Switched

Harry waited until Quirrell turned around to write something on the board, then hissed pst at Danny as loud as he could, just to be sure the possessed professor would hear him. When he turned back around to rake his eyes over the class, Danny winced (he always did, Quirrell still made the sowilo on his forehead burn, which would make sense if he was possessed by Undead Riddle and the mark was meant to protect him from people who wanted to kill him) and Harry made a show of looking around furtively before giving the professor his best innocent, who, me? smile. 

Quirrell glared at him, but turned back to the board. 

Harry passed the note he and Danny had written out ahead of time over to his former roommate. 

Quirrell didn’t notice, turning around several seconds after the note was passed, which meant Danny had to think of something else to add to the end of it and pass it back. They’d figured that:

If I think I know something about something bad, I have to tell someone, right?

What do you know about what?

I can’t tell you.

What the hell are you talking about?

I mean, I have to tell Professor Snape or someone, right? If I might know something about what’s killing unicorns.

Why Snape and not Hagrid?

Hagrid’s special. I’d tell you before I told him.

—would do it, establishing that Harry thought he knew something, that he hadn’t told anyone else yet (they didn’t want Quirrell to go after Blaise or Hagrid or someone before coming after Harry), and that if Quirrell didn’t want the scariest professor in the school after him, he needed to find a way to keep Harry quiet ASAP.

The best Danny could come up with on the spot was apparently: And you won’t tell me?

Since Quirrell still didn’t notice, Harry added: No. It would put you in danger. Plus, I might be wrong. But I might not be. —and passed it back.

Yes, fine, tell Snape, then. For god’s sake...

Harry fancied the ‘for god’s sake’ was more for Quirrell not catching them already than for Harry passing him stupid notes. Still, he hadn’t, so... Cheers. I’ll just go to his office hour, then. 

Okay. You do that.

Still nothing! Damn it! It was never this hard to get caught passing notes by any other professor! Even Binns would probably have noticed by now! Somewhat at a loss, Harry added, What am I supposed to say about why I’ve been sleeping out in the Forest?

You’re a crazy person and thought tenting all term would be fun?

Ha, bloody ha. Wanker. There. They could just go back and forth insulting each other for a while. 

Danny, though, was apparently tired of this actually acting like they were trying not to get caught shite. He just scratched out a couple of letters and then froze, waiting for Quirrell to turn around again and “catch him” looking guilty. 

Most of the rest of the class had noticed by now, casting sidelong glances at the two of them and smirking and whispering like they thought they were trying to get Quirrell to read a note insulting himself aloud like everyone knew Weasley and Finnegan had tried to do to Snape last week. (Obviously it didn’t work. According to Blaise, the note said I’m a greasy bellend. Snape had taken one look at it, rolled his eyes, and informed the class that Weasley would like them all to know that he — Weasley — was a greasy bellend. And then let Malfoy escort Weasley up to Pomfrey to have that looked at, because Snape took no prisoners when it came to people trying to prank him.)

It “didn’t work” on Quirrell, either, when he finally noticed and staggered over to confiscate the note. “Gu-Gu-Gu— H-Hand it o-over, T-T-T-Tonks!” He went pale enough when he looked at it that Harry half thought he was going to pass out right then and there, then forced out, “D-D-Deten– ten-tion! B-B-B-Both of y-you!” and staggered back to the board.

Harry was pretty sure he would still try to get him alone before their detention. After all, he’d need at least a day to arrange the detentions, that would still give Harry plenty of time to go to Snape. Or, if he really thought he knew something and was in danger, Quirrell might expect him to just blow off the detention entirely, he supposed. Either way, it didn’t change the plan.

Quirrell, Harry thought, was absolutely terrible at this. 

If he were an undead has-been dark lord trying to claw his way back to the land of the living, and Quirinus Quirrell was all he had to work with, he might just give up, honestly. 

This was just sad.

He wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t watching Harry from up at the professors’ table, and he seemed more nervous about all this than Hermione, who had barely so much as touched her potatoes (even though the Hogwarts elves made the best mashed potatoes).

“Would you relax, Hermione?” he asked, calmly spearing an asparagus. “It’s a good plan. It’ll work.” 

“But what if– What if he realises it’s a trap, or Danny misses, or something goes wrong with the ritual, or—”

“He’ll make a run for it and we’ll tell Snape, who will probably track him down and kill him; I’ll kill him when he turns around to see who’s throwing stunning spells at his back from nowhere—” Well, first Danny was going to hit him with a binding spell they’d looked up yesterday, so He Who Got Himself Blown Up couldn’t escape before they exorcised him and trapped him in Hermione’s “lamp” (it was a muggle torch, which Harry at least thought was hilarious), but same principle. “—or you’ll kill him by tearing his soul out or something equally horrifying but clearly accidental.” He smirked at her expression of absolute loathing. “It’ll be fine, Hermione. We’ll be back to revising before curfew.” He paused a beat for effect. “Or tomorrow morning, if you tear his soul out and have to talk to the D.L.E., I guess.”

