Chapter 17: The Philosopher's Stone.
He quickly ascended the stairs to the third floor, taking two steps at a time. He hurried down the hallway, nearly colliding with the wall, when he abruptly turned right in search of his destination.
Suppose the young Quade heir hadn't been so preoccupied with his friend's well-being. In that case, he might have noticed the surprising increase in his speed, his controlled breathing and steady heartbeat.
When he finally approached the wooden door at the end of the third-floor corridor, he was surprised to find it slightly ajar. Taking a deep breath, he grasped the circular handle and cautiously stepped inside, his eyes filled with awe at what lay before him.
In the room slept the creature known as Fluffy—a sight more astounding than anything Jakob could have imagined when first hearing that it might have been a dog.
Spellbound, he pulled out his wand. As he stared at the three-headed dog, he couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to have a beast like Fluffy guarding his dormitory. The idea of Pansy's reaction being denied entrance by Cerberus' barking brought a chuckle to his lips.
His momentary amusement was abruptly interrupted when the enchanting melody of a Levitating and charmed flute reached his ears from one of the corners.
Jakob rapidly deduced that the enchanting flute music had put the formidable beast to sleep, and realising that the melody would not play forever, he quickly scanned the room for a way forward.
His eyes landed on a square latch just beside the Cerberus's right paw, and he tiptoed carefully over to it. Bending his knees, the Slytherin boy carefully opened it, trying not to make a sound as he kept a vigilant eye on the beast, ready to react if it showed any signs of awakening.
When he confirmed Fluffy was still asleep, Jakob peered down and saw an empty abyss.
He had absolutely no desire to jump down. Had it not been for his Mudblood's descent, he would have happily closed the hatch and allowed the others to face whatever fate awaited them.
With a string of curses racing through his mind, he mustered his courage, took a deep breath, and leapt into the dark unknown.
After falling for a few seconds, Jakob landed on something and muttered to himself in the darkness, eyes closed, raising his wand.
"Please don't be poisonous, and don't be hungry,"
Taking a few shallow breaths to steady his nerves. With determination, he spoke the incantation.
"Lumos"
It was a giant Devil's Snare. Jakob let out a relieved sigh as he looked around, his initial relief fading as his frown deepened while searching for a way out.
"There is nothing but Devil's Snare... What if..." he whispered, his voice trailing off as he looked down to see that the plant had already started curling around his legs and stomach.
He scoffed at the plant and raised his wand menacingly. "Oh no, you don't. Incendio!"
As the flames slowly began to engulf the plant, it retracted away in what seemed like a torturous manner. A wide grin spread across his face, prompting the raven-haired boy to channel even more of his magic into the spell, watching as the flames devoured the plant.
With smug confidence, the Slytherin believed he could easily eliminate the plant. However, to his surprise, the Devil's Snare retracted from under him, causing him to tumble to the floor below.
On his back, Jakob's alarmed gaze shot upward as a blazing root descended from above. He deftly rolled to the left, narrowly avoiding the imminent danger.
With a swift recovery, he scrambled back to his feet and rushed toward the wooden door, which had been blown off its hinges.
Just before entering the other room, Jakob detected a burning scent and smoke emanating from a section of his robe that had caught fire.
"Goddamnit!" He exclaimed, hastily slapping at the burning fabric in an attempt to extinguish the flames. After a few frantic seconds, the fire finally subsided. Jakob brushed off any lingering embers and sighed in frustration as he poked four fingers through the hole that had been created.
"When I find that idiot Potter, I'm going to slap him so hard that it will make him forget that he is the boy who lived."
Taking a deep breath, the Slytherin closed his eyes and attempted to calm his rising anger. When he opened them again, he felt an uncomfortable prickling in his palms.
He glanced down and frowned, letting out another sigh, this time in defeat, as he saw that the flames had already burned through, leaving behind raw, blistered skin.
"This is going to be agony tonight."
Seeing that there was little he could do to tend to his injuries at the moment, Jakob attempted to push aside the pain and focused on his unfamiliar surroundings.
A flurry of flapping wings caught his attention and caused him to look upward. To his amazement, he saw a multitude of keys hovering gracefully above him.
A flurry of flapping wings caught his attention and caused him to look upward. To his amazement, he saw a multitude of keys hovering gracefully above him, all with wings flying too high for him to reach.
"If there are keys, there must be a..." Jakob began and turned his gaze to the other side of the room.
His eyes settled on a door with a single key perched atop an aged-looking keyhole. This particular key's wings beat fervently as if it were desperate to be set free. He also noticed a broom beside the door and concluded what must have happened here.
