Chapter Text
EPISODE ONE: "A TALE OF... TECHNICALLY JUST ONE HARRY"
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The story is a familiar one. In nearly every universe, the story is known. A boy is born with magic, and the love of his parents. Tragedy strikes. His parents sacrifice themselves to save him, and thus set him on the path of destiny. After discovering his magical power, he is whisked away to a school of wonder and mystery. Year after year, he faces challenges, but he meets them head-on, with the help of his loyal friends. Until one year, he’s set up for a challenge none can help him with. A challenge that, like all others, he may scrape through by the skin of his teeth.
Only, this is not one of those universes. This is not the story of a boy that destiny chose, but of a man who happened upon a wild, unpredictable Destiny.
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The Durmstrang Institute Champion is… Viktor Krum!
The Beaubatons Academy Champion is… Fleur Delacour!
The Hogwarts School Champion is… Cedric Diggory!
But only one will have the honor and glory of winning this tournament, and with it, the TriWizard Cup!
A blue flame sat idle through it all, before gold energy seized its moment and sparked the fire once more. There was a furious relish to the blue flames. An almost primal urge to burn, long buried in its history. From the looks on even the most ancient spectators in his hall, it was clearly a unique occurrence. Finally, a shred of paper spat out into the air. And a tired hand plucked it.
“HARRY POTTER!”
A teenage girl felt her heart sink, the name leaving her stunned silent. It was a name she'd only heard very sparsely, from only the most disreputable & malicious circles, over the last three years. A name which obviously didn't mean anything to her anymore, if it ever did, but which nonetheless held sway on her now.
Swiftly, with the eeriest whistle of air, every head in the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry darted in her direction. The fourth champion of the Triwizard Tournament – a deadly, three-school tournament which, obviously, was only ever meant to have three champions – had somehow been chosen. Her heart threatened to plummet into her stomach. With how fate always seemed to have its chosen victims, she'd quietly dreaded something like this might happen. There was simply no escaping Destiny. She could never have a simple, easy year at Hogwarts, it seemed, and someone working from the shadows had ensured that yet again.
But now it was too late. There was nothing she could do to stop what was coming. All she could do was turn and look Destiny in the face.
“Um, Destiny, shouldn’t you get up there?” Hermione Granger nervously quivered out to her best friend since first year, currently seated to her right.
Her name was Destiny Potter, most recently discerned as the shock of patchy, punkish blue hair & assortment of facial piercings seated at the Gryffindor House table. But for the past thirteen years, she’s been by-and-large known to the Wizarding World as The Boy Kid Who Lived. For just over ten of those years, they’d known her by the aforementioned deadname. The child that defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort as a wee babe. Savior of the free peoples of Magical Britain. And now the so-called Fourth Triwizard Champion.
“Huh, why?” Destiny blankly responded. Her eyes innocently perplexed. As if her mind had totally glazed over the events of the last sixty seconds, and had genuinely no idea why any of it involved her.
…
“ WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHY?! ” Hermione belted out obstinately. She could feel a vein along her forehead pulsing.
“That’s not my name.”
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THREE YEARS EARLIER
(GENERALLY. PLUS A MONTH OR TW-I DUNNO, CHECK A CALENDAR!)
“Eh, aren’t you Harry Potter?”, the soon-to-be first year girl, dark-skinned, bushy-haired and compact of build, asked.
“I’m still undecided,” the incredibly aloof pre-teen in question responded.
“You can’t be ‘undecided’! It’s your name!” she yelped back.
“Only in theory. My relatives don’t use it. They just yell out ‘Boy!’ and I know it’s for me.” Hermione cocked her head, confused. Were there no other men in his family? Was it some term of endearment from his guardian? “Lots of folks here seem to be real excited about it, though,” he continued as he craned his head towards the train hallway. “Kinda makes me wanna ditch it.”
“Are you mental?!” their fellow compartment mate, a young red-headed boy named Ronald Weasley, piped up quite energetically. “If I were you, I’d be rolling in that praise.”
