It's been awhile folks! This story isn't dead though, and here's the twenty first chapter for you to enjoy!
* Review Response:
JPElles, Darth-Vulturnus, iitrnr, DarkRavie, Yana5, mizzrazz72, TigerWolf, lonewolf 83, Ranmaleopard, ObsessedWithHPFanFic, jamnaz79, naruto (guest), skigirl51 (guest), Anon (guest), Melikalilly, mumphie, HelL4DAluCarD, TheImmortalSlytherin, Ciel Moony, Master of Dragons God, richard333, Guest, draconianking, thank you for your reviews, folks!
magitech, orion0905, yeah, I think it is kinda stupid that in canon Dumbledore barely did anything about Voldemort until after he got himself a new body. Here he's going to be a bit more proactive.
Eldersprig, Amelia isn't exactly a fan of Dumbledore here, and she'll tear him a new one for what he did (or, rather, what he didn't fast enough).
Some Guy In An Ambulance, you speak the truth, man. It's hard to believe Dumbledore to be as incompetent as some stories like to portray him (even if we assume that three quarters of Magical Britain are sheeple), given all of the positions of power he has.
Tsukikageshi, thank you for your kind words, and I hope I won't be disappointing you with where my story is going.
Wyrtha, all things considered, I'm not ruling out the possibility of Harry telling Dumbledore that he had a horcrux removed from his scar if/when Dumbledore brings their existence up. Actually, now that I think about it, that might happen way sooner than sixth year...
LordSinnoh, hotkillerz, Harry actually wanted to avoid joining the Quidditch team, it was Flint who wanted him to. And, yeah, I should probably expand on Harry's friendships and how they came to be. I'll try to think something up.
* AN: As always, great thanks to my friend Skelekitty for his help in polishing this chapter.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" franchise. No profit is being made. Same goes for any books, video games, anime or manga I may or may not use for ideas.
"speaking"
"parseltongue"
'thinking'
written text
spells
A Year Too Soon
Chapter XXI: One Man's Defeat Is Another Man's Victory
"You look troubled, Harry." Flora observed just as the Hogwarts express departed from Kings Cross. "Did something happen over the holidays?" Her question made the green-eyed youth sigh inwardly. The girls knew him too well to be fooled by his act. Still, he didn't want them to worry about the Dark Lord's horcrux stuck in his forehead. And, it wasn't like they could do anything about it anyway.
"Don't worry about that, it's nothing serious. Just a little personal issue." He lied as he gave them the most believable smile he could muster at the moment. Flora hummed in a way that made it quite clear she wasn't convinced by his word.
"If you say so…" There was a small pause, before she offered: "If you ever need help..." Harry nodded.
"Of course." Deciding to change the topic of their conversation, he then asked: "Any idea, who our new DADA Professor will be?" The twins shrugged.
"None." Hestia replied. "But whoever they are, they are going to use the same textbook as Professor Quirrell did. I just hope, they will be easier to understand. That constant stuttering made following the lesson really difficult." Harry nodded in agreement, silently hoping that whoever this new Professor was, they'll be at least somewhat competent and their choice to use the same textbook as Professor Quirrell was made for the sake of the students and not because they couldn't teach anything by themselves.
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Unlike September first, there normally was no feast at the beginning of the spring semester, so the students could grab some dinner at any time between seven and eight in the evening. This year, however, the Headmaster asked everyone to gather at the Great Hall at seven o'clock sharp, so that he could introduce the new DADA Professor to them properly. And, indeed, as Harry and his housemates filtered into the Great Hall, they could see a new face at the Professors' table, occupying the seat traditionally reserved for the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
And, to be honest, the man looked surprisingly unimpressive despite being, supposedly, a skillful and experienced wizard. He was of average height, stoutish, and looked like he hadn't had good rest in days. His short dark hair was rather unkempt and showed the first signs of falling off. Still, this man was a capable wizard who had seen his share of action, as a cursed scar partially hidden by a goatee on the left side of his jaw could attest.
"Good evening, and, to those who chose to spend Yuletide with their families and friends outside of the castle, welcome back to Hogwarts." Dumbledore said as he rose out of his golden throne-like chair. "Some of you might wonder, why I've asked you all to attend the dinner tonight together. Well, the answer is simple: I would like to introduce you our new DADA Professor, Senior Auror Terence Mire." he said, gesturing towards the man in question, who then stood up and took the proverbial floor.
