He—Ravenclaw's so-called prodigy—had been fooled in battle by a child.
Before he could launch a furious counterattack, Hermione shouted again:
"Expelliarmus!"
Quirrell had been tricked once; he refused to fall for it again.
He swung his wand decisively—
A jet of red shot from his wand—
And to his shock, another red jet burst from Hermione's wand at the same moment—
This time, it was real.
The Disarming Charm was the fastest of the offensive spells—
Many wizards only realized what hit them after their wand flew from their hands.
It was a standard spell in dueling clubs:
Not lethal, but a test of reflex, control, and instinct.
Quirrell… did not pass this test.
The two red beams met midair and locked—
Crackling like twin bolts of lightning—
Sparks spattering down like molten metal from a welding torch.
Quirrell's eyes bulged.
The strobes of red lit his face in flickering crimson.
He had never imagined that a mere girl could stand against him like this.
His wand hand trembled—rage and humiliation twisting his expression.
His earlier calm and smugness evaporated.
What replaced it was hideous anger.
"Damn you!"
Fury surged through him.
His magic flared—
The red beam brightened—
Then—
"You… disappoint me."
The voice was faint—
Barely a whisper—
Yet impossibly clear.
Clear enough that Hermione—though straining every nerve to keep her spell alive—heard it.
Clear enough that Harry—fighting a storm of stone guardians and deafened by the crash-crack of stone against stone—heard it.
It was…
Impossible to describe.
Weak.
Hoarse.
Slick and cold—
The sound of branches rustling in the Forbidden Forest at midnight—
Of a serpent gliding through a shadowed corner.
Hermione's pupils shrank.
Across the causeway, the air around Quirrell distorted—
Warped—
Just like that night on Halloween.
A gray pall spread from his robes—
From the ground beneath him—
Creeping like frost across the stone.
The locked spells—
Stopped.
Without sound—without ripple—
As if they had never existed.
Hermione's eyes reflected Quirrell—
But not the Quirrell she knew.
This Quirrell had collapsed to his knees—
Hands clutching his head—
Sobbing, screaming:
"I'm sorry! Master—! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I'm sorry—!"
He slammed his forehead against the ground—again and again—
As if trying to smash out the thing clawing at his mind.
The voice did not stop him.
It only breathed darkly, slowly:
"Stupid… useless… filth. Not even worth the rats in the forest.
Quirinus… Quirrell…
You are as laughable as your name."
"I tire of your apologies.
Every time I grant you mercy… you manage to disappoint me even more.
A duel with a little girl… matched blow for blow.
How pathetic."
Hermione watched Quirrell writhe—
Curl up—
Scream—
Then silence.
He fell still.
His voice faded to nothing.
A perfect chance to escape—
Hermione wanted to run—
Wanted to grab Harry and flee—
But she could not move.
Cold seeped into her limbs.
Her muscles stiffened.
Her thoughts froze—
Drained of emotion.
She felt like she had fallen into a black, bottomless lake.
On the other side, "Quirrell" rose.
When he stood—
The distortion around him worsened.
Shapes stretched—
Stone warped—
The world rippled like underwater weeds swaying in a current.
"Heh—"
He exhaled slowly—
And turned.
No.
He wasn't looking at Hermione.
He was looking past her—
At Harry.
"Harry… Potter…"
The voice rasped.
"What a memorable name."
He waved his hand.
Hermione's paralysis released in an instant.
She stumbled backward—
Colliding with something hard—
She turned—
It was Harry—
Or rather, the Queen-form he controlled.
The stone face—normally expressionless—twisted slightly in pain as Harry fought to move.
He shielded Hermione behind him—
And glared at Quirrell.
No—
At Voldemort.
"Voldemort!" Harry spat.
"Ah. You remember me?"
Voldemort sounded amused, standing lazily with Quirrell's wand pinched between two fingers.
"Yes, Harry. It's me.
May I call you Harry?"
"Don't hide behind a shell when speaking to me," he added, chuckling.
"It's rude.
Especially a shell Dumbledore crafted for you.
He loves his flashy tricks—your transformation, and this little pocket-world."
He twirled the wand lazily—
And the air split open.
A tear in space—brief but unmistakable—opened and closed before their eyes.
"Showy.
And useless."
Then he flicked the wand toward Harry.
Hermione felt no spell.
