It's past five-tea first

The sight shook Gavin to his core.

In that instant, never mind continuing his observation—he could not even maintain the most basic stability.

It felt as though something had shoved his entire consciousness violently outward. The abyss-like black-hole eye before him and the little girl's outline, so hollow it seemed to be fading away, abruptly receded and shattered in the briefest instant, then gave way to the real world.

He opened his eyes, his previously rhythmic breathing noticeably uneven.

The hospital room was still the same room.

The light, the bed, the chairs, Dibby, Pipi, and Cordelia sitting opposite him—none of it had changed.

But a sheen of cold sweat had broken out across his back.

"What's wrong?"

Cordelia immediately looked at him anxiously.

She had been watching his face all along. Now that his expression was clearly wrong, her fingers unconsciously tightened a little.

"What did you see?"

Gavin did not answer immediately.

He wanted to, but he did not know how to put it.

Tell her that what was inside her was not a black vortex he might still find a way to divert, soothe, or counterbalance, but a black hole that had almost fully developed into an Abyssal Eye?

Tell her there was also a "little Cordelia" beside it, slowly being swallowed? Tell her the situation was far worse than he had imagined—so bad that a single glance had shaken his mind and thrown him out?

Saying any of that now would not help in the slightest.

It would only frighten her.

So Gavin steadied his breathing first, trying to make his voice sound as normal as possible.

"Don't worry about me for now," he said. "What did you feel?"

Cordelia froze for a moment.

Clearly, she had not expected that to be his first question.

She carefully considered how she felt for a while, then shook her head.

"Nothing unusual."

"Dizzy? Nauseous? Cold? Or... like something touched you?"

"None of that," Cordelia said. "Almost nothing at all."

She even looked a little bewildered as she spoke. It was as though she had braced herself for an upheaval inside her head, only for nothing to happen, leaving her oddly at a loss.

Gavin said nothing after hearing that.

He simply sat there quietly, slowly processing what he had just seen.

Cordelia did not disturb him either.

She just sat by the bed, holding her book and watching him quietly. Sunlight streamed through the room's high window and fell on the small patch of floor between them, lending the moment the feel of a peaceful afternoon.

She actually liked moments like this.

When Gavin fell silent and lowered his head to think, his brow would furrow slightly, but his gaze remained focused, as though the whole world had temporarily made way for his mind. Cordelia could not tell what he was thinking, but that did not stop her from finding the sight more reassuring than many other things.

After all, as long as he was still sitting here, even with a terrible expression and without saying a word, he was still "here."

He would not suddenly end up lying in the room next door like he had that day, covered in the same wounds buried deep in her memories.

At that thought, Cordelia's fingers tightened slightly, then quickly relaxed.

Gavin was still thinking.

Without a doubt, he had gained a crucial, but also deeply troubling, piece of information.

The crucial part was that he finally knew Cordelia's internal structure was on an entirely different level of difficulty from his own.

The troubling part was that the difference was so vast that many of the plans he had prepared had suddenly lost all relevance.

Her obscurus had grown powerful enough to almost dominate her entire consciousness space, while her own "core consciousness"—

Or rather, the part closest to her true self, had been forced to the very edge, as though one more step would see it swallowed completely.

...This is trouble, Gavin concluded.

And what made it even worse was that Cordelia herself could barely feel any of it.

That made sense.

If someone had grown up with something pressing down inside her head since she was seven, she might have no idea what a normal person was supposed to feel like. To her, that enormous, cold, devouring presence had already become part of everyday life.

People immersed in abnormality for a long time often failed to recognize their condition, believing it was normal.

Gavin thought for a long while, but still could not find an approach he could put into practice immediately.

So he could only turn his attention back to Plan B for now.

At least this backup plan could begin right away.

"Cordelia," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Let's not rush into studying you any further," Gavin said. "I'll teach you something else first."

"What?"

"Meditation," he said. "And how to control your emotions."

Cordelia blinked.

"Will that help?"

"In theory," Gavin said. "You can't actively keep yourself lucid and stable the way I do yet, so we'll start with the basics."

He paused, then added:

"At the very least, when your emotions erupt, you should know how to keep them from taking control right away."

This was something well worth doing.

After all, no matter how they eventually dealt with that black-hole-like obscurus, the strength of Cordelia's own consciousness and her ability to control her emotions would certainly be key variables.

"Is it hard?" she asked.

"For ordinary people, it isn't easy," Gavin said. "For you, it might be a little harder."

"Then why are you teaching me?"

"Because you'll have to learn sooner or later," Gavin said. "And—"

He glanced at her.

