Late at night, on the eighth floor of Hogwarts, inside the Room of Requirement.
After retrieving the Thought Projection he had sent to take his exams, Victor continued with the construction of his guild, a cacophony of magic and wood.
His main objective was to finish building the house in the common room area. He planned to build a large, three-story wooden house. The design was for the first floor to be a recreational space for guild members, while the second and third floors would be for offices and bedrooms.
Victor used magic to strip the bark off the pine and fir trees from the Forbidden Forest, then he whittled them into cylindrical shapes of the same size. Then, he used Crush to carve perfect notches on both ends, and soon, one by one, the mortise and tenon structured wooden components for the house were ready.
But after he was done with this, Victor continued to release his Fire Dragon Slayer Magic to remove the excess moisture from these logs. This required precise control, or it would be easy to set the wood on fire, especially the resin-heavy pine, which could burn incredibly fast.
The wooden components needed to be roasted for a while, so Victor sat on the side, waiting and eating a chocolate ice cream. The large wooden house behind him was only missing its roof.
He recalled that it had been exactly a week since he started building it. Since he wasn't a professional architect, he had encountered quite a few difficulties along the way.
The reason Victor had to go through all this trouble and build the guild house himself was that his Nature Magic couldn't be used to build a house. The conditions for using Nature Magic required plants and water, and no matter what shape the things he created with this magic took, they were all living plants.
Those plants would take root and grow, and Victor was never able to control the roots of the plants he had created with Nature Magic to prevent them from destroying the ground. So in the end, he decided to build the house the old-fashioned way.
After waiting for about half an hour, all the logs were finally dried. Victor installed them one by one into their corresponding grooves, and the guild house was finally topped off with a roof. He checked the overall stability of the house, and it was excellent!
His hard work and the money he spent to get a professional to draw the blueprints hadn't been in vain.
Having spent a week to finally build the wooden house, a sense of pride welled up in Victor's heart. He then took out his pocket watch to check the time and realized it was almost midnight.
Time really flies. He couldn't believe a school year had already passed at Hogwarts.
Sighing at the passage of time, Victor put his pocket watch back into his pocket and used magic to instantly apparate back to his dorm. After washing up, he happily went to bed, hugging his pillow and falling into a deep sleep.
At the same time, except for Neville, who had already been petrified, no one knew that three little lions from Gryffindor had left their common room.
After an unknown amount of time, Victor was fast asleep in bed, having a sweet dream. But all of a sudden, a small figure phased through the wall of the Ravenclaw student dormitory and silently came to Victor's bed. The figure slowly reached out a hand toward Victor, but at that moment, Victor's eyes snapped open. He looked at the owner of the hand and sighed helplessly. "Peeves, can you please not choose this time to play a prank? Waking someone from a good dream is a very bad thing to do."
But as soon as he finished speaking, Peeves didn't let out his usual prankster's laugh. Instead, he said anxiously, "Snake… bad guy!"
"Albus Dumbledore is gone, and the bad guy has entered the school!"
Victor immediately frowned upon hearing this.
At the same time, the Gryffindor trio, after going through numerous difficulties and overcoming the challenges of the Devil's Snare, the flying keys, the wizard chess, and the potion riddle, which were almost tailor-made for them, finally arrived at a long, downward staircase.
For some reason, perhaps because of Victor's influence, Ron didn't have to sacrifice himself in the wizard chess challenge. Hermione, on the other hand, had simply used a floating charm to carry them all over the purple fire door that required drinking the correct potion to pass.
"When did you learn that spell?" Ron asked, looking at the purple flames behind them in disbelief.
"Is that so strange? You know how to practice the flying spell. You just weren't willing to spend the time to learn it!" Hermione replied proudly, then brushed a few sparks off her robe. In reality, it was because she had trouble with her flying broom in every flying lesson. In her desire to be better than others, she had secretly practiced the flying spell every day…
After passing through the purple fire door, the trio were greeted by an endless staircase that led underground. Although they didn't know what dangerous traps awaited them at the bottom of the stairs, the three of them mustered up their courage and continued to walk forward.
After walking for what seemed like an eternity, they finally reached the end and saw a large underground hall. There were dozens of stone pillars embedded in the stone walls around the hall. In the center was a mirror that Harry was very familiar with, and in front of the mirror stood a figure that no one had expected to see.
Harry felt the scar on his forehead get hotter and hotter. He looked at the face reflected in the Mirror of Erised, a look of disbelief on his face, and Ron and Hermione had the same expression.
"No! It's impossible!" Hermione said in shock. "How could it be you, Professor Quirrell?!"
"Heh… heh… heh…" Quirrell slowly turned around and let out a sinister, raspy laugh. The Arabic-style turban he usually wore on his head was gone, replaced by a head that was oozing a disgusting liquid. On the remaining charred skin of the face, three green pupils stared intensely at the trio.
"It's you! You were the person in the Forbidden Forest that night!" Hermione immediately realized, seeing that Quirrell was covered in burns. "It's impossible! How could you still be alive after an attack like that!"
