After Newt Apparated away, the Albanian forest seemed to slip back into its untouched quiet.
About a hundred meters from that tree hollow, deep in the overlapping layers of canopy.
A lead-gray viper coiled silently on a thick branch.
Its triangular head poked out just a bit from the leaves, snake eyes locked on the spot where Newt had stood and vanished, tongue flicking now and then.
This wasn't right.
In the dead of winter, normal snakes should've been hunkered down in hibernation.
Suddenly, threads of thick black mist—like something solid—seeped out from the gaps in the viper's fine scales.
The viper's body went rigid all at once, its eyes—once shining with that cold-blooded gleam—quickly turning dull, like dusty glass marbles.
"Thud."
Losing whatever was holding it together inside, the snake's body went limp and floppy, dropping straight off the branch. It smacked the cold, hard ground below, bounced once lightly, and then lay still—no sign of life.
Up on the branch where the viper had been coiled, a pitch-black soul form with edges that kept twisting and rippling slowly appeared.
It didn't have a fixed shape—more like a thick shadow that just wouldn't fade. The only standout was where the eye sockets should've been: two faintly pulsing blobs of crimson mist hovering there.
This was Voldemort.
Ever since last year at Hogwarts, when his pathetic servant Quirrell's body got wrecked, this beat-up remnant soul had been on the run, scrambling away until it drifted back to this out-of-the-way Albanian forest.
Those two crimson "eyes" stared hard at the empty spot where Newt had disappeared, the whole soul form shaking like crazy from rage and defeat, making the air around it drop even colder.
Damn it! Newt Scamander! What the hell was he doing here?!
Voldemort had done his homework on big names in the wizarding world—especially folks who hadn't picked his side in the old wars or who had weird talents that could be a problem.
That wizard with the telltale suitcase, buddying up with animals—a quick once-over was all it took to peg him.
How'd Newt bump into Nagini? And snag her away?!
Just thinking about it made Voldemort's soul black mist churn even wilder.
Even without a body, stuck as the lowest kind of wandering ghost, his Parseltongue gift hadn't gone anywhere.
He was dead sure it was his inheritance from the great ancestor Salazar Slytherin—proof of his bloodline and power.
During his time haunting this forest, Voldemort had leaned on that ability to link up with that huge, one-of-a-kind inky-green giant snake—Nagini.
That snake was something else.
She wasn't just some regular animal, and not your typical magical creature either.
When they "talked," Voldemort could feel smarts and a kind of spirit way beyond your average snake; she even got his twisted thoughts and moods.
In those weak, lonely stretches where he could only hitch a ride in crappy animals to hang on, this clever, badass venomous snake had turned into pretty much his only "chat buddy," giving him this messed-up sense of comfort, like a special...
"Friend."
They'd already built this weird but solid magical connection.
Voldemort had it all mapped out: once he scraped together a little more juice, he'd grab a chance to off somebody, rip off a soul chunk to stick into Nagini, turn her into his Horcrux, and bam—they'd be eternal, hanging out forever!
But nope, all that got wrecked!
Why the heck would Newt Scamander pop up in this middle-of-nowhere dump?!
Fury and confusion scorched his battered soul.
Earlier, picking up on Newt closing in and facing off with Nagini from a distance, he'd tried shooting an attack order through that special link.
She'd clearly started to react at first, so why'd the strike flop? How'd that Scamander slip out of it?
Too far off, plus his soul being super weak and stuck in a basic viper's body—Voldemort hadn't caught the magical flashes from Newt's wrist and belt. All he saw was Nagini lunging, then getting shut down out of nowhere and carted off.
Years of digging into dark magic had eaten away at his soul, and the sting of back-to-back flops and head-scratchers was poking at Voldemort's already shaky remnant.
The swirling black mist spread out, layering a bone-chilling freeze over the already cold air in that little patch.
Last year at Hogwarts, on top of the usual Harry Potter headache, some punk kid named Lucien had come out of left field, scrapped with him, and left his soul even more wrecked and wobbly than before.
Now he was stuck trying to possess forest critters, but even snakes—the best fit—their flimsy bodies couldn't handle his dark-magic-packed soul for long; they'd crap out and die in days.
Voldemort had to hustle and figure out how to stockpile enough life force to beef up and feed his soul; endgame was still nabbing a real human body or cooking up a way to rebuild one.
Nagini had been key to the plan—a ready-to-go, heavy-hitter sidekick.
And look what happened?
How'd Newt Scamander crash the party halfway through?!
That itchy urge to kill spread like poison through every bit of Voldemort's soul.
Just wait—wait till the great Dark Lord had a body that could move around free, then hunt down Newt Scamander, end him in the nastiest way possible, and snatch back his Nagini!
And that Lucien brat...
The soul mist flared hard.
Everybody blocking his way, everybody dumping failure shame on him—they all deserved to die.
Deserved to die...