Prophecies have never lied. It is the world that mistook who they were about.
Azkaban has no light, but the darkness taught Lailuos how to disguise himself as the sun.
At eleven, a Potions professor hauled a little menace out of prison.
The pendant on the boy's chest whispered day and night, but no one knew that it held the Third Dark Lord who would throw the world into chaos, and his future self, who would take his own life to rewrite the present.
“They offered me the crown of a false god and forced me onto a bloodstained throne.”
Lailuos ran his fingers over the potion bottle Snape had left behind. The liquid inside rippled, reflecting two souls.
“But they forgot to ask: would I climb a staircase of bones to reach the gallows that will hang me?”
When Voldemort's green fire scorched through Hogwarts's ceiling, when the spells of a secret organization tore apart the last line of defense, and when a doomsday sigh came from the pendant: “Become me... and you can kill me.”
Bloodied fingers clenched the black robes. The boy laughed softly amid the ruins. “Severus, your potions can't stop a soul from crumbling...”
“But your eyes understand how to devour the sun better than any Dementor.”
In the end, what he burned away was not the Dark Lord's name from the book of fate.
It was the brightest version of himself, the one who would have worn the Crown of Time's Erosion.
