Chapter 38 — The Last Link

The pillar took the next spell for us. Stone broke beside my ear, and I dragged Harry round the other side before Quirrell could aim again. He followed unevenly, twice glancing at his own arm. The herb was still troubling him, but it had failed to keep him on the floor, and I could not afford another direct exchange of spells.

I took out the four strips prepared for the chain. They remained charged and unreleased as I threw them towards the space between the opposite pillar and the mirror. Their marks needed to face along the intended path. Getting them to land that way, while somebody tried to curse me, was considerably harder than arranging them beside a classroom stool.

The first caught in a chipped seam low on the pillar. One of the others slid across the floor; another turned over, struck a raised paving joint and settled at an angle. I watched the last piece land and tried to decide whether the gaps were still possible. Quirrell glanced at the scattered paper, then brought his wand back towards me.

He moved it twice. My legs snapped together, and I fell onto my side hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Harry landed beside the pillar with his hands outstretched. I tried to reach the nearest strip, but Quirrell was already standing over us.

‘Enough,’ he said. His gaze shifted beyond me towards something I could not see, and he struck at his sleeve again. I had managed to make him distracted and furious. Neither condition stopped him pointing a wand at two boys who could no longer stand.

‘Bring them to the mirror,’ the other voice ordered. Quirrell stopped striking his arm and answered, ‘Yes, master,’ with an obedience that frightened me more than the anger.

He hauled me up by my collar and shoved me towards the mirror. I had to hop to avoid falling, with his grip doing little to help me breathe. He brought Harry beside me next, leaving us shoulder to shoulder with our legs bound. His wand touched between my shoulder blades when he told us to look and describe what we saw.

For the first few seconds, the glass showed what ought to have been there. Two frightened boys stood beside a man in a turban, with the chamber behind them. Harry’s glasses were crooked and my collar had been pulled out of shape. I looked at our reflections, waiting for the thing Harry had described to happen.

The Harry in the mirror smiled. Beside me, the real Harry remained still. His reflection reached into a pocket and drew out a small red stone, translucent enough for the light to pass through it. I knew what it must be before he turned towards the reflected version of me.

He slipped the Stone into my pocket. My own image closed a hand over the cloth and gave a small nod. At the same moment, something hard pressed against my thigh. I kept my hands still, though every part of me wanted to check whether it was really there.

‘Well?’ Quirrell demanded. Harry swallowed and said he was shaking hands with Dumbledore after winning the House Cup. Quirrell turned his attention to me before asking the same question again.

I wanted him watching my face instead of my pocket. ‘You’re asking that voice to leave you alone,’ I said. ‘You’re on your knees. It doesn’t seem interested.’

His eyes narrowed. The second voice said we were lying, and this time I heard where it came from. I had been looking towards doors and pillars, searching for another person. The sound was coming from Quirrell himself.

He seized my throat before I could move. I caught his wrist with both hands, feeling his fingers press harder as he demanded to know what I had seen. I could not have answered even if I had wanted to. My heels scraped against each other while Harry shouted beside me, and the room seemed to contract around the hand at my neck.

‘Let me speak to them,’ said the voice. Quirrell loosened his grip, and I dragged in a breath that hurt almost as much as its absence. He pushed me away while protesting that his master was not strong enough. The answer was a short assurance that there was strength enough for this.

Quirrell made a small movement with his wand. My legs came apart, and I almost fell before recovering my balance. Harry stepped back with me. The wand followed our chests, preventing either of us from turning towards the stairs while Quirrell began unwinding his turban with his other hand.

Cloth fell across his shoulder. He turned slightly towards the mirror, letting me see the back of his head in the glass. A face looked out of it, with pale skin stretched where no face belonged. Its eyes were open, and a thin mouth moved independently of the man whose body carried it.

I backed into the mirror’s frame. Harry made a small sound when the face addressed him by name, then supplied the name I had been trying to attach to this impossible thing. ‘Voldemort,’ he said, without looking away from the reflection.

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The face appeared pleased. ‘You see what remains of me,’ it told him. ‘What I have been forced to become.’

My stomach turned. I had tried imagining a wounded fugitive, a monster drinking blood in the forest and a dangerous memory attached to Harry’s scar. None of those pictures required the back of a man’s head to look at me. I steadied myself against the frame and said that he could have stayed away.

The red eyes moved towards my reflection. ‘A Mercer,’ Voldemort said. ‘Your family always did find something to say.’

I thought of Ken and Mary, then of the white animal on the leaves. I asked whether he had killed the unicorns. He said their blood had kept him alive, nothing more; there were better ways to live. His gaze dropped while I moved my hand from the pocket too late.

‘The Stone is on him.’ The words made Harry step between us. He told me to run, and I turned towards the stairs before finding any sensible route to them.

