On Resurrection and the First Lesson

Of course, He Shenyan heard the door opening behind him and the slow footsteps that followed.

He was not surprised by Snape's arrival. He had met many people like him, especially since Dumbledore had already hinted at it. It seemed that in every world, Englishmen liked to beat around the bush.

Snape entered the room and discovered that the space had expanded to more than five times its original size.

The portraits of former headmasters were gone, as was Dumbledore's cluttered desk. Only the walls and floor retained their original colors. Other than that, there was nothing—just an empty room. He saw the man standing in the center of it with his back to him.

He stepped closer and said loudly, "Mr. He! Do you remember me? We met this afternoon. I am Severus Snape, and I came to ask you—"

"About resurrection and such, right?" He Shenyan answered without even turning around.

Snape was struck as if by lightning. No one would feel good about having a thought buried in their heart for more than a decade exposed so directly. Yet he could only nod silently.

He Shenyan finally turned around.

He held a book in his hand and was flipping through it. Its heavy brown cover bore the flowing title Standard Book of Spells, with a smaller line beneath it: One book is better than six.

As he turned the pages, he said casually, "Of course it can be done. Such things are not difficult for Mages."

"But." The Mage raised his head without finishing the sentence, drawing out the word.

Here it came. He was going to name his conditions.

Snape's heart trembled, but conditions were only natural. A completely new, superior, more advanced way of casting spells—and Magic Power that could even resurrect the deceased.

It would have been stranger if there were no conditions.

He had even prepared himself to do whatever He Shenyan asked of him, even if it meant killing Dumbledore.

Yet what he had not expected was that He Shenyan merely asked a question.

He looked up and said, "Why do you want to disturb the deceased?"

After a long silence, Snape spoke with difficulty. He tried to make his words clear, but the harder he tried, the more he failed. His tongue felt like a rusty five-pence coin in his mouth.

"Because... because she died by accident. She should not have died that way. And she... was very brave. She died protecting her daughter. She, she..."

He spoke more and more slowly, yet more and more clearly. It was as though every word took all the strength in his body. "And I still owe her an apology."

"I will not help you."

Just as expected.

Snape lowered his head. His long, untrimmed fingernails dug into his palms, drawing blood.

"But I will teach you. You are very talented. It depends on how much you can learn in this month. After that, I will have to teach students, and my pace will be based on them."

Snape seemed to jerk his head up. The joy on his face was utterly undisguised, his expression changing at a speed comparable to some ancient secret art.

He Shenyan said calmly, "Do not be too happy yet, Mr. Snape. I have requirements for my students. Especially talented people like you, I may be even stricter with. My personal advice is that you should prepare yourself."

He paused deliberately. "...And you should also take care of your personal hygiene. It would be best to bathe once a day, Mr. Snape."

He Shenyan even made a rather humorous joke. "I imagine that lady would also want the man resurrecting her to be clean, wouldn't she?"

Snape did not sleep that night.

In fact, ever since that day, he had found it difficult to sleep peacefully. Sometimes he went to bed early, only to be jolted awake by nightmares in the middle of the night. In them, Voldemort laughed madly while she lay in a pool of blood. Snape wanted to draw his wand and cast a spell on Voldemort, but he could not even move.

Sometimes it was worse, and he could not sleep all night. The moment he closed his eyes, there she was.

The guilt in his heart grew with every passing day, as did his unrequited love. This condemnation from his own conscience would gradually devour a person. Yet today, though he had clearly been given a chance to reverse it all, he still could not sleep.

His mind was filled with those green eyes. Once, during the happiest days in Snape's memories, they had looked into each other's eyes.

He had once seen the entire universe in those eyes—a poetic universe, a universe he had never possessed.

The verse was too beautiful to be rewritten.

Too beautiful even to remember.

This man, who never easily showed his feelings, stared at the pure white moonlight spilling beside his bed. To his own surprise, tears began to fall silently, and he began to weep soundlessly in the darkness.

At eight forty-five the next morning, He Shenyan was already fully dressed and waiting for his students in the former headmaster's office, now a magic classroom. The day before, he had used the same Magic Power on everyone else that he had used on Dumbledore. The results were remarkable, and he was very satisfied.

At nine sharp, everyone had arrived.

Hogwarts's current teachers all stood in the empty room.

Other than Professor Binns, who could not come for personal reasons, and Professor Trelawney, who refused to come no matter what, they were all there. He Shenyan snapped his fingers, and enough chairs and desks for everyone appeared in the empty room.

He gestured with a smile, signaling for his students to sit down. Teaching a group of teachers whose combined ages could easily be several times his own was somewhat strange, but as long as they were willing to learn, He Shenyan was happy to teach.

He did not believe sharing knowledge was a sin—besides, they had all passed the test.

Once they were seated, a floating blackboard appeared behind He Shenyan. Black Magic Power formed a pen behind him and began writing on its own. It covered the basic theory of the connection between the mind and soul, along with some elementary preparatory knowledge for meditation.

Severus Snape wore a brand-new set of black robes. He had even cut his hair short and shaved his beard completely clean.

He held a leather-bound notebook that was obviously newly purchased and wrote furiously with a quill pen. He did not want to miss a single word from the blackboard, even copying down the title in its entirety.

McGonagall watched him from beside him, at a loss for words. Were you ever this serious when you were still studying?

The first lesson lasted an hour and a half without a break. Flitwick even looked somewhat unsatisfied. The small man possessed unimaginable energy, especially when encountering such new knowledge. That energy burst forth completely.

He progressed the fastest of them all. Even Dumbledore could not compare, which surprised He Shenyan somewhat. He immediately raised Flitwick's teaching pace in his mind.

After the first lesson ended, they had twenty minutes of rest time to digest the knowledge they had just learned.

But that amount of time certainly could not allow them to fully understand and absorb it. Take Severus Snape, for instance: he sat in his seat, propping up his face as he pondered, silently staring at the neat writing in his leather notebook.

He Shenyan walked over, patted Snape, and said, "If there is anything you do not understand, you may ask questions at any time. Any time, Mr. Severus."

Snape raised his head somewhat dazedly. He looked at the young man, then pointed to a passage in his leather notebook and asked, "I do not quite understand this part, Mr. He."

"'The soul and body are bound together quite tightly. Even death may not necessarily separate them, unless demons drag them down to Hell. Or Angels bring them up to Heaven.' Does that mean the souls of the departed always sleep within their bodies?"

He Shenyan considered it before answering, "In most cases, yes. Since I have not found any traces of Heaven or Hell in your world, you can treat it as one hundred percent certain. In other words, yes."

Snape's body swayed.

He Shenyan knew why. He did not disturb the man, who had become helplessly constrained precisely because hope was so close at hand. That was only human nature. He had already begun considering how to open the next lesson.