“Praise for not dying seems… kinda unfulfilling? Lots of folks don’t die. In fact, if you poll every person on the planet, you’d find that the grand majority didn’t die yesterday.”
“Well, obviously, it would,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “You can’t poll dead people. The statistics you’re using aren’t complete.”
“B-but, I mean, not everyone who came up against You-Know-Who can say they lived to tell about it,” Ron stammered between the two, grasping at the cultural narrative he’d grown up in.
“Against who?” Potter replied, confused.
“Er… You-Know-Who,” Ron replied
“I don’t know who. I’m asking for clarification.”
“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” Hermione added, confident in her grasp of recent magical history.
“Well how do we know who that is if we can’t name him? We could all be talking about different guys we’re not supposed to name.”
“It’s… perfectly reasonable, according to history,” Hermione stammered, a vein nearly pulsing in her forehead from the discourse; a vein that would in time become quite fixed there. “Everyone was so afraid of him they feared using his name in vain. They thought it might be enchanted to sense them.”
“Again, still confused who we’re talking about, but even then, how’s he supposed to tell between people using his name in vain or in praise? Also seems like poor branding to me. Like, I’ve known about the magical world a month, talked to loads of people about why the heck I’m seemingly famous, and nobody can even tell me who the person who made me that way is! How am I supposed to look it up?”
“Oh, come off it,” Hermione nearly yelled at the kid. “It can’t be that hard to find out.”
“Hah!” the ostensible Boy-Who-Lived pointed at her in accusation. “ You don’t even know his name!”
“I… well that’s…” Hermione gaped, stunned. The kid was right. All the research she’d done in the year leading up to her proper debut in magical education, and she didn’t even know the villain of the country’s name! “Oh gods, you’re right. They never wrote it down. The only way people know what it is is through the people who lived through it passing it down… to their…”
As one, both Hermione and the Potter kid turned to face Ronald, who was currently shrinking further and further behind his bag.
“I dunno anything,” he muttered.
“You have to tell us,” Hermione yelped, the draw of knowledge too urgent!
“I can’t! I swear, I dunno! My mum didn’t tell me anything!”
“Ah, he’s a mummy’s boy,” Potter grinned. “Very shy. Low emotional defenses.”
“How do you know that?” Hermione eyed them, quizzically.
“Experience,” Potter smiled as they started poking at the redhead boy. “C’mon, Ronnie! You can’t hold out forever!”
“Please, stop. I don’t wanna…” the boy squirmed.
“Voldemort.”
An unfamiliar voice from the compartment door caused all three of them to turn. Peering in was an auburn-haired girl with pigtails & a very bright-colored blouse & skirt combo, smiling eagerly at them.
“Pardon?” Hermione said.
“Gesundheit,” Potter said at the same time.
“That’s his name. Lord. Voldemort.”
The two standing kids slowly turned to each other, turning over the name in their minds.
“PPFfffaaahahahahahaha!” they both broke into hysterical laughter.
“No it isn’t! That’s such a stupid name! Lord Voldemort?” Hermione couldn’t stop laughing, even as Ronald visibly shrunk in his seat. Even as the rhythms of doors sliding open and footsteps tapping towards them could be felt. You know, if the two hollerers weren’t kicking their feet in amusement.
“Hahaha, Voldemort! That would be the name of a dude who killed himself trying to kill a baby! ” Potter added, all while the new girl snickered in the doorway, very pleased with the drama she was feeding.
“What is the meaning of this?!” A loud yell pulled them from their giggle-fit. Their eyes turned to see an older red-head with a prefect’s badge scowling at them. His eyes landed on his fellow red-head. “Rrrrron!”
“I didn’t do anything, Percy! I swear! It was all them!” he squealed, pointing at his compartment-mates.
“You two!” Percy swerved on the two on the ground. “How could you be so insensitive as to loudly say that name !”
