Kevin read the System reward.
Constitution and Magic, ten points each. Solid, but not the kind of life-changing upgrade the Intelligence boost had been, or the Talent panel unlock. The early missions paid more by percentage — he was starting from a higher base now and the marginal gains were smaller.
He thought about this for precisely as long as it deserved, which was about four seconds, and then thought about what was actually coming tonight.
Afternoon classes finished. Harry found him with the particular energy of someone who has made a decision and needs to move before the decision gets complicated.
"Dumbledore's gone. McGonagall says London. Snape might — "
"Tonight," Kevin said. "Yes."
Harry blinked. "How did you — "
"You've been thinking about it for weeks. It was going to be tonight." Kevin stood up, shouldered his bag. "Hermione?"
"If you're going," she said, without looking up from her packing, "I'm going."
"I figured."
"Don't say 'I figured' like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you've already accounted for me."
"I have accounted for you. That's not a bad thing." Kevin held the library door. "You're the best person in the group in a situation that requires clear thinking under pressure. Of course I've accounted for you."
Hermione walked past him through the door and elected not to acknowledge that this had landed well.
Eleven o'clock. The common room fire burned low. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Kevin — and Neville, sitting in the armchair by the stairs with the resolute expression of someone who has decided to do something and is seeing it through.
Kevin looked at him.
"I'm not letting you," Neville said. "You'll get in trouble."
"Neville — "
"You shouldn't be out after hours. It's against the rules."
There was a moment where Kevin assessed Neville Longbottom — his shaking hands, his set jaw, the way he was holding the chair arm — and understood that this was not stubbornness or tattling. This was courage of the type that nobody ever recognised as courage because it involved stopping people rather than accompanying them, and it cost Neville more than any of them would ever acknowledge.
"You're right," Kevin said. "We probably shouldn't."
Neville blinked.
"But we're going anyway, because something important is at stake, and you know that's true."
Neville's jaw stayed set.
"I'm going to remember this," Kevin said. "That you tried to stop us. That took more than going with us does." He met his eyes. "Stay here. Keep watch. If we're not back by dawn, tell McGonagall everything."
Neville looked at him for a long moment.
"Everything?" he said.
"Everything. All of it. Fluffy, the Stone, Snape, Flamel, all of it. McGonagall will know what to do."
Neville nodded once, slowly, and sat back.
They slipped out.
Fluffy's room smelled of damp fur and straw and something enormous breathing in its sleep. A harp played somewhere — small, self-sustaining, already fading at the edges as whatever enchantment maintained it began to unravel.
"Someone's been through," Harry said.
Kevin was already at the trapdoor, shifting the paw. "Move."
They dropped through. Devil's Snare first — Kevin had planned a full-intensity light burst, but stopped himself. Harry, Ron, Hermione. This was their story as much as his, and there was value in letting them move through it under their own power when they could.
"Don't fight it," Hermione said immediately, reading the plant's response as they fell through. "Let it take you — don't struggle — "
She was already sinking, controlled. Kevin followed her lead, arm around her as they went through.
Harry dropped cleanly.
Ron thrashed. Hermione had already remembered by then — "Lumos Maxima!" — and Kevin backed it with his own light at full burn. The plant recoiled. Ron dropped.
Keys next. Harry's Seeker instincts turned the task into something between a performance and an inevitability. The old, rusty-hinged key. Two passes and he had it.
The chess room.
Ron looked at the board with the particular expression of someone who loves something and is about to find out what it costs. He took command of it with quiet authority — the pieces responding to him in a way that said, clearly, that the room recognised its master when it found one.
When the time came, he set himself up as a sacrifice and took the hit without flinching. The white queen moved and Ron went down.
Harry moved immediately. Kevin stepped in front of him.
"Move — I have to — "
"Hold on," Kevin said. He reached into his bag and produced a Restoration Potion. He knelt beside Ron, tipped it between his lips, and waited.
Ron's eyes opened. He blinked at the ceiling. "What — "
"Get up when you can," Kevin said. "We're going through."
Harry stared at him. "You had a potion."
"I had several potions." Kevin stood. "I have them in specific situations. This was a specific situation."
"You could have — Ron didn't need to — "
"Ron played the game and he played it brilliantly. He didn't need to get hurt to do that." Kevin looked at Harry. "There's a difference between a moment costing something and a moment costing more than it needs to."
Harry absorbed this. Ron sat up slowly, looked around at the pieces, and said: "Did I win?"
"You won," Kevin confirmed.
"Obviously," Ron said, and let Hermione help him to his feet.
