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Chapter Text

Based on a sample size of one, Holly Potter quite liked wizards. Hagrid, who saved her from that awful island shack that her uncle forced them all into and who gave her the very first birthday cake she’d ever received, was brilliant. On the other hand, the crowd of magicals in the Leaky Cauldron who’d pushed and tugged to get her to shake their hands had been rather less brilliant, although Professor Quirrell had been… interesting at least. And then Griphook had been gruff but helpful, and Madam Malkin kind and fluttery, and then she met the blond-haired boy. Rude, but the kind of rude Aunt Petunia would like, the kind that’s pleasant to adults and terrible to everyone else.

That boy was still talking. And he still hadn’t asked for her name. “And the Malfoys, of course, descend from the first son’s line…”

Well, Holly also hadn’t asked for his pedigree (as though he were one of Aunt Marge’s prized pit bulls) but he’d decided to enlighten her with it anyway.

Maybe this was what wizards did. Maybe it was a kind of normal-for-wizards small talk. Holly considered memorizing the names of her relatives for a couple centuries back but it sounded so boring. She’d rather hear stories about these people rather than be able to recite their full names and blood status, but she doubted she’d be able to find what she wanted to know about them in books. Everyone seemed to know her parents, but even Hagrid, who’d actually known them, hadn’t known them well enough to tell her about more than her parents’ looks and which subjects they’d done well in. That and that they’d been Head Boy and Girl, whatever that meant. It sounded more like a Smeltings concept than a Stonewall one.

“… I can’t believe you had to ask who Abraxas Malfoy was…”

Holly glanced hopefully over at Madam Malkin, who smiled at her and offered, “Sweetheart, wouldn’t you like to look at our dress and casual girl’s robes?”

“Yes,” Holly said, jumping right off her footstool.

“Girls,” the boy muttered.

Holly rather thought that if the boy were a better conversationalist, girls wouldn’t have to avoid him by being girly. Still, she didn’t argue with him. Half because that sounded like even more of a pain than listening, half because good girls don’t ever argue ran through her head in Aunt Petunia’s voice.

She went to the back of the shop and poked about in the fabrics, which was more fun than she would’ve thought. Some were so bright and shiny, sparkling under her hands, but others were a distinguished darker color. Even the gray fabrics looked nice, woven so finely with a faint shine. Much better than her almost future uniform for Stonewall. And everything was new, unlike all her clothes, which Aunt Petunia picked up from yard sales and threw into her cupboard occasionally. Holly was given the old sewing machine when Aunt Petunia upgraded hers (although the only person who ever used it was Holly, to fix Uncle Vernon and Dudley’s clothes, which often ripped under the strain of their fat).

The bell over the door jingled a couple times until finally—

“Draco, dear, are you ready?”

“Yes, mum. I’ve been ready for ages. Are we going to get my wand now?”

“Let’s find your father first. I think he’ll want to be here. Getting your first wand is one of the most important moments in life—”

Holly strained to hear more, but the two were gone quickly.

It figured that someone as irritating as Draco would have a mum who loved him as much as Aunt Petunia loved Dudley, but it still hurt.

Now that they were gone, Holly could stand closer to the front of the shop, ignoring the other students and parents who come in and out. Any second Hagrid was going to arrive and help her with her shopping. Any second…

But the seconds went by, building up into an hourglass of sand that weighed down on her chest. She could leave, but Hagrid had asked her to wait, and she liked the thought of doing her shopping with someone who knew their way around Diagon Alley. She felt naked around here, trapped with all these people who would crowd her as soon as they realized who she was.

“Would you like to order some more robes, sweetheart?” Madam Malkin eventually asked, and Holly sighed with relief. She had money and apparently she had the time.

“Yes, please,” she said, and what felt like all the cloth in the shop came alive for her.

By the end of things, Holly had two more sets of school robes, some underrrobes (dresses, really, but in such strange fashion), as well as some real clothes under different names (breeches and underunderrobes and loose shirts). Hagrid still wasn’t there when she finished. She stood outside the shop with all her bags, debating where to go since she’d have to go shopping on her own now. It wasn’t bad, and Holly was used to doing things on her own, it was just that… It was silly. She was being so silly, wishing for a sign of the man she’d only met the night before.

“M-miss Potter?”

Holly looked up, wanting nothing less than to shake hands with someone who would fawn over her, but it was only that professor from earlier. “Professor Quirrell?”

“Wh-where is your g-guide?”

Holly glanced downward. “I think Hagrid must’ve had some important business to do.” A pint wasn’t exactly important business, but she didn’t want to get Hagrid in trouble. He’d been so nice earlier, with the cake and yelling at the Dursleys. When she looked back up, Quirrell was looking at her with a pensive expression. “I have my money, I can just—”

“Your letter, Miss Potter.”

She handed it to him.

He glanced over it, huffing lightly at a part of the list. “H-how much of-f th-this have y-ou bought?”

“Just my robes.”

Quirrell glanced over at her four large bags.

“And some extra clothes. But I can do this myself, really, if you just give me back my letter—”

“We’ll b-buy a tr-trunk first,” Quirrell told her. He spun on his heel and looked back at her. “C-come on, girl.”

“Thanks, professor,” Holly told him as she walked fast to match his strides. “I really appreciate it.”

“It is-s m-my own c-colleague who left you here,” Quirrell replied. “And y-you must be p-properly p-prepared for my own c-class.”

“Defense, right?” Holly asked. “I can’t wait. To start real classes, to go to Hogwarts… I never imaged any of this, even in my wildest dreams.”

“Y-your relatives n-never told y-you ab-about Hogwarts?”

“They never really told me about anything,” Holly said, shrugging awkwardly. “I think that boy at Madam Malkin’s told me more than my relatives ever did, and he was all haughty and terrible.”

“Unprepared, unarmed…” Quirrell said, quietly.

“I am! I’m going to be the worst student at Hogwarts.”

“…but so was she as a child…” he continued muttering under his breath.

Holly wondered if maybe, Quirrell hadn’t come back from the vampires all that well in the head. “Are you talking about the whole Voldemort thing?”

“You dare to say his name?”

Holly glanced down at the cobblestone path. The stones were smooth and gray, with no dirt despite all the shoes that must walk up and down them every day. Aunt Petunia would’ve loved it, even if it was magic. “I remember him killing my mum. Him ordering her to stand aside, the flash of green light, his laughter… him trying to kill me.” She looked up and saw that Quirrell had a strange expression on his face. “I think people won’t say his name because they’re scared, like Hagrid was, but if I’m going to be scared, I think I’ll be scared of the real thing rather than the names people make up for him.”

“And you believe there’s still reason to be scared,” Quirrell prompted.

“Hagrid said that some people think there’s a chance that he’s not really dead, just waiting to gather enough power to return properly.”

“What do you think, child?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t know any magic now, and I definitely didn’t know any as a baby, so how could I really have killed him? And besides… I don’t like the thought of having killed a person.”

“Even one such as he? Had he killed you properly, Lord Voldemort would not have had a single regret for the action.”

Holly shrugged. No one was completely remorseless, even when they were awful people. Sometimes Aunt Petunia would touch her hair and say it was better than her awful sister’s before attacking it with her scissors. Sometimes Uncle Vernon would gruffly tell her she did well in the garden, even though the next day he’d always find fault in it again. Sometimes Dudley would let her sit with him and watch a little TV before remembering he hated her and that he was thus obligated to pull on her hair anytime he felt like it and call her names.

“Everyone feels regret,” she said instead. “I don’t think you can avoid it, no matter how bad you are. Maybe he wouldn’t have cared about me or my parents, but there’s got to be a part of him that didn’t laugh.”

“Perhaps even several parts,” Quirrell replied, a small smirk on his lips, but he didn’t share the joke. “How much gold did you remove from your vault, Miss Potter? I’ll need to know what our limitations are.”

Holly slipped her handbag from her shoulder. It was a ratty, jean, over the shoulder thing, but Aunt Petunia had said that every girl needed a bag. Even freakish ones. The zipper jammed halfway through, causing the task to take much longer than it should.

“Reparo,” Quirrell eventually said, and her handbag twitched in her hands with a sort of shudder, and then Holly was zipping it open perfectly. When she looked at the bindings, she realized that even the small tears had fixed themselves.

“Thank you!” She held her bag forward for him to appraise.

Quirrell looked down and tapped one of the galleons inside with his wand. “Fifty-four galleons? Were you planning to buy everything plated in gold? That’s far more than you’d ever need.”

Holly flushed, snatching the bag back and zipping it up again. “I didn’t know! Hagrid just said to grab some of the gold ones and I didn’t know how much I’d need. I don’t know how much things cost.”

Quirrell did not look like the thought her answer was sufficient, because he was apparently a mean person. “Hagrid is not an example you should follow.”

Very mean, actually. “Hagrid was really nice to me!”

“Niceness does not prepare you for Hogwarts.”

“Meanness doesn’t either,” Holly told him as sharply as she was able. But with Quirrell’s look, she deflated a little. Quirrell was going to be her professor, after all, and if he was anything like the Dursleys, she really shouldn’t antagonize him. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from adding, “I know he maybe wasn’t the best person, considering he left me, but I like him. He bought me my first birthday cake! It had green frosting and was a little squished but it tasted really good.”

“Children,” Quirrell sighed. “How much g-gold did you have in your vault?”

“Lots,” Holly replied, knowing that was not the answer he wanted, but it was the only answer she had. “Lots of big piles of gold ones. Thousands, I think.”

Quirrell looked like he wanted to sigh again. “The most expensive thing on your supply list will be your wand. The rest of your supplies will amount to approximately ten galleons if I’m correct. You’ll buy a higher end children’s trunk for around fifteen galleons.”

“I don’t need a children’s trunk!”

“You don’t need a trunk with a maze of rooms inside or the ability to hold living things or room for thousands upon thousands of objects that you will throw in and immediately forget about. A children’s trunk is perfectly suited for your age.” And with that, he opened the door to Tulip’s Trunks & Tambourines and motioned her through.

Despite her initial annoyance, Holly was ashamed to say that she really liked her new trunk. The outside was a dark cherry wood with her initials down the side and when you opened it, you saw three compartments lined in a soft purple fabric. Though empty now, the compartments would begin to leave at the top the things she reached for most. When she held her hand over a specific compartment, silvery cursive writing would appear on the lid of the trunk to remind her of what she’d placed in the compartment.  She dumped everything she’d bought from Madam Malkin into the first compartment and delegated the second one to school-related things, while the third could just be for anything else. Holly didn’t have much in the way of stuff, but she liked the thought of acquiring cool new things. And the best part about the trunk was that when she said, “Come!” it would follow her on for dog-like wooden legs. A proper adult trunk wouldn’t do that, so Holly decided it was all very okay.

She threw her various purchases into the trunk as they walked along Diagon Alley. Dragonhide gloves that Quirrell confirmed came from a real dragon unless the store had fallen on hard times and decided to turn to inferior counterfeit materials, textbooks that Quirrell called wastes of words but placed on the counter anyway, a cauldron and other potions materials, a telescope that Holly instantly looked through only to see the sun more clearly than she’d needed to, and more.

“It says I can get a pet,” she said as they passed by a shop whose chirping, hissing, and squeaking sounds could be heard from outside. “A cat, an owl, or a toad. Do people really pay for toads?”

“Some,” Quirrell said derisively. “Be quick.”

Holly tried to be quick, but she ended up walking all the rows of the pet shop, her faithful trunk walking behind her. She wanted this one and that one and all of them maybe, but wondered if her aunt and uncle would even allow her to have one. Holly could easily hide a toad from them, but she just didn’t want a toad. She wasn’t squeamish—Dudley had dropped toads on her loads of times, and by this point she didn’t mind them—but they sounded boring. A cat would be great, but despite all of Dudley’s pleading, her aunt and uncle had always been firm about not wanting a cat or dog ruining all their furniture. And a cat wouldn’t be happy staying just in her room. But if she got an owl, it could fly around outside when it wanted to and not bother the Dursleys at all…

“Would you be okay with coming with me even if I don’t have anyone to send letters to?” she asked the owls in the owl section. They were behind a sort of bubble thing, but otherwise roamed free in the enclosure. A couple hooted at her. “I could send letters to Professor Quirrell if you’d like to stretch. And Hagrid, maybe!”

She stepped inside the bubble, glancing between all of them. They were all different and beautiful, but a snowy white owl caught her eye.

“Hi,” Holly said.

The owl hooted at her and took off. For a second, Holly thought she’d just fly away, but the owl settled on top of Holly’s trunk with a small hoot. Holly couldn’t restrain her smile. It didn’t fade even as Quirrell told her she’d taken too long, because all she had to do was look at her beautiful owl and feel content.

To get him onto another topic, she asked, “Professor, the boy at the robes shop said something about sorting and Slytherins? What are those?”

“You’ll be sorted into a house upon your arrival. Gryffindor for the foolhardy, Hufflepuff for the fools, Ravenclaw for those who never look past their books, and Slytherin for the power-hungry.”

Holly had a feeling that those weren’t the official qualities of each house. “I don’t think any of those sound like me.”

“The qualities on the other side of the galleon are bravery, loyalty, intelligence, and ambition,” Quirrell said like it pained him. “But a wizard’s good qualities are often outweighed by the bad. Slytherin is the best option of them all, but even fools can be ambitious.”

“What house were you in, sir?”

Quirrell paused for a long moment. And then with a sigh, he said, “Hufflepuff.”

“That makes sense. You’re so nice to help me. That’s very Hufflepuffish, isn’t it?”

“Incredibly. There’s Ollivander’s. In you go.”

“You won’t come in with me?”

“Wands remind me too thoroughly of the stakes I tried to use to stave off my vampire attackers,” Quirrell said dryly and pushed her in.

“You must’ve needed a Gryffindor there to help you!” Holly called before the door closed.

Ollivander turned out to be an old man with a voice much softer than his height would’ve suggested. Holly liked him instantly for telling her more about her parents and for the fact that his shop was a chaotic yet subtly organized jumble of wands. Wands in cases, wands lying on top of cases, wands upon every surface, wands levitating near the window… It was brilliant. Less brilliant was that none of these wands seemed to work for her. Holly tried, mentally pushing something that she was pretty sure was her imagination instead of magic at each wand, but none of them seemed to fit. One wand even sent a shelf of wands falling down!

“Not yew!” Ollivander exclaimed, tugging that wand right out of her hand. “Definitely not yew. But perhaps…”

By the time Holly left the wand shop, her hair was singed on the right side, her glasses were cloudy with some kind of ash, and her hand was wrapped tightly around her very own wand.

“I’m a proper witch now!” she told Quirrell, who seemed to be in the middle of writing something on a long sheet of parchment.

“Mm.” The parchment vanished inside Quirrell’s robes before she could finish walking up to him.

“The wood matches my name—holly. It has a phoenix feather inside. I asked and Mr. Ollivander said I might see the phoenix at Hogwarts, and if I do, I’ll definitely thank him. Or her. He also said that my wand has a brother wand…”

“Explain.”

“It was very spooky. He told me that my wand’s brother was the one to give me my scar. Do you think that means that Voldemort and I are related?”

“That would be very unlikely.”

Peering down at her, Quirrell reached out as if to touch her scar, but his hand stopped before it reached her skin.

“I think it would be best to get going,” he said, his voice odd.

“I know we’ve finished my shopping and you’re a busy man, professor, but could we… Could we maybe get some ice cream?”

“If you do so very quickly. And tell me word for word what Ollivander said to you.”

After half-running to the ice cream shop they’d passed by earlier, Holly ordered a goblin green cone—not made from actual goblins, she was told by the cheerful owner—while Quirrell refrained from ordering anything. He seemed to prefer sitting down across from her and waiting her out. True to her word, Holly told him everything that had happened. Quirrell seemed very interested, much more than Holly was, really.

When he asked why, she said, “It’s still my wand, even if it has a brother. I can feel the way it’s mine and no one else’s. I don’t think it’ll leave me for Voldemort. But… professor, why do you think it’s him specifically?”

“Because the fates have it out for him. Did he tell you anything else?”

“No, but he told me about my parents’ wands. My dad had a mahogany wand, eleven inches…”

Holly continued talking since Quirrell seemed like a quiet sort of man. He asked questions occasionally, but mostly he seemed content to let her talk. Holly thought it might be because of his stutter; even though it had stopped for now, it might come back. She’d hate it if she were him, too. Dudley would’ve teased her so horribly if she’d had one.

Too soon, Holly’s delicious ice cream cone was gone. Instead of directing them toward the Leaky Cauldron, Quirrell led her toward a different pub, one closer to a street called Knockturn Alley, though not quite inside the alley. He motioned her through and with a bit of suspicion Holly entered. The reason they were there became obvious quickly. Hagrid, her first guide to the wizarding world, was passed out in one of the corner tables.

“Oh, Hagrid,” Holly murmured.

Quirrell tapped his wand against Hagrid’s shoulder and said a word she didn’t catch. Instantly, Hagrid jumped up with wild eyes.

“Wha— ‘olly! What ‘appened?” He looked around and Holly saw recognition dawn in his eyes. “I only meant ta ‘ave a pint…” Hagrid sounded horrified. He smelled terrible, sounded worse, his words stumbling together as he apologized to her.

“It’s okay, Hagrid,” Holly said before he could berate himself more.

“Really?”

“I promise,” Holly said, even though she really didn’t quite mean her words. But it wasn’t like she was angry.

Professor Quirrell raised an eyebrow at her, the brow almost becoming hidden by his large turban.

Holly shrugged at him. There was no point in being mad at people who hurt you. She’d been mad at the Dursleys loads of times and it hadn’t helped at all. And Hagrid was loads better than the Dursleys, so she couldn’t be mad at him. It hurt, but a lot of things hurt. That was life. She’d had to help Uncle Vernon loads of times when he was drunk and angry. Hagrid wasn’t angry at least, just sorry.

At first, she’d thought Hagrid’s size was absolutely wicked, because he was so much bigger than her uncle. But now, she couldn’t get it out of her head that he was even bigger and could crush her like a twig if he were the kind of person to get angry when he was drunk.

Stop being a scaredy-cat, Holly told herself. Hagrid was nice even now, and he’d been gentle with her when he took her hand to make sure he didn’t get lost on the subway. He was nothing like Uncle Vernon, who was mean all the time and just meaner when he was drunk.

She wasn’t mad, just sad, but Hagrid looked even sadder, so carefully Holly stepped closer to him and put her arms around his big waist. She couldn’t even reach halfway across, but it still counted as a hug. Hagrid sniffled and did the same, enveloping in his arms. It was warm and nice and he was the gentlest giant in the world, even if he cared more about drinking than showing her around Diagon Alley.

“Ah, ‘olly, yeh deserve better.”

Holly burrowed closer for one more second, then let him go. “I’ll see you at Hogwarts?”

“I’ll be ‘ere when yeh get off the train.”

“Th-the b-bartender can g-give you a ssober up ch-charm,” Quirrell told him.

“And… Dumbledore, he, ah, doesn’t ‘ave ta know?”

“N-no,” Quirrell agreed.

Holly nodded her head. “I won’t tell. It’s okay, Hagrid.”

After saying their goodbyes, which Hagrid sniffled and blew his nose through, Holly left the building with her trunk scampering at her heels and Quirrell leading the way. She was quieter as they came to a stop below a sign proclaiming the little area as something called an apparition checkpoint. It seemed so silly to be upset, but Hagrid had seemed to like her, and he’d given her a cake, but then he decided to ditch her, but he also felt bad about it afterwards… Holly’s thoughts kept looping around her head.

