Its position between the sun and the earth prevents the illumination of the moon for good, and it ultimately causes the darkest of nights. Although the new moon is supposed to symbolise spiritual new beginnings, it much rather feels like the last night of my life.

I keep on hearing us, again and again, even two days later. Every waking minute, I hear myself say things I never intended to say. Not to her.
And I see what she saw in my mind – again and again. The Deathly Hallow, Grindelwald, Edwin … Her horrified face, all the confusion and fear, keeps haunting me.

With too much fog in my head, I can barely function anymore – but I know one thing for sure. I have to finish this. And I have to trust that I won't be bleeding out inside, that the division of all life within me will finally come with the desired effects.
No more pain. No more regrets …

"Son of Slytherin," Echidna hisses as I drag myself through the cold of her realm, all the way to the pentagram once again. Her mighty body slides right under my raised left hand, only for her to soon watch my every move reprovingly. "You are dying, you must not return to the circle on the ground!"

She wants to block my way, but I have no more energy for an argument.

"Echidna – I'm not telling you twice to move …"

I light the torches along the snake statues with my last ounce of willpower, including the eternal candles right next to us.
But I wouldn't be able to do much more …

Echidna hesitates, knowing fully well that I'm no longer in the physical condition to stand up to her of all creatures. Nevertheless, she obediently moves aside and turns her gaze to the statue of Slytherin.

Something about that irritates me.
Beyond measure. Something's different.
She's always glaring at me with suspicious yellow eyes, and she won't stop lamenting whenever I begin …

That's suspicious. Too easy. As if she knows something I don't. But maybe I'm just paranoid for good now.

Not least because of this all-too-obvious assumption, I decide not to waste any more time. Breathing heavily, I reach for the diary in my cloak because the sooner I get it over with, the better I can find redemption.

I just need to stay sane for a few more minutes, that's it. A few moments of concentration and discipline, down here, in the circle of my own hell, with the old familiar incantation on my lips and my destined emptiness clutching to my soul.
This is my fate, whether I like it or not. It's too late to look back now.

I can't say it out loud or with any kind of pathos anymore, still I manage to say it.

"Animus magis magisque discinditur … Animus magis magisque –"

"Oh, I just can'tbelieve it!"

I spin around like in a fever dream – only to see an incredibly mad Harper jumping out behind one of the snake statues, wading through the dark moats of the chamber.

Is she insane?
Can't she see the giant basilisk behind me?

"Everte Statum!" It's like a reflex, she has to stay away from Echidna –

"Finite!" she fends my curse off, and in her fury she simply continues on to rush through the water towards me.

"Harp, wait a minute!" I suddenly hear – Leonora?
She also frantically peeks out of her hiding place. "It wasn't planned like that!"

What the hell!

"No,exactly!" Harper yells.

"Are you two out of your minds?" I shout. "Are you so desperat to die? One glance and you're –"

"She's not moving, is she?" Harper hisses. "Echidna's looking away!"

Incredulous by the very idea of that, I turn around and abruptly realise that, oddly enough, that is the case indeed.
Why the blazes is she right?

Unlike the basilisk present, Harper doesn't take her eyes off me, not for a second. She reaches the centre aisle of the chamber much quicker than I thought possible and with unexpected strength – probably fueled by insane rage – she pulls herself up, only to run towards me, dripping wet.

Here I am, with the open diary in my hand and a huge amount of incomprehension in my head – about an impossible situation that, against all odds, is unfolding right in front of my own eyes.

How can they be down here?
Why won't Echidna do so much as flinch?

"Thisis what you're usingmy diaryfor?" she roars and, after reaching me, slaps me across the face. "Howdareyou?"

"No need to bother, Harper, I can't feel a thing," I grumble, rubbing my face out of reflex nevertheless. "What are you doing here? It's your birthday!"

"What kind of question is that?" She shakes her head in bewilderment. "Am I supposed to celebrate upstairs while you die down here?"

We stand opposite each other in this shimmery green hell, breathing heavily and highly confused.

Until I feel panic rising in me, so raw I almost feel sick.

"Your trust can be deadly, close your damn eyes! Leonora, you, too!"

"No need."

"Are you not listening!" I literally scream at them, feeling the ground shaking beneath us because the queen of snakes is moving now. "Echidna,stay away!"

"She wants to save you – the mudblood and the others have nothing to fear from me."

Save me? Has everyone gone mad along with me? A glance over my shoulder, however, proofs that Echidna is merely coiling, but not turning her head – no yellow eyes in sight.