"Thank you, Professor." The Auror said to the Headmaster, before addressing the student body. "As Professor Dumbledore said, I'm Senior Auror Terence Mire and I will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts during the coming semester. I hope that this will be a productive time for all of us. Thank you." Bowing curtly in response to a round of applause the Great Hall was giving him, Professor Mire retook his seat. With the man's introduction out of the way, Dumbledore saw no reason to further delay the dinner and with a tap of his wand to his golden goblet he signalled the elves to put the dinner onto the tables.
"Hm…" Harry hummed as he put some pork chop onto his plate. "Is it just me, or something isn't quite right with Professor Mire?" He asked Flora and Hestia, who were sitting next to him. "I don't know how to explain it, but to me it feels like there is something not quite right about him." The twins, however, could not feel anything wrong about their new DADA Professor:
"It's just you, Harry." Flora told him. "Professor Mire isn't very handsome, sure, but that doesn't make him evil." Hestia nodded in agreement with her sister. Then, with a sly grin, Flora added: "You know, Harry, not every DADA professor that isn't your beloved Professor Armstrong is evil."
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Later that evening, after the girls have gone to bed, Harry spoke to Salazar's portrait:
"Welcome back, young Speaker." The Lord Slytherin greeted him. "Were you successful in determining what Magics reside in your scar?" He asked then.
"Thank you, my Lord, and yes." The green-eyed Potter replied with a nod. "I hired a Curse-Breaker to take a look at my scar, and they were able to identify the Dark Magics within to be a horcrux." The Founder's portrait raised an eyebrow.
"A horcrux? I'm afraid, I'm not familiar with that term."
"A horcrux is a piece of soul that is stored in an object and prevents its creator from passing on, should their body be killed." Harry repeated the explanation that curse-breaker Grimlance gave him.
"I see…" Salazar said, nodding to himself. "In my times, a different name was used for this brand of Magics. Regardless, it's a very Dark Magic, and one that undoubtedly damages the caster. And while I can't claim that I'm much knowledgeable about these… horcruxes, I was under the impression that only inanimate objects could be used to store soul pieces."
"It would seem that humans work just as well." Harry replied. "The Curse-Breaker said that they have never had a case like me before, but they were quite positive that the soul fragment can be removed from my scar safely." And that was something he was very glad about. "The necessary ritual, however, is quite complex and requires lengthy preparations. I've scheduled it for the summer holidays." The Lord Slytherin nodded.
"Good. Such abomination shouldn't exist, much less within a student of my school and my house. It must be destroyed as soon as possible." There was a bit of a pause, before he added: "I hope, you've picked a skillful and trustworthy Curse-Breaker to do the job."
"I'm hiring a team of goblin Master Curse-Breakers." Harry replied. "It's rather expensive, but they guarantee that I will walk away from the ritual alive and free form the horcrux." Salazar's portrait let out a quiet hum.
"While I do have my share of prejudices against the goblinkind, you've made a sound decision to hire them for the job. They might be greedy little bastards, but they will honor any written contract binding them to the best of their ability. And, you can trust them to keep the existence of the horcrux a secret. There will be no end to problems, should the knowledge about it fall into the wrong hands." Harry nodded: he didn't doubt that there were 'reformed' Death Eaters that would go out of their way to bring back their Dark Lord, should they learn he was still around in some form.
"Thank you, Sir."
"Now, young Speaker, I believe your classes resume tomorrow." Salazar said after a short pause. "As entertaining as you might find my company, you should probably go get a full night's sleep." Taking a glance at the clock, Harry noticed that it indeed was getting pretty late in the night and the common room was mostly empty, save for a few upper year students still working on their homework.
"Of course, Sir." He said.
~/ *** \~
Teaching children was hard, Voldemort realized as he sank tiredly into an admittedly nice armchair in his office. He had always dismissed Quirinius' complaints as the man just being lazy and uncooperative, but, apparently, teaching indeed was a tiring and time-consuming job. And time wasn't something he had in abundance.
Indeed, the body he was currently inhabiting was was already showing the first signs of rejecting his soul, and even with powerful Magical means to extend his time like unicorn blood, he still had only two, at most three, months left to steal the Philosopher's Stone and uncover its secrets. There simply was no time left for him to waste if he wanted to rise back to glory.
Shaking his head, he drew his wand and got back to working on the "trap" he had promised to make for the old fool. Of course, the real purpose of this intricate piece of Magic was a bit different. While it indeed could ward off would-be thieves, it actually was a backdoor that he could use to steal the Stone for himself. And to sneak that past Dumbledore he had to put a lot of effort into his work.
~/ *** \~
It has now been almost three weeks since the spring semester began, and Harry still was on the fence about the new DADA Professor.
