Dawn seeped through the tall, mullioned windows of Prince Manor like liquid gold, casting long shadows across the stone floors, but Severus had not slept. Dark circles rimmed his obsidian eyes as he sat hunched over his mahogany desk, where the red candy from the Muggle shop still rested—a simple piece of confectionery with its glossy surface gleaming faintly in the early morning light, an unassuming catalyst for what some might call madness.
He stared at the innocent sweet for a long, contemplative moment, his pale fingers drumming silently against the desk's worn surface, before turning back to his extensive notes. The yellowed parchment was covered in his characteristic meticulous scrawl: intricate diagrams of molecular bonds sketched beside ancient rune arrays, chemical terms borrowed from dog-eared Muggle textbooks jostling for precious space with alchemical symbols that were centuries old and steeped in forgotten knowledge.
Liquid to solid. Critical heat thresholds. Magical binding preservation techniques. If he could somehow stabilize the potion's volatile magical signature while successfully transforming its physical state, he could render blood truly portable, completely safe for transport, and utterly invisible to the untrained eye of any inspector.
With practiced efficiency, he positioned a small, silver-lined cauldron over a carefully prepared rune-etched flame that burned with an eerie blue-white light. He then poured in a measured vial of the synthetic blood potion—the liquid flowed like dark crimson wine, thick as the finest ink and gleaming with an otherworldly sheen. Around the cauldron's base, he methodically arranged ingredients that had never been found together in any sane or documented recipe: finely powdered beetroot for color stability, a delicate thread of spun sugar that caught the light like gossamer, precisely ground mandrake crystal that sparkled with latent magic, and finally, a single drop of molten silver for mystical binding properties.
His movements were precise and economical, each gesture the product of years of potions mastery. The very air around him began to shimmer faintly with gathered magic as he whispered the complex preservation charm in barely audible Latin, expertly layering it with sophisticated temperature modulation spells he'd painstakingly adapted from chocolate tempering techniques found in well-thumbed Muggle culinary texts.
"This will either congeal into an unusable mess or combust entirely," he muttered, wiping perspiration from his brow as the temperature in the cramped workshop climbed.
He glanced up at the swirling, iridescent mixture bubbling violently in the iron cauldron and said under his breath, his voice barely audible over the hissing steam, "You want to burn the world down to ash? I want to sweeten it first—make the medicine go down easier."
A sharp voice cut through the crackling silence like a blade.
"Sweeten what, exactly? The apocalypse you're brewing in that thing?"
Aurora stood framed in the doorway, arms crossed tightly over her chest, dark eyebrows raised in a mixture of disbelief and concern. Her keen eyes swept across the chaotic scene—taking in the violently bubbling cauldron with its suspicious, color-shifting contents and the dozens of scattered candy molds littering his cluttered workbench like innocent soldiers awaiting orders. "You've officially lost whatever remained of your sanity. You're making confections now? Candy?"
"If the ultimate goal is concealment from prying eyes and suspicious minds," Severus said with measured calm, his voice steady as steel as he flicked his blackthorn wand in a precise arc to adjust the flame's intensity beneath the cauldron, "then aesthetics become strategy. Appearance becomes armor."
Aurora let out a sharp, incredulous snort. "You mean literally sugar-coating a revolution."
His lips curved upward in an expression both faint and razor-sharp, like moonlight on a knife's edge. "Exactly."
By midday, the laboratory looked like an alchemist's battlefield, with scorch marks decorating the stone walls and the acrid smell of failed experiments hanging heavy in the air.
The first attempt had exploded with spectacular violence — a burst of superheated sugar steam that coated every surface in sticky crimson frost, transforming the pristine workspace into something resembling a confectioner's nightmare. The second batch had shown promise initially, maintaining its crystalline structure for nearly an hour before melting into a viscous puddle the moment Severus removed the cooling wards, leaving nothing but a disappointing scarlet stain on the workbench. The third attempt… she didn't even want to talk about the third. The resulting sludge had eaten straight through the reinforced cauldron's base with alarming efficiency, hissing and bubbling ominously until it finally met the unyielding stone floor.
Aurora sighed heavily, waving her wand in a complex pattern to vanish the latest mess, watching as the remnants of melted metal and crystallized blood disappeared into nothingness. "You're going to transfigure your entire lab into a dessert-themed graveyard at this rate, complete with candy tombstones and sugar-glazed epitaphs."
Severus ignored her commentary entirely, his long fingers tracing mathematical equations in the air while muttering calculations under his breath and adjusting ingredient ratios with methodical precision. His obsidian black eyes flickered restlessly between the parchment covered in his spidery handwriting and the pristine replacement cauldron. "The sugar matrix should stabilize the magical essence if the cooling process is executed correctly. The blood essence resists proper coagulation due to inherent enchantment polarity creating molecular interference. I simply need to recalibrate the temperature gradient and—"
"—stop destroying expensive cauldrons that cost more than most people's monthly salary?" she offered helpfully, raising an eyebrow at the growing pile of ruined equipment.
He shot her a withering look that could have frozen fire, but she caught the barely perceptible ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth before his stern expression reasserted itself.