“Oooh... Keep it up and I’ll kill you when I’m done with him!” she hissed back, doing her best basilisk impression and trying to kill him with a glare right this second.

“That’s the spirit!” he said brightly, as he noticed an oddly empty spot approaching through the magic behind him. “Hey, Danny. Theo and Blaise ready to go?”

Danny leaned in close to mutter, “How did you know I was here?”

“Um, you’re invisible. The magic around the Danny-shaped empty spot isn’t. Are we on?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“Come on, Harry, we’re supposed to be meeting Blaise and Theo,” Hermione said more loudly, packing up the dozen or so textbooks she’d spread out around herself to ensure that no one would try to sit close enough to hear them over the usual Great Hall din, and leading him to the door closest to Quirrell, who obligingly moved in the same direction.

“Ah, you go ahead, I think I forgot my Transfiguration book in the Library, and I had something I wanted to talk to Snape about. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Professor Snape!” she corrected him. “And fine, but hurry up. You’re wasting revising time!” she huffed at him, taking about two steps toward the door, apparently oblivious to Quirrell’s sudden, anxious gasp behind her, then stopped. “Oh! Wait! Could you ask him about the thing Professor Sprout was talking about with the moon phases and willowbark?”

“...Sure?” 

“You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Well, no, actually, because he knew she wanted to talk to Snape about whether the relatively higher potency of willowbark and leaves gathered under the full moon was high enough to make any difference whatsoever in potions but was slightly afraid that he would fail her for bothering him just to ask a stupid question, but she...did know he wasn’t actually going to talk to Snape, so... “Yes, of course I do. I already told you the answer is no, though. Except with super advanced healing potions that we probably won’t even cover on NEWTs, I guess, probably.”

“Well, you were the one who thought he was going to put obscure theory questions on the exam, so ask him, and don’t come back with I guess, probably!” Then she stalked off with a huff, muttering under her breath about boys, always taking their sweet time on errands, which he objectively did not, so—

Oh, wait, maybe she was giving him an excuse to take the longest possible route up to the Library and back, like to have a break from her.

Brilliant, he thought, even though she couldn’t hear him, hiding his appreciative grin under a twisted sneer and a mocking, near-silent repetition of her words “Oh, don’t come back with I guess, probably...” before rolling his eyes, sticking his tongue out at her retreating back, and wandering off in almost the exact opposite direction, on a path which would take almost an extra fifteen minutes to bring him to the Library without stopping to look at neat statues and paintings and let Quirrell keep up. 

After about ten minutes, he led the way into a blind, apparently dead-end corridor, perfect for Quirrell to ambush him, or for Danny to ambush Quirrell. There was another way out, but it was one of the Parseltongue passages, so Harry figured Quirrell would think it was a dead-end, and Theo and Blaise had used glamours to disguise themselves as Gryffindors and jinxed the paintings in the corridor outside to be blank canvases (Danny assured them it was temporary), so there wouldn’t be any witnesses to the fact that he’d gone in and wouldn’t be coming back out — if Quirrell really wanted to silence Harry for good, he wasn’t going to get a better chance than this. 

The corridor was long and narrow, with no nooks or anything to hide behind, practically any spell should be able to take him out as soon as he muttered, “Shite!” and turned around, his wand still in its holster, because armed bait seemed like it would be suspicious, feigning surprise at seeing the professor blocking the only exit. “Oh! Professor! I think I must’ve gotten turned around. Are we on the east side of the Castle? I thought we were...” he babbled, trailing off as the possessed professor began to laugh.

“Er. What’s funny, exactly, sir?”

“Y-Y-You!” he stuttered, though his voice quickly grew more confident. “I h-have you, finally! Trapped! All year I’ve been trying to kill you, and now, now when you were so close to revealing me, to ruining everything, now I have you! You will not escape me, Potter! I will not fail my Master again!”

Well. Apparently they were done pretending, now. Harry blinked at him, then said the first thing that came to mind. “I knew that wasn’t a real stutter! And when the hell did you try to kill me? Because I didn’t even notice, unless you count trying to drive me to suicide with that bloody stupid fake stutter, and I swear, I’m not that oblivious, what the hell?” And what the hell was taking Danny so long? The corridor was too long for him to see the patterns of magic at the other end clearly — too much going on between here and there — but he couldn’t have been that far behind... 

“It was I,” Quirrell said, sounding awfully offended about it, “who cursed your broom before the Yule holiday, and I who sent the spiders to attack you in the Forest with the wolves.” Oh, right. Harry had kind of forgotten about that. Not about the attack itself, but that it was supposedly intended to kill him specifically. “I slipped enough blue salt into your breakfast to kill a horse last week yet somehow you are still here—” Harry wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded like poison, and probably explained why he’d been so incredibly ill for the first time in his life. So, maybe the Blacks’ resistance to poisoning was heritable, after all. Neat. “—and let’s not forget, I was the one who released the troll which so very nearly finished you off over Samhain!”