With cautious steps, he made his way across the room, his eyes locked on the hovering keys. The Slythertin half-expected them to react or attack as he crossed the room beneath them, but to his relief, nothing happened.
When he reached the other side of the room, he let out a small sigh, opened the door, and continued onward to the next room.
Stepping into the room, a wave of shock washed over the first year. In the centre of the room lay a massive troll, its green body bearing the evidence of a brutal attack.
Two swords jutted out from its skull and chest, piercing deep into its flesh and bone.
"bloody hell, there was no need to go that far."
Cautiously approaching for a closer look, Jakob noticed that the two swords had been driven with such force that the surrounding skin was mangled, a testament to the savage nature of the murder. He stood there, utterly dumbfounded by the extreme brutality displayed by the Gryffindors.
Jakob couldn't help but let out a chuckle, his head shaking in disbelief as he surveyed the troll's remains.
"It's hard to believe that four Gryffindors could manage this..." However, before the thought could fully settle in, he quickly realised why it seemed so unbelievable.
There was someone else who was after the stone as well. Someone who would not hesitate to kill.
"Shit, Hermione!" Without wasting another moment, he hurriedly sped off to the next room.
As he stumbled through the door into the next room, he beheld the remnants of a battlefield.
Scattered remnants of statues, or perhaps chess pieces, in varying states of destruction, covered a giant chessboard.
At the room's centre, Jakob spotted three figures suspended in mid-air, completely motionless. He dashed forward, narrowly avoiding a severed arm on the ground that swung at him, the hand still clutching a sword.
As he drew closer, he realised with horror that Hermione, the Potter girl, and the Weasley boy were hanging from an invisible force above the ground.
Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed Hermione's legs and pulled her down.
"Hermione?" he whispered softly, desperately trying to rouse her.
"Hermione, please wake up." Jakob shook her gently, but she remained unresponsive.
Terror gripped his heart, and Jakob shook her more vigorously, desperation evident as he cried, "Granger, wake up!"
As the horrifying thought of his Mudblood friend possibly being dead took hold in his mind, the Quade heir noticed something unusual in her eyes. A white layer shrouded her eyes.
Jakob's initial panic gave way to a sense of relief, but this relief soon metamorphosed into a seething rage as he slowly halted his attempts to rouse her.
"She's not dead," he growled, releasing his grip on her robes and rising to his feet.
"But the one who cursed her will be. I will make sure of it."
His gaze turned to the door on the other side of the chessboard set, and he brandished his wand. Jakob knew the perpetrator was waiting on the other side, and he allowed his rage to consume him.
"I'm going to tear that piece of shit apart for daring to lay a finger on what is mine."
He stormed towards the door, his face contorted with wrath as he flung it open. A winding staircase leading downwards stretched before him. He could hear a voice from below that sounded surprised as it said, "You? No, it can't be you."
Fueled by his determination to make someone pay for what had happened to Hermione, he raced down the steps.
Entering the round chamber at the bottom of the staircase, Jakob's eyes were immediately drawn to the large, ornate mirror at its centre.
In front of the mirror stood Professor Quirrell and Harry Potter, deep into a fierce argument, their voices filled with anger and tension.
Then, Quirrell's arm shot up in a fit of rage, delivering a powerful backhand blow to Harry's face. The force of the blow sent the young boy hurtling through the air until he collided with one of the stone pillars, resulting in a loud thud. Harry's form crumpled to the ground, and his eyes fluttered closed as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Ignoring the Gryffindor, Jakob focused on the seemingly useless Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. His voice dripped with menace and anger as he slowly descended the stairs.
"Was it you?" Jakob's questioned, his words low, sinister, and barely human-sounding.
Professor Quirrell's face, previously adorned with an enthusiastic smile as he clutched the stone close to his chest, changed into an expression of surprise and shock upon hearing the words of the top first-year student.
He spun around, his response sharp and devoid of any hint of stutter or confusion.
"Did I what, Heir Quade? Are you asking if I was the one after the stone all along, and not Professor Snape, as I led heir Potter here to believe?" he responded, gesturing toward the unconscious saviour behind the Slytherin. However, Jakob didn't look back.
"Was it you that cursed her? You pathetic waste of magic," Jakob snarled, his wand pointed threateningly at the professor. The man with the turban on his head just smirked in response, seemingly unafraid.
"Oh, that. Yes, it was me," Quirrell admitted, a glint of excitement in his eye.
