Yet this wonderful life lasted only a few weeks. One weekend evening, after returning from the library, Camelia felt an agonizing soreness all over her body. Perhaps it was due to the increased physical exertion of the past few days that her body simply couldn't handle, she thought dismissively. As usual, she washed up, curled into bed, and fell fast asleep.
Libby still harbored a lingering fear toward Camelia. The last time Camelia had pressed her wand tip against her neck was the first time Libby had so clearly felt murderous intent from another person; she could distinctly sense that Camelia had genuinely wanted to kill her. When she told Parkinson and the others about it, however, they merely dismissed it as another one of her fabricated lies meant to target someone.
A giant wolf with violet eyes... Camelia woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, barely able to remember the fragmented pieces of her dream. She slowly got out of bed, the soreness in her body far more intense than before she went to sleep. She walked slowly toward the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the creatures swimming lazily beneath the lake outside. The eerie green light from the depths of the lake flickered across her face. She failed to notice a faint violet reflection appearing on the glass pane.
Camelia and Severus did not spend all their time together because she still had work to do in the herbology greenhouses. And Lily... Lily had made friends in Gryffindor. She still remembered how happy Lily had looked when introducing her roommate, Mary McDonald.
At the start of the new week, Camelia pushed open the door to her dormitory as usual, only to find the room unusually lively. A pale-blond girl sat quietly on the soft armchair in the center of the room, with Libby sitting cautiously beside her. Camelia recognized her: Perseus Parkinson, a Slytherin pure-blood supremacist. The magical traps that had been set on her way back to the dorm on multiple previous occasions were undoubtedly her doing; had it not been for Camelia's exceptionally nimble reflexes, she might well have been paralyzed for life.
Camelia glanced at them, walked over to her desk as she usually did, and began organizing the books in her hand.
"Immobulus!" the pale-blond girl in the armchair suddenly struck. "You Muggle-borns have no business being in Slytherin!" Abandoning her noble and elegant posture, Parkinson stood up and hissed with a distorted expression.
With a quick side step, Camelia dodged the spell, whipped her wand out of her right hand, and charged forward with a burst of speed. First, she flicked her wrist to cast a Binding Charm, freezing Libby—who was acting as a mindless lackey—in place. Then, using the sofa for leverage, she vaulted over and pinned Parkinson beneath her, knocking her wand away with lightning speed before grabbing her tightly by the throat with her left hand.
"If you so damn much as try to hurt me, I swear I'll make sure you never stay a day longer at Hogwarts!" Parkinson shrieked, her face contorted with malice.
"I imagine that since you know I'm a Muggle-born, you probably also know I'm practically an orphan, aren't I, Miss Parkinson?" Looking down, she watched as Parkinson's face flushed red from the increasing pressure of the hand around her windpipe. Parkinson's initial ferocity rapidly gave way to sheer terror, a transformation Camelia found immensely amusing.
Yet Camelia did not know that Parkinson's terror wasn't entirely due to having her throat choked. As Camelia lowered her head, Parkinson stared in mounting horror as Camelia's black eyes slowly shifted to a striking violet. A monster! That was the only thought running through Parkinson's mind.
Lowering her head further, almost nose-to-nose, Camelia peered into Parkinson's pale blue eyes. This close proximity allowed Parkinson to see her eyes with terrifying clarity.
Overwhelmed by a rising tide of fear, Parkinson tried to struggle, only to discover with absolute horror that she couldn't move at all!
Camelia felt a dull ache begin to blossom in her head, quickly escalating into a splitting migraine that instantly turned her expression from calm to ferocious.
"You should know I have the ability to kill you, so don't come bothering me again," Camelia said, her voice filled with a fierce hostility. Her head throbbed as if it were about to split open, and she felt an almost uncontrollable urge to tear everything around her to pieces.
Terrified, Parkinson tried to nod, only to find she was completely immobilized—she couldn't even blink her eyelids. It wasn't until Camelia impatiently looked away that Parkinson felt life return to her limbs. She nodded frantically.
Releasing Parkinson, Camelia stood up, cast a counter-jinx on the paralyzed Libby lying on the floor, and stood silently as a terrified Libby hurriedly helped Parkinson up and fled the room.
Inside, Camelia felt a sensation as though her body was about to burst apart.
"Cough, cough..." She bent over, coughing a few times, and felt a rush of liquid rise in her mouth. She quickly clutched her hand over her mouth to keep the liquid from spilling out, then stumbled blindly toward the bathroom.
She spat a mouthful of blood into the washbasin, feeling as though her body was in such agonizing pain she might actually die. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to endure until the torment slowly subsided after a long moment.
She splashed some water on her face and looked up into the mirror, shocked to see her skin as pale as a corpse.
After a brief wash, Camelia staggered out of the bathroom, collapsed onto her bed, and fell into a deep, unconscious sleep—she couldn't tell whether she had merely passed out or fainted.
From that day on, Camelia's face remained as pale as snow for several days running, her lips tinged with a faint, ghostly purple.
This worried Lily deeply, and even Severus watched her with a mixture of confusion and concern.
"Lia, your complexion is terrible. Are you feeling unwell?"