“It did not! If Minnie hadn’t distracted me, I could have finished it off, easy! And if you mean Friday, yeah, that sucked, but I think Madam Pomfrey’s stomach settling elixir was worse than whatever you slipped me. Your spiders didn’t get close to killing me, either, but I’ll make sure to tell the wolves you were behind that, assuming you get out of this alive.” He would actually give him that the broom thing was a decent attempt. If it had actually killed him, everyone would’ve just blamed the shite school brooms, and Quirrell would have gotten off scot-free.

“Assuming I get out alive?! Ha! You arrogant little—”

“Yeah, if you get out alive. Well, Quirrell, I mean. I dunno, am I talking to the world’s worst Defence professor, or the undead has-been dark lord? Whatever, I hear people only drink unicorn blood if they’re desperate, Q.E.D.”

“What would you know of it, Potter?” Quirrell snarled, disgust dripping from his name.

Harry wasn’t entirely certain what came over him, then. He grinned, taking one slow step closer to the professor, then another, ignoring the wand in his trembling hand — the stutter might be fake, but he clearly wasn’t entirely well. “I know you’re dying. This body.” Another step. “You’ve been drinking unicorn blood for months, but I would have noticed before now if that was all it took for someone to smell like you did on Monday.” Another. “You’ve been killing them, stealing the magic of their lives, but before now, you’ve always stopped in time, stopped taking blood while they’re still alive.” Closer. “This time, you didn’t.”

“W-What are you talking about, Potter?!” Quirrell demanded, that stutter entirely natural, Harry was sure. 

“It clings to you still, you know. Absolute purity in life becomes absolute corruption in death,” Harry quoted, almost close enough now to lunge forward and snatch the wand out of his hand. “And while your Master might once have dared taste absolute corruption, he has lost our Lady’s favour, and you, Quirrell, are nothing more than a twisted little tool.” Last step. “And you’re doomed.”

His left hand shot out, quicker than blinking, seizing the wand in Quirrell’s right, his free arm holding off the hand that reached immediately for his neck, even as he kicked the poor, doomed idiot in the balls, harder than he had ever kicked anyone before. (Quirrell, Harry felt, fully deserved this, not only for ineptly attempting to kill him, but for making him suffer that bloody fake stutter all bloody year!) 

He doubled over in spite of a high, cold voice shrieking at him to stand up! to kill him!

Shrieking at him...from his own head?

A bolt of golden light hit him squarely in the arse, lightning racing over him, transforming into ghostly chains, binding the stupid shade to this physical body. It shrieked louder, now a sound of pure, inarticulate fury.

Seriously, was that coming from...under the turban?

He dragged the professor to the ground, snatching the wand from his fingers and the ridiculous purple turban from his head, revealing...

“Wicked...” There was a whole other face on the back of Quirrell’s head! A face that was bloody livid, at least for the few seconds until a bright red stunning spell hit the wizard in the leg, and its lidless eyes rolled back into their shared skull. That was, without a doubt, way cooler than the major possession transfiguration-like effects Dru had listed as examples, which had ranged from shifts in limb proportions to cist-like or cancerous growths or, alternatively, abscesses. Well, she had also mentioned changes in the shape of the skull, but he was thinking like, makes you look like a dog-person, not gives you a whole other face on the back of your head.

“You’re such a creepy little freak, Potter,” Danny said, a palm pressed to the Mysterious Anti-Voldemort Sowilo and an expression of disgust on his face as he looked down at what remained of the man who killed his parents. 

“Old news,” Harry shrugged. “Somnus maximus! Petrificus totalus!” The stunning element of the Stunning Charm was instantaneous and wore off fairly quickly, after which the victim was just asleep and could be woken up by shite like attempted exorcisms. The sleeping spell should keep him under for at least a few hours, though, and the body-bind should stop Riddle being able to do anything if the sleeping spell only worked on Quirrell, not things possessing Quirrell. “What took you so long?”

“Well, it’s not my fault you picked a spot with no bloody cover to speak of. I wasn’t going to hit him with the binding spell while he still had his wand on you, was I? He could’ve A.K.’d you before I had time to stun him!”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, right. You really think Quirinus bloody Quirrell was ever competent enough to cast an Unforgivable?”

“Fine, a cutting curse, then, or an Entrail Expelling Curse, or an explosive piercing hex, or any one of a hundred other spells that could’ve killed you before I could knock him out! Ugh, come on, let’s just go, the others’ve got to be wondering where the hell we are by now...”

The others were, in fact, wondering where they were, waiting anxiously in the classroom they had decided to use for the spirit-trap. They’d moved all the furniture out so they’d have space to chalk the containment circle — it was a simple one, designed to prevent magic from crossing the circle; since a wraith was basically just magic, it should be trapped in there, too — and the more complex ritual...shape inside it (it wasn’t really a circle, more like a complex geometric design he might expect to see on a Persian rug, or something) onto the floor. 

