Justina's Writing Corner

Lost, I awoke in The Chamber Of Shadows, a vast and endless room where the air smelled of stale ink and burnt parchment. The walls stretched very high, yet I could not see their end. Before me lay a mountain of blank pages, untouched, waiting. Their blankness was blinding, yet they held no promise—only judgment.

Scattered around me were trays of food, but none was fit to eat. Spoiled bread, moldy cheese, and cold soup thick with grease. Lining the walls were papers pinned like trophies, each one branded with a scarlet F, as though failure itself had multiplied and now loomed over me.

A great clawed hand reached out from the darkness behind me, swiping at my back—a panther, sleek and relentless, its yellow eyes gleaming with hunger. I ran, but it followed, its silent paws barely making a sound on the cold stone floor. It was the predator of self-doubt, feeding on my hesitation, my every incorrect answer. The faster I moved, the closer it seemed to be, my failures only fueling its pursuit.

But worse than the panther was the wolf, padding ahead in the shadows, its gaze never meeting mine. It did not chase me, nor did it block my path. Instead, it walked with the others, an unseen crowd that murmured the same words, followed the same paths, accepted the same fate. The wolf of conformity, its presence whispered, Follow, and you will not fail. Follow, and you will not be alone. Yet, deep within, I knew: to follow meant to disappear.

Above me, a bat hung upside down, its black wings wrapped around itself like a cloak. Its red eyes flickered open, and it spoke—not in words, but in disappointment. Why run? It seemed to say. You already know the end of this path. You have seen the names on the wall, the ones who tried and failed. Do not fight. Accept what is written. 

I turned, my breath heavy with dread. The panther’s growl trembled in my bones. The wolf’s silent gaze called me to surrender. The bat waited, wings outstretched, ready to embrace me in its shadow.

And then, from the deepest corner of the chamber, came a voice, smooth as silk, sharp as steel.

“How extraordinarily foolish,” it murmured.

There, standing tall in his dark robes, Severus Snape emerged from the shadows. His black eyes glinted with neither kindness nor cruelty, but with understanding—a man who had lived among ghosts and regrets but had not let them consume him.

“You are wasting time,” he said, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “Fear will not help you. Following the herd will not save you. And giving up?” He scoffed. “Pathetic.”

I wanted to protest, to say that the weight of the blank pages was too much, that the food was inedible, that the words I wrote would never be good enough. But before I could, Snape lifted his wand, and with a flick, the pages before me erupted into ink, forming words I had not yet written, sentences I had not yet dared to speak.

“Write,” he commanded. “Not because you are unafraid. But because fear is irrelevant.”

With a final sneer at the beasts that surrounded me, Snape turned, his cloak billowing like a shadow against the firelight. I looked at the blank pages once more. They were not walls, but doors. The panther still lurked, the wolf still waited, the bat still whispered—but they no longer held me in place.

I stepped forward.