Curious Quirrell
“Good morning, Harry!”
Harry, who forgot how enthusiastic Hermione could be, grinned when she bounced-walked right up to where Harry and Sirius waited for defense to begin. Sirius, who didn’t seem terribly fond of Harry’s friends, grimaced at Hermione.
Hermione either didn’t notice Sirius’s grimace or didn’t care, she was busy sifting through a large amount of books in her bag to find something.
“Here!” Hermione was beaming when she offered three books to Harry. “I found these in the library. They’re about your family! You’re very famous.”
“Oh.” Harry looked down at the books and only took them because he knew sharing books was Hermione’s form of affection. “Er… thanks,” he said lamely.
“You’re welcome!” Hermione said. “Do you want to sit together? Are you excited? I’ve been studying but Percy Weasley, he’s the Gryffindor prefect for his year, he said—”
What Percy Weasley did or didn’t say, Harry didn’t know or care. Harry saw Ron in a group with Seamus and Dean, walking up to join the others waiting for defense to begin. Harry brushed Hermione off for a moment with a quick excuse and then tried to catch Ron for a chat.
“Ron, hi.” Harry wasn’t desperate, so he didn’t smile and Ron’s slight frown said that he wasn’t altogether welcome.
“I wanted to say sorry about yesterday,” Harry said politely. “I really hope your rat comes back. I used to have a rat, his name was Chudley.”
Harry thought that would be all he needed to start a conversation with Ron. They could bond over their missing rats, Ron could ask if Harry liked the Chudley Cannons (Harry did not). They might not be as immediately close as they had been when Harry had also been a first year, but they’d get there eventually.
If Ron would just cooperate.
“Did you scare your pet away too?” Ron asked Harry hotly, the tips of his ears giving him away as they reddened with anger. “Scabbers is missing and I know it’s your fault!”
Harry flushed in embarrassment as the entire Slytherin and Gryffindor first years had ended their own conversations to listen in to Harry and Ron’s. It wasn’t that Ron was wrong, it was that technically it had probably been—
“Your rat ran away because it’s a bloody cowardly piece of filth,” Sirius said loudly, taking all the attention off Harry. Hermione stared at Sirius affronted, probably for his language. Blaise and Malfoy were standing on either side of him though; Malfoy was glaring at Ron, Blaise looked bored.
“Scabbers isn’t a coward!” Ron said, a bit of a stupid argument to start. “He’s an innocent rat! You’re - you’re a piece of filth!”
Harry shook his head at Sirius sharply, begging him silently to not let the spat turn into an entire argument. Not only was it not doing Harry any favors in befriending Ron, but the two of them didn’t need even more attention on them.
It had been unbearable enough for the Slytherin students to think Sirius was a Parslemouth, they had been insufferable as the house seemed torn on adoring Sirius or fearing him. Malfoy and Blaise were adoring (though Harry got the queer impression that Malfoy was showing some sort of family loyalty?), Theo Nott didn’t speak to Sirius or Harry that morning. Daphne Greengrass had been cordial.
Harry couldn’t be sure, but he thought that he was receiving even more whispers and stares than he did the first time he had been eleven. It could have been his house, but Harry thought it was Sirius. Sirius couldn’t seem to stay out of the spotlight.
Even with Harry shaking his head, Sirius wouldn’t let Ron’s (quite childish) dig go.
“I’m trash?” Sirius’s face twisted and Harry could see his Sirius in the flash of anger, the narrowing of his eyes. It took nothing at all for Sirius to flick his wand at Ron and hit him with a spell.
Ron had ducked when he first saw Sirius pull his wand and he slowly straightened up out of it, seemingly relieved to not feel any pain. It wasn’t until everyone else started laughing that Ron must have realized he’d been jinxed.
It was creative… even if Harry didn’t approve.
Harry slunk back to Sirius’s side, uncaringly shoving Blaise some to stand beside Sirius. Blaise was as busy laughing as the others were while Lavender Brown pulled a mirror from her bag to show Ron the damage.