On one hand, the man was quite a decent teacher. He wasn't great like Professor Armstrong, but he was a definite improvement over the stuttering mess that Professor Quirrell had been during his lectures. On the other hand, the young Potter just couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off about the wizard. He couldn't quite put it into words, but to him it felt like there was something vile lurking under the man's skin
Unfortunately for him, he seemed to be the only one to feel like that: none of his classmates had noticed anything. Even Flora and Hestia didn't believe him, saying that it likely was a trick his mind was playing to somehow justify his dislike of Professor Mire.
And Harry had to admit that they might actually be right. Still, he wouldn't completely ignore the odd feeling as there probably was a good reason why his Magic kept telling him to be wary of the man. Now, if only he could understand why it was doing so...
~/ *** \~
With his "trap" finally installed at the end of the previous week, Voldemort was at long last ready to go after the Philosopher's Stone. Conveniently, Dumbledore - the only wizard capable of stopping him - was out of the castle on some Wizengamot business for the rest of the day.
Thus, as soon as the classes were over for the day, Voldemort retreated to his office and set up a ward to keep people away by making them think that he was he was working on something important and mustn't be disturbed. That done, he used the backdoor he had installed into his "trap" to portkey himself into the chamber the said "trap" occupied.
Disabling the whole thing with a quick wave of his wand, the Dark Lord carefully approached the door leading out of the room and cast a series of arcane detection Charms on it which revealed that the old fool might actually be more prudent than he gave him credit for. Indeed, there we three different wards set to send out an alert when someone tried to open the door plus another masterfully-hidden ward that would alert Dumbledore, should any of the other three be tampered with.
Finding a way around these wards took Voldemort quite a bit of time, but at last he was ready to proceed. Walking through the door, he found himself in room that contained only table with seven differently shaped bottles sitting on it in a line and a piece of parchment. As soon as he approached the table, however, the Dark Lord found himself trapped between walls of cursed fire.
Apparently, he was supposed to do something with those bottles in order to proceed. Interesting, but he had no time to waste on some stupid puzzle. With a wave of his wand Voldemort tried to vanish the flames and… the Charm did nothing. He then tried a few other spells for putting out fires, but none of them managed to do anything about the wall of fire in front of him. A fire-freezing spell, likewise, achieved no discernable results. Even conjuration was a no go as he soon discovered: the cursed fire ate through a foot-thick slab of concrete in a blink of an eye. It looked like he had to solve that damn puzzle after all…
According to the parchment on the table, three of the bottles contained poison, two - wine and the final two - some potion than will enable one to cross either wall of fire safely. A quick detection Charm, however, showed that it was a lie: all seven bottles were poisoned. That said, the three announced in parchment indeed contained much more lethal and fast-acting concoctions.
Discarding those bottles as well as the ones with wine, Voldemort was left with the two that, supposedly, would protect him from the fire. Now, which one of these two would let him advance towards the Philosopher's Stone? His intuition told him that it was the smaller bottle, but it would be quite foolish to just hope that he was right. Thus, he conjured a small snake and fed it a drop of the potion, before throwing through the flame. Witnessing no signs of the reptile being burned to ashes, the Dark Lord concluded it was indeed the potion he needed. Now, he just needed a way to counteract the poison in it...
A bezoar would be ideal but, unfortunately, he hadn't thought to bring one along for this little 'adventure'. What he did bring along was a small vial of unicorn blood, and while it probably wouldn't protect him from the poison's side-effects, it would keep him alive for long enough to get a bezoar or another antidote once he got his hands on the Stone. With that in mind, Voldemort drank the potion from the bottle, which made him feel like he swallowed an iceberg, and stepped through the wall of fire. Once on the other side, he gulped down the unicorn blood.
With the poison in the potion hopefully neutralized, the Dark Lord turned his attention to the door leading out of the room. He was pretty certain that the old fool had put monitoring wards on this one as well, and a detection Charm confirmed his suspicions: there indeed were skillfully-hidden monitoring wards - all different from the ones he had encountered earlier - on this door. After wasting almost an hour on finding a way around these wards, he was finally ready to advance to the next room.
After walking a long and narrow corridor, Voldemort found himself in a big circular chamber with a large ornate mirror sitting in its center. There were no other routes out of this room, meaning that it contained the final "trial" he had to overcome on his way to acquiring the Philosopher's Stone.
"Let us see, what the great and mighty Dumbledore has come up with to keep me away from the Stone." He said as he carefully approached the mirror. While the object itself was without a doubt exceptionally Magical, there seemed to be only one recent modification to it - one that allowed a conditionally-released object to be placed within it.
