Many years later, facing the transfer student Skyl, Quirinus Quirrell would recall that dreadful night when he went alone into Albania and encountered Voldemort.
Right now—this very moment—is the afternoon of 6 September 1991. The sun has not yet fully slipped below the horizon.
Quirrell's clothes were soaked through with sweat. He lay weak and limp on the floor, the light from the wall sconces casting a cramped, twisted shadow of him on the wall. The poor man was convulsing, trembling without conscious control. Voldemort's corruption had sunk so deep into him that parts of his body and soul had already warped; when Skyl wrenched the remnant soul free by force, the pain Quirrell suffered was exactly the same as Voldemort's.
It was not the kind of agony that made you scream—it was more like the terror of falling into a bottomless abyss.
"Professor. Professor, are you all right?"
The transfer student's voice sounded as if it were coming across the surface of water. Quirrell had a strong sense of drowning—then a warm wind rose from all sides, and he felt the existence of his body again.
"Ah! Hah… hah—" He sucked in air with all his might, like a newborn just freed from the womb, and then began to cough violently.
Skyl helped the feeble Quirrell up and poured a few drops of the Water of Life and Death into his mouth. It was a powerful sleeping draught that let the drinker forget pain and sink into a temporary, peaceful sleep.
"What… is this?"
"The Water of Life and Death, Professor. Get some rest. When you wake up, everything will be all right."
Quirrell lay in Skyl's arms. After drinking the Water of Life and Death, an expression of pitiful desolation came over his face. "No… don't let me… disappear…"
"Shh. Don't worry. None of this has anything to do with you anymore. Just rest."
Skyl poured a few more alchemical potions down his throat to help him recover from the damage.
Once he had settled the sleeping Professor Quirrell, it was time to deal with Voldemort's remnant soul.
Skyl looked down at the black soul gem in his hand. The second Dark Lord's core personality was sealed inside it. A faint green line crept along the stone's surface, and if you brought it close to your ear you could hear threats and curses seeping out from within.
…
In the Gryffindor common room, Harry Potter suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead.
"What's wrong, Harry?"
The lightning-shaped scar on his forehead had begun to ache, as if it had turned into a fresh wound. He tried pressing on it, hoping to keep it from being exposed to the air—but the pain didn't come from outside. It came from his soul.
Pain wrapped itself around him. The cheerful voices of his classmates vanished all at once, as if someone had hurled him into a lonely, grey plain. Harry wanted to scream. A face rose up in front of his eyes, strangely familiar: black hair and silver eyes, looking down at him. He felt himself turn into a wisp of cloud, a lump of cold ghost-mist. His physical senses were gone; only a fierce phantom pain remained.
The black-haired figure reached out a hand. Even the sky was blotted out; his palm was like a curtain dropping from the heavens. A vast, deep-blue vortex filled Harry's vision, roaring as it turned. The terrifying suction it produced seized hold of Harry and dragged him upward. Helpless, he floated toward the sky like a speck of dust, falling off the edge of a ten-thousand-mile storm of clouds.
Falling, falling. He heard "himself" shouting: No…
Woof! Woof!
Two sharp barks shattered the last of the illusion.
Harry jolted awake. The pain in his scar vanished in an instant.
"Are you all right?" his classmates asked anxiously.
"I—I'm fine." Harry had no idea how bad his face looked. For a good while afterwards he didn't say another word. Not until close to eight o'clock, when Ron had to leave for detention, did Harry hurry off with the others to see his friend off.
…
"I didn't take part in the history of the wizarding world. Just like I never lived through the world wars. I only know, as a bystander, about the tragedies that happened during the years when the Dark Lord ran rampant. Voldemort, Tom—when you were flinging the Killing Curse around to slaughter witches, wizards and Muggles, when you were torturing people with the Cruciatus Curse, you were utterly certain of your own power."
Skyl stroked the black soul gem in his hand like a jeweller playing with a favourite piece in his collection, but his voice was cold—quietly cold.
Trapped inside the stone, Voldemort had no way to defend himself. And Skyl had no interest in hearing any defence. Faced with a murderer like this, the architect of terror itself, even the noblest moralist would be hard-pressed to find words to excuse him.
"Think about it, Afu. When life is peaceful, when your work moves along in an orderly way; when the Ministry of Magic is stupid, yes, but not so stupid that existence becomes unbearable—you can talk to people, try to make friends, have a bit of fun, get through the day and curl up in bed at night, reflecting on your past and feeling… tired, maybe, at the thought of a simple, predictable future. But none of that stops you from going to a wizarding pub, ordering a glass of Gigglewater and laughing your head off until you can't stop."
The soul gem gave a small shudder. Clearly a certain Parselmouth was not in a friendly mood; he didn't want to listen to a youngster like Skyl pontificate from on high, attacking his politics and his life's choices.
Skyl ignored the disturbance and sounded even more relaxed. "You see, that's what most people's lives are like. They get used to peace. When you brought war and disaster to the wizarding world in the name of blood purity, did you ever realise just how reactionary your actions were? You didn't. Of course you didn't. Your confidence lay in the power of Dark magic and in the backing of those pure-blood families.
"But once you choose violence, you ought to understand something: if one day, someone's magic is stronger than yours, that person can toy with your life as easily as you toyed with the lives of your innocent victims."
The soul gem quivered harder, like a mobile phone buzzing again and again with incoming calls.
"That's right, I'm going to teach you a lesson. Where I come from, we have at least a hundred ways to make someone like you 'lose gracefully'. Still, I've decided to pick an entertaining one. I don't know if you've read or heard of a book called Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. Oh—right, it won't be published for another fifteen years. Then, have you heard of the six realms of reincarnation? Hmm? An ancient concept from the South Asian subcontinent. Think there's any chance it might have been brought back to Britain by the colonisers?"
Skyl got to his feet and took off Professor Quirrell's purple turban. "Don't you find these coincidences interesting? You latched onto Quirrell, and he used an Indian-style turban to wrap you up. This piece of purple cloth is your mask, your skin. Now I'm going to turn it into the flesh and blood of a beast, to carry your spirit and soul."
Raw magic roared into motion. The magical power supplied by the Eye of the Tower was divine in nature. Skyl bathed the turban in that undying magic, washing away every trace that this scrap of matter had ever left in time. Then he cast Transfiguration, turning dead matter into living flesh.
"I've noticed your nose is very short. It's always made you self-conscious. I'll fix that flaw for you soon. You'll have such a long nose it can reach all the way into a crisps can."
The purple turban transformed into a white Russian wolfhound. It was a strikingly handsome creature, downright dashing—only its eyes were vacant. As soon as Skyl placed Voldemort's remnant soul within it, the dog came to life.
It went berserk at once, snarling as if it couldn't believe what had happened. Then its eyes flashed with murderous light and it tried to lunge for Skyl's throat. But before it could move, every one of its teeth turned into soft rubber. Its bite was meaningless now; it couldn't even tear Skyl's robes.
"Good dog." Skyl laughed as he scrubbed Voldemort's canine head. "Still haven't grasped the situation, have you, Tom? If you really want to make me angry, I have no problem turning you into an earthworm, threading you onto a fishhook and dropping you into Lake Baikal as bait."
The Russian wolfhound let out a howl of pain and flopped onto the floor, sobbing in misery.
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