The day after Ethan was introduced to Atlas training program, he had to face a large hurdle. He thought about avoiding Voldemort by not attending his lessons, but he also didn’t want to give him an excuse to invite him for a private talk, and so he attended the class as usual.

At first, Voldemort or Quirrell didn’t even seem to give him any attention. He just told the students that he was sorry that he was unable to give the lessons as regularly and that he hoped that the lessons Professor Ward gave them were also satisfying. He then went on to explain how the terrain can be used in a battle while also demonstrating a few things, like transfiguring the table into a horse that charges at a specific target or using the chalkboard as a shield. He even used the calk itself as a projectile with wandless magic.

After his demonstrations, he tasked them with trying it themselves in small groups. After the groups had formed and Ethan began to train with Leona Amy and one of the girls that was in their group they trained with under Professor Ward, Atlas felt something entering his mind. He immediately built up his resistance. At first, he thought that Voldemort would cease his attempts, but after two minutes, he attacked his mind again. All while explaining to one of the other students how even reparo could be a useful spell in battle.

This second attempt was far more forceful than Ethan expected. It was also far more painful than Ethan had expected, and he couldn’t help but grab his head in pain.

“Mr. Brown. Is everything okay? I should probably bring you to the infirmary. Class is dismissed.”

“NO! No, I’m fine. We can continue.” Said Ethan but the moment he said it, his head started to feel as if someone was hitting him with a splitting hammer.

“I just need a moment in the bathroom. I will be right back.” said Ethan, who was already out of the room before Quirrell could say anything.

Ethan spent almost ten minutes in the bath thinking about what to do. Voldemort was obviously trying to talk with him under four eyes. The problem was that, while he was able to avoid that, he was unable to prevent Voldemort from destroying his mind. At least not with the level of occlumency he currently has. Ethan gritted his teeth at the wastefulness and upgraded the occlumency skill, despite it only being level 9 at the time. The upgraded version helped him to actually block of people that tried to enter his mind. He also took the T1 skill "shielding", which also buffed mental shields. If Voldemort now tried to penetrate his mind, he would speedlevel his shielding skill and occlumency. The problem was that he was unsure if he was able to endure it until then.

To make it relatively risk-free, he only re-entered a few minutes before the end of the class.

Voldemort didn’t reinitiate the attack immediately, which made Ethan wonder a little, but two minutes before the end, he once again felt the foul mind of Voldemort tackling his shields. Ethan had to close his eyes and concentrate on blocking them and not wincing in pain, but Voldemort only increased the intensity of his attack.

While skill levels for his newly gained shielding skill were coming in fast as each attack on his mind barriers was counted as a block, his barrier was still slowly crumbling.

When Ethan realized that he was still unable to block Voldemort, he could only helplessly redirect his mind towards something Voldemort already knew. He tried to focus on his memories with his grandma, but Voldemort's proficiency and rigorousness in searching his memories brought up his recent date with Amy.

The moment the lesson ended, Ethan once again fled the room. He couldn’t give Voldemort even more opportunities, so he even ignored it when Quirrell called him.

It took Ethan some time to recover from the ordeal, but he still went with the others to the library. The whole time from that lesson on, he focused on his occlumency. Each level up would protect him, and he hoped it would be enough to resist Voldemort during the next lesson.

The next few days were spent grinding his skill levels like crazy. His defensive skills probably benefited the most, as he focused quite a lot on them to endure Quirrell’s next lessons.

He also crafted spatially expanded bags for his friends. He had found the spell inside the library while looking for alternative ways to destroy horcruxes. The spell had given him an interesting skill option. Spatial magic. The Skill would probably also boost things like apparating as well. But he already planned to take the skill apparating instead of something like that. Teleportation was a too powerful ability to ignore, and with a specific skill, he would surely be able to circumvent limitations like not being able to apparate in Hogwarts or the like.

On his second lesson with Quirrell, Ethan had to endure a continuous on slaughter of mental attacks from Voldemort. His shielding and occlumency had leveled a lot since the first lesson, and by now he was at least able to endure them. That didn’t mean that Voldemort didn’t manage to break his defense when his concentration broke, but that only happened two times while doing a complicated exercise. The information he gave away at those times was probably useless to Voldemort, as he had already extracted everything useful he knew long ago, but if his actions hadn’t confirmed that he was free from Voldemort’s influence, the snippets of his memory that Voldemort managed to see surely revealed that he had regained the memories that had been lost.

