Harry looked around the Room of Requirement in wonder and awe. Everything about this Room felt…odd like it was there, and yet at the same time, it wasn't. The Room was so small, and yet at the same time it seemed to stretch on forever and ever.

Harry….wondered if this was what the original writers of Doctor Who had originally planned for the TARDIS; while the old police box-shaped time machine was bigger on the inside, the inside just never caught on; some might say it was because of the budget constraints, but even then they could have made the interior a little bit more imaginative; they could have conceived of an optical illusion, something to make the console room much larger, perhaps ethereal, maybe other-worldly.

When he had gone to Gringotts in secret after leaving the alley with Hagrid, Harry had learnt a lot about the magical world, especially after making his pledge to learn more about it, after he'd tried to escape from the Dursleys a few years ago, before seeing those moving magical photos at Mrs Figg's place, and learning of the spells Dumbledore had put on him. He had even found a way of getting permission from the Dursleys to leave Hogwarts and begin attending a different magical school in case Hogwarts didn't pan out, and after a few weeks of seeing for himself the amount of bullying in the castle, which the teachers tolerated for some reason, he thought of it more and more while he practiced his occlumency.

'I wish I knew how the Room of Requirement works, I wish to know if this room can be used as a time machine,' Harry thought to himself, adding the last thought after remembering his love for time travel stories.

A piece of parchment appeared right in front of Harry, and he picked it up. The Room of Requirement worked by looking at the thoughts and wishes of the people who came in, although it worked equally well outside, too. The Room could work as a time machine, and despite the best efforts of the creators of this kind of chamber, the Room's extra-dimensional nature meant it could travel backwards and forwards in time, but it slipped sideways into different realities if you travelled too far back. By too far, it was at least up to a year.

Instantly Harry was excited by the possibilities. "With this room," he muttered to himself, "I could see what's going to happen and then slip back and leave notes for myself," he said.

-8-

Harry's first major use of the Room of Requirement came when he went back after the Quidditch match where he was nearly bucked off his broomstick; he had listened to Granger and Weasley accusing Snape, but something told him the sneering Potions Master was innocent. He slipped backwards into the past, so he could see for himself what was going on, and to find out what curse was used on the broomstick.

The Room of Requirement provided him with a magical sensor in the shape of binoculars that detected and identified magical curses, and he went back in secret and after using several spells to hide, he got to the Quidditch pitch an hour early and he hid himself as best he could while he watched the teachers, and keeping out of sight of Dumbledore and the others, and most especially from Granger.

When the Quidditch match played, (it was so weird seeing himself, but as long as he stayed out of sight, there wouldn't be a paradox), Harry used the sensor and discovered Snape wasn't cursing him.

No, it was Quirrell.

But why? The DADA teacher was ineffectual, timid, and a stuttering idiot, easily mocked, but he hadn't seemed dangerous and yet as he checked the sensor, he found Snape was trying to cast a counter curse as wandlessly as he could, while Quirrell was countering it with a curse of his own.

Suddenly he realised the truth, Quirrell was the one who let the troll in; Snape might be the one responsible since it would explain that nasty wound on his ankle, but it did not tally with everything he was seeing right now.

He would definitely keep a close watch on Quirrell.

-8-

Harry stared at the ghastly snake-like face sticking out of the back of the head of the DADA teacher, screaming at him in anger and fear at the boy who had just used an enchanted mirror and said "NOW!"

"What are you doing?!" Voldemort shrieked in agony as he struggled to resist, he felt as if he were being torn apart, and he also felt as if the magic he was taking from his followers was not helping him.

Harry folded his arms, gazing at him without any emotion about how things were playing out. "I found out Quirrell was your lackey," he replied, "I also did some research and I found out how you gained immortality. You were stupid to use Horcruxes. Just as you were stupid to fall for the con."

"Con?" Voldemort got out, screaming as he tried valiantly to escape the pull.

"The Philosopher's Stone. The Flamels couldn't combine the potions needed for longer life and for transforming metals into pure gold, all they got were bills for the damage to their laboratories; in the end, they found a different form of immortality," Harry rubbed his forehead where the protective rune his mother had left before she had died.

The scar had been removed, and it had provided the goblins with the piece of Voldemort's scar they needed for this.

Voldemort screamed when at last the large chunk of his soul was torn out of Quirrell's body. Harry stepped out of the way and watched as Voldemort's spirit disappeared.

"What have you done?" Harry turned and he grimaced when he saw Dumbledore, with Granger and Weasley flanking him. They looked right at home there. All three of them had likely been there for a while, now.

"I found out about Voldemort's presence in the school," Harry said, refusing to reveal how he'd found out since Dumbledore and the DMLE, who had witnessed the whole thing thanks to the enchanted mirror he'd had sent to their offices in the Ministry of Magic. Soon the old man was going to have a visit. "I had a collapse in Gringotts when I went to them during the Easter holidays, centred around my scar, and they examined it and discovered a piece of Voldemort's soul, and they removed it. I've waited a while for this. They drained the soul fragments and killed Voldemort for good."

Dumbledore had been listening to this with a look of shock on his face, but before he could do anything, a group of people in red robes walked in, with a tall woman wearing a monocle with them.

Harry smirked when she glared at Dumbledore. "Headmaster Dumbledore, would you mind explaining all of the traps we've been seeing over an enchanted mirror? And," the woman was glaring at him more fiercely, her eyes flicked from the three pre-teens in the room underneath the castle, "why three first-year students were roped into this….farce!"

Dumbledore looked so shaken that Harry almost laughed.