"That's scary, is that what Parsel sounds like?" I suddenly hear Elliott whisper so loudly that even the dead could have heard it.

"It's snake language, Bryant," Rouvenia whispers back, barely quieter, "what did you expect it to sound like?"

My body may be exhausted, but I'm wide awake now. And above all – furious. "What the hell are you all doing down here?"

"Is it true?" Harper asks, catching my glance again as she steps into the pentacle. "Is today the fifth and final ritual? New moon?"

I remain silent, still undecided as to what this is supposed to be … Until I literally burst. "Do I seriously have to refuse a poorly planned rescue mission now?"

"So it's true," she concludes. Remarkable how sober she remains … "You'll die if you carry on, Tom. You're letting your present and future be overshadowed by your mother's past, but you can't see the wood for the trees. The ritual can't work, won't you realise that?"

"You won't realise I can't just stop an occult, magic ritual because I suddenly don't feel like it anymore, or because you kindly ask me to!"

"You keep saying that, but it's not true," she protests and suddenly cups my face with her hands, no longer sober at all. "That's why we're here! Maybe it's not a good plan, for all I care it's miserable – but unfortunately, we're your best chance …"

She suddenly thrusts a roll of parchment at me, and I reluctantly accept.

"Read it,now!" Rouvenia moans in the background. "And may I take a look at your basilisk while you do?"

My jaw drops for good. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Asks the lunatic tearing his soul apart in the legendary Chamber of Secrets …" Unfazed, she comes up to Harper and me only to pass us by ever so casually. "Hagrid, come on, your turn – we'll feed her your sheep …"

"Hagrid?" I'm about to kill them myself …
I don't have to keep an eye out for him for long – given his size, he really had trouble finding a suitable hiding spot in the first place. "Wait!" I call out. "You can't just walk up to her, she's not a bloody pet, she's a predator! If something happens to you –"

"Nothing will happen, Echidna and I had a serious talk," I suddenly hear the very person that must've made this public access to the catacombs possible.

"Nagini?"

"Hello, Tom," she sighs, following Rouvenia and Hagrid. "You look awful, do you know that? I told you that you need to get into the sun more frequently …" She gestures to the letter in my hand with a wan smile. "Read it already! We can chat later …"

I take a deep breath, slightly overwhelmed, and proceed to skim the contents of Edwin's research.
Until I look up at Harper, frowning.

"The way I see it, you only have two options." She shrugs. "Either we try what Edwin's describing, or you … you die …"

"Well, then I die," I reply acidly. "Seven virtues? Justice, faith, temperance, hope? Hardly. But love?" I almost laugh. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"

"Even if it may not be the case now," she quietly says, and firmly so, "you did love."

"Harper, on my soul, won't you understand that the Amortentia simply makes that impossible and I –"

"The fallibility of a theoretical ideology is surprisingly easy to test in practice," she replies. "That's what Edwin said after Christmas aboutCrime and Punishment. You read into Dostoyevsky and wondered whether it was truly wrong that his Raskolinkov, after explaining his reasons in detail, believes that so-called valuable people should pay no attention to the lives of the supposedly worthless. You have so many parallels with this intelligent but completely lost character, and at the time you wanted to hear Edwin's answer – I know that. You wanted to know whether we all have such dark thoughts from time to time. But that's the core of humanity! We all hold a certain depravity and we are constantly fighting against it. You have to do that, too! Edwin said that thoughts like those explained in the novel are interesting and disturbing at the same time. And you subsequently start to toy with the ideas. Yet –"

"Yet a clear vision of reality, with all its relationships, intersections and connections," I quote her great-uncle's words absently, "is showing and proving to us that the world must be significantly more complex, and thus in the same way kinder, than such ideologies leave room for."

"Yes." Harper nods. "And it can be applied to any other principle. A theory must stand up to reality. Amortentia makes it impossible for you to love according to a textbook, but what in magic is truly impossible? You keep saying that there are hardly any limits. Why with that? Why can't you see that the only reason you're so miserable by now is because your soul is clinging to your body? You loved! Don't be so blind …"

"The fallibility of a theoretical ideology," I repeat, my head already blurry, "is surprisingly easy to test in practice …"

I felt compelled to believe the textbooks due to the information from Little Hangleton. I trusted, without further ado, that I was cursed. Unable to feel. In a way, it confirmed my entire life – except for a few months in Harper's heaven.

