For large parts, Ominis’ life had gone back to normal after Leanaul helped him retrieve his wand, but ever since that night, he had been troubled by a reoccurring nightmare.

He became a snake in that dream, crawling in narrow, dark rifts that have never seen the light of day. His eyesight was still terrible, only able to identify murky shapes of blue or green, but the acute senses of smell and hearing made up for what he lacked in vision.

Following his kins, he headed towards a dimly lit underground chamber inside a gloomy Victorian mansion, heeding the call of a human child who spoke Parseltongue. They gathered around this tiny human boy, observing at him with a gentle curiosity, like he was one of their own, only in a different body.

But Ominis could never figure out what the young child said to the snakes—he knew Parseltongue, yes, but the moment the boy started talking, his eyes would start aching again and woke him up immediately. He would be able to see weak traces of light right afterwards, then quickly lost the vision in less than one minute.

What could this all mean? Ominis even did a lot of research on his own, but what he got was nothing… not even a possible hint, as usual.

At least Ominis was glad these dreams and problems with his eyes didn’t seem to affect him most of the time, so he simply treated it as another burden he had to bear for being born into this cursed family. It felt like no big deal if he thought of it that way.

Finishing the ever-boring History of Magic lecture, Ominis left the class in a lazy mood, the warmth of autumn sunlight temporarily drove away the dark clouds in his heart. Today he was going to visit Leanaul at the Room of Requirement, a rendezvous that was supposed to take place on the day when his wand went missing, but was postponed to this afternoon for obvious reasons.

“She truly is Merlin’s descendant, isn’t she? First it was ancient magic, now she practically owns Room of Requirement like it’s her private apartment…”

Marvelling at how hilariously lucky Leanaul was to enjoy all these privileges, Ominis walked towards the top of the Astronomy Tower, though approaching the place where he was supposed to meet Leanaul, he could hear her talking with someone already. It was Mr. Sallow, wearing the Slytherin Quidditch uniform.

“Sebastian…” His presence caught Ominis off guard, “Don’t you have training right now?”

It was Leanaul’s idea to get Sebastian signed up for the Slytherin team when Quidditch trainings and matches finally resumed: to quote her words, only a sport this competitive and intense could “let this roguish, overly energetic pup blow off steam”. And Ominis agreed—it was a way for Sebastian to put his… ambition to good use, where there’s no dark temptation for forbidden magic.

Considering what the alternative was after Solomon’s death, things have gone well for nearly a year. Both Ominis and Leanaul tried to carefully balance their relationships with Sebastian, making sure he knew they were always there to support him, while also reminding him that what he did had consequences, and their efforts seemed to have worked. Anne still hadn’t forgiven Sebastian, but… Ominis could almost see his old friend coming back to him.

Yet deep down, he knew something had forever changed among the three of them.

“Ah, speak of the devil…” Sebastian snapped his finger, clearly expecting Ominis’ arrival, “Can I borrow Ominis for a bit, Leanaul?”

Leanaul narrowed her eyes and looked at Sebastian with suspicion: “Hmmm… what are you guys up to now?”

“Nothing, just some… boys’ talk, that’s all.”

“Really?”

“Come on, Miss Cheninx… if I did anything bad, Ominis would be the first to let you know, you know that right? Just two minutes, please?”

Sebastian deployed a puckish yet innocent tone to soften Leanaul’s attitude, which worked every time. Ominis could already imagine how she nodded with the doubt melting in her eyes, like she was dealing with a spoiled child, a scene he found slightly… unpleasant.

“Quite the Prince Charming, aren’t you?” After Leanaul left them alone, Ominis poked fun at the way Sebastian talked to her.

“I’m no match for you when it comes to charming, Ominis,” Sebastian responded with equal sarcasm, “I’ve only been busy with Quidditch training for like… what, a month? And you two were already going on a date in Hogsmeade.”

“I lost my wand, Sebastian, Cheninx was simply guiding me…”

“If it’s just a guide you need, why don’t you ask me? You realize there are some places that a lady can’t take you to.”

Ominis had no answer to that, so after a few seconds of awkward speechlessness, he changed the topic: “What did you want to talk about, anyway?”

“Your wand… it still works, right? Sirius didn’t give you any more trouble?” After a weird start of the conversation, Sebastian asked, out of genuine concern.

“No, it’s all good now.”

“Next time… any of those Pure-Blood maniacs start something like this, just keep it between us, alright? We will handle it, I don’t want her to get too involved with those people.”

“…I see your point. Ok.”

