"—You shouldn't have been so impulsive."
Snape looked at the Dementor corpses littering the ground, then at the uneasy wizards gathered in the distance, and felt a massive headache coming on. "Dumbledore is at the school, so we can still muddle our way through there... but what about the Ministry of Magic? The Aurors and the Wizengamot don't have our people. The Ministry's people will be here soon. Have you figured out how you'll explain this to them?"
"Explain? Why should I explain anything?"
Zheng Qing carelessly shook The Wand in his hand, as though trying to shake off the bad luck clinging to it. "—If they were still alive, perhaps I would need to offer them an explanation. But now they're all dead... What is there for me to explain? Who would I explain it to?"
Snape said nothing.
He merely flicked The Wand in his hand without warning. A flash of deep crimson spell light shot out, blasting a Dementor hiding behind a wall in the distance into pieces.
Even Zheng Qing failed to recognize what spell he had used.
"—Since you don't intend to explain yourself, make sure every damned one of them is dead."
In his usual voice, barely louder than a whisper, Snape said, "Don't think about keeping a few for experiments... When you're out and about, safety comes first. Make sure to eliminate every uncontrollable risk."
Zheng Qing tilted his head.
He dodged an iron nail that came flying out of nowhere—he had no interest in investigating its origin, trusting that the nail had a perfectly innocent background and ample reason to be flying at him—and watched from the corner of his eye as it viciously embedded itself in the red sandstone wall outside Duke's Honey Candy Shop.
"Experiments? I don't have time for