But those might make all the difference. Theyweremy reality. They actually refuted the textbooks …

I swallow hard. In that awful Bed & Breakfast, haven't I already realised that I never wish to let go of her ever again?

"Remember what you said during the Slug Club before the holidays?" she whispers. "You said we … we were everything … That words couldn't describe it, that it was irrational. Tom, love is just like that! Words are never enough because it is surreal in itself. It goes beyond everything we know, it is … a piece of eternity that we can never fully comprehend. And what you're chasing down here won't be the same. Magic is powerful, yes. But it will never be able to surpass love. A broken Amortentia curse proves that."

My head is about to burst. I can recite highly complex spells and uselessly detailed knowledge of countless books, but I find it infinitely difficult to understand what's actually happening with my emotions.

Why do I wish to feel rain on my skin again? Why do I want to take back words that I have spoken? Why would I wish not to die, but to wake up next to Harper just one more time?

I have detested these thoughts for so long. But there can only be one reason for it all.

Believing means not knowing …
But do I know, deep down? In my core?

Isn't the agony those rituals bring proof enough?
Didn't they all say that the pain would only come hand in hand with love?

Maybe this is the first and last sober moment of my life, but the way Harper is standing in front of me right now, angry and caring and impatient and demanding, I realise it. I know.

That my bloody soul refuses to obey because it already knows love. In its entirety, before all her tears and my murder and the blood and the guilt.

I finally have to believe my own words. Harper is my key to life. My ark, my equinox – salvation.

That this is love, even if the term seems so terribly worn out.

She is the day to my night. Like the words of the song that my mother used to sing in the twilight of her life.

Ferte in noctem animam meam, illustrent stellae viam meam, aspectu illo glorior – dum capit nox diem.

When night takes the day …
But the night does not take the day.
The day takes the night.

Dum capit dies noctem …

A little light illuminates every darkness, no matter how profound, whereas darkness cannot suffocate the glow of the stars in the sky even with all its might. In the dark, they shine brighter the blacker the sky becomes – only the day can make stars disappear.

Harper is my day. The light that is required.
Hogwarts is it.
Elliott. Thomas Riddle and his daughters … They all are light. Maybe I've just turned a blind eye to it because I've survived my whole life without looking …

"You may not be a prime example of holy virtues," Harper gently brings me back to her. "But justice, faith, temperance, hope, love – you've got all that in you somewhere! See, you're putting Black in his place because he's teasing Hagrid –"

"No, Harper, I'm forcing Hagrid into my service!"

"It's fine," he kindly calls out to us all while Echidna allows herself to be scrutinised with her eyes closed thanks to Nagini's encouragement.

For heaven's sake …

"Anyway," Harper proceeds, "at least you have some sense of justice in you, even if your maxims still allow you to use Unforgivable Curses, but … we'll work on that another time."

I'm about to object when she fervently continues. "Faith … Tom, whatever we call it, you're constantly dealing with the dialectic of good and evil, two primal principles that require a certain amount of faith, right? You want to find your place in it. And that in turn shows a certain temperance. Like the fact that you stop here and now and cherish your mortality – that will be the epitome of it."

Again I wish to object, but she puts her index finger to my lips.

"Silence, please! The next virtue, hope – didn't you feel it? I still do. It wasn't just a spark, you know very well that you were happy before Little Hangleton … Because, and that brings me back to the most important virtue of all … love." Softly she adds, "We've loved each other. Haven't we? So whatever you've done – whatever you're involved in – we'll solve it. One word from you and I'll stay with you to the bitter end. But I don't want to watch you burn your world down. Make the right decision, Tom. Do you want life? Or death?"

A simple question, in principle – and yet it seems as complicated as quantum physics.

"What is still holding you back?" she groans, unable to comprehend why I so obviously hesitate. "For hell's sake! Look at me.Legilimens!"

It's utterly unacceptable how this keeps happening.
But at once she recognises Grindelwald's black eye. And also the one that begins to glow in bright shades of blue when the Deathly Hallow changes alliance. She hears our oath and its contents for the very first time. And if I didn't know better, I'd also assume that for a few seconds, she feels the self-inflicted torture of tearing my soul apart piercing through her after seeing me open Slytherin's locket.

The memories already fade to black as my Occlumency takes over, though she might still see the white pentagram and yellow eyes that thought her unworthy for the longest time solely for her blood.

Then she just stares at me in shock.

"No way," she says under her breath. From this point forward, however, she screams at the top of her lungs. "An oath? Withhim? Are you insane?"

I thought it couldn't get any more uncomfortable, but clearly I was wrong …