Worlds Away

Severus got shakily to his feet. The pressure of keeping the screams inside had caused his ears to pop. They were still ringing, as though he'd spent three hours next to the loud speakers at a Sex Pistols gig. He had bitten his tongue a few times, and raked his hands so hard across the earth that dirt was embedded painfully deep under his fingernails. But the aftermath of the pain was just a background sensation now, bubbling up under fathoms of cool blue Occlumency.

The pain hadn't surprised him anyway. That was the good thing about being a pessimist whose muscles were permanently tensed in expectation of attack. When the attack came, at least you could congratulate yourself on all that gloomy foresight.

And he remembered thinking earlier on – when she was in his arms – that there would be a price. Nothing felt that good without a price. He'd been made to pay sooner than he'd expected, that was all, but disaster never really disconcerted Severus Snape. To a greater or lesser extent, he'd always been expecting it.

He was standing outside the pain now, watching it with nauseated interest. He was aware – in a dim, nebulous way – that the exhaustion was only being deferred – that his body would make him suffer for what it had been put through as soon as his concentration began to waver. Soon, his muscles would ache, his heart would race, and anxiety would swell like a balloon inside his chest, leaving no room for his faltering lungs. He knew the stages of terror off-by-heart by now.

But that was hours away – and consequently, worlds away for Severus.

Still, the things which were going to cause him pain were outlined to his eyes with extra sharpness, and one of them was the accusing expression of Elsa Valance, whose face was still wet with tears, but whose eyes had hardened into pinpoints of outrage. Good girl, thought Severus, in the echoey expanses of his head. A proper Slytherin. Fuming instead of moping. The tears were practically evaporating from her flaring red cheeks.

It was all so disquietingly easy. For now, he didn't have to think. There were no agonizing choices – no ethical quandaries. Planning was for when he was at liberty – for when that searching red gaze wasn't tearing through his head like a chainsaw.

In these moments, he almost believed that he was who Voldemort thought he was. Only the thinnest of threads anchored him to Lily and Dumbledore, and the man he was when he was with them. It could be cut in an emergency – or whenever he felt like it – but he didn't feel like it just now, and he was lucid enough to concede that he probably never would. They had some kind of hold on him. It was difficult to anatomize at the moment. They were frivolous, fleeting and illogical as butterflies – absurdly ill-fitted to the demands of survival in the real world – but their continued existence was important, for some reason. He… well, he was sunk too deep in the Occlumency state to believe that he actually cared for them, but they were… of interest to him.

It was getting dark on the hill overlooking the village of Mapledurham. Voldemort's night vision was probably excellent, but he hadn't spent all those years cultivating a terrifying appearance just to have it smothered in darkness. Like all dictators, he wanted to know that people could see him.

He flicked his wand through the air, and two of the elder tree's topmost branches started blazing merrily, like burning torches. He waved his wand again and, with a groaning sound, two more of the elder's boughs bent low and twisted round each other to form a seat for him in the wreckage of the tree-trunk.

"This delightful spell merits further investigation, Severus," he murmured, sinking regally into his new throne, and brushing the dust off his lap. "I believe we will sleep in a little late this morning."

Severus, in spite of all the shaking and ear-ringing, couldn't rein-in his curiosity. "You can control whether or not we wake up, my Lord?"

"Oh, certainly. This spell is malleable, to a truly great wizard. And that is another point which demands consideration, Severus. A great wizard has been here before us, did you know that? His fingerprints are over everything. I can taste him in the air."  

"Is he still here?"

"I think not. Centuries, perhaps, have passed since he was here, but he has woven spells into the very fabric of this curse, and they are still operating with remarkable efficacy." Voldemort tapped his wand absent-mindedly against the bark of the elder tree. "He is the one who carved the word 'Resurgam' into this tree. 'I shall rise again'. If the wizard is indeed gone, it would be reasonable to assume that he doesn't expect his absence to be permanent."

The dream hadn't outfitted Voldemort in nineteen-fifties' clothes. Clearly, it had taken one look at the red eyes and slit-like nostrils and decided that 'incognito' was never going to happen. He was dressed in his usual sweeping black robes, and, even sitting down, he seemed too tall for the low-hanging sky in Mapledurham.

That, thought Severus, was one good thing about the Dark Lord's sudden appearance. There would be answers; there would be order. Those creepy, hysterical muggles would realize they had bigger problems than dead husbands.

And it was at that exact moment – just when he was marveling at how delightfully cold his last thought had been – that the Boggart appeared.