Ron screamed the instant he saw his hair, which had been turned to a mess of dark orange spider legs, the same shade as his hair had been. There was more laughter at Ron’s scream and Malfoy actually fell on the floor in a fit of hysterics when Ron began running back toward the staircase, probably off to find the Hospital Wing.
“He’s terrified of spiders, Sirius,” Harry hissed at Sirius under everyone else’s mocking laughter. A few students weren’t laughing, Hermione and Neville amongst them, but the rest seemed to find it the funniest thing to ever happen.
“I know,” Sirius said blandly, shrugging. “I remember.”
The door behind the class opened and Harry barely heard Quirrell telling them to ‘find a seat’ beneath everyone else’s excited chatter about the brief fight.
“Then why would you do that?” Harry asked Sirius as they fell in line to filter in the classroom. Harry saw that Hermione had quickly decided to sit in the front with Neville, she didn’t even turn back to look at Harry despite her offer to sit together before.
“Because he’s annoying,” Sirius said, reminding Harry of another Sirius in another time —
“I’m bored,” Sirius whined, his head lolling backward so the sun could shine on him.
“I see something that’ll keep you occupied.” James had his eyes on the entrance of the castle and he tilted his head in that direction when he had Sirius’s attention. “Look who it is…”
“Excellent.” Sirius became instantly alert and animated. He smiled and it wasn’t kind, it was mocking and cruel. “It’s Snivellus.”
Sirius was Harry’s favorite person in any world, any time. But Sirius could be cruel and Harry wasn’t going to stand by and watch him be a bully to kids who were leagues less talented than he was… though possibly with the same level of maturity, even if Sirius swore like a grown man.
“You’re going to apologize,” Harry told Sirius before they took their seats. They had already planned it out, having had nothing better to do in History of Magic. Harry sat in the very back row, right by the aisle. Sirius took a seat two rows up, confusing the other Slytherins.
Malfoy elbowed Blaise to take the seat beside Sirius. Blaise huffed before sitting beside Harry, causing Harry to glare harshly at him.
Sirius turned in his chair and rolled his eyes at Harry over the conversation that was not finished yet.
“I’ll apologize in hell,” Sirius whispered stubbornly.
“You’re a git and a bully,” Harry whispered right back.
Sirius winked, which broke Harry’s composure, and they both settled in their seats when Quirrell began attendance.
“You two have a very strange friendship,” Blaise muttered beside Harry.
Harry nodded in agreement, it probably seemed that way. Blaise only knew two days worth of their relationship though, Harry couldn’t begin to explain everything.
‘Oh, Sirius? Well technically he’s my godfather. I thought he was trying to kill me at one point, but he wasn’t, he was trying to protect me, I think. He offered to let me live with him, but that was before Snape and Fudge tried to have him kissed by a dementor. After that? He lived off rats for a year, just to be near me. Mental, right? He also fought to keep me informed on the war, and I had to listen to people saying rubbish about him. That was before I thought he’d been taken and tortured though, that was the day he fell through a veil and I followed him, which I think he’s mad about for some reason. Oh, then I spent a month thinking he had died.’
‘Strange’ didn’t begin to cover it.
At least they were strange and had a plan.
Harry and Sirius had carried on a whispered conversation all through their history class that morning on what they were going to do about Voldemort possessing Quirrell. Harry had been shocked to find out that Dumbledore had the stone in his office, then realized that made some sense after he considered it.
The mirror hadn’t been moved until after Christmas, Harry thought maybe Dumbledore thought the stone was safest with him until the traps were all set. Though Harry couldn’t imagine that Voldemort would have been daring enough to directly steal from Dumbledore, as Sirius had. If Dumbledore was truly the person Voldemort most feared, it didn’t make sense why Dumbledore didn’t carry the stone around with him?
Sirius had his own theory, though they had disagreed adamantly over it:
“I’m probably wrong,” Sirius said, talking entirely casually beneath the charm he used to ensure their conversation was private. They had received quite a few questioning looks when they started talking more comfortably since no one else could hear them - more attention that was making Harry begin to itch.