“We’ll apparate from here straight to your home,” Quirrell said, interrupting her thoughts.

Holly looked up at him with surprise. “Apparate—is that like teleport?”

“It’s the proper wizarding term that shares some similarities with the muggle concept,” Quirrell replied. “Now, where do you live?”

“Number four, Privet Drive. It’s in Surrey.”

Quirrell nodded, his dark eyes intensely focused on her. “I won’t be able to apparate you as I’ve never been to this Surrey myself. Will you allow me to read your mind to get a clear picture of the location?”

Holly bit her lip. “You’ll look only to see where it is?”

“Yes. You’ll concentrate on how your street looks and I’ll apparate us based on your memories.”

“…okay,” Holly finally said. She wanted to ask him why they couldn’t just use the tube like Hagrid did, but Quirrell didn’t come off as the type to have ever used the tube before. He probably thought it wasn’t a wizard-y thing to do. “I’m concentrating.”

Quirrell stared into her mind for quite a while, but Holly didn’t feel a thing. She felt as though she should feel something—he was in her very mind!—but there wasn’t even a tickle. Finally, after a long moment, Quirrell said, “Interesting,” and straightened his back from the lean he’d taken to make himself closer to her height.

Maybe Quirrell was a really bad mind reader, Holly privately thought, and that was why it had taken so long. “What’s interesting?”

“Your home,” Quirrell told her.

Holly made a face. “It’s not that interesting. Or even unique. Every house on our street looks like ours, down to the floor plan and flowers in front of the house.”

Quirrell hummed in agreement. “Grasp your trunk by its handle.”

Holly did so, and when she saw Quirrell’s hand reach for hers, she took it willingly. There was a crack and everything felt all wrong, squished and harsh and it kept hurting and hurting and—

Holly opened her eyes to the bright sunlight that illuminated Privet Drive. They were in the middle of the Dursleys’ backyard, hidden from view of the surrounding houses by the tall fence around the yard. Peering inside, Holly could just barely make out movement in the kitchen.

“That really hurt,” she said, shuddering at the fading pain. “Does it always hurt so much?”

When she met Quirrell’s eyes again, he was looking down at his hand with a curious expression, but he slipped his robe down his hand before Holly could see much more than a red tinge to his skin. Holly couldn’t remember letting go of him; she’d been in too much pain to even concentrate.

“It shouldn’t. I believe our magics are… very incompatible.” He looked around, taking in their surroundings. “This is where Dumbledore placed you?”

“Dumbledore? The headmaster?”

“After your… extremely unexpected survival, the headmaster announced to the wizarding world that you had been placed in a safe location and were well-protected from any remaining Death Eaters who might want to harm you,” Quirrell said, his lips curling up in something that definitely wasn’t a smile. “All this time, this is where you were.”

Holly nodded, unsure of what to say. “I was with my Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. And Dudley, my cousin. I’ve never seen a Death Eater before, whatever that is, so I guess it worked? I’d invite you in to meet them, but they really don’t like magic, and they hated Hagrid. Uncle Vernon tried to shoot him even! Hagrid bent the gun like a pretzel, but you still shouldn’t meet them. They’ll yell at you. You don’t need… You’re—you’ve been very nice.”

“And these relatives of yours, they’re not very nice?”

“They are sometimes,” Holly said, feeling as though she had to say something in defense of the Dursleys. “They took me in. And gave me clothes and stuff.”

Quirrell’s eyes looked over her clothes. Holly felt all too aware of the old yard sale clothes that hung off her frame. But he said nothing of what he maybe was thinking, only, “The day a muggle scares me off is the day I should simply give up my magic. But I have little interest in entering your home.” As if to himself, he added, “I’m not sure if it’s even possible. Those wards…”

“Oh,” Holly said. Overall that was good. Professor Quirrell didn’t deserve to be yelled at. His stutter would probably come back and Holly would feel really bad about the whole thing. “I suppose this is goodbye then, professor. Thank you for everything.”

“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” Quirrell replied with a short huff of his breath. “Return to your family. I expect to see you in September.”

Holly grinned at him. “I’ll read up on your class, I promise!”

And with a wave, she called her trunk with her and went toward the back door. When she looked back, Quirrell was gone. It seemed her family had gotten back from the shack in the middle of the lake in the time she’d been in Diagon Alley, because when Holly knocked on the door, Aunt Petunia pulled her in and screamed at the sight of Holly’s trunk and owl. Her arm was hard and bony around Holly’s shoulder and Holly realized she much preferred Quirrell’s hand, as much as it had hurt to touch it. It was always worse when it hurt on the inside rather than on the outside.

Holly was quickly sent to her room—she was allowed to keep it!—and once there, she opened her owl’s cage and her bedroom window to let her owl stretch its wings. 

“We live at number four, Privet Drive,” she told her owl, just in case it got lost. She wasn’t sure if the owl could understand her, but she decided to take her hoot as a yes.

As the days passed, Holly made use of her owl only once.

Dear Professor Quirrell, Holly wrote, chewing on the tip of her quill as she thought of what exactly to write. Hedwig was sorely in need of entertainment, so she decided to write to the only person she really could. I wanted to thank you for your help the other day…

The letter ended up being rather long and rambling. It began with a thank you and in the middle she talked about how Hedwig (named for a goblin queen!) kept bringing back mice and placing them on Holly’s pillow and ended with her wondering what Hogwarts would be like. Quirrell didn’t write back. Holly was a bit sad, but she knew he was a professor at Hogwarts and a busy man. And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t see him again in September.

Chapter Text

The days between her birthday and September 1st passed more quickly than Holly could’ve imagined. The Dursleys were still angry about everything that had happened, but they also seemed to be worried about her newfound knowledge of the magical world, so they simply ignored her the entire month. Holly still had to make breakfast and do chores, but otherwise, they barely said a word to her. It was magical. Uncle Vernon even agreed to drop her off at King’s Cross Station, though he almost made her late out of spite. Holly ran for the train, trunk in one hand and owl cage in the other, sliding through the brick wall that Quirrell had told her about. Even though it looked so solid, she didn’t bother hesitating outside it. Quirrell had been completely clear on how to get onto the train, and he’d been right!

Holly jumped up into the train and caught her breath, looking around. The floors of the train were a dark blue, carpet-like material and the walls wooden rather than steel on the inside. Dozens of doors lined the hallway, each with a little window. Holly glanced through them as she passed, seeing groups of friends chatting and hugging and doing all sorts of magic. Students passed by her as they searched for a free cabin for themselves or looked around for their friends. Up toward the front of the train, the cabins seemed emptier, and just as Holly thought she saw an empty cabin, she heard someone call out.

“Hey, it’s you!”

Holly turned around and— “Oh, it’s you.”

Her voice was not nearly as loud as the boy from Madam Malkin’s, and her tone sounded reluctant even to her own ears. The boy from Madam Malkin’s, of course, did not care about or notice any reluctance.

“Mother said I was rude for never asking for your name despite how long we chatted for,” he told her. His words seemed like a direct quote. “I’m Draco Malfoy.”

He held his hand out and Holly took it, feeling as though it was a much too grown up gesture to do. Uncle Vernon always talked about how a good handshake was absolutely necessary for business, but he’d only taught Dudley what to do. But it seemed as though Draco only needed to hold her hand for this kind of handshake. He squeezed a little and then released.

“I’m Holly Potter,” Holly said, since it looked like she’d be the rude one if she didn’t give her own name.

“Are you really?”

“I’m pretty sure I am. It would be strange if there were two Holly Potters walking around,” Holly said. The sudden curiosity on Draco’s face was mildly threatening. She really, really didn’t want to be questioned on all her ancestors going back for a hundred years. She could name exactly two of them, thank you very much.

“Hm. Well, Holly Potter, you obviously need someone to guide you through the wizarding world and to keep you from interacting with the wrong types of wizards,” Draco told her, managing to sound even more pompous.

“Right,” Holly replied, for lack of anything else to say. What were you supposed to say to something that sounded nice but interested you not one whit? Aunt Petunia would know. Aunt Petunia would rub it in for not knowing, too. “Well, I suppose I’ll—”

“My compartment is over here,” Draco said, opening the door and waiting for her to go through. “There’s only Crabbe and Goyle inside, and they’re… the right types, but just barely the right types.”

And with a huff, Holly let herself be herded inside. Draco was snobby, but at least he was kind of funny, especially when he didn’t mean to be. Also, Holly was pretty sure that if she tried to make a run for it, he would just lecture her. Inside the compartment, two very large, mountainous boys were eating chocolates shaped like frogs that were trying to escape from their large fingers. The two didn’t look related, but they didn’t look unrelated either. It was as though they had spent so much time in each other’s company that they’d started to resemble each other. They reminded her of Dudley, but while Dudley was simply round, they were tall and big.

“That’s Crabbe and Goyle. You two, this is Holly Potter.” Draco didn’t bother specifying which one was Crabbe and which one was Goyle.

“Hi,” Holly said. She hoped she was excused from the handshake thing, since both of the boys’ hands were sticky with chocolate.

“Hello,” said one of them.

The other nodded as if to agree. “Hello. Are you really Holly Potter?”

“I have the scar and all.”

The boy kept looking at her, so she shoved her new bangs aside to prove it. Even Draco glanced at the scar. It was such a small thing, easily covered by her bangs, but it marked her as different from the rest of the world. Too different, Holly thought. It was easier to be normal, to be less freakish. But at least no one here would be coming after her with a frying pan.

“It looks painful,” said the other boy.

Holly nodded. Ever since going to Diagon Alley, her scar seemed more defined, deepening into a darker red than the faded red it used to be. “It doesn’t hurt much anymore.”

“Mine still does. But it’s new. I fell off of one of Draco’s abraxans. Want to see?”

“Sure,” Holly replied. It was much more interesting to see other people’s scars than have people gawking at her own.

The boy grinned and lifted the bottom of his robe, where a long scar ran up one of his calves. It looked years old instead of recent, but the skin around it was redder than the rest. The boy then showed her his other scar, and Holly told him about how she’d fallen off while trying to climb onto a roof and had a now-faded scar on her back, and the other boy chimed in to say he’d done the same thing once. He’d been looking for his escaped kneazle instead of being hounded up there by Dudley, and Holly liked his story better. The conversation finally lulled as the three of them ran out of scars to talk about and Crabbe and Goyle went back to their treats, so Holly turned back to Draco, who was looking at them all as if they were a particularly interesting science experiment.

“Do you have any scars?” Holly asked him.

“Of course not. Malfoys don’t scar.”

“They don’t?”

“Well, we have a top class personal healer that comes to our house if we fall off a new broomstick that Mum banned from the house because she thinks I have the wrong grip. And she fixes the scar almost instantly and gives me a salve to put on it. I suppose I could lend you some. Maybe it’ll make yours look less like it’s about to bleed all over your forehead.”

“Thanks, Draco,” Holly said, deciding that the best strategy for talking to him was to pick and choose what she heard.

She was about to ask what wizards did for things like broken bones when the door to the cabin burst open. Holly, who quite enjoyed being rude when she could get away with it and make her aunt’s life slightly harder, thought that was a bit much.

A girl with brown hair even wilder than Holly’s poked her head inside. “Have you seen a toad by any chance? It answers to Trevor.”

“No,” Holly replied, glancing around as though a toad might suddenly appear. The closest she saw were Crabbe and Goyle’s chocolate frogs, which she’d found out were surprisingly tasty, even though they did try to climb out of her mouth while the chocolate melted. Crabbe and Goyle were definitely onto something with their love of wizarding candy. But she was still worried that Draco was going to pull her into a lineage conversation, so Holly jumped up and said, “I’ll help you look for it!”

“You… really don’t have to,” Hermione said, looking confused. “Please don’t feel like you have to.”

“I want to,” Holly promised. “I’ll see you later, Draco, Crabbe, Goyle!”

“Are you just running off with someone whose name you don’t even know?” Draco asked. “What if she’s a blood traitor? Or worse?”

“I’ll grin and bear it,” Holly said with a grin. She ordered her trunk to come along and slid the door shut behind her. Glancing at the girl, she quickly added, “I don’t mind if you’re a blood traitor. Um. I’m not sure what that is, but Draco is a bit stuffy, you know?”

“I didn’t know until I got on the train,” the girl said, glancing down. “And now, well. Some people care more than they should about the blood inside people instead of what’s inside their heads.”

“Or their hearts,” Holly added, because that was pretty important, too. “I’m Holly Potter.”

“Hermione Granger,” the girl said with a small but brightening smile. “You’re a lot nicer than the books made you sound. Not that they made you sound bad! Just intimidating. I’ve read all about how you defeated a dark lord when you were one, but it almost doesn’t seem real.”

“Tell me about it,” Holly groaned.

Hermione took that as a cue to tell her what exactly every single book she’d read had to say about her. Holly was amused to learn that there were real people with real jobs who got paid real money to write about her. Holly Potter, the bane of the Dursleys’ existence, was famous.

After walking half the train, she and Hermione met up with Neville, who was the owner of the still-lost toad. He hadn’t had any luck either. Holly was sympathetic, really, because maybe the toad was given to Neville by a favorite relative, but she was pretty sure he could find another toad on the Hogwarts grounds. It would even look just like Trevor. Tactfully, Holly said exactly none of that. Instead, she asked if they wanted to sit down for a while instead.

While Hermione and Neville went off to get their belongings, Holly looked around for an empty cabin. The closest she got to empty was a cabin with only one boy inside, a gangly redhead who was munching on a sandwich and looking out the window. Beside him sat a rat.

Holly knocked on the door and opened it upon hearing a, “Yeah?”

“Can my friends and I sit with you? All the other compartments are full and we don’t really have anywhere else to sit.”

The boy shrugged. “Sure. Wait, do you know Fred and George?”

“No?”

He peered at her. “You don’t look like one of their usual pranking trainees.”

“They train people to prank?” Holly sat down across from him.

“It’s a worthwhile hobby that cultivates both your brain and your brawn,” the boy quoted with an air of tired acceptance. “It’s bloody irritating, that’s what it is. At least the trainees or whatever don’t have to live with them.”

“I’m just a first year,” Holly told him. “Never even met them.”

The boy perked up at that. “You’re safe then… for now. I’m a first year too! Ron Weasley.”

“Holly Potter.”

His eyes went straight up to her forehead.

After a dozen cabin checks, Holly knew the routine. She pulled up her bangs and said in a monotone voice, “Yes, I have the scar.”

“Sorry. It’s, you know, I’ve heard so much about you and the scar and everything and I mean.” He stopped. “My mum would say to mind my manners.”

“What would Fred and George say?”

“To convert you to the pranking cause since you’d probably get a lesser punishment because you’re famous.” Upon realizing what he’d said, he added, “I should just stop talking.”

Holly giggled. Ron looked so put out that she almost couldn’t mind. “I can’t imagine having two brothers.”

“Just two? I have five brothers and one sister and they’re all the worst,” Ron said, and went on to explain.

Holly couldn’t relate at all, but she loved Ron’s stories about all his siblings. Bill, the cool one who didn’t have time for Ron now that he was all grown up, but who used to play whack the gnome with him when he was still around the house. Charlie, who lived in Romania now and worked with actual dragons, who was a badass that their parents worried about and Ron did too, since Charlie had gotten badly burnt a month ago and was still healing. Percy, who was a prefect—according to Ron, those were the suckups with a special badge who got to give people detention and take points if they felt like it—and had practiced handwriting with Ron all summer, though he’d mostly despaired over Ron’s attempts. Fred and George were the blights of Hogwarts, but they’d never let anyone bother Ron except them, especially not their horrible neighbors. And little Ginny, who was secretly terrible even though she looked like an angel and would join him in Hogwarts next year. She was looking forward to receiving a toilet seat for Christmas from the twins.

Holly talked a little about Dudley, trying to remember the few times they’d gotten on alright. She’d helped him make cookies in the middle of the night once when he had a craving. When you didn’t mention the fact that he’d pulled her out of her cupboard and made her make them for him and blamed her for everything when the sounds of his television woke Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon up, it was a rather alright story.

“Still don’t like him, though,” Holly finished.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to like family,” Ron said with a wise air.

“I like your family,” Holly had to say, because she did. Maybe they were all secretly like the Dursleys inside, but from the outside, even in Ron’s less than positive stories, they sounded great.

“Thanks, I think,” Ron said, his ears going red.

Hermione and Neville never did come find her, probably still looking for the toad, but Holly didn’t mind. She and Ron talked until the train stopped. Outside, they met up with Hagrid, who was more than happy to see her, and got onto rickety little boats that took them to the other side of the lake. Hogwarts was humongous, each window lit by candles on the inside, the sun setting behind it in beautiful reds and oranges. It was the most beautiful building she’d ever seen. It was also the first castle she’d ever seen, but Holly was pretty sure that no other castle would be able to match it.

Inside, they were gathered in a group by the stern Professor McGonagall, who led them into the Great Hall, an enormous space lit by candles and filled with a great number of people in black robes.

“The ceiling is enchanted to look like the sky,” said a voice next to her.

Holly looked over at her and smiled to see Hermione again. “Did you catch the toad?”

“Only once we got off the train. Even asking a prefect to summon it hadn’t worked!”

“Are you standing with a Weasley?” another familiar voice sneered over the sounds of the other nervously chatting first years.

Holly waved to Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle. “I met more of the right kind! Hermione and Ron are really nice.”

“Nice?” he said, outraged, but he was cut off by McGonagall’s demands for silence.

It was time for the Sorting Hat. It was an old, shabby thing, the kind of hat that Aunt Petunia would’ve picked up with her fingers covered by a tissue in order to throw it in the garbage. But its voice was melodious and deep as it sang its song. When it finished, the ceremony began, with McGonagall calling out names and the first years nervously shuffling towards the hat. Holly, for all that she had heard a lot about all the houses by now, wasn’t too scared. She knew which house she wanted, but if she got stuck in one of the others, it couldn’t be that bad.

Crabbe was the first of her little group to leave them, the hat calling out Slytherin after a long deliberation, and same for Goyle. For Hermione, the hat called out Gryffindor after a long couple of minutes. Neville also got into Gryffindor, his wait less lengthy, and Draco’s was quickest of all. And then it was Holly’s turn.

She ignored the weight of all the eyes on her as she walked quickly toward the hat and shoved it onto her head.

“Hmm,” said a voice inside her head. “A very difficult student you are.”

“I’m sorry,” Holly told the hat. Somehow, even though she’d meant to speak the words out loud, they just came out in her head.

“Any conversation we have should only be heard by the two of us,” the hat said reassuringly. “Now, you’re going to be a talented one, and it’s my duty to place you where you can develop your talents best. You have the right drive for Slytherin, though you haven’t found a reason to be driven yet, have you? Don’t worry, you’ll find that with time. And it takes a healthy heap of bravery to achieve the things in your future.”

“Do you know the future?”

“Unfortunately not, my dear, but I know the minds of generations of wizards. I won’t tell you about their minds, but the picture I receive of the wizarding world might just be clearer than one might you might get from any other means. Now, decisions, decisions…”

“You could put me in Hufflepuff like Professor Quirrell,” Holly said, eagerly.

