21 – The Lost City

Voldemort whispered some words, and his broom extended several feet. He'd performed the transfiguration as if it were as easy as pulling a rabbit from a hat. "Come," he instructed Snape.

Snape didn't waste any time and immediately mounted the broom. He tried not to look at Lily but couldn't help himself. She was slumped over Voldemort's shoulder, one eye swollen shut like a boxer's in a title match, the other eye completely open but showing no consciousness. He thought of a time he walked home in the snow, just months after his father had made him pet the tiger at the Spinner's End Carnival. It was winter, a few days before Christmas, when most homes revealed scenes of parents and children around the fireplace, singing songs, playing games, stuffing stockings—but the window into his home was dark. There was no warmth there, for the lights were out. There was no sign of love anywhere.

He tried to force this memory from his mind, but Lily's one eye remained open, showing nothingness, and that was all he could think about—the lights were out.

The broom ascended high into the air above Willow Gorge, and they briefly basked in the last rays of the sun, which had disappeared behind the mountain. Voldemort snapped his fingers, and the broom accelerated faster than Snape had ever experienced. This was easily double the speed of the Quidditch players from Hogwarts.

"Is she going to make it? How bad is she hurt?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. He wasn't sure he could hear the answer with how fast the wind was blowing by them. "And how did you know we were here?"

"It will help if you don't speak." Voldemort's voice was matter-of-fact. He was focused on piloting the broom and didn't want any distractions.

They flew over the northwestern corner of Willow Gorge, nearly skimming the top of the mountain, but Snape barely noticed. He rubbed Lily's head softly with his hand. "I should have never let you come," he told her.

Beneath them , there wasn't anything that looked like Grindelwald's Lost City. There were rocks that stood like giant soda straws; they were lined up, row after row, a perfect setup for dominoes. Voldemort made the broom nosedive and weaved between the soda straws much more quickly than Snape would have tried. He felt his stomach bobbing up and down, his robe occasionally grazing the rocks, and just when he thought it would never end, the broom nearly went vertical, Lily's head lopping to the side, and they shot downwards into a black hole where the broom twisted and turned, and he lost all sense of direction, until finally they came out the other side of a stony hill.

And there it was—the Lost City. While not directly on the other side of Willow Gorge, the blue unicorn was right. Grindelwald, somehow, had secretly starting building his own world, and there was only one word to describe it: BIG.

The city was laid out in the shape of an upside-down V. At the front left side, there was a partially built Quidditch stadium with two large staircase structures on opposite sides for spectators. The wood staircases had only a few rows finished with seating, but Snape estimated there to be over one hundred potential steps (rows), which easily could've held tens of thousands of people.

On the right, the beginnings of a library were evident. Though the roof was never put on, the four wooden walls were there, and Snape was particularly mesmerized by the size of the book shelves, each maybe half the height of Big Ben.

It seemed that everywhere he looked, there was the start of something big: an enormous wooden sign (lying on the ground) that said Owlery, a half-finished statue of Merlin (on its way to being as tall as a giant) carved in oak, the first floor of a prison (a few cells with bars as thick as tree trunks), several meters of train track (the world's GIANT MAGIC RAIL emblazoned in the steel),... It went on and on, almost as if the left and right sides were competing to outdo the other.

But none of it was finished. When Grindelwald was defeated by Dumbledore, someone might as well have walked into the Lost City, waved a magic wand and said, "Stop." It had all become a ghost town.

As Voldemort guided them over the brown structures, Snape saw that they were headed towards the tip of the upside down V. He wasn't sure what Grindelwald had planned for this location, but guessed it was intended to be the city square. At ground level, there was a pulpit at the V-point, likely where Grindelwald would have given speeches to his city's people.

The broom abruptly moved to the left of the pulpit, climbing over the edge of a stony cliff, and here was the one structure in all of the Lost City that looked finished: a brown house—except this wasn't any brown house. It looked like a stack of Christmas presents piled on top of one another, the pile climbing further and further up the stony cliff, overlooking all of the Lost City. Each part of the house was a different shade of brown, and Snape guessed that the wood came from the different types of trees in the Forbidden Forest.

"Is this where you live?" He looked at the curving brown tower with a new perspective. He'd always wondered where Voldemort spent the majority of his time. Voldemort talked about his travels, never his home life, and now that his home was in front of them, it became an even bigger mystery. It became that house, the one that every kid has in their neighborhood growing up, with a checkered history of haunting or murder or something sinister. "Do you really live here?" he asked again. "What do you do in a place where no one—"

"There is no time for your questions right now," said Voldemort coolly.