“If you’re probably wrong then tell me why you think there’s the traps,” Harry insisted.
Sirius leaned back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head and turned pensive, thoughtful.
“Flamel asked Dumbledore to protect the stone, right?” Sirius said. “It was in Gringotts and Voldemort made a move on it on your birthday.”
“Right,” Harry nodded.
“And you said originally that Flamel was fine with it being destroyed to keep it from Voldemort.”
“Right,” Harry said again.
“I think that Flamel intends on it being destroyed no matter what,” Sirius said, staring up at the ceiling as he explained his theory. “Flamel wanted it destroyed, Dumbledore never thought Voldemort died. He can’t be sure, until he’s got two shiny baubles to dangle in front of him.”
“Two?” Harry asked, not following Sirius anymore. “What’s he got besides the stone?”
“You,” Sirius said, taking a hand off his head to twirl his finger in a rather ‘duh’ motion. “Between Flamel’s stone and the Boy-Who-Lived in the castle, Dumbledore must assume that Voldemort can’t resist. So he brings him to Hogwarts and sits back to wait and see what happens.”
“Dumbledore wouldn’t do that,” Harry argued. Even after spending the last year being turned away, ignored, and frozen out by the Headmaster, Harry refused to believe that Professor Dumbledore would purposefully lure Voldemort to Hogwarts.
It would risk the lives of all the students, who Harry had to believe that Dumbledore cared about. Harry had seen Dumbledore lose his temper over Umbridge shaking Marietta Edgecomb, that was not a man who would risk their lives for no reason.
“Why would he?” Harry asked. “He never thought Voldemort was dead, he didn’t need confirmation of that.”
Sirius hummed and didn’t seem like he was going to answer. They lapsed in a tense silence, both of them considering the other’s point of view. Then just before class dismissed, Sirius leaned toward Harry to finish off his theory.
“What if he wasn’t trying to get confirmation that Voldemort was alive?” Sirius asked, whispering when he didn’t need to be. “What if he wanted confirmation of something else?”
Harry, once again getting swept up in Sirius’s dramatics, whispered back to him, “What else would he be testing?”
Sirius leaned even closer to Harry and tipped his head toward Harry’s, so close their breath was mixing and Harry was more uncomfortable with that than he was with Sirius’s wild idea:
“I think he was testing you.”
So they didn’t agree on Dumbledore’s motives, but they did agree on how to handle it.
Voldemort didn’t have Harry’s blood, never would if it were up to Harry. It meant that Harry’s touch would burn him - it would also kill Quirrell, but Harry couldn’t worry about that, he was dead the second that he accepted Voldemort in his body.
Harry didn’t think it was a great idea to expel Voldemort from Quirrell’s body in front of half the first year class, but Sirius didn’t want Harry to be alone with Voldemort either.
It wasn’t a terrible plan, considering that it was Harry and Sirius who came up with it.
Harry raised his hand when Quirrell said his name and settled back to wait. All they planned was for Quirrell to walk past Sirius at some point during his lecture and for Sirius to hit him with a silent tripping hex. When Quirrell fell, Harry would pretend to fall as well.
Then Harry would burn Voldemort out of Quirrell and spend the rest of the year… doing something, maybe.
It was actually going to be a bit boring with Harry knowing all the lessons, unable to play quidditch, and with nothing mental happening. It wouldn’t be too boring, not with Sirius around certainly, but Harry would have to find something to keep himself occupied.
Quirrell started their lesson with a stammered discussion on the basics of defense against the dark arts and what they would learn through the year. It was mostly theory, Harry remembered that much. Which made Quirrell’s next request rather strange…
“I’d l-like to see what y-you all know,” Quirrell said, his eyes roaming across the room. Harry tilted his head and winced at the sharp pain in his scar when Quirrell’s eyes landed on Harry.
Because of course they did.
“Mister P-Potter and Black,” Quirrell stuttered out. “Why d-don’t you t-two come up?”