The design — a yantra, he thought it was called — centred on a muggle torch. It didn’t have any batteries in it, because the spell would be broken if the lamp in which the spirit was trapped was lit, and they didn’t know how the magic and electrics would interact, anyway. (Also, because Hermione had forgotten to put them in before leaving home, so they didn’t actually have any.)

Harry levitated Quirrel-mort’s stunned, invisibility-cloaked form into the circle (he’d finally remembered to tell Danny that yes, he had actually found a use for this seemingly useless charm, dragging unconscious victims around by a toe or whatever) and dropped him none-too-gently on his second face. 

Danny quickly reclaimed the cloak, as though it would catch the dreaded lurgi from him if it stayed in contact with him a single second longer than necessary.

“So...what now?” he asked Hermione. He’d missed most of the preparation because he’d spent all of his free time yesterday getting that binding spell down.

“O...kay,” Hermione said, slightly too hesitantly to sound businesslike, but ‘A’ for effort. Well, ‘O’ for effort, he supposed. (Magical marks were stupid. Made it all the more ridiculous that she cared so much about them.) “So... We break the binding spell — you’ll have to reach inside the circle to do that, Harry—” Harry was doing that because Danny wasn’t entirely confident about his ability to break the binding spell, but not the other charms. “—and hopefully the wraith will just come out of Quirrell, but if it doesn’t, there’s an exorcism ritual we’ll have to do.” 

She held up a piece of parchment and a small basket with an iron buckle, a jar of saltwater, and a little tub of ground herbs and grease. “We’re going to put the herb stuff and saltwater on him and the buckle under his tongue before we break the binding, just in case. Basically the herbs are like a sort of poultice to draw him out, and the salt and iron make Quirrell’s body less hospitable to the possessing entity. And then there’s an incantation, sort of. Basically, I say each line, then wait for you all to repeat it together. Blaise and Theo think it shouldn’t matter if we just do it in English, rather than Latin—” Which was good, because Hermione’s Latin pronunciation was rubbish. “—and we just repeat it again and again, willing the spirit to do as we bid until it’s dragged out. Oh, and we have to hold our hands out so they’re inside the circle, or it will block us. The exorcism will bar the spirit from returning to its host, and if Theo and I understood how this spirit-trap works correctly, the Gate of Idramm should just...suck it in.”

“And then it snaps shut,” Theo added. “Like a bear trap. And the spirit can’t get out again until the lamp is lit.”

“Alright then,” Danny said firmly. “What are we waiting for?”

“Er...” Hermione hesitated.

“Hermione doesn’t want to touch the icky greasy shite. Or put her fingers in Quirrell’s mouth,” Blaise told him. “Which, who can blame her, really?”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Harry said, as both Blaise and Hermione did exactly that. “You know the angelica gave me a rash.” He’d helped her gather the ingredients from the greenhouses (he’d collected them while she distracted Sprout with questions about the impending exams), and he was pretty sure he was allergic. It had looked like the poison ivy rash Dudders had gotten on the Ill-Fated Tenting Excursion, and it had itched like hell for most of the afternoon.

“Oh, just give it to me,” Danny snapped, giving all four of them a look of utter disgust. (Theo just lurked and didn’t say anything, clearly hoping that someone else would volunteer, probably because he didn’t want to touch Quirrell and/or grease, either.) “Do I need to do anything specific, like runes or something? or just slap it on him anywhere?”

“Um. The book said it should be over the thymos, but obviously that’s not a real organ, so—”

“On his chest,” Theo volunteered. “About level with the heart, but in the middle of the body.”

“Well, fine. There, then. And no, you don’t need to do anything specific with it. The saltwater we just sprinkle over him, and technically the buckle doesn’t need to be under his tongue, but I thought it would be less likely that he would choke on it or something if it is.” They were also using a buckle rather than a nail or something so he wouldn’t choke on it, which Harry personally thought was taking rather a lot of concern over the health of someone who was already doomed, but whatever. It wasn’t like it had been difficult to cut a buckle off his bookbag, and he could put it back with a Repairing Charm when they were done with it.

The first part went just fine: Danny vanished Quirrell’s shirt, scooped up the mess, and slapped it on his chest. But then he sort of tried to turn around without rising from his crouch to ask if everyone else thought that would do, lost his balance, and tried to catch himself, incidentally placing his bare left hand directly on Quirrell’s stomach. 

His right hand, still covered with herbal goop, flew to his forehead, slapping instinctively at the scar, even as he yelped and continued to lose his balance, which did break the contact between him and Quirrell, Harry supposed. It also left a raw-looking burn the exact shape of Danny’s hand, right in the middle of the pale, sickly-thin torso. “Well, that’s neat. Is your hand burned?”

“Huh— Wha—? My hand?” he stuttered, blinking away tears, still trying to catch his breath and obviously confused by the question, so probably not. 

“I’m going to say it’s probably best if I shove that stupid buckle in his mouth,” Harry decided, plucking it out of the basket and doing exactly that, while Hermione helped Danny to his feet and out of the circle to lean on Blaise. After that, she sprinkled the water over the cursed man, and Theo lit the candles, activating the circle.

