Compared to the stuttering Professor Quirrell she remembered from the books, the man standing before her now had burn scars covering most of his face — a sight that was genuinely hard to look at.
"Quirrell — it really is you!"
Harry immediately leveled his wand at him.
"It seems you're sharper than I gave you credit for, Potter." Quirrell showed not the slightest surprise at Harry's arrival.
But almost at once, his gaze slid away from Harry and settled on the massive armored warrior looming at his side — a hulking construct of metal that stood half a head taller than Quirrell himself.
"What is this? Some guardian Dumbledore sent you?" he sneered. "Your courage doesn't amount to much after all."
Harry looked sideways at the armored warrior with a bewildered, head-buzzing sort of confusion.
Dumbledore had sent this thing to protect him?
He had no way to confirm it — but just having that enormous bulk standing at his side sent Harry's sense of security soaring.
Quirrell snapped his fingers. Several ropes materialized out of thin air and shot toward Harry, trying to bind him — only for the armored warrior to slice them apart with a single flourish of its sword.
"Then I suppose I'll have to deal with your guardian first."
Quirrell's expression darkened. He whipped out his wand, thrust it at the armored warrior, and shouted: "Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of green light erupted from his wand and blazed toward the armored warrior as it charged forward at full speed.
Protego!
A wandless Protego snapped into place — but the invisible shield could not stop that lethal streak of green.
"No!"
Harry's shout rang out. The green light punched through the shield and struck the armored warrior dead in the chest.
The smile had barely begun to form on Quirrell's face before it froze solid.
The armored warrior simply... stopped. The iron breastplate had dented ever so slightly where the curse hit. Then it raised one hand, rubbed the dent thoughtfully, and lifted its head in silence — as if mocking Quirrell's wasted effort.
"The Killing Curse had no effect... are you a magical object?" Quirrell murmured, his color draining slightly.
Before he could press his attack, the armored warrior was already surging forward, its longsword swinging down in a powerful arc — only to crash against Quirrell's hastily cast Protego barrier.
A sharp metallic clang rang out as iron blade met iron shield; sparks flew in all directions.
Quirrell's heart lurched with genuine alarm. He threw himself backward, simultaneously sweeping his wand across the floor. The dirt rose up and reshaped itself into two Basilisk-shaped monsters.
The Basilisk-creatures let out a roar and lunged at the armored warrior.
The armored warrior didn't flinch. It channeled its magic into the blade, cut one of the creatures down in a single stroke, and continued advancing on Quirrell one measured step at a time.
Avada Kedavra — useless. Transfiguration — useless.
Even Fiendfyre was being casually deflected.
Quirrell fired curse after curse, but the sweat on his forehead only thickened. Whatever dark spell he hurled, the lighter ones were simply tanked by the armor outright, while the heavier ones were blocked by Protego.
And him? The moment he edged even a little too close, that ceaselessly swinging longsword would find him — best case, crippled; worst case, dead.
Whatever happened to a proper magical duel!
You fight with both magic and martial skill — you have no honor!
"Useless fool. Let me handle this." A raspy voice emanated from the back of his skull.
Quirrell didn't hesitate. If his master didn't intervene now, the two of them might both die here.
He quickly unwound the turban from his head. The back of his skull was exposed, revealing a face — grotesque and terrifying. Its color was chalk-white, its eyes a livid red that glowed with a sinister light, and beneath them were two narrow, slit-like nostrils, thin as a serpent's.
Ha — no nose, just as expected.
Voldemort twisted Quirrell's neck at a sickening angle and fixed his burning gaze directly on Kate.
Under Kate's control, the armored warrior stopped mid-stride, its ceaselessly swinging longsword finally going still.
Voldemort stared at her. She stared back at Voldemort.
Then, without warning, the armored warrior moved first — turning and running straight toward Harry.
Voldemort was faster. He dissolved into a plume of black smoke and surged toward Harry's position as well.
If he got his hands on Harry, everything would fall apart!
Get out of the way — now!
She screamed it inwardly with every ounce of urgency she had. She had no voice to use, but Harry himself understood he was the target, and he immediately spun and bolted for the door.
A rushing sound tore through the air. Harry glanced back and, through the swirling black smoke, saw a gleaming longsword flying straight toward him.
He instinctively grabbed the hilt — and the unseen force bound into the blade seized him along with it, blasting the door open by brute force and hurling him straight at the wall of black flames.
He was going to crash right into it!
Harry screwed his eyes shut — but the searing pain he had braced for never came.
He opened his eyes a moment later, belatedly, and found himself already standing within the protective perimeter of the black flame wall.
The black smoke that was Voldemort, and the armored warrior, had both been stopped outside.
He looked down and found that the longsword in his hand had been melted down to nothing but half a hilt at some point, with a faint residue of some substance still clinging to the grip, cold to the touch.
Which meant no one could enter now — and he couldn't leave through the fire wall either.
Harry watched as Voldemort's black smoke drifted above the fire wall for a moment, then had no choice but to reassemble into human form and stand on the other side.
"You've ruined everything!" Voldemort shrieked, thrusting out his wand and directing torrents of Fiendfyre at the armored warrior.
