almost instinctively, Lin Yanqing followed the direction indicated by the contract and hurried toward the Slytherin dungeon.
The pain and sensation of magical disturbance continued to come through. They were not strong, but they were unsettling, like background noise that would not go away.
He found Snape in a dark, rarely used corridor leading toward the dungeons.
He was curled up in the shadows of an alcove with his back to the corridor, his shoulders trembling slightly as his left hand gripped the wrist of his right arm.
Several sheets of draft paper covered in complex calculations and magical symbols were scattered across the floor, along with an open copy of An Investigation into the Phenomenon of Magical Resonance, which Lin Yanqing had only given him a few days earlier.
"Snape?" Lin Yanqing slowed his steps and called out tentatively.
Snape spun around sharply, his face as pale as paper and his forehead covered in fine beads of cold sweat.
His black eyes no longer held their usual coldness or vigilance. Instead, they contained an almost panicked expression Lin Yanqing had never seen before. Though the moment he saw Lin Yanqing, he quickly suppressed it and covered it once more in a layer of ice, that instant of loss of control had already been caught.
"Get lost!" His voice was hoarse, his harshness weakened by exhaustion.
Lin Yanqing did not leave. His gaze fell on Snape's left hand, which was unconsciously pressing harder against his right arm, and on the faint, abnormal magical glow seeping through his fingers. "Your magic..." He frowned. "Contract backlash?"
Snape's pupils contracted slightly. He pressed his lips together and neither admitted nor denied it. He had clearly been conducting some dangerous magical experiment or deduction alone, trying to forcibly analyze or even resist the contract's connection, only to suffer a magical backlash.
"I warned you that studying this alone was dangerous." Lin Yanqing's voice was calm, without accusation, merely stating a fact. He stepped forward, ignoring the way Snape's body instantly tensed and the warning in his eyes, then bent down to pick up the scattered drafts. The wildly interconnected symbols and equations on them clearly pointed toward methods of "isolating soul perception" and "cutting off magical flow."
Snape snatched the drafts from him, crumpled them into a ball, and shoved them into his pocket. The discomfort in his arm made the movement somewhat stiff. "It's none of your business," he said between breaths, trying to straighten up, only to stagger.
Just then, another faint ripple of magic spread from Snape's body and traveled through the contract. Lin Yanqing felt a slight numbness in the same spot on his own right arm. He raised his hand to look at it, then looked toward the right arm Snape was still clutching.
Snape had clearly noticed Lin Yanqing's subtle reaction as well, and his expression darkened further. Their worst suspicion had been confirmed—the contract did not merely share magic. It might even share injuries, or at least the negative effects of magical loss of control.
"Looks like," Lin Yanqing said, lowering his hand, his tone still calm, "before you find a way to 'block' me, we at least need to make sure you don't blow yourself—or me—up first."
Snape glared at him fiercely, his chest heaving. Humiliation, anger, and a trace of helplessness churned in his black eyes. He hated having his weakness seen through, and the possibility of dragging someone else down with him made it even harder to bear than simple intrusion.
"That book," Lin Yanqing said, pointing at Obscure Connection, which he had nearly dropped earlier, "might mention how to 'stabilize' the connection instead of forcibly tearing it apart. At least until we find a safe method." He held the book out to him.
Snape did not take it immediately. He stood there like a wounded beast trapped in a difficult struggle between preserving his pride and facing reality. The corridor held only the sound of their restrained breathing and the faint wind in the distance.
In the end, his thirst for knowledge, along with his fear of losing control like that again, overcame his urge to blow this Ravenclaw and himself into the air. He suddenly reached out and practically snatched the book away, then hurried toward the Slytherin common room without looking back, his steps slightly unsteady.
This time, he left no new reading list behind.
Lin Yanqing watched him disappear around the end of the corridor and sighed softly. He could feel the severe pain and disturbance at the other end of the soul bond slowly subsiding, but a deeper, more complicated emotion was brewing—anger at a thwarted plan, mixed with frustration at his own inadequacy, and... a deeply unwilling compromise forced by reality.
"New mission triggered! [Crisis Rehearsal]" [Mission Description: Ensure that the bound target, Severus Snape, does not cause another loss of magical control through researching soul contracts within the next week.] [Mission Reward: Magical Stabilizing Potion (Basic) x2, System Points x50.] [Failure Penalty: Share the negative status [Magical Disturbance] with the bound target for 24 hours. 😭 The little one doesn't want to crash!]
Looking at the mission penalty, Lin Yanqing rubbed his brow. He knew the peaceful holiday was over. The real trouble—or rather, the next stage of their twisted relationship—had only just begun.
Before you continue