Harry broke the containment charm, and...nothing happened. 

Apparently they were doing this the hard way.

“Are you still up to helping?” Hermione asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Danny insisted, despite definitely not looking especially well. No one challenged him, though. Harry, at least, was thinking that if Danny wanted to participate in trapping the bastard who killed his parents, he wasn’t going to stop him.

Hermione took a deep breath. “Alright, everyone into position. I’ll take the north point, and then the four of you spread out to make a sort of pentagon around the circle — it doesn’t have to be exact — and don’t muss the lines. They’re only chalk.”

The exorcism took long enough Harry was starting to think it wasn’t going to work, that the gentle waves of magic pulsing out from each of their extended hands, washing through Quirrell and (presumably) loosening the wraith’s hold on him, just weren’t strong enough. He lost count of the number of times he repeated, “Dark spirit, uninvited guest; You are not welcome here; We refuse you this body; We compel you, come forth!” at six (or seven) — right around the time they all started saying the words together, rather than echoing Hermione and blood began to drip down Danny’s face. He kept going though, his free hand pressed to his forehead, practically shouting the words through tears of pain, and eventually Mouldy Voldie lost their battle of wills. The magic dragged his wraith out of his host, boiling black smoke twisting out of Quirrell through the “poultice”, shrieking and lashing out at them with mind-magic, but the containment circle held. 

The yantra definitely wasn’t working, though, and Danny seemed to be suffering more now that the wraith wasn’t contained within Quirrell — he reeled back, catching himself momentarily on the nearest wall.

“Why isn’t it working?” Hermione asked Theo, her voice shaking with urgency and nerves.

“It has to go into the gate — some part of it needs to—”

“Shite, Danny!” Blaise interrupted.

Everyone turned to the other boy, now on the floor, clawed hands clutching at his bleeding forehead, a twist of black smoke pulling itself free of the sowilo too, just like the one in the circle (except much smaller, it seemed to start dissolving as soon as it was free) had been pulled out of Quirrell. 

“YOU!” the wraith shrieked, throwing itself at Danny, heedless of the circle between them. “It was you, all along?!”

The runes of the circle flared with spell-light, the flames of the candles jumping dramatically. 

The wraith saw it, too, a high, terrible cackling filling the room as it threw itself at the barrier again.

Well...shite. Someone should probably do something about that. And by someone, Harry meant himself, since he couldn’t imagine that anyone actually knew a spell to force the wraith into the trap. Plus, he was pretty sure he was the only person here the wraith couldn’t possess. Yes, Dru had said that he’d probably need his host to invite him in and Harry couldn’t imagine any of the others would say, yeah, come on in, either, but better safe than sorry. Especially when sorry meant possessed by the undead dark lord. (Of course, really safe would be not going into the circle at all, but the way he did big magic, Harry just didn’t think that focusing his magic through one hand was going to do it.)

“Oh, bugger!” Hermione swore. Harry had to bite his lip to keep from giggling. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her swear before. “What are we— We didn’t plan for if—”

“Does anyone know if it will damage the circle if I step inside?” Harry asked. “As long as I don’t muss the lines, I mean.”

Hermione and Theo exchanged a slightly panicked look. Theo shrugged. “I don’t know!”

“I...don’t think so? Reaching across it was fine, so—” Hermione said. Good enough. “But, Harry, what are you— No!” she cut herself off as he answered her half-asked question by stepping over the line. The barrier sort of wobbled for a moment, but not enough for the wraith’s next attempt to break it. “He’ll be able to get in you, and—”

Harry laughed, at both Hermione’s panic and the opportunistic feeling rolling off the wraith, needle-sharp probes attempting to pierce his occlumency barrier. “No, he won’t.”

“Yes, he will,” Danny choked out. “I could– I could feel him, his rage— Harry! You need to get out of there!”

Harry ignored him, focusing on his connection to the Black Family Magic. They were part of him, no paltry containment circle could touch that bond, much less break it. Granted, his understanding of all this soul-magic shite was kind of vague, but if the Family Magic could possess him thoroughly enough to try to eat Danny, he was pretty sure that the broken has-been would be in for a very unpleasant surprise if it tried to try to take Harry’s body for itself. 

The Family Magic didn’t entirely understand what Harry was doing or why, but they did understand that he wanted their attention, and of course they responded, almost painfully present (not almost, really, more like it definitely hurt, he just couldn’t decide if that was bad at the moment, or just borderline overwhelming), their aura manifesting around him like wings, welcoming him home. 

“Oh, shite,” Blaise muttered. “Here we go...”

“What are you?!” the wraith screeched.

“Try possessing me and find out,” he suggested, fighting back giddy giggles. 

Then he did what he’d actually crossed the circle to do in the first place, reaching out into the magic around them and claiming it as his own, pushing the wraith slowly but inexorably toward the trap it had clearly been avoiding, because on second thought, maybe it hadn’t been a great idea to lay out the whole plan right in front of it.

“Harry, what are you doing?!” Hermione demanded.

