There will be one more chapter after this, posted tomorrow. Then No Mouth But Some Serpent's starts on Monday, to continue the story. That means this particular story will stop updating after tomorrow, so don't be surprised when that happens!
And here is the battle, wherein I proceed to mess with everyone's head, but most especially poor Harry's.
Chapter Nineteen: The Boy-Who-LivedHarry's Blasting Curse melted against invisible shields, but it had the useful effect of making Quirrell stop reaching for Connor and stare at him. Harry readied another spell, his mind spinning through the various effects, looking for something that would cause Quirrell considerable pain as well as fling him backwards.
Then the snake was on him.
She moved faster than she had when dragging Connor through the bushes, her jaws open and her body scything the grass as she struck. Harry darted away from her, and her mouth hit the ground, but she whirled and headed for him again. Harry cried out, "Protego!", only to have the snake's jaws shoot through the Shield Charm and rip the cloth of his sleeve. He stepped further back, hearing her hiss as though she were laughing, and cast a glance at Connor.
At least I know she's a real snake, not a magical one.
"What is this?" the cold voice asked, its accents harsher than ever. Harry fought the urge to sink to his knees as the pain in his scar became worse. Quirrell was staring straight ahead, from what he could see, and Harry could not reconcile that cold voice with the blank expression on his face. "Finish him, Nagini!"
The snake—Nagini, apparently—hissed and gathered herself. Harry had the feeling that this strike, when it came, would be too fast to avoid.
Meanwhile, Quirrell was reaching for Connor again.
Harry cast a hand out and snapped, "Wingardium Leviosa!" He performed it wandless, so as to keep his wand pointed towards Connor. It worked. His magic arrested Nagini in the middle of her charge and bounced her into the air like the Muggle balloons Harry had seen on one of their birthdays.
Harry wound up the force of the spell and threw Nagini over the Forbidden Forest. She soared away with a trailing hiss that sounded oddly like a cry of pain. Harry dismissed that. He wasn't thinking clearly.
He faced Quirrell and pointed his wand.
Quirrell had stopped reaching for Connor once more. His stare this time was more pointed, but also more leisurely, and Harry went back to trying to think of a spell that would hurt, get around the shields, and cast Quirrell out of range of whatever protections he had. Harry had been squinting since he came into the clearing, but he couldn't make out the lines of wards. These spells were more complicated than the ones he'd trained himself to see, then.
"You are unusual, boy," the voice said. "So much power. Why did I not sense this about you at first?"
Harry saw no point in answering such irrelevant chatter. He had chosen his spell. Admittedly, it was an odd choice, but this was an odd battle. Quirrell, or whoever he really was, had had time to prepare his ground, and Harry had not.
"Reducto!" he intoned, and packed behind the spell all the force of his will, joining it to the force of his wand. He envisioned the shields splitting and cracking, the way the egg had when the centaurs tested him.
The spell flew straight and true, and showed the shields as it smacked against them in a rainbow aurora of light. Harry saw faint cracks outlining its impact, and memorized their position as the light flared and vanished. "Reducto!" he cried again, this time targeting one of the cracks.
It shattered, and some of the force of the curse got through and to Quirrell, who staggered. Harry came in, fast and low to the ground, just behind the spell, trying to get Connor and drag him away before Quirrell could recover.
The cold voice said, "Cavea," a spell that Harry had never heard of before, and blue light flashed into existence around Connor. Harry tried to thrust his hand through anyway, and recoiled. He might as well have tried to punch a fist through solid steel.
He climbed to his feet and got in between his brother and Quirrell—an easy task, because Quirrell showed no signs of coming closer just yet. Harry breathed harshly. He could feel the beginnings of sweat on his cheeks and forehead. His heart blurred and burned in his ears, loudly enough that he found it hard to make out what Quirrell was saying.
"What should I do, master?" whined the voice that Harry knew from class, minus the stutter. "The boy is too powerful for me to easily face."
"Unleash me."
Quirrell gave a little shudder, but it was gone when he looked and smiled at Harry. "Yes," he said softly. "That might be best." Then he turned his back on Harry.
Harry snapped his wand up. Is Quirrell stupid? This is such a prime opportunity to strike—
No, no. He's not stupid. He must be planning something.
Warily, Harry held his spells, and watched as Quirrell began to unwrap the back of the turban.
Harry expected to see bare skull at most. What he saw, as the purple wrappings fell away, was a second face imposed on the back of Quirrell's head. The nose was stretched and pressed flat, the eyes impossible narrow slits of crimson, the mouth a gash. The eyes pierced him, and from the mouth came the voice in a high, cold laugh familiar to Harry from old dreams.
