Forbidden Love: (a Harry Potter love story.)

Chapter 18) The man with two faces.

It was Quirrell. "You!" Harry asked as I gasped in shock. Quirrell smiled, but it wasn't warm and comforting, it was cold and evil. His face wasn't twitching at all like it usually was. "Me." He said calmly, eyes lingering on me for a second and his smirk seemed to increase. "I wondered if I'd be meeting you here, Black."

"But we thought - Snape -" I started, but was cut off when Quirrell laughed. It wasn't his usual tremble, either. It was cold and sharp. "Severus? Yes, he 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?"

I couldn't take it all in, and by the look on Harry's face neither could he. "But Snape tried to kill me!" Harry said, but it sounded more like a question. "No, no, no. I tired to kill you! Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at the Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I'd have got you off that broom and moved onto Black. I'd have managed to get rid of you both if Snape wasn't muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you."

"Snape was trying to save me?" Harry asked, and my eyebrows rose in confusion. "Of course. 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, Potter, I'm going to kill you tonight." Quirrell hissed.

I jumped in front of Harry protectively, him putting a hand on my waist ready to pull me back if Quirrell tried anything. The devil snapped his fingers, and ropes shot out of thin air and wrapped themselves around us, seemingly tightening the more we struggled.

"Your too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school at Halloween like that. For all I knew you'd seen me coming to look at what was guarding the stone." Quirrell said, returning his attention back to Harry, who now beside me again, still tied up.

"You let that troll in?" Harry asked, making Quirell smirk and nod his head. "Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls, surely you must have seen what I did to the one in chamber bank there? Unfortunately, whilst 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 stupid three-headed dog didn't even manage to bite Snape's leg off properly."

I felt like I was going to sick. "Now, wait quietly, Potter, Black. I need to examine this interesting mirror."'

Was the mirror of erised always behind him? Yes? Oh. Well then I really need to start paying attention to things. "This mirror is the key to finding the stone. 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 I could think of was trying to keep Quirrell talking and to stop him focussing on the mirror, it's the only thing I could think of. "We saw you and Snape in the forest." I blurted out without thinking. Harry looked at me with a worried expression, shaking his head madly.

"Yes, He was on to me by then. Trying to figure out how far I'd gotten. He suspected me all along, tried to frighten me - as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side..." Quirrell said idly, walking behind the mirror and then back to the front.

"I see the Stone. I'm presenting it to my master. But where is it?!" Quirrell hissed as Harry started struggling against his ropes. "But Snape always seemed to hate us so much."

"Oh, he does. Heavens yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father and your uncle, didn't you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead." Quirrell waved us off as if he thought we weren't worth his time.