The Final Chamber
The small, circular opening in the stone wall closed silently behind Phoenix Hellflame. Harry, standing alone in the outer potions chamber, could feel the air grow cold and thick with a palpable, terrifying power.
Phoenix stood in the final room, a vast, dim chamber dominated by the great, elaborate frame of the Mirror of Erised. The floor before the mirror was littered with the bound and stunned forms of his teachers—an immediate confirmation that the threat was active and had already bypassed the lower defenses.
Professor Quirrell, stripped of his turban, stood facing the mirror, his body shaking with a sickly desperation. He was speaking to it in a reedy whisper, laced with a venomous urgency.
Phoenix stepped into the center of the room, his black robes barely stirring the ancient dust. His amethyst-violet eyes were cold, analytical, and utterly devoid of fear, taking in every detail of the chamber and the figure before him.
Quirrell spun around, his face a sickly pale mask of fear and fury. He stammered a meaningless threat, but then his entire demeanor changed. A high, cold voice—slippery as a snake and sharp as a dagger—cut through the air.
"Hellflame. I felt your presence throughout the year. Your power is an anomaly. Pure, yet utterly destructive. A magnificent combination... and an immediate threat."
A grotesque face, chalk-white with flaming red eyes and slit nostrils, materialized on the back of Quirrell's head, looking directly at Phoenix. Lord Voldemort was revealed.
The Transaction
Phoenix did not flinch. "I am not here to stop you, Shade," Phoenix said, using the precise term to denote Voldemort's fractured state. His voice rang with a powerful, low resonance. "I am here to ensure you reach a position where I can permanently neutralize this inconvenient body. You require the Philosopher's Stone to regain a cohesive form. Take it."
Voldemort was stunned into momentary silence, his crimson eyes narrowing. "Why would you allow this? Do you seek power at my side, boy?"
"I seek only the removal of instability," Phoenix replied, looking past Voldemort's shade to the mirror. "Harry Potter is the mirror's subject. His desire is to see his family, not find the Stone. Your desire is to find the Stone. We require the one who desires to find it, but not use it."
Phoenix then sent a subtle, non-verbal directive—a Conceptual Will—through the magical connection he had maintained with Harry. The command, absolute and irresistible, entered Harry's mind: Come forward now and look into the mirror.
Harry, stepping through the hole in the wall, looked around in utter shock, then moved instantly to stand by Phoenix's side, his eyes fixed on the Mirror.
"Potter," Voldemort hissed. "You are an inconvenience."
Phoenix pressed a single, dense pulse of energy against the air around Quirrell's arm, trapping the shade's action in a single moment of absolute stillness. "Do not touch him. He serves his final function now."
Voldemort, recognizing the overwhelming power and surgical control, yielded. The shade fixed its eyes on Harry.
Harry looked into the mirror. In his reflection, his parents vanished, and he saw himself, whole and healthy, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the Stone. He felt the cold, smooth presence of the Stone slide into his own pocket.
Voldemort roared with delight. "He has it! Take it out, boy, take it out!"
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out the Philosopher's Stone. He tried to resist the next action, but Phoenix's Conceptual Will was absolute: Give it to the host. Harry's hand moved forward, almost mockingly.
Quirrell's hand snatched the Stone greedily. Voldemort's shade cackled as Quirrell pocketed the priceless artifact, already feeling the raw, chaotic magic of the Stone begin its work of unstable, partial reconstruction.
The Clash of Concepts
"Excellent," Phoenix said, his voice sounding entirely satisfied. He looked at Harry. "Your purpose is complete, Potter. Retreat now, through the hole, and rejoin your friends. This is not your battle. This is the removal of a cancer."
Harry, stunned by the cold, calculating nature of the exchange, backed away slowly, retreating through the opening Phoenix had created.
Voldemort, feeling the surge of regenerative power, laughed—a dry, horrible sound. "So, you allowed my return to fight me when I am strongest? Foolish arrogance, Hellflame. You have a magnificent core, but you face the mightiest Dark Lord of all time!"
Quirrell turned, now facing Phoenix. Voldemort's shade was already growing clearer, stronger, his features becoming less ghostly and more solid.
"You confuse strength with stability," Phoenix corrected, his silver hair seeming to float around him as a powerful violet aura erupted from his body. "Your magic is poisoned, fractured by the very act of your desperate existence. My magic is absolute elemental concept."
Voldemort shrieked a wordless curse—a devastating jet of emerald green light, imbued with killing intent.
Phoenix did not move. As the curse reached him, he simply willed the concept of 'Deflection' into existence. The jet of green light hit an invisible, impossibly dense wall of pure violet energy, dissolving harmlessly into sparks.
Phoenix responded with a silent, invisible wave of power. It was not a spell; it was a fundamental attack on the very concept of Voldemort's being. The violent collision of raw Dark Magic and Purified Elemental Force was deafening.
A massive, transparent dome of violet and swirling green light instantly erupted around the two combatants. The pressure was enormous, crushing the air and pushing every loose object to the edges of the room. The sheer density of the clashing magic acted as a perfect, impenetrable barrier, designed by Phoenix to stop any interference.
Outside the dome, the castle felt the shockwave. High above, Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape, having just recovered from their initial charming, stopped dead as a blinding flash of light emanated from the third floor. They rushed forward, but as they reached the corridor, they found the door sealed by an impossible, shimmering field of violent, chaotic energy. They could not pass; the density of the magical conflict was too great, too primal.
Annihilation and Artifact
Inside the dome, the duel was fast, brutal, and entirely one-sided. Voldemort threw every curse, every destructive spell he knew, his partially resurrected body surging with the Stone's chaotic power. Phoenix countered all of it not with incantations, but with conceptual commands: Entropy. Dissolution. Silence.
Phoenix unleashed his final attack: a spiraling torrent of silver-fire Dragon Core energy, focused and sterilized by the Unicorn essence. It was not Dark, and it was not Light; it was pure, elemental annihilation.
The body of Quirrell, and the shade of Voldemort clinging to it, did not burn; they disintegrated. They were not reduced to ashes, but atomized, leaving only a small, lingering wisp of black smoke and a faint outline of the man in the dust. The Philosopher's Stone clattered onto the floor.
The violent energy dome instantly collapsed, and the chamber was plunged into silence.
Phoenix moved quickly. He scooped up the Philosopher's Stone, its surface warm and glowing faintly. He surveyed the chamber, his eyes lingering on the Mirror of Erised. The magical signature of destruction would baffle the professors, but the Stone's recovery was clean.
Before he left, Phoenix used his thumbnail—now hard as dragon bone—to scratch a tiny, inconspicuous shard from the outer edge of the Stone, just enough for his own purposes. He tucked the glowing, silver splinter deep into a hidden pocket.
The main Stone he placed in a prominent position next to Quirrell's robes, exactly where Dumbledore would find it.
He stepped back through the hole, which silently sealed itself back into the solid, protected stone wall, leaving Snape's brilliant magical security entirely intact. He rejoined a terrified Harry in the outer chamber.
"It is concluded," Phoenix stated simply, the violet light receding from his eyes. "The Stone is recovered, and the entity is temporarily neutralized. Dumbledore is coming. Remain silent about my intervention. Weasley and Granger must provide the official, heroic narrative."
He then, with a single, precise wave of his hand, cast a subtle but deep Stunning Charm on Harry, ensuring he would only remember the terror, the cold voice, and a flash of green light—everything Dumbledore expected. Phoenix then stood over the unconscious Harry, awaiting the arrival of the two most powerful wizards in the castle.