After stepping through the door that would lead to the Philosopher's Stone and the one trying to get their hands on it, Harry Potter stopped and took a quick look around.
Torches lined the stone walls and cast enough light that everything within the room was illuminated. Large and cylindrical, spanning about a 50-foot radius and with a height of somewhere around 40-feet, the room reminded him of those ancient spires in old castles... only without the ascending staircase. In the center of the room sat the Mirror of Erised, and standing in front of it, mumbling to himself, his head covered in a large purple turbin, was none other than Professor Quirrell.
“Professor Quirrell,” Harry said calmly as he walked down the stairs with a measured pace. He absently palmed his wand, ensuring it remained hidden beneath the voluminous sleeves of his robes, the only reason he had worn them and not something that would offer less restricted movement. “I thought I might find you here.”
“Potter,” Quirrell smiled grimly at the young boy. “I'm not surprised you suspected it was me. Though I am curious to know how you figured it out.”
Harry decided to indulge the man. It would give him a moment to prepare himself for the confrontation to come.
“You were too obvious. No one stutters that much when they talk, even if they are frightened to death of their own shadow. There is also the troll to consider. It's not well known, but for those who know how to properly gather information, it's not impossible to discover that you have a special gift when it comes to controlling trolls.” Harry cocked his head to the side. “The fact that I always felt a legillemency probe in your classroom those first few weeks of school may have also had something to do with it.”
“Such intelligence,” Quirrell praised the raven-haired boy in a mocking fashion. “It's too bad I can't let you go.”
Quirrell snapped his fingers and several ropes appeared out of thin air.
“Diffindo!”
Harry's wand sprang into action, several cutting curses shooting from the tip and slicing the ropes apart before they could reach them.
He jumped to the left just in time to dodge that same sickly yellow curse he'd run afoul of in the forest. It flew past him and splashed against the stairs, eating through them like they were made of rotting wood.
“Where is Voldemort?” Harry asked, his wand held aloft. Quirrell stood opposite him, his own wand out and ready to send another attack. “I know you're working for him. I know that you're trying to get the Stone so he can regain his body. Where is he!?”
“That's none of your business, Potter,” Quirrell sneered as he fired off more curses. Most of them were the same acidic spell Harry was becoming intimately familiar with, but a few were of a kind he had never seen. Though he assumed they were dark curses designed to not only do damage, but inflict pain as well.
Harry dodged most of them, blocking those he couldn't by conjuring small rocks and banishing them into the path of the spells. It was easier to block spells with physical objects instead of a Protego, something Harry had determined when coming up with battle strategies.
However, while this strategy kept him from dying, it was only a delaying tactic. So long as Quirrell controlled the flow of battle, Harry would never win. He needed to put the battle in his favor by changing the playing field.
“Very good, Potter. Very good,” Quirrell complimented in a taunting voice. “It seems you have improved since the last time we fought.”
“The last time we...” Harry only needed a moment to understand what that statement meant. “That was you in the Forbidden Forest?”
“Of course.”
“But I thought that was Voldemort!”
Harry was shocked. He could have sworn it was Voldemort who confronted him in the Forbidden Forest. The creature, for he refused to call it a man, that he fought had been more monster than human. Certainly it had not moved like a human. And Quirrel was most definitely a human. Had he been wrong this whole time?
No. He was not wrong. Several times after the battle Harry had snuck into the Forbidden Forest and spoke with Firenze, and the Centaur was positive the thing drinking unicorn blood was Voldemort. Harry trusted the Centaur's judgment on this, as they coincided with his own thoughts and opinions.
Was Quirrell covering up for Voldemort then? Trying to throw him off the trail? Their didn't seem to be much reason to, especially if the man planned on killing him anyway.
And aside from that, there was the fact that unicorn's blood cursed those who drank it. Why would Quirrell drink unicorn's blood when he didn't have to. Unless...
“That wasn't you using legillemency on me in your classroom,” Harry's whispered words were surprisingly heard by Quirrell over the spells being fired.
“What was that?”
“Voldemort's here, isn't he?” said Harry, speaking with more volume. “That's why you claimed it was you in the Forbidden Forest. Because he's using your body. And that's why you're wearing that turban. To hide the fact that he is currently residing in your body.”
Quirrell's spell casting stopped. His wand was still pointed at the boy that he now eyed warily. The reaction only made Harry more sure of his assumption.
“Such a clever child...”
