Waking up wasn't gradual, exactly — it felt closer to flickering off and then back on again, like lights in a power outage. The first thing Sarah noticed, besides the fact that she was conscious again, was that everything hurt, most especially her chest. As she tried to move, away from a floor that she was starting to realize was cold, and stone, in a room that was badly lit, she found that her neck and shoulders were stiff and tight.

She made herself move anyway, rising slowly to her feet, as the last few moments before she'd blacked out started coming back. Quirrell at her door. Something about the children? A red light.

She whipped her head around the room — setting off sparks in her neck and making her head throb worse — looking for Harry or his friends, but none of them were there. There was no one there, except for the Quirrell, who had his back to her. He was peering into an ornate mirror, muttering to himself, totally ignoring her.

He hadn't taken her wand. She closed her fingers around the handle and let out a soft, relieved breath when the carved sycamore warmed to her touch. It felt real, and alive, and like she wasn't basically alone with a psycho. Or whatever Quirrell's problem was.

She took in a deep breath and then asked, "Why did you do it?"

Quirrell paused. His spine straightened and he seemed to take his time before he turned to face her. "Attack you, you mean? Bring you here? Pretend for so long to be w-w-weak, st-stuttering, and fright-t-ened?"

"Either. Both. Any of it. Just what's going on, Quirrell?"

What looked like distaste crumpled over his mouth and hooked his eyebrows down. He looked away from her for a moment, and when he looked back, there was a feverish light in his eyes. "I wanted to see him rise again. He deserves to rise again. I've been keeping him alive. Do you know what's in here? What that old fool has hidden among his students?"

"The Philosopher's stone. Turns lead into gold. Grants eternal life."

"Not quite the idiot we thought, then. He told me there must be more to you, that his greatest enemy would never pick up a tool that had no use. Personally, I'd always assumed you more that old cat's project." He paused, considering, and then said, "You are aware, are you not, of how small and insular wizarding Britain has become? Even if we've cast off the best of the old ideas, we've no room for anything new, either."

"I don't see what that has to do with the Philosopher's stone," Sarah replied, carefully.

"It's more to do with why I brought you here. I'm here to make sure the Dark Lord lives again, but you — you'll be a minor, necessary sacrifice. The other professors know what you are, you know. How could anyone trust you, the consort to the Goblin King? Practically a child-stealer yourself."

So she was going to be his patsy. She crossed her arms and hoped that it looked resolute rather than like she was cold and scared and trying, desperately, to think of something she could do to a trained wizard. What had that spell been?

"That's a bad plan. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life screaming that I didn't do… whatever it is you want me to be blamed for. And if you think Jareth would stand for —"

"It'll be the Kiss for you, I assume. Or Azkaban," Quirrell told her, mildly and unconcerned, like what he was saying made any sense. The Kiss? Azakaban? Were they spells? Prisons? "As for the Goblin King, he's the head of an enemy nation. At least so far as the Ministry is concerned — my master will fix that."

"And who's that? Your master, I mean?" She closed her fingers tighter around her wand. Stupefy? Yes. That had been it. And then a red light.

The fever glow receded from his eyes. Instead, he looked vaguely quizzical, like he was dealing with someone so stupid that they confused him. "Why, the Dark Lord himself, Williams," and he was opening his mouth to say something else, probably snide —

Sarah lifted her arm, wand pointed straight at him, and hissed, "Stupefy."

This time, the red beam lanced from her wand toward his chest, but Quirrell just waved his wand in a lazy-looking circle and said, "Protego." Her spell struck something in front of him, some sort of bubble of air.

Of course there was a force field spell, some distant part of her thought. Why wouldn't there be? It looked like something out of Star Wars.

She dodged away from him before he could try to stun her again, snapping her wand out. "Incendio!" Every move made her lungs ache and her neck throb.

"Aguamenti," he snarled, so quickly it must have been reflex. Water streamed from his wand, putting her fire out immediately. He didn't even check to see if it had worked, just looked at her with burning hot eyes and fired back at her with the stunning spell again.

She flung herself to the side, and time seemed to move slowly as she went. She moved her own wand in a circle, more complete than his gesture had been, and yelled, "Protego!"

The combination of moving away and the force field spell meant that the red light glanced harmlessly off air, three feet away from her, and she marched forward. She jabbed her wand in his direction and mimicked his earlier spell: "Aguamenti!"