His scar roared fiercely to life, sending him to his knees. Harry couldn't hold back a cry this time, and it was echoed by a choked whimper from Connor. A quick look over his shoulder showed that his brother was unharmed, though he felt around the edges of the cage spell with a bewildered look on his face.
"I should have known," the voice said, in a hiss that would have done credit to Nagini. Harry forced himself to listen around the pain in his brow. What the voice was saying could be important. "The prophecy was never whole, and Peter Pettigrew has always been a fool. It was you. The older one, the more powerful one. What I saw as a nuisance to be dismissed was in fact the object of my desires." Quirrell took a step backwards, so that the face moved closer. Harry smelled its breath, cold and foul as grave dirt. "How does it feel, boy, to know that you are facing Lord Voldemort for a second time?"
There was a pause, as though Voldemort truly expected some sort of answer. Harry dug his hands into the ground and gave one. "I admit I'm impressed, since this is only the first time I've done it. But reassured, since I have the boy who defeated you at my back."
The voice began to laugh, and laugh. The pain in Harry's head grew worse, strong enough that his training couldn't fight it. He catapulted forward and lay on the ground, losing consciousness for a brief, intense second.
When he woke, Quirrell held him, staring into his face with his own, normal one. Harry wanted to cast a curse, but couldn't find his breath for a long moment. When it did emerge, it was in a sob of pain. His head felt as if it were about to crack like the egg-shaped stone.
"My lord commanded me to be done with the Boy-Who-Lived," Quirrell whispered. "I admit I didn't foresee doing it this way, but it is useful." He dropped Harry and took a step backwards. Harry scrabbled for strength, knowing that whatever was to come would be bad.
Quirrell didn't disappoint him. "Crucio!"
The spell snapped Harry's weakening Shield Charm. Agony exploded from his belly this time, and traveled outward through his limbs, rivaling and then eclipsing his scar. Harry screamed. There was no shame in screaming, his mother had told him once, the first evening that she revealed he was likely to be tortured. Torture often broke a man. Harry couldn't allow it to break him, and so the worst thing to do would be to combat and try to override the pain. He would roll with it instead, scream, writhe, beg, do whatever he must to emerge on the other side alive and fighting for Connor.
He was down to babbling pleas when the curse was lifted. Harry gasped and curled up on his side, then uncurled hastily. His sides ached with perfectly timed bursts of anguish. It felt as though one of his ribs was broken, though so far as Harry knew that wasn't a side-effect of Crucio.
"That," said Voldemort, "was payment for the first few months I spent as a bodiless spirit, powerless to affect the world, gazing on their celebrations, the weak fools who thought they'd defeated me. There will be many more to come. I have years and years of suffering to pay you back for, boy."
Harry lifted his head. Tears blurred his sight, and he'd shaken his glasses off, blurring it further. But he didn't think he could ever mistake again the figure that stood before him. He would know the sight of Quirrell, and the sound of Voldemort's voice, until the day he died.
He did wonder, hazily, what Voldemort was babbling about, but that didn't matter. A sequence of spells had entered his head, beautifully timed and perfectly rendered. He could pull it off, if he could only summon enough strength to make Voldemort angry. And it had to be the kind of anger that would make him react without thinking, charging forward to punish Harry physically instead of with a curse from a distance.
Harry tested his shaking limbs, and nodded. It would have to be now. He didn't think he could run if he took another Crucio.
"You're the weak one," he said, and put as much contempt into his voice as he could. "Not having another measure ready in case something like this happened to you, a backup plan? What do you think you are? A Slytherin?" Harry laughed weakly, and then coughed. He didn't like the sensation in his body when he coughed, or the fact that some of the specks that landed on the back of his hand were red, but there wasn't much he could do about that. He did like the fact that Quirrell had gone tense and still, that his silence was a listening one. "Dumbledore's twice the Slytherin that you'll ever be. At least his plans stand a chance of working once in a while, and he wasn't defeated by a baby."
Quirrell came for him.
Harry called on his wandless magic. He couldn't hold a wand right now. "Wingardium Leviosa!"
Quirrell flew into the air. He performed the countercharm, of course, and was already coming back down, but that bought Harry a few seconds.
"Cavea!"
That did nothing at all, as Harry had expected, but it enraged Voldemort. "You think to use my own spell against me?" he asked, hard enough that Harry thought flecks of spit were probably flying from the mouth on the back of Quirrell's head. "You insolent, impudent—"
"Expelliarmus!" Harry yelled, throwing such a force of will behind that word that he felt drained afterwards. It worked. Quirrell's wand soared out of his relaxing grip and fell to the ground beside Harry. Harry didn't try to touch it. He still couldn't hold it, with his hand shaking, and he didn't want to risk contamination, as he couldn't be sure that Voldemort wasn't linked to Quirrell's wand core somehow. He continued speaking, not giving Voldemort a chance to get a word in edgewise. "Fumo! Specularis! Protego!"