Harry stiffened as he heard the voice. It was soft, raspy and weak, but unmistakable. Harry knew that voice. Even if he had not been cursed with eidetic memory, he would never forget the voice of the person who killed his parents.
“Let me speak with the boy... face to face...”
“But Master,” Quirrell's voice wavered, “You are not strong enough yet.”
“I have strength enough for this.”
There was a moment's hesitation before Quirrell began unwrapping the turban. For a moment, Harry thought about using the action to go on the attack. He doubted he would ever get such an advantage like this again, and it would be foolhardy not to take advantage of it.
Yet he did not. Harry's curiosity and desire to face his parent's killer overruled his common sense. He allowed Quirrell to remove the turban unimpeded.
The face was on the back of Quirrell's head. He was pale, his skin a chalky white that made him look like death warmed over. His nose was flat, with only two small slits where his nostrils would normally be. Combine that with his bald head and near lipless mouth made think of a snake.
Yet it was the eyes that held Harry's attention. Those crimson irises that haunted most of his nightmares. The eyes he had seen almost every night for the past ten years within his mind.
“Voldemort,” Harry breathed. Despite the man's weakened state, Harry could not keep his heartbeat from speeding up as he gazed upon the visage of the man who took his parents away from him. The man he despised more than anything else.
“Harry Potter,” Voldemort's voice carried across to him. The sound of that man's voice, a sibilant hiss more than anything, caused an intense rage to well up within Harry. He wanted to blast this man into oblivion for what he had done. To take revenge on this monster for taking his parents away.
But he didn't. He kept his calm, remembering his Occlumency training. Right now there was no guarantee he would actually be able to kill Voldemort. Not only had he survived getting a killing curse blasted back at him when Harry was but a child, he had Quirrell, who still pointed his wand at Harry, to protect him.
“From the moment I learned you were alive, I knew we would meet face to face once again,” Harry stated as he glared at the man. “Though I did not expect to meet you so soon.”
“Indeed,” Voldemort smirked at him. “It has been a long time. When we last met, you were but a child. Now you are a young man going to the same school I myself went to when I was your age.”
Voldemort paused, and Harry was sure that, were it not for how he was attached to the back of Quirrell's head, he would have tilted his head.
“I have watched you since you came here, Harry. You have impressed me greatly with your magical knowledge and power. You remind me of myself when I was just starting Hogwarts.”
“I am nothing like you,” Harry refuted the man's claim fiercely.
Voldemort's smile was mocking.
“Are you not?” he asked. “Much like myself, you show great talent for magic. Like me you are a model student that everyone looks up to. Like me, you hide behind a veneer of charisma and charming words in order to disguise your true self. We are much more alike than you might think, Harry.”
Harry grit his teeth. Not only because of his words, but because those words were, in many ways, true. Voldemort had done the same thing Harry was doing now. And while Harry justified it by saying he needed to present a strong image so people would follow him when he began changing the wizarding world for the better, Voldemort could have used the same justification for what he'd done.
Did that mean he and Voldemort really were alike?
“You and I are so similar,” Voldemort's honeyed words came out sounding like a hissing snake. “Both talented, both powerful, both ambitious. Yes, I see the ambitions in your eyes, and I can help you make those ambitions a reality. Join me, Harry Potter. Together, we can rule over the wizarding world.”
Harry closed his eyes. His lips pursed as his mind tried to formulate a response. For several seconds, neither he nor Voldemort spoke, one waiting for the young boy to speak, another trying to determine what he should say.
“There are many people like you,” Harry's words were soft, yet strong. “People who wish to control everything, who wish to rule the world, who crave power.”
Harry's eyes snapped open and set themselves in a hard glare.
“Over the centuries humanity has existed, there are always people like this.”
His stance shifted, feet sliding across the floor until they were shoulder width apart.
“And if there is one thing history has shown me about these people it's this.”
He placed most of his weight on his hind leg, preparing to move at a moment's notice. He would only have one shot at this.
“People like you do not share power.”
Voldemort's face took on an expression of fury as Harry scorned his offer.
“So be it!” He hissed. “Quirrell! Kill him!”
Quirrell's wand snapped up and the sickly yellow curse flew from its tip. The spell raced toward Harry at speeds far faster than it had before. It was clear that Quirrell had been holding back during their previous engagement.
No matter. Harry had a plan.
Before Quirrell even moved his wand, Harry was already moving. He pushed himself forward, moving into a shoulder roll. The acidic curse that would have burnt through flesh, muscle, bones and organs, flew overhead, splashing into the wall behind him and eating away at the stone.