"Hahaha, clever little witch! But in fact, that student named Victor Dreyar couldn't kill me." Quirrell's green pupils suddenly radiated endless hatred, but he quickly calmed down. "But that's alright. Both he and Dumbledore thought I was dead, so I was able to sneak in here."
With that, he simply raised his hand and summoned Harry to his side, then tightly grabbed his neck.
"Harry!" Hermione and Ron exclaimed in unison. Hermione immediately raised her hand and pointed her wand at Quirrell, but she hesitated to cast a spell for fear of hurting Harry.
Quirrell completely ignored Hermione and Ron, and he placed Harry in front of the Mirror of Erised. After a short while, he saw Harry's pants pocket bulge. He then took out the Philosopher's Stone from his pocket, and with a flick of his wrist, he threw Harry, who was almost suffocated, to the ground not far from Ron.
The two of them fell to the ground together… Quirrell looked at the legendary Philosopher's Stone with its magical powers, and his eyes were filled with a mix of fascination and madness. But he quickly composed himself and focused his attention on the trio again.
Seeing that Harry was no longer in the way, Hermione immediately used the most powerful spell she knew. "Incendio!"
A fireball the size of a football shot toward Quirrell, but he didn't move an inch or even do anything, and the fireball instantly dissipated in front of him.
Quirrell's emotionless green pupils stared at Hermione. He slowly said, "I see a shadow of that annoying person in you!"
With that, he slowly raised his wand.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Hermione stared blankly at the familiar green light, and the cold feeling of impending death once again filled her body. In this moment, she deeply regretted not listening to Victor and foolishly thinking she could protect the Philosopher's Stone on her own. But after a long while, the terrifying feeling of death did not come.
Hermione slowly opened her eyes and saw that a familiar figure had appeared beside Quirrell, who was holding his wand. The figure kicked Quirrell to the ground and then cursed angrily:
"You old fool! You didn't sleep all night and made me get up to save someone!"
"And you, you old coot, you owe me a favor!!!"
"Victor?!"
Hermione rubbed her eyes, confirmed that it was the person she had been thinking about, and quickly ran over. Harry and Ron, who had been thrown to the ground and were dazed, also breathed a sigh of relief when they saw Victor and stood up, stumbling behind Hermione.
Victor crouched down and pried the Philosopher's Stone from Quirrell's hand. Looking at the stone that was emitting a red light and flowing with special magic, he couldn't help but feel a desire to study it.
"Victor!" Hermione ran over and threw herself into Victor's arms, and tears began to stream down her face.
Victor raised his hand, sighed at the sight of the little witch, and then looked at Harry and Ron, who were running toward him, with a serious expression. "Your arrogance almost resulted in three more cold corpses at Hogwarts."
Upon hearing this, Harry and Ron immediately lowered their heads in shame.
"And you, don't think you're off the hook just because you're crying!" Victor said, then tapped Hermione on the head. Hermione winced in pain, immediately pulled away from Victor's embrace, and wiped away her tears with a look of grievance.
"What's wrong with Quirrell?" Harry asked curiously, looking at Quirrell, who seemed to be under a full-body binding curse on the ground.
"Illusion Magic!" Victor explained. "Voldemort is like a wizard Orochimaru, splitting his soul so many times. God Magic is his nemesis."
Orochimaru? What was that? The trio was confused by this unfamiliar name, but they didn't pay too much attention to it, assuming it was a magical creature they hadn't heard of before. They were quickly drawn to another name Victor had said.
"Voldemort?!" Ron took a few steps back from Quirrell's body upon hearing the name. "Isn't he Professor Quirrell? How is he Voldemort?"
"Quirrell is already dead. Voldemort was attached to his body like a parasite. After I severely injured him in the Forbidden Forest that night, Voldemort probably used some unknown dark magic, using Quirrell's life as a price to take over his body's last bit of vitality." With that, Victor kicked "Quirrell" in the face. "Take a look, all this burnt skin is covered in scales."
"So that means we were in the same classroom as Voldemort for almost a whole school year?!" Ron said with a look of fear. He never would have thought that the stuttering and timid Professor Quirrell was the Dark Lord.
"Victor, how did you find your way here?" At this moment, Hermione had finally calmed down and asked Victor with red eyes.
"Peeves called me. He found that Voldemort had turned into a snake and slithered into the school, so he came and called me over," Victor explained, then raised one hand, and a ball of blue and purple Fiendfyre appeared in his palm.
"I'll deal with you guys later. I'm going to destroy this guy who ruined my good dream first."
With that, without waiting for the trio to react, Victor threw the Fiendfyre at "Quirrell." Immediately, a puff of black smoke erupted from Quirrell's body. Voldemort's soul shrieked as it merged with the Fiendfyre and desperately flew toward Victor. But the ugly face couldn't get any closer than a foot away from Victor.
Soon after, the shrieking of Voldemort's soul grew weaker, and Quirrell's body gradually turned to dust. Just like that, one of Voldemort's Horcruxes was gone…
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