Hours passed in meticulous concentration. Failure gave way to fragments of success — a crystal sheen forming at the potion's edges, a faint shimmer that didn't collapse under the weight of ambient magic swirling through the dungeon air. Severus's dark eyes narrowed as he observed the subtle transformation, his pale fingers adjusting the flame beneath the cauldron with practiced precision: one drop less heparin, watching as the viscous liquid merged with the brew, then one drop more carnivorous blood, its metallic scent sharp and unforgiving.
For the stabilizing matrix, he reached for his most precious ingredient — powdered unicorn horn. The ivory dust gleamed like starlight in the dim laboratory, a near-sacred reagent he handled with the reverence reserved for the rarest of magical components. His movements were deliberate, almost ceremonial, as he sprinkled the powder into the bubbling mixture.
Finally, with his wand held steady above the cauldron's rim, he drew a cooling rune spiral across the surface of the potion. The ancient symbol glowed briefly before sinking into the liquid, which began to crystallize in response. The transformation was mesmerizing — the fluid spinning itself into hard, gleaming facets that caught and refracted the candlelight dancing around the stone walls.
The scent that gradually filled the room was both intoxicating and deeply unsettling — an impossible marriage of sugar and iron, sweetness and blood that seemed to pulse with its own rhythm.
Aurora leaned forward from her position near the workbench, her breath catching. "Severus…"
He said nothing, his jaw tight with concentration. He only waited, every muscle tense with anticipation.
When the last swirl of magic faded from the air, settling like invisible mist, resting in the center of the cauldron was a single ruby lozenge. Small, perfect, no larger than a Galleon, glowing faintly when he held it near his wand tip. The light emanated from within the crystalline structure, pulsing with an otherworldly luminescence.
It pulsed — alive, unmistakably alive.
Aurora exhaled slowly, wonder and apprehension warring in her voice. "You actually did it."
The vampire entered with the usual dry humor of someone long past fear, his footsteps silent against the stone floor of the laboratory. His pale eyes, like chips of winter ice, darted between Severus hunched over his parchments, Aurora standing tensely by the workbench, and the gleaming candy resting in a crystal dish that seemed to pulse with its own inner light.
"If this kills me," Lucian said, his voice carrying that familiar sardonic edge that had survived centuries of undeath, "I'll haunt you from the afterlife."
Severus didn't look up from his meticulously detailed notes, his quill scratching against the parchment. "You already do."
Aurora stepped forward, her movements careful and deliberate as she handed Lucian the lozenge, making sure not to touch it with her bare fingers. Even through the protective cloth she wore, she could feel the magical energy radiating from the small confection. The vampire held it between thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly in the lamplight, watching it catch and refract the illumination like a drop of blood suspended in perfect crystal.
"Eat it," Severus commanded, finally lifting his dark eyes from his work.
Lucian rolled his eyes with theatrical flourish. "You make it sound so romantic."
Without further hesitation, he placed the candy on his tongue. The laboratory fell into a silence so complete that even the usual bubbling of distant cauldrons seemed to pause in anticipation.
The candy dissolved slowly, almost ceremonially — first with a soft hiss that echoed off the stone walls, then a faint hum of energy that made the protective runes carved along the walls tremble and glow with brief, flickering light. Lucian's pupils widened until they nearly swallowed the pale iris entirely. His fingers clenched against the table edge with enough force to leave impressions in the wood, his knuckles white with strain.
Then, gradually, like dawn breaking over a long night, his posture began to ease. His breathing — though unnecessary for his undead form — deepened into something that resembled the rhythm of life. Color flushed faintly beneath his pale skin, a warmth that hadn't touched his features in centuries.
He blinked once, twice, as if seeing the world through new eyes. "It's… the same," he murmured, wonder threading through his usually cynical tone. "It tastes like blood. Feels like blood coursing through me." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, filled with an awe that seemed to surprise even him. "And yet it doesn't pull at me. It doesn't demand. The hunger is… quiet."
Severus leaned forward, his black quill poised above the parchment, the scratch of its tip the only sound breaking the laboratory's tense silence. "Do you feel thirst?"
Lucian shook his head slowly, as if testing the motion itself. "No. Just… calm." His voice carried a wonder that hadn't been there moments before. "For the first time in decades, I feel… full. Complete."
Aurora stared from across the stone table, her eyes wide with disbelief and growing excitement. "You've done it, Severus. You've actually done it. You've made a substitute that doesn't enslave the curse — it satisfies it."
Severus said nothing for a long moment, his pale fingers moving steadily across the parchment. He simply wrote in his precise script: Subject reaction: stability achieved. Hunger reduced to negligible levels. Emotional state: tranquil, coherent. No adverse effects observed.
When he finally looked up from his notes, his dark eyes met theirs with an expression that was unreadable — not triumph, not pride, but something far deeper and more complex.
"This is not the end," he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's only the beginning."
The ruby lozenge gleamed in his pale palm like captured fire, its faceted surface catching the candlelight and throwing crimson reflections across the laboratory walls. Somewhere deep within his chest, Severus Shafiq knew he had crossed another threshold — not merely from failure to success, but from discovery to true power.
The kind that changed worlds forever.
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