“Hmm. You are hardworking, but it has all been under the direction of someone else, hasn’t it? You’ve worked hard only to prevent something bad from happening. You’re loyal, but you’ve never had a chance to prove your loyalty. It will have to be Slytherin or Gryffindor, I’m afraid. Your path to greatness is clear in Slytherin, but with Gryffindor, it’s a much more winding path.”

“I don’t mind going to Slytherin,” Holly said, unsure. It worried her, this house with people who cared so much about blood, but Holly had done many things she’d been scared of. She’d cleaned the roof and gutters; she’d washed all of Aunt Marge’s bulldogs and only cried a little when they bit her. “I don’t know if I’ll fit in. And I’m still not sure if Draco wants to be my friend or if he wants to make me be like Crabbe and Goyle. But snakes don’t scare me and I’ll make my way. I can’t do much magic yet but I’ve bitten Dudley before and I’m not bad at it.”

There was an echo of a laugh in her head. “Well then, where can I put you but— GRYFFINDOR!”

Puzzled, Holly gave the hat to McGonagall. Maybe the hat had meant to say Slytherin and gotten confused? It was a very old hat after all.

*

“She looks like her mother, doesn’t she?” Minerva asked, looking over at Severus with an expression that reminded him of nothing as much of that of a cat. There was something she wanted from him, a certain response, and she would get it. “Not much of her father in her.”

“Please refrain from attempting to induce compassion in me. My heart is as dead and blackened as a faulty bezoar, haven’t you heard?”

“That’s a particularly good one. The twins?”

“Etched into my classroom door already. They have detention this entire week with you.”

“If you assigned the detentions—”

“If I spend one more moment in their presence than I already have to, they’ll have my thoughts etched into their foreheads.”

“Charming. I think this might be the least excited you’ve been to start a new school year,” Minerva said, amused with him. “Is it because of a certain new student?”

“It’s because of a certain group of new students. They’re called first years and they will attempt to blow up my classroom every week until I force proper brewing techniques down their little throats.”

And with that, Severus turned to Quirrell and began to pointedly talk with him. He’d rather bear the man’s stuttering and nauseating garlic smell than Minerva’s needling. Oh, she cared about him, that much Severus had been forced to realize over the decade he’d been teaching at Hogwarts, but Minerva’s particular brand of care involved irritating him into growing as a person.

Even with Severus’ lackluster conversational attempts, Quirrell’s stuttering explanation of his first month’s curriculum didn’t hold his interest for very long, though it did cause Minerva’s interest to leave him in favor of talking to Albus. Their conversation, of course, was about the Girl Who Lived. Albus did agree that she looked like her mother, who he remembered sitting at that same table with warmth in his voice.

Severus did too, though he’d been on the other side of the Great Hall, sitting at the Slytherin table and wishing he’d been able to successfully convince the hat to put him in Gryffindor with her. Before, as they waited in line with their hearts in their throats, Severus had hoped that Lily would join him in Slytherin, where he’d been relatively certain he would end up. Lily was brave and loyal and brilliant, but she’d always wanted to prove her sister wrong, and she had a vicious streak that came out in defense of her friends. His hope hadn’t been enough.

This time, he hadn’t had any hope at all, and he hadn’t been mistaken, either. Of course James Potter’s brat would get into Gryffindor. Severus would have been amused to see her in Hufflepuff or Slytherin, just to see if Potter’s body might turn over in his grave, but it hadn’t been much of a hope. She even seemed to have friends already, made on the train just like those blasted marauders. Severus could just see her forming her own little pack of loyal sycophants and bullies.

It was true that she looked like her mother, but even the traits she’d received from Lily had been tainted by her father. Her shoulder-length red hair was darker than Lily’s had ever been as a child, and the composition wild and messy. Her eyes were hidden behind glasses like James’, and while the color was Lily’s, the brat’s green eyes were somehow even more vibrant than hers, the color an eerie green. It was the green of the killing curse, not the green of the forest. The rest of her features were a mix of her parents’, but all Severus could see was the way she held her head like her father did. That Gryffindor arrogance, reborn.

And yet, she looked enough like Lily that he hated the thought of her stepping one foot into his classroom.

He would deal. Always, Severus would deal.

Chapter Text

Ron hadn’t left Holly’s side since the train, following her into Gryffindor soon after Holly’s own sorting, but they were forced to separate as they found themselves inside Gryffindor tower for the first time. He glanced back at her as he walked up the steps to the boys’ side, and Holly shrugged, mouthing I’ll see you tomorrow. She didn’t wish she were a boy, not exactly, but of all the people her age she’d met, she liked Ron the best. Even if he was going to show Dudley-like tendencies tomorrow, today had been nice.

Holly followed the first year girls into the room they’d share for the next year of their lives, looking around curiously. She was a little disappointed that they didn’t get their own rooms since Holly had quite liked having a whole room of her own for the first time that summer. But she’d never shared space with any girls her age, and if the others were anything like Hermione, she didn’t think she’d mind them. She chose the bed on the far end of the room, smiling at Hermione when the girl nervously chose the bed next to hers.

She dreamed in green that night, of a lullaby she never remembered hearing and the comforting buzz of a flying motorcycle. There was no Dudley here to pound on the stairs or Aunt Petunia to force her to cook or Uncle Vernon to yell at her to do the family’s errands. Maybe Hogwarts wasn’t, couldn’t, be her home, but it was magical all the same.

The next day, Holly found that she had been assigned the role of best friend in Hermione’s mind. The girl partnered up with her in Charms and stuck to her side for most of the day, with Holly accepting it awkwardly. She realized why Hermione didn’t want to partner up with Neville, since he seemed constantly overwhelmed by Hermione’s energy, but it wasn’t as though she and Hermione had known each other for that long either.

Holly didn’t mind it, exactly, but she found she didn’t like the thought of someone being friends with her by process of elimination. She consoled herself with the fact that it didn’t seem to have anything to do with her scar, but still.

“I can’t believe they’re not even opening their textbooks,” Hermione whispered in the minutes before their second class of the day, Transfiguration.

Holly shrugged. “Parvati and Lavender aren’t that bad. They’re a bit giggly, but they’re really nice.”

“They asked me if I knew any hair charms since I’ve already read all our textbooks.”

Holly privately was sure Hermione hadn’t found a single hair charm, because Hermione’s hair was even wilder than hers. “They mean well, I think.” They were the types of girls that had fawned over the cute boys in Holly’s old school, the types that wouldn’t have spared her a glance because she didn’t dress nice and her cousin wasn’t even close to being cute. Here, Holly’s clothes were just like everyone else’s, and she looked almost normal, not like the girl in threadbare clothes who always sat to the side at lunch, reading a book that she wished was a meal instead. Aunt Petunia had rarely sent her off with much food.

On her other side, Ron whispered, “I don’t know any hair charms either.”

Hermione glared at him, but Holly just laughed despite herself.

Holly’s sole reference point for boys her age—ones who have spent any length of time in her company, rather than those who avoided her at school—was Dudley. She didn’t believe in cooties, exactly, but she wasn’t sure about having a boy for a friend. What if he was just like Dudley? But then if she worried about that, she’d have to worry about girls being like Aunt Petunia, and that way lay madness.

After a few days, Ron was completely off probation. He hadn’t pulled her hair, dunked her head in the toilet, or stolen any of her belongings. Holly was very satisfied with his level of okayness. When she told him so, his response was, “Mate… I don’t think your cousin should be allowed to do any of that. Even Fred and George wouldn’t do that sort of thing to Ginny.”

“It’s Dudley.” That was all the explanation she had, because there wasn’t a way to explain away the years of the Dursleys being Dursleys. My relatives hate magic sounded… less than the situation really was, and my relatives hate me sounded like something she’d hear in one of Aunt Petunia’s soaps while she washed down the kitchen counters. She settled for a shrug.

Hogwarts was turning out to be a strange place. People would point at her and whisper to their friends every time she walked down a crowded hallway. It was like that time Dudley had spread a particularly bad rumor about her, but worse because this time it was true. She was the Girl Who Lived. She had defeated Voldemort as a baby. Holly constantly felt the urge to tug at her red hair, wishing she were more inconspicuous. Even the professors had opinions about her. Flitwick couldn’t wait to see if she’d outshine her mother in charms, McGonagall had been fond of her dad and the fondness carried through sometimes when she spoke to Holly, and Snape hated her with a passion that nearly rivaled the Dursleys for no discernible reason. But Holly was used to being hated; it was the worshipful way some people talked about her status that bothered her most. Not Hermione and Ron, not anymore at least, but the other students… She felt like that boa she’d met, trapped in his glass cage, but Holly couldn’t vanish off to Brazil like him. She didn’t want to, exactly, since learning real magic was amazing, but Holly wished it didn’t come with so many strings.

The one person who she wouldn’t have minded treating her differently was Quirrell. Holly had tried to catch his eye a couple times in the Great Hall, but the man often didn’t appear for meals or spent the entire meal looking down, and she’d never seen him in the hallways. During their two Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons that first week, he didn’t call on her once or give any indication that they’d met before. He’d vanish quickly after class or boot everyone out of the room before Holly could even get a word in edgewise.

It hurt a little, but Holly remembered all the time he spent with her in Diagon Alley and the way he’d let her get an ice cream instead of rushing to get rid of her. She liked Quirrell and even if he didn’t like her—and people did like her here, no matter what Aunt Petunia had always said about her being completely unlovable—Holly knew there was a chance he could grow to like her anyway.

It was Hermione who gave Holly the perfect solution to her problem. In fact, Holly was coming to realize that Hermione’s best quality was knowing what everyone around her should do (and it was her worst quality as well).

“Holly, I’m not sure why you want to see Professor Quirrell,” Hermione said, giving Holly the feeling that she had swapped stalk for see at the very last moment. “But if you’re that concerned about your Defense grade already, you could always try his office hours.”

“He has office hours?” Holly perked up.

“All the professors do. I asked Professor McGonagall for the list on my second day since some professors were remiss in letting us know about theirs,” Hermione huffed. She poked around in her bookbag before handing Holly a scrap of parchment paper.

“I’m pretty sure that’s because they don’t want anyone to come,” Holly said, skimming until she found Quirrell’s name.

“Do you really think so?” Hermione asked nervously. “I’d been planning on going to all of them.”

Five o’clock on a—

Oh no, that was in a few minutes!

“I’ve got to go, Hermione!” Holly cried, gathering things and stuffing them haphazardly into her bag. “I’ll see you later!”

She ran out of the library, ignoring the way Madam Pince called out after her. Holly managed to catch her first staircase just before it moved, then ran down the stairs and jumped the last few. I’m on a mission, Holly thought, patting the walls and hoping Hogwarts would understand her hurry.

*

Perhaps if he ignored the knocking, it would go away. The Great Dark Lord Voldemort was not in the habit of ignoring annoyances, but he was not the Great Dark Lord Voldemort right now.

Knock, knock, knock. Knockknockknockknock— “Professor, I’m here for your scheduled office hours! I checked your classroom and you weren’t there, so I’m really hoping you’re here!” Knockknockknockknock. “Professor Quirrell?”

All professors were mandated to hold a minimum of one office hour session per week. Voldemort had given into McGonagall’s ridiculous rule, but he hadn’t announced when exactly he would hold his office hours to his students, nor had he in any way encouraged them to find him when they weren’t in class. It had all been very deliberate. And yet, there was a student knocking on his office door.

He reached for his wand on reflex, then put it back down. It was infuriating to at have a human body, even if it wasn’t his own, and yet nearly all of his own and Quirrell’s magic was allocated toward simply keeping himself in this body and keeping the body from deteriorating any further. His skin was already sallow, his weight low, and using any magic at all tired him easily. The Great Lord Voldemort—nearly a squib. Infuriating wasn’t nearly enough to describe it. Quirrell’s wand barely worked for him, all too aware of the fact that it wasn’t its owner that was in possession of it.

He stood from his seat and manually opened the door, scowling at the student in front of him. “Miss Potter.”

He couldn’t say whether having her at his door was better or worse than it being Miss Granger. On one hand, the know-it-all mudblood was irritating. On the other hand, the Girl Who Lived was as persistent as a leech.

“Professor Quirrell!” She was smiling widely at him. Merlin.

“I have questions,” Holly told him, ducking under his arm and entering his office.

Voldemort itched to Crucio her. He hadn’t been able to cast a proper dark curse in a decade. Perhaps Hogwarts’ wards could ignore it just this once. Instead, he followed her, sitting down behind his desk and giving her the driest expression possible. “You can’t possibly have questions about the material. We’ve barely started anything.”

“Professor, it’s important! What if my grade suffers?”

“I don’t particularly care,” Voldemort said. A part of him saw merit in swaying Dumbledore’s precious Girl Who Lived to the dark, but through his previous questions and glances through her mind, Voldemort had to admit the girl had very little hatred inside her. It would be a waste of time to ensnare her loyalties, time that he was in precious demand of. This precarious situation—flying just below Dumbledore’s radar, keeping this body together, not killing one of the students—couldn’t last long. His focus could only belong to the stone.

The child looked hurt at his words. Good. Eleven was a fine age to learn disappointment.

“Just one question?” she asked, clinging to a shred of hope.

A denial was on the tip of his tongue, but he realized that if she complained in public, word would get back to Dumbledore. The last thing he needed was an earnest discussion of how they should encourage their students to grow instead of cutting off their progress.

“Just one,” Voldemort thus said.

It was a mistake. A question about the introductory chapters led to a tie-in question about how exactly the theory behind Defense came to be, which led to her claiming that asking him about dragons really did tie into the original question, please professor. It was maddening. It was also the first time in a month since he’d been able to talk without a stutter—he’d given that away in Diagon Alley and attempting to keep up the charade now was pointless. Thankfully, the brat seemed to think his stutter was simply due to him being bad at talking to strangers and a fear of public speaking.

She was a small, irritating little thing, this girl who had so nearly destroyed him. His soul still bore the scars of being forcefully pushed out of his body, which had, upon his long prior spells, burned to a crisp once his soul left it. There was no way he could’ve allowed Dumbledore or any other wizard to get their hands on his corpse. Some of his blood and he would’ve been even more fucked than he was now. Holly Potter didn’t look like a girl with the power to destroy him. She didn’t walk like one, so unsure in her steps. She didn’t talk like one, so hopeful and brash. She seemed like any eleven year old girl. Voldemort would know; he’d had to deal with more children this week than he’d ever had since he’d been their age himself. He was almost, almost thankful Dumbledore had denied him this job decades ago. A lifetime of this and Myrtle wouldn’t have been the only ghost he would’ve left in these halls.

Occasionally, the girl would rub at the scar he’d left on her forehead. Even his presence caused her pain. Silly girl, unable to see him for the apex predator he was, unable to realize her scar was entirely correct to indicate she should avoid him.

The clock in the corner of the room gave a hiss. “And that would be six o’clock. My office hours are adjourned.”

“Can I come back next week?” she asked, standing up from the visitor’s chair but not leaving until he answered.

“Will you lie in wait for me if I say no?”

She looked at him mutinously, crossing her arms.

With a small sigh, Voldemort inclined his head. She would get bored of this soon, or become too hurt at one of his cutting words. One or two more office hours and this farce would be over.

*

Holly made her way out of Quirrell’s office and walked towards the Great Hall, thinking back on her visit. It hadn’t been perfect. Quirrell, for all that he was nice with his actions, wasn’t always nice with his words. But it had been fascinating, learning about why Hogwarts even had a Defense class—there wasn’t a muggle equivalent of this at all—and realizing there was so much more to the wizarding world than just wizards. An offhand comment from Quirrell had reminded her that dragons were real and she’d latched on hard to the fact that Quirrell had actually seen one. In person! She couldn’t quite imagine her nervous professor standing in front of a dragon, but maybe there had been a glass wall between them, like at a zoo.

As she idly walked, she saw a blond head next to two big boys a full head taller than him coming towards her from the other end of the hallway. They were both heading towards the same intersection that would lead them to the Great Hall, unfortunately. Draco had mostly spent the past week scowling at her (and that was the generous word, because sometimes it really did just look like pouting instead) and glaring at Ron and Hermione. He’d even shushed Crabbe and Goyle when the two had said hi to her. Holly considered ducking down behind a suit of armor, but Crabbe had already noticed her.

“Hullo, Holly!” Crabbe called, echoed by Goyle.

“It’s Potter! She’s in another house, honestly you two—”

“I like being called Holly,” she quickly said. “Hi.”

Draco huffed at her instead of properly replying. “Your sorting was very disappointing.”

Holly sighed at him. “I’m okay with it.” But the more she looked at him and the way he looked at her, so huffy and pouty and weird, the more she thought that maybe, he’d been excited for her to be in Slytherin and show her the right way of things, whatever that was. Even if it had been selfish on his part, it was nice of him to offer. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends?”

“Of course we can’t. You’re a Gryffindor.” He said it like a slur.

One chance, Holly thought. “Come with me to the library tomorrow night. I’m… researching my family history.”

“I knew you’d see things my way,” Draco said, instantly looking much more pleasant.

Holly had the sudden realization that she might not be able to get rid of him again. “Hermione Granger might be with us.”

Draco breathed in deeply. “You’re still learning. I suppose I can forgive that.”

“And maybe Ron Weasley.”

“You have a lot to learn.”

“Crabbe, Goyle, you’re also invited,” Holly said, hoping that maybe the duo could distract him.

The two looked dubious at the invitation.

Goyle complained that, “There’s no food there,” while Crabbe added, “I hate reading.”

“You will come,” Draco hissed. “I need you to surround me and make sure Weasley or Granger don’t accidentally touch me.”

One chance, Holly thought again. “You can’t be mean to my other friends, though. And they can’t be mean to you. That’s my only condition.”

“Define being mean.”

Holly ran through a whole list of things as they walked to the Great Hall, including but not limited to using cruel words, maiming, coercing into a duel, insulting the looks of, talking about wealth and anyone’s lack of thereof.

“What exactly am I supposed to say to them otherwise?” Draco asked, looking honestly confused.

“You’ll think of something, I’m sure.”

“A loophole, yes…”

“That’s really not what I meant!”

Holly wanted to follow Draco to the Slytherin table to put a stop the the loophole plans he was making to Crabbe and Goyle, who were more interested in the food but still grunting in agreement, but she figured the Slytherins would be too appalled. It was weird that people cared so much about where an enchanted hat told them to sit and sleep, but Holly mostly tried to follow that rule. Following rules meant that when you were found breaking one, you at least had a good reputation to help you out. Besides, she knew that some people were smart enough to not care: Quirrell appeared to dislike all the houses (and people in general) just about equally.

She sat down next to Ron and Seamus, who were talking about Quidditch, and looked around for Hermione reflexively. She’d left her at the library, but Hermione did usually make her way down for dinner. If only because studying was less productive while one was dying of hunger. When Hermione didn’t appear, Holly wrapped some savory filled buns and a piece of chicken into a cloth napkin and headed off. Ron headed off to the dorms with the others, giving her a beseeching look to join them, but Holly just shrugged. Hermione was… bossy and mostly always right and probably regarded her textbooks as a closer friend than Holly, but Holly didn’t like the thought of someone she knew going without food, even if it was Hermione’s choice that she hadn’t gone down to dinner. And maybe she also just liked Hermione, too, in a way that Holly couldn’t really figure out. Unlike Ron, who she’d liked immediately, Hermione had somehow grown on her slowly.

As she’d thought, Hermione was still in the same place Holly had left her, but now surrounded by even more piles of books. Enough that Holly could only see the very top of Hermione’s bushy hair.