After the lesson, he had a massive headache, and even Amy couldn’t cheer him up, and he wasn’t too happy about needing to spend his time in the library pretending to search for things that could technically help Voldemort’s recovery to find out what Quirrell might be searching for. Because of his headache, he wanted to reduce the time by just pretending for a short moment before showing them the description of the philosopher’s stone.

While studying, he suddenly felt some information streaming into his head. He suddenly gained knowledge about different kinds of rituals and sacrifices related to healing. Dark rituals. Rituals that, by all means, should be classified as horrendous and evil. The stream of information wasn’t blocked off by his occlumency and it took him some time to realize that it was his rapid knowledge transfer’s passive ability that had triggered. What puzzled him was who was reading something like this among his friends.

He looked around and noticed that Atlas was the only one reading something without any letters on its cover. When he asked him, he said that it was a book from the forbidden library.

Ethan looked at the knowledge he gained in more detail, and one ritual peaked his interest. It was the ritual Voldemort used to recreate his body in the fourth movie. It took Ethan a while to realize that this couldn’t be a coincidence, but he didn’t know how to interpret it instantly.

Only a few hours later, at night, when he lied in his bed and after he had fully recovered from Voldemort’s attempt to violate his mind again, he had an enlightenment, or at least he thought he had. It was already strange to him how Atlas was able to deduce so much about Quirrell’s plan with so few clues he had, but it would be explainable if he was a reincarnator like himself. It would also explain why he was so much better than most of the students, even a year above him. The next day, he tried to confirm his suspicion by talking with Amy about it. She confirmed that even though in some pure blood families it was common practice to teach occlumency from a young age, teaching legilimency never happened before finishing their OWLs in the fifth grade. The skill Atlas showed was also beyond what any normal first-year student should be able to have. At least for normal students. People like Dumbledore apparently were geniuses from birth. At least according to the public records. So either Atlas was a genius on Dumbledore’s and Voldemort's level, or he was a reincarnator like he was.

The next day, when he wanted to confirm his thesis, he noticed that Atlas wasn’t there during breakfast. Hermione was also missing, as well as a few other students. It didn’t take long for a rumor to reach him that a student had died during detention. Some even said that Snape finally snapped and killed a student. Others said that it had to be the defence against the dark arts teacher because it is always the defence against the dark arts teacher.

The rumors got worse and worse. Some were frighteningly realistic, while others were so far fetched that Ethan was sure that even the people telling these stories didn’t really believe in them. But all rumors had one thing in common. A student had died.

The table where the professors usually sat was only half full when the owls delivered the newspapers that confirmed that a student had died. The problem was that the article didn’t mention who had died.

As the day progressed, owls never stopped flying into the great hall, delivering letters from worried parents, grandparents, and friends. The infirmary was closed to all students who didn’t have any serious injuries.

A few people were trying to sneak in by pretending to be ill, but Madam Pomfrey either cured them in front of the door or sent them away after seriously questioning the morality of a few students. She had a way with her words that made these people feel really ashamed of themselves.

It was only in the evening that Ethan got more information, as Hermione and Harry got discharged from the infirmary. To say that they didn’t look good would do what they had experienced, unjustice. Especially Harry was in a terrible state of mind.

Ethan was shocked when she revealed that Neville Longbottom had died. The clumsy boy who had trained with him just a day ago was dead. The boy who, in the movies, grew into a competent wizard and hero who beheaded Nagini, had died.

He wasn’t the only one who was hit by the news. Amy and Leona were hit as well. Both tried especially hard to cheer up Harry and Hermione, but not with much success. He also learned that Atlas got seriously hurt by a fiendfire basilisk and that it was unclear how well he would recover.

When they visited him the next day, he understood why Hermione was so worried. Ethan even thought about immediately giving him one of his healing potions but refrained from doing so. He wouldn’t be able to explain it to Madam Pomfrey, and while he wasn’t scared of other people finding out about his abilities to brew excellent healing potions, what his potions were capable of couldn’t be described as mere excellence.

But the situation still required him to act. In the movies, there wasn’t much time between the forbidden forest and the final confrontation with Voldemort, and now everything was moving faster than he had expected. He was sure that it was his fault, as Voldemort got scared that he would spill the beans to Dumbledore.

So instead of beating around the bush any longer, he confronted Atlas with his suspicion of him being a reincarnator.

