He pressed his ear to the door and listened carefully, but there was no sound from inside.
"Out?"
"Alohomora."
Gerald tried the Unlocking Charm, but the door did not budge.
Seeing this, Gerald stepped back, pointed his wand at the lock, and crisply incanted, "Confringo!"
A flash of red light instantly blasted the lock apart, sending wood chips flying.
The moment he pushed the door open, a bone-chilling wave of cold surged out of the house, making him shiver involuntarily.
Every surface in the room was covered in frost. The teacup on the coffee table had frozen into a lump of ice, and the fire in the fireplace had long since died, leaving only a few clumps of cold ash coated in white frost.
Lupin stood in the middle of the room, frozen in the act of waving his wand, his entire body covered from head to toe in a layer of translucent frost.
His hair was white, his eyelashes were white, his lips had turned blue-purple from the cold, and even his breathing had stopped completely.
Only his brown eyes still moved faintly beneath the ice, shifting toward the doorway with extreme slowness and difficulty.
Oh no, Lupin froze himself while researching that Ancient Magic.
He isn't dead, is he?
If he is, I'll have a lot to answer for!
He had copied Frostbite Breath from Slytherin's notes for Lupin. If something happened to Lupin because of it, he would carry that burden for the rest of his life.
Gerald hurriedly activated the Qi-Perception Spell, and half his anxiety instantly eased.
The dense red aura of magical power around Lupin was still pulsing. His heartbeat was slow but fairly steady, and although his body temperature was terrifyingly low, his blood was still flowing.
*Thank goodness, he's just frozen stiff,