[Chapter Size: 2200 Words.]
Third Person POV
Hogwarts.
...
...
Severus left Dobby aside and exited the area where his shadows were working on Potions to supply his other potion franchise. Since it was still active and his main source of income.
He then went to his room, where everything seemed normal, until his eyes fell on a type of aquarium, but without water.
It was an artificial terrestrial terrarium, with leaves and some plants, around 1 m², and inside it was a snake — the same snake Severus had taken from Voldemort when he fought him in the Muggle city.
He had left it trapped there for some time, unable to escape from Severus, and he knew Voldemort was quite desperate to find it for some reason. He had taken it that day because something about it had caught his attention, but he hadn't delved into it until now and kept it until he had time to look into it, while letting Dobby take care of it.
He simply walked up to the glass, opened it, and picked up the snake, a bit frightened, as if begging to be released, showing its fangs to him.
He ignored it, staring at it with interest.
"I can control death. And death plays with souls. I can feel... there's a soul trapped in you, a soul that shouldn't be there."
Severus could feel the connection. It wasn't complete, but he still knew it was there. He could only feel the souls of dead people when he killed his opponents, before he managed to resurrect them.
"Let's test this," he said. The next moment, his words were spoken.
"Arise." He pronounced the words that allow the dead to walk among the living, and as Monarch of Shadows, only he could do such a thing.
Suddenly, an aura began to emerge from it like black smoke.
The snake seemed aware of what was happening, becoming terrified, but Severus continued holding its head in his hand. The dark energy began to gather in front of Severus, while he set the snake aside, still holding it. He watched it closely.
The smoke became a shadow, a kind of wizard with a wand, with a somewhat powerful appearance. It simply knelt before Severus, as its master. The moment its transformation was complete, he received the notification.
[You have received the shadow of Voldemort, but only one complete fragment of it, 1/7].
"So it's just one part... of six others..." Severus murmured. "I didn't know a wizard could split his soul. There was nothing about that in the library, not even in the Restricted Section." Severus thought for a moment. The shadow just looked at him.
"Are you Voldemort? Do you have his memories?" he asked calmly.
Without saying anything, it simply nodded.
"Do you know where the other parts of your soul are?"
It nodded again.
"How did you do this? Can you explain it to me?" Severus asked. This shadow had only a fraction of Voldemort's power, but it was above that of other wizards he had.
The shadow tried to argue, but since it had no words, it was difficult to explain anything. Until it saw a book on Severus's bedside table and pointed to it.
Severus looked, seeing the name "Slughorn" on the book's cover. He had taken that copy after the professor asked him to take a look at certain potions in a class.
Severus picked up the snake, which struggled, before throwing it back into the glass container.
He summoned the phoenix again. And then vanished from there.
Professor Slughorn was not having an easy time. He was locked inside his classroom, with no active cauldrons due to the holidays, if classes were even going to resume as planned after what had happened.
All he did was sit, drinking a glass of wine, with several newspapers spread out in front of him.
He was frustrated, disappointed, afraid of everything that had happened in the last few days.
He believed Severus was a brilliant boy, someone who could change the magical world with his incredible talent. But in the end, he turned out to be like his old disappointment: Tom Riddle, who had also been a brilliant student and now used the name Voldemort to terrorize the wizarding world and impose his pure-blood ideology.
It was a failure in his life, one he wished he could erase completely from memory. He spent his days consumed by fear, watching Voldemort grow more powerful with each passing day.
And when he thought he had found a student even more brilliant than Tom Riddle, he discovered that Severus too was following a path filled with death.
Even if his targets were dark wizards, he didn't believe that was the right path. Severus massacred his enemies mercilessly, wielding a dark power capable of controlling creatures made of shadows. No one could yet explain what kind of magic that was, but everyone undoubtedly considered it dark magic—and a very wicked one.
Then suddenly, he felt a disturbance in the room. An explosion erupted. He immediately took a deep breath, dragging the chair back as he saw the one who had dominated his thoughts in recent days.
"Severus..." he murmured.
Severus appeared, with the phoenix vanishing a moment later. The professor had never been so frightened to see him, while Severus only sighed.
"Professor Slughorn," Severus greeted him.
The professor swallowed hard. "What are you doing here?" he asked, stammering.
Hogwarts had always been like a fortress to him, a place to stay away from his enemies, never leaving the castle for fear that Voldemort wanted to kill him—after all, he held knowledge about the young Tom Riddle that could become a major problem.
But now, even within Hogwarts, with Dumbledore's disappearance, the fear pressed against his neck every day, and this had been a constant feeling for the past six months. Now Voldemort could attack Hogwarts, and worse, the cause of Dumbledore's disappearance seemed to have come directly from Severus.
And Severus could enter the castle easily, with that purple phoenix... Slughorn's eyes widened at the thought that perhaps that was Dumbledore's phoenix, but transformed into a dark creature.
"I'm not here to hurt you, professor," Severus began, seeing the fear in the potions master's eyes.
"Then what do you want?" The professor still didn't seem convinced that Snape wouldn't harm him.
"I'm the same person you once knew. But I'll be honest: I'm not the Severus Snape from two years ago. That boy committed suicide," Severus explained.
"What do you mean by that?" The professor grew increasingly alarmed.
