Quirrell stood near the center of the board, and they could see the differences just from his body language. Gone was the slight slouch and eyes angled down replaced with the imposing figure that he made, standing his full height as he shouted out a direction to one of his pieces without even a hint of a stutter.
The door clicked shut behind them, causing Quirrell to spin around to face them. A brief look of confusion flitted across his face before it was replaced by a small smile. Without moving from his square on the board he called out to them. "Well, not the trio I expected to see tonight, but definitely a more welcome one." The smile on his face got larger and while on most people it would have been seen as reassuring, on Quirrell's features it felt unnerving. "That however certainly explains who cast the blood ward on the door. Quite good for a first year."
Although Hermione felt a small swell of pride at the compliment she remained on task. "Why are you trying to get through these?"
Quirrell seemed to preen, "The philosopher's stone will grant my master a new body and allow him to rise to power again." The philosopher's stone? Hermione had never heard of it but glancing to the side, it appeared as if Daphne and Aurelia had. Also, what master, rise again, surely, he could not be referring to- a high voice emanated from Quirrell, sounding muffled.
"Let me speak to them."
"Master you are not strong enough."
"It was not a request Quirinus."
Quirrell reached up and started to unwrap his turban. Everything seemed to focus in on Quirrell, it seemed as if even the massive black and white chess pieces were watching as he shed the layers of cloth and an occasional clove of garlic fell away until suddenly there was nothing left.
Quirrell pivoted on the spot and the back of his head came into view. Hermione had never found a description of the dark lord, but she knew with absolute certainty that this was him. The skin was an unnaturally pale white, fading into a disgusting greenish area of rot that the turban had concealed, that explained the garlic and the queer sent that always followed him. The eyes were a solid bright red, Hermione knew that eyes could gain a reddish hue due to dark magic usage and that red was the only color left in the cold ones that fixed on the three girls. The mouth and nose barely even looked human, instead appearing to be three thin slashes more fit for a reptile.
"Heiress Burke" he said, his voice while coming out of such a disturbing face was beautiful and smooth, tempting them to listen to its every syllable "your family has always served me loyally, once I am restored you will be rewarded for that." Aurelia seemed rooted to the spot, her normally composed face flitting between anger and sadness.
The red eyes turned and refocused on Daphne, "and you Heiress Greenglass, your family did not partake in the last war, join me tonight in my mission and aid in my ascendancy and the ancient and noble house of Greenglass will be elevated to heights you never could have imagined."
Again, the terrible eyes swung, now onto her, freezing her in place, Hermione wanted to wrench her gaze away and run away screaming but she was fixed in place by their focus. "Ms. Granger, you have⦠intrigued me this year. You have skill and drive and clearly power to cast such a passable blood ward. But in all my travels over the world I have never heard of the Granger family." Hermione felt fear course through her, never had she wished so hard to not be intriguing. "Well, it's about time we found out the truth isn't it."
Hermione's knees buckled as it felt like her brain was shredded apart. Hermione couldn't think, couldn't breathe, it was as if a stake was being slowly driven into the front of her skull. Through the slashed remains of her mind spilled memories, the ones she hadn't thought about for as long as she could, the ones she had pushed into the depths of her mind. Her brother flying through the air borne by a pillar of flame, her shoulders dislocated from being tied above her head and hoisted into the air, biting down on the inside of her cheek to stop from crying out as her back was ripped apart. As they flicked through her mind, the world through her eyes seemed to be happening in slow motion. Daphne was slowly turning to look at her and Aurelia hadn't taken her eyes off the pale face.
Her thoughts spun by as fast as her memories played behind her eyes, she was going to die. Aurelia and Daphne, the ones she had thought were her friends were going to join the dark lord, go where she, a muggleborn, could not follow. They were going to abandon her; she knew the wizarding world had been too good for her. She clawed at the intrusion in her mind desperately. In her mind she could hear Voldemort's voice joining the chaos of thoughts and memories, "You put up a good fight, you would have been a powerful servant. Such a shame about your filthy blood." The thread of memories was not comprehensible anymore but just a stream of recollected pain.
Then suddenly the pain stopped. Memories continued flowing but they were not being forced through her and she no longer felt the pain. Hermione's started to clamp back down on them now that the hostile invading presence was gone. Looking up from her place on the floor she saw the reason for the withdrawal, Quirrell was ducking underneath a disarming spell from Aurelia and had broken the eye contact. Hermione's heart soared; Aurelia at least was not going to abandon her.