“Hermione,” Holly called softly, glancing around to make sure Madam Pince wasn’t in the vicinity.

But Hermione was all strange, her shoulders tight, and when she turned around in her seat, her eyes were red and teary. “Not now, Holly.”

Holly ignored her. “What happened?”

“I’m fine,” Hermione blatantly lied. “It was just some girls being… you know. Asking me if I lived in the library.”

That didn’t sound like nearly all they’d said. And Holly felt… angry. She’d never had someone she cared about be hurt by another person. She’d never cared about the Dursleys, and the Dursleys were always the ones doing the hurting anyway. But now it was Hermione with tears in her eyes and Holly realized this was what anger could feel like when you actually cared. Through her teeth, she said, “Where are they?”

“They were just some girls, I don’t even know—” Hermione hiccuped. “I don’t know who they were.”

“Okay,” Holly said with a determined nod. “We’ll just walk throughout the school tomorrow and you’ll tell me if you see them and then I can tell them off.”

“That’s against the rules.”

“Talking to people?”

“I don’t think you have a polite ‘please stop that’ in mind,” Hermione said, but she was starting to smile.

“I don’t like books much, but no one’s allowed to make fun of you just because you do,” Holly said fiercely, wanting to go after everyone and anyone but knowing it was no use. “It’ll just be a little conversation. With wands. I can turn their noses into needles if that charm Flitwick taught us works on people.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Hermione told her, sounding a little more like her usual self. “I’m not fine, but I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve never heard anything mean. Oh, what’s that?”

Holly glanced down to where Hermione’s eyes lingered and saw her hand was tightly clenched around the napkin. “Sorry, I think it’s all smushed now. I didn’t see you at dinner so I brought you some food.”

“Holly…” Hermione looked like she was about to cry again, but then she lunged and before Holly could do anything but widen her eyes, she was being hugged tightly. And then she realized Hermione had in fact started crying again. Holly felt all stiff, unable to remember what regular people who’d been hugged before did when they were being hugged, but slowly, she circled her arms around Hermione’s back and rested her chin on Hermione’s shoulder. Hermione’s voice sounded wet when she said, “You’re the best friend I could ask for.”

And, and what was she supposed to do with that? She and Ron had gotten on fine because they didn’t bother hashing out what exactly their friendship was, but Hermione was saying those words, and Holly didn’t know what she was supposed to do with them. She just— She just didn’t know.

Thus, she might as well say the worst thing ever. “You’re not friends with me just because you don’t like Lavender and Parvati?”

Hermione’s arms tightened around her. “No. How could you— No.”

“It’s just, you never came back on the train, and then you didn’t like them, but you seemed to sort of like me, and I thought maybe I was just the default option…” She wasn’t making sense, Holly knew, but she couldn’t get the words out right.

“I do, I do like you,” Hermione said into Holly’s robes, her voice muffled a bit, but at least she didn’t sound as angry now. “I just kept thinking on the train that if I find Neville’s toad, I’d stop worrying about everything, but I didn’t and then we were already there. You were so nice on the train and you weren’t snotty or stuck up and you were friendly and I really hoped we could be in the same house and we are and—”

“I like you too,” Holly quickly said, because she did, when she could finally not be scared about how Hermione felt. “I promise.”

“Good, because you’re not allowed to stop being friends with me.”

“Not going to happen.” And then Holly remembered, “But actually, we could make a new friend together.”

Hermione, rightly suspicious, let go of her to peer and ask, “…who?”

“Draco. He’s joining me tomorrow to study?”

“Malfoy?”

“Yes?”

“Holly.”

But she didn’t vanish on her the next day, so Holly took it as a win.

Chapter Text

A knock.

A sigh.

Voldemort glanced at the clock, hoping he could just dismiss the visitor, but time had flown by and it was the one hour he was obligated to put up with his students outside of class time. “Come in.”

Holly Potter thrust open the door and smiled at him. Joy. “Hello, Professor Quirrell!”

“Miss Potter,” Voldemort greeted, halfheartedly considering the pros and cons of attempting another killing curse. Insanity was attempting the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but as far as most of the wizarding world was concerned, Lord Voldemort was already insane. “You’re here yet again.”

It was the child’s fifth visit to his office hours and he was beginning to grow used to how happy she always was too see him.

“Of course I am, you’re my favorite professor,” Holly said, sitting down in a chair.

Voldemort knew with horrible certainty that she believed her words to be true. Somewhere, Grindelwald had to be laughing. He bet the former Dark Lord had never had to deal with playing teacher to his prophesied nemesis. He’d learned little relevant information during these meetings. The girl was a bright but not especially studious child. She was largely a visual learner who most enjoyed classes that had an active component. Flying lessons were by far her favorites, where she displayed a competitiveness that didn’t seem to be brought out in anything else. Overall, Holly Potter was a disappointingly normal child. When he finally killed her one day, it would be both satisfying and boring.

“Professor, when you were at Hogwarts, did you have any friends in other houses?” she asked, slumping down to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin on her elbows.

“I had no interest in friendship,” Voldemort replied. He couldn’t bring himself to say the trite answer that a Hufflepuff like Quirrell would have given.

“Allies in other houses?”

“A few,” Voldemort conceded, leaning back in his chair. He wondered what the girl would have said to the fact that as a penniless first year, he’d written essays for idiots like Holly’s grandfather. This was before the revelation of his heritage or the day he’d found out just how to rule the Slytherin house through fear. “They were useful but fleeting alliances, however. None lasted past my Hogwarts years.”

Holly sighed loudly. “It feels like that’s what everyone does, just makes friends with their own house and that’s it.”

“You, of course, must be different.”

Her glare was ineffective. “I don’t get it, that’s all! Sure, Draco is a bit annoying, but he’s not bad. He’s helping me learn about my family from the books and newspapers in the library. Did you know my grandma Dorea was in Slytherin? She won a dueling competition, that’s why she was in the papers. But Draco hates Ron, and Ron hates Draco, and Hermione alternately hates both of them, and Vince and Greg don’t care much but they still sometimes forget they can’t say the m-word. I don’t know why they can’t all just get along.”

“Centuries of beliefs passed down from parent to child and a lack of emotional maturity that would at least provide a proper brain to mouth filter in mixed company,” Voldemort drawled. He would have sworn that children were better composed in his day, but he couldn’t be sure. The Gryffindors were idiotic, but these new Slytherins weren’t any better. The whelps were childish and obvious in any attempts at manipulation. “They would do better to think of their future alliances rather than create needless enemies while they’re still too young to do anything about it.”

“Enemies of me and my fame?” Holly asked morosely. At Voldemort’s wordless agreement, she said, “But I just want them to do the right thing, not pretend to do the right thing when they’re around me.”

“And the right thing would be…?”

“Accepting that blood purity is rubbish,” she said, folding her arms.

“Mm.”

The child peered at him suspiciously. “Professor, you’re way too smart to believe in that sort of thing.”

Good Merlin. “If that is what you consider manipulation, it’s no wonder you were sorted into Gryffindor.”

“The hat considered putting me into Slytherin,” Holly said, her green eyes bright behind her crooked glasses. “It said it could go either way, really. It just ended up going with Gryffindor.”

“I’m sure Severus would have appreciated that,” Voldemort replied. It was interesting to hear the girl could have been a Slytherin, but he couldn’t think of what Slytherin qualities she had. Certainly not manipulation or ambition.

“Is Snape also a snotty pureblood? Is that why he’s so mean to everyone who’s not a Slytherin?”

“No,” Voldemort said. “He hates non-Slytherins equally.” Even young, Severus had cared more about power and safety than blood politics. It made him someone to watch, if only because there had been few in his service who had the slightest chance of realizing that Voldemort cared more for power than blood himself. Oh, he hated muggles—if there were a simple way to kill every single one of them, he would commit genocide without a second thought—and he wasn’t fond of muggleborns. He despised the effect they’d had on the wizarding world in the decades he’d been alive, as pro-muggle sentiment grew and grew. But even at the height of his campaign, what he truly cared about was power, and how to achieve it.

“I don’t know it that’s any better,” Holly grumbled. She paused for a moment, tapping her fingers against her chin nearly long enough for him to tell her to straighten up. “Are muggleborns really less powerful? That’s what Draco keeps saying. But most of the time, the reason I do badly is if I don’t get to read up on things beforehand. Maybe that’s the same for some of them. And some are like Hermione, who’s brilliant.”

“They’re still borne from muggles. Can you honestly tell me you like your muggle relatives?”

Holly frowned at him. “I hate the Dursleys, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like muggles. They’re just… rotten apples, the Dursleys. They look like regular apples on the outside, all nice and juicy, but on the inside they’re bad. But that doesn’t mean all the other apples in the basket are bad. That’s not how it works.”

“That really is how it works.”

“And without muggles there wouldn’t be Star Wars,” Holly kept going, pretending she didn’t hear him. “Dudley used to be obsessed with it and I could hear it under the door and see bits through the doorknob and sometimes he’d even let me watch it with him a bit.”

“I believe that says more about muggles’ cruelty than their innovation,” Quirrell replies, eyebrow raised.

“And they’ve gone to the moon! There are actual moon rocks out there. And vaccines, and the internet, and Disney, and—”

“You’ve made your point,” Voldemort replied, cutting her off. “But do you intend to return to that world you so profess to like after Hogwarts?”

She scowled at him mulishly, but didn’t lie. “No.”

“Because you understand what a gift your magic is. But there are so many things you don’t understand about the world your gift has brought you into, the power and traditions that truly set us apart from muggles. They are ants to our giants,” and I a god to you mortals, “and you need not concern yourself with them when your rightful world has opened itself to you.”

“Giants would step on ants,” the girl carefully said.

“Giants have better things to do,” Voldemort replied. But with some regret, he decided he’d already spoken on the subject too long for a man who was formerly a muggle studies professor. “Talk to more people than just your Gryffindors on the subjects. Perhaps you’ll learn something interesting.”

“If you’re trying to make me dark, it won’t work,” she said, her eyes shining with determination.

He was reminded of her mother, the way she’d thrice defied him, the way she’d refused to stand aside. The way both of them—and Lily Potter had barely been more than girl herself—had cursed him to a decade of bodiless existence, during which he’d had nothing but his thoughts to contend with. Anger had boiled within him, but sometime during that decade it had boiled over, and he’d been left with the stark truth: that he had completely lost the first war he’d led. One day, he would wage a second one, and the light would not find it easy to fight him on an entirely different playing field. But before he could begin, he needed a body of his own.

“You are what you are, Miss Potter,” Voldemort said, standing up to open the door for her. “As am I.”

“A dark wizard,” she said, but the silly child had no fear in her voice. “But people can be both dark and kind, can’t they?”

She might have said they, but Voldemort knew the both of them heard you. “When it truly matters, they can only choose one.”

Holly nodded, her expression unreadable. It was an uncommonly serious face for one so young. Voldemort wondered what was going through that head of hers, but it didn’t particularly matter. Either he’d succeeded in corrupting some of that Gryffindor shine or he’d failed. At this age, so much of his prophesied enemy’s future was still in flux, opinions picked up and dropped at the drop of a wand.

“I like being kind,” she said, quietly, as though it was a secret. “The Dursleys never let me be kind, and they weren’t very kind back, but I still like it.”

“You should have been in Hufflepuff.”

“I asked, since it was your house,” Holly said, and her smile was less wide than the one she’d entered his office with, but Voldemort still found a rather disquieting sort of sincerity in it.

*

A few days later, Holly carefully slipped out of her bed. She had been lying there for hours until a hushed Tempus charm finally revealed it to be one in the morning. Holly hadn’t bothered to take off her robes that evening, so it was quick going to begin to make her way out of Gryffindor tower. Or at least it should have been.

“Where are you going?” hissed a voice from behind her as Holly reached the doorknob of the first year girls’ dormitory.

Holly flipped her head back and exhaled when she saw it was only Hermione looking out of her bedcurtains. If it had been Lavender, she would’ve decided Holly was meeting a secret boyfriend and ignored all of Holly’s denials. Holly whispered, “Having a seeker versus seeker competition with Draco on the quidditch pitch.”

“What is wrong with you?” Hermione groaned. “You could get in so much trouble. Who cares who’s the better quidditch player?”

“I do,” Holly said, too quickly. “You’ve seen him during our flying lessons. He keeps going on about how his amazing broom-riding technique works a lot better on the field, even though Madam Hooch has told him a hundred times that that’s not the proper way to hold a broom. But since she won’t let us play with proper balls yet, we’ve been forced to get creative.”

“You haven’t been forced into anything,” Hermione countered.

“Draco’s forced me into it by way of being irritating and smug. I’m doing it for Gryffindor, Hermione.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Hermione said. “Give me a minute.”

Holly stood there, peering cautiously at the other beds to make sure her other dormmates hadn’t awoken, while Hermione threw a robe over her pajamas and slipped into a pair of boots. Outside the dormitory, making their way down to the common room, they could speak properly, though they still watched their volume.

“This is such a bad idea,” Hermione said, twice in two minutes.

“You don’t have to come,” Holly replied. She backtracked with, “I mean, I want you to come, but you don’t have to. You’ll probably think it’s boring. And you don’t even have an excuse prepared for if we get caught!”

“And you do?”

“I’m off to see Madam Pomfrey,” Holly said, grinning. She pulled out her wand and applied the sweating charm that she’d spent all day practicing. It was the key to her act. “See? I have a fever.”

“That only works for if—when, actually—someone catches us inside the castle. But what if a prefect or a professor just looks outside? You’re going to be flying out in the open in the middle of the pitch!”

Holly thought Hermione was a bit of a worrywart, though she knew Hermione thought Holly was reckless. They balanced each other out, she decided, though their version of balancing seemed to be dragging each other into midnight escapades or the depths of the library. “The tricky part is really going to be getting out of the castle. Once we’re out, there’s only Hagrid to worry about, and I don’t think he’s ever taken points from anyone. Most of Hogwarts doesn’t face the field and it’s far enough away that no one will be able to see us clearly. Even if they do, it’s so dark that they’ll just think we’re birds or something.”

“You won’t be able to see clearly either,” Hermione said, sighing.

“That’s why it’s fun.” As they reached the bottom of the tower, Holly waved at Ron, who was sitting on one of the plush red couches

“You too?” Hermione huffed when she saw him.

“How’d she convince you to come?” Ron said with some wonder. “I didn’t think you’d ever break a rule.”

“Someone has to try to keep Holly out of trouble,” Hermione replied.

“That’s pretty impossible, but we can try,” Ron said.

Holly opened the portrait and looked both ways before loudly whispering, “Come on, my noble defenders. Let’s go!”

They slipped out of the common room. It was pure luck that the Fat Lady was asleep, since Holly wasn’t sure if their portrait was obligated to snitch on students, and no one lurked directly in the hallway leading to the tower. They huddled together, stepping softly and listening for any noise. It was convenient that Hogwarts had so many hallways and rooms and alcoves to duck into, since every little sound, even their own shallow breathing, sounded like the tap of a professor’s footsteps. They had made their way down two floors and ducked away from two patrols when Holly felt Ron’s hand catch her shoulder.

She looked back at him, but Ron only shakily pointed at a dark corner of the hallway. Two glowing little orbs shone through the darkness a foot from the ground.

“Oh no,” Hermione breathed.

“Maybe she didn’t see us?” Ron tried.

Holly really didn’t feel very confident. Especially not when Mrs. Norris stepped out of the shadowy corridor and gave them the evillest look Holly had ever seen come from a cat. She then yowled loudly into the hallway, sending visions of a cackling Filch and McGonagall yelling ‘minus one thousand points’ into Holly’s head.

“Run!” Holly hissed, grabbing their sleeves and tugging them along. “If we hide—”

“Mrs. Norris will just smell us out,” Hermione said. “We need to get on a moving staircase, maybe that would make her lose our scents—”

They hopped onto the nearest one and then hopped off at the first section it brought them to, not daring to stay out in the open lest Filch see them from another opening. The hallway in this section was perfectly dark, good for hiding three students who really should’ve thought this through better, Holly thought with a whimper. As they walked onward, she slowly caught her breath. Her heart rate dropped to a normal beat for every moment that no one popped out of the shadows. Toward the end of the corridor, there was a wooden door that Holly idly tried to open.

“It’s locked,” she murmured. In the nearly two months she’d been at Hogwarts, Holly had grown unused to locked doors. Classrooms were always open, though she hadn’t tried them outside of regular hours. The Great Hall was empty of food outside of mealtimes but she could still spend a free period doing homework there until food began to appear. The prefects always told them the Fat Lady’s new password well in advance of the change. It was so different from a childhood of locked doors: the cupboard, the front door until she finished her outdoor chores, the school shooing kids out after the school day ended.

“Did you hear that?” Ron asked. He pressed his ear against the door. “Something’s growling in there.”

Holly and Hermione did the same, squeezing into the space. The growl was deep and rumbling, reminding her of Aunt Marge’s bulldogs and their rows of sharp teeth.

“I wonder if the professors know about this,” Holly said. She’d been warned about Peeves and Mrs. Norris and possible boggarts, but nothing about a growly, possibly dog-like beast.

“Of course they do,” Hermione said, her eyes wide. “Oh, this is the third floor corridor.”

“The third floor has a lot of corridors,” Ron said, swallowing audibly. “This maybe isn’t the certain death one.”

“Yeah, maybe that one’s on the other side of the third floor,” Holly added, but she took a step back along with Ron and Hermione. “But in the interest of not being dead?”

“Let’s go,” Hermione said, turning around. “I think if we catch the third staircase it should bring us to the west wing of the fifth floor…”

Holly took one last look at the door, because she was just so curious about why the headmaster was keeping an animal in the school, but she let it go. She couldn’t beat Draco at quidditch if she was dead, after all.

Hermione glanced back at Holly and Ron. “We are going back to the tower, aren’t we?”

“Gryffindor pride,” Holly said, taking Hermione’s elbow and sharing a bolstering grin with Ron. “We’ve gotten this far. It’s death, detention, or demolishing Draco time.”

Hermione looked like she wanted to demolish Holly right from the edge of the corridor, but she gave in to sharing her mental map of Hogwarts with them. Mrs. Norris ended up being their closest encounter with detention, and they slipped out of one of Hogwarts’ side doors and into the chilly autumn air. Holly relished the fact that she wasn’t locked in the school, either. Hogwarts really was perfect. By the time they got to the pitch and the shed to the side of it, Draco had already found a way to unlock the shed and had rested two brooms and a little box against the side of the shed facing away from the school. Vince and Greg stood on either side of him in a way that looked like it was to preserve Draco’s body warmth, even if Draco would deny it.

“Finally,” Draco said as they arrived. “I’ve been waiting here for hours. You Gryffs have no sense of propriety and time management.”

“Get over it,” Ron huffed.

Holly released the snitch from its box and dragged Draco into the air before he and Ron could get into yet another fight. She flew in a circle around the pitch, not quite daring to do the dives she’d read about in Quidditch Through the Ages on such a rickety broom, but still enjoying the freedom to just fly. It was so dark below, but with the light of the moon, she could just barely make out the others huddling in the stands. Partway through the match, four balls of blue light appeared, quickly hidden under her friends’ hands.

“Giving up already?” Draco called as she zoomed toward him and stopped in front of him. He looked a little like a painting, with the way the moon shone off of his platinum blond hair, though the painter would’ve left out the way he couldn’t control his shiver. “Professional players play in much worse conditions than just a little chill.”

