"—You're calling me a Mudblood? But Severus, you call everyone like me that. What makes me any different?"
Zayn blinked violently—and found himself staring into the gleaming green eyes of a young girl.
She cast him a scornful glance, then turned and slipped through a portrait hole.
With a thud, a heavy wooden panel swung shut in front of him, sealing off the entrance.
On the panel, a plump woman in a pink dress yawned with evident irritation.
"All right, all right, off to your dormitories now," the Fat Lady murmured drowsily. "Students aren't meant to be wandering the corridors at this hour."
Wait—where the hell am I?
A sudden, searing pain split Zayn's skull as if someone had driven a blade through the middle of his head.
His vision blurred. He dropped to his knees with a hollow thud, arms buckling beneath him, whole body trembling.
Disjointed memories surged in his mind: Spinner's End, Hogwarts, whizzing spells, Lily Evans…
The scenes flared and vanished in flashes, as if someone had smashed his memories into shards of a jigsaw puzzle. Familiar. Foreign. Jagged. Lacerating.
He didn't know how long the agony lasted, only that when it finally receded, and the throb in his temples dulled to a pulse, he dared to raise his head.
And he understood.
He had transmigrated.
This was the Gryffindor common room tower.
The girl walking away—was Lily Evans.
And he… he was Severus Snape.
As thoughts scrambled into a coherent storm, the truth congealed:
Earlier today, right after the O.W.L.s, in a haze of rage and humiliation from James Potter's bullying, he had uttered that word to Lily.
"Mudblood."
He had still been trying to apologize. To explain.
But he had failed.
Just as in the books, Severus Snape and Lily Evans had reached the point of no return.
"Lily…" Shi Lei muttered. "How did it come to this…"
A war of emotion waged within his chest—part of him, knowing the ending, wanted to charge into the Gryffindor dormitory and bare his soul, plead his case.
But another voice—colder, wiser—whispered: it would only make things worse.
And now, the once-radiant green of Lily's eyes began to fade in his memory, like a watercolor left out in the rain.
Was it love? He wasn't sure.
Longing? Perhaps.
The memories of another life, of someone else's pain and dreams, felt near and far all at once.
In the flickering light of the torches along the stone corridor walls, Shi Lei stumbled toward the marble staircase.
Not long ago, he'd been home, happily playing Hogwarts Legacy, guiding a transfer student across the vast map, hunting down spell targets.
He'd paused just to drip eyedrops into his strained eyes. One blink later—he was here.
Hogwarts, summer of 1976.
He instinctively skipped the vanishing step, then sat heavily on the cold stairwell, sorting the tangled flood of memories inside his head.
"A week without calling home… The monthly report's unfinished… What now…?"
The quiet crushed down like pressure from deep underwater.
"Well, look on the bright side."
Eventually, Zayn pulled a wand from the folds of his robe—ebony wood, with a dragon heartstring core. He flicked it gently. A narrow beam of light shone from the tip.
"Magic,"
Severus Snape whispered wearily.
"I'm already here… So from this day on, I am the new Prince."
"Nox."
The wandlight blinked out.
He rolled back his sleeve to inspect his forearm. No Dark Mark—yet.
Snape descended deeper beneath the castle, eventually stopping in front of a damp, blank stretch of stone wall.
He paused, searching his mingled memories, then murmured the week's newly assigned password:
"Always Pure."
Always Pure? he scoffed.
Tom Riddle was a half-blood too.
Snape rolled his eyes at the wall.
With a whisper, a concealed stone door creaked open.
He stepped onto the narrow, tapestry-lined spiral staircase leading down.
The Slytherin common room stretched out before him—a long, low-ceilinged dungeon.
Its walls and ceiling were made of rough-hewn stone, and round, green-tinged lamps dangled from chains overhead.
Even in summer, the room was cool and damp.
In the hearth under a finely carved mantel, flames crackled softly.
The mingled glow of red firelight and green lanterns bathed the room in shifting color, illuminating students sprawled in high-backed, ornate armchairs.
Most were younger.
But there—Severus spotted one of his roommates: Patrick Abbot.
Abbot sat alone, leafing through a thick, leather-bound tome titled Advanced Rune Translation.
He had never shown much patience for their other roommates—Mulciber and Avery—and their crude jokes about Muggle-borns. In fact, he loathed them.
And by extension, he didn't treat Snape any better.
It was rare, for a Sacred Twenty-Eight pure-blood Slytherin, to show such disdain.
Snape ignored the curious glances trailing him and slipped off toward the boys' dormitory, turning into the adjoining washroom.
The silver sconces bathed the chamber in eerie, emerald light.
Outside the window at the far end, lakewater lapped gently against the glass. Every now and then, huge, shadowy shapes slid past—giant squid, perhaps.
Snape leaned over the basin, studying his reflection. The "new" face.
He muttered,
"How is this Black? Why cast a Black actor?
"James is an arse, but that doesn't make him a bloody racist…"
The boy in the mirror looked slight, but wiry.
Pale as if grown in shade, like some light-starved plant.
Straight, greasy black hair framed a sharp-boned face. A long nose, hooked at the tip.
Then came the memory.
The humiliation.
The beech tree. The idle cruelty. "Snivellus." Suffocating soap bubbles. The robes yanked high.
Laughter. Cheers. The stench of shame.
Little Mudblood.
His breath hitched. Rage shone in his dark eyes, unfiltered. His face went slack with the weight of it.
Somewhere, the boundary between the reflected face and the real one dissolved.
Snape raised his wand slowly. One hand swept his hair aside. The other directed the wandlight along the roots.
Snip. A lock of hair fell. Then another.
Black eyes stared into black eyes.
Snape whispered:
"James Potter… this isn't over."