The last room.
Quirrell stood with his back to them in front of the Mirror of Erised, studying his own reflection with the intense concentration of someone who has not yet solved the problem.
Harry said: "I thought it was Snape."
Quirrell turned. The stammer was gone — had been gone the entire year, Kevin realised; the stammer was the performance, this was the man underneath it. His voice was flat and clear.
"Snape." A smile that didn't fit his face. "Snape who counter-cursed your broom every time I cursed it. Snape who ran to the third floor on Halloween to stop me. Snape who has spent this entire year protecting you while you suspected him of — "
A different voice cut through. Old. Cold. Thin as smoke.
"Enough. Let me speak."
Quirrell went still. Turned slowly.
Kevin moved.
The moment Quirrell's back was to them — the moment between turning and turned — Kevin was already moving, the crowbar out of his bag, everything in him committed to the swing.
The impact was enormous and also immediately useless. The Ironclad Charm had activated on pure reflex — Voldemort's instincts firing through Quirrell's body faster than Quirrell's conscious mind could have managed it, the protection snapping into place around him like a second skin.
Kevin was already in the air from the rebound.
Mid-flight, the crowbar swapped hands. His wand came up. Everything — every point of Magic he had — went into it in one single cast.
"Invisible Blade!"
The blades hit the Ironclad Charm like a hammer hitting weakened glass. The charm held for a fraction of a second, then the sheer volume of force cracked it, and the blades tore through into Quirrell's body with the degraded but still considerable power of a first-year who had just spent his entire magical reserve in one hit.
Kevin hit the floor on the other side, landed in a controlled roll, and was back on his feet.
He had six seconds before Voldemort recovered his footing.
The crowbar came down.
Once. Twice. He didn't stop until he was certain, and then he stopped.
The room was very quiet.
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the remnants of Ron's Restoration Potion were all looking at Kevin, and then at what was in front of Kevin, and then at Kevin again.
Kevin was breathing hard. His hands were shaking — adrenaline, not distress, he noted clinically. The crowbar was at his side.
"Harry," he said. "Come here."
Harry didn't move.
"Harry."
Harry came.
Kevin guided him to the body. Harry's breathing was audible. Kevin took his hand, pressed it to skin.
The reaction was immediate and extraordinary — the body screaming, crumbling, and the black smoke rising with Voldemort's face barely visible in it, his voice somewhere between rage and disbelief, ranting about Mudbloods and vengeance and a reckoning.
Kevin tried Stupefy on the smoke. It passed through.
"Tch," Kevin said.
He ignored everything else Voldemort said, which Kevin suspected was the most infuriating thing he could have done to him. Voldemort raged, faded, was gone.
Kevin sat down on the floor.
His reserves were completely empty. His hands had stopped shaking and started a more fundamental kind of trembling that suggested his body was filing a formal complaint.
"Is everyone — " he started.
He lay down on the floor instead. The stone was cold and he didn't mind.
Ron sat heavily on the steps. Harry stood for a moment longer, looking at the place the smoke had been, and then sat too.
Hermione came to Kevin and sat down beside him. She didn't say anything. She put her hand on his chest, over his sternum, and felt the fast beat of his heart slowing down.
"The Stone," Harry said, after a while. "It wasn't even — we didn't even see it."
"Dumbledore has it," Kevin said. "Has had it. The mirror was a distraction — no one can take it from the mirror, they can only find it while they're not trying to use it. Quirrell was stuck." He paused. "He had it handled. We just made sure Quirrell didn't have long enough to figure that out."
Silence.
"You had this planned," Harry said. It wasn't quite an accusation.
"I had something planned. The specifics were improvised."
"That was improvised?"
"The swing was improvised. The spell was planned. The floor was unplanned."
Ron made a sound.
Kevin reached into his bag and found a Restoration Potion. He drank it slowly, lying on the stone floor, and felt the warmth of it move through him.
"Everyone alive?" he said.
Three voices confirmed it.
"Good." He looked at the ceiling. "Snape's going to be first through that door."
He was right. The door opened four minutes later and Snape took in the room — four students arranged across the floor in various states of horizontal exhaustion, the remnants of Quirrell's body already beginning to crumble to ash, the mirror standing undisturbed — with an expression that moved through several stages before arriving at something that wasn't quite speechless but was adjacent to it.
"Professor," Kevin said, from the floor, without moving. "The Stone is safe. Quirrell is not going to be a problem. There is some mess. I apologise for the mess."
Snape looked at him for a long moment.
"Get up," he said finally.
Kevin got up.
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