Ron was biting holes in his lower lip, but he didn't seem to have noticed that he was bleeding; he was too focused on the game. Unlike every other game of chess he'd played - even against Alicia, who had proposed forfeit terms and had subsequently been dragged giggling and shrieking into the lake in February - this one had real, potentially dangerous consequences if he lost. Or even, Percy thought with a wince as the White Queen took apart a pawn mere feet from Fred, if he didn't.

"Fred, take that bishop," ordered Ron, "er, I mean, queen's rook to H-6." Fred strode forward, and then slowed as the problem visibly occurred to him. How was he supposed to take anything? He didn't have a giant stone sword like the other pieces (or giant stone fists, in the case of the White Queen). "Just sort of ... walk into its space I guess?" suggested Ron dubiously when he noticed this problem.

Percy was quietly trying to remember the wand movements for a Reductor Curse, which he'd passed over briefly in his Defense textbook but not learned as it wasn't on the official OWL syllabus. Fred awkwardly stepped into the white bishop's space, making a vague go away! gesture at it; Percy could swear that the bishop actually raised an eyebrow at Fred. He said, "Fred, you may want to duck?", and then aimed his wand and prayed he was remembering correctly. "Reducto!"

Fred hit the floor with surprising speed, and the bishop crumbled. It didn't explode dramatically like Percy had rather been hoping, and most of its constituent pieces were quite large. He made a mental note to practice his offensive spells more, if he survived this. Still, the enchanted board seemed to consider this an acceptable level of destruction, and the white pieces made their move as Fred scrambled back to his feet looking slightly surprised. "Where'd you learn that?" said George curiously. "No offense, Perce, but you aren't exactly the type to practice Curses."

"I do read," said Percy airily, not feeling strongly inclined to admit that he'd just made a mental resolution to do just that. He wanted to be prepared if something like this happened again, but he certainly didn't want to encourage it to. A few minutes later, there was a decided pause. Percy shot Ron a quizzical look; his little brother appeared to be thinking very hard suddenly. "You alright, Ron?" he asked in concern.

"Um," said Ron. "Well ... no, not really."

"What's wrong?"

Ron swallowed. "I have two workable plans for winning this game," he explained. "Either of which would go fine, if we were playing normal chess. But we aren't, and - " Ron stopped, biting his lip. "Do you have any parchment on you?"

Percy blinked. "What?" he said. "No, I don't, why do you - oh. No, Ron, absolutely not." Fred and George both jumped; Percy supposed his voice must have gone rather sharp.

"No, what?" said George, who was standing closer to them at the moment, looking puzzled.

There was only one logical reason Ron might have wanted Percy to write down a bunch of instructions. He wanted to give him a flowchart (if white does x, you do y) for winning, because he firmly expected not to be able to do it himself. "Ron is going to try to sacrifice himself," said Percy, "and that is not acceptable in any way, shape, or form - "

"Would you rather both the twins?" snapped Ron. He looked very pale, which made his bleeding lower lip stand out even more sharply against his freckled face, but also very determined. "That's the other option, Percy, I lose both of them to trap the White King, but I can do it myself and the three of you can go through - "

"No," said Percy flatly, "no, absolutely not, unacceptable. Find another way."

Ron shook his head. "There isn't one," he said, "I've been trying. I know you lot think I'm a prodigy at this or whatever, but I'm not perfect, I'm only twelve, I'm pretty sure I'm playing McGonagall, and anyway you need Fred and George more than you need me, we don't know how many more traps there are - "

"Use us," interrupted Fred, his voice uncharacteristically serious.

Ron's head snapped around in surprise to look at his other brother. "What?"

"Use us," repeated Fred. George was nodding. "We take hits better than you do, we're less likely to die." "And what if we screw this up after you're out?" George added pointedly, as Ron gaped at them, "Then we all lose, You-Know-Who gets the Stone, and everyone is royally screwed."

Percy made a frustrated noise. This was not how heroic adventures were supposed to go, this was why he hated having to play hero. You weren't supposed to sit there and play the King while your younger brothers argued over who got to die. They were his little brothers, it was his job to protect them, not their job to protect him. He shouldn't've let them come along in the first place (but Percy, said a mutinous part of his brain, you'd be dead by now without them, and then where would all this heroing business be?) But still - "No, this is ridiculous, I am not letting any of you play martyr."

"We haven't got a choice, Percy," said George. Fred nodded. "Like Ron said earlier - we're all more dispensable than you. And right now, we're more dispensable than Ron, because he needs to win the game." As one, the twins took a fortifying breath. George said steadily, "This is how you felt when you rescued Granger, isn't it?"

Percy frowned, feeling a deep sense of unease as the situation spiraled out of his control. "What?"