Later, when he was at liberty to think, Severus would start to develop a paranoid theory about the Boggart-Lily. She always seemed to appear in his darker moments – as though she was drawn to him when he thought the kind of thoughts that his young Lily would usually greet with an outraged "Severus!" She seemed to lap up those thoughts and use them to fuel all her bitter, sardonic energy.

Of course, she encouraged the dark thoughts in the first place – that was the really unfair part. Lily Evans with a dress that tight and a smile that mischievous was bound to bring out his darker side. That was why he had only twice in his life succeeded in surprising the Boggart.

But she was also a sobering reminder of where those thoughts could lead. She was both tempting demon and redeeming angel. And, at a moment when it was so crucial for him to concentrate, he really could have done without the confusion that caused.

Needless to say, he didn't have time to think all that yet. Voldemort reached suddenly to his left, and seemed to scoop her out of the air, whipping Potter's invisibility cloak off her with his other hand. Severus only had time to be phenomenally glad that Voldemort liked to gloat over his enemies when he'd captured them, because it gave him a few precious seconds to compose himself.

"My dear," said Voldemort, dragging her close with a grip that couldn't be argued with, "I am quite inconsolable at seeing you again. You do realize that you have already taken up far more of my time than a creature of your ignoble birth has any right to expect? But the fault is mine for not having killed you sooner. You are quite superfluous now, as you have no doubt been eavesdropping for long enough to gather. Severus has both the Light Mark and the Dark Mark, and will not, I believe, object to me slitting your throat in front of him."

This last remark was addressed to Severus, who dug his fingernails into his palms and tried to smile. But Voldemort swept on without giving him a chance to speak. "In fact, I think we shall give him an added incentive. You're pushing your luck by asking me to spare one of them, Severus. It would be downright impertinence for you to ask for both."

"My Lord?" said Severus calmly, finally finding his voice.

"I will explain," said Voldemort, in what he obviously considered to be a kindly tone. "Let's see what we can do with this girl's remarkable gifts, shall we?" And, still holding the Boggart-Lily's forearm firmly in one hand, he turned his wand on Elsa and muttered: "Imperio."

Elsa's eyes slid inexorably out of focus. Voldemort made her raise her hand to the horizon and trace the outline of a door in midair. As she did so, the space within the outline seemed to take on a deeper darkness than the night air around it. It turned velvety black and opaque. Voldemort walked over to the door and spoke. The sound of his voice echoed as though he was speaking into an endless, empty hallway.

What he said was: "Accio Lily Evans."

A few seconds passed by, while Severus – normally so quick-witted – tried to make sense of this sentence. And then there was movement in the black doorway. Some scrap of red and white was being dragged irresistibly into Voldemort's outstretched hand. Severus couldn't comprehend it – even though he'd seen everything, even though he'd heard the spell being spoken. He couldn't understand what was in front of him, even when Voldemort dragged his little scrap of red-and-white across the grass and into the reach of the firelight. Perhaps the Occlumency state was slowing down his comprehension – putting off the moment of realization until he'd worked out how to deal with it.

"Well, Severus?" said Voldemort matter-of-factly. "Which one do you want to keep? I'm going to have to kill one of them; they have such an infuriating face."

Severus looked for the second time, but saw for the first. And, if there was one image calculated to pitch him out of his Occlumency state, it was this one. Lily was still dressed in the cotton night-dress she'd been wearing when they went to sleep. Goosebumps were creeping up her bare arms. She was struggling, uncomprehending, against Voldemort's grip, but the Boggart-Lily had fallen very still, watching Lily through her mascara-thickened lashes, her lips curling into a sardonic smile.

Had Voldemort ever been this close to his little girl before? Had he ever touched her before? Severus couldn't remember having to fight this hard against the panic, in all the years he'd been pretending.

He couldn't believe how vulnerable she was. No magic – no idea of where she was. She didn't even have a coat. There were a million instant, horrible ways for her to die before he could move an inch, and only ninety-nine per cent of them involved Voldemort. Her skin in the firelight seemed gossamer-frail, as though a strong breeze could tear her to pieces.

Breathe, said the Occlumency state. He's watching you. He wants to see how you're going to react. And you've been here before. You've played this game. In fact, it's the only game you ever play.

On the road to Hogsmeade, Potter grabs your favourite book from your arms and threatens to stamp it into the mud. You don't reach out for it. You don't rise to the taunts. You certainly don't beg. You make him think you couldn't care less about that book and, eventually, he gets bored and chucks it away. He doesn't care. He only wanted the satisfaction of seeing you sweat. Whatever happens, you don't let your enemy realize he has power over you.  

