After Grindelwald's Killing Curse, Harry struggled in a silent darkness.
There was no light, no sound, only black tides surging in and receding, and something slowly rising.
It was a trembling green light, and at its end was a warm white glow.
Harry staggered toward it, but before he could touch the white light, he suddenly plunged into a bottomless abyss.
He jerked awake, gasping for breath like a drowning man breaking the surface.
The familiar ceiling of a bedroom in Black Family Manor came into view. He tried to sit up, only to find that he could not move his body at all.
"Harry!"
Sirius's face burst into Harry's field of vision.
His face was haggard and anxious, his chin covered in stubble.
Harry's hand was being gripped tightly, with such force that he felt as if his bones were about to break.
"Merlin..." Sirius's voice was hoarse. "You're finally awake... You've been asleep for three whole days."
Three days?
Harry painfully turned his stiff neck, trying to process that information.
Only minutes had passed from the moment he fell into the abyss to when he opened his eyes. How could three days have gone by?
Harry moved his captured hand. He could feel his body slowly reviving, his mind unusually clear, and a lightness he had never felt before.
He remembered now. That white light had not been the end, but a door.
Before entering it, he had been dragged into an endless abyss.
There had been no wand, no spells, only a fragment of soul curled up inside his body.
It had Tom Riddle's face, yet it was uglier, more broken, filled with endless resentment and a crazed desire to survive.
It screamed and tempted him, trying to drag him into eternal darkness.
This time, Harry did