Cautiously moving in front of the mirror, he looked into it and immediately saw himself holding a modestly-sized bright-red stone. So that's what the Philosopher's Stone looked like. Interesting, but useless as it didn't tell him anything about how to pull it out of the mirror… Meanwhile, the mirror switched to showing him a different vision. In it he was already in possession of an alchemically-created perfect and immortal body, his enemies crushed under his feet. If this was what awaited him in the future - great, but it still gave him no idea how to get the damned Stone…
The mirror continued showing Voldemort various scenes of him either obtaining the power of the Stone or using his newly-acquired might to destroy his enemies, conquer the world and purge the filthy muggles and mudbloods, but there were no clues on how to actually get the Philosopher's Stone out of this mirror. And, eventually, the Dark Lord grew tired of this. If the mirror wasn't going to be helpful, then he'll just take what will be his by force!
The moment he tired to move from his spot, however, he discovered that something was very, very wrong. He couldn't move his legs anymore, nor could he look away from the accursed mirror. Then, the powers that be decided to make his situation even worse as he heard the door leading into the room open. Immediately, his instincts honed throughout the many battles in the past cried for him to guard himself against an incoming attack. Knowing better than to ignore his intuition, he quickly summoned an omni-directional shield. A moment later an extremely powerful stunner collided into this shield, actually causing it to break.
"Good evening,.. Tom." Voldemort heard the unmistakable voice of the old fool. "I hope you're enjoying the Mirror of Erised and the trial I've built around it."
"Dumbledore!.." The Dark Lord hissed. "I'll make you pay for this!" Raising his wand and in the direction of the Hogwarts' Headmaster, he released a powerful area-of-effect curse, hoping to at least wound his greatest enemy with it. Albus Dumbledore, however, wasn't one of the greatest wizards of the modern times for nothing, and swiftly summoned a silvery shield to protect himself.
"Now, now, Tom, that's not how you greet your old teacher." He replied in that annoying grandfatherly tone of his, making Voldemort growl angrily and blindly toss a few killing curses in his direction. None of those connected as the old man nimbly dodged them all.
"Release me from your cowardly trap and fight me like a proper wizard!" Tom demanded, as he kept struggling to tear his eyes away from the cursed mirror.
"I'm here to apprehend or eliminate you, Tom." Dumbledore answered. "Why would I make my job harder just to please you?" He punctuated his question with an obscure modification of a stunning spell that Voldemort barely managed to shield himself against. "Surrender. You aren't leaving this room free; the wards will not allow it."
"And you're telling me that you found a way to entrap me, the greatest wizard of the modern times?" The self-proclaimed Heir of Slytherin asked, hoping to make the old fool slip away something that might help him beat the trap and get the Stone out of the mirror.
"Indeed I did, Tom." The Hogwarts Headmaster confirmed. "You've been caught the moment you looked into the Mirror of Erised, and there is no way for you leave this room without my consent." Voldemort really wanted to contest this claim but, unfortunately, being rooted to the ground and unable to even look away from the damned mirror made it impossible for him to beat the old fool.
What a loathsome situation…
And the only way out of this mess that he could see was to abandon his current body and flee. Certainly not something that he ever wanted to do. Still, setting his plans for a triumphant return back a decade - he had expended all of the strength he had managed to recover on taking over that inept Auror - was preferable to the utter and complete defeat that letting Dumbledore capture him would be.
Thus, with an exertion of will Voldemort ejected himself from his mortal shell. It was far from a pleasant experience and it took him a couple of seconds to get himself together. Thankfully, the old fool was too stunned by his emergence to do anything in the meantime.
"You might have delayed my return, Dumbledore." The now-disembodied Dark Lord called. "But I will rise again soon, and you are powerless to stop me. Enjoy your pointless victory while you can, old fool. I'll reshape the world in my image whether you like it or not." And with those words he flew away. The wards in the room's walls tried to stop him, but being less than a ghost had its advantages too, it seems, and he managed to force his way through.
As Tom's smoky-black form disappeared from his sight, Dumbledore let out a deep, tired sigh. He knew, even if he wouldn't admit it out loud, that he was an old man, and that the world might have to fight against Voldemort and his forces without without his guiding hand. Perhaps it was the time he contacted the Order of the Phoenix to start preparing them for the coming conflict? He'd also need to research the means Tom used to cheat death, so that the Dark Lord could finally be vanquished once and for all.
That's all, folks!
Read and review.