While Hermione was stifling her own amusement with a vice grip, her partner had no qualms about such. “Pfft, I killed the guy, dude. I think I’m allowed to laugh at his stupid name.”
“Hmph,” a different, quite snotty young boy’s voice entered from the corner of the doorway. A platinum blonde head of slicked-back hair and an upturned nose were the identifying features of the boy. “All this fuss over the famous Harry Potter, and all he can do is giggle like a schoolgirl.”
Hermione pouted at the cruel, misogynistic jab, but Potter only seemed to snicker at that. “Pfft, what’s the problem with that? Not even at school yet, and we’re already having more fun than you, Nazi youth.”
“Um… there’s…” the prefect looked about the crowd of kids that were surrounding him. “There’s tons of youths around here. Is your eyesight alright?”
“Oh my gods, read a non-magic history book, will you?!” Hermione yelped out. “I’m eleven, and even I know about Nazis.”
“I, er…” the prefect stammered.
“Anything from the trollies?!” a loud, cheerful woman yelled out from down the car, causing all the kids to scurry away from the commotion in their booth. The prefect seemed to follow, yelling at them about single-file lines. The blonde brat stayed, glaring further into their booth.
“Word of advice, Potter. Don’t think you’re so bloody important that you can get away with mocking the dark lord’s name.”
“Aww, is he sensitive about it? If I had that name, I wouldn’t want anyone to say it either,” Potter giggled.
The boy scoffed. “Whatever. If you’re gonna be like that, I won’t even do you the dignity of saying your name… boy,” he awkwardly finished, before jogging off.
“Huh, he must know my uncle. No surprise,” Potter idly muttered.
“Hah, great comeback, Malfoy!” the pigtailed girl laughed after him, having stayed to watch the show. “Don’t mind Draco. He’s your typical rich bigot. His dad’s got some lordship or whatever. I dunno. Never really followed politics when my parents chatted about them. I’m Lavender Brown, by the way,” she rapidly explained to them before extending a hand.
“Hermione Granger,” she awkwardly shook the girl’s hand. Potter didn’t move.
“I’m not being rude. I’m just not really sold on my own name,” they answered Lavender’s confusion. “And apparently that boy’s not gonna be using it, so might as well brainstorm another.”
“Y-you can’t! Your name is legend!” Ron yelped.
“Then it’ll be all the funnier when I change it,” the kid smiled.
“Ugh, this bloke’s gonna be the death of me,” Ron whined.
“Hah, that’s brilliant! I like you, Potter,” Lavender popped into a seat in the booth. “And you’re funny, too, Hermsy! In your own cute, dorky way.”
Hermione scoffed. “I’m not a dork!”
“I mean it as a compliment,” the airheaded Brown waved. “Dorks are adorable. They get so energetic about the things that excite them, and are even cuter when they’re mad.”
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“HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET UP HERE?!” Hermione nearly screeched, alerting all the girls in the Gryffindor first year girls’ dormitory. She’d felt quite honored to be sorted into a house known for bravery, given her own timidity in primary school. Her dorm-mates were also really nice, friendly and supportive, even if she felt distant from most of them. Well, except for the one Gryff girl who wouldn’t let her be distant.
“Ooh, hey Placeholder!” Lavender cheerfully greeted the Potter child, whose refusal to reply to the name ‘Harry’ had caused a lot of headaches for their classmates. Most just called them Potter, but Lav had taken to calling them Placeholder. Well, after calling them every boy name under the sun to see if anything stuck. Nothing did, and they learned a lot of names that seemed cruel to name a living thing. Said Placeholder was currently splayed out on the floor, after Hermione had reactively decked them after their sudden entrance. “Whatcha doin’?”
“I heard you were having a sleepover, and I felt left out,” Potter moaned, rubbing their noggin.
“We live in the same dorm,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Technically every night’s a sleepover.”
“Awww, come on, Herms. Don’t act like we’re not always inviting you over to chat & snuggle,” Lav lightly elbowed her.