But she saw the result:
The Queen's stone body began to crumble.
Chunk by chunk—
Turning to dust.
"Yes… face me as yourself, Harry."
"You don't know… do you?
For eleven long years, I've thought of you every day."
"My body shattered.
Reduced to shadow.
Forced to slither like smoke through a filthy, barbaric forest."
"Only by leeching on other living creatures could I cling to sanity.
Rats.
Snakes.
Corpses."
"Every time I swallowed rotting flesh—
Every time I chewed on beetles crawling through dirt—
I whispered your name."
"Harry—Potter."
The Queen collapsed completely.
Harry gasped—returning to his human form as Hermione grabbed him.
He looked up for the text describing the Queen-transform—
Gone.
Voldemort had erased it with a flick of his wrist.
The weight of that power slammed into Harry—
Cold.
Suffocating.
He trembled.
The casual cruelty.
The effortless dominance.
This—
This was Voldemort.
"Come now, Harry," Voldemort called lightly.
"Stand up.
Take your wand.
Let us honor our reunion with a proper wizard's duel."
"Harry!" Hermione tugged him sharply.
To her, Quirrell had been a murky lake—
Dangerous, but visible through careful observation.
But Voldemort—
Voldemort was a void.
An abyss deeper than imagination.
No hope.
No chance.
Harry looked at her—
Then Voldemort—
And drew a breath—
But at that moment—
The Narrator returned:
"THE HERO APPROACHES HIS FINAL MOMENTS. THE AWAKENED DEMON KING—"
"Silence."
Voldemort pointed upward.
A flash of impossible power cut through the sky.
The Narrator's voice fractured like a broken radio—
"...fire dragon… appears…"
ROOOOAAAAAR—
The castle trembled.
A colossal shape burst from the towers—
A DRAGON.
It soared, then dove—
A monstrous shadow blotting out the sky.
Hermione and Harry stared—
A real, living FIRE DRAGON—
Majestic—
Terrifying—
Magnificent.
Voldemort sounded bored.
"So this is your trump card, Dumbledore?
A lizard to guard your Stone?
How quaint."
…
"Quirinus is gone…"
High above, Dumbledore sighed through the smoke.
Vaughn understood.
Through magic-sight, he saw clearly:
Quirrell's life-flame—weak but colorful—
Had been completely extinguished.
Replaced by a single smear of gray-white—
Voldemort's parasitic existence.
"Tom…"
Dumbledore whispered, voice laden with ancient sorrow.
"This is his true form now.
A scrap of gray.
A rejected shadow."
"He has no true existence.
Neither living nor dead."
Vaughn said nothing.
He watched Voldemort erase Harry's transformation like brushing away dust.
The Black Lord's old power flickered through.
"How long can he maintain this form?" Vaughn asked.
"I don't know."
Dumbledore's voice was honest and weary.
"I never created a Horcrux.
I can only guess."
"My bet is—not long.
If Quirinus's life could sustain him for long, he would not have waited until now."
Vaughn nodded slowly.
He had seen it clearly:
Voldemort had killed Quirrell the instant Quirrell tried to kill Harry.
"Tom never wanted Quirrell to kill Harry," Dumbledore murmured.
And then—
Magic flared around Dumbledore again—
The smoke curtain twisting into a display of symbols, sigils, and threads—
And the world revealed itself.
Not through sight—
But through fate.
Threads.
Thousands—millions—billions.
Stretching through everything.
Air.
Soil.
Stone.
Magic.
Forming a titanic, shimmering web across the world.
"The Web of Fate…"
Vaughn whispered, stepping to the edge of the floating carpet.
He had imagined this long ago—
But seeing it, truly seeing it—
Was different.
Every fluctuation.
Every motion.
Every influence—
Left a mark.
Thus fate became visible.
"Yes…"
Dumbledore's voice echoed from everywhere—
Faint and exhausted.
"Your design… succeeded."
Controlling a world—even a small alchemical one—was overwhelming even for him.
But he endured.
"Vaughn. Look at Harry and Tom."
Vaughn focused—
And gasped.
A vortex.
A massive one.
A cyclone of fate-threads—
Pulling, twisting, converging—
Centered on Harry and Voldemort.
All threads around them were dragged into the spiral—
Warped—
Entangled.
"See?" Dumbledore said softly.
