Expedited Delivery

The Hospital Wing was utterly silent.

It was a good while before the boys reluctantly tore their gazes away from the doorway.

Then, frowning, they turned to look at Snape, silently questioning what was so special about him.

Aber hesitated, his lips twitching.

But after sneaking a glance at Mary's expression from the corner of his eye, he swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue and wisely chose to keep quiet.

"You just rest easy," Snape said, giving Aber's leg a firm pat. "We're off."

Mary shot Aber a vicious glare before following him out.

She walked fast, dragging Pandora along at a brisk pace ahead.

Pandora had wanted to turn back and call for Snape to join them, but Mary's grip on her arm made it impossible to stop.

Their voices drifted back to Snape's ears, fragmented and broken.

"How can you not be angry... the way she was... I'm telling you..."

"Why should I be angry... she's pretty enough..."

"Why can't I make you understand... the way they were..."

"I don't understand either..."

Mary stomped her foot in frustration, then finally abandoned Pandora altogether and walked off alone.

The next day, Aber's sprained ankle was completely healed.

"Mate," Aber said on the corridor leading to the Transfiguration classroom, looking at Snape with admiration. "So you're the one who blew up the school."

"Tsk, tsk," he clicked his tongue in amazement. "I really don't know what to say to you. Pulling off something that earth-shattering and not even getting expelled."

"Speaking of expulsion, Severus," Aber sighed, a bit dejectedly. "It's just the two of us left in the dorm now. Do you think our room's feng shui is off? Even Avery's stopped coming to school.

"Ah, I know he was annoying, but I really wonder what kind of bad luck he ran into..."

Snape couldn't shake the feeling that Aber's words carried a hidden meaning, like a veiled accusation. "They talked too much. That's why they ran into bad luck."

"What's even more infuriating," Aber muttered on, though his tone shifted from sighing to indignation, his teeth grinding, "is why Madam Rosmerta invited you to her pub. What's so much better about you than me?"

"Maybe she prefers humans over Tree Monkey Frogs with green herbs wrapped around their feet?"

With that, Snape dashed into the classroom in three quick strides, where Professor McGonagall was already waiting.

During Transfiguration class, Pandora saw Aber and kept pressing him about what kind of healing magic or medicinal herbs he'd used to fix an injury that had even stumped Madam Pomfrey so quickly.

Aber stammered for ages before finally managing to brush it off, claiming his father had gotten some specialty herbs through a friend from Castelobruxo, the Brazilian wizarding school.

"Aber, Flahos, what are you two chatting about so merrily!"

Professor McGonagall scolded sharply.

"Mr. Aber, please name the five principal exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration."

"Poo..." Aber muttered uncertainly under his breath.

"What?" Professor McGonagall's eyebrows shot up in surprise, her eyes wide, looking like she was caught between laughter and anger. "Oh, Merlin's trousers, are you planning to subsist on excrement?

"When you graduate, don't you dare say I taught you Transfiguration.

"No, I'll have to give you remedial lessons."

"Oh, no—" Aber let out a groan of despair.

The class burst into laughter.

"Ahem, ahem, Flahos, do you know?" Professor McGonagall hesitated, glancing at Pandora, then quickly added, "You don't have to answer if you don't."

"The first exception is food," Pandora said calmly, her voice soft. "We cannot conjure genuine food out of thin air.

"But fake food is still edible. I've eaten pumpkin pasties made from air. They taste good—they don't fill you up, but they stave off hunger."

"And the rest," Professor McGonagall cut off Pandora's freewheeling explanation.

"The second exception is living things. We cannot create life from non-living matter."

"Yes, yes," Professor McGonagall nodded approvingly, pointing at a crow poking its head out on the desk. "It was a teapot just a moment ago. Even if it looks like a living creature now, its essence hasn't changed."

"The third exception is enchanted objects, like Galleons..."

Pandora's grasp of Transfiguration left Professor McGonagall with nothing to critique. She turned back to glare at Aber. "Remember, six-thirty in the evening. Honestly, why can't you lot ever let me have a moment of free time..."

Hearing this, Snape instinctively shrank back behind the Advanced Transfiguration Guide. His last detention wasn't that long ago.

After class, during dinner, eight long-eared owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying a large package. They knocked the plates right off the table in front of Snape.

Ordinarily, owls didn't deliver things in the evening, but Snape had paid an extra three Galleons for Expedited Delivery.

The people around him stared curiously, wondering what was in the big package, but he had no intention of opening it here.

"Reducio." Snape pointed at the package and incanted.

The package quickly shrank to about a fifth of its original size.

He recited the spell again, then laboriously moved the package onto the bench.

"Pandora, have you done any experiments lately?"

"No, a lot of things are gone."

"Let's go check the lab," Snape said. "See what's left."

Then, they once again arrived at the Room of Requirement.

Pandora looked somewhat sorrowfully at the sparse magical materials and experimental apparatus left in the lab, tidying the tabletop with a heavy heart.

"Hey, Pandora." Snape spoke as he pointed to the small package he'd carried into the room. "Engorgio. Engorgio.

"Open it and take a look."

Opening the package revealed dozens of small boxes bearing the Slugs & Jiggers Apothecary label.

"I didn't know exactly what you needed, so I had them send a bit of everything. But you'll have to make the experimental apparatus yourself—I didn't see anything like that on the market."

"No," Pandora said, shaking her head. "I can't accept this."

"Take it. You lost all your things because you were helping me."

Pandora still refused.

"How about this—consider it a conditional sponsorship from me. You'll have to share the results of your experiments with me.

"Also, from now on, let me know before you do any experiments.

"When you mentioned 'I have a way' in the Secret Passage, that way was way too big... way too terrifying..."

"Thank you, Severus."

"You're welcome."

Thank you to Xiao Xi Feng Xi for the monthly ticket.