It was Quirrel.
"You!" gasped Harry.
Quirrel smiles. His face wasn't twitching at all.
"I knew Snape wasn't behind it!" I said.
"I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potters."
"But I thought-Snape-"
"Severus?" Quirrel 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 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 tonight. You and your sister."
Quirrel snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry and me.
"You two are 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?"
"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, Potters. I need to examine this interesting mirror."
I struggled in the ropes for a minute.
"This mirror is the key to finding the stone," Quirrel 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..."
"It all makes sense," I blurted out. "I knew there was something off about you. I never trusted you for a second."
"I saw you and Snape in the forest-" Harry said.
"Yes," said Quirrel 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..."
Quirrel 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?"
The ropes binding me didn't give.
"But Snape always seemed to hate me so much."
"Oh, he does," said Quirrel casually, "heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn't you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead. But Annabelle, on the other hand. You're his favorite. You look just like your mother, and he's trying to make up for his mistakes."
YOU ARE READING
Sun and Stars *Improved*
Fanfiction"I just feel so lonely, all the time. And I want it to end." Annabelle Potter had lived a normal life for eleven years. Well, as normal as you can when you're a werewolf. But everything she's ever known gets turned upside down when she gets her let...