The Fiendfyre he unleashed was in an entirely different league from Quirrell's.
The fire serpents he conjured howled as they lunged at the armored warrior, melting the iron of its body inch by inch into streams of molten metal.
"No — stop!"
Harry cried out in horror, desperate to intervene — but he was trapped inside the flame wall, completely powerless, forced to watch as the armored warrior that had guarded him all this way melted away in the inferno.
Voldemort laughed, sharp and triumphant. His Fiendfyre was invincible — never mind a mere magical object; even if Dumbledore himself were to walk in here...
His eyes went wide.
The armored warrior, which had already melted into a pool of molten iron, stirred as if resurrected. Drawn together by unseen magical force, it slowly recongealed into a humanoid shape — and all across its body, deep crimson dragon-fire blazed to life.
"Damn you — it's you!"
Voldemort recognized those flames in an instant. This was the very same dragon-fire that had scorched him in the Forbidden Forest that night. Fury ignited in him like a furnace.
Old grievances piled on new ones. For a Dark Lord already volatile even at the best of times — reduced as he was to a mere sliver of a soul — the rage pushed him further over the edge, and he spent the magic he had borrowed from Quirrell's body without restraint.
The Fiendfyre blazed ferociously, incinerating everything flammable in its path. The fire serpents opened their enormous maws and tore into the dragon-fire figure before them.
But Kate's dragon-fire could only be sustained by what little magic remained in the Phantom Clone — and for the moment, it was completely outmatched by the Fiendfyre serpents.
Dragon-fire, Fiendfyre, and the black flames blocking all exits blazed together, heating the entire underground chamber to an almost unbearable temperature.
Inside the flame wall, Harry wiped the sweat from his forehead. Through the curtain of black fire, he could just barely make out the dragon-fire figure — shaped from the armored warrior — being driven back and overwhelmed by the Fiendfyre serpents.
He had to find a way to help it!
He looked frantically around the room and suddenly remembered the five bottles left over from the earlier challenges.
If he recalled correctly, two of them were wine.
He sprinted to the table, quickly identified the two wine bottles based on Hermione's earlier analysis, then climbed up onto the tabletop to get a clear line of sight — just in time to see that the dragon-fire figure was on the verge of being consumed entirely by the Fiendfyre serpents.
"Hey — over here!"
He waved his arms wildly until he finally managed to draw one of the Fiendfyre serpents' attention away, then wound back and hurled both wine bottles with all his strength at the fading dragon-fire figure.
The bottles shattered. Alcohol splashed across the dragon-fire figure and instantly reignited the flames that had nearly guttered out!
Carrying the faintest trace of alcohol in its heat, the dragon-fire figure staggered upright. The molten iron that had formed its humanoid shape was finally vaporized entirely by the now superheated dragon-fire, leaving not a single drop behind.
Voldemort made a strange sound — a curious "hmm" — his red eyes fixing on a barely-perceptible point of light glimmering beneath the dragon-fire.
"So it was only a Phantom Clone all along..."
He muttered in irritated disbelief. The vicious Fiendfyre serpents surged back in, pinning the dragon-fire figure down once more.
How dare it make a fool of him like this!
Just wait. He would find the owner of this Phantom Clone, and then tear them apart limb from limb.
Kate, whose consciousness was linked to the clone, was not faring much better in that moment. Even though her physical body was back in the dormitory, she was drenched in sweat as thoroughly as if she had been hauled out of a lake.
It's almost over...
With only a Phantom Clone, there was no winning against Voldemort...
Her body had already begun to tremble faintly. Kate squeezed her eyes shut, her consciousness still straining to hold back the assault of the Fiendfyre serpents.
Gradually, the magic within the clone ran dry, and the dragon-fire sustained by that magic began to show the first signs of going out.
And at that very moment, a knock came at the dormitory door, accompanied by Hermione's urgent, desperate voice: "Kate! Come out quickly! We need to find Dumbledore!"
On one side, the fire serpents pressed in harder. On the other, Hermione pounded at the door and called for her.
Kate's small face cycled between pale and ashen. Beneath her closed eyelids, something stirred — and she could feel the link to the clone on the verge of snapping, her consciousness about to be pulled back into her own body.
Fluffball, perched on its roost, suddenly threw its head back with a sharp cry, then launched itself from the high perch and plummeted — only to vanish the instant it hit the floor.
Outside the room, Hermione was still knocking.
In the underground chamber, the clone's magic was nearly gone.
The moment the dragon-fire died, she heard Harry's cry of shock and grief.
Really now... they had never even met this Phantom Clone. Why on earth was he crying over it?
The clone scattered into scattered motes of light and drifted weightlessly upward from beneath the crushing Fiendfyre serpents.
Voldemort let out a low, satisfied laugh and raised his wand to finish it off with Avada Kedavra — but to his astonishment, the Phantom Clone before him simply vanished.
Recalled?
He turned, suspicious, scanning the room in all directions — and found no trace of it anywhere.
Until he noticed Harry's terrified eyes staring at the floor beneath Voldemort's own feet.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Outside the clone — her consciousness having snapped back into her body — Kate's eyes flew open, and she cried out the incantation for the Levitation Charm.
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