Thank you to my new Patrons: Reader 11, Supley Maple, Alienmatt, Nine, ANdrew, SadNecromancer, Adithyashailender Umesh, Sakyrse, Cole Winsor, HeatingGold
-/-
A glistening pearl of sweat ran down Harry's brow as he considered the last room separating him from the confrontation between Neville and Quirrell.
It was a large, barren affair, the grey stones jutting out unapologetically from the slightly uneven walls.
A boiling cauldron next to a table full of ingredients was set in the middle, and on the other side from where Harry was standing was a door that he could feel was covered by some sort of ward.
Rather than bothering with the cauldron, the first thing he did was walk up to the door and withdraw within himself to feel the magic of the ward.
He'd been getting better and better at reading the nuances of magic over the last year as his sensitivity increased. He could tell the ward had something to do with identity.
Neville, the unlucky bastard, had probably just been able to stroll right through due to his invisibility cloak.
Harry could try to break the ward… After all, hadn't the whole point of the third-floor corridor been that it was supposed to delay any would-be thief until Dumbledore could get here?
Technically, any dark wizard worth the name could have just let Fiendfyre roar through all the corridors, destroying any obstacles and enchantments in the way.
The whole point was, however, that such an approach would have undoubtedly alerted the entire castle.
Breaking the ward… It was probably inadvisable. Harry certainly wasn't good enough yet to do it and could very easily fall for some sort of trap.
But he needed to cross this unassuming wooden door. Canon wasn't a reliable source of information. Neville might very well die, and Voldemort might very well succeed.
After all the effort Harry had put into killing the man, informing Dumbledore of the Horcruxes, destroying the diary, Harry was unwilling for his efforts to end in Voldemort rising earlier than he had in the books.
He went to the table with the potions ingredients and carefully analysed them. Boomslang skin, runespoor eggs, many other things. Most of the ingredients were nonsensical, not fitting together at all. Ice bird wings and ashwinder scales were two completely contradictory ingredients, and any potion that had both of them wasn't a potion, but an explosion. False trails. He looked at the cauldron, and it wasn't just water boiling away in there, but an actual, nearly ready potion. Yellowish, brown, murky, thick.
Another look at the potions table. A real look.
He found the one thing that didn't belong. A twitch of his fingers and an eyelash suddenly floated up. A grey eyelash.
The ward on the door.
Identity.
Biological identity?
Harry looked at the cauldron.
Boomslang skin.
"You're kidding me…" he muttered in abject disgust.
It was polyjuice.
Polyjuice that was suspended to near completion, only missing one last ingredient.
Just that all the magical ingredients on the table were fakes.
Harry quickly ran a simulation in his mind. He didn't know the exact recipe for polyjuice, but he knew about some of the ingredients and he knew the properties of the things on the table. Adding any single one of them would ruin the potion.
Except one.
The eyelash. A non-magical ingredient that almost escaped notice if one wasn't specifically looking for it.
The last ingredient of the polyjuice potion is someone's body part containing their DNA.
"Could I be wrong?" Harry muttered to himself. He was by no means a whizz at Potions. Had he actually needed to brew something under the current stressful conditions, it wouldn't have worked.
But adding an eyelash? He could do that. The only question was if he was right, maybe the potion wasn't polyjuice, maybe the eyelash was just there randomly. Maybe adding it would turn the thing into the draught of the living dead, leaving him unconscious.
He wasn't good enough at Potions to even know in how many ways he could get screwed over here.
But he also wasn't good enough to break the ward on the door.
Harry took a portion of the potion from the cauldron with the ladle and dropped in the eyelash. The muddy potion turned greyish, and he chugged it before he could develop any second thoughts.
He couldn't let Neville risk his life. He was the adult here.
The potion burst to life inside his body.
It was like the ageing potion, but a hundred times worse. His body swelled and ballooned, in height and width. He curled up on himself and grimaced in pain.
He was just able to transfigure his boxer shorts into something bigger and more fitting before they started constricting his body.
A few seconds later, gasping, he found himself in his new form.
Still barefoot, wearing the boxers he'd gone to sleep in, just expanded with transfiguration.
He looked down at his hairy hanging gut and put a hand up to touch his walrus moustache.
He didn't need a mirror to know who he was. He was a fat old man with a double chin. He was Slughorn.
Voldemort and Neville… He'd kill both of them.
Harry painfully trudged towards the warded door in his new form and slapped a meaty palm on the door handle.
Opening the door worked, so he'd correctly solved the puzzle, no matter how much he wished that he hadn't.
Stepping into the final chamber, he found himself facing an entirely new aggravating scene.
Professor Slughorn, or rather, the Voldemort-possessed professor Quirrell masquerading as Professor Slughorn, had just finished tying up the boy who lived and was forcing him to look in the mirror.
