Problem two, said Gryffindor. Harry Potter isn’t missing, he’s right there at the Quidditch match where everyone can see him. Professor Quirrell thought of that too, it’s part of why he sent that fake note. Problem three. I don’t think MadEye Moody and an Auror squad can beat the Dark Lord, and certainly not before he kills us. I’m not sure the entire DMLE can beat the Dark Lord if he’s fighting seriously and Dumbledore is gone. Problem four. The Quidditch match was not disrupted, that’s probably the only reason why Professor Quirrell was willing to try something as complicated as bringing us along on this trip in the first place.
Thinking along different lines, ventured Slytherin, maybe Professor Quirrell calls in someone else to Memory-Charm us. Legilimency, Imperius, Confundus, who knows what else, we’re not a perfect Occlumens. Then the Dark Lord would have a smart—well, sort-of smart lieutenant that he could use. That could be another reason why Professor Quirrell was so willing to tell us secrets, if he knew that the memory would disappear. It’s also a reason to leave the Hogwarts wards, so the Dark Lord can call Bellatrix to Apparate in and do the work…
This entire reasoning process is illegitimate and I refuse to participate, said Ravenclaw.
What lovely last words, said the last voice. Now shut up and think.
Rough stone tunnel went by underfoot, Harry’s shoes sometimes dipping into moisture or nearly slipping on a curved surface. The neurons in his brain, which kept on firing, imagined voices talking to each other, yelling at each other, even as the Listener stayed numb with horror and shame.
Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were conducting a debate about suicide by charging the Dark Lord’s gun, or by swallowing the little jewel on Harry’s steel ring. It seemed unclear whether the fate of the world was better or worse if the Dark Lord had Harry as a mind-slave; if the Dark Lord was going to win anyway, it might be better if he won faster.
And the last voice kept talking through it all; even in the depths of failure that last voice remained. What else did the Dark Lord always say in human speech and never in Parseltongue? Do we remember? Anything like that, anything at all?
It was all too distant in time, too distant in time even though it had all happened this very day. The Dark Lord had told him in Parseltongue just now that it was time to revive Hermione, and then he’d said other things all in English, Harry could hardly remember for all that they’d just been spoken. Before then… before then there’d been the Circle of Concealment, when Professor Quirrell had hissed that the barrier would explode if touched. And the Defense Professor had said in English for Harry not to take off his Cloak or try crossing the Circle, said in English that the resonance might strike Professor Quirrell afterwards but Harry would be dead. Said in English that if Harry touched the magic and Professor Quirrell didn’t remember how to halt the resonance, it would kill them both…
Suppose it doesn’t kill us both, said the last voice. On Halloween in Godric’s Hollow, the Dark Lord’s body was burned and we only ended up with a scar on our forehead. Suppose the resonance between us is deadlier to the Dark Lord than to us. What if this entire time we’ve been able to kill the Dark Lord at any time, just by dashing forward and touching our hands to any part of his exposed skin? And then it makes our scar bleed again, but that’s all. The sense of ‘stop, don’t do that’ is inherited from the Dark Lord’s worst memory of his mistake in Godric’s Hollow, it may not actually apply to the Boy-Who-Lived.
A small note of hope rose.
Rose, and was quashed.
The Dark Lord can just throw away his wand, droned Ravenclaw. Professor Quirrell can turn into his Animagus form. Even if he dies the Dark Lord will possess someone else and return, and then torture our parents, to punish us.
We might be able to get to our parents in time, said the last voice. We might
be able to hide them. We might be able to get the Philosopher’s Stone away from the Dark Lord if we killed his current body now, and that Stone could provide the nucleus of a counter-army.
The Dark Lord was moving on through the stony corridor. His hand still held the gun. He was at least four meters away from Harry.
If we dart forward, he will sense us approaching through the resonance, said Hufflepuff. He will fly forward rapidly, he can do that, he has the broomstickenchantments that let him fly. He will fly forward, turn around, and fire the gun. He knows about the resonance, he’s thought of this already. This is not something the Dark Lord has failed to consider. He will be ready for it, and waiting.
Continuing the same line of argument, said the last voice. Suppose we can freely cast magic on Professor Quirrell but he can’t cast it on us.
Why would that be true? demanded Ravenclaw. In fact, we have evidence that it’s false. In Azkaban, when Professor Quirrell’s Avada Kedavra hit our Patronus Charm, it felt like our head was splitting apart—
Suppose that was all his magic going out of control. Suppose if we’d just cast, say, a Luminos targeting him, nothing bad would have happened.
But why? said Ravenclaw. Why suppose that?
Because, thought Harry, it explains why Professor Quirrell didn’t warn me not to cast any magic on him in Azkaban. Because Professor Quirrell never said in Parseltongue, that I can remember, that I’d hurt myself if I tried to cast magic on him. He could have given me that warning, but he didn’t, even though he gave me a lot of other warnings. Absence of evidence is weak evidence of absence.
There was a pause while Harry’s parts considered this. We don’t actually have our wand, said Ravenclaw.
We might get it back at some point, thought the last voice.
But even then, Harry thought, and the grey hopelessness returned, the resonance is something the Dark Lord knows about. He’s already thought of everything I can do with that, he already has a response prepared. That was my mistake from the beginning. I didn’t respect the Dark Lord’s intelligence, I didn’t think that maybe he knew everything I knew and could see everything I saw and had already taken it into account.
Then, said the last voice, conditional on our winning, we must have hit him with something he doesn’t know about.
Dementors, offered Gryffindor.
The Dark Lord knows we can destroy, deflect, and possibly control Dementors, said Ravenclaw. He doesn’t know how, but he knows we have the capability, and where the heck would we get a Dementor anyway?
Maybe, ventured Hufflepuff, the Dark Lord’s whole horcrux system would short out via the resonance if we grabbed him and held him, sacrificing our own life to destroy him forever.
Bullhockey, said Ravenclaw. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to engage in some pleasant fantasy before we die, no matter how stupid.
If Lord Voldemort had a strong enough fear of death, Hufflepuff argued, if he wanted strongly enough to just not need to think about death again, then the horcrux system could have design flaws like that. It never occurred to Voldemort to test his horcruxes on someone else, that could indicate he wasn’t able to think about the subject clearly—