“Harry, just a reminder, if you touch the Gate yourself, you’ll be trapped in that thing until I get home and find some thrice-cursed batteries,” Blaise warned him, sounding almost bored. “Also, probably dead. Or at the very least disembodied like that idiot.”

Harry lost the fight to contain his giggles. He couldn’t help it, Blaise was hilarious. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it...”

He did have it, most of it, the magic inside the circle. He didn’t know if he could safely extend his aura over the yantra, so he hadn’t, and he hadn’t tried to claim the magic too close to the wraith — its area of influence extended a little way beyond its roiling black cloud — but the rest of the ambient magic in the space was his. 

He yanked at it, pulling it toward himself, creating an area of low magical density around the Gate and just...sucking the wraith and its magic into the (relative) vacuum, a great wave of ambient magic shifting to sweep the undead git into the bear trap, his efforts to swim against the tide as absolutely futile as his screeching objections: “You can’t do this to Lord Voldemort!”

The trap was sprung with a positively blinding flash of magic, strong enough to blow out the already weakened circle — the flames jumped almost as high as Harry was tall for a brief second, before burning out entirely — snapping closed around the wraith and the torch. The latter glowed briefly golden with the lines of the sacred symbol, and when they faded away, what was left was a perfectly innocuous looking muggle tool, looking very out of place just sitting in the middle of the burnt-out circle with the unconscious Quirrell. (At least, Harry assumed he was unconscious. Was he even still alive? Hermione clearly wasn’t sure either, hurrying to check his pulse: “Professor? Professor!”) 

You look pretty out of place, too, Blaise thought at him, showing him a momentary glimpse of his perspective — Harry looked like an actual demon, the aura of the Family Magic visible around him, manifesting like they were standing at his back with their wings spread triumphantly, magic crackling around them as they cheered their success, though only Harry could feel them doing so. His eyes, turning to meet Blaise’s, were star-flecked blackness, though as soon as he blinked, they cleared to their normal cat-like green — still an inhuman colour, but not nearly as alien as not having visible sclera. The wings faded a moment later, the Family Magic retreating, mindful that if they pushed too far, tried to extend too much of themself into Harry for too long, they could burn him out.

They were still slightly more present in him than usual when, a moment after that, there was a flare of searingly light magic just inside the doorway — Fawkes, with Dumbledore in tow, wand out, ready to protect his school and his students from whatever powerful magic had just triggered an alert from the wards, in much the same way he’d appeared in his office on Christmas, ready to curse Dru for just showing up unannounced. Their power surged again as though they thought he was under attack, but he pushed them back through the instant headache induced by the sudden influx of light magic. Somehow, he really, really didn’t think it would be a good idea to look even remotely threatening at the moment. 

Dru wasn’t there to say ‘hi’ to Fawkes and distract Dumbledore from cursing him, but he paused anyway, taking in the entire scene: the burnt-out circle; Hermione kneeling beside the unconscious Quirrell (Harry figured she would’ve said if he were dead), with a handful of herbal goop on his chest and a handprint apparently burned into his stomach; the ominously innocent-looking muggle torch; Harry, whatever he looked like at the moment; Danny scrambling to his feet, his face and hands bloody; Theo, horrified, pressed against the nearest wall; and Blaise, as calm and unflappable as ever, raising an eyebrow at him. 

“I can explain,” he volunteered. “But it may be best to take the professor to the hospital wing first? Or maybe Saint Mungo’s... Major possession is no joke...”

No point, Harry thought at him. He drank the blood of a dead unicorn and he’s not me, so they’re not going to be able to save him.

You want to try explaining to anyone how you know that? 

Um, no. But I think the fact that there’s a second face on the back of his head, where part of his brain should be, is obviously going to be a problem.

They’ll still want a Healer to confirm it anyway...

“A-And we have to do something with that thing!” Theo stuttered, pointing at the torch. “It’s got the Dark Lord trapped in it, we can’t– we can’t let him get out! Not ever! He won’t— You don’t know—”

"Calm yourself, Mister Nott. I give you my word, if what remains of Lord Voldemort—” Theo flinched. “—is indeed trapped in that artefact, it will never again see the light of day.”

“What? No!” Harry objected immediately. All five of the others turned to stare at his outburst. “You can’t just hide it away, I need to kill that wanker!”

Theo looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “Harry. It’s the Dark Lord. You can’t kill him!”

“Yet. I’m working on it! No, wait—” He cut himself off to scowl at Dumbledore, as the old wizard used a wandless summoning charm to pull the torch to himself. “Sir! I—”

“We will discuss the matter later, Harry,” he said, examining the entirely unremarkable-looking muggle object. “I do believe Mister Zabini is correct: I should remove poor Quirinus to hospital. And then I believe you five have a very interesting story to tell me. Please go up to my office and wait for me there. The password is Lemon Sherbert.”