“Good, glad we are on the same page about something, at least.” After the agreement was reached, Sebastian suddenly walked close to Ominis, sounding more serious than ever, “One more thing before I go, Ominis… you know I don’t back down from a fight, right?”

Ominis could feel the incisive look in Sebastian’s eyes without seeing. He didn’t answer, simply stood up with his arms folded across his chest, using the silence as a statement. Once Sebastian left and Leanaul returned, he quickly adjusted his mood so they could resume this greatly anticipated tour in the Room of Requirement.

He readied himself for anything when it came to this legendary chamber said to be able to provide anything one wished for, but Leanaul’s creativity totally exceeded his expectations. She turned the space into a moonlit gothic mansion, and on top of everything a Hogwarts student would ever need, there were also plenty of Muggle objects that Ominis had never seen before: a clicking machine used to convey encoded messages over very long distances, a huge black box that could print one’s image accurately on weird slippery materials, little glass balls that somehow captured and released lightning by pressing a button…

“Why don’t they have these things in the Muggle Studies…”

Ominis was absolutely astonished by the overwhelming information he perceived about these devices through his wand, but growing up in the Muggle world, Leanaul was completely used to them: “These are very new inventions, so perhaps the curriculum hasn’t been updated yet…”

Apart from the latest Muggle “technologies”, she also stored plenty of personal items here, notably a lot of oil paintings—about Muggle friends or families, her home in Virginia Water, various city or natural landscapes, etc..

“Are these your works?” Ominis asked.

“I wish—I suck at painting, unfortunately… these were my big sister’s, she was the oldest child in the family. Here, she was the one teaching me how to play chess.” Leanaul picked up one of those paintings and showed to Ominis, her voice full of bittersweet nostalgia.

It was a drawing of five siblings playing in a beautiful garden, all dressed in comfortable but well-made casual clothes. The oldest girl was playing chess with her white-haired younger sister, who was scratching her head in frustration, while the other two were playing with their little brother. Ominis was no art connoisseur, of course, but the familial love portrayed on this canvas did make him envious.

“Impressive…” Then he realized the odd past tense that Leanaul just used in her words, “Sorry, you said she was…”

Leanaul’s face darkened: “Well, she passed away before I came to Hogwarts, her health really worsened after getting married… Was a strong girl growing up, but three abortions in four years didn’t help at all…”

Knowing he had no doubt triggered a sad memory, Ominis apologized: “I’m so sorry, Leanaul, didn’t mean to…”

That’s one way to ruin a date. He scoffed at himself.

“It’s ok.” Leanaul said, carefully wiping away the dust on the frame, “I just kept these paintings because my brother-in-law didn’t want them. He always hated my sister when she drew anything, and since she wasn’t a renowned professional, these works are worthless to most people. Pretty sure they would have discarded them all…”

“That would be such a shame… your sister was gifted.”

“I know right? In fact… I probably would have been married away by my parents too, if I hadn’t come to study here… with some Duke or Prince, whoever makes my family more powerful.” Leanaul put the painting back on the wall with a wry smile, “You see, Ominis, Muggle aristocrats are just like those Pure-Blood supremacists… It’s such an irony, isn’t it? I’m considered noble in one world, but lowly in another.”

“That’s how you know it’s all made-up nonsense.”

Ominis shook his head, clenching his fist behind the back. He couldn’t believe Miss Cheninx, a girl who literally swore to pet every single one of the Hogwarts cats and insisted on annoying them because of it, would have been wedded at such a young age… and to someone else.

“Anyway, don’t worry about me, Master Ominis, now that I learned magic here and made friends with powerful wizards and witches, I’m no longer some helpless debutante…” seeing how Ominis got upset, Leanaul walked towards him, waving her wand and trying to cheer him up, “If my parents force me to marry anyone—I don’t care, I’m going to turn them all into frogs, and make them into a choir…”

She tried her best to croak, making Ominis chuckle. “That’s my girl…” He whispered to himself.

Then Leanaul showed him around in her fully equipped kitchen, using it as a reason to “teach him how to cook like a Muggle”, and before Ominis could react, she was already putting an apron on him. He was supposed to just make a dough for the pumpkin pie, but it wasn’t easy since he was blind and must do everything in the Muggle way.

“What are you even doing here, Ominis…”

Ominis muttered, had no choice but to pull up his sleeves and start mixing the flour with butter and egg yolks. The wet ingredients clinging to his fingers while he did so, reminding him of how he felt when the chocolate wand melted in his hand that night in the Boathouse… and some other things. His mind gradually drifted away, bringing down the speed of his mixing motions.

