Jenna Lily Potter: Sorcerer's Stone

Chapter 19: The Man With Two Merlin Damn Faces

Jenna's POV

It was Quirrell.

"You!" Harry gasped.

Quirrell smiled. His face wasn't twitching at all.

"Me," he said calmly. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potters."

"But I thought -- Snape --"

"Severus?" Quirrell laughed, and it wasn't his usual quivering treble, either, but cold and sharp. "Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn't he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who would suspect p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell?"

Yikes, I thought, me eyes going from Harry and back at Quirrel.

"But Snape tried to kill me!"

"No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I'd have got you off that broom. I'd have managed it before then if Snape

hadn't been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you."

"Snape was trying to save me?"

"Of course," said Quirrell coolly. "Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn't do it again. Funny, really... he needn't have bothered. I couldn't do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning, he did make himself unpopular... and what a waste of time, when after all that, I'm going to kill you two tonight."

"Oh yeah? Try us." I challenged. Harry gave me a look of what in the name of Merlin do you think you are doing?!

Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry and I. Welp first time dying kinda nervous. ✌️

"You're too nosy to live, Potters. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew you'd seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone."

"You let the troll in?" Harry inquired, venom in his words.

"Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls -- you must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there? Unfortunately, while Alohomora everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off -- and not

only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn't even manage to bite Snape's leg off properly."

"Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror. It was only then that I realized what was standing behind Quirrell. It was the Mirror of Erised. She had seen it in Harry's mind when he had told her about it. He didn't notice of course with the small brain of his.

"This mirror is the key to finding the Stone," Quirrell murmured, tapping his way around the frame. "Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this... but he's in London... I'll be far away by the time he gets back...."

"I saw you and Snape in the forest --" Harry blurted out beside me.

"Yes," said Quirrell idly, walking around the mirror to look at the back. "He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I'd got. He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me - as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side...."

Quirrell came back out from behind the mirror and stared hungrily into it.

"I see the Stone... I'm presenting it to my master... but where is it?" Harry and I struggled against the ropes binding us, but we didn't give. We had to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the mirror.