I walked through what should’ve been my front door.

“Hello?” I called, and gasped as a new wave of nausea swarmed over me. Our cat, Freckles, was sprawled in the living room (or, rather, the square box of burnt down wall that once represented my living room.)

“Go any farther and you’ll find your mum and dad,” a voice laughed behind me.

I spun around to find a hooded figure with a mask facing me.

“Who are you?” I asked, backing away slightly.

“Crucio!” he yelled, and a beam of light sped at me.

I dodged it just in time, and looked at him, surprised. “What was that for? That’s… that’s practically one of the worst spells in the world!”

He tried to shoot it at me again.

I backed up more and felt a sickening crunch underneath my foot; I looked down to see the remains of Freckles squished around my shoes.

“You can’t run forever,” the man hissed as a tear dropped down my cheek.

Just then I knew he was right.

“Expelliarmus!” I yelled, but he just laughed and stepped aside.

“You’re so predictable, little missy. Avada Kedavra!”

I rolled aside, soot covering my robes. A bright green jet soared to my left and missed me by inches.

“Come on, now,” he laughed. “You little boyfriend James put up such a fight; finally I got his wand away from him and tortured him to his death. In between screams he asked me to tell you that he’s sorry about picking on you about Avery, and that he ‘loves you Lil.’ How’s that make you feel, Lil?”

I’d started to sob. “No one, I mean no one, can call me Lil except James.”

I took a step forward.

“What’re you going to do, slap me?” he laughed again.

“No,” I said softly. “This.”

I threw my wand aside, into the kitchen, and the man screamed louder than I’d ever heard someone scream before. His fingers began to curl and his legs started shriveling up.

Suddenly, a white light erupted all around me and the image was gone. I was standing back inside, right in front of Dumbledore.

I wiped a tear out of my eye. “You mean… that was all fake?”

He nodded his head and told me to sit down.

“But it all seemed so real!” I cried. “Freckles, the spells, the smell…”

“Shh,” Doge said, handing me a piece of chocolate. “None of it was real. You were just in a Memory Vortex, created by yours truly. What it does is plays off your biggest or least fears and past memories to produce something frightening. I took the idea from the boggart, and just went with it. The Memory Vortex can also be used to portray your ideal dream day… however, as in this case, we used it to test you.”

“And you were quite impressive,” Marlene said after I was done shaking. “But I want you to explain what you did in the end. The Death Eater, though not real, apparently suffered an extremely painful death… and you did it without a wand.”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell you… I could… I would get thrown into prison for something like that.”

“Now is not a time to be modest,” Dumbledore smiled.

“I’m not being modest!” I replied, glaring. “It’s basically Dark Magic!”

“Which is exactly why we need to know,” Elphias Doge said, patting my knee.

I sighed, and closed my eyes. “I started teaching myself about wandless magic a couple of years before we started learning about it in school. In my fourth year I could do any basic spells just by thinking about them.

“Then I decided to try something new; I’d made up my own spells in the past but I wanted something extreme. So I started to use… I started to use my Prefect’s privileges to go into the Restricted Section. I wasn’t planning to do anything rash with what I learned, but I was still curious.

“I came upon this one spell, Ucciderli, and it ultimately tortures a person… so I began to add to it… and turned it into a killing spell. I swear I never tried it on a person, just flies and worms and stuff…”

“Why didn’t you use your wand for it?” Marlene asked.

“It can’t be done with a wand…” I said, and stood up. “Can… can I go see James? Make sure he’s okay?”

“It wasn’t real, Lily,” Dumbledore said gently.

“I… I know that, but still…” my voice carried off.

“Yes, Lily, you can go,” he replied. “Just one thing… what was that about Avery?”

“It was… it was nothing,” I lied, and went up the stairs, three at a time.