Voldemort was sitting behind an enormous long table piled high with books.
Those books were neither made of the parchment commonly seen in the Wizarding World nor forbidden tomes bound in human skin, but a pile of finely printed Muggle textbooks.
Snape's gaze swept quickly over the spines:
Basic Genetics, Principles of Cell Biology, Introduction to Genetic Engineering, The Secret of the Double Helix... there was even an operating manual for a Muggle microscope.
A thick book lay open in front of Voldemort.
With his excellent eyesight, Snape made out its title-Introduction to Molecular Biology: From DNA to Proteins.
Several sheets of rough paper covered in drawings of double helices lay scattered nearby, densely filled with equations and derivations Snape could not understand.
The corner of Snape's mouth twitched involuntarily.
If Lucius had not brought him here in person.
He would have thought the Dark Lord before him was that damned Douglas in disguise.
Voldemort held a black quill.
But instead of dipping it in ink, he held its tip above the page, his long, pale fingers moving slowly along the complex gene-chain diagrams in the book with exceptional precision.
At the sound of footsteps, Voldemort did not immediately look up.
He continued staring at a line of small print on the page, letting out a thoughtful hiss.
"Deoxyribonucleic acid... sequence recombination... interesting Muggle theories..."
Only after several seconds did he slowly raise his head.
His deathly pale, snakelike face had no nose. In the bright candlelight, his two scarlet vertical pupils narrowed into dangerous slits, fixing firmly on Snape, who had just come to a halt.
"Severus."
His voice was soft, yet it felt like a cold snake's tongue licking the rim of an ear.
"You're here."
Snape felt his heart clench sharply, and his Occlumency instantly went into