The greater the trouble, the deeper you sank. He had watched his mother being beaten up with this same calm, lucid expression, holding himself back, recording every detail to pick over later in a fever of revenge fantasies, thinking not yet, not yet. Some day you'll make them suffer for what they've done to you, but not yet.

But then the Boggart-Lily spoke. Severus had already made his decision before she spoke. And, in a way he couldn't explain, he knew she'd seen him make it. She had watched his brain crawl towards that torturous conclusion as clearly as if his skull had been made of glass.

Well, what kind of a choice had it been, anyway? The Boggart-Lily was a cynical, embittered magical creature. Severus didn't even know if she was human – he didn't even know if she was Lily. Whereas his little girl, struggling in Voldemort's other hand, was warm and alive and defenceless. At least the Boggart-Lily would have a chance to fight back. Not much of one, granted, but a chance was a chance.

Besides, could you even kill a Boggart? But the Occlumency state – which had already considered this eventuality – answered instantly. Boggarts took on all the abilities and all the weaknesses of the creature they were impersonating. A Dementor-Boggart could suck out your soul. A Fwooper-Boggart could drive you out of your mind with its haunting song. The Boggart-Lily could do everything Lily could do, including die.  

"You'll never find Madam Pomfrey if you kill me now," she said.

Voldemort turned to her, shoving the young Lily down to the ground. And, trying to bite back the desperation, Severus went to her, pulled her up, but couldn't speak, because his teeth were clenched together too tight in an effort to keep the yells in.

"Severus..." she whispered.

"Very well, Severus," said Voldemort, turning towards them with a lazy wave of his free hand. "You can keep that one, if that is your decision. To my mind, the Boggart is a great deal more useful, but you have been a careful disciple – and will prove to be a yet more careful one, I trust – and Lord Voldemort is not a tyrant. I can have her wake up in her bed unscathed, if you like – or perhaps just a little scathed. She is a mudblood, after all."

"Yes, my Lord," said Snape, forcing himself to look into those burning red eyes with the indifference he'd spent his whole life feigning. "She can be willful at times. Perhaps a little scathing will teach her her place."

Voldemort's face creased into a smile, and he waved his wand, bending Lily's back forcibly, so that she lurched forward into a kind of bow. Then, little by little, she faded away. It was not a nice thing to watch. Severus kept his eyes off her face entirely while she faded. Quite apart from the fact that he needed to stay in control, he didn't want to see the reproach in her eyes. Elsa's was hard enough to deal with. Lily's could strip the flesh from his bones.

But she was going to wake up safe in the Valance House. She could hate him for years – decades. He didn't care as long as she was alive to do it.

"You have something to say to me, creature?" said Voldemort, turning back to the Boggart-Lily.

She was still smiling sardonically, as though she'd predicted all of this – as though everything was going to plan. "You know you're going to need the dreamer," she purred. "This whole world revolves around the dreamer. Whatever you have to do to gain immortality from this dream, Madam Pomfrey will be instrumental in it. Without her, nothing in this world can ever change. And I've hidden her away. If you kill me now, you'll never find her."

Voldemort sighed wearily. "Oh dear, Severus," he said, turning to Snape with a conspiratorial smile. "Who does your Boggart suppose she's dealing with?" He brought his wand up, pointed it straight between her eyes, and hissed: "Legilimens."

In spite of himself, Severus flinched. He felt as though he had to, because the Boggart-Lily wasn't doing any flinching of her own accord. Somebody had to fear for her, if she was so determined not to fear for herself. Her head was knocked backwards by the force of the mental intrusion. She closed her eyes – much too late – but didn't once give voice to the screams.

Voldemort was quick. He lowered his wand within a few seconds, and turned back to Severus. "Yes," he said, in a bored, business-like voice. "She has hidden Pomfrey in the symbolic world to which the Light Mark gives her access. It's so amusing, Severus – whenever my enemies want to conceal something from me, it's always the uppermost thing on their mind. They're concentrating so hard on not thinking about it that it's like having the thought illuminated with mental flares." He turned back to the Boggart, addressing her in the same bored drawl. "And you believe that you are the only one who has access to Madam Pomfrey there? Well, in a manner of speaking, my dear, you're right, but that is no impediment to me."