Sirius didn’t look at Harry as he stood up and paused for the two steps it took Harry to catch up with him. The classroom door opened when they nearly reached the front and Harry glanced over his shoulder to see Ron slipping in the classroom, his hair normal once again.
The harsh glare Ron sent Harry would have been much more disheartening if Harry wasn’t preoccupied with whatever Quirrell was up to.
“D-do either of you know how to d-duel?” Quirrell asked, his gaze aimed at the floor. Harry tried to catch his eye and couldn’t help but shiver when he swore he saw a flash of red.
There were a few quiet chuckles, mostly from the Slytherin students who had already seen Sirius duel or the ones who saw Harry and Sirius both showing off a bit in Transfiguration.
“Some,” Sirius said, winking at Harry as he automatically began backing away from Harry, his wand in hand.
“You want us to duel each other?” Harry asked, feeling vaguely sick over the idea. It wouldn’t mean anything, Harry wasn’t going to hurt Sirius, it would be no different than practicing with the DA.
It felt different though when Quirrell told them to ‘show him what they knew’.
“I do,” Quirrell said, meeting Harry’s eyes and causing his scar to ache.
There had never been a demonstration in first year before, Harry was sure of it. Harry had never been asked by Quirrell to do anything either, which meant Harry had to assume that it was Sirius again who was changing things.
Sirius didn’t seem bothered, he looked excited as he bent at the waist and bowed to Harry on the other side of the room. Harry scrunched his nose in irritation and he bent just slightly, not liking the idea of bowing to Sirius anymore than he wanted to duel him.
There was a trace of excitement in Quirrell’s voice when he told them to begin and Sirius didn’t waste a second.
Harry didn’t recognize the first spell Sirius sent, but thought it might be some form of transfiguration based on the consistency of it. Sirius was brilliant at transfiguration, it made sense that he would rely on it.
Harry wasn’t exactly a bad dueler himself though, even if he was nowhere near as creative and powerful as Sirius.
The students were completely silent when Harry and Sirius dueled for a while, neither of them slowing down any. Despite not wanting to duel him, Harry also didn’t want to lose either.
“C’mon, I thought you were a mini-Moony,” Sirius taunted Harry, thankfully speaking a little in code. Sirius twirled his wand in a small figure eight and Harry nearly fell on his face because of the slick ice suddenly under his feet.
“And I thought you were a muggle-raised orphan,” Harry complained, putting more effort into keeping Sirius on his toes than he had in any duel before. It didn’t help that Sirius was excellent at silent magic; maybe that was what Harry would work on that year to keep from getting too bored.
“Didn’t you want to be an auror?” Sirius asked, pausing to laugh when Harry conjured a small amount of hornets, all of them aimed to attack Sirius. Sirius swished his wand, turned it into a single creature that looked like a flying bear, and Harry had to duck when he sent it straight at Harry’s head.
It was when Quirrell yelped quietly that Harry realized where he was standing… just behind Harry.
Harry could accomplish two goals at once if he waited until just the right moment:
Get rid of Voldemort and not technically lose to Sirius.
“If I become one, then you’ll be the first person I arrest,” Harry said, backing up two steps. He tried to hit Sirius with a knock-back jinx and then had to jump when Sirius sent something purple toward his feet.
When Harry jumped, he purposefully leaned backward and swung his hands out in a wild attempt to grab Quirrell. It worked, Harry landed half on the man and his left hand was covering Quirrell’s face.
Quirrell screamed, which made students start screaming. Harry’s hand was on fire and when he dropped his wand and grabbed Quirrell’s face with both hands, it was excruciating.
“LET GO!” Quirrell shrieked, steam pouring off his face and clouding both of their vision. “GET OFF ME!”
“Not until he’s gone,” Harry grit out quietly, forcing himself to withstand the pain for the end result. Quirrell was thrashing, screaming in agony.
Someone else screamed Harry’s name, it might have been Sirius. Harry had heard it before—
“HARRY!”
It wasn’t altogether a surprise when Harry stirred, a dull ache in his head waking him. Harry slowly opened his eyes and saw a blurred ceiling that he had been well acquainted with in the last few years.