"Severus Snape died when he fell into darkness. He couldn't bear the loneliness and took his own life. I died at the same moment, but far from this world. My soul, I don't know why, invaded the boy's body, resurrecting as me. But that's not what I came to talk about," Severus said, while Slughorn couldn't react to such a frightening revelation.
"Anyway, I want to talk about Voldemort. I found a fragment of his soul in the snake I took when we fought in the Muggle city," Severus began, while Slughorn's expression turned even more drastic, his face going pale as he looked Severus in the eyes.
"What is this? Why does Voldemort have seven parts of his soul separated?"
"Seven?" Slughorn finally got up from his chair, which fell along with him to the floor. He quickly stood, as if the ground had vanished beneath his feet. He was visibly shaken. He had never expected that Tom Riddle had split his soul into so many parts—more than he had ever imagined.
"So you know. Voldemort's own soul told me that you knew."
"It told..." he stammered, as a shadow began to emerge beside Severus.
"This is one of the seven parts of Voldemort's soul," Severus said calmly, as the shadow knelt before him.
"How is this possible? You turned it into a soldier? This is... necromancy!" More and more, the professor seemed more terrified of Severus than he had ever been. "You're... turning Voldemort into your servant?"
"Yes, exactly that. Not that I'm proud to have this power, but it's the power needed to fight those who must be defeated—my true enemies who are in other worlds..." Severus said.
Slughorn stood there, frozen, not knowing what to say.
"I need to know exactly what this is. I'm going to destroy Voldemort. I don't want to run into any more surprises," Severus said seriously to his professor.
Slughorn stood still for a while, torn between revealing what Severus was asking or fearing his power even more. At that moment, Severus was at a level of power even worse than Voldemort—he had turned the Dark Lord himself into a shadowy servant.
"This is called a Horcrux," Slughorn finally said. "When a wizard tears his own soul through dark magic using someone else's life as a sacrifice and places it into an object—or even a living being—it's a way to ensure a chance at revival, even if his body is destroyed."
"Why didn't I know this until now?" Severus asked. It felt strange to him. He hated not knowing something, especially now that he had become a wizard in another body.
"It's a name that was erased by Professor Dumbledore. It was a very wicked magic, and that's why it was banned from the school. There's nothing about it, not even in the Restricted Section, as you can imagine," Slughorn explained.
"So I have to destroy all the Horcruxes before killing Voldemort?" Severus asked.
"Exactly," he murmured.
"I see... With that, I'll leave you in peace," Severus said, while Slughorn widened his eyes, seeing him summon the phoenix again.
"Wait, Severus. Tell me one thing. Is Dumbledore still alive?"
"I believe so... I'm not really sure," he replied.
"What do you mean, you're not sure?"
"When I was going to kill him, he was absorbed by my ring. I don't know what happened to him after that," Severus said.
"One more thing, Severus... What do you plan for England? Do you intend to continue the terror Voldemort started?"
"No," Severus denied. "I have no interest in ruling the people of this world. My war is beyond here. I will leave this world soon... as soon as I am strong enough," Severus said, while the professor didn't quite understand what he meant.
"Severus!" he exclaimed a third time and approached the desk, finally grabbing a piece of paper.
"Please, save Lily Evans. I know you had contact with her. Please, the girl is in the hands of those horrible Death Eaters. You have to save her! She is a kind-hearted girl!"
"You don't have to say that. I'm going after her right now," Severus said, as he began to vanish in the midst of flames.
Slughorn found himself alone in the room again, trapped in the turbulence of thoughts after that conversation. He no longer even cared that much about the fact that Voldemort had created seven Horcruxes.
They were afraid of what Severus would become. Or rather, whoever it was now inhabiting Severus's body—that he wouldn't become a new terror. Moreover, that phrase kept echoing in their minds: "...my true enemies who are in other worlds."
Severus appeared in the Forbidden Forest the next moment, as the phoenix vanished. He looked ahead and saw a completely dark area, with no sign of any other living creature there, in contrast to the part of the Forbidden Forest behind him. This was the forbidden zone, where no one survived if they entered.
His shadow began to move at that instant, manifesting and creating hundreds of soldiers who knelt before him.
"I want you to search all of England for Lily Evans and give me a signal as soon as you find her. Stay close to her, and I will switch places. All shadows must go wherever I teleport," Severus said, while his shadows, in silence, began to disappear, running in all directions — except for his phoenix, which remained with him, and one shadow that stayed kneeling.
"Igris, you must go too," Severus requested, but Igris did not move, only looked at him.
Severus said nothing for the next few seconds, simply staring at him. "I see. You are my knight, my sword. You must never leave your king," Severus murmured, then gave a faint smile.
"Very well. Let's go. There's a creature here no one has ever managed to face. It's time for you to become a powerful soldier," Severus said, as he stepped into the darkest part of the forest.
He was about to face, at last, Juggernaut — the creature he hadn't even had a chance to fight more than a year and a half ago. On that occasion, he had only been able to flee. But now he was more powerful.
And so he entered, with Igris walking just behind, like his most loyal shadow, as the darkness of the forest bathed them, but Severus was already someone who walked beneath shadows, watched by the abyss itself — so this was nothing.
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