“Classes are important. Nobody will take me seriously if I don’t put my all into classes,” Hermione huffed, before turning back to Potter. “Why didn’t you just ask your own dormmates to hang out?”
“Well, I did… try that, but…” Potter looked askance towards the tower where the boys’ dorm would be.
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Meanwhile, the first year Gryff boys were currently hollering around the ring of beds they’d assembled, surrounding a shirtless Kieran Gallagher tussling with a similarly shirtless Ronald Weasley, all while the remaining boys hooted for their preferred winner. Even the usually shy Neville Longbottom was getting into it. Eventually, Kieran managed to pin Ronald long enough for Weasley to give up and tap out. Triumphant, he turned over to the Potter-shaped figure at the far side of his bed.
“How’s that for bonding, ‘ay Potter?” Kieran yelled over to him, to no answer. The sweat-covered boy sauntered his way over. “Oh, come on, shy guy. A little tussle with me in the ring will make you feel ali-”
Just as Kieran went to shake Potter, their rather Quaffle-shaped head toppled off, bouncing on the ground.
“AHHH! YOU KILLED HARRY POTTER!” Neville yelled, followed by the yells of all the other boys.
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“Their cuddling was kinda… aggressive,” Potter picked at their chin.
“That still doesn’t explain how you got up here,” Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Well, I walked? I mean, I left before they could rope me into the brawli-”
“No, how did you get up the stairs? They’re enchanted not to let boys up!” Hermione nearly yelled, causing all the girls to pause and ponder that very riddle.
“Oh,” Potter turned back towards the stairs. “Huh. Okay! Be right back!” They suddenly scampered ganglily down the stairs.
“Wait, what are you-” The kid was gone before Hermione could finish her sentence. “Ugh, honestly that boy.”
“Who wants a soothing massage right now?” Lavender sing-songed to Hermione, gesturing towards Emma Vane, their pink-pixie-haired roommate who the other girls had repeatedly lauded as having ‘magic hands’.
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An hour later, Hermione had been roped into a full-blown in-home spa night, to her ever-partial consternation. They had now moved on to pedicures.
“What color do you like your nails, ‘Mione?” Parvati Pandey asked.
“Brown,” the dark-skinned Granger deadpanned. Parvati just blinked at her for a moment.
“I’ll just give you a clear gloss,” she nervously said.
“I’ll take black & blue!” an unmistakably unflappable voice pulled all the girls’ attention back to the stairway entrance, where a brightly beaming Potter was followed by the Gryffindor house advisor Minerva McGonagall. Also accompanying them: all of Potter’s belongings, floating behind the Deputy Headmistress.
“Wha… what is this? Why is he up here, Professor?” Hermione awkwardly asked McGonagall.
“I’m a girl!” Potter smiled.
“She’s a girl,” McGonagall confirmed flatly. “The enchantment doesn’t lie. Although, I will admit most Gryffindors are more flustered if or when they find out they’re trans before they’ve had time to process. Potter has taken this remarkably in stride.”
“This has happened before?” Sofia Roper asked, curious.
“Not often. Godric Gryffindor, a by-all-accounts chivalrous man from several hundred years ago, when gender norms were far less progressive than today, only enchanted the girls’ staircase, accidentally aligned it to recognize gender rather than sex, aaaaand never left any notes for how to modify or undo the enchantment. As such, we’re the house with the most confirmed trans-men of any other. Which is problematic, but I suppose if the Sorting Hat thinks you’re brave enough to be here, then you’re brave enough to handle being pushed abruptly out of the closet. Of course, that hat is also mentally modeled after a man from several hundred years ago so… still problematic.”
The professor pinched her chin, as if pondering something she’d rather not analyze too deeply.
“And now I live here!” Potter smiled.
“W-WHAT?!!!” Hermione yelled, less infuriated than just utterly baffled. Lav, meanwhile, gasped, realizing something.
“Holly!” she called out, pointing eagerly.
“No,” Potter replied with a close-eyed smile.
“Daisy!”
“No.”
“Ariadne!”