Harry tried to lift his limbs and groaned when they were heavy, difficult to move.
“Harry?”
Harry’s left arm was both heavy and entrapped by a tight grip. Harry slowly turned his head and saw Sirius come in view beside him.
Sirius looked stressed, which was stupid. Harry told him he had fainted last time. He also looked young… young and tired.
“Hey,” Harry said, struggling to shove himself in a sitting position. The Hospital Wing was empty, though Harry knew it wouldn’t be once Madam Pomfrey saw he was conscious. “Did it work?” Harry asked Sirius. “Is he gone?”
“Quirrell’s dead, about thirty kids got to see a wraith flee his body,” Sirius told him. The second Harry was upright, Sirius climbed in the bed and only released Harry’s hand so he could put his arm behind his shoulders and hug him tightly in his side.
Harry was relieved to know that it wasn’t all for nothing, though he would have liked to see everyone’s reactions to Voldemort possessing their teacher.
“Merlin, Pup… you looked dead,” Sirius said, sounding quite worried. “You said you would faint, you didn’t tell me that you would be unconscious for days, Harry. It’s been days.”
“Oh.” Harry shifted and squirmed with guilt. “Er… I forgot.”
“Forgot, right.” Sirius sounded annoyed, but he also seemed concerned over Harry. “I hope you’re ready to be famous, everyone’s talking about you.”
“About getting rid of Voldemort?” Harry asked. “That’s good, at least nobody in our year could call me a liar later on if he ever came back.”
“Uh… no.” Sirius laughed suddenly, a short and amused bark. “They’re saying you killed Quirrell, actually. It’s brilliant, Harry. Aurors had to interrogate everyone in the class. I don’t think your friends really appreciated it.”
“Aurors?” Harry asked, turning quickly to Sirius. “Nobody called them last time!”
“Last time you didn’t kill a man in a room of thirty witnesses,” Sirius said, entirely too cheerful suddenly. “Draco told me that you and I have a terrible reputation. I had a fifth year in tears when I went to use the loo and they were in there.”
Harry closed his eyes as he could all too easily see what Sirius described. It would be like his second and fifth year all over again… people terrified of him, acting as if he were insane.
The only silver lining that Harry could see was that unlike every time he had been feared, hated, or ostracized before… at least he had Sirius beside him to suffer through the same fate.
Harry had to spend an additional day in the Hospital Wing and have his own interrogation happen. Snape, of all people, stood stiffly in the room as Harry’s ‘head of house’ while Kingsley Shacklebolt, an auror that Harry had met before, asked Harry about what happened with Quirrell.
Harry played stupid, said that Quirrell made him duel Sirius and that Sirius knocked him backward, causing him to land on Quirrell. Of course Harry had no idea what made him burn up, it was a complete mystery to him.
Kingsley nodded and didn’t seem too suspicious, but Snape stared at Harry the entire time he spoke. Every time Harry glanced at Snape, he was quick to look away.
He wasn’t likely to forget the ease of which Snape could break in his mind and read his thoughts. The only thing that could make Harry’s situation worse was Snape finding out the truth.
Though the lies were hard to keep up with since Harry had never felt less like an innocent eleven year-old in his life.
Dumbledore never visited Harry during his stay, which Harry would have been more bothered by if Dumbledore hadn’t spent Harry’s entire fifth year ignoring him. It was strange though that he wouldn’t stop to give Harry the same slim explanation that he had the first time Harry encountered Quirrell.
Sirius, typically, added that to his ‘evidence’ that Dumbledore was some manipulative maniac who had played Harry like a fiddle for years.
The day Harry had been released from the Hospital Wing, Harry and Sirius traveled up to the owlery to visit Hedwig. It was a Saturday, thankfully, which meant Harry could hide out from his nosy classmates and try to puzzle out all the differences he had noticed compared to his real first year.