Aurelia started shooting hexes at Quirrell, her face set in a look of absolute furry that Hermione found terrifying. Daphne after a short delay followed suit. Hermione forced her body to respond, climbing to her feet and mustering as much control as she could through the discordant scape that her mind was and the minor magical fatigue, she was already feeling from holding the keys and started casting as well.
Hermione moved towards the left side of the board and Daphne did the same on the other side as Aurelia advanced straight down the middle. Quirrell stood in his square and started returning fire.
He was a much older and stronger wizard, but they had the numbers advantage. They stepped onto the board as they continued to approach and all around them the pieces came to life. Clearly the board was not enchanted to deal with other players entering mid game. The door on the opposing wall disappeared as the pieces converged on all of them, leaving the witches and Quirrell struggling to avoid the small army of massive stone soldiers while they tried to duel each other as well.
Quirrell was standing near the middle and as such had the most pieces around him. He was also however the only adult wizard. He moved around dodging the swings of the slow pawns and ducking away from the swinging hooves of a black knight, casting bombardas at the pieces as they approached him, blasting pieces apart.
Hermione knew she did not have the ability to destroy the pieces as Quirrell could, so she relied on the skills she had built up training with Flitwick, dancing around, forcing her limbs into submission and dodging the strikes as the pieces came after her, weaving her most vicious hexes at Quirrell when she had a clear shot. She dropped to the ground as a particularly strong exploding curse carried a bishop flying above her and smashed it through the door into the room.
The fight was not going well. Most of the white pieces were pursuing the girls as they tried to land spells on Quirrell which he just batted aside. He stood in a large field of rubble, the remains of the pieces that had tried to attack him. At least he looked tiered, even though he had a dark lord attached to the back of his head like a parasite he was still just a normal wizard, a well-educated powerful one, but a normal one none the less.
Hermione could hear Voldemort's cackling laugh over the sound of the grating stone all around her. Then Quirrell started casting. He did it with no urgency, as if he had no place to be, which with the door forward sealed was probably true. They were not meant to be lethal curses, they just forced the three of them to work harder, another thing to dodge, another person to fear. Their offence had practically ceased as they had to conserve their energy for shield charms to keep away the ones they could not dodge.
Hermione was receiving the most of his attention and she was pushed back to the edge of the board. Trying to continue back off of the edge to dodge a strike from a bishop, her back connected with an invisible barrier and she was struck in the side by the bishop's blunt scepter thing, sending her flying along the edge of the board. She landed hard and saw Quirrell raise his wand towards her. Forcing her arm up she prepared for what was to come. She cast the strongest shield she could as she saw the bone breaking curse shooting towards her. It hit her shield which rippled and shook but held. Following it Quirrell sent out a Sectumsempra a purple vicious looking curse as well as an organ liquifying curse. Hermione was thankful she had read about some of these spells in Aurelia's library, now she could know what spell was going to kill her. The spells smashed into her shield as Hermione poured as much power as she could into it. It held keeping the spells from her but as they dissipated, it became too much, Hermione had nothing left to keep it alive the shield flickered and fell.
Quirrell straightened and sent a last spell towards her, a sickly yellow colored curse. Hermione relaxed and hoped it wasn't going to be too painful. The spell never landed though. A shouted flipendo from Aurelia, propelled one of the last remaining pieces into its path, leaving the unlucky rook a melted mess.
A sudden shout from the door drew the attention of everyone. Hermione with great effort turned her head to see standing in the doorway the Gryffindor trio. Three fresh people, mostly incompetent people, but people none the less. Hermione heard Voldemort scream "Potter let me see Potter."
Quirrell turned to allow Voldemort's imbedded face to see the newly emerged Gryffindors. Daphne seemed to be the only person who remembered that they were mid fight. As he turned Daphne sent a knockback jinx followed by a disarming spell towards the man. Despite Voldemort's scream of "Dodge" Quirrell could not see the jinx and threw himself to the side, right into the path of the spells. The knockback jinx hit the back of his leg, buckling it under him and sending him to his knees where the disarming spell hit him strait in the back.
Voldemort let out a scream of frustration and his face seemed to shimmer, then wrenched free of the back of Quirrell's head as Quirrell screamed in pain. The face pulled behind it a curtain of oily black vapor and dissipated into the air. Quirrell's scream stopped as he fell over onto the ground and moved no more.
The Gryffindor's looked on in a stunned silence before Weasley tentatively broke it, "So you weren't working with Snape to steal the stone?" Hermione almost laughed, but without the coursing adrenaline that the fight had provided, she felt herself slipping into unconsciousness.
Light fell on her closed eyelids, filtering through to her eyes below waking her up. Pulling her eyes open Hermione saw around her the rows of white beds that made up the hospital wing. As she tried to escape the tight confines of the sheets, Madam Pomfrey came bustling out of her office and ordered her to stay in place.
