Chapter 218

However, Snape was faster than Murphy this time.

He only used a very small number of materials, his lips moved, and he whispered a few spells. Before long, a pot of pitch-black potion appeared in his cauldron.

It was like sticky asphalt, or ink. Strangely, when Snape poured the potion from the cauldron into the crystal bottle, the whole pot of potion flowed into the small crystal bottle without a drop spilled.

At this moment, the potion changed from pitch black to a kind of gray-white but transparent color.

Before Murphy's third bottle of potion was refined, Snape put the potion on Murphy's table first.

"Come on, taste the taste of despair."

Despair Potion.

This is a formula he learned when he was following Voldemort.

It can make people fall into deep despair, as if experiencing the darkest moment in life.

This potion is extremely powerful, almost the most terrifying kind of potion he knows, because it targets not people's bodies, but their spirits.

Before, his Draught of Living Death was cracked by Murphy using a strange method. Snape suspected that it was not any antidote, but a means of transferring the damage of the potion to the body.

But this time, the effect of the Despair Potion could not be transferred and could only be borne by the drinker himself.

No one can resist this kind of despair, not even Dumbledore.

"Despair?"

Murphy frowned. The materials Snape used just now were several things that could cause hallucinations. Could it be that he created a hallucinatory despair in this way?

He had indeed never seen this kind of potion.

So how to make an antidote?

Draught of Peace?

Draught of Peace can make people get pleasure, its effect is similar to Muggle stimulants, but the pleasure of Draught of Peace is false, and it will also make people easily believe others' orders. If this is Snape's purpose?

After all, he hadn't seen his potion. Judging from the hallucinogenic ingredients used, it should be able to make people have hallucinations. If it is superimposed with Draught of Peace, whether his brain can be controlled by himself by then is a problem.

Thinking about it, Murphy finally gave up making an antidote.

Speaking of which, something similar seemed to have appeared in the original work. That was the potion Voldemort used to protect his Horcrux—Slytherin's locket. Even Dumbledore didn't know how to crack this kind of potion. It should be unlikely for him to crack it within ten minutes now.

He waved his wand, summoned exactly the same materials as Snape used just now, and added them to the beaker in the same steps and order as him.

Snape frowned, what does he want to do?

Replicate the Despair Potion?

But he didn't know the spell at all, it was impossible to replicate successfully.

However, he saw Murphy take six different magic power testers and place them beside the bottle of Despair Potion, and then fixed a bracket beside the beaker, also placing six magic power testers.

Then, he began to stir the potion in the air with his wand while observing the changes in the six magic power testers beside the beaker.

"Tom, what is Professor Murphy doing?" Under the stage, Harry didn't quite understand.

"The teacher seems to be monitoring the changes in the magic power attributes of the potion..." Hermione said. Through wand experiments, she was already very familiar with magic power testers. Murphy often used them to test the distribution of magic power attributes.

"The teacher wouldn't be trying to replicate the potion by controlling the magic power attributes of the potion, would he?" Tom suddenly said.

The dimension theory of magic power was initially used to decompose and understand spells. Spells with the same magic power attributes have basically the same effects. If the essence of potions and spells are similar things, then making them have the same magic power attributes might make the potion have the same effect.

It's just, "Why replicate this potion?"

Murphy observed the changes in the magic power testers while carefully injecting different basic spells into the beaker to add magic power with different attributes to the potion.

At the same time, he recalled the lip movements when Snape made the potion, used a comprehensive recall on himself, turned out the subtle sounds that had been heard but not parsed by the brain, and found the sound of Snape chanting the spell from it.

"Cinisanimae, putridavota, irritadesideria, amoretseparatio, indignatio et ira, ad imum barathrum descendunt et in lutum nigerrimum convertunt......"

He recited the spell.

The solution in the beaker gradually turned into a pitch-black sludge, and then turned into ash-like gray-white.

Snape looked at this scene in shock. He actually succeeded in replicating it!

Although it didn't look perfect, he only watched himself make it once!

How did he do it?

And how did he know the spell?

At this time, Murphy poured out the third potion that had been boiled in another beaker and mixed it with the Despair Potion, and put it into a crystal bottle.

Then, he picked up the bottle of Despair Potion that Snape had placed on his table, touched the two bottles of potion, and put the bottle he made on Snape's table.

"Come on, taste the taste of despair." He said.

He looked at Snape, his eyes half provocative, half playful, and also had a kind of heart-palpitating determination.

This sentence was exactly the same as what Snape said before.

"Professor Snape, I'll drink first."

After Murphy finished speaking, he drank the bottle of potion in one gulp.

Then he closed his eyes.

Tom understood, "That bottle of potion is unsolvable, so the teacher refined one that is the same, and let Snape drink it too. In this way, the two are competing to see whose resistance to medicine is stronger."

Snape looked at the bottle of potion placed on his table and frowned.

Murphy's Despair Potion was not perfectly configured, but he added another potion—judging from the observation just now, that should be "Memory Potion".

Despair Potion plus Memory Potion.

If he drank it, what he would have to face, Snape probably guessed it too.

He looked at Murphy, didn't this guy feel afraid?

Didn't he have moments of regret and despair in his life?

As long as there was such a moment, the Despair Potion could amplify it by several times or dozens of times, making people fall into incomparable pain, as if hitting people into the abyss, and drawing away all his strength to escape, making him sink until his heart was dead.

How dare he?

"Professor, you can wait until the ten minutes are up before drinking this bottle of potion." Professor Sprout reminded, "If Professor Murphy falls or loses consciousness during this period, you will win the gambling contest."

As a colleague for many years and also a head of house, although Professor Sprout didn't like Snape's personality, compared to Murphy, she still hoped he would win.

But Snape looked at her blankly.

Yes, that is the smartest way.

But... the look in Murphy's eyes before drinking the potion stung him like a needle.

What is he mocking?

Is it that I don't dare?

Don't dare to face that terrible memory?

Don't dare to face your own weaknesses?

Don't dare to face... Lily?

Ah, yes, I have always been a coward...

I didn't dare to say I liked her because I was afraid of rejection.

I didn't dare to get close because I was afraid of being isolated.

I shrank in my own corner, thinking that as long as I mastered more spells and climbed to a higher position, I could be worthy of her.

I didn't even dare to truly understand her.

Because that would burn me.

I am a coward.

However... his hand trembled and reached for the potion, gripping it tightly.

"But, memory is the only way I can see you."

(End of chapter)