"The three usless kids will soon be dead but why would the son of Lord Quade care about a blood traitor? You have never shown any indication that you even care about her," he continued tauntingly and chuckled.
However, when the professor saw no change in the young Slytherin's expression, his chuckle morphed into a loud, almost maniacal laugh.
"Don't tell me you actually care about a useless mudblood?"
An icy, malevolent presence within Jakob urged him to take the life standing before him.
It was as if a growing energy, akin to tendrils of shadowy liquid, was expanding relentlessly inside his mind and body, gradually overtaking every thought and emotion.
He yielded willingly to this hollow entity, allowing the cold and obsidian darkness to seep deeper within him.
Jakob's eyes underwent a disturbing transformation, resembling deep, dark voids that emitted an eerie crimson glow. Sinister, twisting veins slithered around his eyes, and his skin took on a sickly, pale tint.
His mouth moved, yet the words that emerged were chilling and unnatural, a sinister growl fused with his own voice, distorted by a malicious force.
"She is my mudblood."
Quirrell gazed at the boy, his expression a mix of astonishment and fear. He stood frozen, his mouth slightly ajar, his eyes locked onto the unnatural creature before him.
With a swift and forceful motion of his arm, the Slytherin boy unleashed a torrent of wild, dark energy from his wand. A malevolent, sickly mixture of purple and black surged like a lightning bolt, hurtling towards Quirrell with astonishing speed.
The older man's face twisted in alarm. He had never believed that Jakob, a mere thirteen-year-old, could pose a threat to him, a master of the dark arts. However, that had been a grave mistake.
With the dark lord's presence in the back of the professor's mind, a commanding voice yelled for him to raise his wand and defend himself.
Desperately, Quirell tried to utter a curse to kill the boy. But before a single syllable could escape his lips, the unknown force locked onto its target—the stone still clutched tightly to the professor's chest.
It collided with the stone, igniting a violent clash of dark and tumultuous magic as the two opposing energies grappled for supremacy.
The stone's temperature rose steadily, casting forth a blinding white light as it began to melt away the professor's skin and flesh.
Quirrell's voice echoed through this luminous turmoil, a cacophony of pain, wrath, and terror, all entwined, while the stone persisted in its struggle to ward off the surging chaotic forces.
The radiance of the rock filled up the entire room until its blinding intensity exploded outward in a tremendous shockwave. Quirrell was sent flying back against the mirror, which shattered into countless fragments upon impact.
Jakob, also in the range of its blast radius, was violently thrown backwards by the shockwave, crashing heavily onto the stone staircase. The impact was brutal, causing his bones to snap and a searing pain to erupt from the side of his head. He tumbled a few steps before reaching a painful halt in an almost fetal position. Lying on his stomach, he winced with every laboured breath he took.
The Slytherin boy was paralysed, his body unresponsive to his commands and slowly dying. He could only move his eyes, which took in the sight of pooling blood running from where his head was positioned and running down the steps.
"This can't be it," he thought in desperation. He'd only just started his journey towards greatness, with so much left to see and do.
However, the relentless pull of eternal slumber grew more potent as he sensed his life slipping away and his battered body giving in.
A faint glimmer of light caught his fading attention. He shifted his gaze, and there, just a few centimetres in front of his twitching hand, lay a small shard of the Philosopher's Stone, no larger than his thumb.
His eyelids weighed heavily, and his body longed for the embrace of slumber as death's cold fingers were inching nearer. But just before he succumbed to the darkness, he witnessed a dark mist materialising from his palm, slowly slithering toward the shard.
Its movements held an intriguing, almost sentient quality, reminiscent of a wary serpent examining its newly discovered prize.
Jakob stared in astonishment, his weary eyes refusing to blink as the mist drew nearer. He could almost swear it had momentarily halted when it arrived at the shard as if captivated by its stunning crimson beauty.
Like a shadowy shroud, the mist enclosed the stone in a protective embrace before completely absorbing it. Amid the absorption, a fleeting red hue briefly merged with the darkness before fading into the smoke.
Once its purpose was accomplished, the darkness withdrew back into the fading Slytherin, leaving behind nothing but a glass-like fragment.
Suddenly, Jakob felt a searing sensation, like sharp electric shocks pulsing through his body. It was agonising yet somehow warm as his bones snapped back into place with each burst of pain. His arms and legs, once awkwardly positioned, twisted and jerked, aligning themselves properly.
As the pain subsided, Jakob could breathe normally again. He took a moment to grasp the incredible reality that he was alive. Gathering his strength, he raised himself up, his eyes widening in astonishment as he looked down at his body.
