Chapter Eight

Monday, June 5th, 1992

Well, on the bright side, at least the exams are over? That's something.

And in less happy news, my life freaking sucks, and I'm fucking exhausted living it. Why the hell did I have to be reborn as Harry Potter's sister? I'd give anything to be some unremarkable half-blood with two unremarkable middle-class half-blood parents. But nooo, I just had to be born to the Potters. And Hogwarts just had to have moving staircases. Whose idea even was it? What's the point? To look cool? To make students run late for class? To help Dark Lords kidnap poor, unfortunate students minding their own business?

FUCK! I wanted to remain uninvolved in the grand plot! Was that too much to ask for?! God! Death! ROB! Whoever's fucking responsible for me being stuck in a fucking fictional universe! Answer me, goddammit! Couldn't you have just let me die in peace? Why me? What in the world did I do to deserve this! Kicked puppies and ate babies for breakfast?

*Angry scribbling over the entire next page*

Future me, please use a Time-Turner and tell me this is the last time I get involved in the plot to this extent. It's 6:29 pm as I'm writing this in the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor, you know the place. I'm alone.

It's been five minutes and you're not here. So, I have no choice but to conclude this won't be the last time. Darn.

Right. Take a deep breath and calm down.

One. Two. Three.

Where to begin… June 1st? Yeah, let's go with that.

So, on June 1st –

Dahlia calms down from her Forbidden Forest scare by exam time. With her mind busy with frantic revisions of her notes for the following day's examinations, she fell into bed after midnight and slept like the dead until morning. There were no nightmares and her only fatigue was from staying up late studying.

There was also her little business to take distract her. Selling copies of her notes to her year-mates and the ones below her was surprisingly lucrative. Hermione had been scandalized when she had caught her stealthily pocketing money from a second-year Hufflepuff in the Library. According to the firstie lion, Dahlia should have been doing it for free if she was going to help others laze around all year anyway. Yeah, right.

She does well on her exams, breezing through the written portions despite wanting to swear at the uncomfortable Anti-Cheating Quills and the sweltering hot weather. Her clothes weren't spelled with Cooling Charms like the rest of her Housemates since she'd seen it as a needlessly expensive frivolity and she was now left to either suffer in silence or to bother an older student until they did it for her. Understandably, she chooses the latter option, even though their spells didn't last like the professional ones.

Hilariously enough, she remembers half an hour after her Ancient Runes exam that she had mixed up ehwaz with eihwaz after she passes Hermione in a hallway. She recalled the strangest things. Why did such a minor detail stick in her mind and not Quidditch or the Forest? Honestly.

The practical exams were a little more complicated, but her teapot turned into a beautiful Red-Footed Tortoise during Transfiguration and she finally succeeded in casting a proper Cheering Charm in Charms. In Potions, her Confusion Concoction thickened perfectly, and in the Ancient Runes practical, they were assigned an out-loud reading from an expert of a poem in Latin and another in Ancient Greek both of which had Professor Babbling complimenting her on her pronunciation.

Care of Magical Creatures, where they had to collect the venom of a sleeping Acromantula under Newt Scamander's supervision, might have been the exam she had done the worse. She had been expecting a Diricawl like the one the previous year's Slytherin Care students had, and Acromantulas were usually sixth-year material, but despite the deviation from the normal curriculum, Professor Kettleburn hadn't wanted to pass up the chance to show his all students one of the giant spiders close and personal while there were professionals on hand to quickly subdue the specimen if things went wrong. Unfortunately for her, she hadn't been listening keenly that day because she had spent the entire class time grimacing in disgust and shooting the teacher mean looks and so had fumbled a bit when it came up in the exam.

Unsurprisingly, Hagrid was utterly heartbroken at the deportation of his beloved friend and his family. She spots the Golden Trio visiting often and his occasional heavy sobs during dinner do make her a tad guilty. But not enough to go up to him to apologize. Acromantulas had no place in a school's backyard.

FYI, Newt Scamander does look like Redmayne. Just a very old one. Still cute, though.

It was one the evening of the 4th, just after dinner, that it happens.

Having finished her final exam, she was hurrying alone to the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor to meet up with her friends when she gets turned around by the stairs. The one she was on suddenly switches directions halfway like they sporadically do and she disembarks on the wrong landing.

