The red light that had been rising through Quirrell's body surged outward—as though something had torn itself free from deep within him, breaking through the boundaries of borrowed flesh.
Quirrell's body went rigid. His face contorted, not with pain but with something more fundamental—one expression being forced out and replaced by another, as though a second face was pressing itself up through the first.
What emerged had no nose. Its features were sharp and inhuman. The eyes had gone entirely blood-red, their pupils contracted to vertical slits.
Voldemort.
With a single, casual gesture, he sent the unicorn flying sideways. She hit the ground and stayed there, her cries weakening but continuous.
He looked at Henry.
A smile formed on a face that wasn't designed for warmth.
"Interesting," he said. The voice was low and dry, each sibilant drawn out—the sound of something that had long since stopped thinking of speech as anything other than a tool. "A unicorn under the Imperius Curse, and yet she broke free. What did you do?"
Henry stood exactly where he was. His hands hung at his sides. His wand remained in his pocket, because moving toward it right now would give Voldemort all the reason he needed.
"Nothing," Henry said. "Perhaps it was her own will."
He was surprised to find himself calm. Not the performed calm of someone suppressing panic, but something more genuine—the particular steadiness that comes from having already thought through the worst possibilities and accepted them.
Voldemort regarded him, something that might have been amusement moving through those red eyes.
"Her own will." A soft sound that was nearly a laugh. "Unicorns are pure creatures—but purity and power are different qualities. The Imperius Curse should be absolute against them."
His gaze traveled over Henry with a deliberateness that felt like contact.
"Unless something gave her additional strength."
Henry's chest tightened fractionally. His face showed nothing. "You think that was me?"
"What do you think?" Voldemort said.
He didn't wait for the answer. He raised his wand and turned it toward the unicorn, who lay struggling on the ground, unable to rise, her sounds growing quieter.
"This creature has served its purpose," he said. "Keeping it alive now is simply inconvenient."
His lips parted.
"Avada—"
Henry moved.
His wand was in his hand and aimed before he had consciously decided to reach for it.
"Expelliarmus!"
The jet of red light crossed the distance between them in an instant, heading directly for Voldemort's wand hand.
Voldemort flicked his wrist. The spell deflected, struck a nearby tree, and scattered into sparks against the bark.
He turned back to Henry with an expression that had acquired genuine interest.
"A twelve-year-old boy," he said, "draws his wand in front of me. Do you know who I am?"
"Yes," Henry said. His palms were damp around the wand, but his arm held steady. "Voldemort."
The moment the name landed, the air seemed to contract around it.
Voldemort's eyes narrowed to very thin lines.
"You use my name."
"Names exist to be used," Henry said. "You were frightening because you were powerful. Now you're living in a professor's borrowed body and surviving on unicorn blood. I'm not sure what about that warrants the same level of reverence."
Voldemort didn't express anger. He laughed—a sound as dry and cold as the rest of him.
"You haven't studied dueling yet, have you," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I'm a second-year student," Henry said pleasantly. "Surely you wouldn't want to duel me."
Something crossed Voldemort's expression that might have been genuine amusement.
"No," he said. "As your Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, I believe what's appropriate here is instruction. An informal lesson."
He took two measured steps forward. "First, draw your wand. Then we exchange a bow."
He bowed, precisely and deliberately.
Henry didn't move.
Voldemort sighed with theatrical patience. "Henry. Etiquette is observed even in the forest. You haven't forgotten everything Dumbledore taught you, I presume."
Henry gave a slight, careful bow.
"Better." Voldemort straightened, and the faint satisfaction in his expression gave way to something more assessing. "I find I appreciate your nerve. That's genuinely Slytherin. Now—what dueling spells have you actually learned?"
"Tickling Charm," Henry said, as though reciting from a lesson plan. "Tarantallegra. Expelliarmus. The Knockback Jinx, very recently."
Voldemort made a sound of profound contempt. "The standard has collapsed entirely since my time. If this continues, Hogwarts will become an embarrassment among the European schools." He paused, apparently struck by something. "When I was a student there—" He stopped.
Henry raised an eyebrow slightly. "You mean that Muggle-born student? The one who—"
"Do not." Voldemort's voice dropped to something very quiet and very flat. "Do not finish that sentence."
A brief silence.
"Very well," Voldemort said, recovering his composure with visible effort. "I'll teach you something actually useful. Something worth knowing."
"I'd like to learn the spell you just attempted," Henry said. "The one you were about to cast at the unicorn. I understand it's an Unforgivable Curse."
He had quietly accepted that reinforcements were not coming. Whatever happened in this clearing would be decided here.
Voldemort's expression shifted into something that looked almost like recognition of a kindred spirit.
"Admirable," he said, with what appeared to be genuine appreciation. "Wanting to learn the Killing Curse in your second year. I'll confess that particular ambition didn't occur to me at your age."
He paused. "There is a complication, however. The Killing Curse requires genuine killing intent—not practiced hatred, not rehearsed malice, but the real thing. A mind and heart fully aligned behind it. At your age, with your current experience, at best you'd give me a headache."
"I disagree," Henry said, with the tone of someone who has been unfairly underestimated.
Voldemort laughed—an actual laugh, brief and apparently involuntary.
"Then we'll make this an exchange," he said. "I'll teach you the Killing Curse properly, and you'll retrieve the Philosopher's Stone for me. That's a considerably more concrete arrangement than what Quirrell offered you."
"Significantly more honest," Henry agreed.
Something flickered across Voldemort's face at that—not displeasure, precisely, but a recognition that he was dealing with something more careful than he had initially anticipated.
"Good," he said. "The pronunciation first. Avada Kedavra. Repeat."
Henry repeated it.
"Precise," Voldemort said, with something that might have been a teacher's satisfaction. "Now—raise your wand, aim it at me, and cast it."
Henry looked at him. "Is that wise? On your part?"
"You can't harm me," Voldemort said, with the complete ease of someone stating an obvious fact. "Not yet. Consider it a demonstration."
Henry raised his wand.
He became aware of something: the serpent ring on his left hand—the same hand steadying the wand—had begun to glow.
Faintly at first, then with increasing urgency, a green light building in the setting of the ring with a quality that felt distinctly unlike anything the ring had done before.
Voldemort registered something a half-second too late. His expression changed.
Henry had already committed to the cast.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The green light that erupted from his wand was nothing like what he had produced in any practice session, nothing like anything he had seen performed.
It was vast—a torrent rather than a beam, filling the space between the trees, obliterating shadow, consuming the distance between himself and Voldemort in less time than it took to understand what he had done.
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Early chapters: [email protected]/palevolt100