Holly cast a Tempus charm, nearly sneezing through her pronunciation. The smoky numbers glowed for a moment before they vanished. “I think two hours is probably long enough for frostbite to set in.”

“What’s frostbite?”

“It’s when your limbs fall off because of the cold.”

“Sounds muggle.”

Holly laughed at Draco’s disgusted look. “Well, they don’t have warming charms like we do… say, do you know how to cast one?”

“No,” Draco said, glumly. “I tried, but it’s no use. I don’t know how my mum does it. Not that I’m cold.”

“Of course not,” Holly agreed. But she preferred not going to Madam Pomfrey in the middle of the night because her toes all fell off, so she said, “I bet the others are, though.”

“Crabbe and Goyle do have weak constitutions.”

Holly looked at him suspiciously and Draco averted his eyes. “Fifteen more minutes?”

“You’re on,” Draco said.

He’d come to regret it, since it only took ten of those minutes for Holly to catch the snitch, fumbling for it with her numb fingers but just barely grabbing onto one of its fluttering wings. She whooped in delight and dropped downward in a dive that had Hermione whispering furiously at her until they got back to their beds, but Holly couldn’t keep the grin off her face. In her pocket, she had a box of anti-scarring lotion that Draco passed to her when she gave him back the snitch, saying his mum had sent it over. Ron said they should test it for curses, but Holly wasn’t all that worried.

*

Any other day, Holly would’ve found Professor Quirrell’s lecture on vampires fascinating, but today her mind just kept drifting off to things a lot worse than vampires. Well, worse to her, since Quirrell probably thought vampires were the worst things in the world after they attacked him. Even months after his attack he still walked around with cloves of garlic in his pockets and a stutter as he forced himself to talk about them in class. Holly looked down at her notes and couldn’t even read her handwriting. Half an hour into the lecture and she only had four lines of text while Hermione was scribbling madly next to her. Discreetly, Holly opened the box of anti-scarring lotion that Draco’s mum had sent over and slathered it over her forehead, sighing as it soaked into her skin with a tingle. It didn’t do much about the way it stuck out against her skin, but it helped a lot with the headaches she always got around Quirrell.

The lotion tingled pleasantly across her forehead for the rest of the lecture, but it didn’t do much to improve her mood. Defense Against the Dark Arts was her third and last class of the day, and Holly had been in a mood ever since she woke up that morning. It couldn’t be helped, so she forced herself to focus on Quirrell’s words. How to distinguish a vampire from a non-vampire, was the current topic, and Holly paid as much attention as she could.

When the bells finally rang, she hung back as the other students cheerfully headed out in anticipation of the feast in two hours’ time. Hermione and Ron knew Holly saw Quirrell as a mentor of sorts, so they didn’t question her wanting to stay a little longer. Holly ended up questioning herself anyway. I’m not your therapist, she could already hear Quirrell say, because while he was her favorite professor, he wasn’t her mentor or anything. He was just… there, taking her questions and giving her new ones and confusing her and helping in his weird way.

“I hope this is important, Miss Potter,” Quirrell said. He was turned around, cleaning the blackboard behind his desk. Holly wondered if he had eyes in the back of his head or if he just had a Holly-detector.

“Of course it is,” Holly said. And then she couldn’t actually say it, because it wasn’t important, not to Quirrell, so she said something else that she’d been thinking about for a while. “Sir, are you a vampire?”

Quirrell turned around with a look of complete disbelief on his face. “I believe I misheard you.”

That was probably when she should have stopped, but Holly just charged along. “You’re so pale! And Hagrid said you were attacked by vampires in the Blood Forest—”

“The Black Forest.”

“—but you don’t have any wounds or scars from it at all. Does that mean you were turned into one?”

“No, that is certainly not what that means,” Quirrell said, taking a seat in his chair as though that was the only thing he could think to do in this circumstance. His vampire-pale hands rose up for a moment to touch the edge of his turban and his expression resembled nothing so much as a sigh that has lasted from September first to today. “I hate students.”

Holly was too amused to take offense. “But you still became a teacher? I don’t think you can do that by accident.”

“It was the culmination of one extraordinarily bad decision and the cruel whims of fate,” Quirrell said, leaning back in the chair.

Sometimes—well, most of the time—Holly had no idea what Quirrell was talking about, but she always found his words interesting anyway. For all that Quirrell was afraid of public speaking and vampires, he wasn’t afraid of anything else. He spoke his mind and said grouchy things and never apologized for anything he said, and yet he never made her feel like the Dursleys or Snape made her feel. He wasn’t kind, and sometimes she caught glimpses of a deep anger inside him, but he never made her feel small. Young, yes, but never small, and never like the mishmashed combination of James and Lily and the fame of the Girl Who Lived.

Which was why, when Quirrell told her to tell him why she was actually here, Holly sighed and said, “I don’t want to go to the feast.”

Quirrell said nothing for a long moment, simply watching her through eyes that seemed too dark for the rest of his features. “I assume it’s because of what happened ten years ago.”

Holly nodded. She found no sympathy in Quirrell’s eyes, but that was better than everyone else’s eyes today. “Everyone is so happy today and I hate it. I know they have a right to be, that to them it’s Halloween or that pureblood holiday that Draco cares about or the day the war stopped, but that’s not what today is to me. And the people who understand that keep pitying me, and I can’t— Professor McGonagall took me aside after class and she was so nice and I still want to hit everyone I see.” She glanced down at her hands, feeling ashamed because girls didn’t fight, girls didn’t consider blasting down every decoration she saw in the hallways, but she couldn’t stop. And who cared what Aunt Petunia always said, anyway. (Holly did, but only because she didn’t want to get detention for the rest of the year for acting on all her impulses today.) “It’s stupid. I never knew today was when they died. But now that I do, I just…”

Quirrell’s voice was even, matter-of-fact, as he said, “I’ve never understood grief.”

Holly looked up from her hands, and there was something so strange in his expression. Holly didn’t know what to do with the fact that she understood something her professor didn’t. “Your parents are still alive?”

“No,” Quirrell said, his fingers quietly tapping once against his desk. “But I’ve always preferred anger over grief. Anger is useful—grief, as far as I’ve seen, is only paralyzing.”

“I used to be angry at my parents sometimes,” Holly said. She’d never said it to anyone, but Quirrell would understand. “Aunt Petunia said they were drunks who died in a car crash. I thought it was their fault that they left me, but it wasn’t. I used to think it was a dream, but… I remember a little from that night. Voldemort, he told my mother to step aside, but she wouldn’t. She loved me so much that she wouldn’t move and she died for it. I can’t ever be angry at them now. All that’s left is being sad.”

“You can save your anger for the Dark Lord,” Quirrell said, a pinch to his lips.

Holly nodded, her fingers hurting as she gripped the edge of the desk she was leaning on. Voldemort was evil, she knew that, everyone knew that. But everything about that night made her sad as well as angry, even the awful man who’d killed her parents. “I can save some of my sadness for him, too.”

“He doesn’t need it.”

“I need it,” Holly said, her words coming out too quietly. “Anger always feels like it’s going to choke me one day, the kind of anger that’s real, like for the Dursleys or for him.”

Quirrell’s breath sounded like a sigh. “You have the right to feel as you wish, as illogical as I find it. Attendance at the feast isn’t mandatory. In the dungeons directly below the Great Hall is a painting of a bowl of fruit. Rub the pear and it will open into the kitchens, where you may eat dinner away from the rest of the student body. You will find it easier to stay there for the entirety of the feast.”

That sounded fantastic, except, “But I don’t want to be alone.”

“Your Miss Granger and Mister Weasley are currently hovering outside my door. I’m sure it will take very little to convince them to join you.”

“Really?” Holly asked, glancing toward the exit.

“I’m sure your emotional state today has been noted by them,” Quirrell explained.

That same emotional state lightened a bit as she turned to him. “They’re the best friends I’ve ever had. And you’re the best professor. Thank you, sir.”

“Your appreciation is unnecessary,” Quirrell replied. “Much more than you know.”

Because Quirrell was a dark wizard, Holly figured, but he could be her favorite dark wizard, too.

She took his advice, haltingly asking Ron and Hermione if they wanted go to the kitchens with her and not even going up to the tower to drop off her school bag beforehand. In the kitchens, which were staffed by little creatures called house-elves that none of them had ever seen before, the three of them found a quiet little corner out of sight of the bustle of the dinner preparations. There was a small table that an elf heaped food on with a flick of a finger and an old but soft couch to sink into. It felt like their own little world, and before long, Holly began to talk about why she couldn’t go up to the feast.

Neither of her friends could relate to her, not completely. Ron and Hermione hadn’t really lost anyone. A great uncle who used to babysit Ron until he was two, a grandfather Hermione had met only once. But when Holly couldn’t say anything more, because if she did she’d start crying and she couldn’t bear to shed even more tears over two people she only had one hazy memory of, Hermione quietly started talking about her parents. Who she loved, she said, but who’d always worked so much that she rarely saw them. Two years ago, she’d argued her way out of having sitters stay with her after school, but then she’d just been left in an empty house until evening without a single friend she could invite to keep her company. Her parents were so proud of her for being mature and brilliant, but so much of her perfect marks had been because she’d been so lonely that even the most boring of assignments helped.

Ron had never had that problem, with a dad whose job barely had any work for him to do and a stay at home mom, but he wouldn’t look at them as he talked about how the Chudley Canons were his favorite Quidditch team because they gave free tickets and orange hats for people to come fill their side of the stands. He’d rarely had a piece of clothing that had been his first, because everything down to his socks was Bill’s or Charlie’s or Percy’s (but not Fred or George’s, because anything of theirs never lasted long enough to be passed on). He talked about sitting on the third step of the stairs while his parents sat in the kitchen and tried to make ends meet that month, feeling horribly useless even as Percy sat down next to him and pulled him into a hug. None of them got through the evening without at least one tear, but neither was there only one hug. And after, they washed their faces and joined the rest of their house in the Gryffindor tower, which had filled up due to a troll in the dungeons or some such rumor.

The next time she saw Quirrell, Holly hugged him tightly, ignoring the way her forehead exploded with pain. It was easier to bear than touching him for apparition had been, but not by much. For a moment, she thought she felt the light pressure of a hand over her head.

Chapter Text

That hug lingered in her mind as Holly carefully pressed closer to a door that was opened just a crack. She’d slowed down in her walk from the library to the Gryffindor dormitory when she’d heard Snape and McGonagall’s raised voices. Snape, whose voice she was used to hearing raised, was no surprise, but McGonagall’s? That had been the interesting part. Holly hadn’t been able to keep herself from lingering and now she cursed herself for her nosiness.

“—told Albus?”

“Of course I told Albus. I’m not an imbecile. Do you know what he told me? He has complete trust in Quirrell and that the man had only been in the corridor to make sure his troll was alive and well.”

“Then it’s likely that’s all it was. Severus, you’re bringing this out of proportion—”

“I am? He released a troll into Hogwarts and yet I am the one who’s bringing this out of proportion. Albus was a fool to leave Flamel’s life work in Hogwarts and a bigger fool to announce the truth to all the teachers.”

“I don’t disagree completely,” McGonagall said. “You know I was against keeping it here.”

“Any sane person would have been against it.”

“But I do trust Albus to know what he’s doing.” McGonagall’s tone grew consoling in a way Holly hadn’t realized she could be. “And you do to. You and I know that it would be no easy feat for someone to find their way through all the protections that are in place.”

“I wouldn’t call Quirrell particularly brilliant or magically powerful enough to succeed,” Snape said, some of his anger fading out of his voice. “But if the imbecile gets killed by Hagrid’s beast next time he tries, it will be on Albus’ head.”

“Of course,” McGonagall replied with some amusement. “Is there anything else you wished to get off your chest, Severus?”

“No.”

“Nothing about a certain student of ours?”

“I said no.” Holly could nearly hear Snape’s scowl.

Quiet as a mouse, Holly tiptoed away from the door and turned down a small corridor until she found a dusty, unused classroom where she could properly panic. Holly slumped down on one of the desks. She felt as though her brain was just melting right out of her ears. Quirrell was trying to steal something that was being kept in the third floor corridor. Something that was someone named Flamel life’s work—his research, maybe? The name Flamel sounded familiar, but for the life of her Holly couldn’t remember where she’d heard it before. Maybe in one of her textbooks?

Her favorite professor was a thief. Or an aspiring thief, since he hadn’t exactly stolen anything yet.

She breathed. In, out. In, out.

Holly wasn’t against thievery on principle. She’d stolen from the Dursleys loads of times. Usually food, but sometimes money for food or school supplies. One winter four years back, she’d gotten the opportunity to steal enough to buy herself her first real Christmas gift: a doll that what felt like every girl in school had. When the doll had inevitably been discovered, Holly let Aunt Petunia think she’d stolen it from someone at school, but it had been nice while it lasted. But stealing something important, something that someone else valued so much that it was their life’s work? That was different.

But the worst part of it all was that Holly had the awful suspicion that maybe the reason Quirrell had told her about the kitchens was because he’d wanted her out of the way on Halloween night. That way, there would’ve been a few less students around while he tried to break into the corridor. And if the professors had realized that Holly Potter was missing while a troll wandered the halls—

Holly curled in on herself, tucking up her legs and wrapping her arms around them.

Would Quirrell have thought of it like that?

He wasn’t a good man, Holly knew. She’d leaned away from the truth for a long time, but Quirrell hadn’t hidden the fact that he wasn’t a light wizard, and Holly could face the fact that she’d still visited his office hours anyway. She’d still stayed after class occasionally and she’d still hugged him just the once, when he’d given her a night when she could mourn her parents with her very best friends. And Quirrell, he let her do all of it. He talked to her without his eyes glazing over in memory of her parents like McGonagall or Flitwick or even Snape, whose version of glazing over was just anger. If he’d only been using her, he wouldn’t have been so nice. He wouldn’t have let her stay so much. Maybe he’d been using her a little, but that couldn’t have been all there was.

Holly had sometimes wondered why a man like Quirrell had taken the DADA position when he didn’t enjoy teaching or being around children. The position was hard on him because of his stutter, which hadn’t gotten any better in class, and his fear of public speaking hadn’t seemed to get any better. This was a better answer than any she had tried to come up with.

She settled her head on her knobby knees and considered the fact that she could snitch on Quirrell about him being a dark wizard. Maybe not to Snape, who would believe her because he seemed to want to believe the worst of Quirrell, since she didn’t want to help Snape. But McGonagall was her head of house and the deputy headmistress. McGonagall was older than everyone except Dumbledore; she would know what to do if Holly just told her everything.

In this dark, chilly room, the only sounds Holly heard were her own breathing and heartbeat.

She wasn’t going to do that, even though it was the smart thing, the thing that Hermione would’ve urged her to do.

Hermione wasn’t here. There was just Holly Potter, Holly the freak, the girl in the cupboard and the smallest bedroom, Holly of the holly wand, Holly whose magic was so incompatible with Quirrell’s that it hurt to be near him, Holly who only had one adult in the world whom she actually liked. McGonagall was nice, but she wasn’t Quirrell, and Hagrid had apologized, but he hadn’t talked to her about magic every week since the start of term.

Alright, Holly thought, alright. The first thing she had to do was figure out what Quirrell was trying to steal. Then she could decide what to do. Except, unless it was something very, very bad being held in there, Holly knew what she was going to do. She just needed a few more facts.

Holly scampered out of the classroom and headed back toward the library, passing the door that McGonagall and Snape had been talking behind. It was completely closed now, no voices to be heard. Once she entered the library, Holly ignored the path toward Hermione’s usual corner and instead went for the most textbook-knowledgeable un-suspicious person she knew. Not Hermione, because Hermione hadn’t yet been able to inhale the entire Hogwarts library, but a prefect who could usually be found in the library at this time. Also, Hermione would ask why she needed to know about Flamel and Holly didn’t know what she’d tell her. She trusted Hermione and Ron (and Draco and Greg and Vince, too, though that was a different kind of trust), but she trusted them with herself, not with Quirrell. Quirrell wasn’t her friends’ favorite professor; they didn’t even like him all that much.

“Percy?” Holly asked, coming up to Ron’s older brother.

Percy looked up from his pile of textbooks with eyes that took several moments to focus on Holly. “Er, can I help you?”

“I have a research question?” Holly said hopefully.

Percy’s eyes flickered toward the clock at the front of the library. “Is it a short question?”

“Very short,” Holly was quick to say. “I’m looking for someone named Flamel.”

“Oh, that’s easy. You probably mean Nicholas Flamel?” At Holly’s nod, Percy continued with, “He’s a famous alchemist and inventor. If you take Ancient Runes, you’ll learn about his major breakthroughs in the field and last year in Potions we had a few lectures on how his work with dragon’s blood has affected some major potions.” He pointed toward a row of bookshelves. “The biographies section starts eleven shelves down and three shelves to the left. His life has been long and fascinating, from what I’ve heard, so you should find at least a few.”

With a heartfelt thank you, Holly was off. She only had half an hour until curfew, so there was little time to research Flamel as much as she wanted to. When she found F’s section of the biographies, she picked up the shortest of the books about Flamel and flipped through it. It didn’t take long at all to find what was likely in the corridor. Not research, not vials of dragon’s blood, but something precious and unique: the philosopher’s stone.

Her head was filled with a jumble of thoughts as Holly made her way back to the tower and into bed. The stone granted two major gifts: the ability to transform any metal into gold and the creation of the elixir of life, which made people immortal. She tossed and turned in her bed for ages, the drawing of the stone on the cover of one of the biographies imprinted on her mind.

The secret in the corridor was huge, but it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t a murderbot or an evil spell to enslave the world. It just gave people gold and immortality. Holly had no need for either—she now knew her parents had left her gold and she was eleven and her whole life stretched out ahead of her—but it seemed that Quirrell did. Maybe he’d run out of money for all that garlic he kept buying. Maybe he was really scared of death.

Death… it made her sad, but it didn’t scare Holly. Not her own, anyway. Holly didn’t know what she’d do if she lost Ron or Hermione.

Or Quirrell, she thought, swallowing. Unable to stay still for any longer, Holly threw open her bedcurtains and stood up, looking around. She was drawn to Hermione’s bed, just a meter away.

“Hermione?” Holly whispered, tapping on her friend’s bedcurtains. “Hermione!”

There was no sound for ages until Hermione drew open the curtains, scowling blearily at Holly. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No, do you?” Holly asked, climbing inside.

Hermione’s scowl deepened as she drew the curtains closed. “It’s either too late or too early. We have potions first block tomorrow. I hope you have a good reason for this.”

“I have a great reason,” Holly said, settling cross-legged at the foot of Hermione’s bed. “If you do something bad for a good reason, is what you did still bad?”

Hermione groaned. “Holly, it’s too late for moral dilemmas.”

“It’s probably too early by now,” Holly corrected. She’d been up for hours. “C’mon, Hermione, you know everything and I need help.”

“Are you actually going to explain the situation to me?”

“Nope,” Holly said, unable to meet Hermione’s eyes for a moment. When she turned her attention back to Hermione, her friend seemed a lot more awake.

“Is it something that could get you in trouble?” Hermione asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then you shouldn’t do it.”

Holly smiled, because that was such a Hermione answer. “I think I’m going to do it anyway.”

