Fear, Flight, Death

Given his superhuman senses, Anduin could hear every flirtatious whisper from inside the Stone House. He was getting a headache, and his stomach churned with nausea. The whole thing was making him sick.

Anduin knew he couldn't wait any longer. Who knew how long it would take for the young couple to finish and leave?

So he slowly wandered over to the window of the Stone House and silently cast a spell on the two inside. Before long, the young wizards had fallen asleep.

"Finally, some peace and quiet..." Anduin shook his head helplessly. Now he understood why Snape was so strict with students who wandered the halls at night. Young couples were a real nuisance.

After dealing with the potential witnesses, Anduin immediately got to work. First, he planted several Jamming Interferers around the square, making sure that neither the sounds nor the sights from here could get out.

Then he went to the Snakewood and gently stroked its trunk. Before long, he sensed the magic coursing through the tree like blood.

The magic was far more powerful than he had imagined, nothing like that of an ordinary magical tree. Clearly, the Snakewood had gained a great deal over the past few hundred years.

The discovery excited Anduin. The Snakewood really was extraordinary. The legend in the records seemed to be true, and all that magic would be a great help in waking it.

"Wake up!"

Anduin leaned close to the trunk and murmured in a slightly hoarse Parseltongue, concentrating fully on the changes in the magic inside the Snakewood.

The vocabulary of Parseltongue wasn't particularly large, and most of its words were simple and direct. That gave the language its mysterious power, but once you understood it, there weren't many secrets left.

That was why anyone who spoke