"Voldemort is still alive."
Wade repeated himself, his voice soft, yet it exploded in Slughorn's ears like a thunderclap.
"W-what?!"
Every muscle in Slughorn's body tensed at once. His breath stopped, his eyes widened, and his pupils contracted sharply.
He sprang to his feet and stared fixedly at Wade, searching his face.
For several seconds, he could not even feel his own heartbeat. It was as if the whole world had been reduced to those calm gray eyes across from him.
"N-no... impossible..."
His chapped lips trembled, and his voice came out hoarse, as though squeezed from someone else's throat.
An absurd thought suddenly darted through his chaotic mind:
Was this some "new treatment" St. Mungo's had devised?
They would confirm what he said to shock him, then laugh uproariously once he believed it and tell him it was impossible, that it had all been a joke?
But the frightening calm in the boy's eyes did not look like an act.
Slughorn's muddled thoughts raced faster than ever before. Instinctively, he chose the response that would best protect himself:
"What did you say?"
His voice abruptly rose, turning shrill and trembling, his words firing out like bullets:
"He's alive? How do you know? Who told you? This... this is absurd!"
"Everyone knows he's dead!"
He clutched his sleeve tightly, his knuckles turning white, and said in a shaking voice:
"Y-you're not fooling me again!"
Wade said steadily, "Just as he did not truly die that night in Godric's Hollow... this time, he is still alive as well."
"With his body and his shattered soul, he escaped from everyone's sight."
"The reason everyone tells you he is dead is because, two years ago, he cast an extraordinarily powerful spell that made everyone instinctively overlook the fact that he was still alive."