Huffing in frustration, she prepares herself to wait for the next staircase to swing around –

I should have realized. I should have never stepped foot off that last step. I should have run screaming at the top of my voice.

"Mm-miss Ppottter." An awfully familiar says behind her.

Her stomach drops. Slowly, she turns around.

Professor Quirrell frowns nervously at her from where he was standing next to a particular door she was now realizing was on the forbidden third floor, his wand in his hand but thankfully still pointed at the floor.

Shit.

"Hello, professor." Dahlia carefully articulates through numb lips. "I'm sorry, I know we're not allowed up here, but the staircase moved on me. I'll be leaving as soon as I can."

"It's aaalright. I uunde-derstand." The man tells her. "Yyou're noot in-in tttrouble. Aa-actuallly, Pr-pr-professor Ddu-dumbledore aasked me to do him aa favor-or." The Death Eater possessed by his Lord continues stuttering, unaware of the fear his words were awaking in her. He pauses, then smiles. "I could use your help."

"I don't know how I could help." She murmurs in response. "I'm just a third-year student. Wouldn't a prefect be better? I think I saw Percy Weasley on the previous floor. Maybe I can get him for you?"

"No, no," The man wasn't bothering to act nervous anymore and radiated self-assured confidence. "you're just what I need."

Damn, where's her wand?

Keeping my bun in place and being impossible to grab unnoticed, where else?

I need to break that bad habit of shoving anything remotely pencil-like into my hair when I don't have an elastic on hand.

Quirrellmort lifts his wand and she freezes like a deer freezes in the headlights. He doesn't even need to cast a spell to keep her immobile when he approaches and yanks out her wand, leaving her curls to tumble freely around her shoulders. She knows when she's outclassed. The moment she had made a move toward her head, she'd have lost.

He examines Dahila's wand with a smug air. Proud that he'd disarmed a fourteen-year-old, huh?

"Pretty." The prick comments and throws it contemptuously to the side. She bristles internally at the careless handling.

Wands were strange. They weren't just pieces of wood. When Ollivander's said they choose their owners, not the other way around, he was right. They weren't sentient, but there was something about them… The first time she had held her own in that tiny shop, it had been like meeting an old friend for the first time.

She was proud of her wand. Polished it often and didn't handle it like it was a sturdy stick that wouldn't break if she sat on it, Goyle. It was a wand, fuck it all! Her own real magic wand! A lifelong dream come true! She'd be devasted if it fell apart to pieces even if she knew it could be easily replaced.

Holding his alder wand on her, Quirrellmort passes his other hand over the handle of the door. The lock clicks open.

And this is where I have a hard time believing Dumbledore is nothing but a kind old man. Who the fuck secures a priceless artifact with a door that could be unlocked by a first-year spell that we are taught in class?

Oh my god, were there even any intruder alarms set? Considering the amount of time Gryffindors had snuck in there with no consequences, I'd have to say no, unless Dumbledore had been deliberately ignoring all of the children he's responsible for that were inches from being mauled by a dog several times their size trained to attack unknown people.

Her first sight of Fluffy was terrifying and it didn't get better the longer she stared. He fit the whole space between the ceiling and the floor, and from his muzzles full of yellowish, sharp fangs hung disgusting strands of saliva. Breed-wise, he looked a lot like a Rottweiler who were known for their aggressiveness and for occasionally killing humans. And that's when the males grew to only about 70 cm rounded in height.

As if that wasn't scary enough, there was also the fact that avoiding death by a Cerberus, doesn't mean you get away scot-free either. Cerberi aren't like werewolves. Their bites aren't cursed, but they will mess you up. Some property of their saliva means the healing speed of the wound is inhibited and neither magic nor potions work well on them. It was why Professor Snape spent so long limping after Halloween. They will pain you for the rest of your life.

All three heads growl and she gulps. There goes her dream of ever owning a dog. Also, hello more nightmares.

"Sing." Quirrellmort prods her in the back with his wand.

Very unwillingly, Dahlia opens her mouth and shakily stammers out the beginning bars of the first song she could think of. Fluffy cocks his heads in confusion.

"What is this drivel?" Quirrellmort exclaims in disgust.

"Muggle song." She mumbles and shuts up, feeling strangely insulted.

Here I am, an enormous Cerberus looming over me and Voldemort himself behind me and I suddenly forget to be scared out of my mind because I'm too busy pouting.

