Clearly,
Snape wanted to prove Ian was lying through his teeth by recreating the bizarre scenario Ian had described.
However,
Ian wasn't nervous at all.
Though Snape's notes didn't explain or teach the spell as well as Grindelwald's annotations in Secrets of the Darkest Art, the magic Snape had recorded clearly wasn't particularly difficult.
"Does it need to be hostile...?"
Ian studied it very carefully.
He hadn't grasped the entire spell all at once.
Maybe it wasn't dark enough?
Ian thought this, now that he had a better understanding of his own talent for Dark Magic.
Meanwhile,
"Heh heh, putting on an act..."
Snape was just waiting for Ian to admit defeat.
While Ian was studying,
he drew his wand.
With a wave,
the planks stacked in the corner began fitting together to form coffins, and the scattered corpses were pulled by an invisible force, automatically floating into the coffins wrapped in oilcloth.
"Clatter, clatter~"
One by one, the coffins were buried in the earth.
The dirt piled up inside the house began to refill the ground as well.
Before long,
the entire living room had been restored to its original state.
The task Ian had spent all afternoon struggling with was completed by magic in just a few minutes. The corpses didn't even have to be crammed into a single coffin anymore.
Actually, if the corpses hadn't burst out of their coffins when Ian summoned them, he wouldn't have needed to build new coffins to make amends to the dead.
He did have a conscience.
Just not much of one.
There was no helping it.
Nailing coffins together was exhausting, and Ian had only considered burying several corpses together to save time. Those corpses had new homes in the end, hadn't they?
"Mr. Prince, I don't have time to wait while you keep stalling."
After cleaning up the mess,
Snape turned his gloomy face back toward Ian, who was standing in the corner.
"Professor."
Ian finally looked up from his intense studying.
"If you want to come clean, it's not too late."
Snape gave a cold snort.
"Professor, this spell of yours is Dark Magic, isn't it?"
Ian asked, sounding a little hesitant.
"Of course."
Snape glanced sideways at Ian.
"Would I get into trouble for learning it?" Ian continued.
Snape looked impatient.
"You weren't worried about getting into trouble when you learned the Corpse Control Curse?" Snape sneered, staring at Ian as if he'd seen right through his tricks.
"Don't give me some ridiculous excuse as a lame reason why you supposedly can't learn it. Didn't you pick up a piece of paper, try the spell out of curiosity, and learn the Corpse Control Curse?"
"It's not even proper Dark Magic. Given how you boast about yourself with such absurd arrogance, a little spell like this shouldn't be beyond a magical genius like you."
Snape put particular emphasis on the words "magical genius."
The sarcasm was unmistakable.
"I wasn't making excuses, Professor. You've misunderstood." Ian blinked and glanced at the extra level-one skill on his skill panel.
"I just thought..."
Ian pulled out his wand and pointed it at the pile of planks nearby.
"Sectumsempra!"
Ian murmured the spell. As soon as the words left his lips, the air seemed to ripple almost imperceptibly. An invisible blade swept through like a ghost, as if an unseen sword were slashing wildly, cutting everything in its path to pieces.
A shrill tearing sound rang out.
Fragments flew everywhere.
Wood chips and dust filled the entire living room, drifting down like rain.
"It wasn't all that hard to learn."
Ian was covered in splinters. He put away his wand, lightly brushed off his clothes, and looked at Snape with a slightly sheepish smile.
"Perhaps you should try giving me a harder spell, Professor. Then maybe I really wouldn't be able to learn it. You'd get to see me floundering and suffering, just as you'd hoped."
His words brimmed with anticipation,
and sounded entirely like he was thinking of Snape's best interests.
They received no response.
Snape stood on the other side of the room, his sneer now completely frozen.
The atmosphere had turned rather strange.
"Professor?"
Ian pressed on, unwilling to give up.
"Honestly, make it a little harder and I really won't be able to learn it." His thirst for knowledge was so genuine that even his insincere words sounded heartfelt.
"..."
Snape's hair was covered in wood chips. They clung stubbornly to his greasy hair. But clearly, he couldn't care less about his hair right now.
"What is wrong with you!?"
Snape's face twitched violently.
"As you can see, you almost stumped me."
Ian put on a look of lingering fear.
Just as he had with his earlier, utterly absurd story,
Snape wasn't fooled.
At that moment,
the professor, who could hurl insults for half an hour without repeating himself, opened his mouth, but couldn't manage to say even a single word for a long while.
There was no helping it.
Who could have seen this coming?
A little wizard he'd taken from an orphanage not long ago, who'd only bought his wand a few days earlier, had actually managed to slap him in the face and prove what it meant to have magical talent from "teaching yourself."
Was this even human?
What the hell was he?
Twenty minutes, start to finish?
Even Voldemort would have to hand you his wand!
Snape looked dazed.
"Professor, Professor, still haven't decided? I suggest you stop giving me Dark Magic. Why not test me with Fiendfyre instead?" Ian's voice kept chattering away.
"Shut up!"
Snape just wanted a moment to collect himself.
Good grief!
Fiendfyre?
Could you possibly be any bolder?
"Okay..."
Ian shrank his neck.
Snape took a while to recover from his dreamlike bewilderment. Then he studied the boy in front of him, forced to reconsider Ian's story.
Maybe
there really had been a Dark Wizard who'd dropped a scrap of paper?
"Where is the piece of paper you found?"
Snape still wasn't willing to admit he'd been wrong.
"It's gone. Last night was total chaos, with corpses crawling out everywhere. I don't know where the paper ended up." Ian immediately put on a regretful expression.
"Don't tell anyone about what happened yesterday...or today!" Snape's expression was complicated, and he didn't press Ian any further about the paper.
His gaze held more than shock and disbelief; there was also a hint of worry. Showing off such extraordinary magical talent at such a sensitive time was no good thing.
Voldemort was about to return.
Grindelwald's Acolytes and descendants were active near Hogwarts, too.
At the thought,
Snape suddenly seemed to realize something.
Maybe
the scrap of paper the kid had found belonged to one of Grindelwald's Acolytes? If it had been a note intended to teach Young Grindelwald, that would explain everything!
The more he thought about it,
the more plausible it seemed.
Before he knew it,
Snape seemed to have stopped doubting Ian's story.
There was no helping it.
He'd seen with his own eyes just how incredible the boy's talent was.
"School starts soon. Listen carefully: you are not to use the spell you just learned on any student at school! Not even if someone you hate provokes you!"
Snape was already regretting teaching him Sectumsempra.
Who could have seen this coming?
The boy had actually learned it!
"Sure, sure. Of course I understand. I'm always kind to people."
Ian hurriedly nodded and promised.
He took Snape's words straight to heart.
After all,
Snape had only forbidden him from using Sectumsempra on people he hated. He hadn't said he couldn't use yesterday's Corpse Control Curse on the ancestral graves of hated classmates' families.
Hmm.
This had to be a tacit approval from the professor!