“Then I don’t know what you want from me. Just try sleeping on it, I guess,” Hermione harrumphed. She pulled aside the covers and patted the spot next to her, the bed more than big enough for two first year girls. “Stay. I can keep an eye on you better from here.”

“You’re about three seconds from falling asleep,” Holly said, but she still crawled over and lay down next to Hermione. It was warm here, and everything smelled like Hermione’s minty shampoo, and Holly wanted to blurt everything out into the darkness around them.

“You can tell me anything, you know that, right?” Hermione asked.

“I know,” Holly replied. “It’s just…” Stupid, so stupid, and yet she couldn’t stay away. It would’ve made so much more sense for her to do it if Quirrell were super nice instead of dark and sometimes mean and just Quirrell-y. “Personal.”

Hermione hummed in response, more than half on the way back to slumber.

Holly closed her eyes and dreamed, clouds and chaos and a gruff voice on an island shack and a light as green as her eyes. Hogwarts really brought out the drama in her, Holly decided when she woke up, but she also couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d already jumped off her own personal cliff, and everything she did now was only her in freefall.

Worst case scenario, Holly thought, but out all the horrible paths this could lead to, the worst she could imagine was one where she did nothing at all.

*

Holly slept on it for a few more nights, read up on the philosopher’s stone for a few more days, and watched Quirrell as covertly as she could during mealtimes and class times. Quirrell the thief did not act much differently than Quirrell the professor or Quirrell the dark wizard, the sides of the man completely in sync. Knowing another facet of his character only changed the way Holly observed him. Holly looked for thievery and deception in everything he did.

And she was forced to realize that, most likely, that stutter was all for show. It stood to reason that the rest of the over the top aspects of Quirrell’s behavior—everything that was absent from their office hour sessions—weren’t real, either. The cloud of garlic that hung over him, the abject fear of vampires, the frightened way he’d jump when someone talked to him unexpectedly. It hurt to see the illusion go, but Holly hadn’t grown to like the man who Quirrell was in class, but the man he was in that little office of his. And that man, for better or worse, was still there.

She found him during his office hours on Thursday, nearly a full week since the conversation she’d overheard. Quirrell’s usual reluctance to let her in lingered for a quarter of an hour, but it faded in the face of her perseverance and his explanation of why vampires were able to see their reflections in muggle mirrors but not magical ones. Holly wanted to be him when she grew up, just a little. Not like him in personality or unhappiness with his chosen profession, but the way he was knowledgeable and spoke so surely, conviction in every word. It was rare that she could stump him with a question.

When Quirrell’s mini-lecture came to an end, Holly held back from asking all the new questions on the tip of her tongue. Her heart felt like it was trying to beat itself out of her chest and into her hands, and suddenly she wished she had Ron and Hermione here with her. It would’ve been impossible—Hermione would have gone to a professor if she’d heard a whisper of theft and Ron had no reason to trust Quirrell either—but Holly still wanted their comforting presences.

Holly swallowed, bunching up her robes in her hands. She could still leave, go to Snape or McGonagall or even Dumbledore, she could— “Do you know about the philosopher’s stone?”

Quirrell’s eyes gained a sharpness that Holly had seen only a few times. “You have been meddling in things that don’t concern you.”

Holly nodded. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just that a few weeks ago, R— er, I, just me, I accidentally found the third floor corridor that Headmaster Dumbledore talked about during the feast and I heard growling from outside the door, like a guard dog. And then I came upon Snape and McGonagall talking about how they were guarding Flamel’s life’s work and I got curious.”

“They were speaking of it in the open?” Quirrell asked, in that way that said he knew exactly what she meant.

“Not in the open, but if they didn’t want anyone to hear, they should have shut the door properly,” Holly huffed. When Quirrell didn’t seem too angry, she continued with, “I heard… they were talking about how you were trying to steal it.”

“Is that right,” Quirrell said, his voice suddenly glacial. “Are you making a foolish attempt to stop me?” Quirrell’s words were quiet, hard. It was the first time he’d looked dangerous in her presence. Before that overheard conversation, Holly would’ve thought he couldn’t pull it off, but he could, and it was as though danger was a well-worn shroud for him.

“No, I’m making a foolish attempt to help you.” Holly’s voice didn’t waver in the face of Quirrell’s hard look. She’d had so much time to think about this, so much time to stare up at her bed curtains and wonder. “If you want my help, that is.”

Hard lines seemed to engrave themselves into Quirrell’s face, and Holly had the uncomfortable realization that she couldn’t see his hands, which meant one could very well be on his wand. Hers twitched for her own, but it would never be enough to defend herself against her defense professor. She didn’t want to have to, either.

“Have you told anyone else about this? Tell me the truth.”

“No,” Holly quickly blurted out. “No one. I didn’t think Ron or Hermione would approve.”

“And that is your concern?”

“And that they might try to stop you or look for evidence to turn you in,” Holly admitted. Because Quirrell was going to ask, Holly said, “I don’t want that to happen. Stealing is bad, but, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction. It’s just a stone. I don’t really understand why you want it, but it’s important to you, isn’t it? So important that you’d be a professor to get it.”

“Just a stone,” Quirrell repeated, but he was starting to look less like a particularly angry statue. “The Girl-Who-Lived would of course have no use for gold or immortality.”

That hurt. “Because my mum and dad died and left me their gold. And because I’m eleven, I’m already going to live a long time, I don’t need forever. Why do you want it?”

“To perform a ritual that would return me to the man I used to be,” Quirrell replied, with more honesty than Holly had expected. He leaned back, crossing his arms, and there was no wand in his fingers. “You are aware that this is madness on your part.”

“This is friendship,” Holly corrected. Maybe Quirrell didn’t want an eleven year old as his friend, like Holly wouldn’t want a one year old as her friend, but he still had it.

Quirrell looked like he wanted to refuse just on the principle of the matter. “I’ll take your word for it.” His gaze rose from her eyes to just above them, and then his eyes met hers. There was a strange sort of gravity in his voice as he said, “You will regret your decision one day, Miss Potter.”

A line of goosebumps rose unbidden on her skin, because those weren’t idle words, and they weren’t the words of someone who was only a professor. They were a stark reminder of the fact that Quirrell had a whole life outside these walls that Holly mostly didn’t know about. As open as he sometimes was, he was never completely open. Holly had to wonder if he ever was, with anyone at all.

“Would you hurt me?” Holly asked, quietly.

Instead of answering, Quirrell rose from his seat and walked around the desk, coming to a stop next to her chair. Holly looked up and up at him, wondering if it was her imagination or if Quirrell’s eyes really did look reddish in this light.

“I will have you swear a vow to help me with the retrieval of the stone to the best of your ability.”

Holly stood to match him, even though the added height wasn’t all that much. He looked like he was waiting for something, but there were so many thoughts in Holly’s head that she didn’t know which one he wanted. “Can I ask you for something too?”

“Were you anyone else,” Quirrell murmured, a sharp tilt to his lips. “What does your little heart desire, if neither gold nor immortality even tempt you?”

“Not everyone in the world wants those,” Holly said.

“Quite enough do.”

And Quirrell was in that majority, but Holly… There was so much she wanted, most of which either Quirrell couldn’t give her, or she knew she couldn’t ask of him. A vow to be her friend wouldn’t be any vow at all, because friendship wasn’t something that could be bought. “I want you to make the elixir for Mr. and Mrs. Flamel until they can make another stone for themselves.”

“I don’t think you know how bargaining works,” Quirrell said, slipping his wand out of his robes but holding it sideways, pinching it in the middle instead of grasping it by the handle.

“Of course I do. You tell me what you want and I tell you what I want and we meet in the middle. You want the stone. I want you to be happy and I want the Flamels to be alive.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Quirrell huffed. “What is wrong with you that you won’t even try to ask for your safety?”

“If you really wanted to hurt me, I don’t think you’d let the vow stop you,” Holly carefully said, looking up at him. She wondered if anything would. Friendship, sentiment, the fact that she’d never tried to hurt him. “Will you, though?”

Quirrell was silent for a long moment. He reached out, brushing Holly’s bangs aside with his wand. Holly almost took a step back when his wand traced down the slightly raised scar tissue of the lightening bolt that reached its way down her forehead. “One day, you will act against me, and I will respond. Until then, your life is your own.”

“What if I never do?” Holly asked, both grateful and not that it was Quirrell’s wand he had chosen and not the painful touch of his skin.

“Then you would make my life very simple,” Quirrell replied, a wry quirk to his lips. “But fate is never so kind.” He wrapped his hand over the hilt of his wand and held it sideways in front of her. “Take the other end.”

Holly did, the wand cold under her palm.

“Repeat after me,” Quirrell said, and she did, the words coming out steadily as she matched him with, “I, Holly James Potter, vow to help you retrieve the stone for your own use to the best of my ability. I swear to uphold my vow in word and in spirit, lest the worst befall on me.”

Something rose between them, heavy in the air around them, but Quirrell ignored it, beginning to speak. “I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, vow to provide the elixir of life to Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel until they no longer require it. I swear to uphold my vow in word and in spirit, lest the worst befall on me.”

Magic, it had to be, was heavy in the air all around them, pushing out everything else, even air. Holly didn’t release the wand even when it felt like she couldn’t bear to continue this much more, but before she could truly panic, the heaviness whooshed out like a popped balloon. Holly heaved, breathing hard, and saw Quirrell’s nose flare as he more subtly took in some air.

“What’s the worst?” Holly asked, realizing she should have asked before.

“The loss of your magic,” Quirrell said.

Holly nodded. She tried to imagine a life without magic—going back to the Dursleys with no hope of Hogwarts—and knew she would’ve preferred death to the loss of her magic. “Tom Marvolo Riddle?”

“Is a name you should do your best to forget,” Quirrell said, though he didn’t sound too angry. “You will hear from me when the time is right.”

“And before then?” Holly asked, picking up her schoolbag.

“Your presence is as unwelcome as it was an hour ago,” Quirrell replied, and there was just a touch of amusement in his gaze.

Holly’s hand still felt cold despite having let go of Quirrell’s wand, but those words sent a jolt of warm contentedness through her. Perhaps she really was insane, but she knew she had dragged Quirrell into her insanity, even if it was only a bit.

Over the next few days, Holly walked around thinking that at any moment Quirrell was going to jump out and tell her they were heading for the third floor corridor. But as the days passed, Holly’s shoulders lost their tenseness and she realized her professor was settling in to wait for the perfect moment. She distracted herself with homework (or rather, allowed Hermione to dictate her study time more), learning chess from Ron (she still lost every game, but now she lasted fifteen minutes instead of five), and continuing to covertly watch Quirrell (which, judging by the exasperated looks he sometimes shot her, she hoped she was keeping the secret from everyone better than she was from Quirrell).

As they walked to Charms one day, Hermione asked, “Did you do it? That thing you were worried about?”

In the midst of everything that had happened, Holly had forgotten she’d even asked Hermione for advice. Sort of, anyway.

“Do what?” Ron asked, looking between them. “Hey, are you two keeping me out of the loop? It’s not my fault I’m not a girl and can’t join in your slumber parties or whatever.”

“We don’t have slumber parties,” Hermione said, crossing her arms. After a moment, she said, “But we do, occasionally, stay up late because Holly won’t let me sleep until I answer a burning question of hers.”

“That only happened once,” Holly quickly said. Suddenly, she had the feeling that Hermione had asked her question in front of Ron because she wanted to get an answer out of Holly and Ron was even more determined about ferreting out things than Hermione. “And yes, I did. I can’t talk about it, though.”

“Like a magical promise kind of can’t talk about it?” Ron asked, furrowing his brow. “That’s serious stuff.”

“Don’t be silly, Holly would’ve never impulsively sworn a magical vow to anyone. Right, Holly?” The tone of her voice said there was exactly one answer to her question.

Holly just shrugged at them. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Hermione gave her a careful look. “Is it bad? Is it hurting you?”

It’s only hurting my head, Holly thought, and my heart a bit. “No, it’s not. And that’s all I’m saying on the matter.” She started walking faster, shooting out in front of her friends and arriving to the Charms classroom the first out of all the students. Ron and Hermione came minutes later and Holly tried not to think about what they must have been talking about without her. She didn’t have any reason to be upset—it was Holly who was keeping secrets, not them—but she was anyway. Because of things she couldn’t talk about, think about, or else she felt like she really would go mad. It made no sense, but she felt less adrift when she talked to Quirrell, even though he was the source of all her problems.

“Do you want to hear about my plans for SPEW?” Hermione asked, sitting down next to her.

On Holly’s other side, Ron didn’t even groan, though he did mutter, “Spewing information, more like.”

“I heard that,” Hermione said sharply.

“Sorry.”

“I’d love to hear about it,” Holly said, relieved.

It wasn’t really an apology, but she spent more time with Hermione on her house elf club ideas than she would have had she not been keeping such a large secret. Holly pulled Ron into it too, because if she had to suffer, then so did he. Holly wasn’t sure what she thought about house elves. She knew what a life of serving ungrateful people was like, but the house elves seemed happy doing their jobs. She found more of an interest in learning to knit. Not to sneak socks into the house elves’ pillowcases, but because it was nice to have something to do with her hands. Holly even refrained from teasing Ron, who’d bashfully admitted that he already knew how to knit from helping his mother with her projects. When she first began her scarf, Holly’s hand hovered over the ball of yellow yarn, but she knew deep down that while Quirrell did have a tiny streak of yellow, it wasn’t his dominant trait. Hufflepuff belonged to the man Quirrell pretended to be. When it came to the man he actually was, the man who spoke of coming back and viewed her so firmly as a possible enemy… Holly pushed the thought out of her mind and reached for a bright orange that didn’t remind her of any of the Hogwarts houses.

She didn’t regret it, because she’d done it for the professor she’d gotten to know during his office hours. But a part of her wondered, and a part of her wished things had been simpler. If her Quirrell had been someone less, someone easier, someone who hadn’t promised to leave her alone with so much gravity in his words.

*

Holly came across it in early December, before the beginning of winter holidays: a strange mirror in a room on the third floor. It was the only thing inside the room, standing tall at its center. It looked old, but there was not a speck of dust on it.

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

It showed only her at first. A short, scrawny girl, her shoulder-length red hair too messy to properly hide her scar unless she’d brushed her hair only minutes before. Her Gryffindor tie was askew, so Holly reached to fix it, but her reflection didn’t move with her. Instead the girl in the mirror smiled at someone just out of the frame, the smile full of uncomplicated joy, the kind of smile that Holly so rarely gave to a person. To the feeling of riding on her broom, yes, and to the joy of getting an acceptable from Snape, but people were so very complicated. A foreign hand began to appear first, and then another, and Holly knew those hands before she even saw the big chocolate cake that she’d made for Dudley’s birthday last year. Except this cake wasn’t made by her but for her, and Aunt Petunia entered the mirror with a soft smile on her lips. It was directed at Holly, not at anyone else at all, and her aunt’s lips moved in soundless words. Uncle Vernon appeared next, looking at her proudly. Dudley appeared next with a ball for them to play catch with. Even though Holly didn’t like playing ball, he was still trying in his own way. Her parents stood in the distance, their faces too far away to make out. Holly didn’t know what they looked like, but her mother held a small bundle of blankets with so much protectiveness. Hermione and Ron and Draco zoomed in and out on broomsticks, waving to her, while Greg and Vince threw cupcakes at a running, yelling Lavender. The Holly in the mirror glanced at something far away and reached toward the edge of the mirror, pulling in a hooded man whose hands tightly clutched the philosopher’s stone. It didn’t hurt when she took one of those hands into her own.

Holly couldn’t bear to look at the mirror for very long, but she came back the next day, this time bringing Ron and Hermione with her. Ron saw himself as the picture of success in the mirror, Head Boy and Quidditch captain and just a good as any of his brothers. Hermione smiled when she saw herself and said, “I’m graduating with full honors.”

“I don’t think they do that here,” Holly replied, wishing she could see what Hermione saw. In her view of the mirror, her mirror self only waved at her.

“They do in the mirror. I have some kind of acceptance letter in my hand. And everyone is cheering…” She cleared her throat. “Well, at least it’s not an unreasonable heart’s desire.”

“A what?” Ron asked.

Holly was glad he said it, because she had no idea either.

“Oh, you two. The words, they say I show not your face but your heart’s desire except backwards.”

Holly squinted up at the frame. Now that Hermione said it, it seemed obvious, but the words weren’t arranged neatly. They’d been put backwards and split up to make new words, just so that anyone reading them would have a harder time with it. Whoever created the mirror was kind of mean, she thought. Especially since she had a feeling that if she wasn’t careful about it, she’d give in to the urge to try to smuggle the mirror into her dorm room.

It was either that or hit it so hard it broke.

It was hard to look at it for very long, this picture of uncomplicated happiness where people cared about her and each other. Draco pulling Hermione up when she slipped halfway down her broom, Ron not giving Quirrell weird looks, Uncle Vernon clapping both her and Dudley on their shoulders. It was a life where everything could come together, her life with the Dursleys joining her life at Hogwarts and her so distant childhood.

Lavender joined them after she’d heard Holly and Hermione talking about the mirror, but she wouldn’t say what she saw.

Neither would Parvati, who took one look at the mirror and left the room.

“I already knew my deepest desire,” she said later.

Others slipped in and out of the room as word got out to most of Gryffindor. Most wouldn’t tell others the details of their deepest desires, the things the mirror showed them too personal to reveal. The Weasley twins took one look at the mirror and said they’d have to work hard to make it happen—and with more mischief. Draco, when Holly pulled him into the room, was the type to sit in front of the mirror and stare for a long while. Greg and Vince took their reflections with more seriousness than Holly thought them capable of.

No one had easy, uncomplicated desires, Holly thought as she sat down next to Draco. Hermione and Ron’s had seemed simple to her, but later in the darkness Hermione had talked about the expressions of her parents in the stands, so happy and accepting of her magic instead of mourning the doctor she could’ve been. In the library a few days after, Ron sighed over his textbooks and said he could want to be Head Boy all he wanted, but it was the kind of want he knew he couldn’t achieve. Not with how hard he found their subjects to grasp. I’m not Hermione, he’d said, and for the first time in a while there was bitterness there.

When Draco left, Holly stayed there, thinking she’d leave in a minute. Minute after minute passed, until it grew late and a sound came from the door. Holly looked back to see the headmaster standing in the doorway.

Scrambling up, Holly said, “Professor Dumbledore! Is it after curfew?”

This wasn’t how she’d ever wanted to meet the headmaster of her school. She knew him from chocolate frog cards (she had three of him now) and from across the Great Hall during mealtimes, but this was the closest she’d ever been to him. He looked older from this close, but his eyes were a clear blue behind his half-moon glasses.

“Only two hours past,” Dumbledore replied, but there was very little censure in his voice.

Holly was relieved the good cheer the man portrayed from afar was just as present in person. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“It has only been a century or so since I was in your place,” Dumbledore said, a twinkle in his eyes. “It took us professors longer than it should have to realize more footsteps were crossing this room than there should have been.”

Holly apologized again, though privately, she wondered at the fact that there hadn’t even been a lock on the door. “I didn’t realize students weren’t allowed in here. I just thought it was a mirror. Well, at first.”

“And now?” Dumbledore asked, stepping closer until he stood beside her, his gaze just as drawn toward the mirror as everyone else’s had been.