Neville heard the door creak open and shouted. "You were right!" the blonde-boy screamed while looking into the Mirror of Erised. "It wasn't Quirrell, it was Slughorn, go get Dumbledore!" he shouted while Voldemort, with his walrus moustache and grey hair curiously turned to look at Harry. He was dressed in black robes, a purple turban on his head as always.
The man lifted one hand and spun his finger in the air, causing Neville to spin around in his bondage and blink in abject horror at the vision in front of him.
His ageing and overweight potions professor, once again, standing in front of him in his boxer shorts.
Harry didn't even know what to say. The only thing he knew was that he had to delay.
"To think you'd steal my identity and try to steal the stone so as to pin it on me," Harry said with Slughorn's voice. "Even wearing Quirrell's turban to throw people off the track further. Unfortunately for you, I've been on your tail the whole year." Harry narrowed his eyes. "Professor Sprout!"
Neville and Voldemort both blinked in surprise and shared a confused look.
"Professor Slughorn?" Neville asked in a confused tone of voice while Voldemort simply palmed his pudgy face.
"Leave it to that old buffoon to create such an annoying trial," the man muttered before promptly raising his wand at Harry, but not casting a spell yet.
"It is unfortunate that you sought me out here, Harry. We could have parted amicably. Your wand, of course, is easily recognisable," he said dangerously with narrowed eyes, a faint smile betraying his confidence in handling the situation.
"I will miss being colleagues with you, Pomona," Harry replied seriously as he raised his own wand. "To think you would steal poor Quirinus' wand to complete your dastardly plans. How many people do you seek to implicate?"
Neville for his part was just throwing his head to the left and to the right, looking alternatively at Harry-Slughorn and Voldemort-Slughorn.
Voldemort's eye twitched in annoyance. "You always had a mouth too smart for your own good," the man hissed. "If your skills had been unable to back it up, you'd have found yourself eating dirt much earlier. Unfortunately, now you are an obstacle, and will have to be removed from the board for a moment."
"Pomona," Harry-Slughorn said sadly. "I know you don't want the stone for the gold, but because you wish to return to your youth. But I just wanted you to know that to me, you are still the most beautiful witch in the world."
Neville whimpered in the background.
Voldemort shouted, "Enough!" An invisible wave of force was sent at Harry, causing the boy to twirl his own wand and redirect it telekinetically. A twitch of his other hand pushed Neville aside, away from the duel. The boy who lived to be tied up fell on his face after a few rather ungraceful flips in the air, but such was life.
Voldemort sent a barrage of curses, which Harry frantically deflected with his wand.
"Dumbledore is already on his way, perhaps you should flee," he suggested, finally dropping his idiotic facade while panting at the exertion of the exchange.
Voldemort simply shook his head at him. "I see that you are as frustrating as an opponent as you are as a student. Let us commence the final lesson, then. I see there are still things you need to learn, primarily of all, respect for your betters."
A twirl of his wand and the spells being sent at Harry became more complex, and most importantly, more dark. Considering Harry had never practised much of dark magic and Voldemort had not shown him any for fear of breaking his cover, he couldn't really deflect any of them.
His only chance was then to swipe his wand and let countless black wasps emerge from where the tip had been seconds ago. The curses shredded through the insects, bile yellow, dark red and murky brown. But the insects ended up blocking the entire barrage.
"Resourceful, but the dark arts are not something that can so easily be defeated by simple conjuration," Voldemort said with a smirk before pointing his wand at the wasps which were now buzzing towards him and hissed out something that sounded like ancient Sumerian, but could as well have been very badly pronounced Japanese.
While the comic effect was further enhanced by the spell being cast by a purple-turban wearing Slughorn, the effect was anything but funny. A small splotch of dark smoke emerged from the man's wand and latched onto the first wasp.
In the blink of an eye, the first wasp was drained of its life, after which the dark smoke multiplied and latched itself onto other wasps and did the same.
Harry stopped his conjurations and grimaced as he looked at his swarm slowly disappearing in the black smoke. He had no choice but to swipe his wand to dispel his own conjurations, which finally prevented the black smoke from growing.
Unfortunately for Harry, the black smoke which was at least the size of a car suddenly and violently coalesced together into a floating vaguely human-like shape with burning red eyes and a forked black tongue.
The thing reeked of dark magic almost as much as the diary Horcrux had.
The shape rushed towards him, and Harry instinctively knew its hunger. It would eat through any defensive magic he put up. He didn't have an answer.
Unless…
When faced with darkness…
He swept out his wand. "Expecto Patronum!" he shouted, at which his trusty raccoon emerged and punched straight through the torso of the black shadow creature and rushed towards Voldemort.
"Good choice," the man complimented. "But a patronus cannot harm a human," he said bemusedly with a jolly, sinister laugh. The laugh quickly faded as the silver raccoon suddenly started dancing in front of his face.
"Opp, opp, opp, oppan gangnam style," it sang in a very loud voice while Harry gathered his focus for his next spell.