To his amazement, the numerous wounds that had nearly claimed his life moments ago had vanished. His once-broken bones were now whole and healthy. The burns that had marred his hands in the second chamber had faded into nothingness, leaving his skin unscathed. The ceaseless pain that had pulsed in his head was now only a memory.
He tentatively touched his temple, anticipating the sting that had been the origin of the pooling blood on the staircase, but found only a faint trace of blood.
"Huh, that's weird," he remarked, a bemused laugh escaping his lips.
Spotting his wand a few meters away, Jakob hastened over and retrieved it. He examined the room and noticed Professor Quirrell lying still at the centre. The professor's back was turned, obscuring any immediate danger. The shattered mirror, which could have possibly unveiled the other side, lay in fragments, rendering it useless.
With a strong grip on his wand, the young Slytherin cautiously advanced toward the professor, a mix of curiosity and alarm clearly displayed on his face.
However, his steps were suddenly halted when he felt something hard beneath his foot, a clear cracking sound accompanying the sensation.
Jakob's gaze shifted downward to discover a mirror shard almost as large as his foot. As he raised an intrigued eyebrow, an image became apparent within the shard's reflection.
Where his own reflection should have appeared, a mature and weathered man bearing an uncanny resemblance to the young Slytherin stared back. A shiver ran down the thirteen-year-old's spine as he momentarily forgot about the professor's presence. Driven by curiosity, he gingerly picked up the shard.
Gazing at the shard, Jakob saw himself as a grown man, standing atop a mountain of destruction and carnage. His wand was raised high, and he surveyed the scene before him.
It was a world filled with humans, magical creatures, and various abominations, all bowing in submission to him. His allies stood resolute behind him, their faces lit with triumphant smiles, surveying the battlefield they had successfully conquered.
A wheezing sound from Professor Quirrell redirected Jakob's focus away from the mirror piece. Swiftly, he concealed it within his robes and continued on onwards.
As the Slytherin boy drew closer to Quirrell's mangled body, he was met with a horrific sight. The blast had completely destroyed the professor's face and chest, leaving nothing but a vile mess of flesh and blood. His organs were shredded apart and scattered about the floor like broken pieces of twine.
Dumbstruck by the horrific sight, a wave of nausea overcame the thirteen-year-old. His gut churned violently, and he could feel bile rising in his throat. Jakob stumbled backwards, swiftly turned around, and vomited as the nauseating scent of burnt flesh and a sickly sweet odour assaulted his nostrils.
After wiping away the remains around his mouth, Jakob gasped, "How the bloody hell can he still make a sound without a mouth?"
The eerie sound repeated, and Jakob spun around, tightly gripping his wand.
A swirling, ashen mist rose from the professor's body, gradually taking form. It was a phenomenon Jakob had never before witnessed. As he continued to watch, the spectral figure took shape, its ghostly face gaining clarity and definition.
"Finally, I've found you," the grey smoke hissed with satisfaction, its menacing grin widening like a crescent moon.
"Who are you?" Jakob asked, curiously extending his hand toward the eerie figure.
As his hand passed through the mist, the stirring within him returned, and simultaneously, he observed his dark tendrils slowly manifesting from his palm.
The black mist swirled around the wraith in a captivating dance, resembling vipers circling their prey as it sought to determine whether the shade was a friend, foe, or a delicious meal.
The wraith followed the unknown being with its gaze and seemed on the verge of speaking, but Jakob's dark mist acted first. Its tendrils swiftly reached out, firmly ensnaring the wraith and commencing its absorption.
The darkness greedily sucked out something resembling a soothing blue hue from within the wraith, as if sating an unquenchable thirst. Stunned, Jakob observed in fascination as the wraith began to howl in agony.
After a brief struggle, the wraith succeeded in breaking free, disrupting the darkness from completing its feast. Its ghostly form hastily retreated up the stone stairs and vanished from sight.
The dark mist slowly receded into his hand, and Jakob sensed a subtle change within himself. Bewildered by what had transpired, he couldn't help but ask, "What in the bloody hell is happening to me?"
A noise interrupted his contemplation, prompting him to gaze towards Harry, who was beginning to stir. In a hushed voice, the Slytherin muttered with a hint of bitterness.
"You'll definitely receive all the credit for this as well."
With that, the Slytherin boy quickly ascended the stairs, ensuring that Harry wouldn't have the opportunity to awaken and discover his mysterious saviour's identity.