“You need to really work the dough, Master Ominis… or we won’t get to eat the pie today…”

Grumbling at his clumsiness, Leanaul took a step closer to him, putting her hand on top of his, her fingers slipped through the gaps between his fingers and locked in with his palm as she tried to guide its movement.

It seemed like a simple task, but could get quite straining in repetition, especially when Ominis’ hand was so inconveniently rigid all of a sudden. He could feel the back of his hand getting warmer every time her palm pushed and ground upon it, and a thin layer of sweat slightly moistening the sensation of their skins brushing against each other… until the messy batter was turned into a smooth, pale-yellow dough.

“Yes! Now we just need to get some flour on the surface…”

Leanaul took the dough out, explaining the next steps with great enthusiasm, while Ominis was still standing there, his hand in the empty bowl. His slender fingers twitched a little there, like baby snakes who just lost their first prey.

However, their private cooking class was soon interrupted. Deek, the House Elf who took care of the Room of Requirement for Leanaul, Apparated back here in a hurry and cried out to her: “Oh Miss Cheninx! Please help! Scrope was… Master Sirius…”

He panted uncontrollably, couldn’t even form a complete sentence, his face lifelessly pale like he just saw something extremely horrific. Leanaul immediately cleaned up her hands and walked to Deek, giving him some comforting pats on the shoulder: “What’s wrong? Just… calm down and tell me.”

Deek took a few deep breaths, regaining some composure when he heard Leanaul’s voice, but when he saw Ominis standing and listening behind her, he began to hesitate about what to say, so Ominis talked first to clear the doubt for this cautious Elf: “Sirius asked Scrope to steal my wand for him, didn’t he? It’s fine… I know it’s not Scrope’s fault, just tell us what happened.”

Though upon hearing the names of Sirius II and Scrope together, he could already guess what Deek was going to say.

“Oh thank you, young Master Gaunt! You have a good heart…” Deek sighed in relief and explained, “Master Sirius asked Scrope to keep everything secret, but Miss Cheninx was nice to Scrope and Master Gaunt is friend with Miss Cheninx, so Scrope still decided to tell Miss Cheninx about the wand, and Master Sirius just found out about it, then… Oh he’s so angry… He’s so, so angry… if Master Phineas didn’t stop Master Sirius, Scrope would have died…”

Deek squatted down and covered his head with his hands, his voice and body shaking, as if he was the one who personally suffered from Sirius’ fury, and Ominis could sense the anger building up inside Leanaul as her breath hastened with Deek’s every word.

“Take me to Scrope, now.”

She said, holding Deek’s and Ominis’ hands.

Deek obeyed and teleported the two young Slytherins to the Hogwarts Kitchen. The Elves, who had always been busy with serving and cleaning something, stopped their works and gathered around the fireplace in a circle, looking at each other with sorrowful eyes. When Leanaul and Ominis arrived, the House Elves quietly moved away, letting them approach closer and see what went down with their own eyes.

Scrope was lying on the ground, bound and bruised all over his body, the bondages that used to just cover his lost ear had now extended to his eyes, his horrifically sunken, empty eye sockets bloodied the white cloth. Phineas, the second-born of the Black family and a junior Slytherin student who just attended Hogwarts not for long, was sitting next to Scrope, trying to provide some consolations, but to no avail. What Scrope went through in his older brother’s hands was so traumatic, that the mental state of this poor Elf had deteriorated to insanity.

“If you love that stone-blind Gaunt so much, you should be just like him…”

That was the sentence that Scrope constantly repeated. Ominis knew the Elf was simply reiterating what Sirius said during those terrible tortures. “Why are you tying him up? That’s not going to help him recover.” Ominis asked.

“But if we don’t… he’s just going to continue punishing himself and get himself killed.” Phineas replied, holding Scrope’s hands, “We had no choice…”

A helpless silence befell the room. Leanaul didn’t say anything, but her rage was flaming so vehemently that it was almost the only thing Ominis could sense with his wand, like how a bright full moon diminished the lights from other stars in the night sky.

Then, as if Scrope could sense Leanaul’s presence, his mind regained clarity momentarily when he reached for her hand and said: “Miss Cheninx… Please, please be careful around Master Sirius… Master Sirius will do scary things… very scary things to Miss Cheninx…”

He passed out in exhaustion after squeezing this direful warning out of his mouth, leaving everyone pondering over his words cluelessly, except Phineas Black. After witnessing what had happened, this young boy stood up and made up his mind. “You are Leanaul… right?” Looking straight at Ominis and Leanaul, Phineas said, “Please follow me, I have something to show you.”