“Nope.”
“Adora!”
“いいえ.”
“Yeah?”
“いいえ means no.”
By that point, Hermione had passed out from the whiplash.
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Of all the skilled, exceptional young wix at Hogwarts’ School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, her happened-upon best friend had to also be the most infuriatingly obtuse. She wasn’t the cocky, brash, insanely reckless type she’d seen most of the Gryffindor boys fall into being. In fact she seemed more recklessly insane.
Even before she’d happened upon her own gender identity that winter, there was the whole incident with the troll on Halloween, or Samhain, as magical culture assigned it. She could’ve expected her friend to come to her rescue in the girls’ bathroom. She could not have expected…
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“Eeeasy, sweetie. Sshhhh, I get it,” Potter kneaded circling into the large scalp of a mountain troll, currently sobbing and grunting and… waving its hands in patterns that had long since gone over Hermione’s head. They didn’t seem to go over Potter’s, though, who was currently administering the most inscrutable therapy session she’d ever seen. Well, she’d never seen a therapy session, cause those were private, but… well, maybe she’d need one after this. After all, the bathroom was partly demolished and Hermione had narrowly avoided being smashed before Potter and Ronald arrived.
The redhead who’d insulted her earlier that day was currently quivering in a daze, petrified of the troll, repeatedly muttering “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” etc.. Honestly, the boy’s emotions were as fragile as his ego.
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?” Professor McGonagall hollered as she entered the scene.
“Give her a break, Professor!” Potter yelled out, tears in their eyes. “This lady busts her ass day in, day out, gets NO support from her deadbeat boyfriend! Gets attacked on the job, totally disoriented! She deserves a break… and a raise, for her troubles.”
The Professor’s eye twitched, utterly confounded.
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Why Hogwarts had employed a mountain troll to guard something in the castle was beyond Hermione’s knowledge, and honestly, beyond her desire to dig deeper. The incident had pretty much wiped away any assumptions or expectations either she or Ronald had about Potter.
Hermione had never totally got on with the Weasley boy, but he’d stuck by Potter so much out of habit, it felt for a time like they were friends by proxy. Now that Potter was living in the girls’ dorm, that friendship seemed to dissolve away surprisingly quickly. Hermione didn’t know all the details. She’d seen Potter and Ronald arguing at times, but soon they were just moving in different circles.
Which caused Hermione to worry that, soon enough, she and Potter would also be distant acquaintances. Her gender discovery hardly even registered as a scandal, and she’d gotten on with the Gryff girls faster than Hermione ever did. It helped that Potter and Lavender were ditzy peas in an aloof and daydreaming pod. Lavender was eagerly on top of any gossip, drama or mystery, and Potter had enough chaotic, unhinged confidence to actively move that drama along. She didn’t really “march to the beat of her own drum”, so much as she stripped the drums of their leather, rolled them up and carved them into a functional flute. She should not have worked half as well as she did.
The two’s kinship left Hermione feeling abandoned for some time. Like history was repeating itself, as it had throughout primary school back home. At best, people being friendly to her, but nobody staying friends with her.
She remembered clearly, though, the day she realized that would never happen.
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“ SNFFFFfff ,” Riri sharply inhaled next to her. Potter still hadn’t settled on a new name yet, but she allowed Riri to be the new placeholder over… well, Placeholder.
Hermione had ample opportunity to use it in the last week, since Riri had abruptly insisted on pairing up for assignments… while Hermione was noticeably suffering from a cold. It was honestly more awkward than comforting. Like Riri had simply taken pity on her lonely, sickly acquaintance. The whole charity-friend routine that girls at her old school loved to practice, usually for cynical ends. Increase their social appeal by spending time with the sad, friendless know-it-all, just long enough to make said girl feel optimistic about finding a true friend. Then ditch her before she gets clingy. Hmph , knowing Riri, she’d probably be able to abandon her without even a thought.