Smoke washed up from the ground around him, and the Shield Charm snapped back into existence. Harry forced himself shakily to his feet. He had to run, had to move, which was the whole purpose of the Smoke Charm. He kicked Quirrell's wand in front of him as he staggered forward, hoping to keep it from the Death Eater's grip as long as possible.
He darted towards Connor, whom the blue glow of the Cavea spell revealed pounding on the walls of his prison and mouthing what looked like obscenities. Harry gathered will and love both as he ran. No trouble, no trouble, harnessing love this time, when his beloved twin was in danger.
Crack, he told the force of the Cavea spell.
It did nothing at all.
Harry slid to his knees beside the prison, bracing his own hands on the blue light. Connor met him, palm-to-palm, but Harry couldn't feel him at all. He growled and focused the clear Specularis window on just a tiny point right past his left hand. You will crack. I will it so. I want—
A powerful rope snared him around the middle and tugged him away from the prison. Vengeful hisses in his ear told him that Nagini had returned. Harry struggled wildly, but he was no match for a snake as large as she was. She carried him firmly away from the spell and Connor, and deposited him at a pair of feet as the Smoke Charm vanished abruptly.
Quirrell said nothing for a long moment. Harry closed his eyes and tried to breathe. His head and his ribs and the middle of his belly, where Nagini had grabbed him, all shouted at him in a symphony of aches. He had never hurt so much.
"You have caused me too much trouble," said Voldemort's voice. "I would have been content to torture you to death and then pass on. That is not enough, not now. Now you must watch your brother die."
Harry's anger woke.
Nagini let him go with a shriek that sounded too human to Harry's ears as her body burst into flames. Harry paid no more attention to her, though he had the vague impression she was rolling about, trying to put out the fire. He struggled to his feet, snapping, "Accio wand!"
His wand settled into his left palm a moment later, the familiar feel of the cypress wood soothing him and solidifying his rage. Harry stalked towards Voldemort. He felt as though he wore immense robes, like Snape's perhaps, and couldn't understand the feeling until he saw the grass bending away from him, some of it beginning to smoke and take fire. This was his magic, spreading around him like wings, rising in a silent, deadly wash that hummed until Harry's ears burnt. He was no longer tired, and all his pains had vanished.
Quirrell backed away a few steps. "M-m-master?" This time, Harry felt certain, the stammer in his voice was real.
Not Connor. Not Connor. The words were under Harry's skin, blazing in his shoulders, rife in his ears, beating just beneath the roof of his mouth. He called more magic, and then more, more than he had ever dared summon under Lily's supervision or even in the centaurs' trial. The air in front of him blurred with a haze of power. It wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Harry blinked, and caught a glimpse of green light, and a crib beside his own, and Voldemort's startled face—
Then that was gone as someone else's magic answered his, as rich, as powerful, as destructive. It was Voldemort's, and he was laughing, a sound of purest exultation.
"I know more than you, boy," he said, while his magic locked and linked with Harry's, bearing an answer to every defense, a sheath for every sword, a key for every door. "I have had time, and more than time, to develop my defenses. You are a worthy opponent, that I will grant you, but you simply—cannot—stand—against—me."
For every one of the last five words, his magic became a battering ram and struck at Harry's. Harry gasped as his pain returned, and then new pains started, weak points opening and running in his defenses. Once one crack spread, a dozen new ones sprouted. Harry tried to protect himself, tried to spread the wings and then curl them around in front of him to shield, but he was too new at this manipulation of raw force, and Voldemort was not.
With a shivering of the air like a fall of dust, one of Harry's weak points gave way. He fell to the ground, feeling the Dark magic above him flowing over his like serpents. They twined and writhed and hissed at him, sounding as human as Nagini, and more human than Voldemort.
"Enough toying. I would have enjoyed taking longer, but we cannot. We must retrieve the Stone. Quirrell. Take his brother, kill him, and then turn and use the Killing Curse on the boy. We must take no chances."
"Yes, Master," Harry heard Quirrell say, from long ago and far away beneath a dark sea. He managed to open his eyes against pressing weight in time to see Quirrell stride up to the blue light and dismiss it with a gesture. Connor lay helpless before him, crawling away and probably trying to mouth a spell, but unable to muster any defenses.
