Expedited Delivery

The Hospital Wing was quiet.

After quite a while, the boys reluctantly tore their gazes away from the door.

Then they frowned at Snape, silently asking what was so special about him.

Aber hesitated a little, his lips moving.

But after secretly glancing at Mary's expression from the corner of his eye, he swallowed the words that had reached his lips and wisely chose to keep quiet.

"Rest up," Snape said, giving Aber's leg a heavy pat. "We're leaving."

Mary shot Aber a vicious glare before leaving as well.

She walked quickly, dragging Pandora along at a hurried pace.

Pandora had wanted to turn back and call Snape to come with them, but Mary gripped her arm so tightly that she could not stop.

Their voices drifted to Snape's ears from afar, fragmented and intermittent.

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

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

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

"I don't understand either..."

Mary stamped her foot furiously. In the end, she simply abandoned Pandora and left on her own.

The next day, Aber's sprained ankle had fully healed.

"Mate," Aber said in the corridor leading to the Transfiguration classroom, looking at Snape with admiration, "so you were the one who blew up the school."

"Tsk, tsk." He shook his head in amazement. "I honestly don't know what to say about you. You did something that earth-shattering, and you still weren't expelled."

"Speaking of expulsion, Severus," Aber sighed gloomily, "there are only the two of us left in the dormitory. Do you think our dorm's feng shui is bad? Avery isn't coming to school anymore either.

"Ah, he was pretty annoying, sure, but I really don't know what bad luck he ran into..."

Snape felt that there was something behind Aber's words, as if he were taking a jab at someone else: "They were unlucky because they talked too much."

"What pisses me off even more," Aber continued muttering to himself, his tone shifting from sorrow to anger and his teeth grinding, "is why Madam Rosmerta invited you to her pub. How am I any less handsome than you?"

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

After saying that, Snape hurried into the classroom. Professor McGonagall was already there.

During Transfiguration class, after seeing Aber, Pandora kept asking what healing spell or medicinal herb he had used to recover so quickly from an injury that even Madam Pomfrey had been unable to treat.

Aber stammered for a long time before finally managing to blame it on a special herb his father had purchased through a friend from the Brazilian wizarding school Castelobruxo.

"Aber, Flahos, what are you two chatting about so happily?"

Professor McGonagall reprimanded them sternly.

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

"Excrement...?" Aber uncertainly offered in a low voice.

"What?" Professor McGonagall raised her brows in surprise, her eyes widening as though she were about to laugh from sheer exasperation. "Oh, Merlin's trousers, do you intend to live on excrement?

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

"No, I need to give you extra lessons."

"Oh, no—" Aber let out a despairing groan.

The class burst into laughter.

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

"The first exception is food," Pandora said calmly and softly. "We cannot create real food out of thin air.

"But fake food can still be eaten. I've eaten pumpkin pies transfigured from air. They tasted good. They didn't fill you up, but they did stave off hunger."

"And the rest?" Professor McGonagall interrupted Pandora's freewheeling explanation.

"The second exception is living life. We cannot create living creatures from inanimate objects."

"Yes, yes." Professor McGonagall nodded approvingly and pointed at a raven peering about on the desk. "It was a teapot just now. Even though it currently appears to be a living creature, its essence has not changed."

"The third exception is Enchanted objects, such as gold Galleons..."

Pandora's mastery of Transfiguration left Professor McGonagall unable to find any fault with her. She turned to glare at Aber again. "Remember, six-thirty tonight. Sigh, why won't you let me have even a little free time..."

Hearing that, Snape instinctively shrank back behind the Advanced Transfiguration Guide. It had not been long since his last detention.

After dinner, eight long-eared owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying a huge package, knocking Snape's dinner plate onto the floor.

Normally, owls did not deliver things in the evening, but Snape had paid an extra three Galleons for Expedited Delivery.

Everyone around him watched Snape curiously, wanting to know what was inside the large package, but he had no intention of opening it here.

"Reducio," Snape said, pointing his wand at the package.

The package swiftly shrank to roughly one-fifth of its original size.

He cast the spell again, then laboriously carried the package onto the bench.

"Pandora, have you been doing any experiments lately?"

"No. So many things are gone."

"Let's go take a look at the laboratory," Snape said. "Let's see what's left."

Then they once again went to the Room of Requirement.

Pandora looked sadly at the few remaining magical materials and experimental apparatuses in the laboratory, dejectedly tidying the tabletop.

"Hey, Pandora." As Snape spoke, he pointed at the small package he had carried into the room. "Engorgio, Engorgio.

"Open it and take a look."

Inside the package were dozens of small boxes bearing the logo of Slug & Jiggers Apothecary.

"I didn't know what you needed, so I had them send a little of everything. But you'll have to make the experimental apparatuses yourself. I didn't see anything similar on the market."

"No." Pandora shook her head. "I can't accept this."

"Take it. You lost those things because you helped me."

Pandora still refused to agree.

"How about this? Consider it conditional funding. You have to share the results of your experiments with me.

"And in the future, you'd better tell me before you conduct an experiment.

"You mentioned in the Secret Passage that you had a way. That way was far too big—far too frightening..."

"Thank you, Severus."

"You're welcome."

Thanks to Xiao Xi Feng Xi for the monthly ticket.