She felt a feeble hand paw at her shoulder. Hermione’s face slumped forward in a frustrated grimace. “Hey Hermy. D-do you have a tissue, by chance?” Riri mumbled next to her. Today they were ambling their way through another dull Defense Against the Dark Arts class - a mouthful that was often abbreviated to simple ‘Dark Arts’ or DADA or, by the most impish students, ‘Daddy Class!’. Professor Quirrell did not look particularly fatherly. He was the epitome of a hands-off professor, so frightened of his own subject material that he insisted they go through the readings silently on their own. Which obviously resulted in most of the class not bothering with the readings at all and taking it as a sleep period. A shame, since reading on potentially dangerous magical species in First Year was currently the only thing setting them up to not be thoroughly overwhelmed by the practical exercises and experiences to come in later years.
As for the sniffly girl at hand, Hermione rolled her eyes as she irritably fished through her bag for the small, unopened pack of tissues she had left over from her cold, which had since moved on to Riri. She thrust the tissues at the young fledgling trans-girl. “Here. Happy now that you’ve made yourself sick doting on me?”
Riri tugged a tissue out of the pack and loudly blew into it. Once done, she unfolded it to examine the slickly green mucus, her eyes widening slightly with a look that blankly conveyed ‘ooh, that’s bad ’. Then she turned back to Hermione with a wide, sincere, close-eyed smile on her pale face. “Of course! That was the plan!”
Hermione was taken aback by the bluntness of the admission, before being overcome with outrage at Riri’s true feelings. “So you admit it, even!” she hissed back, careful not to make a bigger fuss out of it in a quiet, largely sleeping classroom. “You were just using me to make yourself more popular!”
Riri blinked her eyes open, blankly absorbing before she tilted her head in confusion. “Huh? No, I was using your cold to make me more lonely.”
Hermione blinked away the frustration, her expression of heartbroken anger immediately replaced by her own startled confusion. “Wh-what?”
“I hate being sick,” Riri whined as she sunk onto the table, her punkishly asymmetrical hair drooping over her right eye. “Everyone avoids you, you feel crummy all the time, and you can’t spend time with the people who’ll make you feel better,” she listed off, now looking blankly into her textbook as she moped. “But… when you got sick, nothing changed for you. And that made me feel even worse than if I was sick. Cause you already weren’t spending time with me. Which meant I wasn’t making you feel better… ever.”
Hermione couldn’t stop her eyes from tearing up at Riri’s frank, but sweetly observant admission. It was… weird, and very roundabout, but in a way that felt very… her .
“So I decided that if I spent time with you while you were sick, then I would get sick, and the only person who’d be able to make me feel better would be you. Because I missed yo-”
Hermione’s fist connected hard into Riri’s shoulder. “Jerk!” Riri looked up at her with pure surprise. Cause that’s just what Riri was like. Only one feeling noticeable on her face at any given time, sitting there in utter simplicity. “If you missed me, why couldn’t you just… ask me to join you and your new friends?”
Riri’s eyes tilted up as she thought it over. “Well, I am really thick and unreliable… as Parv pointed out to me when I asked her for advice. And I figured if I just asked you over during one of our sleepovers, I wouldn’t have felt rotten enough about unknowingly excluding you to be certain that I wouldn’t do it again.”
Processing the apology, Hermione couldn’t help but find it both incredibly thoughtful and baffling. Riri had felt bad about how she made Hermione feel? Bad enough that she’d make herself literally sick and miserable over it, just to make sure she wouldn’t leave Hermione behind again?
“Pffffft,” her composure cracked, giggles rhythmically bubbling inside her. Riri, still blinking away tears, look at her puzzled. “You’re so stupid, Riri,” Hermione pushed out through snickers, a relieved smile spreading on her face.
Slowly enough, Riri smiled back, cnot still pooling in her nose, from sickness and emotions both. “Yup! That’s true.”
And for a sweet moment, the two just giggled at each other. After all this time, still the anxious know-it-all and her sincere, thick-headed best friend.