“It’s a mirror that shows you your greatest desire,” Holly said, her eyes not on the mirror but on the flickers of something in her elderly headmaster’s eyes. If Holly already had so many desires at eleven, she wondered what it would be like to look at the mirror at such an old age. Would she have found a way to achieve some part of her desire or would she look upon the mirror and think of just how little time she had left to do anything?

“Desire, but neither knowledge nor truth,” Dumbledore added to Holly’s words. “It is easy to waste away before the Mirror of Erised, hoping for a glimpse of how to make the desires one sees in it come true.”

“I don’t think there’s a way to make my desire come true, not exactly,” Holly said, glancing back at the Holly in the mirror. “But I think I know how to make some of it real.” Not her mum and dad, and the Dursleys were a lost cause, but maybe with time her friends would all get along. She would see Quirrell get the stone—both because she had to now that she’d given him her vow and because Holly was committed to seeing her mistakes through—and just the thought of how much it would hurt to touch his skin had her shuddering, but maybe it wouldn’t always be that way. But it wasn’t as though Quirrell was the hand-holding type anyway. Knowing it was rude but unable to help herself, Holly asked, “Is yours like that?”

“One day, perhaps,” Dumbledore replied, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “But in the meantime, I would settle for a pair of thick, woolen socks. One can never have enough socks.”

There was something behind Dumbledore’s gentle blue eyes that made her ache, but it wasn’t as though there was anything she could do. “I’m sorry. Um, that you don’t have enough socks in your life.”

“It’s quite a tragedy,” Dumbledore replied, guiding her out of the room.

The next day, Seamus bemoaned about the mirror vanishing from its room before he’d been able to look into it. Holly slipped into the corridor to double-check his words. There was nothing to even hint the mirror had been there except the stories from those who’d had a glimpse of it. It was forgotten quickly enough as the rumor mill turned to something about the Head Boy and his girlfriend from Beauxbatons, though Holly sometimes thought about the mirror in the space between dreaming and wakefulness.

Chapter Text

Winter holidays were a welcome break from the madness of Hogwarts. Holly hugged Hermione goodbye as her friend left for the horseless carriages that would carry the students to the train stop on the other side of the lake. Holly wished her a Merry Christmas and happily wished herself one too, because this would be the best Christmas of her life. She would go to sleep in a dorm room that hopefully wouldn’t feel too empty with only her to fill it, spend her days ignoring winter homework with Ron, and have a real Christmas dinner that she actually got to attend instead of only hearing sounds enjoyment from her cupboard.

After most of the students left, Holly joined the most of those who stayed behind in the great hall. They carried the little balls of light that popped out of Flitwick’s wand to the big pine trees that Hagrid had been carrying into the great halls all day, tapping the orbs with their wands and saying which color they wanted the ornament to become. Holly had a feeling her professor could do it all much more quickly on his own, but she was having too much fun to complain. She and Ron covered the tree closest to the Gryffindor table with so many red and gold ornaments that it ended up looking like a beautiful, gaudy mess.

On her way back to the tower, leaving Ron behind to have a second breakfast, Holly saw Dumbledore and McGonagall walking quickly and determinedly down the hallway. She didn’t think anything of it until one of the classroom doors ahead of her opened and her scar prickled even though she couldn’t see anyone there.

Holly stepped inside.

Quirrell was already waiting for her. He was as close to excited as she’d ever seen him, the set of his mouth resolute as his eyes glinted with anticipation. “Are you ready?”

I am, Holly realized, for all that she’d worried about this moment. Whatever happened now—and Dumbledore finding them was the best of the worst possible outcomes—Holly was ready. “Let’s go.”

Quirrell herded her out the door, closing it behind himself and beginning to stride toward the stairs to the third floor. Holly hurried after him, matching him two strides for one in order to keep up.

“We’re not disillusioning ourselves?” Holly asked, looking around for students or professors. There was no one there right now, the halls empty of most of the Hogwarts population, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be seen.

“What for?” Quirrell asked, glancing down at her.

Holly scowled at him, because that was definitely one of Quirrell’s tactics of getting her to slowly come to her own conclusions so that Quirrell didn’t have to do any work. Still, she thought it over, and, “We’re not actually suspicious, are we? It’s not past curfew and you’re not yet a fugitive for stealing the most coveted item in wizarding Britain.”

“If you believe that’s all I would be declared a fugitive for, you haven’t been paying attention. And what of you?”

A co-conspirator, that was what she was, a delinquent just like her aunt and uncle always told people she was. There was something freeing about living up to that on her own terms. But that wasn’t what people had to believe. “I’m your hostage. Or I was trying to stop you all along!”

“Or,” Quirrell said, lifting a tapestry and taking them down a shortcut, “You are Holly Potter, Girl-Who-Lived, and too precious for Dumbledore to truly punish you whatever you choose to do. To a point.”

Holly nodded, glancing down at her hands. It wasn’t as though she’d forgotten her status—it was hard to do so when even now people still gawked at her—but she hadn’t thought of it in that way. She didn’t like thinking in that way. “Do you really think so?”

“Everyone wants something from you, Miss Potter,” Quirrell replied, lifting another tapestry and revealing a more familiar hallway. Holly recognized that painting of a golden-haired man turning his friend into a tree. They were very close to the third floor corridor. “Dumbledore and I are only more obvious about it.”

“What does Dumbledore want?”

“Peace on earth, friendship with muggles, wizarding Britain bathed in the Light forevermore.” Quirrell’s words were too light for the serious look in his eyes. “What he wants from you specifically, you will learn for yourself.”

“You won’t tell me?” Holly asked, but she was distracted. The third floor corridor was upon them. There was the locked door that she, Ron, and Hermione had accidentally come upon. Shivering slightly, Holly wished her friends could be here right now. Quirrell was her friend and her favorite professor and the best adult in the wizarding world, but he wasn’t soft and safe like Hermione and Ron.

Quirrell stopped before the door, turning toward her with a strange light in his eyes. “He wants what any man in his position wants—hope.” There was something wrong with his sneer, but Holly couldn’t tell what. “It’s the folly of the old and the young alike, no matter the measures they take against it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with hope,” Holly said, and she heard a growl begin to rumble from the other side of the door. She could do with a little more hope right now. “You know what to do, right?”

“As a professor, I’ve been privy to the enchantments guarding the stone,” Quirrell agreed, tapping his wand against the door. The lock clicked open with an ease Holly hoped she would master one day. But Quirrell didn’t open it, instead twirling his wand in his hand and facing her. “I wonder, will you allow me the use of your wand?”

Holly’s fingers tightened around her wand automatically at his words. But when Quirrell noticed, he only looked amused.

“What’s wrong with yours?” she asked. There was a lot she would do, but her wand? Her fingers itched to hide it behind herself.

“It is a fine wand, but it isn’t my original wand, and it is reluctant to serve me.”

“Did the vampires snap your old one?” Holly couldn’t stop herself from saying. It was a lie, Quirrell’s story of his vampire attack, but it was an amusing one.

Quirrell shot her an unimpressed look. “I can still feel my tie to it. It is only lost. One day, I will have it back.”

Holly swallowed. She was a Gryffindor and she was a Potter and she was an Evans and none of those would give him her wand. She couldn’t be brave without it, she couldn’t be safe without it, she couldn’t be strong without it. ”Can’t you just order me to do it? With the oath?”

“Not even oaths can force a wand to become truly willing,” Quirrell replied. “If I take it from you, it will spend the entire time rebelling against me.”

Holly nodded. She could say no, she knew, and yet what was one wand when she was already helping him with so much more? Quirrell just kept asking and she kept saying yes, and Holly didn’t know where their path led. Maybe this was the end; maybe after today she’d never see him again. It wasn’t likely, but maybe.

“You’ll give it back when we’re done?”

“I will.” Quirrell’s voice was grave, his eyes catching hers instead of dropping to her wand.

Holly looked down at her wand. It was hers, but it was Ollivander’s before hers, and one day she would pass and it would go on to someone else. But right now... “I want you to listen to him today,” she said, sounding so young and so determined at the same time. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she felt a warmth in the wood for a moment. To Quirrell, she said, “Take good care of it, please.”

And then she flipped the wand and gave it to him hilt first.

Quirrell took it and ran his finger down the length. “Holly and phoenix feather.”

“Eleven inches,” Holly said, unnecessarily. She stomped down on the visceral discomfort of seeing her wand in someone else’s hand. And Holly wasn’t stupid, okay? She knew her wand was the second best option in the world for her professor. She knew, even when she didn’t want to know, even when she closed her eyes and tried to see the purple of Quirrell’s turban instead of a blinding green light. But it didn’t feel real in the light of day, not even when Quirrell wrapped his hand around her wand like he’d been born to wield it instead.

“Thank you,” Quirrell said, handing her his own wand.

“It’s so cold,” Holly murmured. The chill seeped into her fingers, the wand unwilling in a way she hadn’t even realized wands could be. Holly realized she’d never touched another’s wand; she had only hers and the unclaimed wands at Ollivander’s to compare this feeling too, but even those wands hadn’t felt like this. “Was it like this for you too?”

“At first, but I have no time to show you how to subdue it. It won’t work as well for you as it would for— its real wielder, but it will accept you well enough, as it did me.”

Without another word, Quirrell opened the door and began to speak. Holly peeked out from behind him and gasped quietly at the creature in the room. It was a huge, three-headed dog that took up nearly the entire room. Each of those three heads seemed ready to bite her. Beside her, a harp appeared and began to play. Instead of crunching the harp with their gigantic teeth, the three heads wavered woozily until they hit the floor with three loud thumps. Snores filled the room soon after.

“Wow,” Holly whispered. She followed Quirrell into the room, shivering as she neared the dog and realized the teeth poking out of its snout were half the size of her.

Quirrell pushed aside one of the animal’s paws, the action not causing it to even stir. Beneath was a trap door that Quirrell opened and leaned against the beast. “I will clear away the Devil’s Snare, but if any remain, do not struggle against the vines until I free you.”

“It’s that easy?” Holly asked. She’d only read about this plant in textbooks, which gave severe warnings about it. No one but a master herbologist should even go near it.

“While the enchantments here are vicious, they won’t be able to truly harm a student who may have stumbled inside—or anyone accompanying that student, as I made sure to add into the ward matrix,” Quirrell said, sounding rather smug and nothing like a man who’d already failed to get inside once.

Holly wondered if it was because he hadn’t really been trying, or if her wand really made that much of a difference. Threaded through her discomfort at seeing her wand in his hand was a little spark of pride that her wand was so perfect. While Quirrell blasted away the snare, Holly reached over and patted one of the beast’s three snouts. Its fur was so very soft, nothing like Aunt Marge’s bulldogs’. When Quirrell disappeared through the trap door, Holly gave the beast one last pat and followed in after him.

Wisps of the dark green plant still remained, flicking at her ankles, but most of it was gone. The walls of the cavern they’d been dropped into were marred by scorch marks and the air was thick with a weird-smelling smoke. From the length of the fall and the strangeness of the stone walls, Holly could believe that they were below Hogwarts instead of simply on the second floor, even though it made little sense. But then, magic rarely did.

She held Quirrell’s wand in front of her as they walked to the other end of the passage, which opened into a large room with strange little birds flying around. While Quirrell tried several charms on the door leading from the room, Holly looked more closely and realized the birds were actually keys with wings. With the same precision she used against Draco, she scoured the room and saw a key different from all the others.

“If you make me a broom, I can snatch the right one,” Holly said, not looking away from the key.

Quirrell tried another two charms before he said, “You have three minutes,” and made her a terrible but passable approximation of a broom.

Holly caught it for him with a whole minute to spare. The next challenge they had to overcome was a charmed chess piece set that came alive as soon as they entered the next room. All the pieces were taller than Holly, and even at an adult’s height, Quirrell only had a centimeter or two on the shortest of the figures.

“Choose a figure to replace,” Quirrell said, already stepping onto the square with the black king. The king took a bow and stepped off the table.

Holly was tempted to choose the queen because it was the strongest piece on the board, but she knew from losing against Ron so many times that even the queen could be sacrificed. If she was going to choose, she might as well choose the piece she liked most: the rook. It wasn’t as flashy as the queen, but it could move as far across the board as it wanted to, up and down and left and right. Even better, when she approached the square, she found grooves on the side of the rook that she could slip her fingers through. She climbed up to the top of the tower and sat down cross-legged on its flat top.

“Onward, noble rook,” she whispered when it was their turn.

Quirrell played chess with a serious expression that was similar to Ron’s, but he didn’t seem to hold much love for the game. When they won and Holly jumped from the top of her piece, she asked him about it.

Quirrell stepped off the board with an air of satisfaction as the pieces bowed towards them. “I’ve always found human beings much more interesting pieces.”

“That’s so creepy,” Holly replied, sighing.

“Wait here,” Quirrell said, pausing in front of the next door.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Only for first years with three months of spells under their belts,” Quirrell replied. He opened the door and closed it behind himself without letting her see the other side. But he didn’t shut it completely, and the scent of something gross filtered into Holly’s nostrils. There was a loud roar and a flash of red light that blinded her for a moment. She blinked rapidly and once she could see again, the door was open and Quirrell stood before her. “Don’t step onto any of the fluids.”

Holly stepped around the troll, pinching her nose but still gagging as she pulled the next door shut behind her. She heaved in the air, which smelled wet and stale, but at least it didn’t smell of troll.

“It wasn’t dead, was it?”

“Only stunned,” Quirrell replied. “The wards would have registered its death.”

And that had been the only thing stopping him, Holly realized, a queasiness in her stomach that wasn’t completely to do with the smell. She didn’t care about the troll’s life, exactly, because it was a beast instead of a being and a horrible beast at that. But it was sort of human-shaped and if she didn’t know anything about trolls, she might have thought they could talk and think just like any human.

Quirrell pulled a cloak of some sort from one of the pockets of his robes and threw it onto himself. Belatedly, Holly looked around the room, noticing the flames in the doorway ahead of them and the table at the center of the room. Various potions vials sat atop it, positioned for show, not as a workstation. Heat flared from behind her and Holly jumped forward. When she looked back, she saw the doorway behind her lit in a similar fire as the one ahead.

After pulling another cloak out of his pocket, Quirrell approached her and draped it over her shoulders. “Pull up the hood and it will protect you from the flames.”

Holly nodded, doing as he directed. The material was strangely soft and warmer than she would have expected. “Thanks.”

She glanced down at the sheet of paper on the desk—some sort of riddle—and watched her professor disappear into the flames. There was no scream of pain, so she assumed the cloaks would do their job. Holly clutched the fabric to her body and ran. She felt the slightest bit of warmth, but it wasn’t painful or even uncomfortable. When she opened her eyes, her gaze landed on a mirror she hadn’t thought she’d ever see again. She could only see the wooden left side of the Mirror of Erised and a hint of a sparkle to the glass.

Quirrell stood facing it with a hard frown to his face. As Holly drew closer, she heard him muttering spells and ordering the mirror to give him the stone.

“Dumbledore said nothing about this protection,” Quirrell muttered. “That blasted old fool hadn’t even trusted his staff with this.”

“He wasn’t exactly wrong,” Holly said from beside him.

Quirrell breathed in a deep, aggravated breath. “Tell me what you see in the mirror.”

Holly had carefully kept her eyes averted from the glass, but at Quirrell’s words she forced herself to face it. She didn’t want to see the happy scene of her greatest desires now, not with the real Quirrell right next to her.

But that wasn’t what she saw.

“I only see our reflections,” she said, a little confused. “Only you are holding the stone.”

“I see the same.” Quirrell walked around the mirror, cursing as he tested the glass and the wooden frame. His reflection went with him, while Holly’s stood still, reflecting Holly’s hand when she waved at the girl in the mirror. Eventually, Quirrell looped back around, coming to a stand next to her. “He must have altered it in some way.”

Holly kept staring at the two figures in matching cloaks in the mirror, one short and red-haired, the other tall with a big purple turban. Show me a sign, she thought, meeting her reflection’s eyes. We’re trying to get the stone, but it’s alright, I promise. Quirrell will take good care of it. And I don’t even want it.

The corner of her reflection’s mouth turned up and she reached out, but not toward Holly.

Her eyes wide, Holly did the same, extending her hand to the side, palm open and waiting. She didn’t break her gaze from the mirror, but she felt it instantly when Quirrell took her hand. For a flicker of a second, her palm was warm, skin on skin, and but the too familiar pain flared between them the very next moment. Holly clutched Quirrell’s hand, not letting go even when it hurt, because the scene in front of her was changing.

The images in the mirror kept changing, fleeing from her vision before she could reach any real understanding. A young boy in faded clothes, small bedroom, a cardboard box atop which he rolled a pair of dice, a dozen random objects cluttered next to him. The dice rolling again and again, snake eyes, snake eyes, snake eyes, and the boy turned toward her and his eyes weren’t a snake’s at all. Glinting, glittering objects, but there wasn’t enough sunlight in a cave. Red beard, blond, gray eyes, red now. A pale white snake, too big to be anything but magical, who whispered something Holly could almost hear. The world was burning and yet he faced away from her, it, everything, his shoulders tense, his hand reaching for something neither the Holly in the mirror nor the real Holly could see. Shadows everywhere, but the Holly in the mirror took one shadow’s hand, curling her fingers through something that shouldn’t exist.

Hope, mirror Holly mouthed. With her other hand, mirror Holly threw something too fast for Holly’s eyes to follow. But she didn’t have to, because it was already there in her hand, the one that hurt so terribly. Half in hers, half in Quirrell’s, and when Holly wrenched her hand away, she let him keep it.

“The stone,” Quirrell breathed, turning it over and tapping it with his wand. Her wand.

When Holly looked back into the mirror, all she could see were their reflections. “What was that?”

“What did you see?” Quirrell asked, though his attention was mostly on the stone.

“I don’t know. It was all confusing,” Holly said. She shook off the lingering pain in her hand, trying to shake off her confusion just as easily. The Mirror of Erised drove people mad, she knew that, and yet… She stared at the glass again, trying to make the scenes come back. “You didn’t see it?”

“I saw the same thing I did before: our reflections.” Quirrell seemed curious, but evidently not enough to linger. He slipped the stone into one of the pockets of his robes, hidden under his cloak. “Let’s go. I don’t know how long my distraction will allow us to stay unnoticed.”

“Alright.” Holly hoped Quirrell didn’t notice her distraction, because she couldn’t talk about this. Not yet, not until she figured out what she saw.

The Mirror of Erised showed a person’s greatest desires.

But those weren’t her desires, were they?

And yet she couldn’t reconcile them with the man who’d been standing next to her.

You’re so confusing, she thought, looking ahead at the man who waited for her by the fiery doorway. And it wasn’t because she was young; Holly didn’t think she would understand Quirrell even if she turned a hundred years old. Maybe even the mirror didn’t understand him. She walked through the two fires with him and held her breath through the room with the troll, glancing down at the body. Its chest was moving with unconscious breaths.

It was only when they got to the giant chess board that Holly asked, “Do you really like life so much that you want to live forever?”

“Merlin save me from this,” Quirrell muttered.

“He already is,” Holly said, a little sadly. Quirrell made her feel all sorts of bad emotions, but there were so many good ones there too. She didn’t want him to leave. But, “You’re going to leave now, aren’t you? Even if no one can prove it was really you who stole the stone?”

“I am,” Quirrell admitted. “I have old plans to resurrect and new ones to set in motion. I can’t do it while spending my days teaching little brats—and neither do I want to.”

“Even for Hogwarts?” Holly asked. “It’s amazing here.”

