Disclaimer: Was limbo, the liminality of mortality, actually represented by King's Cross Station? Then I don't own Harry Potter.
My thanks go to my talented wife for her help with this chapter. She improved nearly every paragraph in this chapter.
Promotion
Chapter 7: Breaking and Entering
May you find what you are looking for.
– Chinese Curse
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The first layer of defence was a locking charm. The charm was so low-powered that a basic Alohomora could break it. Even to the most experienced wizard's magical sense, it deceptively appeared to be a mundane lock. However, maintaining the charm required a continuous pull on the caster's magic, leaving a constant feeling in their mind to those attuned to it. And when the lock was opened, and the charm broken, the caster could notice it.
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Voldemort cursed mentally as he felt the slight energy backlash of the magical lock breaking. He'd been in too much of a hurry and had failed to thoroughly check that the door had only been secured by a Muggle bolt. Assuming Dumbledore cast this, he's still alive, and he probably now knows.
The wizard hurried through the door before stopping short. Three giant heads, each dripping drool, loomed over him. A low rumbling growl built in the chest of the dog as it coiled its muscles, getting ready to lunge.
"Avada Kedavra."
Voldemort smirked as the green spell struck the dog in one of its eyes, and its head drooped to the ground. The smirk disappeared when the other two heads pounced.
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Hogwarts, Dumbledore reflected as he climbed another staircase, is entirely too large. Not for the first time, he lamented that Hogwarts was warded against both Portkeys and Apparition, and that there was no way to "key in" certain persons to allow them those modes of transportation.
He also regretted putting the Stone so near to his office. Originally he thought that if someone had deduced the location of the Stone, their attempt to steal it would occur when he was asleep or out of the castle. If he was out of the castle, he could simply floo to his office. If he was asleep, however, there was a chance that the small backlash from the first lock opening would not wake him, and it would take the second door lock breaking to notify him. In that instance, it would have been better that he be nearby to arrive as soon as possible.
The timing of this attack was simply brilliant. The Hallowe'en Feast, which no student, staff, ghost, or elf would miss, herded the unsuspecting castle populace into a dangerous area well-away from the Stone. It was common knowledge that he had a phoenix though, so most would consider transportation time for himself to be negligible. For the prospective thief to know to attack tonight, so soon after Fawkes' burning day, suggested a level of knowledge that would require at least an informant in the staff.
As he hurried up the next staircase, Dumbledore dearly hoped that Hagrid had not been tricked out of sensitive information again.
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Harry would have thought that it was dark, even pitch black, except that even with no light he would still see little stars, lines, and afterimages that were the eyes' half-imagined memories of light. This was the darkness of the man born with no eyes. For that matter, no ears, nose, mouth, or nerves at all. Harry could not tell if he was sitting, standing, or even had a body. Time may have passed, or not, or gone backwards, or not existed at all. There was no point of reference for anything at all.
In short, he was aware of nothing. Seemingly contradictorily, he was oddly cognizant that he was aware of nothing. The contrast of his memories and this all-encompassing nothingness indicated that there hadn't always been only this void.
Detachedly, Harry wondered if he was dead. He felt vaguely disappointed, as he had always imagined light and fluffy clouds in Heaven, and at least heat and fire in Hell. This afterlife, if that's what it was, could quite possibly be very boring.
Harry continued to contemplate the nothing as best as he was able.
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The deadweight of the centre head was enough to allow Voldemort to dodge the dog's first lunge. He quickly loosed a second Killing Curse at the body, but the spell slid off the dog's fur like mud off a Niffler. Then the centre head reanimated, and the whole dog lunged again.
Voldemort was very intrigued by the beast. The dog having three heads was interesting enough, since he had heard of few animals with multiple heads. The only one that came immediately to mind was the Hydra. The fact that it appeared to have three souls… and that it appeared to have a soul anchor… simply remarkable. Was it the body or the other souls that were acting as the soul anchor? Voldemort had to resist the urge to throw three Killing Curses at it to answer that question, as Quirrel was incapable of producing and channelling that much magic in such a short time. Fiendfyre was out of the question, and other curses seemed to glide over its fur much like the first.
He tried to manipulate the flagstones into a protective wall, but the room walls, floor, and ceiling appeared to be warded against Transfiguration. A giant paw slammed into Quirrel's body, pinning him to the floor, but Voldemort was able to regain some breathing room with a heavy Banisher.
Voldemort rose to his feet even as he conjured Bluebell Flames in front of the beast's three heads. The dog cringed back, swiping at the air with its huge paws. He moved his wand again, conjuring caltrops and banishing them under and around the dog. The Cold Fire was being dispersed by the magic-repelling fur as the dog swatted them from the air, but its paws landed on the spikes, causing it to rear up again in pain.
