Emerald Green Eyes

Madara caught Severus Snape's gaze.

He suddenly turned to Ivan and added in a casual yet unquestionable tone:

"By the way, make two more sets of the outfits we just ordered—everyday clothes for all seasons and formal dress robes."

He paused, then casually pointed in Snape's direction.

"One set goes to Mr. Severus Snape's residence at Spinner's End."

"The other goes directly to Professor Snape's office at Hogwarts Castle."

Dead silence.

Ivan stared in stunned disbelief, and the magical notebook in his hand fell to the floor with a smack.

The Shadow Guards remained expressionless, as though their clan head had merely instructed them to do something as ordinary as eating or drinking.

Snape spun around sharply!

His black robes billowed with the violent motion like storm clouds before a tempest.

His face was dark enough to drip water, cold and wary light shooting from his eyes. His tightly pressed lips formed a straight line, making it clear that he was deeply displeased.

"I have no need for them."

His voice was low and silky, yet plainly resistant.

"I do not know you, and I do not accept gifts from unknown sources."

His sharp gaze swept over Madara and the Shadow Guards.

"Especially gifts from... suspicious individuals."

The air in the shop seemed to freeze.

Ivan was too terrified to make a sound, even softening his breathing.

But Madara smiled.

The smile was faint and did not reach his eyes, making those crimson pupils seem even more unfathomable.

He did not immediately respond to Snape's refusal. He merely waved to Ivan and the Shadow Guards, signaling for them to continue settling the details of the transaction and delivery arrangements.

As though Snape's protest were nothing more than insignificant background noise.

Snape stared at him as magic began to stir subtly around him.

He was preparing to make his refusal even more forceful—

At that very instant.

Without warning.

Madara vanished from where he stood.

The next moment—

Every muscle in Snape's body tightened like steel wire!

Years spent moving between the Dark Lord and the Order of the Phoenix, fighting on the edge of life and death, had honed his battle instincts. He almost reflexively reached for the wand in his sleeve!

But his hand had barely moved an inch before it froze.

Because the black-haired, red-eyed boy had already appeared silently before him.

It was not Apparition. There had been no fluctuation in space.

It was as though he had been standing there all along, except no one had seen him until now.

The distance between them was terrifyingly close.

Snape could even feel the strange, oppressive magical field around the other boy—

Cold, heavy, carrying a violent aura utterly incompatible with this world.

Like an ancient beast wearing human skin stood before him.

Madara tilted his head slightly upward, looking at Snape, who was far taller than him.

From such an upward angle, the young boy should have appeared at a disadvantage.

Yet Snape felt an invisible, almost tangible pressure lock onto him.

It was not magic, nor was it an intimidation spell, but something more primitive—

As though a predator at the top of the food chain were calmly examining him with the eyes it used to regard prey.

Then.

Madara's eyes changed.

Those dark eyes, which had merely possessed an unusual color before, suddenly became a pure, ominous crimson!

At the center of that crimson backdrop, a black tomoe slowly emerged and began to rotate like a living thing.

Demonic, mysterious, radiating an aura that made the soul tremble.

The instant Snape met that gaze, his Occlumency automatically surged to its utmost limit!

He felt the mental barrier he had spent decades building, once unbreakable, shake violently like ice struck by a boulder! That frigid barrier emitted an overwhelmed hum that only he could "hear"!

Peeling away.

He felt his thoughts, his memories, and those deepest things within him—sealed beneath layer after layer, wrapped in the hardest ice and the most vicious curses... being slowly yet resolutely peeled open, layer by layer, by those strange red eyes.

Peering in.

Those eyes seemed capable of seeing directly into the core of his soul.

Snape's pupils contracted uncontrollably at that instant.

Horror.

Even someone like him, who had endured war, betrayal, and death and witnessed the darkest magic, felt a long-forgotten terror born from the instinct to survive before those eyes.

But he was Severus Snape.