To Ethan’s surprise, Atlas admitted to it. In the exchange that followed, Ethan learned that Atlas did not have something like his system. At least that’s what Atlas told him. But what was interesting was that Atlas had read the books and seen the movies. Hearing what Atlas told him made him realize a lot of troubles he could have avoided if he had known it beforehand. That included his terrible attempt at killing Quirrell by pushing Harry on him, or the fact that Professor Trewlany sometimes hid her cherry inside the room of requirements. The talk was more on the embarrassing side, as Atlas was almost cursing him for how stupid he acted, especially when he had to admit that Voldemort knew everything about the movies.

So when Atlas told him that Voldemort would attempt to get the stone in four days, they weren’t really sure that it would really happen that way, but they planned with that time in mind. He would have liked a few more weeks or even months just to push his skills further, but he couldn’t change how things turned out now.

The time he had was even further limited by the things he had to prepare for the trials.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

When the newspaper informed him about an attack on the ministry, with a second attack announced for the following day, he knew that Atlas information about the four days had been right.

He had already informed Atlas about his decision to exclude Amy and Leona from their fight against Voldemort, and to his surprise, Atlas had a similar plan for Ron and Hermione. Only Harry couldn’t be brought to safety, as he was a necessary tool to kill Quirrell.

When the time for them to enter the trials finally came, he was nervous. Maybe even frightened. He had done his best to push his defences to the maximum, but he definitely still lacked in the offensive department. And defeating Voldemort only with defensive moves was a long shot, even if he could return some spells with his T3 skills.

It also worried him when Atlas told him that Voldemort had kidnapped Cedric Digory and that Snape was with them. His state only worsened even more when Professor McGonagall’s announcement rang through the castle that a basilisk was running wild. He was almost tempted to stop the whole operation, but Atlas, Harry, and even Ron and Hermione were determined to go forward, so he couldn’t stop now.

After taking care of Fluffy in a way that would probably cause Hagrid to rage, they entered the easiest trial. A trial that should have been easily solved by creating some sunlight.

What followed was that he was almost knocked out by the screeching of a few mandrakes. Only thanks to his shielding skills did he hold out long enough to protect himself.

The pain and the disorientation had against all odds acaused him to be able to focus again. Not physically focus as his ears were still ringing and even his vision was partially impaired but he was able to focus on the task at hand and not worry about the basilisk, Amy, Leona or whatever Voldemort had planned with Cedric and Snape. It made him realize that the trials, that should have been mere little obstacles might actually be a reason for concern and that if he was distracted by his worries he might die even before reaching Voldemort.

The second trial reduced these worries a little as it became apparent that the trials were used to stall them. Them or Voldemort. Atlas had various theories about Dumbledore that portrayed the old headmaster in a much darker light than the movies had, so he wasn’t really sure about what to think about the man.

With some minor hiccups, they managed to clear the second and third trials. Ethan thought that the fourth trial was even easier as he saw the troll running towards him. He felled the troll with a single full-body bind and thought the trial was over, but the troll was able to free himself far too fast. So fast, in fact, that Ethan was sure that Voldemort had done something to especially counter his full body-binding skill.

Caught by surprise, Ethan had been grabbed by the troll, while the chess pieces had also started to cause trouble.

Ethan had struggled and wanted to free himself but was unable to cast a spell because the troll held him in such a way that he was only able to use one hand while the other was squeezed together with his body.

Ethan then tried to poke the trolls' eyes with his free hand, but his arms were just an inch too short. Ethan then tried to punch the troll to cover the distance as his skill increased his range, but his fist was too big to just hit the eyes and instead just hit him in the face.

The hit itself didn’t do much to the troll, and Ethan had to think of another solution. With adrenaline flooding his system and his thinking and battling skills buffing him, time seemed to have stopped for Ethan. In the seemingly endless moment, he realized that with the passive option of increasing the strength of every 100th hit, he could potentially defeat the troll without magic, so Ethan began to hammer his fist on the troll's hand and arm.

The troll tried to squeeze him, and while Ethan felt the pain of his ribs braking and even his lungs getting punctured, he endured. He was sure that the only reason he was squeezed into a paste was because of his shielding skills. In this case, his skin and flesh were shielding his organs. He wasn’t sure if it worked that way, but that didn’t matter at the moment as he was still hammering the troll while his background calculation was used to keep track of the hits.

The 100th hit even managed to make the trolls heads crack like a melon hit by a hammer instead of just causing him to release his grip.

The moment he was free, he rushed to get a healing potion.

It was painful and relieving at the same time to feel the healing potion in his lungs. The only major problem with that was that he felt like he was drowning. Even his breathing skills couldn’t stop that feeling, even though he didn’t feel like he was out of breath yet.