He slashed his wand through the air again, and this time the Boggart-Lily was hit by the Imperius Curse. Voldemort cast the curse non-verbally, but Severus recognized it from the energy signature in the air, and the way the Boggart's face suddenly took on a mildly concussed look. Besides, it was exactly what he would have done.

In the mild hysteria underneath his Occlumency state, he realized that it was nice to see the Boggart-Lily relax. Her expression was usually so guarded, hostile and prickly. It was nice to see her looking blank for once.

Voldemort pressed her wand back into her unresisting hand, and then made her turn away and slash it through the air. A burning trail appeared in the wake of the wand, and it hung, sizzling, in mid-air for a moment, before gradually widening, pushing back the charcoal-black scenery of Mapledurham, to reveal a bright but oddly chilly window into another world.

But it was like opening the gates to hell. Later – when Regulus told him what Voldemort's aura looked like – Severus would remember the flames that came pouring out of this doorway with a shudder. It was fire devoid of warmth and light. The darkness wasn't banished by the flames – it leaked out of them, as though thick, pitch blackness was a by-product of the conflagration.  And there was another by-product: a whole agonizing chorus of screams. There must have been hundreds of voices in there, all adding their decibels to the cacophony. Even in his Occlumency state, Severus had to raise his hands to his ears. Elsa – the Silencing Jinx now having worn off – screamed whole-heartedly along with them. And the lungs of a frightened eight-year-old had surprising power.

It wasn't what Voldemort had been expecting, clearly. He made the Boggart slash her wand through the air again, closing the window with much more abruptness than she'd opened it. Now Elsa's voice was the only one left, and even that petered out after a few seconds, when she realized she was all alone.

In the sudden, ringing silence, the Boggart-Lily dusted her hands and grinned. "I'm afraid some spells are too personal to be performed by a witch or wizard under the Imperius Curse, my Lord. If you put someone under the Imperius Curse and make them summon a Patronus, it will be your Patronus that they summon, because it is your will which is asking for it. Similarly, if you make someone with the Light Mark open the door to the world which symbolizes their true nature, what you will actually be doing is making them open the door to a world which symbolizes your true nature. And they can be very revealing places, my Lord. I'm not sure even you would survive the visit."

The ringing silence spiraled into the realms of the unendurable. Seveus dug his fingernails into his palm, expecting some horrible curse to descend on the Boggart-Lily at any moment. But nothing happened, and – like a true Gryffindor – she seemed to see this as encouragement to push her luck even further.

"You can't open the door to Madam Pomfrey," she said. "I have to do it of my own free will, or she stays in the world of my true nature forever. That's the way light magic works. It can't be performed under duress. It's probably not a branch of magic that you've ever bothered with, so your ignorance is forgivable. But I will require certain conditions to be met before I release my prisoner."

Voldemort hadn't taken his eyes off the spot where the window had disappeared. "What was that supposed to be?" he asked woodenly. "Anger? Hatred? I have negligible amounts of both."

The Boggart gave him a patient smile. "Apparently, that isn't the case, my Lord."

These last two words were uttered with such withering sarcasm that Severus groaned inwardly. Why was she doing this to him? What was the point in insulting Lord Voldemort? Did she think she was going to make him cry? Did she think she was going to convince him of his own worthlessness? She was going to get the Cruciatus Curse for nothing – for nothing. And he was going to have to stand here watching Lily's knees buckle with pain.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe she was turning herself into cannon-fodder just to torment him – just to fill his mind with images of the only woman he'd ever loved getting tortured. It would be just like the twisted bitch.

But, to his everlasting surprise, Voldemort didn't give her the Cruciatus Curse. Instead, he put his wand in his pocket and steepled his fingers reflectively.

"You know, according to the oldest surviving biographies, Rowena Ravenclaw used to say to her students, 'If you want to know who you're dealing with, draw blood'. There is a great deal of academic debate about what she meant. Some feeble-minded individuals – Dumbledore amongst them – maintain that she was trying to tell her students that we all bleed; therefore, if you draw blood, you will immediately understand that your enemy is just a frail human being, made of the same stuff as yourself. Still others persist in believing that she meant: You can tell whether your enemy is a wizard of pedigree or the offspring of filthy muggles by drawing blood. You see, to the most aristocratically-educated wizards, 'mudblood' is not just an expression. They really believe that the blood of muggle-born witches and wizards is thick, festering and brown as muck. To this, I make no comment, other than the observation that some people think along lines far too straight for the accommodation of a metaphor. I have had plenty of experience with the blood of muggle-born witches and wizards and, I assure you, it is as red as that of any pure-blood. But the third school of thought on Rowena Ravenclaw's famous axiom is the one I favour: that she meant draw blood – throw aside the civilities – and you will understand who your enemy is by the way he or she reacts."