"No, Lily, I'm fine. It's probably just from reading too much." Camelia shook her head. She genuinely didn't think anything was wrong; she just experienced occasional bodily aches, which she assumed were simply the result of her training.
"No way, we're going straight to the Hospital Wing to see Madam Pomfrey." Unconvinced by her explanation—as Camelia truly looked like she was suffering from a severe illness—Lily grabbed her by the hand and started pulling her along.
"Really, Lily, I'm fine. Being this pale is probably just anemia, you know—anemia from the Muggle world," Camelia quickly protested.
"It certainly looks like it." After all, given Camelia's impoverished upbringing before coming here, anemia wasn't out of the question. Lily finally accepted her explanation.
Once Lily had hurried off to class, Severus and Camelia walked down the corridor toward the library together.
"Why lie? You don't have anemia at all." Severus hadn't bought Camelia's childish excuse for a second, and he disliked it when she kept secrets from him.
"It's nothing, Sev." Camelia didn't know what to say; she simply didn't want to show her vulnerability to anyone.
Severus didn't press further, but the cold, set expression on his face betrayed his anger. In the library, they sat opposite each other, working in silence. Afterward, Camelia would head to the herbology greenhouse, while Severus would make his way to the empty classroom they had previously discovered to practice potion-making and continue his studies.
Camelia finished her tasks quickly and made her way to their practice classroom, carrying the bundle of herbs Professor Sprout had kindly gifted her.
Since arriving at Hogwarts, Severus had found far more opportunities to work with ingredients. Although the term had only just begun, he was already eager to put his potion-making into practice.
Pushing open the door, Camelia saw Severus with his head lowered, completely absorbed in the delicate, beautiful process of stirring a brew. He was attempting to improve the Forgetfulness Potion they had brewed earlier. It was no easy task, but combined, the talents of three potential potion masters might just make it simpler.
On Gryffindor's timetable, only Potions, Charms, and Flying were shared with Slytherin. Their schedules rarely overlapped, leaving only the weekends for the three of them to gather.
Walking over to the table, Camelia drifted into a rare daze, feeling as though her mind wasn't quite the same as it used to be.
"You're blocking the light, Miss Wood." Severus looked up from the curling smoke to catch her eye.
Coming to her senses, Camelia met his black eyes across the hazy mist. She looked away almost instantly, stepping aside in a rush—only to realize a second later that the candlelight wasn't coming from behind her at all; she couldn't possibly have been blocking his light.
Soon, curfew was fast approaching. Camelia and Severus were walking through the underground passages back to their common rooms.
Near the final junction, Camelia stopped Severus. Turning her head, she whispered, "Someone's here." She exchanged a glance with Severus; judging by the look in his eyes, he already knew who it was. So this was the reason he sometimes arrived with torn, messy clothes and missed meals altogether, Camelia thought grimly, a fierce glint in her eyes.
Retrieving a piece of pudding from her bag, Camelia transfigured it into a long wooden stick with her wand and probed cautiously ahead. She swept the stick carefully along every inch of the passage walls before advancing a step at a time.
Sure enough, near the fork in the path, the stick was sheared cleanly in two by an invisible force, positioned precisely at ankle height. Clearly, they had intended to cripple Severus.
"Well, well, looks like the little Mudblood is quite the watchdog," sneered a boy with ashen hair and a smattering of freckles on his face. He stepped out from the shadows of the fork holding a wand, followed by a cowering David Copperfield.
"Mulciber," Severus said coldly, naming the boy.
"Scum like you and mixed-bloods shouldn't even exist in this world, let alone worm your way into Slytherin. Just thinking about having to eat meals in the same room makes me sick to my stomach. You two could jump straight into the Black Lake, and even the fish would find you too foul—filthy Mudbloods!" Mulciber looked at them with utter disgust, fixing his hateful gaze squarely on Camelia as he spat out the final insult.
"Let's hope Libby Macmillan wasn't just talking nonsense," he added with a contemptuous smirk.
With that, he flicked his wand, sending two Leg-Locker Curses their way. Fortunately, Camelia and Severus managed to dodge them. Just as they tried to retreat, however, a web of glowing red lines began to materialize half a meter behind them.
"Go on, back up! Hurry up and back up, let's see how many pieces you get sliced into, hahahaha!" Mulciber roared with maniacal laughter as he hurled a Cutting Curse at them. Mulciber was a third-year student, and being pure-blood, his mastery of magic and spellwork far outclassed two newly arrived first-years. Yet the fact that he had resorted to such clearly precious magical items showed just how wary he was of them.
The dungeon corridor was narrow, leaving nowhere near enough room for free evasion. Severus snatched up his robes, hastily transfiguring them into solid stone to deflect the oncoming Cutting Curse.
Dodging and weaving, Camelia and Severus attempted to counterattack with spells of their own, but the offensive magic at their disposal was still far too limited. Mulciber, on the other hand, seemed frighteningly adept at the Cutting Curse, firing them off in a frenzied barrage. Combined with the cramped confines of the corridor, both of them soon sustained various cuts and injuries.
Camelia tried to close the distance for hand-to-hand combat, but every time she attempted it, David Copperfield would intervene to beat her back.
Until...