"Their confrontation twists fate itself.
Everyone near them… everything near them… is pulled into the vortex."
"Even Tom.
That is why he killed Quirrell instantly—
Because fate allowed no other hand to kill Harry."
Vaughn was silent.
Part of him wondered what would happen if he dropped a cursed firestorm onto both of them.
Would fate intervene?
He dismissed the thought.
Hermione was down there.
And interfering too forcefully might break the world entirely.
"Albus," he finally said,
"let's bring out Nobeta.
It's time for the next phase of the experiment."
The next experiment—
Time.
…
The fire dragon's roar split the sky.
Its wings stirred sandstorms on the bridge.
Voldemort stood like a shadow carved into stone, unfazed.
The dragon inhaled—
Its chest swelling—
Red light boiling beneath its scales—
WHOOOOSH—
A blast of plasma-fire roared forth—
Engulfing Voldemort completely.
Stone melted.
Air burned.
Fragments exploded skyward in showers of molten splinters.
Hermione and Harry shielded themselves—
Not from the dragon—
But from the raining magma.
When the blast finally stopped—
Harry gasped.
"Burned like that—he must be dead, right?!"
Hermione did not answer.
She pointed.
The dragon was watching the lava pool—
Eyes sharp—
Body tense.
Not triumphant.
Wary.
And then—
As the steam thinned—
A shape kneeled in the molten rock.
A man-shaped silhouette—
Skin cracked like lava—
Heat distorting the air around him.
And then he rose.
Red slag fell from him like cooling embers, revealing the dull, flowing glow beneath.
"Such boring tricks…"
Voldemort rasped.
Harry's blood froze.
The dragon inhaled again—
Red light surging under its scales—
Harry pointed his wand—
"EXPELLI—"
BOOM!
He never saw the spell.
He only felt the world flip—
He was thrown into the air—
"HARRY! Accio Harry!"
Hermione shrieked.
She yanked him back just in time—
Because—
The dragon's neck had exploded.
Scales and flesh burst outward in a fountain of molten red—
Voldemort stepped out of the lava pool, robes burned away, bare feet sinking into the superheated stone.
"Beautiful summoning charm, little girl," he said amiably.
"Quirrell mentioned you often."
Then, almost wistful:
"A pity.
I would have liked to play with you two children longer."
"But first—
the Philosopher's Stone."
He vanished—
Reappearing before the wounded dragon.
He raised his wand.
"Imperio."
Harry froze.
Hermione's wand blazed with red.
They both knew this curse.
Knew its horrors.
The dragon knew where the Stone was—
If Voldemort gained control—
They had to stop him—
But time was already too slow—
Too late—
The spell left Voldemort's wand—
And then—
The dragon moved.
Its claws lifted—
And clutched the gold chain at its neck—
Revealing the small hourglass pendant.
A Time-Turner.
With a twist.
Harry's mind blanked.
Everything froze—
Then began to move backward.
Fire sucked itself back into the dragon's throat.
Lava cooled and reassembled into stone.
Voldemort walked backward into the molten rock—
Then the rock solidified around him—
Then the flames rose upward—
Then the dragon soared—
Time reversed.
Hermione and Harry lifted trembling hands—
"Ha… Hermione—?"
"Harry…"
Both of them stared, speechless.
"What… happened…?"
"It's time," Hermione whispered.
"Time just reversed.
The dragon… rewound the world."
…
In the sky, Vaughn flexed his fingers.
His first true experience with manipulated time.
"Fascinating."
He turned to Dumbledore.
"You modified the Time-Turner?"
"Yes."
Dumbledore's voice was soft, frayed with effort.
"In the real world, a Time-Turner creates a small, separate temporal bubble.
It cannot reverse the true flow of time."
"But in this world—
under my control—
time itself can be reversed."
Vaughn considered this.
"What would happen if we reversed it indefinitely?"
Dumbledore chuckled weakly.
"We'd reach the dawn of creation… my boy."
Vaughn nodded, eyes gleaming.
"So I was right.
In a world not bound by reality—
the past can be changed."
"Meaning reality itself… was not always as it is now."
"Yes…"
Dumbledore hesitated.
"And that implies something unsettling."
"That in the real world, long ago…
there truly was an Observer."
"The one who shaped the rules of time—
and fixed past, present, and future."
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