"Expelliarmus!"
The red bolt struck Quirrell squarely. His wand flew from his hand and clattered across the stone floor, spinning out of reach.
Quirrell barely had time to react.
"Depulso!"
A second spell hit him full in the chest.
The force of the spell sent Quirrell hurtling backward. His body struck the far wall with a heavy crash, stone cracking beneath the impact before he crumpled to the floor.
He hadn't wanted to give Voldemort even the smallest chance to retaliate.
Without a wand, a wizard's magic was weaker—unstable, difficult to control. Voldemort would be at a disadvantage.
So he had chosen the element of surprise.
He struck first.
"Victor!" Hermione cried.
"Have you gone mad?" Harry shouted, staring at him in disbelief. "He's a professor!"
Victor didn't lower his wand.
"Are you two blind?" he snapped, eyes still fixed on Quirrell. "He just admitted he tried to kill you. You wanted to stand there and let him finish?"
The two of them fell silent.
He was right.
In the shock of seeing a student attack a professor, they had reacted without thinking.
Then it came.
A high, piercing scream ripped through the chamber.
The sound was unbearable—sharp and unnatural, as though it clawed directly at their minds. Harry dropped to one knee, clutching his head. Hermione cried out and covered her ears.
Victor staggered but remained standing.
The scream stopped abruptly.
Slowly, Quirrell pushed himself upright.
The burns from the spell were gone.
He was trembling—not with weakness, but with something else.
Without a word, he reached up and began to unwrap his turban.
Layer by layer, the cloth fell away.
He turned. Where the back of his head should have been smooth and bare, there was a face.
Pale. Flattened. Serpentine.
Red eyes opened.
Hermione gagged.
"Ew," she whispered faintly, unable to stop herself.
The eyes fixed on Victor.
"A Malfoy," the cold voice hissed. "You should be on our side. Your father would be most disappointed to know you oppose me."
Harry felt his stomach drop.
Victor tilted his head slightly.
"My father," he said evenly, "doesn't usually take orders from faces attached to the back of someone else's head."
He is pretending he doesn't know who this guy is for many reasons.
Quirrell stiffened.
"Fool!" he spat. "Bow down before the Dark Lord! This is Lord Voldemort!"
The red eyes narrowed.
For a brief moment, Victor lowered his wand.
"Oh," he said slowly. "Lord Voldemort."
He took a small step forward, his posture shifting—subtle, deliberate.
Harry's heart pounded.
Ron's voice echoed faintly in his memory: The Malfoys were always close to You-Know-Who…
Victor couldn't be—
Could he?
The red eyes gleamed.
Victor moved first.
"Reducto!"
The blasting spell shot forward — but Voldemort lifted a hand, and the magic shattered against an unseen shield. The impact cracked stone behind him instead.
"Pathetic," the cold voice hissed.
The body lurched forward, movements unnatural, too sharp, too deliberate. Arms shot out, fingers curled like claws, reaching for Victor's throat.
Victor twisted aside just in time.
Up close, he saw it clearly with his eyes of the dead.
The body was failing.
Hairline fractures traced along the skin like cracks in old porcelain. Dark veins pulsed beneath the surface, magic leaking erratically, flaring and dimming in unstable waves. The body wasn't healthy flesh — it was something stretched past its limits.
It seems the body is on the verge of collapse—just needs a little push, Victor thought, watching the unstable magic flicker across Voldemort's borrowed flesh.
"I've heard quite a bit about you, Riddle," Victor said lightly, almost conversationally. "I must say… your performance is rather underwhelming."
With a casual motion of his foot, he kicked the fallen wand across the stone floor. It slid toward Harry, stopping near his trainers.
The effect was immediate.
The red eyes flared with something far more volatile than rage.
"Do not call me that," Voldemort hissed, the voice rising into something shriller, less controlled. "That name means nothing."
But it did.
Tom Riddle. The name of a half-blood boy from a London orphanage. The name tied to a Muggle father he despised. The past he had tried to carve away and bury beneath power.
Victor tilted his head slightly.
"What?" he continued calmly. "Tom Marvolo Riddle. That's still your name, isn't it?"
"I am Lord Voldemort!" the voice shrieked, echoing through the chamber.
The fractures along the body deepened.
Victor's eyes sharpened.
Good.
Anger made him careless.
And careless would make him break.
Without a wand, Voldemort's magic grew erratic. Dark energy lashed outward in wild, unfocused bursts—violent, but lacking precision. Sparks split the air, scorching stone, yet none carried the deadly sharpness of a properly cast curse.
Hairline fractures spread rapidly across the skin. The legs faltered first. Blackened cracks deepened, and then the lower half of the body began to crumble.
"No—" Voldemort's voice warped, distorting between fury and disbelief.
The knees gave way.
Dust spilled onto the stone floor.
For a brief second, another voice broke through—thin, terrified.
"M-My Lord… what is happening?" Quirrell's voice trembled from somewhere within, panicked and confused, as if surfacing from deep water.
But it was too late.
The body could not endure the strain.
A piercing, inhuman scream tore through the chamber as the remaining flesh fractured completely. The torso collapsed inward, disintegrating into fine ash that scattered across the marble squares.
The red eyes vanished.
Silence fell.
Only a faint, cold ripple passed through the room—like something unseen fleeing into the darkness.
Where the body had stood, there was nothing but drifting dust.
Victor exhaled slowly.
"Whew," Victor muttered under his breath. "Finally."
From the moment he'd seen the cracks spreading through the unstable body, he had known it wouldn't last. He had only needed to push it.
Hermione was still staring at the dust scattered across the stone floor.
"Victor…" she said, her voice trembling. "You—you just killed the Dark Lord."
There was shock in her eyes. Fear too. However twisted and weakened he had been, that had still been Voldemort—the name no one dared speak.
Harry looked from the ashes to Victor, stunned. "You just… you actually…"
Victor lowered his wand at last.
"Relax," he said evenly. "That wasn't him. Not completely."
He glanced at the faint traces of dark residue still lingering in the air.
"If the Dark Lord could be destroyed that easily, he wouldn't have terrified half the wizarding world."
Hermione swallowed.
"So… he's not dead?"
As if in answer, the ashes exploded outward.
A shrieking wraith burst from the remains—black, twisted, barely human—and shot toward them. It moved too fast to dodge.
Straight at Harry.
It passed through him in a blast of searing, unnatural cold.
Harry gasped—
—and crumpled to the ground.
The shadow spiraled upward, dissolving into the air like smoke caught in a sudden wind.
"Harry!" Viktor and Hermione shouted as he hit the stone floor, unconscious.
*****
A/N : 🔥 On Patreon, the story has already been updated up to Chapter 62🔥
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