“Scabbers is gone,” Harry started with, petting Hedwig while he went through it all with Sirius. “Quirrell is dead, Voldemort is gone again. Dumbledore has the stone, he never told me about my mum dying for me or her blood protecting me…”
“We’re in Slytherin,” Sirius added as he shared an apple with a hyper barn owl. “Snape’s still a greasy bastard.”
“You stole my dad’s cloak,” Harry said. “Dumbledore called the aurors over Quirrell’s death.”
“Ron’s a terrible friend and Hermione might be terrified of us,” Sirius said, quite unhelpfully.
“You scared my friends away,” Harry said, still stinging over that. “Hermione didn’t even say hi to me when I saw her, Siri. D’you know how bad that feels?”
“Make new friends,” Sirius said like a broken record. He leaned around the owl attacking his hand to peck the apple and rolled grey eyes at Harry. “I don’t know why you’re so convinced that it’s got to be them again.”
“If you went back to your first day at Hogwarts, would you make new friends?” Harry threw back.
“Would I be friends with Peter? Fuck no,” Sirius said. “Remus? Probably not. Your dad? Of course. Your dad was a good friend, the greatest friend.”
That bothered Harry probably more than it should.
“Ron Weasley though?” Sirius scoffed, unaware that he wasn’t helping matters any. “He’s a right berk, Harry. I swear, I’d rather be trapped in a house with Snivellus for a summer than ever be trapped with Ron and his mother again.”
“Mrs Weasley is nice,” Harry said, defending her automatically. “She used to send me food, you know, when- er… during the summers.”
Sirius understood what Harry wasn’t saying, but Harry had forgotten about some of the things that Mrs Weasley said to Sirius. Harry had only witnessed one disagreement, he didn’t think of the many that might have happened before he ever arrived at Grimmauld Place.
“You won’t need food parcels this summer,” Sirius swore. “And Molly can kiss my arse. That woman has a stick so far up her arse that I’m surprised Arthur ever dislodged it long enough to have as many kids as they do.”
Harry, against his will, snorted at the crude and crass description.
“She used to order me around like it wasn’t my house she was in,” Sirius said, settling in his rant. He began pacing the owlery, kicking up dirt and droppings while his hands fluttered in pitch with his voice.
“‘We need to clean, Sirius’,” Sirius said in a high-pitched imitation. “‘Harry needs to be left in the dark, Sirius’. ‘Dumbledore knows best, Sirius’. You’ve got no idea how glad I was when I got the message about the fight breaking out, Harry. I swear to you I was less than a week away from joining Voldemort out of pure spite.”
That wasn’t funny and Harry rightfully didn’t laugh. It did make him curious though, about the message he got.
“Who told you there was a fight happening?” Harry asked him, still sitting on the floor with Hedwig on his lap. Hedwig had nestled in Harry’s chest and seemed to be lazily napping, as if the poor girl ever had anything to do really.
“What?” Sirius paused to scratch his head, knocking a stray feather loose. “In May? It was Dumbledore, he said you went to the Ministry and he needed all Order members to go help you.”
“Dumbledore?” Harry felt a chill begin in his stomach and it slowly seeped outward, freezing the blood in his veins as he tried to make that make sense.
“I went to the Ministry because Voldemort sent me a vision of you being tortured,” Harry told Sirius slowly, ensuring that they both had all the facts. “I told Snape that, I said that ‘he has Padfoot in the place where it’s hidden’. Snape said he didn’t have any idea of what I was talking about.”
“You - you went there to try and rescue me?” Sirius said, missing entirely the point of what Harry was saying. They both stared at each other, both blinking rather quickly, and Harry broke the spell by nodding sharply.
“Yeah, and if Snape told Dumbledore that, then why would Dumbledore tell you to go to the Ministry?” Harry said. “Sirius, why would he send you there?!”
If Dumbledore knew it was a trap… if Dumbledore knew that Harry would have gone to help Sirius… if Dumbledore knew that Sirius was the key to luring Harry away from Hogwarts and right to a circle of death eaters… why the hell would he send Sirius there?!
Sirius didn’t have an answer. Harry didn’t have an answer.
They both made theories… and, for once, their theories were perfectly lined up.