“I-i-is-ssssss-is every-ev-ev-everything alr-rrrrr-is everything alright, y-youn-youn-yyy-young m-mm-misses?” The two turned. Evidently their teary mea culpa and isolated giggle-fit was not unnoticed, interrupted now by the telltale aggravated stammer of Professor Quirinus Quirrel. Riri seemed to regain her composure, if not quite her health, quicker than Hermione.
“Yes, Professor Queer-Queer!” Riri grinned.
“Please stop calling me that,” he responded without a trace of a stammer. Weird , Hermione thought, but then, Riri often had that effect on people.
“Why not? Coming from me, you know it’s a compliment, ah-” Riri grinned, laying the charm on thick. Her face screwed up as her reply tapered off though. “Aaaaahhuuu…” she restrained herself best she could, but it was swiftly clipped by another reaction. “ah-ACHEW!!!” With a squeak, Riri sneezed directly at Professor Quirrell, whose hands quickly jumped to his face as he stumbled back a bit.
“Riri, that’s disgusting!” Hermione scolded her recently reclaimed friend. “Cover your nose!”
“Eep!” Riri chirped, rightly accosted, turning back to her unsuspecting victim. “Sorry, Profess… Professor?” What started as an apology quickly became a nervous query at the cowering sight before her.
“Mmmmm-pphhhh-rrrrrrggggg…” a strangled moan echoed from the professor’s mouth, his hand grasped desperately at his face. A face that was currently giving off… steam? No, steam had no smell beyond the humidity. This was acrid. Foul. Stinking smoke.
Quirrell’s fingers splayed apart, his hand drifting upwards to reveal his face. Or what should have been his face. Instead, what they saw was a gaping, disintegrating max of moaning dust and… crud. That was the only world a grade-schooler would know for the clumpy substance that had been Quirrel’s face.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!” the two girls screamed as they clung onto each other. They weren’t the only screams of horror in the class. Merely the closest.
“MMMMAAAAPPHHH-TERRRRR!!! HEEELLLLLL… MEEEEEEE!!!!” the remaining clumps of the professors mouth failed to enunciate into complete words. Even as he said them, the lungs reverberating them were caving in. Quirrell’s still-standing body lumbered back against the table, his hand grazing over his head, sliding his signature turban off onto the ground as he faced away from the class.
In its place, a ghoulish visage on the back of his head now faced towards the class. The screams continued, now joined by the haunting wail of this eerie, noseless specter. “YOOOOUUUGGGGHHHHH… FOOOLLLLGGGGGGHHH,” it gurgled. A wail that was mercifully cut short, as whatever brain function provided the… thing vocal chord must’ve collapsed as well.
And so, too, did what remained of Professor Quirrell. Flopping forward (or was it backward?) onto the ground with a thud, his now-ashen innards scattered across the floor. The screams of their classmates fell silent. Barring the sound of their heavy, terrified breathing, the room stayed silent for some time.
Slowly, nervously, Hermione looked around the room. Lavender looked just as horrified, closely huddled with Parvati, Sofia and Emma. Malfoy looked utterly frozen in his seat, his cohorts Vincent Crabbe & Gregory Goyle both passed out on the ground behind their desk.
“Does this-”, she was brought back to the present by the sound of her friend next to her. Riri, still keeping her introverted look of shock, seemed motivated to break the tension and terror of… whatever the hell just happened. “Am I a xenomorph, Hermione?”
Hermione blinking. Her eyes slowly turned down to the smoking, sifting sands of their now-former teacher. “No, Riri. You’re not. But…” she took a deep, barely stabilizing breath in. “It’s probably not a good thing we both know that reference.”
“Yeah,” Riri nodded, before coughing from the arid dryness of the room. She grabbed for a water bottle at her side. “Damn, I… I never got to ask if he was trans.”
Hermione’s horror was, thankfully, replaced once more by bafflement. “What?! Why would he be trans?”
“Cause I just don’t believe a parent would be cruel enough to name their kid Quirinus Quirrell.”
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