Chapter 341: The Lost Soul
The realm was a hazy, shifting void.
Harry scrambled up from the ground, finding himself lying in a brilliant, pale mist. It wasn't like any fog he had seen in the real world; it wasn't that the surroundings were obscured by vapor, but rather that the vapor had not yet decided what surroundings to become.
He reached up to touch his face—his glasses were gone. He looked down—his clothes were gone, too.
In a fit of panic, he desperately wished he were dressed. No sooner had the thought formed than a set of robes materialized a few feet away. He scrambled into them. They were soft, clean, and radiated a comforting warmth. It was extraordinary; they had simply appeared because he needed them.
Just as he was processing this... he realized a black cat was watching him.
Harry stood there, utterly dumbfounded. "Mr. Kneazle! But... how? Why am I unconscious? Where are we?"
The cat didn't speak. Instead, it raised a silken, ink-black paw to its whiskers in a universal gesture for silence.
Harry felt a prickle of awe. The creature was telling him to listen.
Soon, he understood why.
A sound drifted through the unformed nothingness. It was a small, rhythmic thumping—the sound of something constantly flapping, swinging, and struggling. It was a pathetic noise, one that inspired a strange mixture of pity and revulsion. Harry felt a wave of discomfort, as though he were eavesdropping on something secretive and shameful.
He turned slowly, surveying the vast, bright, and clinical space. There was nothing here--just him and the black cat existed.
Suddenly--Harry recoiled.
He finally saw the thing making the noise. It had the shape of a small, naked child, curled on the ground. Its skin was raw and reddish, looking as though it had been flayed alive. It lay shuddering under a high-backed seat, discarded and forgotten, gasping for breath in shallow, agonizing hitches.
Harry was terrified.
Even though the thing was tiny, weak, and clearly wounded, he felt a visceral reluctance to step anywhere near it. Despite his revulsion, he began to edge closer, inch by inch, ready to bolt at the slightest movement.
Soon, he was close enough to reach out and touch it, but he lacked the courage. He felt like a coward. He knew he should try to comfort it, but the thing filled him with an instinctive, overwhelming disgust.
"You cannot help it," the black cat said.
Harry whirled around. The cat was padding toward him across the white floor, its vivid green eyes shimmering.
The connection between Harry and Voldemort was even deeper than Sean had imagined. Simply severing the link in this realm had sent Harry into a coma and left the soul-fragment on the brink of true death. But this was exactly what Sean had come to achieve.
"What is that, Mr. Kneazle?" Harry asked, glancing back at the trembling, injured creature under the seat.
"A thing that we are both powerless to mend," the cat replied. "He feared coming here more than anything else. Now, I have brought him. No matter how great one's magical power was in life, Harry, everyone is equal in this place."
Harry stared at the creature. In that moment, the black cat seemed infinitely more radiant and whole than the mangled life-form on the ground. The cat was solid, sharp, and carried an aura of quiet, ancient wisdom. The creature was merely pathetic and loathsome.
"Is this... Voldemort?" Harry asked after a long, heavy silence.
"You are a perceptive wizard, Harry," the cat said.
Harry lowered his head quickly. He didn't know if his soul-form was capable of blushing, but if it were, his face would have been as red as a seeker's jersey.
Harry had grown to like this place. He might even love it. Mr. Kneazle always appeared precisely when he was most in need of help. Even when the cat spoke in riddles or used words Harry didn't quite understand, the presence wasn't confusing.
In moments of crisis and deep reflection, Mr. Kneazle's voice acted like a small, steady lamp in a vast darkness. Words... they truly were a wizard's most inexhaustible resource. They could wound, but they could also heal.
"Look, Harry."
The cat batted at a cluster of mist with a paw. The weak, flayed life-form was suddenly sucked into the vapor. Within the mist, a vision appeared: a terrifying wizard who ruled over the entire world with an iron fist. But the moment Harry looked away from the vision and back at the floor, he saw only the fragile, ridiculous soul of a dying man.
"In the world of the soul, it is natural to lose one's way," the cat noted.
Behind them, the creature gave one final twitch, let out a thin, rattling groan, and dissolved entirely into the fog.
Harry sat there for a very long time, absorbing the silence. Slowly, like falling snow, the realization of what had just happened settled in his mind.
"You destroyed it? Mr. Kneazle?"
"It chose to die. The fragment of the soul that lived within you... even here, one could hear its wailing. It had no love, Harry, and therefore it had no strength to choose life. A wizard who cannot choose to live must inevitably choose to die."
"And what about me?" Harry murmured to himself.
The cat's whiskers twitched, and the corners of its mouth curled up in a faint smile. Harry had never seen it look so lively and content. It made the creature feel much less distant.
"Harry, you are far less afraid of this place than he was," the cat said.
Harry felt that Mr. Kneazle held him in much higher regard than he deserved. As the mist began to thicken and reclaim the space, Harry thought to himself that the Castle Kneazle was easily his favorite magical being in the entire world. Sometimes, he really just wanted to reach out and... give it a scratch behind the ears.
One of Voldemort's Horcruxes had been eliminated.
The cat's pace was light and effortless. Sean found he could remain in the liminal realm for two seconds longer than usual, thanks to the strengthening of the silver thread connecting him to Harry. It was these anchors—these connections of trust and care—that allowed him to linger in the Lands Between without losing himself.
This was why the cat was willing to talk to Harry for a few moments longer. Or at least, that was how Sean justified it to himself.
Dreamland Tales mentioned that after seven hours, the sky of this realm would darken and the stars would become brilliant, revealing a night sky so clear it was perfect for divination. It also mentioned that after seven hours of light, at the cusp of a coming dawn, one could often find waiting souls—shades that lingered in the twilight, hovering in the moment before a sun that never quite rose.
Finally, the dream ended. A heavy, snowy silence settled over the castle.
Harry didn't find the silence oppressive; instead, it felt peaceful. The knowledge that Voldemort's soul was no longer inside him made him feel lighter than he had in years.
Mr. Kneazle was the most wondrous entity he had ever encountered at Hogwarts. It woke him from nightmares and whispered comforts in the dark, assuring him that he was safe and that no problem was insurmountable.
"The night-messenger of Christmas, the Castle Kneazle who holds our luck," Harry whispered with quiet devotion. "The towering castle is his ears, the moving stairs are his breath..."
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