Harry finished the roll, kipped to his feet and crouched low to the ground. His wand was already in motion by this time, a quick jab that sent a powerful Reducto at the traitorous Hogwarts Professor.
The charm was blocked by a powerful shield, naturally. But that was ok. This was just the opening salvo.
Before the shield even had time to come down, Harry sent another spell. It was basic, just a first year spell, but that hardly mattered. It was not designed to do anything other than distract Quirrell.
The spell did its job. The shield came down and Quirrell swatted it away contemptibly, a sneer on his face.
It was a sneer Harry would soon remove.
“Bombarda!”
Harry twirled his wand over his head, then pointed it at his target. As the spell launched from the tip of his wand, Quirrell produced another Protego, the shimmering bronze shield that had been protecting him from all the spells Harry sent his way thus far.
Too bad Quirrell wasn't the target.
The spell hit the ground just an inch from the shield. A loud explosion erupted from the point of impact, and both fire and chunks of stone smashed into the shield as a thick layer of dust was kicked up from the ground.
“Gah!”
While the shield around Quirrell held, the man himself stumbled back in surprise, having obviously not expecting an indirect attack. The dust kicked up from the destroyed stone floor also provided Harry with a smokescreen he could use to his advantage.
After his battle in the Forbidden Forest, Harry thought a lot about how he had lost and why, and had determined one thing when it came to his duel. He currently did not have the experience needed to best fully-grown wizards. Even if he mastered every spell he came across, studied every strategy that existed in his dueling books, it would mean little if he lacked the necessary experience to know when to use them.
So Harry came up with an alternative means of fighting until he could improve.
If he couldn't match a wizard using spells, then he would defeat them using fists. It was something he had thought up during his study of the children attending Hogwarts. Aside from Quidditch players, most wizards were very lazy. They did not exercise, they used magic for anything involving physical labor, even the most mundane of tasks.
In other words. They lacked the physical fitness to deal with him up close. While Quirrell could best him in a fight of magic, Harry was positive that he could best the defense professor in a fight of might.
The entire time Harry had been implementing his plan, he never ceased moving toward the Voldemort possessed teacher. By the time the smokescreen dispersed, the raven-haired young man was already inside of Quirrell's defenses.
Quirrell's Protego was down and Harry was in the perfect position to demolish him.
Quick as a whip, Harry thrust the palm of his right hand into Quirrell's face. The heel of his palm smashed into Quirrell, hitting him directly in the nose, breaking it.
The satisfaction he felt when he heard the loud crunch of a nose breaking was second to none.
He ignored the sharp pain in his scar when his skin touched Quirrell.
Quirrell stumbled back, grunting in pain as his left hand rose to his now bleeding nose. The grunt soon turned into a scream, however, when the skin of his nose began to peel away as if it had been burned.
Harry ignored this as well and continued to attack. He moved forward one step. Quirrell brought up his wand, cognizant even as he screamed, but Harry quickly grabbed the wrist in an iron grip.
Once more, ignoring his own pain as well as the renewed screams of Quirrell, Harry yanked on the man's arm.
Quirrell stumbled forward, off balance and unprepared for the move, he could do absolutely nothing as Harry took one more step forward and drove his heel into the older man's knee cap.
There was a loud snapping sound as Quirrell's knee cap shattered and his leg bent at an angle the human appendage was not meant to bend. The former defense Professor's screams of pain became screams of agony as his leg shattered and the arm that Harry latched onto began flaking and crumbling like it was made of dust.
With his leg no longer able to support his weight, Quirrell began to fall, and Harry initiated the last phase of his plan to beat the defense professor.
Moving so fast his magically enhanced body was little more than a blur, Harry slid into a wide stance, feet spread wide, legs bent at exactly forty five degrees, and his fists tucked into his torso.
The fists were not there for long. With another move of blistering speed, both fists lashed out towards Quirrell, striking him hard in the chest and stomach with enough force that the traitor was sent flying backwards for nearly five feet.
Quirrell hit the ground hard, landing on his back with a loud crash. Yet that did not seem to register with him. In fact, he seemed too busy covering his face with both hands and screaming himself horse to even realize what happened to him.
Harry watched in a mixture of shock, fascination and horror as the man's body seemed to shrivel up. It was almost like all of the moisture was being sucked out of Quirrell's body. His skin took on a pallid, sickly hue as skin and muscles began degrading at a rapid pace. Before long, Quirrell's body became nothing more than a dried up husk, and even that soon became nothing more than dust as the body crumbled into a pile of ashes.
