Harry Styles and the Sorcerer's Stone

Chapter 17: The Man with Two Faces

It was Wesley.

"You!" gasped Harry.

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

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

"But I thought – Sprouse–"

"Cole?" Wesley laughed, and it wasn't his usual quivering treble, either, but cold and sharp. "Yes, Cole 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 Professor Wesley?"

Harry couldn't take it in. This couldn't be true, it couldn't.

"But Sprouse tried to kill me!"

"No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Mitchell accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Sprouse 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."

"Sprouse was trying to save me?"

"Of course," said Wesley 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 Apa watching. All the other teachers thought Sprouse 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 tonight."

Wesley snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry.

"You're too noisy to live, Styles. 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?"

"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 everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight up 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, Styles. I need to examine this interesting mirror."

It was only then that Harry realized what was standing behind Wesley. It was the Mirror of Erised.

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

All Harry could think of doing was to keep Wesley talking and stop him from concentrating on the mirror.

"I saw you and Sprouse in the forest –" he blurted out.

"Yes," said Wesley 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 Salvatore on my side...."

Wesley 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 struggled against the ropes binding him, but they didn't give. He had to keep Wesley from giving his whole attention to the mirror.

"But Sprouse always seemed to hate me so much."

"Oh, he does," said Wesley casually, "heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn't you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead."