Voldemort, If I Call Your Name, Do You Dare Answer?

"The school rules say we have to wear uniforms at school and keep them neat." Another student beside them chimed in.

"So we can make small innovations elsewhere." Roger pulled out a loose-leaf notebook he carried with him from inside his robes.

He opened it, tore out a sheet, and tapped it lightly with his finger. The blank paper turned into a pair of glowing vampire fangs.

He handed them to the student beside him, then tore out another sheet and transformed it into Jason's hockey mask from the classic 1980 horror film Friday the 13th.

Finally, he shook the notebook in his hand, turning the entire thing into a pumpkin head mask.

Some of the young wizards were uninterested in such things, but they held considerable appeal for Muggle-born students.

Before coming to Hogwarts, they had dressed up for holidays every year. Suddenly not dressing up now felt a little strange.

Still, people tended to follow the crowd. Since no one else around them had dressed up, they had not wanted to stand out.

But now that the Prophet had taken the lead...

The young wizards who had celebrated Halloween in the Muggle world immediately gathered around Roger.

Hogwarts' Great Hall.

A lavish spread of food suddenly appeared on the golden plates, and the Halloween feast began. Harry looked around and saw that many young wizards had adorned themselves with all sorts of little accessories—masks, head coverings, bandages... Though they were still wearing wizard robes, the atmosphere felt far more like Halloween than before.

"So what character are you supposed to be? Some special kind of vampire?" Harry turned and looked at Roger, who was sitting beside him.

Roger picked up a fried chicken drumstick and casually replied, "An Egyptian Pharaoh who plays cards."

"...Huh?" Harry was baffled. He looked Roger up and down but could not see anything Egyptian Pharaoh-like about him besides the pyramid-shaped pendant on his chest.

Just as Roger was about to explain the fashion of the future and Tearlaments at the height of its power to Harry—

Bang!

The doors to the Great Hall flew open.

"Troll! There's a troll in the dungeons!"

"I..." Professor Quirrell had already prepared his lines, but he could not continue halfway through them.

Because he noticed Roger not far away.

A pyramid pendant hung before Roger's chest, with a dark-red crystal embedded in its center.

...The Philosopher's Stone!

How could it be here?!

After obtaining the Philosopher's Stone, Roger had considered how exactly he should keep it.

In Voldemort's memory, the stone should have been kept by Dumbledore on the third floor.

Under normal circumstances, Roger ought to have followed fate's original course.

He would let Harry suspect Snape, let Snape and Voldemort struggle against each other, while showing the other professors his secret letter from the headmaster and having them set up Devil's Snare, the flying keys, Wizard's Chess, and the potion trial. Then he would find some replacement for the Mirror of Erised to cast the spell.

After all, Harry still carried the Love's Magic his mother had left him. Voldemort could not harm him, and with just a light touch from Harry's little hand, Professor Quirrell—deeply corrupted by Voldemort—would die instantly.

Voldemort, having lost the body he depended on, could only flee in panic.

And Harry would get some experience from the ordeal as well.

But Roger did not want that.

Roger had been on the battlefield. He knew that taking another person's life was not a pleasant experience, especially in close combat.

Unless you no longer saw the other party as a person.

Let Harry kill Quirrell? Forget it. Perhaps he would face such a situation someday, but Roger did not want it to happen when he was eleven.

Just because he had been caught in the rain did not mean he wanted to tear apart someone else's umbrella.

So Roger came up with a method.

On Halloween, Quirrell would release a troll into the school. In the original course of fate, Hermione would spend the entire afternoon crying in the girls' bathroom after Ron's cruel words hurt her, and Harry and Ron would go looking for her out of concern.

In the end, they would face the troll's attack together in the girls' bathroom.

They would use the Levitation Charm to knock out the troll, and it was only from that moment, after facing life and death together, that they truly became close friends.

But fate had already been twisted beyond recognition by the butterfly's wings. Hermione's life had undergone subtle changes, and Harry and Ron's ways of dealing with things had also shifted slightly because their experiences differed from those of their original fate.

The battle in the girls' bathroom would not happen.

However, Voldemort had not yet been affected by him, so his actions should not have changed.

Therefore, Roger could lie in wait for him.

And the result was just as Roger had expected.

Quirrell burst into the Great Hall, froze for half a second when he saw the Philosopher's Stone hanging openly around Roger's neck.

But he quickly recovered.

When the situation was unclear, the best course was to adapt to every change by remaining unchanged.

So he immediately rolled his eyes back and pretended to faint.

After all, his somewhat neurotic behavior this term had already become well known to everyone. Such a reaction would not seem out of place.

At this moment, Dumbledore had already left the United Kingdom, leaving all school affairs in the hands of Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall.

Professor McGonagall remained remarkably calm in the face of the sudden crisis.

First, she created a loud disturbance with magic to draw the attention of the young wizards below, who had descended into chaos, and made them quiet down. Then she instructed the prefects of each House to lead the young wizards back to their dormitories. The feast was over.

A troll was not especially dangerous to a qualified wizard. Any one of the prefects, or even most upper-year students, could handle it. But it was extremely dangerous for children who had never experienced battle.

For someone who had never fought before, encountering an emergency meant that successfully casting a spell was the least of their worries. They would be fortunate if they did not mispronounce an incantation and blow themselves up.

It could be said that the wands in the young wizards' hands posed a greater threat to them than the troll did.

So, to avoid accidents, it was better to evacuate them safely.

Following Deputy Headmistress McGonagall's orders, the young wizards searching for their prefects became somewhat disorderly again.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Roger seemingly casually walked over to Professor Quirrell and used the Levitation Charm to lift him up, making it appear as though he intended to carry the "unconscious" Professor Quirrell to the teachers' table so the professors could take him away for treatment.

Quirrell did not react at all.

But Roger felt an extremely faint warning from his sense of danger.

Roger, who was already intimately familiar with his own abilities, knew that this was the reaction he got when someone capable of harming him was on high alert against him.

Roger ignored it. Instead, he adjusted his angle to block others from seeing his face, then said in a meaningful low voice amid the noise, "Can we just let the matter of the Philosopher's Stone go?"

Quirrell's little finger twitched slightly.

"Consider it a favor to me... Voldemort."

Quirrell:! Voldemort:?!