Snape looked over his shoulder and absently noticed that all of the city's unfinished structures were awash in shades of brown as well. "Why is everything made of wood?"

"Silence!" Voldemort took the broom on one final nosedive and landed it on the home's porch. Snape's legs slammed on the wood, and he swore he saw the house tilt back and forth like a stack of books ready to fall over. Voldemort immediately took Lily, threw open the door, and entered the home without saying another word to Snape.

Snape stood on the porch for a moment, and when he saw a splatter of Lily's blood, he remembered why they where there in the first place. He rushed through the door. "Lord Voldemort! Lily—wait!"

He heard a voice in a room to the left. He charged into the room expecting to see Voldemort treating her, and he found something very different instead. The room was cluttered with objects of all sorts—a locket, a ring, old robes, peacock feathers, stacks of books, a drawing of water with zombie- ghosts beneath the surface—but for Snape, they were all a blur. He couldn't pull his eyes away from the paintings hung on the walls. All showed scenes that played like movies, and they were all of him.

One was of him sitting alone in Slughorn's classroom doing a charcoal drawing of Lily. Another showed him reading Lost Magic of the Dark Arts in the same classroom—he was taking notes about doppelganger root and how to use it for Lily's Christmas gift. In a third painting, Lily was sitting next to him, choosing him to be her partner for the Carpe Retractum charm; James was frowning in the background.

But his favorite painting of all showed him stealing a simple look with her. If there was ever a time they had both smiled with their eyes across a room, this was it. Before class several weeks ago, Snape had told her that Slughorn would spend the first five minutes extolling Sirius's fancy broom work in the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff Quidditch match. Sure enough, Slughorn walked in that day saying, "Sirius m'boy, you have quite the golden broom."

The voice that had drawn him into the room continued to croon in the background. He recognized it at once—it was Frank Sinatra's, and Snape was surprised to see the singer's face in black-and-white. Voldemort had acquired a TV for his house, and Sinatra was on it, dressed in a tux, singing in a Vegas saloon:

Try to think that love's not around

Still it's uncomfortably near

My poor old heart ain't gainin' any ground

Because my angel eyes ain't here…

"I see you've made yourself at home." Voldemort's voice cut through Sinatra's.

"I didn't know where you went. Is she okay? "

Voldemort's eyes casually glanced at the Snape / Lily pictures in the background, studying the young wizard's face. "Yes, she will be okay."

He sighed. "Good. Where is she?"

"You really… love… this girl?"

"Yes, I—"

"Well, it distracted you today. Do you think James would have let a unicorn attack on such an important mission?"

"What? How can you compare me to—"

"Never mind. It doesn't matter right now. You obviously have seen this house, this room. You must have a lot of questions."

"I do, but I want to see Lily."

Voldemort flinched a little. He studied Snape's face with a strange curiosity. "Yes, of course. Come this way."

When Voldemort turned, he subtly flicked his wand, and a velvet cover fell off one of the paintings, revealing yet another picture of Slughorn's classroom, but this one didn't show Snape or Lily. Slughorn, himself, was in it and appeared to be decorating the classroom with holly and mistletoe.

"Wait. Is that picture happening right now?" Snape watched his professor take a sip of butterbeer as he decorated.

"How do you think I took the pictures of you?" Voldemort picked up a copy of the Meet Tom Riddle Poster from a mahogany desk. The same one was floating in Slughorn's classroom.

"That poster takes pictures? And it can show everything that's happening right now?"

"It was a piece of magic that I learned in Albania. Slughorn's classroom was a test before using it for grander purposes." Voldemort casually scanned the Snape / Lily pictures again. "It's a technique that's revealed more than I expected. It's a window into people's actions and motivations."

"How did you get it to Hogwarts?"

"An owl to Slughorn. But enough questions. We should be getting you to… your friend." Voldemort turned to leave the room again.

"Wait."

A smile began to form, but when he turned around, his face was serious again. "Yes?"

"One more thing. You said you have grander purposes for this?"

"I do. Before leaving here today, I will be giving you a similar poster. This one will go into Dumbledore's office."

"But…" Snape was lost for words.

"And Severus, I hope you are ready to use the Dark Tourist curse on him as well."

Before Snape could respond, Voldemort left the room.