"Like - as if it was your duty to do whatever - " "even really dangerous stuff - " "to save the day." "Because there was no one else to do it."

Percy stared at them, his mouth dry. That was, in fact, exactly how he'd felt. He'd said as much to everyone who'd asked. I'm not a hero. I was just doing my duty as a prefect. Because no one else had been there, no one else had been close enough. And he'd done it without thinking - they had time to think, and they were choosing the dangerous path anyway. Percy would have dearly loved to stop them, to throw himself into the line of fire instead, but Ron had already prevented him from doing that by making him play the King. And now Ron was directing the pieces, and hesitantly accepting the twins' decision with a sort of stoic terror; and Percy didn't have any say in the matter at all.

Bloody stupid Gryffindor heroes.

Percy looked away, and gritted his teeth.

Even shutting his eyes, however, could not prevent him from hearing the sickening crunch of stone fist on bone, nor the horrible half-muffled gasping noise that Fred made when George was flung off the board, nor the sound of Ron's voice, cracked with suppressed tears, ordering Fred to the same fate.

Ron was crying in earnest by the time he took his last skittering steps and said, in a shaking voice that echoed strangely in the hall, "Checkmate."

Percy broke his stoic frozen stance and bolted off the board towards the twins.

"Fred George Fred George please don't be dead please," he gasped, as he knelt beside their crumpled forms and Ron's shorter strides clattered up behind him. They were both bleeding from the temples, and George's arm was bent in a decidedly unnatural way. Percy felt for pulses - he reached out with both hands, because there was no part of him whatsoever that was capable of deciding between the two of them - and very nearly collapsed in relief. "They're breathing," he said, "they're both breathing, Ron, they're alive."

Ron expelled a great shuddering breath, almost a sob. "Oh," he said, "thank Merlin."

With great effort, Percy got back to his feet. "We've got to - keep going," he said, "they're not going to get worse in the next hour - " I hope " - and we really can't do anything for them ourselves." He shut his eyes briefly and took a deep, steadying breath. "Come on. We'll - as soon as we run into someone else, you run back here and get them to Madam Pomfrey, alright?"

Ron's eyes got very wide. "And leave you alone?" he squeaked.

"Yes," said Percy sharply. "You're the one who said I'm the only one with a realistic chance - that doesn't mean I'm going to let you be dragon fodder! You are not dying on my watch, you are going to run the second I tell you to, is that clear?"

Ron's eyes were still very wide - I don't want you to die either - but he nodded.

And through the door they went, unmolested by the white chess pieces that watched them sternly as they went.

At once they were assaulted by the awful stench of troll, which very nearly made Percy turn and bolt on the spot.

I have PTSD, he observed almost dryly to himself as Hermione Granger's shrieking echoed at the back of his mind. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"It's - dead, I think," said Ron doubtfully, holding his nose and nudging the troll with the toe of his sneaker. "Or sleeping, maybe?"

"Either way let's move," said Percy very quickly, skirting the troll as widely as he could given the size of the room and heading for the opposing door. "Whoever's ahead of us took it out, and we might as well be thankful."

Ron shrugged and followed, still very pale, his wand shaking in his hand. The next room didn't appear to contain an obvious threat at all - at least it didn't, until flames sprung up in the doorway they'd just entered through, to match the ones on the opposing side. With Ron trailing him, Percy very carefully approached the table in the middle of the room, with its seven differently-sized bottles all waiting innocuously in a row. And on the table, a scroll of parchment.

"Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind.

Two of us will help you, whichever you would find.

One among us seven will let you move ahead;

Another will transport the drinker back instead.

Two among our number hold only nettle wine;

Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.

Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore.

To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide, you will always find some on nettle wine's left side;

Second, different are those who stand at either end, but if you would move onward, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, all are different size - neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight."

"A logic puzzle," said Percy, staring at it.

Ron, in a nervous attempt at levity, said, "See, I told you we need you, Perce. S'gibberish to me."

Percy made a valiant attempt to laugh, failed utterly, and set to work. Ron, thankfully, was entirely silent as Percy muttered to himself, drawing imaginary charts in the air with his fingers and pointing from one bottle to the other. This was not the sort of thing he did for fun, but it was the sort of thing he was good at, since it involved basic deductive reasoning and, like Arithmancy, did not require you to make arguments for your facts; they were either true or they weren't.

A while later he had two bottles in hand: the smallest one, which (at least according to the riddle) contained a potion that would permit someone to pass forward through the black flames; and the mid-sized one which purported to take them back. Without a word he handed Ron the larger of the two. Ron gave him a quizzical look. "This'll take you back," he said. "Go get the twins, use that broomstick in the flying keys room to get past the Snare and Fluffy, you're going to need to take a couple trips - "

"You're going in alone?" squeaked Ron, interrupting with horror in his voice.