After he had recovered, Atlas took out Ron and Hermione. Harry was naturally quite angry, but Ethan and Atlas were able to calm him down quickly. While Atlas was bringing Ron and Hermione to safety, we decided to advance further.

Snape's trial turned out to be tricky. At least it would have if it weren’t for his skills, but Ethan had to admit that poisoning the potion to advance further into the trials was a genius stroke, and it reminded him that they shouldn’t carelessly take the trials at face value.

By the time Atlas caught up with them, they had almost finished brewing the antidote. Atlas and Ethan fully expected to meet Voldemort and Quirrell, but instead they were given another trial. A trial that wasn’t in the books. A trial based on trust and teamwork. It was obviously what Professor Ward was doing. With how he emphasized the teamwork aspect in his short lessons, it was quite obvious. The only thing that he failed to analyze was what the water was meant to do. At least until they had guided Harry towards the end of the maze and were able to get closer.

It still looked like normal water to him even from a closer distance, until when he tried to activate his memory potion brewing skill to brew a potion with that water at superhuman speed, the skill failed to assist him in anything. He didn’t even need to pull out a cauldron to realize that. His movements were just as slow as they normally were. This meant that whatever this liquid was, it couldn’t be used as the basis for the memory potion, which meant it wasn’t water. Using this skill like that was actually something Voldemort came up with when he tested his skills, which put a bad taste in his mouth, but he would let that hinder him today.

He was still unable to find out what the water could do and just decided to be careful as they crossed the maze.

The moment they opened the next door, Harry got pulled in before they could even do anything. He almost expected Voldemort to throw a killing curse at them as soon as they followed them, but he instead tried to rile up Harry. Or all of them, if he was honest. He was shocked when Voldemort said that he had helped him get a perfect body instead of just the homunculus version, and at first he thought that Voldemort was lying. At least until Voldemort claimed that he understood his system or his abilities better than Ethan himself. It took him a while to connect the dots, but when he saw Snape's mindless eyes and the wound on his arm, he realized something. The ritual to reconstruct Voldemort’s body was, in essence, still a potion. But he couldn’t remember brewing that kind of potion for Voldemort, and by now he was sure that he didn’t miss any memories.

After Voldemort finished trying to rile them up against Atlas, he realized that apparently his system affected all the potions he had started to brew. He didn’t need to finish them. He didn’t know if there were any efficiency losses when doing that, but that was probably how Voldemort managed to increase the efficiency of the ritual so much. But instead of being happy at discovering how Voldemort did it, he despaired, as these thoughts had distracted him enough to give Quirrell the opportunity to stab Harry.

He flung a shock spell at Quirrell as soon as possible, but he was too late. Atlas tried to save Harry, but he was also too late. The only positive thing was that he learned that his shield charm was indeed able to block the killing curse. But with Harry's death, they lost the only reliable method to kill Voldemort.

The problem was that Voldemort's fighting style adapted to jis defense instantly, and he summoned a fiendfire snake to attack him. Ethan was sure that his shield would be penetrated after some time, and he began too genuinely fear for his life.

At least until Professor Ward appeared. The man was a famous war hero, so he should at least be able to put up a fight. From then on, the fight escalated, and he, Atlas, and Ward were pushed back more and more. Atlas couldn’t even be counted towards their fighting strength in a fight on that level. He was just a slightly more powerful first-year student.

Ethan tried to think of a solution. He still had one T1 skillslot open, but he needed that one to get a specific skill, or he wouldn’t have a chance against Voldemort. The only things he got until now were defensive ones against Voldemort and a shockspell. He needed to find a good moment to use the killing charm, as he was sure that a simple shock spell would not have much of an effect on Voldemort, even if buffed by his system.

In the end, they decided that escaping was the best option for them, so they tried to clear the way to get out of the room, but Voldemort’s attacks had caused the exit to be filled with rubble.

But with them focusing on clearing the exit, Professor Ward had to face Voldemort alone and got critically injured. Just when Voldemort was about to kill the wounded professor, Dumbledore arrived. He flooded the corridor with that strange water to extinguish Voldemort’s fire basilisk before saving Professor Ward.

As soon as Ethan breathed in a bit of steam, he knew what that water was. It was a slow acting sleeping toxin. It was one of the more esoteric potions, as it didn’t put the body to sleep but the mind. That sleep was also infinitely long as long as one didn’t get fed an antidote.