As Harry stared at the remains of what had once been the defense Professor, his stomach rebelled. Falling to his knees, only his hands kept him from falling on his face, as his body forced up whatever was left from the food he had eaten during dinner. Even after throwing up all of his food, his body continued to dry heave for several moments before he could get it under control.
Stumbling to his feet, Harry shook his head and cast a quick spell to clean and freshen his mouth.
He had not expected to react like that. After the troll incident Harry assumed he would have been immune to such violence. It appeared such was not the case.
A part of him wondered if that was because the person he just killed was human, or if there was some other reason for it.
Shaking his head, Harry decided he could think on such thoughts later, after he finished here. There was still work to do.
One minute left.
Harry strode over to the Mirror of Erised, the last defense for the Philosopher's Stone. As he stepped into the mirror's view, an image appeared. It was the image of what Harry desired more than anything else in the world.
In it, Harry was older, a fully-grown adult. His hair looked the same as always, just a little longer, and his body had filled out and looked like an Olympian athletes. There was a confidence in his movements that not even the Harry of right now possessed, and an easy going, content smile on his face that Harry secretly longed to have on his own face.
The reason for this smile stood right beside the older Harry. A woman. He did not know who she was, for her form appeared blurred. Everything from the color of her hair and tone of her skin to the structure of her face was indecipherable. All Harry could make out was the form of a fully grown female adult whose frame the older Harry had an arm wrapped around.
In the females arms was a bundle of blankets, and inside the bundle was a small child with raven-colored hair and vivid green eyes. The only difference between a baby Harry and this baby was that it lacked the scar on his forehead. This was his child.
Family. The one thing Harry desired more than anything else in the world. A desire so deep that Harry would never admit to having it, not even to himself.
Thirty seconds left.
Harry pointed his wand at the mirror, the tip glowing brilliant blue as he channeled a massive amount of energy into it. The runes along the wand began lit up, brighter and brighter until the entire wand was covered in so much light the wand itself could not be seen.
“Reducto.”
The words were whispered, yet it did not change the effects. All the magic gathered in the wand launched itself out, blasting into the mirror and hitting it with all the power of a raging dragon.
The mirror was not blasted into pieces, broken into tiny fragments that scattered across the floor. It was just gone. Not even granules the size of sand remained. Harry had used so much power that the mirror had literally been erased from this plain of existence.
Closing his eyes, Harry took a deep breath, then let it out. Glad that this situation had been resolved. Now all that was left to do was wait for the teacher's to arrive and explain what happened.
Or so he thought.
A loud shriek of rage brought Harry back to reality. He spun around, his eyes wide as he tried to find the source of the sound. He found it alright, and when he laid sight on the source, his mouth dropped into an open gape.
Voldemort, now a wraith-like figure, hovered in the air, his form made of dark ectoplasm that was semi-translucent yet thick enough that he almost looked solid. It shrieked at Harry again, causing the young boy to take a step back, not that the act changed anything.
The wraith flew forward, crashing into Harry, moving through him, into him. The shadowy form of Voldemort entered Harry's body, disappearing.
Then the pain hit. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Harry thought he knew pain. He'd had his entire body nearly crushed by a troll. The feeling of his rib cage caving in and puncturing his lungs had been agonizing, the way his spine felt like it had snapped made him wish for death. Harry knew pain, but this was suffering beyond anything he had ever felt. It was pain beyond compare.
Every single nerve ending in his body screamed in absolute agony. His body felt like it was bring ripped apart from the inside out. Like hot, molten metal was being pumped into his nervous system and melting him from the inside out.
Beyond the pain in his body was the pain in his scar. He could feel it, the darkness inside of him screaming, shrieking as it tried to force its way out of his head. It felt like someone had taken a pair of pliers and used them to pry his skull open, then sent a burst of electricity through his brain in an attempt to fry it.
His body twitched and spasmed, twisting and turning as it tried to instinctively find some way to alleviate the torturous pain unlike anything Harry had experienced before. It was to no avail. Nothing seemed to work, and all Harry could do was hopelessly defend himself against the intruder causing him so much physical and mental anguish.
Harry thought he heard voices, shouts, but he could not be sure. His mind, addled by pain, began going numb. He couldn't even feel his body anymore.
As darkness engulfed him, he thought he saw several figures appearing within his vision. He could not be sure, but he thought the shouting had grown louder.
In spite of what was happening, what had already happened, Harry could only feel relief when he lost consciousness.