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At that moment, Voldemort wanted nothing more than to leave.
To flee as far from that place as possible.
But he quickly calmed down.
He could not do that!
For eleven years already, he had been dragging around that shattered soul of his, hiding from place to place, clinging to life by a thread...
Did they have any idea how he had spent those eleven years?
Parasitizing tiny rodents in Albania, slowly gathering life force by feeding on small animals, living worse than a stray dog.
He had not even dared to seek out those powerful old subordinates who had once bowed at his feet.
Hide again?
He did not want to live like that for even one more instant.
He needed to reclaim a body.
And then...
Kill them both!
It did not matter which of the two fit the original prophecy. If both of them died, then the prophecy itself would cease to exist.
Thinking that, Voldemort's killing intent exploded.
With a light motion of his hand, countless ropes appeared again and wrapped around Neville as well, binding him into another tightly bundled cocoon.
Looking at the two young wizards, both tied up layer upon layer of rope and squirming on the floor like worms, the fear inside Voldemort diminished greatly.
Now he was the one controlling the situation.
So what was there to fear?
No matter how useless Quirrell was, he was still an adult wizard.
And on top of that, it was Voldemort himself controlling him.
Two little wizards were not really going to turn the tables on him, were they?
"Give me the Philosopher's Stone!"
Before anything else, he needed to obtain the Philosopher's Stone.
He needed to regain a body.
He needed to return to his peak.
That much was non-negotiable.
The wand moved, and Harry's body was pulled helplessly toward "Quirrell." He believed the Philosopher's Stone he sought had to be with Harry. All those mechanisms underground had been arranged personally by Dumbledore, and Voldemort knew that former Transfiguration professor of his from long ago very well.
Dumbledore believed in prophecies even more than he did.
Then Voldemort grabbed Harry by the shoulder.
Take the Stone.
Kill Potter.
Kill Longbottom.
But what no one had expected was that such a simple gesture would completely reverse the situation against him.
The moment his hand touched Harry's body, it was as if he had come into contact with corpse-dissolving powder. His hand, his wrist, and his arm began dissolving little by little.
Quirrell let out a scream of agony.
Voldemort also felt unbearable pain.
A curse!
There was some kind of protective spell on Potter!
That spell was protecting Harry!
And the specific target of that protection was him!
In that instant, Voldemort finally understood how he had died the first time.
But even understanding it, it was already too late.
The body he shared with Quirrell was no longer capable of sustaining further magic.
Ding.
In the instant before the body dissolved completely, he saw it.
He saw the Longbottom boy holding a vivid red stone.
The real Philosopher's Stone!
Fate seemed to be mocking him again.
He had chosen wrong.
Again.
He had chosen wrong again!
"Harry Potter! Neville Longbottom!"
Using the last of his strength, Voldemort screamed in despair and fury as the body turned into a pool of foul-smelling liquid.
Then something like a shadow rose out of that puddle.
Black vapor gathered in the air, forming a distorted human face.
It was Voldemort.
The fragment of Voldemort's soul.
He had abandoned Quirrell and intended to flee once more.
Screaming, cursing, hurling threats and vows of revenge, he flew toward the door.
"Looks like I got here just in time."
At that critical moment, Dudley's voice echoed through the room.
No one knew when, but Dudley was already standing at the entrance.
Right in the only path Voldemort had to escape.
Then he did something no one in the room expected.
He raised his hand and slapped Voldemort's gaseous soul right across the face.
Golden light flooded the entire chamber.
When Voldemort saw the palm coming at him, already transformed into gas, he was not worried in the slightest.
On the contrary, he was pleased.
It was like finding a pillow when he was half-dead from exhaustion.
He recognized Dudley instantly.
It was the same wizard he had fought in the Forbidden Forest not long ago. Dudley's monstrous physical strength had left a deep impression on him.
That was right.
He intended to possess Dudley's body.
So he launched himself straight at him.
It was only a slap.
No matter how strong Dudley was, there was no way a physical blow could do anything to him, because souls had no physical body.
There was nothing for him to worry about.
As long as he could get a new body, as long as he could seize a new body, he would still have a chance.
This time, he would never touch Harry directly.
He would use another method to kill him.
And he would kill that Longbottom too.
After that, he would wrench the Philosopher's Stone from the boy's hands.
Victory was right before his eyes.
In the next instant...
Voldemort regretted it once again.
And by that point, he no longer even knew how many times that had happened that night.
Dudley's hand shone gold and crackled with sparks.
"Hamon Overdrive!"
Hamon energy.
It was golden Hamon.
A more advanced application of Hamon Energy, capable of further amplifying physical strength and pushing the body's potential to the limit.
On top of that, it possessed extreme destructive power against dark creatures like vampires.
In Dudley's hand, the Hamon Energy formed a golden film that lit up the entire room at once.
And then the slap landed squarely on Voldemort's remnant soul.
An expression of absolute shock appeared on Voldemort's already twisted face.
Before he could even react, he was sent flying with a single strike.
His shadowy body slammed violently into the wall, and the black gas scattered at once.
After that, thin streams of black mist began gathering again, trying to reconstruct his original shape. But the golden Hamon on Dudley's palm had dealt considerable damage to that fragmented soul. He failed several times in a row before finally managing to reform.
In the world of JoJo, there were only vampires, so it made Hamon seem as though it only worked against vampires.
But in other worlds, it was different.
Hamon Energy could deal enormous damage to anything of a negative or dark nature.
Including Voldemort's remnant soul.
To put it more simply, it was like in Jackie Chan Adventures: Hamon belonged to the side of positive energy, while things of dark and negative nature belonged to the side of black energy.
It took quite a while before the black gas finally managed to gather again and Voldemort restored his form once more.
Only this time, his color was far dimmer than before.
He looked as though he might vanish at any moment.
"You dared... you dared..."
The great Dark Lord.
Thrown into a wall by a brutish oaf just like Hagrid, as if he were a fly.
Humiliation.
That was pure humiliation!
A hoarse voice echoed as Voldemort glared at Dudley with murderous hatred. But he no longer dared act recklessly again.
Dudley had proven that he could hurt him.
That slap alone had, at minimum, destroyed five or six years' worth of life force he had accumulated in Albania.
If he took another one, he really would disappear for good.
But at the same time that he feared Dudley, Voldemort also began coveting his body with overwhelming intensity.
Hamon Energy had not only given Dudley muscles.
It had also granted him abnormally abundant vitality.
And that overflowing life force was exactly what Voldemort desired most.
If he could control Dudley, recovering would only be a matter of time.
Dudley raised his left hand and held it open less than five millimeters from his face. His waist twisted about fifty degrees, leaving him facing Voldemort in a strange, striking pose. Silver moonlight poured in through the high window of the chamber and fell directly over his body.
At over 7'5, with absurdly swollen muscles, he gave off an almost oppressive visual impact.
Behind him, it seemed as though an invisible BGM was beginning to play.
Ai ai ai~
This was Moonlit Dursley!
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