"Protego," he said, with that lazy gesture again, and then, "Expelliarmus," and she felt the burn as it struck her wand. There was a bare moment where she tried to keep it in her grasp as it tried to jerk away, and then her wand was sailing through the air, toward him. He caught it in his left hand and then levelled his wand at her again.

"Imperio," he said, and there was no dodging that one. "On your knees. Hands in the air."

Her knees buckled. Her arms and hands rose. Very far away, there was a tiny voice, more like a buzzing noise. But the world was music, and light, and she understood that it would stay that way if she stayed down and kept her hands up.

"You are going to stay there, just like that, until I tell you otherwise."

Music and light, and the world didn't quite make sense anymore, and there was a voice, small and strange — not her voice, surely — that insisted that she didn't want to stay put or listen to him. The rest of her understood, and did.

Quirrell turned back to the mirror, and Sarah waited.

A door banged open. It was Harry who rushed in — and Harry who stopped, confused, staring at the two of them, as Quirrell turned away from the mirror a second time.

"Professor Quirrell? Professor Williams?" His eyes flashed, green even in the dim, unreliable light, as he turned to look at Sarah.

"Not who you were expecting?"

"No, I — Snape —?"

Quirrell laughed. "Severus? He does seem the type, doesn't, he, swooping around like a demented bat. But he would never dare this. I am the one who hunted unicorns for the Dark Lord. I am the one who brought the troll to the dungeon — I've always had a way with trolls — and I was the one to hex your broom." A pause, and a smile that some part of her could recognize was truly ghastly. "I will be the one to kill the Dark Lord's greatest enemy."

Something in the music and light that made up the world began to shift. She still felt no need to move, but it was like the song was changing. There was a low, insistent drumbeat now, something old vibrating up from the stones she knelt on. She could swear it was beating in time to her heart. She was so focused on that new sound that she missed whatever Harry said in reply.

Harry had moved up to the mirror, and from where Sarah was watching, his reflection changed, turned wrong, for just a second. She quickly lost track again, though, as the drumbeat grew louder and louder.

Whatever he said next, it was a lie. She could tell that much, even if she didn't know precisely what he was saying. He wasn't a bad liar, either; his voice didn't tremble and his eyes didn't dart.

Quirrell reached up, grasping the turban he'd worn since the day Sarah had met him, and pulled it away. It dropped uselessly to the floor, and she couldn't help staring at what she saw. It was a discordance in the song, a silencing of the drums, and the light around it was dark and sour. It took her a few moments to piece together what she was seeing.

There was a pale, vaguely reptilian face in the back of Quirrell's head. Not only were its eyes open, they stared around the room with a sort of cold hatred that crawled into her, perching in the marrow of her bones, turning everything to ice. There was no madness, here. Just a horrible logic that left no room for humanity.

"Not only his greatest servant," Quirrell hissed, "but his — his body, as well."

Harry looked as if he wanted to back away. "That's Voldemort?"

"The Dark Lord himself," Quirrell replied, and reached out, grabbing him by the shoulders —

And recoiled, shrieking, his hands outstretched, fingers splayed.

"Master," he cried — and was really on the edge of crying; his voice had gone watery and thick, "I cannot hold him! My hands, my hands!"

The red, cold eyes settled on her.

"Then let her be the one," the face of Voldemort said. Its voice was high and thin and nasal, like there wasn't enough air passing through whatever it used to speak. Some part of her had the space to wonder just how it spoke. The rest of her was remembering Brynn Terfel and his rich, resonant baritone. In Seinen armen das Kind war tot. Voldemort's voice was the literal opposite of that.

Quirrell raised his wand to point at her. "Kill him," he said to her.

Sarah rose to her feet. The drums grew louder and louder, until she could feel the stones vibrate.

And the world changed again. Light and music didn't seem to matter. The edges of everything glowed very faintly. Nothing looked intangible, but nothing looked permanent, either. Nothing was as it seemed; nothing had to stay what it was. Anything could be something else. The world around her existed in its present state at her sufferance.

My will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great, she had said seven years ago, and the words were with her again, echoing down the days and seasons, and they were true.

"No," she said, and, "the child lives," and she wasn't sure she was speaking English. The words felt strange in her mouth; it felt more like she had said Ná. Se bearn ġeleofaþ.

Quirrell turned to look at her, exposing the back of his head to Harry, who chose that moment to reach up, grabbing the pale face in the palm of his hand. Both Quirrell and Voldemort screamed.