He didn't truly have a chance against Voldemort, and he just had to delay. He raised his wand at the man who annoyedly swiped at the raccoon, dispelling it into mist with a wave of the hand.
"Avada Kedavra," Harry incanted in a dead voice.
A flash of green lit up the chamber, and Harry saw Voldemort's eyes widen in sheer surprise at the spell he'd cast.
A sickly green beam of death traversed the space between the two before a single stone materialised in front of the spell to take on the burden of shattering in front of its destruction.
"You," Voldemort said, almost breathlessly. "You're not as deluded by this pacified society as I'd thought. Delving this deep," he muttered, seemingly completely distracted. "It's acceptable for your age. But I see now, you too are walking the inevitable path. To be discarded by those who lavish you with praise when they realise you will never fulfil their foolish dreams." He suddenly held up a hand towards Harry. "The moment you cast the spell, you lost your place in their society," he said decisively. "Don't fight me, join me, reject conformity and embrace greatness. You are fated, just like I was. Together with the stone, you will be a prince."
"You would never suffer a prince," Harry replied calmly, suddenly seeing a light at the end of this tunnel. The killing curse had made the man pause, and it made him waste time talking. Now he just needed… "For what use is a prince, if the king is eternal. The philosopher's stone would make you immortal. Why suffer a potential competitor?"
"That is where you are wrong," Voldemort said, almost convingly. "A king cannot rule forever, because at some point, he must also lose the shackles of material reality. A prince can become a king when the king becomes a god."
"In the Muggle world, there is a saying, you should know it, Tom", Harry said sarcastically.
Voldemort's eyes widened, and a furious snarl spread over his face.
"No gods, no masters," Harry finished with a smirk as the man raised his wand.
Harry hadn't been supposed to know that Voldemort was Tom.
And now, Voldemort had to find out how Harry knew.
And for that, in a limited amount of time…
There was only one way.
"Legilimens!" The man shouted angrily, seeking to ravage Harry's mind.
If there was one skill that Harry was confident in beating Voldemort with?
The mind arts.
In a fight, always fight to your strengths.
Voldemort's mental presence rushed straight through the room and into Harry's eyes.
Once it arrived it started delving through the clouds towards earth, only to suddenly discover that the clouds behind it turned into a flaming hot iron cage and that beneath the clouds was a raging storm of hellfire.
Voldemort burned.
"Aaaaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhhh," a hideous scream resounded through the chamber and Voldemort put up his hands to grasp at his face which must have been feeling like it was on fire. The man was quick to abandon the probe once he noticed the futility of fighting a mind arts battle in Harry's mind where he had the advantage.
But that one-second delay allowed Harry to do one thing. "Trust me and grab his face!" Harry shouted at the stunned Neville lying in the corner. He then extended a hand to pick the boy up telekinetically -something which was only possible because the boy had chosen to trust him- and hurl him directly at Voldemort.
Neville flew, and Harry vanished his restraints.
The boy who lived grabbed Voldemort, still disguised as Slughorn, by the face, and the effect was immediate. The man's face disintegrated.
If the previous scream had been of pain, then this was sheer soul-wrenching agony.
The dark lord and his nemesis tumbled to the ground in a jumble of limbs, Neville recklessly pawing at every piece of exposed skin he could reach.
Slughorn's body under him, for lack of a better word, disintegrated into a burning pile of ash.
A grey shadow with angry red eyes emerged from the pile of clothes that used to be the dark lord's vessel. First it flew through the mirror then up so it hovered over the two boys.
"The stone was fake anyway, as I suspected," the shade rumbled with a neutral tone as it hung above the boy who lived who was shaking and looking at his hands as if they were covered in blood, and a dispassionate Harry Evans, still looking like Slughorn, still wearing only his boxers.
"Avada Kedavra," Harry said angrily, swinging his wand. Another beam of sickly green emerged and flew at the floating shade.
Voldemort simply dodged to the side and cackled.
A moment later, a flash of fire rushed through the chamber, and Dumbledore emerged with Fawkes on his shoulder.
Voldemort's laughter abruptly stopped, and he glared at the man who was looking at him placidly from behind his half-lunar glasses.
"You will be a good servant," the shade finished saying to Harry. "The blood in your veins won't allow you to become anything else." Then he flew up into the ceiling and was gone.
Harry saw a frown emerge on Dumbledore's face at the escape, and the headmaster thoughtfully tugged at his beard before rushing towards Neville.
"Good job, Horace, you faced your demons and emerged victorious" Dumbledore said as he knelt down next to the boy who lived.
"Horace?" Harry wondered aloud.
"Headmaster!" Neville suddenly shouted with a sob.
He wept and pointed to the empty black robe on the floor, some ashes still drifting off into the air.
"I think I killed Professor Sprout!"
-/-
AN: A happy conclusion to the canon book 1, what do you think? Things will wrap up now and Harry will be travelling to Helsinki for the duelling tournament. Read up to 33 chapters ahead on Patreon