Leanaul nodded and followed Phineas before Ominis could say anything, so after wailing in his mind about why Miss Cheninx wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor, he had no choice but to stay with them closely. Ominis wasn’t worried about Phineas per se—he knew this boy was of good nature, unlike his father and brother, but he didn’t want Leanaul to get too entangled with this business in the first place.

And judging from tonight… Ominis didn’t like what they were going to see, but it was too late to stop Leanaul now. They snuck around the campus, avoiding the attention of ghosts and prefects, until the three reached a seemingly ordinary painting of a wooden hut in dark, gloomy woods.

“This is Sirius’ secret workshop. After today’s… ‘incident’ with Scrope, father has sent Sirius back home tonight so he could ‘clear his head’, which is why I could show you this right now…” Phineas turned around and warned everyone before entry, “So whatever you saw next… and whatever you intend to do about it, make sure you decide before tomorrow morning.”

Then he lifted his trembling hand and tapped the three ravens in the painting with his wand. The canvas melted like pigments in water, revealing a downward passage behind, leading them to another secret room hidden in the perplexing structure of the Hogwarts castle.

When they first arrived at this dusky secret chamber, Ominis didn’t quite comprehend why Phineas was so nervous—it didn’t look all that sinister at a glance. Sirius II was known to be very talented in painting, especially portraits, and seemed like he used this space as an art studio, where he could practice without being disturbed. Admittedly, some of the portraits that Sirius had worked on here were about very… controversial Pure-Blood wizards with questionable associations, but knowing his political stance, Ominis wasn’t entirely surprised about them either.

The two waited in the middle of the room, refraining from touching anything, while Phineas opened a dusty cabinet behind piles of brushes and easels. The young Black boy took out an enchanted metal box that could only be opened by saying the right password, then after long and difficult deliberation, he spoke of it with great disgust:

“Mudblood…pets…”

The chest opened, showing the hand-bound journals lying inside. But before they could look into them further, an uninvited, ghostly guest caught them right in the act:

“Oh-ho-ho! Look who’s here, Miss Cheninx and her friends hanging out in a place they shouldn’t! How would Master Sirius and the Headmaster think about your little naughty adventure, hmmm, I wonder…”

Peeves wiggled his colourful, round body above the three Slytherin students, laughing and screeching proudly with his irksome, high-pitched voice. Knowing exactly what this trickster was going to do next, Leanaul had to leave the metal box in Ominis’ hands and chase after the ghost with Phineas, so that they could somehow stop or persuade Peeves to not tell them on.

Watching her running away in a hurry, Ominis groaned in frustration, but at this stage he couldn’t do anything except following it through, even if it was getting out of hands. He put the heavy chest on the desk nearby carefully, took out the journals inside, and started going through them all one by one.

These were Sirius’ sketches or drafts, all about the Muggle-born witches at school, some of which could be dated back to when he first came to Hogwarts. At first, these drawings were merely depicting how these girls were in their daily life, sometimes added with Sirius’ written notes about some Muggle habits or lifestyles that he observed from these witches, so Ominis could still explain what he read so far with somewhat innocuous curiosity.

But later on, the sketches and commentaries from Sirius II got increasingly creepy: the Muggle-born witches started to appear in suggestive, even outright revealing outfits and gestures, while he labelled them with all kinds of vulgar terms—and not just students, even Professor Garlick couldn’t be spared from his stalking records because of her Muggle origin. Ominis’ hands shivered with indignance as he flipped through these pages, couldn’t even bear to look at the drawings closely.

Deep down, Ominis had a hunch about what he was going to see in the end, yet the more outrage he felt, the faster he scanned through the journals, as if he was possessed and determined to prove that dreadful suspicion in his head… until he eventually saw Leanaul in Sirius’ sketches.

Drawings about her were the most recent, and the worst. As if imposing those dirty fantasies on Leanaul wasn’t enough for Sirius II, he would obliterate her image with frenzied strokes, scratches and sometimes even knife stabbings, all targeting her lips, chest and abdomen, while scribbling the most violent and sexual slanders right next to them.

“That filthy animal… How dare he…”

Ominis cursed and slapped the journal back to the box, the legs of the old wooden desk creaked under his wrath.

He very much understood that Sirius had never met Miss Cheninx, and she wouldn’t even know he existed if it weren’t for the shenanigans with the wand, but just the thought of him envisioning her in such manners was… utterly unbearable for Ominis.

