Ahead, Harry Potter was screaming, raw and grief-stricken, his wand aimed at Bellatrix Lestrange as she cackled and dodged. The prophecy orb, long forgotten, lay in glittering shards somewhere in the dark.

Then, the very temperature dropped. A wave of dread, palpable and cold, washed through the vast chamber. The fighting seemed to stutter, to freeze. From a swirl of inky shadow near the dais, he appeared.

For a moment, there was nothing. No sound, no movement. His head tilted, just a fraction. The cruel, lipless mouth parted, not in a snarl, but in something else. Something like recognition. Surprise, perhaps, long buried but now exhumed.

Then Dumbledore moved, and the world erupted into light and fury once more. The statues of the fountain animated, throwing themselves between the Dark Lord and his targets. Spells of impossible power clashed, painting the air in violent hues.

You could only watch, rooted, as the two greatest wizards of the age dueled, the very fabric of the Atrium warping around them. And through it all, you felt the weight of that singular, piercing gaze that had found you, known you, before Voldemort vanished with a crack of displaced air, leaving only silence and a terrible, unanswered question in his wake.