Considering the stuff wizards listen to, they have no right dissing I Wanna Be Your Dog. The Stooges are great. You wish the Weird Sisters were as good. "Shake your booty like a boggart in pain"? Really?

Scoffing, the man conjures a harp and it begins to play a soothing song. Fluffy nearly instantly yawns. Soon enough, he curls up and his hot and smelly breath deepens. It wasn't cute. If she'd been wearing boots, she'd be still shaking in them.

Also, was she remembering correctly the plot, and did Quirrell really spend months searching for a way to subdue the giant dog to the point of tricking Hagrid with an almost impossibly hard-to-get and very expensive dragon egg while he was drunk or something? He only had to crack open Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It was all there. She checked. It even suggested spells for the music.

It did make somewhat sense, though. She had a hard time imagining Tom Riddle being very interested in the care of animals, no matter how magical. He had most likely taken Runes and Arithmancy as his elective courses and ignored Care.

Feeling much more relaxed with the immediate danger of being maimed to death by an oversized dog gone and strangely amused by the image of Voldemort attempting to interact with a Hippogriff without offending it, Dahlia squirts the edge of what she judges to be Fluffy's lunging range – trusting him not to be a light sleeper was hard. She moves over to the trapdoor which she's then forced to heave open with a grunt. Together with Quirellmort, she eyes the pitch-black hole.

"I'm going first, aren't I?" She sighs.

Quirrellmort looks unamused. "Get to it."

She doesn't dillydally and just jumps, hands holding onto the back of her skirt to prevent it from flipping up.

It was a lot less scary when she knew it would be a soft landing, but she can't help screaming the whole way down as cold, damp air rushed past her. It was a lot further down than she had expected and falling in the dark an undetermined distance will never not be frightening.

Landing on her back, she immediately feels the Devil's Snare's creepers start twisting around her. She doesn't bother struggling. There was nothing she could do anyway since wandless light or fire was not something she could consistently produce and especially not in a situation where she was unable to properly concentrate.

"Potter?" Quirrellmort calls down, his head – made enormous by his turban – barely visible in the postage-stamp-sized trapdoor.

"It's fine to jump." She replies with a wheeze as her chest is squeezed tight by tendrils.

The man lands beside her with a muffled thump. "A Devil's Snare, after all." His voice dripped with revulsion. "I was certain it would be a Venomous Tentacula."

A simple overpowered Lumos Solem from the teacher is enough to have the plant fleeing. Dahlia quickly scrambles away from it to the stone passageway that leads to the next room.

When the internet takes off and the computers aren't dinosaurs, I'm never again watching tentacle porn. This was a disturbing experience.

Note: that's another two points against Dumbledore. A first-year plant that can be defeated by a first-year spell.

Additional Note: invest in Apple. and Google. Amazon, Facebook. make a list of things to invest in Why haven't I thought of this sooner! I'm going to be rich, rich, rich. Cheers for future knowledge!

Figure out how investing works. Ask Uncle Vernon.

The corridor echoed with their footsteps and the gentle drip of water falling from the ceiling. The nearer they got to the next obstacle, the clearer the soft rustling sound of the keys' wings accompanied by a metallic clinking was. The floor sloped downwards and the temperature was gradually getting colder. The place looked to be even further underground than the dungeons and she wondered if the rooms had been there before or if Dumbledore had them built especially for this. She didn't see a use for them otherwise.

The sudden light of the brilliantly lit chamber is jarring after the darkness of the passageway and she has to blink to get rid of the spots in her eyes.

Quirrellmort strides toward the heavy, wooden door on the opposite side while she remains hovering by the entrance. She wanted to be as far away from him as possible at all times if she could help it.

His wandless unlocking trick doesn't work on this lock and he casts several more spells, his furious scowl becoming more pronounced with each failure.

She shifts nervously as the minutes' tick by, wondering if there was any way she could stall for time. Regrettably, she doesn't think of anything by the time Quirrellmort turns away from the door and glares up at the keys.

"Catch it." He orders her.

By then, she feels comfortable enough to presume he wasn't going to kill her just yet, so she throws him an angry glance. "I'm not a Seeker."

I miscalculated.

"Crucio!"

She'd felt worse pain when she had died, but this was a pretty damn close second. Collapsing to writhe on the wet stone ground like a worm, she screams as she's assaulted by white-hot knives all over her body. It barely lasts half a minute but when Quirrellmort ends the spell and orders her to catch the key again, she doesn't dare argue more.