Quirrell swept his wand across the chamber. Fire rose between us and the exit, joining the mirror’s edge to the nearest pillar. Heat struck my face, and through the movement of the flames I could still see the pale shapes of the preparations I had thrown. The potion we had drunk promised passage through a particular barrier upstairs. I had no reason to trust it against this new one.

Quirrell caught me while I was still deciding whether to try anyway. His hand closed round my throat again and drove me against the mirror’s frame, sending pain across my shoulders. Harry rushed him, but a spell threw him sideways onto the floor. I heard him land without being able to turn my head far enough to see where.

‘Search him,’ Voldemort ordered. Quirrell pushed his wand into his belt and altered his grip, freeing one hand to reach towards my pocket. For a moment I could draw air. Behind his shoulder, the mirror showed the opposite pillar and the first strip still caught in its seam.

The others lay in a crooked line beneath it. The arrangement was nothing like the careful one from the classroom, but I could see a possible path through the gaps. I drew a Force Pulse preparation between two fingers and threw it past Quirrell’s arm, aiming through the reflection. ‘Impello,’ I rasped, using the breath he had briefly allowed me.

The pulse struck the piece on the pillar. White light jumped towards the floor, where a second strip released and then a third. The next pulse passed close enough to catch the final piece before its angle carried it away. Fire burst upwards into Quirrell’s face, and he screamed as he let go of my throat.

I fell onto my hands, coughing too hard to see clearly. The four placed pieces were gone, along with the strip which had started the sequence. An afternoon of failures and one lucky arrangement had bought me the chance to breathe. I tried to use it to crawl towards Harry.

Quirrell’s boot came down on my chest. The breath left me again, and I clawed at his ankle without shifting his weight. He was bent over with a hand pressed to his burned face. The other drew the wand from his belt when Voldemort told him to kill me.

Its point lowered towards my face. I could not reach my pouch beneath him, and pulling at his ankle only made my chest hurt more. Then Harry struck him from behind, driving a shoulder into the back of his knee. I glimpsed Harry’s own wand, recovered from the floor and held in one hand, as his other arm hit Quirrell’s wrist.

Quirrell lurched. The spell went wide and burst against the floor beside my head, showering my cheek with grit. I rolled out from beneath the boot and kicked at his stomach. He staggered, caught my leg with his free hand and dragged me back before I could crawl clear.

I struck at his wrist with my other foot. He barely reacted, keeping his grip while the wand began turning towards me again. Harry reached him first and punched him in the face with his free hand. Quirrell let go of my leg, and I pulled away before trying to understand why.

At first I thought Harry had struck the burn. Then skin began blistering beneath the place he had touched, spreading far beyond the mark of my fire. Quirrell dropped his wand and covered his face with both hands. Harry stumbled backwards, staring at his bare fist.

‘What did you do?’ I wheezed. He said he had only hit him, and looked no more capable of explaining the result than I was. I dragged myself farther away, keeping my eyes on the professor and the wand he had dropped.

My throat hurt whenever I breathed. My chest hurt more, and a warm line ran down from somewhere above my ear. I could not remember which impact had caused it. Voldemort ordered Quirrell to get up, and the sound brought my attention back to the hand he was bracing against the floor.

His face changed as he lifted it. The blisters collapsed into a dry, cracked surface, and fine lines spread down his neck towards the hand supporting his weight. He looked like clay left too close to a furnace. His wand lay beside his knee, and his fingers began moving towards it.

I did not understand what Harry had done. I could not tell whether the thing trying to stand could still cast a spell, or whether one more order from the voice would put it on its feet again. I knew I could not withstand another attack. I drew a fresh strip and threw it towards his chest with the only force I had left.

‘Impello!’ The spell struck, and the cracked surface broke. A line opened through his shoulder, another through his face, and the shape in front of us gave way. For a few seconds I heard pieces hitting the floor.

Then there was only the fire and Harry’s breathing. My hand remained raised where I had thrown the spell. Harry looked at the place Quirrell had been, then down at his own fingers, and began asking whether he was dead. I lowered my hand and said yes, so quietly that I was not sure he heard.

I wanted to reach for him but could not make myself move. Sitting with a palm against my chest, I tried to breathe without hurting and watched ash settle on my shoes. We had stopped Quirrell. I had thrown the spell that broke what was left of him, and the thought would not pass through me as easily as I wanted.

Something rose out of the remains. Harry shouted my name, and I turned too slowly to see it before cold passed through me. It went so deep that I briefly lost any sense of where my body ended. Across the tilting floor, I saw a dark shape pass through Harry and his mouth open in a cry I could no longer hear. Then I fell, and the chamber disappeared.