Harry let himself be herded away by the others, partly because now the adrenaline of the confrontation was wearing off, the maybe-not-bad pain of channelling too much magic was shifting into a definitively bad post-overchannelling sort of pain, but mostly because Dumbledore grabbed Fawkes’s tail with one hand and Quirrell’s wrist with the other, all three of them vanishing in a burst of fire and unpleasantly light magic, taking the torch with them.

If it came down to it, he was sure Dru would convince Dumbledore to give the stupid thing back when the time came to destroy it. And on the plus side, the fact that the wraith was currently trapped in a hand torch meant they would be able to just break the connection between it and Tom (and all the other horcruxes) without worrying about reprisals, or that he might retrieve one or more of the horcruxes they hadn’t reached yet and keep them with him, or whatever.

They made it about halfway to Dumbledore’s tower before they reached a short stretch of corridor which didn’t have any portraits and Blaise, who was leading their little parade, stopped abruptly, waving them into a classroom that actually seemed to be in use, though Harry had never been in here before — Care of Magical Creatures, he suspected. There were a couple of charts on one wall, comparing kneazles to housecats and listing the different types of black dogs, complete with animated sketches of each one.

“Blaise? The Headmaster said to go to his office!”

“Thank you, Hermione, I had forgotten what we were doing in the course of the last ten seconds.”

“Er. What are we doing?” Danny asked. “Because I don’t know about you, but I want to get up there and floo my mum before Dumbledore gets back...”

“Good call, but first, we need to get our story straight.”

“Get our story straight? Honestly, Blaise? What is there to get straight?”

“How we knew that Quirrell was possessed, for one.”

“What’s wrong with the truth?” Hermione asked indignantly.

“What, that Harry happened to recognise the same taint of corruption on Quirrell as he felt on a dead unicorn last month?” Blaise drawled, like that was out of the question. 

“Raises awkward questions about what the fuck Potter actually is, but we’ll get back to that,” Theo added, brushing off Hermione’s question before turning to Blaise. “Did you know we were— Did you know that was the Dark Lord, Blaise?”

“Did I know? No. Did I suspect?” He shrugged. 

“You absolute wanker! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“You didn’t need to know? And explaining how I knew would mean betraying secrets, which you know I don’t do lightly.”

“I didn’t need to know that I was helping you trap the bloody Dark Lord?!”

“If he escapes, you can tell him that I tricked you into it. All you knew was that something was possessing your professor, you didn’t know who or what it was, you’re very sorry and will do anything to make it up to him, blah-blah-blah. You might get crucio’d for a few seconds, but you’ll probably walk away. Well, be forced to take the mark and enslave yourself to him, but that was always going to happen if and when he came back.

“Can we please focus? I suggest that we claim that we questioned the S.T.D. story because no self-respecting vampire would have shagged Quirrell, and that protective enchantment on Danny wouldn’t react to some poor sap with an S.T.D., but it very well might have reacted to a possessed professor who theoretically posed a danger to him. Harry was following him after Defence on Monday because...?”

“I was bored and would rather follow Quirrell around and try to figure out if he’s possessed than attend another stupid revising session?”

“If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to come!” Hermione snapped. “No one’s making you. All you ever do is distract everyone anyway!”

“The rest of them are just humouring you. I’m actually the only one who wants to come, specifically because I like distracting you.”

Hermione ground her teeth for a moment before informing him, “I really am going to kill you, Potter.”

Harry grinned. “You love me, you know it.”

“Would you two stop flirting?” Blaise asked, all exasperated.

“Flirting? I don’t flirt! And if I did, I wouldn’t flirt with him!”

“Remind me to say I told you so in five years. So, Harry was following Quirrell around because harassing ill professors is even more entertaining than driving his friends to murder him, and overheard him talking to his ‘Master’—”

“Apologising for failing to kill me and promising to try again,” Harry inserted. 

“Did he say he slipped you cyanide on Friday?” Danny interrupted. 

“If that’s what blue salt is, yeah.” 

It’s a cyanide-based alchemical poison. The effects are delayed about an hour so it’s not immediately obvious you’ve been poisoned, Blaise explained. 

“I really should’ve kicked him in the balls a second time just for that.”

"How are you not dead?" he asked, shaking his head incredulously, though Harry didn't answer because Theo said, “You...kicked the Dark Lord...in the— Harry!” at the same time.

“No, I kicked Quirrell for that stupid fake stutter. I fully intend to kill He Who Failed To Die Properly.”

“But—”

“Are you really surprised, Theo?” Blaise asked, before immediately dragging the conversation back on track. “Harry brought this discovery to the rest of us, we decided to do this ritual in the hopes that we could save Quirrell and wouldn’t tip off whatever was possessing him. Harry lured him into our trap, Danny bound him to his body and then stunned him from under the invisibility cloak, they brought him here, we confined him in a magic-containing circle, exorcised him, and Harry used freeform magic to push him into our Gate of Idramm, which blew out the circle and triggered the wards which alerted the Headmaster.”

“So, basically the truth,” Hermione said pointedly. 

“Except we don’t mention the unicorn,” Harry reminded her.

"And keep up your occlumency," Blaise advised her. "He's not a legilimens, but he can cast the legilimency spell silently and wandlessly." 

