Chapter 3 – Quirrell ( end of 1st Year)
It was indeed like ice was flooding his body. He put the bottle down and walked forward; he braced himself, he saw the black flames licking his body, but couldn't feel them - for a moment he could nothing but dark fire - but then he was on the side in the last chamber.
There was already somebody there – but it wasn't Snape. It was even Voldemort.
It was Quirrell. (Ch. 16 & 17 – Sorcerer's Stone)
'Well, this is not what I expected' Harry thought. He stood a little dumbfounded at the sight before him. Quirrell was the one after the Philosopher's Stone!
It was at that moment that DADA teacher noticed him. "A little surprised to see me Mr. Potter and not Snape?"
Harry tried to reply casually. "Not any more. I was suspicious it was him until we got pass the chess game. The dead troll was the giveaway that turned my suspicions away from our Potions Master. You were the one to announce the troll was in Hogwarts at Halloween while Professor Snape had been at the feast for a long time. Who better to know about trolls that a certified professor of Defense?"
"I thought I had done a pretty convincing everyone that p-p-p-poor Pro-fes-Professor Quirrell was a harmless and unassuming nobody. Incarcerous!"
Thick ropes sprang from Quirrell's wand and wrapped around Harry from chest to ankles pinning him almost motionless. He could wriggle just a little but he would just end up falling over.
"You've arrived just in time to see my triumph. It concerns this object that Dumbledore left here." Quirrell turned enough for Harry to see him spotlight a familiar object with the light of his wand. The Mirror of Erised! Dumbledore had taken the mirror from the room Harry had found and gazed at it and brought it here to the end of the gaunlet. It must have something to do with the Stone. But Harry had no idea what.
What he did know was that Hermione was rushing back to let Dumbledore know that someone had been after the prized possession of Nicolas Flamel. Harry had to think of and connive some ways to stall for time until the Headmaster arrived. Harry leaned one way and fell over to his left shoulder on the hard stone surface. The sound brought Quirrell out of his contemplation of the Mirror and he turned angrily at the boy. "Can't you even stand on your own two feet? Some hero you are; it must have really been a fluke that the Dark Lord was defeated when he attacked you."
"I was a little too young to remember much. By I have dreams of a green flash and someone screaming."
"That was the killing curse; something you shall experience again when I gain possession of the Philosopher's Stone. The screaming was undoubtedly your filthy mudblood mother begging for her and your life."
Harry squirmed backwards, pushing with his feet, until he could get his head and shoulders up against the first step of the stairs. The few inches of elevation gave him a better view of Quirrell as he paced back in forth of the mirror.
"This has to be the key to getting the Stone." Quirrell said as he touched the mirror with his hands and tapped it with his wand trying to get any type of clue about unlocking its secret.
"So how long have you been partners with Voldemort?" asked Harry.
The wizard turned with a snarl. "How dare you have the gall to even mention his name!"
"You said you were going to kill me anyway. I might as well find out some details."
Quirrell waved his wand at Harry and he found himself levitated up to his feet again. This time instead of trying to maintain his balance he scrunched down as much as the ropes would allow and fell to a slightly painful sitting position on the steps.
"Is Voldemort here in the castle? I can't see him being here when Dumbledore is around. That's why you had to wait until he had to go to the Ministry."
"Silence! That fool knows nothing; my Master has always been here."
"Ask him… what he … knows of … this artifact."
Harry shuddered. That nightmare-inducing voice had come from the location Quirrell was standing at but Harry had seen that the professor's mouth had never moved.
"He's here…isn't he? Watching? Wanting? Waiting for you to give him the Stone so he can regain a physical body?"
"My Master is a much stronger wizard than I. But he has suffered long and hard."
A flash of understanding went through Harry. "He was the one in the forest then; the one feeding on unicorn blood. How could you condone that?" Harry felt horrified that Voldemort had resorted to such desperate measures and that Quirrell was a willing servant of his.
"He is with me wherever I go," said Quirrell quietly. "I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power and only those too weak to seek it…. Since then I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me." Quirrell shivered suddenly. "He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me…decided to keep a closer watch on me…." (Ch. 17)
"Then that just proves Voldemort's wrong" Harry said. "It's evil to punish someone just because he reacts like a spoiled child who doesn't get his own way all the time. I've had experience with bullies like that."
"Silence! You dare mock me?" The rage in the voice echoed around the chamber and Harry hoped Quirrell wasn't going to be ordered to kill him on the spot. But it seemed that Voldemort had a temper - and a short fuse. Harry wondered if he dared use that to his advantage.
Quirrell turned back to the Mirror. "I can see myself handing over the Stone to my Master and him regaining his body. I see him rewarding me. But how do I get the Stone?"
Harry had muttered things to himself over the years but Quirrell seemed intent on carrying this conversation out loud. Harry wondered if Voldemort was an invisible ghost here in Hogwarts. The plots and dialogues of old late night movies, heard from his cupboard under the stairs, came back to Harry's memories. A horrifying thought came over Harry; the teacher was possessed somehow.
"Bring the child over here. Maybe he knows the secret."
The voice again; coming from Quirrell's location. A wave of the teacher's wand and Harry was on his feet, with the ropes falling away. With a wand pointed at him, Harry reluctantly walked in front of the mirror.
"So what do you see boy?"
Harry's teeth clenched; he hated that term over all the other cruel things his Uncle Vernon called him. Boy. A prod to his shoulder caused Harry to look up at the mirror finally. He saw himself; he saw Professor Quirrell. He saw the one thing he most wanted to see in the world at this particular moment in time.
