Adventures of Harriet Potter

The Man With Two Faces

It was Quirrell. "You!" gasped Harriet in mock shock, having suspected it might be Quirrell. Quirrell smiled. His face wasn't twitching at all. "Me," he said calmly. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potter." Harriet noted how his eyes lingered on her chest and shivered. "But I thought — Snape —" she pretended, allowing him to think she hadn't figured it out until that moment. "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?"

Harriet pretended she couldn't take it in. Acting like this couldn't be true, like it absolutely couldn't. "But Snape tried to kill me!" she said. "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." Quirrell said, confirming Harriet's suspicions about that match.

"Snape was trying to save me?" said Harriet, not quite fathoming why since he normally acted like he hated her very existence. "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 tonight." Harriet was awed momentarily by the clarity about why Snape wanted to referee the match after that, then felt fear she channeled into a creative outlet upon hearing that Quirrell intended to kill her.

Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harriet. "You're too nosy to live, Potter. 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." Harriet blinked, she hadn't seen Quirrell at all that night after he collapsed in the Great Hall. Then realization struck her. "You let the troll in?" she accused, having suspected as much when stepping over the one in the room before Snape's puzzle. "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 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 Harriet realized what was standing behind Quirrell. It was the Mirror of Erised. "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. . . ." All Harriet could think of doing was to keep Quirrell talking and stop him from concentrating on the mirror. She was bound and couldn't reach her wand after all. "I saw you and Snape in the forest —" she blurted out. "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?" Harriet struggled against the ropes binding her, but they didn't give. She had to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the mirror. "But Snape always seemed to hate me so much." she said, noting her observations. "Oh, he does," said Quirrell casually, "heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn't you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead." This information surprised Harriet, she hadn't known her potions professor had went to school with her parents. "But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing — I thought Snape was threatening you. . . ." Harriet said, trying a different approach. For the first time, a spasm of fear flitted across Quirrell's face.