New Potion and the Enraged Noseless One (4)

It wasn't him. He hadn't controlled it. By the time he reacted, he realized that membrane had moved on its own.

It suddenly expanded outward from the surface of his skin by an inch, like an inflated balloon, then abruptly contracted again, clinging tighter to his skin than before. At the instant it expanded, Fuli felt a faint tingling like static electricity spread from his chest to his limbs, from his limbs to his fingertips, and from his fingertips throughout his entire body.

That membrane was releasing something. Not light, not heat, not anything he could describe. Based on what he had read in Muggle science magazines, it should have been some kind of force field.

Something completely opposite to the life force being drained from his body. It was warm, alive, moving—the kind of stubbornness that said, "You were supposed to die, but I won't let you."

Fuli's eyes hadn't closed. He saw it. After the membrane manifested, those yellow vertical pupils seemed to be pricked by something. The two lamps flared sharply—not brighter, but as if someone had blown into them from within, making the flames leap up before shrinking back down. Then the air around those eyes twisted.

It wasn't the kind of distortion caused by scorching heat. It was stranger, as though something invisible had collided between the Basilisk's eyes and Fuli's body, exploded, and shattered into dust.

Fuli clearly heard a sound echoing beside his ears. Not a hiss, not a scraping noise, but a finer, sharper crackling sound, like something being burned. Then he saw the giant snake's head jerk backward—not out of fear, not out of pain, but in an instinctive retreat.

Those yellow eyes dimmed for an instant, then brightened, then dimmed, then brightened, as if blinking—or adjusting their focus.

Then the