Faced with the strange, purple, bubbling potion held out to him, Su Er accepted it without the slightest hesitation, pulled out the stopper, and downed it in one gulp.
The first sensation was the potion popping on his tongue. Then an astringent bitterness assaulted his taste buds, and human instinct made Su Er want to open his mouth and spit it out.
But a second later, the potion's bitter, astringent taste shot straight from his tongue to the depths of his heart, then swept toward his soul before spreading downward from the top of his head.
Oh, that description was absolutely accurate.
Su Er felt as though his entire body had been soaked in anesthetic-numbed senseless.
His mind briefly went blank.
Everyone had heard the story of boiling a frog in warm water: put a frog in cold water and gradually heat it, and it would never jump out, even as it died. But put a frog in boiling water, and it would immediately struggle to leap out and save its own little life.
Yes, after his mind went blank, Su Er was now like a frog dropped into boiling water. The stabbing sensations transmitted from every cell in his body to his central nervous system made him jump on the spot.
Did Snape poison the potion? he couldn't help wondering.
This pain manifested directly in his body, and it wasn't a single burst that was over and done with. It was like a butcher slicing meat with a blunt knife, and Su Er was the meat being sliced...
When the human body felt pain, it would involuntarily bend and curl up into a protective posture. That was exactly what Su Er did now, collapsing to the ground and curling up beneath Professor Snape's indifferent gaze.
This pain, hovering just