Discussing Snape

Lin Er reached out and touched her wand. Its warmth made her heart ache, and she got up in the middle of the night, slung on her old schoolbag, and went home again.

She couldn't take chances with her belongings. They would only be safe if she carried them with her.

In the moonlight, Lin Er wrote in the magic book with a pen. Great, now she had no choice but to memorize the word.

[Bag]

Well, even if it was only three letters, it was still a complete word, wasn't it?

There was no immediate reply from the other side. Then a book came through first, followed by the cloth bag, whose Extension Charm was also close to wearing off.

Lin Er renewed the charm on the bag and sent it back before looking at the book. It was old but very neat; clearly, its owner cared a great deal about it.

She opened it, and a whole wall of English hit her in the face. She thought she'd memorized a few words, and every sentence looked vaguely familiar, but unfortunately she just couldn't remember them.

[Give you]

Lin Er looked at the book, then at the words that had just come through, and finally scratched her head.

Kid, seriously, aren't you giving me too much credit? Of the two words you sent, I can still only understand the second one without a textbook and dictionary to help me!

Am I even qualified to open a book that's entirely in English? Wouldn't I have nightmares about being attacked by letters in the middle of the night?

The kid was merciless. A gift was a gift, he said, and after Lin Er returned it, he sent it right back, even putting special emphasis on [you].

Apparently, he knew her pretty well too.

In the end, Lin Er accepted it. This was the first time her young pen pal had given her something so precious.

Even though she hadn't understood a thing yet, she knew this was probably the book about magic he'd mentioned, the one his mother had given him.

Given how much he cared about magic, it wasn't hard to imagine how much he valued the book.

She put it safely in her schoolbag. Her wizard robes flapped in the night wind as Lin Er pulled her net out of the river, regretting that she hadn't remembered the Freezing Charm sooner. Then she took the dead fish home to feed the cats, cleaned the live ones by the river, and made fish cakes and fish congee.

It should be time for the kid's dinner now.

The Bone-Vanishing Spell had replaced the Summoning Charm as the spell she used every day. Those little boneless fish were so delicious!

Before leaving, Lin Er looked up at the little bamboo grove halfway up the cliff. She had been keeping an eye on it for a long time. It was a little late today, but she would definitely go clear it out tomorrow.

Back in the dorm, she cast a timed Stupefy on herself. Another good night's sleep!

After finishing her homework, Lin Er flipped through the magic book, spells passing before her eyes one after another. Shi Meng happened to pass by and leaned over for a look.

"Huh? Spells from Harry Potter? Lin Er, where did you buy this notebook? The descriptions of how the spells work are so clear!"

The first twenty pages of the notebook contained records of twenty spells, including their English names, Chinese pronunciations, effects, and counterspells.

It was designed much like those notebooks with English text or calendars printed on the first few pages.

There were another fifty or sixty pages after that, all blank. Lin Er didn't know what they were for. For now, whatever she wrote on them could be seen by her pen pal on the other side, then disappeared within a minute.

It could also transport things, but their maximum outer dimensions couldn't exceed the size of a notebook page.

When she'd sent the padded jacket, she'd had to squeeze it through like stuffing clothes into a pipe.

That had foiled her original plan to give the kid a stove for heating meals.

Still, Shi Meng had recognized the spells at a glance. Apparently, she had read the books and other readers' summaries too.

"My family brought it back for me from outside. Have you read Harry Potter too? Who's your favorite character?"

Lin Er's interest perked up. She was terribly out of touch with people her own age. When she was in school, she'd only known that the books and movies existed, but she'd never read or watched them.

She hadn't expected one of her classmates to have seen them.

"I've seen the movies. As for characters, Hermione, I guess. Of the three main characters, she's kind of the team's strategist: wise, hardworking, tenacious, and full of positive energy."

Lin Er wasn't surprised by that answer. If anything, people who liked the main trio were the ones enjoying the real thing.

At least, that was true of most people.

Lin Er was the odd one out. She'd read fanfiction first and fallen in love with Professor Snape as analyzed by the fanfiction authors, then read the original work with a biased eye.

But everyone had their own reading preferences. She didn't argue with other people's favorite characters, but she also maintained that Professor Snape was her only favorite character in the books.

Even with the protagonists, she could find things to dislike about them because of their positions.

"Then who do you hate most?"

"Voldemort."

All right, that probably wasn't controversial. No matter which character someone liked, as long as it wasn't Voldemort, he was the one they hated most.

Leaving aside his opposition to the protagonists, even within his own villainous camp, he wasn't very good to his own people. It was a whole reign of terror.

"What about you? Who's your favorite character?" Shi Meng sat down beside her. When Lin Er's deskmate returned, she was angry but didn't dare say anything, so she went and squeezed in with a friend in the back row.

That was the kind of treatment a good student got!

"Severus Snape."

It wasn't a name she couldn't bring herself to say, but the surprised look in Shi Meng's eyes still made her want to offer a few words in his defense. Shi Meng gave her the chance.

"Why? A teacher like him doesn't even have basic professional ethics. And he's a villain, isn't he?"

Lin Er closed the magic book, understanding somewhat.

"How far did you get? In the movies, I mean. Did you watch all of them?"

Shi Meng nodded, but when she saw Lin Er's expression, she shook her head.

"No, I watched Philosopher's Stone. I heard there were others, but wasn't Professor Snape bad the whole time?"

"No."

Lin Er looked around, then reached into her schoolbag and pulled out a novel.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

"In the end, Snape was a double agent. He protected Harry Potter for seven years, though maybe it wasn't that obvious."

Shi Meng's eyes widened the moment she saw the book, and she quickly looked around.

Impressive. No wonder she's someone who dares to fight boys—she even dares to bring a novel into the classroom right after the start of the school year!

"Put it away, quick! The teacher might confiscate it!"

Lin Er put the book away and smiled a little sheepishly. She seemed to have scared her classmate.

"I wasn't reading it in class. It's so big I couldn't hide it anyway."

Then she changed tack, ready to start winning Snape another fan. Even if Shi Meng didn't become a fan, she couldn't become a hater!

"Snape does lack professional ethics a little." Shi Meng gave her a complicated look. A little?

"All right, he's really not much like a proper teacher when it comes to Gryffindor, but that's just the school's tradition.

"Look, Dumbledore favors Gryffindor, Professor Flitwick likes clever students, and Professor Sprout thinks all the little badgers are good children. So there's nothing wrong with Snape favoring Slytherin, is there?"

Shi Meng took a moment to match what Lin Er had said against what she'd watched.

It didn't match...

Forget it. She'd just listen to her.

But...

"That wasn't favoritism. Wasn't he just bullying students?"

"How do you know the other professors at Hogwarts never did anything like that?"

Shi Meng was dumbfounded. Had they watched the same movie based on the novel?

If any of the professors on the protagonists' side had done something like that, would everyone have suspected Snape of being a villain?