Harry tried to lunge upward. The weight of the serpents pinned him. Desperate, writhing, hating this with every fiber of his being, he sent a flow of love towards Connor.
I have loved you since we were children, brother, playing together. You were destined for a life of pain. I wanted to keep you innocent. I waited too long. I'm sorry, Connor, so sorry. Please live. I want that more than anything. Please live. Live.
Quirrell's left hand gripped his wand. With the right, he touched Connor.
A moment later, he howled.
White light, bright as magnesium, enveloped his hand. He hopped backward, wringing it and yelling, but that didn't stop the light. It spread fiercely up his arm, eating. He whirled around, and he was near enough now that Harry could make out the radiance crisping his skin, sloughing it away, revealing layers of flesh and muscle beneath that it also consumed like a starving beast.
"Shake it off! Shake it off! Fight it!"
The weight of the Dark magic on him was gone a moment later; Harry thought Voldemort had pulled his power home to fight the destruction of his host body. He leaped to his feet, the pain vanishing again, the wings spreading, his own magic roaring in gladness. He struck home, and hard, the Blasting Curse springing from his lips and hitting Quirrell.
Quirrell, of course, was already dying. Harry had only struck to express his own anger, and he watched, not wishing to miss a moment, as the light spread and captured Quirrell's face, taking his head almost gently.
Voldemort hissed, and then a mass of dark light grew like a boil on the back of Quirrell's head and erupted, spraying like pus into the air. Voldemort flew low over Connor as he soared free. Connor screamed and screamed, one hand rising to clutch at his scar.
Harry ran to him and crouched over him, shielding him both from the sight of Quirrell's last moments and from any harm that Voldemort might try to do him. If the Dark Lord possessed his brother now, he would have a fight on his hands. Harry would show him.
The Dark Lord did no such thing. "Until we meet again, Harry Potter," he said, sheer hatred in his voice, and then his formless form flowed away over the Forbidden Forest and was gone.
Harry exhaled and glanced towards Quirrell. The flame had finished its work. For a moment, it glowed, a dying star at the heart of a black night sky, and then it disappeared with a crack. Quirrell's remains collapsed into ashes.
Harry thought of something and gripped his wand, but when he looked around, there was no sign of Nagini.
They breathed in silence for a long moment, and then Connor whispered, his voice shaky, "Harry, how did I do that? What happened?"
Harry smiled and pushed the hair away from his brother's scar to trace it with a finger. Connor shivered. The heart wasn't bleeding, Harry was glad to note, but it did have an angry silver glow to it, like the light that had flashed between him and Draco when he accepted the life debt. The glow faded as Harry watched. "You don't know, Connor?" he asked. "You told me the answer before the snake took you and started this whole mess."
Connor blinked at him. "I did?"
Harry nodded and hugged his brother close. He tried to think how near he had come to losing him, and felt his mind recoil. He could not comprehend that, not right now. He could feel love, and rejoice, and he did so. "You said that you were the Boy-Who-Lived. You are. Voldemort couldn't touch you. The force of your love ate his flesh. That has to be it. Voldemort is corrupt, he couldn't bear something so good. One touch, and Quirrell—" He hesitated, because he had prevented Connor from seeing that death for a reason, and then finished, "Was gone."
Connor shuddered for a long moment, his breath coming short and fast. Then he said, "Yes. That's it, isn't it?"
Harry nodded slowly, and closed his eyes. His pains were making themselves felt again. He coughed, and felt something thicker than saliva bubble in the back of his throat. He wanted to sink down on the earth and never move again.
On the other hand, Connor wasn't safely back at Hogwarts yet, and that thought urged him to move. He stood, gently tugging on Connor's hand. "Get up."
"But I'm so tired," Connor whispered.
"Lean on me," said Harry, and took Connor's weight on his left side, the less injured one. "Where's your wand?"
After a moment of searching, Connor found it, and they proceeded slowly back in the direction of Hogwarts. Connor paused to fire off red sparks every few steps.
Harry, meanwhile, depended as much on his own happiness to carry him along as his body. He wouldn't have minded doing a dance, if he had been up to it.
This proves it. This bloody proves it. Connor can defeat Voldemort. He's protected from his direct touch, and if the Dark Lord takes another host body, the same thing can happen to it. When Connor's strong enough, he's going to face him, and he's going to rid the wizarding world of him.
There were the things Voldemort had said, of course, the personal hatred in his voice for Harry and the babble about Harry being something or other, but Harry had already decided what to believe about that.
The Dark Lord is a liar. Who can trust what comes out of his mouth? I would rather trust the light that ate Quirrell when he tried to touch Connor. Light tells no lies.