Stumbling to her feet in silence, Dahlia unsteadily approaches the hovering broomsticks near the entrance of the chamber and climbs on the one that looked the safest. The quality of the school brooms was shit. They were safety hazards. It's a wonder no one had been killed using them yet.

Wiping the tears off her face with a sleeve, she peers up at the winged keys to spot the big rusty one that matched the lock on the door. Spying its bright blue wings among a flock of pink, silver, yellow, and every other color of the rainbow, she kicks off the ground.

When on a broom, what she was good at was speed, sharp turns, and nearly vertical dives. Perfect for a racer. She spent many weekends participating in student-organized races on the Quidditch pitch and while she didn't always win, she was in the top five of the regulars. But those skills weren't helping her in her current situation. What she needed was Harry's knack for noticing and catching small objects in the air.

Hold up. Dahlia pauses near the tall ceiling pretending to search for the key after losing it for the third time. It might actually be a good thing she didn't have Harry's knack. She had wanted to stall Quirrellmort. This was the perfect chance even if she risked being crucioed again each time the key slipped through her fingers.

Halfheartedly chasing after the key, she muses on how she would have built the trap if she ever had wanted to do it. Which she didn't. It was stupid. Fidelius on a desk drawer would have been so much more secure.

First thing first, she would have never left the correct key in the room and would have carried it with her instead. Second, the other keys she would have left behind as decoys. Third, they would have all looked exactly the same except for very minor details to confuse the thief.

That's how it should have been. The way it currently was, it was like Dumbledore wanted it to be beatable. Oh, wait… she forgot. He did.

I couldn't stall for time indefinitely. When Quirrellmort looked impatient enough to curse me again, I made a show of finally catching it and we moved on into McGonagall's room.

I was mainly hoping that the others had noticed I was missing by then and had notified the teachers. I was also hoping the teachers have noticed Quirrell was also missing. Professor Snape's smart and he already suspected him. He should have been able to piece it from there.

Light floods the previously dark chamber and they are treated to the sight of an enormous chessboard, the white featureless chessmen facing them. It was quite creepy.

"I don't play chess. Absolutely rubbish at it." Dahlia instantly says and cowers when Quirrellmort raises his wand. "I swear! I have better luck playing the Chinese Go!"

She wasn't lying. Chess was a favorite in the Slytherin Common Room and she had been banned from ever touching the boards she was so bad at it.

"Useless." The man sneers. "Take the place of a pawn."

Thanks a lot, she sneers back internally, moving to the king's side's outermost square. Like she wasn't already aware that's what both Dumbledore and Voldemort thought of her as.

Obviously, Quirrellmort himself takes the place of the black king. She hadn't been expecting anything else.

A white pawn shifts into a new square and the game begins.

Whether Quirrellmort was a good player, she couldn't say. She just moved according to his orders and hoped she wouldn't be beaten over the head with a stone fist.

The game ends almost half an hour later with her still in one piece and just a move away from promotion. As the white king throws his crown at Quirrellmort's feet, she spitefully takes a step forward.

I may play the pawn now, but I won't always. One day, I will be strong. So strong, no one will control me. Anyone who tries will be crushed under my boot like the insects they are. And that's a promise. I'm not in Slytherin just because I'm a vengeful bitch, morons~

Note: strikeout Ministry flunky as potential career.

The troll's chamber smelled so disgusting she had to clasp a hand over her nose. Quirrellmort, on the other hand, looked completely unaffected.

The thing grunts and slowly shuffles its nearly fifteen feet tall mass of lumpy fat in their direction. Its skin was a dull, granite grey, and head bald with long ears. Its stubby feet had horn things and its arms were so long that its wooden club – mistaken for a small tree trunk at first glance – dragged on the ground.

Her brother was even more of an idiot than she had thought. Personally, Dahlia would have run in the other direction if she had ever accidentally come across a mountain troll and screw anyone but her family and closest friends. Under no circumstance is she risking her life for a virtual stranger.

"Has your brother told you how he beat my troll on Halloween?" Quirrellmort asks conversationally.

"He stuck his wand up its nose." Dahlia unthinkingly answers, distracted by the beast, and quickly corrects herself before the man holding her hostage could react and hurt her again. "I mean, Weasley levitated its club over its head and dropped it."