A fit of anger triggered the hurt in his eyes again, this time even worse than what he felt last time in the Boathouse. Ominis collapsed against the wall, gnashing his teeth while pressing his eyeballs with his palms, the agony made him want to gauge them out and be done with it once and for all.

Despite the best efforts to hold back, his aching moans caught Leanaul’s attention, who was just coming back to this secret chamber. She rushed to Ominis, holding his shoulders, her voice fretful: “What’s wrong? Is it your eyes again?”

Through his sodden vision, Ominis could see Leanaul’s face again, but he was so weary because of this ordeal that he couldn’t explain what happened, or what he had found out.

Wait…

Those gross images from Sirius’ journals resurfaced in Ominis’ mind. The disgust it induced compelled him to stand up, and exert all his power to point his wand at the drafts in the metal chest:

“Incen—”

“What are you doing!?”

Leanaul stopped Ominis before he could finish the fire-making spell, and he fell into her arms, entirely drained of physical strength. He could feel her fingertips wiping away his tears, a sensation that gradually eased his pain and numbed his nerves.

“Don’t look…”

Ominis murmured before he passed out entirely. It felt like he had slept for forever, but eventually his consciousness came back to him in a fluffy, rosy cloud.

He realized he was resting in a large bed, too big to fit in any dormitory, and the scent could belong to no one but Leanaul—it was her unique blend of rose fragrance, a recipe she never shared with anyone. Everything that happened tonight quickly came back to his head, Ominis sat up straight, found his wand on the bedside table and walked out of the bedroom.

As he expected, Leanaul managed to take him back to Room of Requirement, and to his reassurance, all seemed well for now, nobody was screaming, crying or arguing, and there was no sign of them being expelled by Hogwarts.

“Feel better? Your eyes still hurt?”

Hearing Ominis’ footsteps approaching, Leanaul turned around and asked. She was sitting in the hall, looking at her sister’s paintings in an elegant night gown.

Ominis nodded, noticing Sirius’ journals were opened right next to her: “The pain is gone now… but we have bigger things to worry about at the moment.”

He was blind again, but this sightless darkness actually gave him some solace. By now, he had figured out the abnormalities with his eyes were connected to his state of mind, and whenever he was stable and composed, it was total blackness that he saw.

What concerned Ominis, on the other hand, was Leanaul’s calmness. He supposed she had seen those monstrosities drawn by Sirius II Black, but for some reason she looked unbelievably unbothered… tranquil, even.

“Leanaul, you…”

“Ominis, I know… we promised to never step out of line again after what happened with Sebastian. But I thought about this whole situation, trying really hard to find an ‘official’ solution that wouldn’t break the rules, and to be honest… I can’t.” Leanaul spoke her mind sincerely but also with reason, “All I can see is, we either do nothing about it… or we cross the boundaries, and I don’t want to end up like my big sister, going down without a fight.”

Ominis listened, didn’t say anything right away, but instead contemplated on what went down by himself. Even disregarding all his personal grievances with Sirius, Ominis still felt an absolute obligation to his own conscience to get that thug punished, but the Black family was powerful and well-connected throughout the upper echelon of the wizarding society, and seeking justice by reporting it to proper authorities would pretty much lead to a quiet dead end.

They could also try to make this scandal public, causing some form of widespread protests that would force Headmaster to take actions. It wouldn’t be hard to spread the news—a bully like Sirius wasn’t exactly popular, so there were plenty of students, not just the victims of his stalking, who would want to expose him, but it was the aftermaths that worried Ominis with this approach.

The opinions on blood status were quite evenly split in Hogwarts in their time, so it’s hard to predict if people would really react in the way they intended. Even if Miss Cheninx was able to utilize her personal credibility to convince many students and members of the faculty to… believe this was all true in the first place, would that be enough to push them further to stand up to the Headmaster and the Black family, at the potential expenses of their careers?

Let’s say optimistically they achieved all those things, Ominis still couldn’t be sure what the Black family and other Pure-Blood supremacists would do if they were cornered—they might very well do something extreme to retaliate, hurting the Muggle-born students even further in the process, which was the last thing he’d want to witness. Of course, Ominis could wriggle out of it through his father’s relationship with the Headmaster, but he doubted his father would defend Leanaul or other Muggle-borns.

“You may be right, Miss Cheninx, but what do you propose we do?”

Running out of options in his head, Ominis asked. He could tell from Leanaul’s poised attitude that she already had something in mind, but before promising anything, he wanted to make sure when she mentioned crossing the boundaries, it wasn’t Mr. Sallow’s way of crossing them—he’s learned his lesson from that.