“Er. What about...?” Danny pointed at his forehead. 

“Well, Theo’s the only one involved who doesn’t already know, so...” Honestly, if it were up to Harry, he would have told him by now. Draco bloody Malfoy knew! But only about him, and Theo was much cleverer than Draco. If Harry told him that he was really Eridanus Black, he was betting the quiet Slytherin would work out that Danny was Harry Potter in about two seconds flat. And that one wasn’t really his secret to tell. (Even if Theo clearly already suspected something, if his comment on the train all the way back at the beginning of the year was any indication.)

“What don’t I know?” Theo demanded. “That Danny’s the real Harry Potter?” he suggested scathingly. “I figured that out two years ago, you lot were just too big of prats to confirm it!”

“Um, yeah. If it’s any consolation, they didn’t tell me until Yule,” Danny admitted, looking a little embarrassed that literally everyone put it together before he did.

“Eridanus Black,” Harry introduced himself. “Don’t mention that to anyone, though. I’ll be going by James or Jay, son of Sirius Black, for political reasons.”

"Well met," Theo said, probably automatically. “Anyway Danny, if Dumbledore knows you’re the kid who was there when Lady Potter did whatever she did on Samhain of Eighty-One, we can explain that we obviously accidentally exorcised you, too. No idea what that thing was, maybe something to identify the person who tried to kill you and make sure you’d be especially protected from them? That’s just a guess, though, obviously. It’s probably broken now, whatever it was, but hey, at least you don’t have a fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul stuck to your forehead anymore.”

"The more I learn about Lily, the more insane she sounds,” Danny said, shaking his head like that didn’t really make it more of a shame they would never be able to meet her. “Alright, is that it?" He was clearly still keen to call his mum. 

Harry shrugged and nodded along with the other boys, but Hermione glowered at the lot of them. "Are we not going to talk about what the heck that was? with the wings?"

"Er, no? We don't really need to. I mean, it's not really any of Dumbledore’s business, so I'm not planning on mentioning it, but it was just an effect of calling on the Black Family Magic so the wraith couldn't possess me. Like soulfire, but bigger.”

"It was way more magic than anyone our age should be able to channel without burning out," Theo informed her (and Harry).

“Well, I was overchannelling,” Harry admitted. Practically his entire body was still tingly and burning, like getting a friction burn on the inside. He had a feeling casting magic right now wouldn't be very pleasant, but it wasn't exactly debilitating. He was sure he'd be fine by tomorrow. Maybe the next day.

Theo gave him a look like he was being an idiot. “If that was soulfire and not some kind of illusion, you should have been overchannelling enough to cause serious, permanent nerve damage, at least. The fact that you’re walking around acting just fine strongly suggests you aren’t human.”

“Oh! Did I not tell you I’m shadowkin now?” 

Thinking back on it...he might not have. Theo knew that Harry had been sleeping with Blaise when it was raining (and now all the time) — he and Hermione had helped Danny ward him out of his old room — but the original “reason” was because he and Danny had had a falling out over Dru and Andi. He might think Snape made an exception and let him into Blaise’s room because Harry was practically a Slytherin anyway, or something. And he hadn’t been there when it had come up with Hermione after winter hols. 

“Apparently that’s supposed to increase your channelling capacity somehow. Also, I’m apparently literally a demon or fae or whatever. A creature of the Void.” That was, Harry thought, the coolest way to put it. “See, there’s this eldritch soul-symbiote thing and how I ended up with it is sort of a long story, but basically, no, I’m not human and never really was, even before turning into shadowkin. Dumbledore doesn’t know about the soul-symbiote, but he does know about the shadowkin thing. So he’ll probably put it down to that.”

Theo just blinked at him for a long moment, like I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me, and I’m leaning toward no even though that’s completely absurd, and I’m not even really surprised. (Danny might have had a point about Harry always being absurd.) “Okay, but that doesn’t change that it's still intimidating as hell, and we probably shouldn't mention it to Dumbledore. I guarantee he'll already be watching you as a potential up-and-coming dark lord. Scaring him by hinting that you're going to grow up to be in his weight class on top of that is just asking for trouble.”

Honestly, Harry suspected that Dumbledore already knew that — Bella was in his weight-class, and Harry was her clone. Granted, Bella’s abilities had been augmented by her dedication to Eris, but Dumbledore didn’t know that. But whatever, for the sake of making this conversation as quick and painless as possible, he wouldn’t mention it. Like he’d already not been planning to. He nodded.

“Noted,” Danny said. “Now can we go? Because at this rate, Dumbles is going to get up to his office before we do, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it might be a great idea to have an advocate and at least one of our legal guardians present while we’re discussing the ritual magic we were just caught doing on one of our professors, which means I need to call my mum, preferably before he gets back!”

Er. Right. Dru would probably not be pleased with him if she ended up having to come here because Harry got in a lot of trouble which could easily have been prevented by involving Andromeda early on. “Yeah, let’s go.”