That flicker of horror lasted only an instant before being buried beneath deeper coldness and rage. His face hardened like stone, while dangerous undercurrents churned in his black eyes.

Madara savored the fleeting shift in emotion within the other man's eyes, a faint, amused curve touching his lips.

He spoke slowly. His voice was not loud, yet it clearly slipped into Snape's ears, carrying an air of lofty scrutiny.

"Professor..."

He paused, as though choosing his words.

Then he asked softly:

"Do you... still remember those 'emerald green eyes'?"

Boom—!!!

Those words were like an icy wedge, driven with crushing force into the deepest, darkest, most untouchable corner of Snape's soul!

All his coldness, rage, and vigilance were utterly overwhelmed in that instant by an even greater shock, one that nearly froze his soul!

Lily!

That name. That mistake he could never undo. That sin no lifetime of repentance could ever cleanse...

Emerald green eyes...

Like the tenderest leaves of spring, like sunlight refracted beneath the Black Lake, like...

Like the only light of his life—and the light he had extinguished with his own hands.

What does this boy know?!

How could he possibly know?!

Snape's renowned Occlumency, which even the Dark Lord had once praised, suffered a violent, nearly uncontrollable upheaval before those words!

He felt the mental fortress he had constructed cracking, collapsing!

The things he had sealed away with the most vicious vows and most painful memories were madly battering against its walls!

For that instant, his face turned terrifyingly pale—despite having already been sallow.

Beneath his black robes, his fingers trembled faintly beyond his control.

For half a second, his breathing stopped completely.

Madara watched it all.

Those crimson Sharingan calmly and greedily absorbed the stormy waves stirred within Snape's soul by those words.

That violent emotional turmoil, that bottomless regret and pain, that twisted and obsessive fixation...

So rich, so pure, so... delicious.

"Heh heh heh heh..."

A low, slightly hoarse laugh spilled from Madara's throat.

Watching Snape's suddenly contracted pupils and bloodless face, he seemed to have witnessed something exceedingly amusing.

"We will meet again, Professor."

After saying that—

Before Snape could form a single word or make any response in the wake of that tremendous blow—

Madara's figure blurred and dissipated once more without warning.

As abruptly as he had arrived.

Only Madara's final words lingered in the air, light as a whisper yet clear in every syllable:

"Merely a meeting gift, Professor Snape."

"See you at Hogwarts."

This time, he had truly left.

The four guards, silent as shadows, had also vanished with Madara, as though they had melted into the shop's shadows.

All that remained—

Was the stunned Mr. Ivan, facing the mountain of Galleons and gemstones on the table with his mouth hanging open for a long while.

And—

Severus Snape, standing rigidly in place as though struck by a Petrification Spell.

The fingers beneath his black robes trembled slightly.

Cracks had appeared in his icy mask.

The dark ocean within him, sealed away for more than a decade, had been thrown into a crazed, raging tempest by those words: "emerald green eyes."

Lily...

Resurrection...

Who exactly was that red-eyed boy?!

He suddenly turned, his sharp, blade-like gaze sweeping across every corner of the shop—

Behind the counter, beside the wardrobes, within the shadows of the vaulted ceiling...

Nothing.

There was not the slightest trace.

As though everything that had just happened had been nothing but an absurd and terrifying hallucination.

Only the faint, lingering trace of oppressive magic in the air proved that the unbelievable encounter had not been false.

The shop door closed.

The brass bell gave one final ding before silence returned.

Snape stared at the place where Madara had stood, complex emotions churning in the depths of his black eyes.

Confusion, vigilance, and a trace of... wariness he himself refused to acknowledge.

That boy...

Those crimson eyes...

And that method of disappearing...

Only he himself knew—

That at the very moment those crimson eyes had looked at him, the indestructible Occlumency barrier he had built over decades...

Had actually trembled slightly.

Like an invisible stone dropped into a still lake.

Hogwarts in September was unlikely to be peaceful.