With great care – and no great hurry – he drew his wand out of his pocket and pointed it at her. To Severus, who had long ago guessed his intention, he seemed to be doing it in slow-motion.

"We will see what it is that you are made of, Boggart-mudblood. After all, you have now seen my true nature. It seems only fair that you should yield the same information, especially if we are going to be co-operating with each other."

Voldemort flicked his wand, and a slash appeared across the Boggart-Lily's chest, just beneath her collar-bones. She didn't even flinch – and Severus knew better than to let any expression appear on his face – but the ringing in his ears intensified, to signal the building pressure in his head.

The cutting curse must have been scalpel-sharp, because it was a few seconds before the blood rushed to fill the new gap in her skin. And she was wearing such a low-cut top that, when it did, it had the whole, voluptuous canvas of her chest to pour down. But the strangest thing was the way it poured. The blood formed a shape, dripping down further in the middle of her chest to form tail feathers, and then less far at the sides to form wings. After just a few seconds, she had a shining, dark-red phoenix emblazoned across her chest.

Voldemort's face, which had been pitilessly blank, now seemed to grow animated. For the first time since Severus had met him, he looked childishly excited, like a little boy in a sweet-shop. "It appears that Rowena Ravenclaw's dictum had more truth in it than I realized," he murmured. "That is what our mysterious wizard was trying to tell us. But he could drop hints until the end of time and still never find a wizard with enough knowledge to grasp his meaning. Every spell-book was destroyed."

"My Lord?" said Severus again, trying to tear his eyes away from the gruesome phoenix on the Boggart's chest.

"Once again, I think, a visual demonstration is required," said Voldemort, placing a shaking wand-tip against his forehead, and drawing out a silvery thread of memory. Almost with disdain, he flicked the thread off the tip of his wand, but, instead of falling, it hung in the air, as though awaiting further instructions. At another lazy motion of Voldemort's wand, the silvery thread lengthened and divided – formed itself into the distinctive lines and loops of runic writing, until what looked like a whole page of runes was hanging in the air, shimmering against the black horizon.

"And Dumbledore said I couldn't be a school-teacher," he said languorously. "I can use the air as my blackboard – I can commit the rarest of magical tomes to memory, recalling not just every word, but every smudge of ink on the parchment, every pencil-note in the margins – and the old fool said I couldn't be a school-teacher."

Voldemort took a deep, rattling breath through his slit-like nostrils, and then breathed out, as though he was trying to blow away the memory of Dumbledore's rejection. And Severus realized that the greatest dark wizard of his time – probably of all time – still desired Dumbledore's good opinion. It made him feel slightly less stupid for running after the senile old git.

"In Jordan," said Voldemort, "there is a series of interconnected caves which extend for seven miles under the Great Rift Valley. On the walls of these caves have been engraved the contents of the rarest spell-book in existence. Every copy was destroyed a thousand years ago – a difficult process, because the writer of this intensely potent spell-book had poured so much of his soul into the writing that, while he lived, the books he wrote couldn't be destroyed by conventional means. Basilisk venom had to be used to dissolve their pages – a difficult and hazardous substance to acquire, but nowhere near as difficult or hazardous as attempting to kill the writer of the book himself. The wizarding authorities demanded the destruction of his book because they deemed the beautiful spells within it to be dangerous. Can you imagine a more potent symbol of idiocy than the burning of books, Severus? But they succeeded. Such is the power of stupidity, in an age where stupidity is freely encouraged."

"It took me almost a year to find the caves. The local muggles feared to speak of them. Even though they couldn't understand the runes, they understood the power. They sensed what those engravings could do, if deciphered. They even believed the carvings had a spirit of their own: that they sat in the darkness reading each other. When I found the place, I wandered underground for days. By following the writing, one could never be lost in there. I was within the greatest tome of dark magic known to wizardkind. I unearthed knowledge of which Dumbledore could only dream. Since the writing could not be physically be taken with me, I used a certain, obscure piece of magic to increase the scope and intensity of my memories, allowing me to recall every single rune in that seven-mile spell-book. Dumbledore doesn't know about that spell, I'm certain of it. If he did, he would probably campaign to have it banned in case his students used it for cheating on their exam papers. Some people can be so small-minded." Voldemort shook his head, as though he was personally saddened by Dumbledore's small-mindedness.  

