[HP: I became Snape]Chapter 185: Beyond the Veil-

Ignoring the several black-robed figures sprawled haphazardly across the floor, Severus Snape dragged an unconscious Death Eater into a vast, circular room.

Everything in the room was black—the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

The dark walls were studded with identical black doors, each indistinguishable from the next, marked only by keyholes, devoid of handles or signs.

Branched candelabras dotted the walls, their trembling blue flames casting flickering, cold light across the polished marble floor, creating the eerie illusion of standing on a shadowy pool of water.

Snape roughly dropped Corban Yaxley onto the icy floor and paused.

At that moment, amid Yaxley’s unconscious groans, a deep, rumbling roar suddenly filled the circular room.

The candles began to shift sideways as the round walls spun into motion.

Within seconds, the scene blurred, the blue flames stretching into a dizzying, neon-like band of light that whirled frantically around Snape.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the rumbling ceased. Everything stilled.

Snape’s gaze swept the room; every door looked identical.

He took a few steps forward, extended a hand, and placed it on the cold, glossy surface of a door. With a gentle push, it swung open.

The room beyond was far brighter than the circular chamber, its ceiling adorned with delicate gold chains suspending lamps that emitted a soft, warm glow.

This rectangular room felt somewhat empty, containing only a few tables. What drew the eye, however, was an enormous glass tank positioned at its center.

The tank was large enough for several people to swim in, filled with a deep green liquid where pearl-white objects floated and sank lazily.

The Department of Mysteries’ Brain Room—Snape knew instantly where he was.

He stepped closer.

Now he could see more clearly: the pearl-white objects were human brains, whole and intact.

They writhed slowly under the strange light, their surface grooves sometimes sharp, sometimes blurred, resembling slimy cauliflowers.

As Snape drew nearer, the delicate, nerve-like tendrils dangling beneath the brains seemed to sense his presence, twitching restlessly.

The surface of the green liquid rippled with faint, ominous waves.

“Bloody hell,” Snape muttered under his breath, “what in Merlin’s name are they studying here?”

He recoiled two steps, averting his gaze from the unsettling floaters. Raising the Elder Wand, he performed the complex spell Dumbledore had taught him, designed to detect powerful dark magic artifacts, and carefully scanned the room.

The wand’s tip gave no unusual response.

The Horcrux wasn’t here.

Confirming this, Snape retreated to the shadowy circular room and, with a flick of his wand, left a distinct magical mark on the door to the Brain Room, which had just closed behind him.

The familiar rumbling sounded again as the walls, with their blue flames, began to spin once more.

When everything settled, Snape chose another door.

He noticed this one’s lock bore signs of violent tampering.

After a brief hesitation, he stepped forward and pushed it open.

The room beyond was chilling, as if it had stored years of cold within its walls.

At its center lay ruins—remnants of what appeared to be a fountain, now reduced to shattered stone and broken pipes.

The walls and floor were splattered with some dried, blackened substance, though faint traces of an original pink hue peeked through the cracks.

The air carried a foul, burnt odor, mingled with… a faint, almost imperceptible floral scent that felt oddly familiar to Snape.

He frowned, trying to pinpoint the fleeting fragrance.

But it was too faint, quickly overwhelmed by the room’s magical, charred stench.

Dismissing it, he raised his wand again to probe the room. Finding nothing, he promptly withdrew.

As he watched the walls spin, the blue glow mingling with two indistinct red marks, a sudden theory struck him.

That wrecked room, tinged with that strange floral scent… could it be…

“The Love Room?” he murmured to himself, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Now wasn’t the time for speculation.

Next, Snape entered two more rooms.

The first was filled with an endless, bustling ticking, packed with clocks of every size, era, and origin.

He swiftly passed through the Time Room into another, even grander chamber, towering like a cathedral.

The Hall of Prophecy was lined with countless tall shelves, each laden with dusty, small glass orbs.

Yet, in these places brimming with arcane magic, he felt no trace of a Horcrux’s cold, malevolent resonance.

Few rooms remained unexplored.

Back in the circular chamber, after renewing a Stunning Spell on Yaxley, Snape pushed open the next door.

The Death Chamber.

It was the largest room he’d entered so far.

Dimly lit, its center dipped into a massive stone pit, twenty feet deep.

Surrounding it were tiered stone benches, like an ancient Roman amphitheater, descending at a steep angle.

Snape stood at the topmost row, gazing down into the pit’s center.

There, on a raised stone platform, stood an ancient, weathered stone archway, looking old, broken, decayed.

It stood alone, unsupported by walls, draped with a tattered black curtain or veil.

Though the cold air was still, the veil fluttered and swayed, as if someone had just brushed against it.

The hairs on Snape’s neck prickled.

He raised the Elder Wand again, softly chanting the detection spell.

This time, the wand’s tip emitted a faint but clear glow, pointing toward the ancient archway in the pit’s center, toward the gently swaying black veil.

Gripping the wand tightly, Snape descended the steep stone benches, step by step, until he reached the pit’s stone floor.

He approached the platform slowly, his footsteps echoing loudly.

From here, the pointed archway loomed even taller than it had from above.

