Harry was never afterwards sure whether he had actually made a decision to act, or whether the instant the thought occurred to him, he had acted upon it, but in that measureless moment between Voldemort's ordering his death and Quirrell raising his wand, the question popped into his head: "If my touch can do that to Quirrell's hand, what can it do to his face?" And no sooner had he thought it than he had darted forward and grabbed Quirrell's head тАУ one hand over the professor's face and the other planted firmly between Voldemort's blood-red eyes.
The resulting shriek jolted Hermione loose from her paralysis, and she rushed forward, determined to help her friend. Harry was hanging onto the wizard like grim death, his head down and shoulders hunched to try to protect his own face from the other's flailing hands.
Quirrell grabbed hold, screamed again and let go, then tried again to beat Harry away without actually touching him. Meanwhile, Voldemort was shouting orders and howling in pain, while Harry's fingers gouged into his eye sockets in an effort to hang onto the thrashing, bucking man.
Quirrell fell to one knee, dragged down by Harry's weight, his skin already blackening and disintegrating where Harry touched him. In doing so, he presented Hermione with an irresistable target. Her father had always made sure that his little girl knew how to protect herself and тАУ with a technique that would have done David Beckham proudтАУ she stepped forward and kicked Quirrell right between the legs.
Even those possessed by Dark Lords find certain pain pathways impossible to ignore. Quirrell's shriek reached a pitch usually exclusive to banshees, and dropping his wand, he clutched himself and fell over onto his side.
The movement tore him away from Harry's grip, and Harry paused for a second, sucking in a breath to try to steady the world that kept whirling around him. Hermione took one look at him and felt her breath catch. Harry looked exhausted тАУ that horrible creature was somehow draining his very soul тАУ yet she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to latch back onto the man in order to try to defeat Voldemort yet again.
"Ron!" she screamed, looking over her shoulder. "Do something! We have to help Harry!"
Ron managed to stagger to his feet, propping himself on the wreckage of one of the chairs splintered by Pomfrey's body. His eye, frantically scanning for some weapon, landed on the pumpkin boulder and with a sweep of his wand тАУ which he had somehow managed to keep hold of тАУ he levitated it. He wasn't sure what to do with it, but he recalled Harry's use of the pikestaff against the troll and thought he might have a similar notion. "Harry!" he shouted.
Harry glanced up and saw the enormous vegetable hovering in the air, and he instantly thought of a recent team practice when he'd nearly been decapitated by a Bludger. "Send it to me!" he cried.
Even with a mild concussion, Ron's body retained its knowledge of Quidditch moves. He seized hold of one of the chair legs and, using it as a bat, knocked the Bludger-like pumpkin spinning towards Harrry
Hermione, somehow guessing what they were thinking, quickly cast a sticking hex, pulling the still groaning Quirrell flat on his back on the floor. "Stinking little mudblood." Voldemort's head snapped around to glare at her. "I will purify the world of abominations like you!"
"Not today you won't," she spat back, just as Harry used his wand to first capture the onrushing stone, then cancel the levitation spell.
Quirrell, his head perforce turned towards Harry while Voldemort snarled at Hermione, caught the movement with his eye and looked up. "MASTER!" His screech of terror was abruptly truncated by a loud, wet noise after gravity reasserted its hold on the huge rock.
The three children stared at the sight before them. For all intents and purposes, the professor's body now ended at the neck. Where his head (and Voldemort's) had been was now the stone pumpkin, while a spreading pool of red seeped out from underneath it.
"That is the worst sound I've ever heard," Ron said sickly, his green face contrasting nicely with his red hair.
Hermione was swallowing convulsively. "I once saw a show on the telly where this man was hitting watermelons with a sledge hammer. That - that was the same as the noise they made."
Harry's countenance was utterly grim, without the slightest trace of nausea. "Guess he wasn't so hard to kill after all."
And then two things happened at once.
The Infirmary doors burst open, and what seemed like the entire faculty of Hogwarts burst through it, wands out. The Headmaster was тАУ amazingly тАУ sprinting in the lead, but Snape was right behind him, with McGonagall and a crossbow-wielding Hagrid right behind him. Tiny Flitwick тАУ for once without his trademark smile тАУ was actually flying over the rest of them, his outstretched wand glowing with a half-cast Protego.
Even as the children spun to stare at this incredible sight, a horrible red haze coalesced above Quirrell's mortal remains. "Potter!" An eerie, eldritch voice shrieked, the ghostly cloud coalescing into Voldemort's snake-like visage. "I will return, Potter тАУ and you and your friends will learn the meaning of pain."
Harry chucked the first thing he could lay his hands on at the ectoplasmic mass. It happened to be a bedpan, which summed up his opinion nicely. "******!" he shouted back.
"Tom Riddle!" Dumbledore bellowed, his voice terrible in its power. "BEGONE!" The faculty shot a kaleidoscope of variably colored spells at the specter, but most passed straight through without effect.
Voldemort's image twisted in hatred and rage, but it fled, moving between the children and faculty and out the nearest window. A golden bolt from Dumbledore's wand pursued it, but the shade seemed vanish into thin air.
There was a moment of utter silence, then "ErmтАж soтАж is he gone then?" Ron asked tentatively.
Dumbledore and Flitwick had been muttering spells, but at the question, both exchanged a look then sighed and nodded. "Yes. He's gone. For now," the headmaster said tiredly.
Snape, one hand clasped to his left forearm, advanced on the children. "Are you all right?" he demanded, looking at Harry.
Harry dragged his eyes up to meet his professor's. For a long moment, his frozen expression didn't change, then his features slowly relaxed into a relieved smile. "Pr'fessor. You came," he said softly.
And then he fainted.
The ensuing chaos took quite some time to sort out. Healers had to be floo'd in from St Mungo's once Poppy's still-unconscious body was found, and Aurors from the Ministry were summoned when Quirrell's corpse was, eventually, noticed.
Ron, suffering from a concussion, was tucked into bed, and Hermione was as well, despite her protests that she was unharmed. Snape refused to let anyone but himself and the head of St Mungo's pediatric injury team touch Harry, then insisted upon staying with the boy even after the Healer assured him that it was nothing more than a slight case of magical exhaustion, coupled with a severe emotional shock. In the end, the Healer forced a draught of dreamless sleep down Snape's throat as well, commenting aggrievedly to the Headmaster that he had never met such an impossible parent.
Finally, the Headmaster insisted that, under the circumstances, nothing would be discussed until the following day. It was enough to know that Voldemort had тАУ again тАУ been routed and the immediate threat was gone. His magical power and political influence, both at Hogwarts and in the Wizengamot, trumped all opposition, and soon the Infirmary was left in peace, with St Mungo's healers watching over the slumbering patients.