They did not scream again when she reached out her hand and turned the stone floor of the room to iron. Harry stomped on it, puzzled, before reaching up to touch Quirrell again. His skin smoked and hissed, all but bubbling, and when she took a breath in, it smelled like burning bacon. Harry's nose wrinkled in distaste, and he backed away.

She reached a hand out again, and the iron began reshaping itself. When she pointed, a sharp iron bar lanced toward Quirrell. He managed to dodge it, but she made a second one, and a third. That one went through his calf, and he stumbled, crying out again. He quickly aimed his wand at it and yelled a word in a language she did not immediately recognize, but understood anyway.

His wand burned through the iron bar, and he moved away again. He lifted the purple cloth of his turban from the floor and wound some of it around his leg. The rest, he transfigured from cloth to thick rope. There were handles at each end.

Sarah turned her attention to the transfigured garrote, and cloth that had been rope became a rattlesnake. Quirrell dropped it, transfiguring the snake swiftly back to cloth. He staggered forward, reaching out to wrap his hands around Harry's throat. Harry hissed in pain, eyes squeezing shut as he tried to twist away, and ended up grabbing Quirrell's hands in his own.

She held her hand out, and then snapped off the iron bar once it was long enough to reach her palm from the floor. She moved forward as quickly as she could, holding her skirts up with one hand. By the time she reached them, the burns and blisters had streaked up Quirrell's arms, well past the elbow, and it looked like even his ear was frying. Voldemort's face had its own eyes clenched shut, gasping and hissing in pain, almost but not quite drowned out by Quirrell's and Harry's screams. The scent of burning pork had grown thicker, now, almost thick enough to choke.

She let go of her skirt and transferred her left hand to join her right on the bar. She lifted the bar up above her shoulder, like this was high school softball, and then swung, pivoting her hips to get as much force as she could behind it.

When the metal hit, the impact jarred up her arms, all the way to her shoulders. She could have sworn her teeth even rattled a little. Her fingers tingled, numb, and she watched as the face like a chalk-white lizard seemed to curve inwards, whatever bone had been supporting it clearly dented and fractured by the strike.

Quirrell's grip loosened and he pitched sideways, crumpling to the iron floor.

Harry's eyes opened up just enough to look at her. He put one hand to his throat and tried to take a deep breath, then reeled, collapsing first into a sit and then falling over.

Sarah managed to catch him before his head hit the ground. She lowered him down gently, then rolled him onto his side. She opened his mouth with two fingers, then listened for breaths. He was breathing in and out, but wheezing badly.

There was nothing in front of the door. She gathered up Harry, awkwardly looping her arms through his armpits, and dragged him out of the room.


Where she promptly discovered at least seven bottles of who even knew what, and Hermione Granger, curled up on the floor. Some part of her seized up in panic, but when she bent down, Hermione was warm to the touch, with a slow but easily found pulse. She was definitely breathing better than Harry.

Sarah slumped down beside Hermione, certain that Ron was in the third floor restricted area, too, but not sure how was she was supposed to get three kids through whatever traps Quirrell had dragged or levitated her through. She leaned back against the doorframe and closed her eyes for a moment, sighing. Her heart had finally stopped pounding like an alarm bell, and the glow around the edges of everything had faded away.

She opened her mouth, and said, "No. I'm not gonna kill him." For good measure, she added, "And I'm not gonna sit there, and I'm not gonna —"

Well, was she a witch or wasn't she?

She stood, and swept all the bottles of glass onto the floor. None of them broke. She pointed at them, not bothering with a wand, and reminded herself that anything could be anything else. Glass could become, for example, a pair of stretchers she could drag. She imagined them in detail, the black metal frames, the white cotton fabric for the kids to rest on, the long tow ropes.

She gently moved both Harry and Hermione onto them, and then dragged them from the room.

The next room was a chess set. She couldn't help but stare at the figures, all as tall — or taller, in the case of the knights — as adults humans, and all seemingly made from stone. Even the floor was mostly black and white squares.

As one, the chessmen turned their heads to stare at her. That didn't seem to matter nearly as much as the young, lanky redhead who lay on the floor. There were dots of red visible on a few tiles of white marble. She dropped the handles and went straight to him, kneeling down to turn him over.

He was still unconscious, and there was a bad bump on the top of his head, complete with a cut crusted with blood. She tried to think back to high school soccer — football, here — and how many people she'd seen take a soccer ball to the crown of their skull. That was supposed to be the toughest, part right?

She gnawed her lip, unsure what to do, and began to shake Ron awake. His eyes were just starting to flutter open, and the chessmen were beginning to rearrange themselves on the board, when the door at the opposite end of the room banged open.

