CH 13

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

The year-end exams loomed on the horizon and many a student, at Hogwarts, were having various nightmares about it, except one. This one exception crept through the silent halls and had made their way to the 'extremely painful death, on third floor corridor' part of the school.

Harry Potter had trusted his instincts more that his memories for this caper. He'd already decided to go after the stone before even Quirrell did or before the Headmaster left the school on some phoney pretence. He'd gotten a Neutral Artefact Concealment bag from his Gringotts management team. They'd had been the ones to explain to him the differences between the bags he'd been using.

They were called: Dark Artefact Concealment, Light Artefact Concealment or Neutral Artefact Concealment bags and were made available to hide certain Family Artefacts against seizure from the Ministry of Magic. They were to be used whenever a new Law or Bill was passed that banned such heirlooms. That had certainly explained to Harry, how that Ministry toadying bitch Delores Umbridge, in his past life, had been able to hide that blasted 'Blood Quill' at the school for so long.

However at the moment, he used some of the invisibility tricks he'd learned and was able to by-pass the three headed dog, affectionately known as 'Fluffy' by its owner, Hagrid. The dog had been curled up in a corner of the room with its back to the door, which allowed the boy to drop through the trap door quietly and easily.

As he dropped onto the vines of the Devil's Snare plant, some of his old memories popped up. The funniest had been Hermione's exclamation of finding wood to start a fire and Ron's comment of 'Are you a witch or not?' This time around, Harry had called forth a tongue of flames that allowed him to drop through the green cradling roots and vines of the man-eating plant.

He never bothered with a light since the walls had some kind of phosphor on them to gently guide the way. Fluttering sounds were what he encountered further down the passage. He'd been curious about something, so instead of immediately mounting the stationary brooms he called out, "Accio Key".

He poured his intent on magically seeking only the one key, separate from the others, that would fit the old-fashioned door blocking the way to the next challenge. He sighed and thought, 'Oh yeah, these challenges were really designed to keep people away.'

The key came to him without disturbing the others. It flew into the door's lock. He turned the key gently so as to not damage the magically charmed wings and was quickly through the door. The other keys hadn't even been alerted to his presence and the key used fluttered back into the flying other keys. 'That was too easy, I wonder when they were actually programmed for attacking.'

The next chamber had him groaning and mentally cursing. He never liked chess all that much. Still with all the mental challenges that he'd done to occupy his time in prison, he'd at least managed to master the game. He slowly worked his way across the board and soon the White King of the set acknowledged its defeat. Before the boy left the room, he'd cast a spell that reset the entire chessmen, undamaged, and back into their proper positions, in order to make it look like no one had gone through the room.

The Troll in the following room had been dead in his past life, but this time it was still alive. However, a bit of luck was with him and he'd been able to quickly step past it, as though he'd been successful in the challenge.

The next to last challenge had belonged to the Potions Master. Again, Harry'd had the time to study up on whatever he wanted to while in that blasted tower cell, so he'd been able to reproduce the potions that would allow a person to walk through the flame barriers of this room. There had been no need to even glance at the parchment on the small table or panic about the various potions vials waiting to be taken by non-logical individuals.

Harry slowly looked around the room that contained the now supposedly hidden 'Mirror of Erised'. He noted the nooks and crannies of the place. 'Dumbledore had to have been concealed in this room the last time I had done this,' he thought. 'There,' he noted an adult sized alcove on the other side of the room. 'He'd had front row seats to Quirrell's bungled attempt and hadn't once bothered to save me, until the last minute.'

He used a few spell detection charms to find out if anything in the room was going to be traced. Nothing had been revealed. So, he approached the mirror and again it worked the way it had the previous time. He saw the reflection of a boy who looked like him hold out the stone and then put it back into his pants pocket. He moved quickly and ensured that the stone was strategically placed inside the neutral artefact concealment bag that he'd been carrying around for just this purpose.

Harry then took the house-elf passageway that he'd known was nearby in order to return to his dorm room and bed. He changed his clothing and called for Rose to come take the bag back the Grimmauld Place. She hid it in a secret place in the house that only the Master of the House would have access to.

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A few weeks later, "That exam wasn't too difficult," Draco said, as they walked out of the potions exam. It was their last exam for the year. "How do you guys think you did?"

"I liked it," Harry told them. "It was challenging."

Inwardly he giggled because knew he was going to be receiving a letter, either shortly or sometime this coming summer, from his Potions Master demanding to know the sources of his information for the bonus question. Although to be honest the bonus question on Harry's potions exam was entirely different from that of his fellow first years.

"You would," Neville commented. "I think you like getting mixed marks in that class on purpose."

The Potions Master had caught that last bit of the conversation and wondered the same thing, especially when the boy answered, "Maybe."

'Cheeky little brat,' the man thought. 'Now do I mark his exam first or last.' He returned to the classroom to put away the first year supplies and to set up the room for the four, year students.