"I can recall any portion of those miles of engraved runes at will. And here – as a gesture of our new-found co-operation, my dear," he added, nodding salaciously to the Boggart-Lily, "I shall impart an extract most relevant to our present situation. Severus, if you would be so good as to translate?"

Severus had already been scanning the runes hungrily, while half his mind listened just as hungrily to Voldemort's tale of discovery. He felt ravenous for this writing, and bitingly envious that Voldemort had got the chance to be there, walking around inside a living spell-book, laughing at the superstitious muggles who feared it. His comprehension had been hampered by all these competing feelings, but now, as he turned his eyes back to the beginning of the excerpt, he started, by little, thrilling increments, to understand.

"The phoenix curse," he read, "is self-sufficient, and self-renewing. It has been marauding through the world from the most ancient days, completely independent of its original caster. Yet all magic proceeds from, and is fuelled by, human consciousness, and the phoenix curse is no exception. It only differs in that it traps humans and tricks them into providing the energy required for the curse's renewal."

"It puts its human victims into a magical sleep, in which it recreates the worst moment of their lives. It provides all the right conditions to make the victim desperate, furious – until, eventually, the victim raises his wand in anger, intending to cast a curse against his shadowy enemies. And so great is his anger that he throws his whole life behind the curse. He is willing to kill himself to smite his enemies. The casting of this spell results in the victim's death, but it provides the energy necessary for the phoenix curse to renew itself. Thus the curse devours witches and wizards in order to extend its life. It is the most pernicious – but fortunately rare – predator in the magical world, and legend has it that it was created as a response to the healing power of phoenix tears."

Here, Severus broke off, because he'd run out of runes to read, and even dared to glance impatiently at Voldemort, in the expectation of more. The Dark Lord laughed. "Patience, Severus," he hissed. "I'm coming to that." He waved his wand over the patch of runes glimmering in the air, and they rearranged themselves, forming what Severus could only assume to be the next page – or the next cave-wall, he supposed. He didn't even wait to be told to go on reading. He cleared his throat and launched impatiently into the translation.

"Throughout the history of sorcery, dark magic and healing magic have evolved to balance each other out. No-one knows why this is so. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of human ingenuity. After all, in the muggle world, no sooner is a new weapon invented than a defence against that weapon is perfected. Necessity is the mother of invention. Those who are prevented from killing will find a way to kill, and those who are prevented from living will find a way to live."

Voldemort interrupted him there. "Little as I like this wizard's comparison of magic to muggle engineering, I understand the precept. I have even participated in it. The existence of the Light Mark compelled me to create the Dark Mark – and here, I was compelled not so much by logic as by inspiration. It simply felt unutterably right. As you get older, Severus, you will understand the extent to which a great wizard learns to rely on his instincts, and how these instincts have governed wizard-kind for millennia."

"Yes, my Lord," said Severus, thinking, with a pang, that if it hadn't been for all the murder, prejudice, and competing ideologies of this war, he would have had the world's best Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.  

"Proceed," said Voldemort, with a lazy wave of his hand.

"Phoenix tears were almost an unfair advantage to the cause of healing magic," Severus went on, "effective against all poisons, even Basilisk venom; able to close even wounds which had been opened by an Anti-coagulant curse. And so, whether by conscious design or tragic accident, the Phoenix curse came into being." Here, the runes ran out again and, despite another impatient glance from Severus, Voldemort didn't deign to renew them.

"Weeks ago, Severus, I mentioned to you the letters of the Boggart-Slytherin, who prophesied that only someone with the 'Nota de misericordia et internecio' – the signs of mercy and destruction – could retrieve immortality from the then-unnamed curse he had isolated. He also specified that the moment of regeneration was the only instant at which the seed of eternal life could be snatched."

Severus stared straight ahead of him, too caught up in the thrill of discovery to worry about the opportunistic Boggart, shining with blood and listening carefully to every word. Voldemort seemed to have forgotten about her too. His eyes were fixed firmly on Severus. Clearly, it wasn't just the logic that thrilled him, but the opportunity to show it off. He really would have been a great teacher.

"That's the moment the phoenix curse renews itself?" said Severus.

"Precisely. The moment the dreamer raises her wand in revenge – when she throws her whole life behind a spell to make her even with her enemies." He turned back to the Boggart-Lily, almost triumphantly, and gave her a cool, civil smile. "We will be requiring Madam Pomfrey from you now."