"Incendio!"
A blast of real fire caught the beast in the chest, burning away at the hair. Voldemort kept up the stream of flame, even as the dog charged him, mad with pain and rage. The wizard banished one of its legs, making it stumble mid-run, and followed up with a succession of cutting and piercing curses directed at the burned area. Blood spurted from the wound and the dog staggered even more. The left head snapped at him, but Voldemort sent another Cutter into its mouth, and turned back to barrage the chest. It seemed that the bones were somewhat resistant too, but not to the extent that the fur was. Shortly, the rib cage gave way, and he managed to pierce the heart.
Unfortunately, there was no time to investigate this interesting creature further. Voldemort hurried to the far door. Lacking time for subtlety, he broke this locking charm with magical brute force and opened the door.
Runic scripts blanketed the wall in this narrow room, but Voldemort suspected that they were mere misdirection. Normally, the only visible scripts in a security ward related to the deactivation or "unlocking" sequence. In cheaper household wards, it was sometimes possible to guess the runic sequence, the "key" required to temporarily disable the wards, from the context of the visible script. However, Dumbledore wouldn't skimp on the Stone's protection, and so any visible script would either give no or bad information about the warding scheme.
There was a door with a large knob and keyhole set into the wall, but that was likely just another ruse. There were also innumerable indentations and crevices set into the stone, any of which could be the actual keyhole. Trying to ascertain the correct unlocking sequence and correct spot to insert it would likely be an exercise in futility.
If he had several days with no concerns about being interrupted, Voldemort might have investigated the extent of the warded walls, and then warded around them to disperse ambient magic. Eventually, the inner wards would run out of energy and would fail. If he instead had his original body, he might have tried attacking a single point on the wall, trying to overwhelm the ward's ability to disperse outside magic. However, Quirrel's body would not be able to channel the necessary power. He wished that Dumbledore was dead so that he could simply take the ward key off his corpse, but the outer lock disproved that possibility.
Voldemort stood back a bit and began testing the ward. He sent several blasting and explosive curses, and attempted to transfigure and vanish parts of the wall and door. All the magic was simply absorbed by the surface. He attempted a bastardized Extension Charm on one of the potential keyholes that looked like it might go into the next chamber. There was, again, no effect. He sprayed conjured acid from his wand. The acid splashed on an invisible barrier just in front of the wall and fell to the floor, where it began eating into the flagstones.
Voldemort closely examined the multitude of keyholes. Choosing another one that appeared to penetrate the wall, he poked at it with a quill from his pocket. The quill was repelled from the wall's surface just like the acid. He moved quickly back to the body of the dog and extracted a small piece of an already-splintered rib. He hollowed it out by sending an overpowered Drilling Charm through the bone marrow, and then jammed it into the largest "through" keyhole.
There was a fair amount of repulsive force from the barrier, but the magic-resistant cortical bone dispersed the ward enough to go through it. Voldemort pushed Quirrel's wand through the hollow middle of the rib, thankful that it was Quirrel's wand and not his own being subjected to this. He conjured acid, and allowed it to drip down the inside of the wall. Eventually, the acid destroyed sufficient amounts of the runic structure to weaken the shield in the section below the keyhole. He extracted the wand and transfigured the wall to give himself a hole to crawl through.
Unfortunately, Quirrel's body was tiring rapidly from the repeated spellcasting and the need to overpower all the spells for dealing with the dog. Fortunately, there appeared to be no further protections. The only object in the small room was a box with a multitude of wards over every face of it. The light in the room was too dim to be certain, but the box appeared to be of the style designed for transport, so it was possible that Voldemort could remove it and study it at his leisure for later opening. However, he would need time to ascertain if that was the case. Abruptly, Voldemort ducked away from his freshly-made crawl-hole when a powerful explosive curse sailed through the space where his head had been.
Dumbledore had arrived.
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Something was here. Harry wasn't sure when the Something had arrived, or if it had always been there and he just hadn't noticed. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was certainly different from the nothing that still surrounded him.
Now that there was some kind of reference, Harry tried to experiment with a few other things. He still could not see or hear. His body still did not appear to exist. He tried to move closer to the Something, willing himself to walk or swim or float towards it. He soon gave that up, as he could not determine the distance or direction of the Something. He didn't even know how he knew that the Something was there, only that he had an overwhelming feeling of familiarity.
