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"Did you know? Nelson should still be alive."

Pythia smiled as she stared at the side of Tom's face, as if waiting for him to fall into wild ecstasy. If she really was, as she claimed, an illusion left behind on her deathbed to wait for Tom, then when she made this prophecy, she must have been even more delighted than the Tom she imagined.

"Did I really need you to tell me that?"

Tom glanced at her calmly, then raised his head and opened his collar, letting the sunlight that had frozen a thousand years ago on the golden roof of the Temple of Delphi fall across his face. "I never thought he was dead."

"It seems you aren't very surprised."

Pythia raised an eyebrow, seeming rather astonished by Tom's reaction.

"For someone like him, if he really had died, I imagine neither the manner nor the reason would have been so hasty. His death should have been brilliant, earth-shaking, far-reaching, great." Beneath Tom's calm black eyes rose the ripples of the Black Lake beside Hogwarts Castle. "I remember you saying you couldn't see through his fate. What? Has your Divination evolved again?"

"Of course not. This isn't prophecy. This is what I discovered. My message."

Pythia narrowed her eyes, searching through yellowed memories for those moments that had once filled her with wild delight.

"During the period after you left, I often went deep into Limbo through the flaw beneath the temple. Nelson and Herpo the Foul's final battle caused unimaginable damage to Limbo. It really was hard to imagine. Did you go to Limbo afterward?"

"I did not. Even I did not have the ability to set foot there. It seemed to open only to those it acknowledged."

"Is that really so?" Pythia stared at the side