Percy nodded, though he very much did not want to. He wished he could take his little brother with him, selfish though that desire was; he wanted company, he didn't want to go face Voldemort all alone. But there was only enough potion for one, and if there was anything he didn't want even more than he didn't want to fight Voldemort, it was that he didn't want Ron to do it. So he nodded, and said, "Yes. We discussed this. Do not argue with me. Get the twins to Madam Pomfrey, and then ... " he thought for a second " ... and then go to the Owlery. McGonagall was no help earlier and she's not going to be any help now, but Dumbledore might be, given all the proof. Get Hermes and write him out everything we know, and then ... "

After a moment or two of silence, Ron ventured, "And then?"

Percy took a deep breath. "I don't know. And then pray I don't get myself killed, I guess." He drank the potion before he could change his mind, and headed through the black flames. Behind him, he thought he heard Ron's voice shouting, but he didn't understand the words through the roaring of the fire.

Quirrell. Standing in front of the mirror, making frustrated gestures at it. Well, at least they'd already guessed it was probably Quirrell; that meant Percy didn't have to spare a moment for confusion. "Stupefy!" he hissed, as quietly as possible, pointing his wand at the Defense professor's back. What was it Professor Greengrass had said? Ninety percent of battles are won by ambushes, he'd said, when explaining why they needed to know how to defend themselves even if they weren't expecting to be attacked.

Quirrell turned, batting the red bolt away with his wand as if it were an impudent fly, and not even bothering to cast a formal shield charm. Since when had Quirrell been any good at duelling? He was afraid of everything - oh. Right. He was probably a Death Eater only pretending to be incompetent. Think a little, Weasley, Percy chided himself, and tried to control the urge to panic. Bracing himself to duck, he said with an almost-steady sigh, "I was really hoping that would work."

"Your overconfidence is almost amusing," observed Quirrell dryly, all hint of a stutter gone. He'd fixed his gaze on Percy, as well as the point of his wand, and looked a great deal more frightening, somehow, even though nothing about him had particularly changed from the Quirrell who had stammered his way through a year of substandard, mostly-theoretical Defense classes. Something about him radiated evil. "What are you doing here, Weasley?"

Good question, Percy thought. What was he doing here? "Er ... trying to stop you?" he offered after a moment, awkwardly, still pointing his wand at the Professor-turned-probably-Death-Eater and wondering whether it would actually do him any good.

"Stop me from doing what?" grinned Quirrell, looking terribly amused, as if Percy's incompetence existed purely for the purpose of being his personal entertainment. "Killing you? Convincing everyone that p-p-poor st-stuttering P-P-P-Professor Quirrell is exactly as harmless as he looks? Resurrecting the Dark Lord?"

Percy was starting to feel a distinct sense of being toyed with. He wished he had some clever method of elongating this conversation, to stall for time until Ron could get hold of Dumbledore. But he couldn't actually think of anything. So he just uncomfortably offered the truth: "Um ... all of those things?"

"Too late," said Quirrell smugly, "to all three."

Well, fuck.

"Avada ked - "

"Hold!" hissed a new voice, as Percy was midway through lunging desperately sideways to try to avoid the green death that would have shortly been headed his way. Quirrell's voice had stopped on the instant when it was interrupted by a great echoing hiss, a voice that made shivers run up Percy's spine and made him very much want to run away as fast as he could and never, ever try to do anything this stupid ever again. (Which was sort of how he'd felt on Halloween, and also for the entire last hour or so of his life; if this was how heroing felt all the time, Percy was starting to really wonder how anything heroic ever got done, ever.) "We can use the boy!"

Er - what?

Percy did not at all have time to try to analyze this new development, as he had abruptly found himself divested of his wand, and had his hands wrenched rather painfully behind his back. Before he could properly wonder where that voice was coming from (the voice of Voldemort? from where?), he had been shoved rather unceremoniously in front of the great clawfooted Mirror that stood behind Quirrell. Percy frankly had no idea why he'd felt the need to give the Mirror a capital letter in his mind, it just seemed like the sort of artifact that deserved a capital letter. "Look into the Mirror, boy!" snapped Quirrell.

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, the Mirror's inscription read. Not a language he recognized.

For lack of a better option, he looked into the Mirror. To his immense surprise, he didn't see himself standing there looking back at him, as one might naturally have expected from a mirror. Rather, he saw himself sitting in the Burrow, reading a book, in the background of a moving scene. In the foreground, Fred and George were chasing Ginny around the living room, while Ron laughed silently from the couch and yelled unknown encouragements; it looked like Ginny had stolen something from the twins. Was this the future? Did that mean Fred and George and Ron were all okay? Percy desperately hoped so -

"Well?" said Quirrell impatiently. Percy startled; he'd nearly forgotten Quirrell was there, so absorbed had he been for a moment in the picturesque scene before him. "What do you see, boy?"