"You can't rely on having a good cry to steady yourself every time you get worked up."

The tips of Cordelia's ears instantly reddened.

"That was an accident last time."

"Mm." Gavin nodded. "So let's try to reduce the number of future accidents."

For a moment, Cordelia could find nothing to argue with. She could only lower her head and crumple the corner of a page, then give a soft "Oh" a few seconds later.

And so, for the next while, Gavin began explaining the most basic things to her in the least obscure language he could manage.

How to sit in meditation.

How to regulate her breathing.

How to avoid rushing to drive her thoughts away, and instead learn to notice them first.

How to distinguish between "I'm sad right now" and "a feeling of sadness is passing through me."

At first, Cordelia listened attentively. Then she began to frown.

"This sounds like splitting my brain in two."

"More or less," Gavin said. "One half does the feeling, and the other watches those feelings."

"Is that how normal people live?"

"No," Gavin said. "Most normal people get swept up in their feelings the moment they arrive."

"Then why do I need to learn this?"

"Because you can't afford to be ruled by your emotions."

She understood that immediately.

So she asked no more questions and obediently followed his instructions, trying to slow her breathing little by little.

Naturally, the results would not appear immediately.

At least, they did not on her first attempt.

She sat there, trying hard for quite a while. When she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she said was:

"I feel like I was just sitting there and spacing out very seriously."

"That's a good start," Gavin said.

"Really?"

"At least you didn't get more and more irritated as you practiced."

Cordelia thought about it.

"I suppose that makes sense."

They went back and forth like that for quite some time.

Only when Dibby could not resist quietly reminding them, "Miss, it's already dinnertime," did they belatedly realize that the sun outside was almost down.

Cordelia leaned back as though relieved, resting as if she had just finished a bout of physical labor.

"What would you like to eat?" she asked. "I'll have Dibby fetch it from the cafeteria."

"No need," Gavin said.

"Why?"

"I brought my own."

Cordelia stared.

"You brought your own food to a hospital visit?"

"To be precise, I came to do research and brought food along," Gavin said.

Once again, that barely sounded like something a person would say.

But before she could offer any further objections, Pipi appeared beside them with a pop.

The house-elf had clearly prepared everything long ago and began deftly pulling things out the moment Pipi appeared: small bamboo steamers, little plates and bowls, and several carefully wrapped boxes of pastries. Then, waving small hands, Pipi expertly began heating them with magic.

Steam soon rose.

Sweetness, milk, pastry, and a faint hint of tea spread through the room together, instantly softening the medicinal smell and sterile atmosphere of St. Mungo's.

Dibby watched in astonishment.

Cordelia was captivated by the display too, leaning forward a little.

"What's this?"

Pipi quickly arranged a small tableful of food, setting it neatly before the two of them.

There were translucent shrimp dumplings, soft golden egg tarts, little molten custard buns, neatly sliced turnip cakes, and two steaming bowls of sweet soy milk.

Gavin glanced at it and said quite calmly:

"This is called dim sum."

"Dim sum?" Cordelia looked down at the food, clearly struggling to reconcile the name with the absurdly elaborate spread before her.

"Mm," Gavin said. "More precisely, it's morning tea dim sum. But it's not too late to eat it now."

Dibby was already quietly drawing in a breath nearby.

Clearly, despite years of service at St. Mungo's, the house-elf still lacked the basic professional preparedness for this sort of development.

For the first time, Dibby sensed a threat—a professional one.

Cordelia looked at a shrimp dumpling, then up at Gavin.

"Every time you come here, you act like you're on holiday."

"That shows how adaptable I am."

"I think you just have too many demands."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

In the end, she could not resist and reached for a siu mai first.

At the first bite, her eyes visibly lit up.

Although she quickly reined it in, trying to maintain a reserved air of "it's all right, nothing extraordinary," that tiny shift in her expression did not escape Gavin's notice.

"How is it?"

"...Average," she said.

"Then stop eating."

"It's not that average."

The answer came very quickly.

Gavin held back a laugh and simply nodded.

"Understood. Within the acceptable range."

Neither of them noticed that an old man had been watching them from outside the hospital window all along.

Dumbledore had arrived quite early. He had been paying close attention to Gavin lately and wanted to see what else he would do.

But what he saw now was a little table laid with dim sum, a little girl who, for once, was not quite so pale, taking small bites of siu mai, a boy sitting opposite her who seemed to have finally set aside his various studies for the moment, and two house-elves—one busy serving dishes, the other still trying to understand the food called dim sum.

Dumbledore stayed where he was and did not disturb them.

In the end, he simply watched quietly for a while.

Then he turned and left.