The feast had not yet ended.
No lamps were lit in the Potions office at Hogwarts.
Moonlight squeezed through the narrow windows high in the dungeon, like a layer of liquid silver flowing slowly across the stone floor, tracing eerie, silent outlines around rows of glass jars filled with unknown potion ingredients.
The air held the distinctive bitterness of wormwood, aconite, and valerian root mingled together.
But tonight, that familiar smell could not suppress another, more intense emotion.
Anxiety.
Severus Snape sat alone behind his enormous desk, motionless, like a stone statue that had been steeped in darkness for too long.
All his attention was focused on his left hand.
More precisely, on the Ouroboros ring on his left index finger.
Douglas Holmes had given it to him.
A ring he had once scoffed at, dismissing it as just another tedious little alchemical trinket in poor taste.
Yet now, the ring coiled around his knuckle like a venomous snake.
Snape's gaze passed through the ring as though it would burn through his skin, fixed relentlessly on his bare forearm.
There was nothing there.
No burning, no stinging.
None of the sensation that the skull and serpent, lodged deep in his soul for thirteen years like a death warrant, might come alive at any moment.
Just a few hours earlier, the final task of the Triwizard Tournament had been underway.
Igor Karkaroff, Durmstrang's hypocritical, cowardly headmaster, had dragged him into the shadows beneath the stands in a panic, like a rat whose tail had been stepped on.
"He's back! Severus! He's back!"
Karkaroff's face had been contorted, sweat soaking his expensive fur collar as he frantically rolled up his sleeve and cautiously showed Snape the Dark Mark, which was growing clearer and hotter by the moment.
"Can you feel it?! He's