Harry had never known his father or grandfather, but he imagined that this might be the kind of familiar, or even familial, feeling he would get around them. It was a little like the feeling he got when Professor Dumbledore spoke at the end of the Start-of-Term Feast. It wasn't necessarily a safe or comforting feeling. Just such a strong familiarity, as if he had known the person or place his whole life. As if he was running his fingers through his hair or over his other hand. As if the Something was a part of him, or maybe he was a part of the Something.
Then the Something reached into the piece of the nothingness that was Harry, and ripped him in two.
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Dumbledore stared as the man he thought he knew moved with preternatural speed out of the path of the spell that he couldn't have even seen coming. Quirrel's voice held an unfamiliar cadence and malice as he hissed, "Dumbledore."
"Quirinus, et al," responded the Headmaster.
Dumbledore sent a jet of conjured water shooting towards the hole in the formerly-warded wall, as flames flew out of it towards him. The resulting steam blocked his view temporarily, so he switched to freezing the air and water, converting the ice into jagged spikes in the next instant. A hiss of pain came from inside the vault, and Dumbledore ran forward, erecting a shield in front of him as a precaution. A flurry of Piercing Hexes deflected off his shield, but Dumbledore could see that Quirrel, or whoever was controlling him, had used the damage his explosive curse had caused to the far wall's wards to vanish a part of it. Quirrel was dragging the runéd box behind him as an effective shield as he crawled into the next room.
The next room acted as part of the buffer area around the vault as well, and was similarly warded to be impenetrable from the outside, lacking even a key to enter. However, Quirrel would be able to simply damage the runes from the inside and escape the same way. Fortunately, his progress would be inhibited significantly by the the heavy, uncharmable box.
Dumbledore paused at the room's opening, detecting no footsteps or other sounds indicative of Quirrel's departure. Deciding that charging directly into the ambush would be poor strategy, he furtively began disrupting wards on a nearby section of wall to create a different entrance to the room. Disregarding recent events in the Great Hall, he called, "I do not suppose you would wish to give yourself up, Quirinus? The Aurors would be more lenient towards attempted theft rather than attempted murder."
Quirrel scoffed from his position on the other side of the wall. "As if the Aurors would prevent Flamel from exacting his own vengeance."
Dumbledore could hear the fatigue in his voice, and decided it would be best to act while he was still recovering. The Headmaster ran at the section of wall he'd been quietly eroding, vanishing it at the last moment. Quirrel spun around from the original opening in the wall he'd been guarding, but was too slow. Dumbledore was able to release powerful cutting curse, before he tripped over a taut wire that had been transfigured in that place to stymie just such a flanking attempt. Quirrel managed to produce a shield, but the curse had been aimed at his still-turning legs, and hamstrung him in a spray of blood.
Dumbledore hit the ground heavily, and wished that he were younger and still able to roll out of falls like this one. Quirrel snarled with pain and rage, and tried to cast the Killing Curse, even as he fell. No green light appeared, and Dumbledore pressed the advantage of Quirrel's exhaustion, even from his prone position. A series of cutting hexes and heavy bludgeoners, mixed with Stunners and Banishers left the Elder Wand at blinding speed. From his own fallen position, Quirrel was forced to blanket shield as he tried to roll back to the vault room. His shield broke first though, and his wand hand was severed. A Banisher knocked him back into the wall, before several Stunners finally finished the fight.
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Hermione's gaze travelled around the bookshop. Normally, her hands would be itching to grab books off the shelves, but now they were shaking from fear and exhaustion. They had been almost to the doors in the Great Hall when Professor Flitwick dove through them and she was sent flying away. She had watched with terrifying clarity as the Troll's club had smashed open the door, before she hit the ground and rolled painfully. Then she had crawled under a table and hidden while the students stampeded back.
When they were finally called to move through the doors again, she saw only the blackened Entrance Hall, with small pools of melted stone at the sides. There was no sign of the Trolls, not even their characteristic smell. The only thing left was the terrible, oppressive heat all around her.
Then, they had half-walked, half-ran down to the nearby village. Professor Snape had led, while Professors Sprout and Flitwick had flanked the group with wary eyes and wands drawn. Her Head of House had taken half of the students to shelter in the bookstore, while Professor Snape had led the other half to a nearby pub. Through several pairs of students' legs, Hermione could see Professor Sprout speaking into the fireplace.
Hermione just couldn't understand what had been happening. What had been banging on the main door? Was it a bigger Troll? But the school nurse had said something about a snake. What had happened to Sally-Anne? And to that other girl and the nurse? Hermione could see them all on the ground next to Professor Sprout. Were they dead? Why were they so stiff? Rigor mortis? Some kind of spell like the Body-Bind Jinx?