Ethan thought for a moment how he could use that to his advantage, but before he could come up with something, the whole water was frozen, and Dumbledore was urging them to escape.

Ethan thought about doing just that because he believed that Dumbledore would be able to keep Voldemort in check, but Atlas stopped him by saying that this was not the case.

It was a difficult decision for Ethan. Since he knew that Dumbledore was more sinister than he initially thought, he didn’t have much of an interest in risking his life to help him. But when he thought about fighting Voldemort later without Dumbledore by his side, he thought that assisting the headmaster now was the best course of action.

With him, Professor Ward, and Dumbledore, the fight was slightly favoring them, and Ethan realized that it was the right decision to stay.

He also found the time to use the killing curse towards Voldemort, but instead of blocking the dark lord, simply dodged, which prevented Ethan from getting the skill he wanted. The problem was that he immediately felt the dark magic affecting his mind. It wasn’t in a way that it immediately made him incapable of rational thinking, but it prevented him from spamming the spell until he hit him.

When he thought that they were close to winning the fight, something happened that shocked Ethan to the core. Atlas had used a dust explosion to attack Voldemort, but his timing was slightly off, and Professor Ward was blasted away. Ethan was only able to defend himself with the T3 passive skill of his protego charm. Then, instead of apologizing or trying to use the moment to attack Voldemort, Atlas, who he thought was a friend and fellow reincarnator, attacked Dumbledore. With a killing curse, no less.

Ethan barely had time to be shocked, as this enabled Voldemort to make a comeback.

He could see out of the corner of his eyes that Dumbledore and Atlas spells clashed. Red against green. Naturally, Atlas was losing terribly, but Ethan realized too late that Dumbledore was unable to defend himself because of the clash, and Voldemort shot a killing curse at the old headmaster. When the headmaster slowly fell down, Ethan could see Atlas' body standing at the opposite end of the room, his head falling to the ground. To Ethan’s horror the head and body were oozing off a black smoke that transformed into some kind of weird ghost and shadow.

This, for some reason, led Voldemort to realize something about Atlas and some mysterious figure behind him. Ethan didn’t want to spend any time thinking about it. Not at this moment. His mind was only trying to find a way out of the situation he was in, but as soon as Voldemort focused back on him, with a sadistic smile on his face, he knew that he couldn’t simply run away.

The only hope he had now was his system. For the first time in their fights, Voldemort and he had a clash of wills. One killing curse against another.

Naturally, Ethan was losing almost as terribly as Atlas had lost against Dumbledore, but he finally got the skill he had been waiting for.

Spellclash (Killingcurse, against Tom Marvolo Riddle)

He instantly upgraded the skill to tier 2, which increased the power instead of the speed at which he could break off the clash, and put every skillpoint into the skill. Because the skill was so increadibly specialized, the skill offered a 10% increase per level, and with all skill points, he managed to push the skill to level 85.

The next clash of their spells was not as the previous one. Ethan didn’t feel like a toddler who was arm-wrestling against a grown man anymore. With all his skills affecting the clash, he was sure he had a boost that was beyond twenty times what he should usually be capable of, and for a short moment, he saw fear in Voldemort’s eyes. With how this went, he was sure that with a few more clashes and a few more level-ups, he would be able to beat the dark lord.

But the situation turned around again as Voldemort summoned the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's corpse.

The moment their spells clashed again, Ethan realized that he was unable to win against Voldemort. Not unless he got the skill ten or twenty levels higher. Fear creeped up his body, and Ethan tried to run away while defending against Voldemort, who chased him from trial room to trial room.

If he just managed to buy himself some time, if he reached the other professors, then maybe he would find a solution, but Voldemort was getting closer and closer to actually killing him. He had to block a few spells with a shield charm instead of forcing a clash, as he would have died otherwise, but even that became less and less of an option as he was pushed into a corner, and he knew that the moment Voldemort used the Fiendfire snake again, he was bound to die inside of his shield. Not only because the shield would break but also because the heat still came through the shield.

He blocked one more spell before realizing that he only needed ten more clashes before his skill leveled up again, which might be just enough to allow him to last long enough for another level up and then maybe another one till he either escaped or won the fight.

He lifted his wand again, ready to shoot another killing curse after breaking out of their previous clash, but before the skill came through, a green light hit him in the chest.

He felt nothing, no pain, no fear, no afterlife reaching out to him. He simply felt the absence of these things. He almost thought that the killing course was unable to harm him, until he felt his vision vanishing even though he could still feel that his eyes were open. And then even that feeling vanished.