Somewhere else, there's an island. On the island, there is a castle. Neither the island or the castle can be found by a person within whose chest beats a four-chambered heart. But there are shortcuts, for people desperate enough to look for them.
Inside the castle, you can find many rare and exotic things. In the greenhouse, there is a particularly fine specimen of Semper Augustus, a tulip that no one has seen since the sixteenth century. On the island, you may notice a number of Terror skinks, enormous lizards which have only recently gone extinct. The waters surrounding the island swarm with coelacanths, as well as several species of prehistoric sharks.
But these things, as marvelous and unique as they may be, are not the reason people come to the island, and Severus Snape barely noticed them as he Apperated inside the castle. In any case, he had seen them many times already. His feet took him down the long hallway and up an iron-wrought spiral staircase, down another hallway and to the third door on his left. He stood outside this door for rather longer than was absolutely necessary, before knocking.
No one answered. He knocked again, then a third time. Still nothing. An observer would realize that he was more than a little reluctant to be found calling on the inhabitant of this most unusual island. Nevertheless, he had no choice, and so he pushed open the door and walked inside.
The room was sparsely furnished, with a small window that looked out over the cliffs that skirted one side of the island. In front of that window was a thin cot, and on the cot was a woman. She was stretched out perfectly still, and her heart was not beating. Snape stood for a while longer, watching her.
She was a very attractive woman.
"Well?" said Snape at last. "Are you here or aren't you?"
A tiny thread of sound, barely more than that, echoed through the room.
"Voldemort has returned. As you said."
I know.
He waited, but nothing more was forthcoming.
"The war has started. The Dementors have defected to the other side."
I know that, too.
"The prophecy was lost."
And Sirius Black has fallen through the veil. I know all these things.
Snape waited, uncertain as to whether or not the speaker was still present. Only silence was forthcoming. He opened and shut his mouth, the words he wanted to say unwilling to leave his tongue.
"And..." His throat was dry. What emerged was little more than a whisper. "And whose side will you be on this time?"
No answer. Then, a laugh, as delicate as the play of light on a predator's eye.
Go, wizard.
Snape went to reply, but instead stepped backwards in shock. Starting in the middle of his chest and rippling out, he disintegrated, dissolving into a fine dust that fell to the thinly carpeted floor. A light breeze brushed what was left away.
The woman smiled. Her eyes, the rich color of liquid gold, opened.
