Through the Mirror

“Seize him! SEIZE HIM!” Voldemort shrieked.

Without even taking a moment to consider the order, Quirrell lunged, knocking Harry clean off his feet. They tipped backwards, and Harry had a split second to worry about cracking his skull open before they crashed through the mirror.

There was a rush of cold air, followed by a moment of weightlessness, and then they were falling.

Harry didn’t have a chance to react. Quirrell’s hands, which had been wrapped around the collar of his robes, went from gripping to shoving as the man screamed incoherently. And with nothing to brace himself against, the force of it sent Harry ass over teakettle through the open air. 

He flailed wildly, catching glimpses of the swiftly approaching ground every time he completed a rotation. His school robes weren’t fitted like his quidditch robes and flapped violently around his arms and legs, but didn’t provide near enough air resistance to slow him down or control his fall.

Abruptly and somewhat inanely, Harry decided that freefalling was nowhere near as pleasant as diving on a broom. And then, somewhat belatedly, he realised he was going to die—splattered against the ground like an overripe fruit.

No! For the first time in his life, Harry felt real, primal fear. Something that not even Voldemort had inspired. But then, Voldemort was a person; someone that could be fought and defeated. Gravity was an unstoppable force. Impossible to fight.

Impossible…? Why did that seem wrong? 

"ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?!"

Ron’s voice sounded in his ears and suddenly Harry remembered:

He was a wizard.

There was no such thing as impossible.

He clutched at the pocket holding his wand, the same wand he hadn’t even thought to use against Quirrell, and screamed, “STOP!”

It wasn’t a spell. He couldn’t think of one; wasn’t even sure if he knew any that would help. But somehow, miraculously, it worked.

The air buffeting him was suddenly strong enough to slow his fall. It slammed into him with the force of a bludger, painful but not deadly, and his spiralling freefall became more like the slow drift of a snowflake.

He barely had a moment to marvel at the change before Quirrell fell past him with a scream that grew quieter and quieter and then cut off abruptly as the man hit the ground.

Still drifting downward, Harry stared.

…Was Quirrell dead?

It was one thing to want him stopped, and quite another to see him—to see anyone—die.

Harry swallowed thickly and was pathetically grateful when a small crowd came running and distracted him from the rapidly spreading pool of blood. They shouted indistinctly, pointing at Quirrell, at Harry, at the sky above them; keeping a careful distance as Harry slowly drew close enough to make out details. The group, made up of about a dozen adults carrying farming tools, stood in a semicircle about twenty feet away from the body. And they were wearing robes. 

It hadn’t even been a concern until he noticed it, but Harry was intensely grateful he hadn’t broken the Statute of Secrecy in addition to everything else that had happened so far.

His weight returned the moment his hands and knees met the rough, rocky surface and all his breath left him in a rush. He was alive. He was—

“Get up you fool! Get up!” Voldemort’s sibilant voice hissed. “You must kill the boy! Do it now!”

Harry felt the blood leave his face.

“Master, please…” Quirrell’s voice was hoarse. He drew a rattling breath. “It hurts… I can’t…”

“GET UP! OR I WILL TEAR YOU APART FROM THE INSIDE OUT!”

Harry, limbs shaking with leftover adrenaline, tried to scramble to his feet, but collapsed back to his knees before he made it halfway up. His wand, he needed to get it out of his pocket—!

The whites of Quirrell’s eyes were showing and there was blood dripping from his mouth, but he listened to his master. “Yes… Kill the boy… Then I can rest…”

It was horrifying, especially with his mangled limbs, but slowly, painfully, Quirrell began to drag himself towards Harry.

Luckily, Harry had finally managed to reach his wand. He lifted it, ready to cast, but just like in the air, not a single spell came to mind. “Stay away,” he tried.

Quirrell inched closer.

“You’re hurt very badly,” said Harry. “You shouldn’t move. You’re making it worse.”

Quirrell ignored him.

What was it? he thought desperately, Flip-something? Flippeo? Fl — “Flipendo!” cried Harry, finally remembering the incantation for the knockback jinx.

He felt triumph for a split-second before Quirrell rolled backwards with a short, pained scream. Harry dropped his wand. He hadn’t meant to hurt him. Quirrell was bad, but he deserved prison. Not this.

“Please stop,” Harry begged, unwilling to injure the man further. His face felt wet. He glanced towards their audience, somewhat surprised they were still keeping their distance. “Aren’t any of you going to do anything?!”

None of them moved.

“Fine!” hissed Voldemort, barely audible over Quirrell’s weeping. “I’ll kill him myself.”

Harry jerked his head back just in time to watch as Quirrell’s body contorted. The man choked and made broken, animal sounds as Voldemort took control of his twisted limbs and forced them to move.

It was like something out of a horror film.

Voldemort moved in fits and starts, twisting like a snake and then scuttling like a spider whenever Quirrell’s broken body failed to accommodate him. “I’m going to pry the stone from your cold, dead hands,” he told Harry, grinning with his awful, inhumane face. He drew closer. “You can join your filthy, mudblood moth—”

Harry jerked his wand up, not even sure when it had returned to his hand, but Voldemort was faster, snatching Harry’s wrist with an arm that really shouldn’t bend that way.

This time, all three of them screamed.

Voldemort dropped his wrist and eyed Quirrell’s smoking hand. “You —!” He lurched forward, reaching for Harry’s throat.

It happened again.

“What. Is. This?” Each word was punctuated by another attempt to touch Harry. “How are you doing this?!”

Harry wasn’t doing anything. “Let… Go…” he wheezed, prying at the burning hands that had returned to his neck.

Voldemort sneered through the pain, fingers tightening. “I—” He broke off with a gurgle.

What? Harry tore his eyes away from the hideous face and did a double take when he saw a bloody fist shoved through Quirrell’s chest and out his back. 

The high-pitched screech Voldemort released drowned out whatever sounds Quirrell might have made, growing shriller and more inhuman as a dark mist poured from his gaping mouth. 

The mist coiled, giving off the impression that it was going to attack, but just as Harry braced himself, the sharp sounds of a flute pierced the air.

What happened next was strange.

The black vapor shuddered strangely as the music continued, swirling agitatedly and seeming to fold in on itself as the tune sped up into something frenetic. Harry didn't know how or why, but it must have been doing something, because the misty wraith—no, Voldemort, kept up his shrieking and moaning even as he was drawn backwards and away from Harry.

Voldemort clearly tried to resist, surging forward in short spurts, only to immediately fall back more than twice the distance he gained following every attempt. For a moment, Harry thought he saw a shadowed facsimile of the dark wizard’s furious and terrified face in the mist, but it was gone too quickly to be sure, swallowed up by a small pouch held by the woman standing beside the flute player.

Harry opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, but then the arm retreated from Quirrell’s torso with a squelch and he was suddenly preoccupied with the body falling into the dirt beside him.

“Professor?”

The dead body didn’t answer, but the owner of the arm did. Only, he didn’t answer in English.

“...What?” Harry looked up.

The being, who was as pale as a vampire but unaffected by the sun, spoke again. Still in whatever language he’d used before. Presumably Chinese or Japanese, since the man was Asian and it didn’t sound very much like the Vietnamese that Andy Nyugen from Magnolia Crescent sometimes used with his parents.

Looking around, it appeared that, aside from Harry himself, everyone here was Asian. “I don’t suppose any of you speak English, do you?” he asked faintly.

When the being spoke again, still in his own language, Harry had his answer.

Bollocks.