"You have experienced acute magical exhaustion and have two cracked ribs. You will not be moving from this bed until I say so."
She moved back to her office and not two minutes later, Snape entered the wing, walking at a decent clip, but his face was slightly flushed in a way that to Hermione thought was a pretty good indicator that he had run there. Snape sat down in one of the seats next to her bed and looked down over her.
"You look terrible."
"Why thank you professor, it's what I'm calling my drove off a dark lord look." There was a small pause, Snape looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't.
"Professor, is there a way to protect against mental attacks?" Snape looked at her with a small amount of surprise.
"Yes, it's called occlumency, very advanced magic." Clearly, he was not going to offer more information without prompting.
"Could you teach me sir."
"If you wish, although it would require me to attack your mind myself, I would not be able to stop from seeing your memories." Hermione thought about it, she didn't want Snape or anyone to see her memories, but if it were going to be anyone, she had a feeling that Snape would understand better than anyone else, and anything beat being helpless.
"Yes, please sir."
Snape nodded. "Very well, we will start next year." He accurately sensed that she had no desire to talk more and stood up. He was about to leave before he turned and talking back over his shoulder told her "Ms. Granger, be more clever next time."
Ten minutes later Aurelia and Daphne came sprinting into the ward, earning a shout from Madam Pomfrey. The two of them took over the seats next to the bed.
"Are you okay?" Aurelia asked.
"I feel exhausted and when I breath really deeply my ribs hurt, but nothing bad." Lowering her voice, she added on, "What have you told the teachers?"
"Just that when we entered Quirrellmort was there, and we dueled him resulting in your exhaustion. They knew the end because of the Gryffindors, incompetent bastards, but at least they flew you up the shaft on one of those brooms after you passed out."
Aurelia leaned in even closer, "I've also been thinking, Dumbledore announced that the corridor was there to everyone, and then the obstacles seem like they were made for Potter's little crew. Everyone knows he is friends with the great oaf, Neville is a Herbology prodigy so the devil's snare. Potter plays seeker so the keys, and despite being an idiot, Weasley is something of a chess savant."
Hermione filled away that information, that would be useful if Dumbledore tried to do anything to them. She also completely believed it, that man seemed to always have some sort of scheme going on. Hermione looked over at Daphne who had just been sitting moodily in the chair without saying a word.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Clearly it was the wrong question because Daphne immediately started doing her most forceful whisper. "Am I okay? Of course, I'm not, you-know-who is still alive, and now I have broken my family's neutrality. If death eaters don't kill me my father will." There was a brief silence as Daphne calmed down a little. "I have conditions for going forward. In the future you will tell me details before you drag me out of bed to fight a dark lord. Furthermore, if any of you suggest working with Dumbledore after he let you-know-who teach us defense for a year I will hex you heads off."
Aurelia and Hermione nodded in unison and Daphne stood up and stormed out, it did seem a bit forced though. Hermione looked at Aurelia, "Are you mad at me too."
Aurelia sighed, "No. And I don't think Daphne is really that mad either, I think she is more annoyed that we didn't tell her about the corridor. I think she would have done the same thing every time, although if we had known it was you-know-who she might have gone to a teacher." Her face turned stormy, "He killed my mother." She was looking out the window, the anger tinged with sadness, "She failed him doing something, so he tortured her until she just broke, I am happy to have attacked him."
It took another day and a half before Madam Pomfrey agreed to release her from the hospital wing, not from her lack of trying. Her side still felt a little sore, but everything was completely fine.
Hermione marched quickly down into the dungeons, everyone else was a lunch but she had something much more important to do. Digging through her trunk she pulled out the box she had found. After everything she had gone through, if she was still not worthy of whatever it held, she never would be.
Cutting open her hand, she smeared blood along where the latch would normally be. It clicked open, inside the box sat a braided silver arm band fashioned like a serpent. Her blood ran through the grooves as she pulled it on to her right upper arm.
Then it happened, it was unlike when Voldemort went through her mind although many of the memories were the same. This time it was like watching a movie instead of being forced to relive the pain. Her fighting against her father, killing the muggle from the pawn shop, dueling Potter, Weasley, and Quirrell rolled by behind her eyes starting far in the past and once it caught up to her in the present Hermione was filled with a wave of acceptance.
Opening her eyes, the band had disappeared and in its place was not a tattoo, it was more burned into her skin although she had felt no pain. It was the same serpent that was on the Asulf house crest, a Selma. The other thing that had changed was the box had disappeared, replaced with a map.