"What?" said Percy blankly. Why on Earth would Quirrell care? "I - I see my family," he said truthfully, too startled to even begin to think of a clever lie, or even a stupid lie. "What does this d - " He stopped suddenly, because even as he asked, he was staring at the inscription, and the letters were rearranging themselves in his head. Anagrams weren't an uncommon occurrence in Runes classes.

I show not your face but your hearts desire.

A very small part of him wanted to reach up and carve an apostrophe into the mirror; all the other parts of him immediately shoved that part back into oblivion, screaming (are you serious) (what a stupid idea) (this is the worst possible time for that) (you complete nutcase) and other such objections.

" - oh."

So Quirrell wanted the Stone; he presumably looked into the Mirror and saw himself using it to resurrect Voldemort. Or possibly further-resurrect Voldemort, if that voice was indeed the disembodied spirit of the not-entirely-deceased dark wizard. (Actually, pointed out the part of Percy's brain that was not currently freaking out over the reminder that Voldemort was possibly in the room with him, that would totally explain the unicorns.)

What did he want from Percy, then? If Percy had been sufficiently not distracted by his family being in danger, he might indeed have seen himself with the Philosopher's Stone; endless wealth and immortality would enable him to have the success he'd always wanted, he'd be able to buy his mum the new marble counter-top she wanted, and shiny things for Ginny because his baby sister should have all the jewelry she wanted, and he could have all the books he wanted and all the time in the world to read them - (he tore his mind away from the daydream with effort) - but how would that actually have been helpful? Obviously Quirrell wanted it too, and seeing the Stone in the mirror hadn't actually provided him with information about how to get it. Dumbledore wasn't stupid; Percy didn't think he'd have much better luck. Well, in stories evil wizards were always delighted to explain their plots; maybe he should just ask. Hesitantly, Percy said aloud, "Er - what were you expecting, exactly?"

"The Stone is in the mirror," hissed Quirrell angrily, "and you can't get it either - he is useless, my Lord, may I kill him now?"

Dismissively, the hoarse voice of Voldemort (seriously, where was that coming from?) said, "If you like, I do not need him."

So much for that.

"Avada kedavra!"

Percy flung himself to the floor, entirely gracelessly; his hands were still tied, and he cracked his shoulder against the stones. Ignoring the pain out of sheer panicked adrenaline, he twisted desperately, suspecting he no longer had enough mobility to get out of range of a second shot and having to try anyway. Above his head, the brilliant green light bounced off the Mirror.

The voice of Voldemort made an entirely horrifying shrieking sound. "Idiot!" it railed, "fool, useless failure - " and more profanity that Percy had stopped listening to, because his brain had focused entirely on the one fact that he had gleaned from it. Quirrell had fired a Killing Curse at a mirror, reasonably expecting the mirror to shatter. Unforgivables didn't, Percy was rather sure, normally bounce off of anything, not even reflective surfaces, that was how the merpopulation in the Baltic had been eradicated with Killing Curses in the 1100s, they didn't bounce off of water (or mirrors) like normal spells... and apparently this Mirror had proven the exception to the rule. The Killing Curse had bounced, and it had hit Quirrell.

But apparently not Voldemort, though the shrieking appeared to have stopped.

Okay, genius, your Defense professor's dead and the disembodied spirit of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is running around loose. What now?

Percy was halfway through an awkward attempt to get to his feet when a sort of invisible smoke hit him full in the face, and he collapsed as his head exploded with pain. It was the sort of pain that was nonsensical, like there wasn't really any possible physical explanation for it; surely there wasn't actually anything in actual real life that you could do that would hurt this much. As if every nerve in his body had been set on fire, all at the same time. That shouldn't be a real thing. For a moment he tried to reject it as impossible, it must be an illusion; but then that didn't actually help, and he gave up, because his brain simply didn't have enough processing power to ignore something so enormous.

Some part of him wondered if this was what it felt like to die.

It was only a very small part, though. The rest of him was occupied with the sound of Voldemort's voice, abruptly gentle. That voice was purring in his mind, Do as I say, child, the pain will stop if you do. It seemed like such a sensible thing to do, really. Simple possession, painless and guiltless and easy, what a pleasant alternative to this pain ... Surely no one would blame him if he succumbed, he was only a kid, after all, it wasn't his job to stand up Voldemort, that was what real Gryffindors were for ...

No, no, no, no, I am a Weasley, no, I won't, I WON'T -

Everything went dark.