Hermione reached out and grabbed a large tome from the shelf next to her. She didn't open it, just hugged it to her chest like a soft toy. At least Harry is alright, she thought. Professor Quirrel can protect him.
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Pain. That had become the entirety of Harry's universe. All-encompassing, all-consuming pain. The pain wasn't in anything. He had no hands or feet or head. It was a pain that pervaded his entire being. And with it came the feeling of wrongness. He felt like he had just lost an arm… or all the feeling in his legs. Part of him had been ripped away, and there was a sense of violation that came with the wrongness that was almost as bad as the pain. Almost.
The pain was so complete that, at first, he didn't notice the addition of pins and needles. He didn't notice feeling colder than he'd ever been before. He didn't notice how much breathing hurt, until his stomach lurched violently.
Harry's stomach quickly emptied itself through his nose and mouth. His arms and legs twitched convulsively as his brain reconnected with the ability to control his limbs. He fell out of the chair at the desk he'd been slumped over, fortunately to the side opposite his vomit. Still twitching and shivering, Harry curled into a ball on the floor, clutching at his chest. A low, anguished moan built up behind Harry's lips, and tears fell from his eyes. Heavy sobs mixed with almost inhuman cries of loss echoed through the empty hall.
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Dumbledore climbed gingerly to his feet, feeling every day of his many years. He picked up and pocketed Quirrel's wand, before turning to the man himself. Not feeling terribly charitable, the Headmaster cauterized the slash through Quirrel's ankle instead of healing it, before pulling his hands and legs behind his back and conjuring cords to secure him.
Dumbledore then proceeded to successively vanish each article of his Defence Professor's clothing to ensure that the man wouldn't have access to any other wands or weapons if he awoke. Items dropped from the robe pockets, and Dumbledore immediately banished them to the far end of the room to look at later. It was only upon vanishing the turban that Dumbledore got an indication of something very wrong.
A noxious green gas, released from the confines of a warded pouch inside the garment, expanded quickly. Dumbledore only caught a whiff through his larger-than-average nose before his Bubblehead Charm was up, but it was enough to send him into a coughing fit. He scrambled backwards, still fighting for breath, as Quirrel's head began dissolving from the high concentrations of acidic vapour.
Dumbledore sucked in breaths of pure air, trying to disperse the poison in his lungs. He attempted to vanish all the air around Quirrel, but was unable to summon the necessary focus to get it all. A coughing fit later, he tried again. All the accessible air around Quirrel, containing most of the poison, was vanished. An enormous pop sounded from the surrounding air rushing into the vacuum. Parts of the dissolving Quirrel also rushed into the vacuum, making the fresh corpse even messier.
Unfortunately, from the amount that Dumbledore moved around and the time that it took, there was probably a significant amount of poison that had already spread out through the room. At this point, the only thing he could do was dilute it as much as possible. Feeling blackness creeping in at the edges of his vision, he cast a wind spell to circulate the air. Another coughing fit sent him to his knees. He really hoped that he hadn't inhaled a fatal amount of the poison.
Dumbledore recast the Bubblehead Charm, hoping it would stay up even when he was unconscious, before passing out on the stone floor.
Omake:
Harry opened his eyes to see only darkness. He tried to feel around him, but felt nothing touch his hands. He couldn't even tell if he was lying down or standing.
"What happened?" Harry said, unsure if he voiced the question aloud or merely thought it.
YOU WERE STRUCK BY THE KILLING CURSE, a voice rang through Harry's head, AGAIN.
The darkness coalesced into a tall figure shrouded in a black cloak. The figure approached, and its skeletal visage and large scythe served to confirm its identity.
"So, I'm dead now?" Harry asked sadly.
YOU ARE… MOSTLY DEAD.
"What?"
YOUR BODY HOUSED MORE THAN ONE SOUL. I WILL TAKE THE FRAGMENT, SHOULD YOU WISH TO BE SAVED.
"I… I don't want to be dead." Harry paused, considering the apparent Grim Reaper's words. "But why are you saving me?"
FOR LATER.
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Harry sat in the hospital wing giving his statement to the Aurors.
"…Then Professor Quirrel pointed his wand at me and said, 'Abracadabra'. And then I died."
The Aurors had stopped writing and were staring at Harry incredulously.
"What?" he asked defensively. "I got better."
A/N: Three references in that omake! Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
I hope that my explanation of the wards and ward keys used in this chapter makes sense, and is sufficiently different from stories I've seen before. If there's any confusion, let me know and I can go into more detail.