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Not long after the last exam and before the end of the year speech the Professor in charge of the Defence Against the Darks Arts class was confined to a secluded room in the Infirmary. The man had blinding headaches several times throughout the year and now that the last of his students had written his exams, the headache was unbearable.

"I don't understand this," Poppy Pomfrey told the Headmaster. "He refuses to let me do a deep scan and he knows that I can't provide anything for the pain until he does."

"Odd," the old man commented. "Perhaps you should contact St. Mungo's to get some assistance with him."

Poppy had only shook her head at the foolishness of men and their need to be stoic in the face of pain. She hadn't been aware that the true reason was that the man she'd once known as Quirinus Quirrell was an agent of the Dark Lord.

The Headmaster may have suspected something of that nature, but had not investigated it. The medi-witch and the old man had left the poor Defence Professor along.

Later that night the man that Quinius had once been was under a different type of pressure, as well as pain. The parasite on the back of the man's head had begun to panic. "You fool," the Dark Lord hissed. "You were supposed to go after the stone, what happened?"

"I couldn't get it," the man whimpered at the doubly painful throb in his head. "There was a trick to it, but I couldn't figure out how to get past that blasted mirror."

"Giggle," a child's voice sounded inside the room. "Oops, forgot I was hiding."

Quirinus looked in the corner by the door to his private room and was shocked that Harry Potter was standing with quite an evil looking grin on his innocent seeming features. The boy shrugged at the man's surprised expression and then he held up a doll for the man to see.

"What is that," the Defence Professor asked.

"Can't see," Harry asked and then walked up closer for the man to notice the doll that looked almost to be an exact duplicate of himself, only it wasn't wearing a turban. "Better now?"

"What…what…is…"

"Voodoo-type magic," Harry told him casually. "It's actually called Cursed Effigy Magic and can cause an echoing pain when I do something like this." He pulled out a long old-fashioned hatpin and slid it into the doll's forehead.

The Professor screamed in pain. The man had been surprised to note that no one had heard him. The he looked at the boy and asked, "Silencing Spell?"

"Of course," Harry told the man. "Can't have your dying screams wake up the castle, can we?"

"What do you mean, dying," Quirrell asked.

"Poppy called the hospital and you're going to receive a full body scan tomorrow," Harry said. "I overheard her when I visited a fellow student. So you're going to die before the night is through because this," he twisted the doll around to show a snake faced image on the back of the doll's head. "Is going to be what kills you!"

"So you know," Voldemort hissed and Quirrell's neck turned so that the attachment faced the boy. The red eyes widened as another pin slide into the doll between the red eyes of the doll's own little attached parasite. "I will kill you Har…ry Pot…ter," the Dark Lord told him. "I will…"

Harry took out another pin and pierced the eye of the doll Voldemort and then he said, "You can certainly try."

Quirrell's body lifted off the bed and was about to attack when suddenly the man's arm was instantly broken as Harry broke the doll's arm. "Stop that," the man shrieked out. "ARRGH!"

Harry moved away from the bed and then slammed the doll with Voldemort's face into the hard stone wall of the school. He played with that with all the cruelty of a child, intent on destroying a particular toy. Nightmares of his first life fuelled the viciousness that the boy displayed and the portion of the soul that had been attached to the other man, lifted away.

It tried to attach the boy, but it was obvious that the boy had been shielded since entering the room. The spirit shouted out, "I'll be back to kill you Harry Potter."

"You can try," Harry had whispered into the night. He touched Quirrell's broken body and the protection spell that his mother had done, did its job. The man's body turned to ash. He left the room after that, leaving the effigy toy behind.

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Rumours of the Defence Professor's death were varied and grew wilder by the end of the school year. The Headmaster stood up and made a general speech about the end of the school year, how he hoped that everyone would have a good summer and how magic was not to be practiced, due to the under age magic use laws.

"We now congratulate Ravenclaw House for winning the House Cup," he told them. The children all clapped for them, especially the first years. "We congratulate Slytherin House on their success at maintaining possession of Hogwarts' Quidditch Cup." Again the first years clapped for the House that had won, which had surprised the Slytherin students. "I wish you all a good summer holiday."

The students rose from their tables, exited the school in a semi-orderly fashion and went to the train station in Hogsmeade in order to catch the old Red Steam Engine train that would take them all home for the summer.

At the platform nine and three quarters, several of the students promised others that they write and keep in touch. Harry received the same invitations and for the first time he was at peace with some of his nightmares, since this time around he'd been the one in control of what had happened.

'Now all I have to do is get a hold of that Diary before something happens to Serasha,' Harry thought about the Basilisk. He sincerely hoped that the creature wouldn't die at the end of his second year this time around.

However that is another story for another time!

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

END

(…Final note…) This is the true end of another odd "What if" tale. I know that I possibly left some unanswered question. But at this point in time I believe that I'll leave the rest up to your imagination and hopefully it will inspire someone else to write a "What if" of a different nature.

Hope you all enjoyed this foray into a "Alternate Year One" genre, which included a back-in-time thing, plus a Harry-went-to-Azkaban and he got free through some unique circumstance.

Lil Nezumi