In the mirror Harry saw Headmaster Dumbledore rushing down the steps to confront Quirrell. Harry laughed and cried out "Professor Dumbledore!"
As the DADA teacher and Voldemort started turning, Harry grabbed the wand out of Quirrell's hand and ran away from the Mirror.
"You fool!" Voldemort cried out.
"Give me back my wand Potter" the slim professor ordered.
Harry fled to a position of safety as far away as he could get from the Mirror where the stone was. Quirrell was hurrying after him but Harry pointed the stolen wand directly at him. "Care to try your luck? I know what spell caused Voldemort to die before. Do you chance it and loose everything?" Harry hoped his bluff and foolhardy words would stop any further pursuit and it seemed to work. Quirrell stopped a half dozen yards away from Harry and he hoped every second's delay was a second closer Dumbledore was to this awful place.
"Let me deal with him."
"Master, you are not strong enough."
"I am strong enough….. for this…"
Quirrell reached up and started unwrapping his ever present turban from his head. It took about thirty seconds and Harry was mesmerized by the simple but serious action. Quirrell dropped the wrappings where he stood and then slowly turned around. A cry of horror escaped Harry's lips as a face was revealed on the back of Quirrell's head. Red eyes, slits for nostrils and no nose whatsoever; Harry almost passed out from the shock of seeing what Voldemort really looked like.
"This is what you did to me Potter! This is what you made me into with your impossible survival. But you shall not escape me today. Imperius!"
Harry felt a pressure in his head, a force underneath the scar on his forehead. A now familiar voice filling his mind, whispering to him. 'Drop the wand. You have no choice in the matter. I command you to obey me! Drop the wand!'
Scrunching up his eyes to try and block the pressure, Harry raised his hands and pressed them against his temples to try and force the voice and presence out of his head. Voldemort took another step toward him and Harry watched as Quirrell's body backed up two, then three steps.
The voice continued in Harry's head telling him to drop the wand. The pressure built and built until Harry thought he might pass out if he didn't obey. But then somehow Harry heard his own voice, his own conscience telling him that he couldn't give in; that surrendering the wand would only cause him pain and death. Harry didn't like pain and he knew from the stories that a few people told him that inflicting pain was a special hobby of the Dark Lord.
The body of Quirrell/Voldemort was close and had turned so there was a hand reaching out to grab the wand from Harry. Shaking his head, Harry opened his eyes to see the gloating and triumph in the wizard's eyes. Harry did the only thing that came to his mind; he jammed the wand with every bit of force he could muster into Quirrell's stomach! The wizard folded up with a cry of pain and Harry dashed back to the side of the Mirror of Erised with the stolen wand still clutched in his hand.
Voldemort's screams of outrage and revenge echoed around the small room and Harry watched as Quirrell had to brace both hands on the floor to raise himself up. Harry couldn't tell which person was going to face him. Both Quirrell and his counterpart on the back of his head wanted him in their sight. Voldemort won and Quirrell spun around so fast he almost knocked himself over again.
"You shall pay for that you half-blood mistake. I shall kill you just like I did your poor excuse for parents!" Voldemort lurched backward as if he was walking but it was more of a stumble as if he had forgotten that Quirrell's limbs were not facing the same way he was.
Harry saw the spittle fly as Voldemort continued to rant and scream at him. His evil façade of a face had gotten very red in contrast to the chalky whiteness Harry had first seen it in. Harry took a step back in reaction and placed his hand on the side of the mirror. Where he got the nerve to speak Harry never understood. "Take another step and I push this over and break the Mirror. You will NEVER get the Stone or a body then."
"You shall not defy me!" The face of Voldemort swelled up in anger once again and Quirrell sagged to his knees.
"Get up you fool. GET UP!
Quirrell got to one knee and Harry saw the face of Voldemort go beyond evil and mad as he forced his anger out at both the body he was inhabiting and Harry Potter. Quirrell made it to his feet but was reeling where he stood.
"Get that bo-"
Just when Harry felt faint from the dread and the tension, another appalling and gruesome sight happened. The face of Voldemort erupted in an explosion of sickly green and red blood and bits of grey skin, bones and brains! Quirrell toppled over and was silent with blood and gore flowing out the missing top and back of his head. Harry bent over and threw up what little was left in his stomach. Harry gasped and tried gaining control of his senses and body's reaction to the sight. Stumbling a few steps away from the mess he had created, Harry fell to his knees and but couldn't look back to the place where Voldemort had…had…
Harry had no explanation for what happened. He remembered what Firenze had told him about the cursed life of anyone who drank unicorn blood and wondered if the curse and time had just caught up with Quirrell and Voldemort. Maybe it was a rare fit of magical apoplexy; it was something Harry might be able to ask Dumbledore about. If he ever had the nerve to try and talk about what had just happened.
Harry heard a sound. It came again and Harry raised up his head and hoped it was Dumbledore's voice calling out his name. But what he saw when he raised his head made Harry's skin crawl all over again. Something was rising from the body of Quirrell. A fog of particles, of smoke, coalesced above the fallen body of his late instructor. It gathered together for a second - floating, seeking – before it gathered itself together and raced around the room.
The ghostly presence fled right through Harry and he grew immeasurably cold and scared. A whisper of an unbearable voice went through Harry's mind before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell unconscious to the dusty floor.
It was a few seconds later that a distraught and apprehensive Dumbledore arrived upon the scene.
(A.N. I could so see this happening with Voldemort's temper. I've often wonder whether it would be Vernon Dursley or Tom Riddle that would out-bluster the other if they ever got into an argument where magic wasn't allowed. It would make a heck of a screaming match I would imagine. )