“Even for Hogwarts,” Quirrell replied, but there was still something wistful in his tone. “But I won’t be leaving my position unfilled. Perhaps you’ll like my replacement.”

“I won’t,” Holly muttered, kicking at the closest grainy little stones. They were nearing the room where the Devil’s Snare used to be. “He won’t be as— Quirrell-y.”

“I think you’ll find him to be perfectly Quirrellsome,” Quirrell replied. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

Holly squeaked as the spell lifted her into the air, and then she laughed, going higher and higher, twirling up into the darkness above her. When she began to hear music still playing from the beast’s room, she hummed along with it. Quirrell flew beside her at a steady pace, but Holly hadn’t even heard him say a spell for himself. The room they reached was exactly as they had left it, which visibly pleased Quirrell. He ushered her out of the room and vanished the harp behind himself. When he hurried down the third floor corridor, Holly followed him since he hadn’t told her to leave. She didn’t have much time left to spend with him, although she knew that one day they would meet again. Hopefully as friends, but Holly would settle for anything other than enemies.

Also, Quirrell still had her wand and Holly kind of needed that.

Chapter Text

Quirrell carefully led them all the way up to the fifth floor and into a corridor where she’d never stepped foot in, not for class nor exploration. Behind one of the doors was a room that obviously hadn’t been a classroom for a very long time. Shelves lined the walls, the books and jars of strange stuff that sat on them dusty. Holly could see whole clusters of mold in some of the jars. The desks in the room had all been shoved to one side to make room for some kind of ritual space on the right side of the room. There was a cauldron at the center of a rune circle and a few objects in a pile just outside the circle. Holly’s mind flashed back to the dice and other things in the mirror, but this was completely different. There was a ritual dagger, some plants, long silvery hair, a feather with all the colors of the sunset.

“If you’re staying, don’t approach any closer and don’t interrupt me,” Quirrell said, stepping inside the circle.

“Can I help?” Holly asked, dubiously. If this was an evil kind of ritual, she didn’t want to be a sacrifice or anything.

“I decided against that option,” Quirrell replied, which made no sense.

Holly watched him without truly understanding what was happening. It was interesting in the way that watching any of her professors do magic was interesting; they always showed an enviable amount of skill and precision in their work. Quirrell was mostly silent, the only sounds from the things he threw into the cauldron, one of which was the blood-red stone that had appeared between their hands. Holly was relieved to realize that the ritual dagger had been for cutting into one of the plants, not into Quirrell’s body.

“Don’t panic,” Quirrell called out, and then there was nothing at all.

The room was pitch black, like all the light had been sucked out of it. All the sound, too, and Holly felt as though she was a discombobulated brain in the midst of nothingness. It was extremely unnerving. It lasted long enough for her to panic, but not long enough for her to try to do anything more than wave her arms around and call out. She blinked—at least she thought she did, it was hard to tell—and the world was normal again. A white mist covered the right side of the room. As it faded, she saw a body lying on the floor.

“Quirrell?” She itched to run out, but if there was one thing she trusted, it was that her professor wouldn’t allow himself to die.

The mist cleared further and revealed another body in the room, this one standing upright, his back to her. He was barefoot, wearing only the cloak that Quirrell had pulled out earlier.

“Can I come closer?”

“You may,” the new man said, not turning around. He was fishing something out of the big cauldron next to him.

Carefully, Holly approached, her heart thumping so hard that the rest of her couldn’t keep up. The body on the floor was Quirrell—there could be no doubt about that—but as unfamiliar as the new man was, his voice held a familiar authoritative cadence. Holly reached for Quirrell’s wrist and gasped when the touch no longer pained her. Even better, there was a pulse. “He’s alive, thank Merlin.”

“I told you he would be,” the man said. This time, he did turn around and Holly scrambled up to meet his gaze.

He was older than Quirrell, not like McGonagall or Dumbledore, but maybe the same age as Snape. He was taller now, and the man’s features were squarer than Quirrell’s, his skin less pale and his hair a dark brown. Holly realized right then and there that she didn’t know what color Quirrell’s hair was, only the color of his favorite turban. He had a strong jaw and thin lips, but all of that was eclipsed by the striking red of his eyes. They were the red of the philosopher’s stone, scarlet and creepy, with a ring of a darker red around his irises. The color was all wrong, but the look in his eyes was still the same, fierce and brilliant.

“Well met, Miss Potter,” the man said, though he didn’t offer a hand.

There wasn’t any doubt in Holly’s mind that the curse of their touch had followed him to this new body. This man wasn’t as familiar as Quirrell and it frightened her a little, the fact that all her good memories were attached to a different face. “It’s not really a first meeting, is it?”

“Of sorts,” the man replied.

“Was he ever awake?” Holly glanced down at Quirrell’s unconscious form.

“No,” said the man after a moment of silence. “He won’t remember the past year, and you will not remind him.”

“I don’t need to. He’s not you.” Quieter, she added, “He’s never been you.”

“You will find him a much more deserving favorite professor, I believe,” the man told her. With a wave of his hand, all the ritual objects in the room vanished, leaving only the desks and the shelves and the three people in the room who had both too many names between them and not enough. He held out the wand in his hand to her. “May it serve you well.”

Holly took her wand back from him. Warmth tingled through her like that of the sun. “Not too well, though?”

“Only if you turn it against someone else,” the man said, a hint of amusement in his voice.

Holly was going to miss this. She wouldn’t miss the confusion and despair that came along with this man, but she would miss the better parts. “I’m going to write to you. Will you write back?”

“If your letters are particularly interesting,” the man replied. “Do you truly wish to write to me?”

“You’re particularly interesting,” Holly parroted. “And… Quirrell hasn’t surpassed you as my favorite professor yet. You have future office hours to make up for.”

The man inclined his head before crossing the room. The large windows opened with each step he took until the room was filled with chilly December winds. He turned back one last time, his eyes so very red. “Until we meet again. Do try not to get yourself killed, especially not in midnight Quidditch matches.”

“That never happened,” Holly said, weakly. “But you can’t die, either.”

“No, I can’t,” the man replied. He stepped onto the ledge of the window, the cloak fluttering around him. “You should do your best to remember that.”

And just like that, Voldemort was gone.

She knew there would be nothing to see, but Holly still pulled herself onto the ledge of the window and sat there for a little while, staring out at the Hogwarts grounds. This window had a perfect view of the Quidditch pitch, but she couldn’t see a hint of Voldemort’s presence. And he was Voldemort, wasn’t he, Holly thought, sighing into the frigid air. But just as the cloak had kept her cool from the flames in the doorway, it kept her warm sitting here right now. There was only so much she could deny when the real Quirrell lay on the ground only two meters away. A man who’d been hurt and possessed by the same man who even now she couldn’t keep from calling her friend. It would be different if he’d just attack her, but he didn’t. He kept not doing it and it was utter insanity, all of this.

Holly breathed in the winter air until she grew tired of moping around. She wasn’t a Gryffindor for nothing. Recklessness was a positive trait in her house, and Holly didn’t deal well with regret. It was done.

The smart thing to do would have been to drag Quirrell out into the hallway and let someone else find him, but Holly couldn’t force herself to do that. Instead, she slipped Quirrell’s wand into his pocket and ran out of the room and down the nearest staircase. She was panting as she reached the hospital wing and banged on Madam Pomfrey’s office door.

“Ma’am, I found Professor Quirrell passed out in a classroom on the sixth floor!” Holly yelled through the door.

Things went rather quickly after that.

Holly was allowed to stay until Quirrell was brought down to the hospital wing, but she was ushered out with Madam Pomfrey’s assurances that he would survive.

“It’s a sensitive matter,” was all Madam Pomfrey would say after a whole host of diagnostic charms. “Who I need now is Dumbledore, but he isn’t in the castle right now.”

“Were is he?” Holly asked, looking back at Quirrell even as she walked out of the room.

“Off on very important business,” Pomfrey replied.

Holly left the hospital wing with a sugar-free ice quill and the niggling feeling that her headmaster’s important business wasn’t very good at all. When she reached Gryffindor tower, she joined the Weasleys and the other students in the common room. Her absence had been forgotten in favor of the news. Percy had heard from Penelope who’d heard from Eve who’d heard from her auror mother that the Hogwarts Express had been forced to stop halfway into its journey when an explosion had damaged the tracks a kilometer ahead of it. It had been a mess: tracks unable to be repaired by any means, a train full of confused and panicking students, and half the Hogwarts professors and auror department called in to lend aid. Percy despaired over not being there, as additional prefects must have been needed to keep order. Fred and George thought the whole thing was wicked. And Ron, Ron fiddled with a chess piece, throwing it up and down as he asked the question that would be on everyone’s minds: why? Why attack the train tracks, causing a gigantic mess for everyone since it meant the students would have to be apparated or portkeyed to King’s Cross? No one had been hurt; it had only been a few hours of irritation.

Holly could only shrug. No one had been hurt, she repeated to herself.

But one day, someone would, maybe even like her parents had been.

She leaned against Ron’s bony shoulder as she watched him demolish Percy at chess and wondered.

It came to her that she hadn’t used her time wisely while she’d still had Voldemort at Hogwarts. What she should have done was work on convincing him that murder was a bad and unnecessary thing to do to people. At least she still had letters, even though letters wouldn’t be quite as effective.

*

The next day, Holly was allowed to sit at Quirrell’s bedside on account telling Madam Pomfrey he was her favorite professor and she was really concerned about him. Quirrell wasn’t gravely injured, though he still needed to sleep off the lingering effects of ‘what occurred.’ Madam Pomfrey didn’t reveal any more than that. Quirrell looked even paler than usual against the stark white hospital bedsheets. The purple of his turban brought out the bruising under his eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all in months.

Holly wasn’t sure what people did while sitting in the hospital wing next to their formerly possessed professors. She’d last been in a hospital in order to get vaccinated to be allowed into muggle school. It had involved sitting around in waiting room chairs while her aunt looked like a lemon was forming in her mouth.

“And how is our Professor Quirrell doing?” asked Dumbledore’s familiar voice from the doorway of Madam Pomfrey’s office. He closed the door behind himself before Holly would eavesdrop any further. She heard their muffled voices through the door, but not any real details.

“I think eavesdropping has gotten me in enough adventures,” she told Quirrell’s unconscious form.

Quirrell didn’t have anything to say in reply. She hoped it wouldn’t be like that once he woke up. Rationally, Holly was aware that this Quirrell wasn’t her Quirrell. This was an entirely different person. But he wore the face of the man she’d come to know over all these months, while the other man’s face was that of a stranger’s. Possession really did make things rather confusing.

The door to Madam Pomfrey’s office opened after a while, but Dumbledore’s footsteps came toward her instead of away. He conjured a plush red armchair for him self and, to Holly’s delight, did the same with the chair she was sitting on.

“Much better, isn’t it?” Dumbledore said with a wink.

“So much better,” Holly agreed, sinking into the armchair. “Professor Quirrell is going to get better, isn’t he?”

“I’m sure Quirinus would be pleased to know one of his students is so faithfully watching over him,” Dumbledore said, but it was in that tone that had a different, less comforting destination in mind. “However, after a thorough investigation, we found that the Quirinus Quirrell we all got to know over these months was not his true self. It seems he fell under the possession of a dark power during his summer trip to Albania.”

“The vampires?” Holly asked.

“Worse,” Dumbledore said, gravely. “It is my greatest fear that this dark power was one that has been attempting to hang darkness over the wizarding world for a very long time. It is likely that Quirinus will awaken with little memory of the past year, and will need the aid of those closest to him to return to the man he used to be.”

“Professor Quirrell will still be Professor Quirrell, with or without his memory. He’s still going to be my favorite professor.” Maybe. Not Her Quirrell won’t be the man she’d gotten to know, but he’d still be someone.

“You must be very careful, my dear girl,” Dumbledore said, his tone kind but steeled in fire.

“You sound like you’ve given up on him completely.”

“I have.” He looked at her so very gently, and Holly wanted to squirm. She didn’t deserve the kindness in Dumbledore’s eyes, but she still had it. “But I don’t believe you have.”

“I don’t give up on my friends,” she said to him. “Not Ron, or Hermione, or Draco who’s not exactly my friend but he sort of is. Maybe Quirrell wasn’t my friend, because you can’t be friends with someone who’s old, but he’s still my favorite professor. I’m not going to just give up.”

“And if your friends lead you astray?” Dumbledore asked.

“Then you pull them with you instead.” Holly knew she was only eleven, but one day she’d be as old as Dumbledore and completely capable of doing more than turning matchsticks into needles. And matchstick-shaped needles, at that.

“I suppose all I can do is wish you luck,” Dumbledore said, standing up. He vanished his armchair with a poof but allowed Holly to keep hers. “My office door is always open to you, Miss Potter.”

“Thanks, professor,” Holly replied.

As she watched him leave, she wondered if he knew. She wondered if it mattered, at the end of the day. Dumbledore wasn’t going to kick her out and Voldemort was long gone and there was a man in a hospital bed who she didn’t know at all even though his face was so familiar. Magic really did make things infinitely more confusing, but Holly wouldn’t trade it for a muggle existence with the Dursleys for the world. Ron dropped by the hospital wing soon after to drag her to lunch, where the Weasley twins decided to spend the entire meal pretending to be Snape. Holly found it all terribly funny, though the professor kept shooting suspicious looks down at the lot of them from the staff table.

A week into the winter holidays, the real Professor Quirrell woke up. Holly stuck by the closed hospital wing door while Madam Pomfrey and Professor Dumbledore talked to him inside. Someone must have cast an anti-eavesdropping spell because Holly couldn’t hear a single thing no matter where she placed her ear. After some time had passed and Holly was just about ready to head back to the Gryffindor tower, the door opened.

“Not too long, he’s still recovering from what happened,” Madam Pomfrey said, gesturing her inside.

Dumbledore was already leaving, and said before he left, “I would be much obliged if you’d do me a favor, Miss Potter.”

“What is it?”

“Talk to Quirinus a bit for me,” Dumbledore replied, a twinkle in his eyes. “I think you might be able to give him some perspective.”

“Er, alright,” Holly agreed. Before she could ask what sort of perspective she needed to give her professor, Dumbledore was already striding down the hall. Madam Pomfrey was back in her office, so there was only Quirrell to focus on. Holly approached his bedside and was delighted to find that Dumbledore once again spelled an armchair for her in Gryffindor colors. “Hi, Professor Quirrell.”

“Hullo, Miss Potter,” said Professor Quirrell, smiling at her. “I hear you’re my b-best student.”

Holly repressed her shiver at the wrongness of the sight. It was as though her professor had been put through a funhouse mirror and spun around a dozen times. This Quirrell wore the same face and dark robes, but everything else about him was different. He was smiling genuinely at her with not a hint of any darker emotions and he was sitting up in bed, his posture more slumped than Holly had ever seen it. And worst of all, his purple turban was draped over the other visitor’s chair, leaving the professor’s shoulder-length light brown hair to hang freely.

“It’s very nice to meet you, sir,” Holly said, even if everything about this Quirrell was all wrong. She kept thinking of him as not-Quirrell, but that was wrong. This was Quirrell as he should be, even if he wasn’t her Quirrell.

Quirrell sighed. “For the very first time, despite my b-body being here every day. I’ll be honest with you, I’m strongly considering quitting this job. The headmaster even has offered to waive my contract because of the circumstances I signed it under.”

“You’ll go back to being the Muggle Studies professor?”

Quirrell shook his head. “No, that position has already been filled. I suppose I’ll do some tutoring. It’s what I did t-two years ago before I began to teach here.”

“Oh,” Holly murmured. Don’t be selfish, she told herself, but she still said, “But don’t you like teaching at Hogwarts? I know you don’t remember teaching this semester, but you already have all these lesson plans through the end of the school year. And all the students love you!” Sort of. Kind of. Holly liked him, anyway. “We’ll be sad to see you leave.”

“I suppose it would be possible for me to stay until the end of the school year,” Quirrell said, thoughtfully. “Only until the end of the school year. I don’t want to get caught up in the curse b-business.”

“Curse business?”

“There’s a curse on the Defense position, has been for decades. Hogwarts hasn’t been able to keep a professor for most of the year and unless the professors only signed a one-year contract, the position would do its utmost to oust them from the job. I swear, the b-best indicator of something being wrong with me should have been that I even took the job at all.” He glanced away, something painful crossing his expression for a moment. “No one even noticed.”

“I’m sorry,” Holly said, even though the words never made anything better.

Quirrell patted her hand. “It’s quite alright. Now, tell me about what I’ve already taught you kids.”

“Of course! I can even bring my notes tomorrow and get some of the other years’ notes…”

Holly stuck around for her entire time allotted by Madam Pomfrey and came back the next day, too, bearing a pile of papers the size of someone’s head. Her own DADA notes weren’t very good, but she did have a copy of Percy’s and others’ in the pile, and she’d owled Hermione that very day to ask her to photocopy hers. This Quirrell wasn’t her Quirrell, but as the days passed, Holly realized she liked him anyway. He was nice and soft-spoken and young, only five years out of Hogwarts himself, something she hadn’t realized until his skin began to return to its natural color instead of looking gaunt and pale.

He wasn’t Voldemort, but that was alright, because the world only needed one Voldemort, anyway.

It took Holly two weeks to write to her real favorite professor. Holly shredded so many pieces of parchment as she tried to figure out how to address it. Dear Professor Quirrell wouldn’t work anymore when there was a real one, Dear not-Quirrell sounded bad, Dear Voldemort was very un-secretive (and besides, Holly still had trouble calling him that inside her head, let alone outside it), but eventually she settled on Dear Favorite Professor.

Hermione is always telling me to be more organized, so I’ve divided this letter into four main parts, Holly began to write.

1. Telling you about everything that’s happened since you left
2. Questions
3. More questions
4. A treatise on why problems shouldn’t be solved through murder

I think part two is the most interesting but you should really consider part four...

Voldemort wrote back the same week as Christmas and the fact that he did tied for her second-best Christmas gift. The tie was with a beautiful invisibility cloak that she received on Christmas morning. The note that came with it read: Your father left this cloak in my possession before he died and it is time that I pass it onto you. It is my dearest hope that you use it as he did: intrepidly, loyally, and perhaps with a dash of a marauder’s mischief. Merry Christmas. — Professor Albus Dumbledore

Holly resolved to think of a Christmas gift just as great to give to the headmaster next Christmas, since on this one he’d have to do with a thank-you note and some candy. Maybe she would knit him a pair of woolen socks…

But the best Christmas gift of all was the gift from Ron’s mother: a soft, knitted jumper with a large red letter H on the front. It was much too big for Holly and she had to wrap the sleeves thrice around her wrists, but she refused to take the sweater off for nearly the entire Christmas break. It was really the best Christmas she could have asked for.

Deciding it would be her lucky charm, Holly wore that sweater for every exam she took next semester despite Hermione’s insistence that only studying could make a difference.

And when she arrived at King’s Cross Station once again in June, Holly was armed with a piece of parchment with Hermione’s address and phone number, the hope that the Dursleys wouldn’t realize she couldn’t do magic outside of school, and that very same jumper.

With a wave toward her friends, Holly stepped back into her old life, cheerful in the knowledge that she would return to Hogwarts soon. Her favorite professor may be gone from the school, but he could be reached by letter, and Holly had a full ream of parchment in her trunk.

In such a magical world, friends were never as far away as one might think. Just a flap of Hedwig's wings away.