"Praecipio eam," Minerva's voice snapped, and the chessmen all dropped their weapons, kneeling.

Sarah looked up from Ron, and saw Minerva, Snape, and Flitwick heading toward her. Snape's robes were billowing, and his eyes had been narrowed.

"Quirrell," Sarah told them. "He's — he's in the last room. The mirror."

"Does he have the stone?" Snape's voice was once again that soft, deceptive quiet. She almost didn't hear him, and she didn't really have the patience for it.

"If he did, do you think Harry would be alive? He had — he had Voldemort on the back of his head!"

Minerva and Flitwick flinched. Snape's eyes narrowed a little more.

"I saw the reflection change, but I don't know what it meant. I didn't — I didn't understand most of what was happening." She forced away the world that had been light and music, and as she shoved that memory out, a thought struck her. She lashed out, grabbing the nearest other professor. Flitwick didn't try to pull his wrist back, but his expression had gone from bemusement almost to horror.

"Quirrell. He's dead. I — it was me. It was me, okay? I hit him in the back of the head. You can't let Harry ever think that was his fault."

"You hit him in the back of the head — where you say the Dark Lord was?" Snape raised an eyebrow.

"He had this pale white face that looked… snake-like. Or lizard-like. It had red eyes. And — and yes, that's where I hit him. It…" Crunched. Caved. Broke. "That's what killed him."

Minerva and Flitwick exchanged looks, and then Flitwick gently pulled his arm out of her grasp. "Professor Dumbledore will sort all of this out," he said, not unkindly.

"Oh, good," she heard herself say.

The trip back through the other rooms was a blur. Snape cast a locomotor spell again, this time on all three of the children, and she followed them through stone rooms — one with an unconscious troll — up past one filled with keys on wings, and then past some sort of plant. She followed them through hallways that didn't seem to match any map in her head, until at last she realized she'd followed them to the hospital wing.

Poppy Pomfrey immediately took charge, levitating the children into beds behind screens. She bustled behind one of the screens, while Flitwick and Snape left, and then poked her head out to point Sarah toward one of the beds.

As soon as Sarah had finally sat down again, the screen whirred closed around her. She sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes, relieved to shut out the world, whether it was real or not.


She woke to Madam Pomfrey's no-nonsense voice, telling someone, "Of course I don't know what happened down there. But I do know that all four of them have had a rough go of it, and there's nothing I can do for him. Not without that stone you've been so keen to hide."

It was Dumbledore who replied, "Poppy," but he didn't get far.

"Except for Granger, they're all of them delicate. I know when injuries have been inflicted by Dark magic, Albus. I'm sure you must interview them, but have a care, will you? Perhaps start with Williams first. She was at least walking on her own power."

When he spoke again, Dumbledore sounded resigned, and a touch amused. "Very well."

Pomfrey came around the curtain at a brisk pace, her nurse's wimple creased neatly, her white apron immaculate. She looked Sarah up and down with a gaze that was at once wry, sympathetic, and concerned. "You heard all that, I assume?" After Sarah's nod, she nodded back. "And are you feeling up to it?"

Come on, feet. "I'm ready to try," she said. Impulsively, she asked, "Will you stay?"

It was ridiculous, of course. Madam Pomfrey probably had plenty to do, taking care of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And it wasn't like she didn't trust Dumbledore.

There was a long pause as Pomfrey thought it over. Finally, she clapped her hands together and said, "What you say may affect appropriate medical interventions, and Dumbledore knows I don't go blabbing about my patients. Not things like this."

Just about whether their bones had to be pulled out. At the dinner table, no less. She was suddenly regretting her request.

Pomfrey nodded to herself and then moved to the curtain, pulling it open so that Dumbledore could see her. He gave her a grave nod, then crossed to sit in the chair by her bed.

"I believe I've put much of the events of tonight together, but if you can, I would like you to tell me what you saw happen, in your own words."

And so she told the story. All of it. From Quirrell's lie to the stunning spell, to Imperio — Pomfrey looked shocked and dismayed, at that — and Harry's collapse. How the world had changed from light and music to an insistent drumming.

At one point, Dumbledore interrupted to repeat: "Ná. Se bearn ġeleofaþ?" He stroked his chin. "I do believe that is Old English. The language spoken at the Founding of Hogwarts."

