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This place felt… unreal.
Harry pushed himself up off the ground and found himself lying in bright, swirling mist. But it wasn't like any mist he'd ever seen before. It wasn't that the world around him was wrapped in fog; it was more like the fog hadn't decided what the world was supposed to look like yet.
He reached up to his face. No glasses.
He checked the rest of himself. No clothes, either.
The second that thought crossed his mind (Please let me be wearing something), a robe appeared a few feet away. He snatched it up and pulled it on. It was soft, clean, and warm, like it had just come off a laundry line on a summer day. Weird. The moment he'd wished for it, there it was.
And the moment that thought popped into his head…
…a pair of bright green eyes was staring at him from the mist.
A black cat.
Harry's jaw dropped.
"Mr. Black Cat?! Wait—what—how did I pass out?"
The cat didn't answer. Instead, it lifted one inky, fluffy paw and delicately touched its whiskers, the universal sign for "shush."
Harry shut up real fast. He got the message.
Then he heard it.
A faint sound drifting in from the formless nothing all around them: tiny, wet thuds and flutters, like something small struggling and failing to breathe. It was pitiful… and somehow gross at the same time. Listening to it felt like accidentally eavesdropping on something private and shameful.
Harry turned in a slow circle. The place was huge, bright, empty. Just him and the cat.
Then he saw it, and his whole body jerked back.
Under what looked like the ghostly outline of a bench was a naked, child-sized thing, curled up tight. Its red, raw skin looked flayed, like it had been skinned alive. It shivered and gasped, abandoned, shoved carelessly into that little space, fighting for every breath.
Harry was terrified.
It was small and hurt and weak, but he didn't want to go near it. Not even a little.
Still, he inched closer, ready to bolt at any second.
When he was close enough to touch it, he still couldn't bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward.
He knew he should comfort it, but the thing repulsed him.
"You can't help it," the black cat said.
Harry spun around. The cat was padding toward him, green eyes glowing.
Their connection (Harry and Voldemort's) had turned out to be way deeper than the cat had expected. Just separating the two of them had knocked Harry out cold and nearly killed Voldemort on the spot.
And that… was exactly what Sion had been aiming for.
"What is that thing, Mr. Black Cat?" Harry asked, glancing back at the trembling little creature under the bench.
"Something neither of us can save," the cat said. "This is the one place he was most afraid to end up. And now I've brought him here. No matter how powerful a wizard once was, Harry, everyone's equal here."
The cat stared at the little lump of life. For the first time, Harry felt how much more… solid and whole the cat was compared to that thing. The cat was real, alive, wise. The thing was pathetic and revolting.
"Is that… Voldemort?" Harry finally whispered.
"Harry, you really are a remarkable wizard," the cat said softly.
Harry ducked his head, grateful he probably couldn't blush in this place, because if he could, his face would've looked like a Weasley jumper right then.
He loved it here. He honestly loved this place.
Mr. Black Cat always showed up exactly when Harry needed him most. Yeah, half the stuff the cat said went straight over his head, but it never felt confusing. Whenever Harry was stuck, scared, or thinking too hard, the cat's words were like a small, steady lantern in the dark.
Words really were the wizarding world's greatest magic. They could hurt you or heal you, depending on how you used them.
"Look," the cat said.
It batted at a drifting puff of mist. The second it touched the weak little creature, the mist lit up with an image: a terrifying dark wizard lording over the entire magical world.
But the moment Harry looked away from the mist, all he could see was Voldemort's pitiful, ridiculous, broken soul.
"In the world of souls, being lost is normal," the cat said.
Behind them, the thing twitched, whimpered, and finally melted away into the mist.
Harry sat there for a long, long time.
Eventually, like the first snowflake of winter finally landing, it clicked.
"You destroyed it?" he asked quietly. "Mr. Black Cat?"
"No. It chose to die. That piece of soul inside you could hear its own screaming clear as day, even here. It never had love, Harry. Without love, it couldn't choose life. And a wizard who can't choose life will always choose death."
The cat's whiskers twitched, and for the first time ever, it looked almost… cheerful.
Harry stared. The cat suddenly didn't feel so far away anymore.
"And me…?" Harry mumbled.
The cat's mouth curled into what had to be a grin.
"You, Harry, aren't nearly as scared of coming back here as he was."
Harry thought the cat was giving him way too much credit.
When the mist finally closed in completely, Harry found himself thinking that Mr. Black Cat was hands-down his favorite magical being in the whole wizarding world.
Sometimes he really, really wished he could just… pet him.
One of Voldemort's Horcruxes was gone for good.
The black cat's steps felt lighter as it walked the borderlands. It could linger two full seconds longer now, thanks to the faint new thread of mist tethering Harry's soul. Those little anchors were the only reason the cat could stay in the in-between places without getting lost.
And yeah, that was definitely why it felt like chatting with Harry a bit more.
…At least, that's what the cat told itself.
The Book of Dreams said that seven hours from now, the sky here would go dark and the stars would blaze brighter than anywhere else, perfect for divination.
It also said that seven hours from now, the sky would lighten again, and right at the edge of dawn you'd start seeing souls who were waiting, souls that showed up every single day at the same time and then vanished again, forever stuck in the moment just before sunrise.
…
At last, the dream ended.
A heavy, snow-deep silence settled over the castle.
Harry didn't feel suffocated by it. He felt peaceful. The thought that a piece of Voldemort's soul had just vanished from inside him made him happier than he'd been in ages.
Mr. Black Cat was the most wonderful thing he'd ever met at Hogwarts. He woke since him from nightmares, whispered comfort in the dark, and always told him he was safe, that nothing was actually going to hurt him.
"The Christmas-night messenger, the castle's luck-bringing spirit-cat.
The towering castle is his ears, the moving staircases are his breath…"
Harry whispered the old rhyme under his breath, reverent and quiet.