"How elegant." Quirrellmort sneers. He really was putting on air like he was some nobleman, wasn't he? Seems being his Lord's meatsuit gave him a big head.

…

Hah!

"Well?" Quirrellmort prompts irritably.

"What?" She looks up at him incomprehensibly.

Quirrellmort sighs as if she was as dim as Crabble or Goyle and he had to repeat the simple instructions for the fifth time in a row. "Distract it."

Her head swivels back to the troll, eyes wide. How precisely was she supposed to do that without a wand?

With no other option, she takes off running with a loud yell. Tiny-brained as it was, the troll follows her without much prompting.

Quirrellmort amuses himself by watching her jump around, barely avoiding the swinging club for a good long while. When he finally deigns to help by dropping the blasted stick on its head – because why change something that works – and the troll drops to the floor in an unconscious heap with a loud thump, she's a panting, disheveled mess.

Professor Snape's room provided me with an opportunity to waste even more time. We stayed there long enough for me to memorize the poem. See:

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 onwards, 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.

And all I had to do is suggest that it could be a lie and that either all the potions were poison – which is what a smart Slytherin would have done (for my part, I'd have filed the bottles with Draughts of Living Dead if I had been capable of brewing it) – or the poem was misleading and the correct potions that would allow us to pass through the fiery doorways weren't placed where it said they would be. Quirrellmort had to examine and test every single bottle to make certain we weren't going to accidentally kill ourselves because we foolishly believed a Slytherin.

Note: Professor Snape is a surprisingly good poet. Did he ever write some about Lil – Eugh, no. Horrible mental image. He's not the type.

Next up, the Mirror room.

Dumbledore was right. I could have gone my whole life without looking into it and be glad for it.

It was magnificent. Even propped up against the wall, it was almost as high as the ceiling and the shoulder-width of three American football players wide, with an ornate golden frame and two clawed animal feet. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi was written on the top in elaborate calligraphy.

"I show not your face, but your heart's desire." Dahlia translates in a reverend murmur.

She wanted to look into it. What was her heart's desire? To see her old family again? To not have been born a Potter? The need to know was eating her up from the inside.

Quirrellmort strides up to the Mirror proudly and pauses when he realizes he had no idea where the Stone was or how to get it. He frowns at his reflection.

"Potter, come here." He orders. "What do you see?"

She slides up to him nervously, and after closing her eyes for a short second in preparation, resolutely meets the equally green gaze of her reflection.

It was still Dahlia Vivian Potter, waving her wand and conjuring silver butterflies. At her feet sat Softpaws, her much-beloved Siamese cat from Godric's Hollow. Behind her stood James and Lily Potter, older than the last time she saw them, their hands on her shoulders and smiling gently. Sirius had one arm around her father's shoulders and the other around Remus. On her mother's side, collapsed sloppily on the ground, were Uncles Gid and Fab, mouths open in soundless laughter. They were being angrily lectured by Professor Snape whose sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He didn't have a Dark Mark. Harry was also there, hovering above it all on a broom, his hair windswept and forehead smooth and scarless.

I'm not like Harry. It's not family that I want, but this world without Voldemort.

I understand now. As much as I miss my old life, I love magic too much to give it up. If I were offered the chance, I don't think I'd ever want to go back. Not if it meant leaving my wand behind.

"Well?" Quirrellmort jerks her out of her wishful staring. "Tell me what you see."

"What my life would be like if the Dark Lord hadn't existed." She replies honestly. Why lie? There was no point in it.

Quirrellmort curses and shoves her harshly aside. He begins casting spells on the Mirror.

Stumbling away, Dahlia sits down beside the flaming doorway. The room was cold and the enchanted fire had warmed the stones around it to a pleasant temperature. It was so lovely, she actually almost nodded off before Professor Snape comes stomping in dramatically.

Quirrellmort reacts quickly. Some sort of spell has her dragged through the air to him and he painfully grabs her by the hair. She's spun around so that her body covered his, and the tip of his wand rose to press against the side of her throat. "I knew you'd be useful." The man hisses into her ear and raises his voice to address Professor Snape. "Try anything and the girl's dead."

She swallows harshly, wildly raking her mind for a way to get out of her current situation.

"You won't win against me." Professor Snape warns softly, his own wand raised threateningly. He takes a step closer. And then another. And another.