"There's a geas in the wards," Pomfrey said. She said it softly, but in a tone that left no room for argument. "A protection in the very foundation of the castle. No teacher is forbidden from harming a student — it's dangerous to forbid that sort of thing — but they can't be compelled to do it, either. Not with magic."

Dumbledore nodded. "I thought it might be that, as well. Go on, if you would, Lecturer Williams."

She continued. And it was becoming clearer and clearer to her that Albus Dumbledore — Headmaster of Hogwarts, among other, more fanciful titles — was the one person in the room who had all the pieces. She could hear it, in the questions he asked and didn't ask. Could see it, as his expression turned graver and graver.

She'd been telling Harry, Ron, and Hermione all along that neither she nor they had the context, and now she was talking to the man who did.

It must have shown on her face, because at last Dumbledore nodded to himself, and turned his somber eyes on her. "You have questions."

Pomfrey apparently took this as her cue to leave. She raised her wand, adjusting Sarah's pillows and blanket with a wave rather than stepping any closer, and then, with a bowed head, retreated from the cubicle. Her steps clicked on the castle floor as she walked away, and Sarah was surprisingly grateful for the necessary pause she'd inserted into the conversation.

There was a moment where she considered trying to keep it all in, trying to tuck her fears back where they came from and just keep moving. She'd learned years ago that sometimes it was necessary; sometimes, the only way to get through something was to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

But not this time. She'd started to make a home here — if she didn't know, how could she stay?

"Did you know what Quirrell was?"

He was quiet for a little while, and then he said, "I began to suspect. I certainly should have known sooner than I did. But Quirrell was a student of mine, once, and I suppose I wanted to believe the best of him."

"And can you… Can you explain why… why all of it? What happened?" She'd lived through it, and even as she'd gone back over it, none of it made sense.

"As I feared long ago, Voldemort was never quite as dead as the Wizarding world thought he was. As we wanted him to be. There are… very few means of extending one's lifespan so unnaturally, and all of them are Dark magic. It would seem that while poor Quirinus was on his sabbatical, he was unfortunate enough to encounter what remained of Voldemort, and brought him home as a stowaway. And Harry — Harry, I fear, will be Voldemort's most hated target, for having caused his downfall in the first place."

"The burning? And that — that spell, that made me want to do what he told me?"

The Headmaster of Hogwarts explained both of those, and Sarah shuddered. Both at the power and use of the Imperius Curse, and at the thought of the people in the war who had given their lives for their loved ones, and hadn't been able to save them as Lily and James Potter had Harry. On the other hand, Harry apparently had a powerful weapon in the love of his mother.

Some part of her wanted to know what magic that was, and why it applied in that way, and whether it could apply in others. Could the love of a father do the same thing? The love of a child for their parent?

The rest of her was tired and shaky and wanted nothing more than to collapse back against her pillows. So she did exactly that, closing her eyes.

"One last thing," she said, without opening them. "Harry's… He's young. I don't know how much you know about his home life, but I don't think it was good. Whatever Quirrell died of, Harry doesn't need to think it was his fault. He's got enough on him — he doesn't need to think he's killed somebody."

There was a long, long silence, in which she didn't admit that she bounced between being glad of the uncertainty and hoping that she really had been the one to kill him, for what he'd done. For what he'd tried to make her do.

"A compassionate thought," Dumbledore said at last, sounding surprisingly pleased, and maybe a little proud. Another pause, as he weighed either his decision or what he would say next. "You need not fear on that account, Lecturer Williams." Another little pause, just enough to punctuate, and then he added: "And Lecturer Williams? Should you score as expected in OWLS and NEWTS, it would give the staff here at Hogwarts great pleasure to have you on as a fellow, working toward mastery. Your integrity and compassion for our students is such that I can think of no finer addition to the Hogwarts staff."

It was a good feeling. A warm one. It would have made her smile period, but after the night she'd had —

"I admit I don't know many other schools of magic, but… I'd like that," she told him. "And I think — I think I need to sleep now."

"Rest. Recover. As many a man in a dark time has said: we will all be stronger in the morning."

Dumbledore rose, and with a nod of goodbye, he left her little cubicle. The curtains closed behind him without so much as a gesture or a word.

Sarah listened to the silence, to the deep, even breaths of the three children who had worked so hard to save the Philosopher's Stone, and tried not to think about a world made of music.


Annnnd I think we're coming up on the end of this fic. Assuming I don't decide I need an epilogue (and since I didn't have a prologue, I probably won't), next chapter will be the last. Holy shit, y'all. What a fucking ride. Here's to hoping the conclusion won't disappoint.