The veil continued its silent, gentle swaying, as if someone had just passed through it.

Snape felt an odd sensation, as though someone stood just beyond the veil.

Through the gaps in the swaying curtain, in the dim, shifting light, he glimpsed the outline of an object:

A small golden cup with two delicate handles.

Hufflepuff’s Cup.

Tom had hidden it here… beyond the boundary of life and death.

“This is… a perfect and utterly vile hiding place,” Snape thought, “but how do I retrieve it?”

He stared at the archway, mesmerized by the faintly moving veil.

An overwhelming urge gripped him—to climb the platform and pass through that thin, fluttering curtain.

Faintly, murmurs and whispers drifted from the other side.

The whispers grew louder, and Snape found himself inexplicably stepping onto the platform, his hand instinctively slipping into his pocket to clutch the cold, hard Resurrection Stone.

Something snapped back into his mind. He jolted, as if scalded, and quickly retreated from the platform, yanking his hand from his pocket, his palm icy.

“Won’t you come take a look?” a hollow, echoing voice called from beyond the veil.

Snape fell silent for two seconds, suppressing the tremor in his chest, and asked, “Who are you?”

The voice stirred a chilling familiarity, yet he couldn’t place where he’d heard it.

“Didn’t you summon me?” the voice countered, laced with a faint, mocking undertone.

Snape took a deep breath and stepped onto the platform.

Standing before the archway, he peered through the swaying, parting black veil to the other side—

A pale, frail face, marked by years away from sunlight, yet achingly familiar.

Long, dark hair, black eyes, a prominent hooked nose, tightly pressed lips.

It was himself—or rather, a version of himself.

A cold breeze seemed to blow from beyond the veil, stirring Snape’s dark hair.

The “Snape” on the other side fixed his black eyes on him, a ravenous glint in his gaze.

“How wonderful…” the other “Snape” whispered, his voice drifting, “how wonderful…”

Snape watched warily, unsure what to say to this figure—less solid than a living body, yet more tangible than a ghost.

The other “Snape” spoke first.

“Did you know?” His black eyes locked unblinkingly onto Snape’s. “Hufflepuff’s Cup carries a legend, one few know.

“It’s said that drinking from water it once held can bring someone back from death… or grant eternal life.”

“The Holy Grail?” Snape murmured.

The figure opposite nodded slowly, his lips curling into a cold arc.

“Alas…” he continued, “it’s only a legend.”

A long, suffocating silence followed, broken only by the faint rustle of the veil.

“I thought… you were long gone,” Snape said, his voice dry. He gazed at the other self with complex emotions. “When I used the Resurrection Stone before, why didn’t I see you?”

“I am a part of you,” the “Snape” beyond the veil said, his pale face twisting into a deeper, eerier smile. “The part you no longer need.”

Black eyes met black eyes.

“Can you help me retrieve the cup?” Snape ventured, his gaze flicking to the faintly visible golden cup.

The smile on the other “Snape’s” face vanished.

His black eyes lingered greedily on Snape’s face, swirling with an emotion so intense it seemed it could swallow him whole.

Just as Snape braced for something to happen, the figure nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” Snape said.

At those words, the “Snape” beyond the veil twisted his face into a look of disgust and fury.

“No!” he snarled sharply. “I don’t need it!”

Before the words faded, the “Snape” lunged toward the archway.

Snape’s pupils contracted, and he instinctively raised the Elder Wand toward the figure—

But nothing happened. No attack, no collision.

Only the soft, metallic clink of an object rolling, striking the stone platform crisply.

Snape glanced down: Hufflepuff’s Cup had rolled out from beyond the veil, resting quietly at his feet.

He didn’t pick it up immediately. Instead, he gripped his wand tightly, body tense, staring at the now-still black veil.

The murmurs from beyond had ceased; the gently swaying veil seemed to lose all life, hanging limply, motionless.

It was as if everything had been a vivid illusion.

After a few more seconds, Snape bent down, swiftly grabbed the cup, and stood upright, scanning his surroundings again.

“Are you still there?” he asked the silent veil.

No response. The Death Chamber echoed only with his own breathing and heartbeat.

Snape tucked the cup into a pocket of his robes, then pulled the black Resurrection Stone from another.

He closed his eyes, following ancient legend, and turned the stone thrice in his hand.

Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but the empty room, the ancient archway, and the tattered veil standing silently.

Snape waited a moment longer. Finally, he faced the desolate archway and whispered, “Goodbye.”

Without looking back, he strode away from the pit’s center, climbing the steep stone steps back to the dark circular room.

As the walls rumbled and spun once more, Snape approached Yaxley, who lay bound on the floor, emitting faint whimpers.

He pulled a small parcel from his pocket, unwrapped the parchment, and placed a Portkey in his palm, pressing it to Yaxley’s forehead.

“It’s time to end this…”

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T/N:Since this novel has already reached the end of its raw chapters, the author now only releases about once a week—and even that isn’t always certain. Because of that, I won’t be able to translate it daily anymore. But don’t worry, as soon as the author uploads a new chapter, I’ll translate it right away. In the meantime, you can enjoy my other work translations while waiting for the next update.