"Severus –" Dahlia stamps her heel hard on Quirrellmort's toes and nails him with the back of her fist in his privates. He howls, involuntarily jerking his hand away from her throat from the pain and she takes the opportunity to slide out of his hold.

Wizards never expected muggle techniques. She'd learned that way back in her first year when people didn't like her much. And it wasn't like she was some Shaolin monk kungfu martial artist. She'd once had a week of self-defense lessons in her high school Phys Ed class and had taken a couple years of karate lessons because she despised traditional fitness gyms but she had to stay active and in shape somehow.

"Potter!" Professor Snape calls and tosses her a pale stick.

"Protego!" Quirrellmort's curse splatters harmlessly against her hastily raised shield and she dives into the space between the back of the Mirror and the wall, wand pressed to her chest to avoid the spellfire of the adult's duel. Panting, she leans out slightly to observe and to wait for a good moment to run over to the side of the room with the exit. The ice flowing through her body after drinking the Fire-Protection potion has yet to abate and it should be still possible for her to escape through the flames while Quirrellmort was distracted.

There is only one good chance. Which she squanders by being too busy gaping at the horror that had been revealed to her. The movies had done it no justice to the awfulness of the sight of two faces on one head.

That's right, you heard her. Quirrell's turban unravels in the middle of the fight.

It might have been a stray spell, it may have been already loose and Quirrell's moving around had made it worse. Whatever the case, there was a sudden stillness in the room as the purple fabric falls to the ground, uncovering its secret.

Dahlia had, of course, know what was underneath, but she had never expected to actually see it.

"Severus…" Voldemort's face hisses and the man chokes in disbelief on his next spell as he meets the Dark Lord's eyes in the Mirror. From her hiding spot, she could see it in all its glory; chalk white, unnatural red eyes, slits for nostrils. The abnormal bone structure that made it look like two heads had been fused together.

Gone was the handsome face she had glimpsed on Halloween night.

Dark Arts didn't affect the caster's appearance. If it did, there would have been either a whole lot more disfigured people walking around or much less Dark wizards. She had read cursed scars were hard to hide long-term with potions and charms, and the appearance change couldn't be all that different. She theorized Voldemort's deteriorated looks were a consequence of splitting his soul into so many increasingly smaller parts. With his original body lost, his appearance could now only be the reflection of the state of his soul. Which was ugly and torn to shreds.

"My Lord –"

Dumbledore bursts into the room.

She can see the exact moment Professor Snape makes his decision between his Masters. His mouth curls into a snarl, his eyes harden, and he flings what she thought to be a Bone-Breaking Curse at Quirrell. It misses and hits the Mirror.

The priceless artifact hiding an even more priceless artifact shatters into a thousand and one pieces.

"NO!" Voldermort shrieks, high-pitched. Dumbledore looks with dismay at the glittering shards. "YOU FOOL! MY STONE!"

"Petrificus Totalus." Dahlia's lips barely move and the whisper is so quiet even she had difficulty hearing it. No one notices, distracted by the glass remains as they were.

The curse hits Quirrell's back, and his arms and legs snap together. He falls to the ground, stiff as a board, and Voldemort hits the ground face first.

She stifles a hysterical snort.

"Excellent job, Miss Potter." Professor Snape says as she climbs out from behind the empty frame of the Mirror.

"Miss Potter?" Dumbledore looks even more startled. Probably had been expecting Harry.

"Is this really the Dark Lord?" She asks because it would have been suspicious if she didn't.

"How did you know?" Professor Snape exclaims.

Ah, it wasn't obvious?

Abort! Abort!
She blinks up innocently at her teacher. "You called him Lord." It wasn't exactly hush-hush that he was a former Death Eater in the Pit.

Thankfully, they appear convinced and for once, things go her way because from Quirrell's prone body rises up black mist, distracting them from questioning her further.

With a banshee-like wail, Voldemort's wraith makes its escape.

I just had to interrupt Quirrellmort mid heist, huh? What's next? Battling the Basilisk? Running from werewolves and facing Dementors? Forget it. Not gonna happen. Nu-uh.

Nest year and the ones following I'm going to be nothing more than a background character.

I don't own Harry Potter. Anything you recognize is Rowling's.

Also, I now have a Tumblr. It's under Quildosse too and I mainly reblog stuff. Lots of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Well, Silmarillion. Some Nirvana in Fire and Word of Honor, my two most favorite C-dramas. Check it out if you feel like it.