A/N: Originally posted on HPFF on 5/12/15. Third place in Unicorn_Charm's Between Two Wars Challenge.

Quirinus Quirrell woke to a new world on November 1st, 1981. That's what the newspapers said, anyway. As far as Quirinus was concerned, nothing had changed apart from the intensity of his headache, thanks to the seemingly endless clamoring that had overtaken the castle during the night.

"Does curfew mean nothing anymore?" He grumbled as he threw his legs over the side of his cot and pulled his socks on from the floor, where they lay discarded from the day before.

He was dressed in a number of minutes, but lingered in front of the mirror, combing his ruffled hair this way and that. The specific composition of his hair made very little difference to the young Professor Quirrell, yet he found himself unenthusiastic about rushing to face the world beyond his modest quarters.

"It's not that I'm antisocial," Quirinus justified to his reflection, "I just don't particularly care for people…"

And there was no doubt that, after a night as disturbingly noisy as the previous one, there would be little peace to be found today. At least it was still the weekend. He only needed to step out long enough to get some breakfast, then he could find somewhere quiet to hide away for the rest of the afternoon. Surely he couldn't be the only one who remembered the value of studying in a school.

At the door, he took a last steadying breath and, with one last remorseful look back at the mirror, stepped out into the corridor.

At first he felt surprised that his personal space was not immediately invaded. But off course, the peace and quiet would not be totally ravaged until he went downstairs. He had merely taken the first step outside of his sanctuary. And now he walked on, along the same inevitable path that he took every morning.

As he approached the Great Hall, Quirinus could hear the excited babble of students within. Whatever commotion had woken the castle the night before, the energy seemed only to have grown. There was nothing to do but stick this one through.

Quirinus held his breath as he walked the length of the house tables, students on either side of him. "Nobody speak to me, nobody look at me," his mind whispered with every step. Of course, the students seemed as uninterested in his presence as ever.

Taking his seat at the staff table, Quirinus looked cautiously around himself. While the student population seemed to have grown with their juvenile excitement, he noticed that the faculty table was less populated than usual. He briefly wondered if his coworkers had been smarter than him and had avoided communal breakfast altogether.

If so, this would not have been his only mistake of the morning, as his prolonged gaze down the table had apparently invited the attention of the bubbly Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Moiken.

"What a glorious morning!" She chirped at him.

"Mm," Quirinus assented noncommittally.

Following his gaze down the table, Moiken said, "I would have thought Dumbledore would make some sort of speech. You know, something to mark the occasion. But I suppose he'll have a lot of business to see to."

At this, Quirinus betrayed his mildly interest. "You mean outside business? This isn't just another student affair?"

Professor Moiken's chin practically fell to her chest, "Goodness, no! This is a proper global affair!" Quirinus raised an eyebrow. "Why, haven't you heard?"

"I heard so much last night it's a wonder I slept at all," he replied humorously.

"But You-Know-Who…"

"What about him?" Quirinus snapped impatiently.

"Well… he's gone."

"Oh."

So that was what all the fuss was about. Well, at least it was a worthier cause of hullaballoo than last month's petition for a school dance. It seemed so strange that someone who had so dominated the tone of the last decade could suddenly be so simply "gone." There was doubtlessly more to the story, but the details didn't make a difference now.

The Dark Lord was gone. That was all. The world could go on in whatever way it saw fit. Quirinus' world would hardly be affected, so long as those around him could see to it that they kept their heads properly screwed on.

"It'll be a relief to see Hogwarts properly alive again," Professor Moiken said wistfully.

Properly alive? Ah yes, populated. It was true that the student population had steadily declined over the past years as fear and uncertainty had overcome the magical population. But through all this the landscape of Quirrell's Muggle Studies class had remained largely unchanged. Neither the Muggle-borns nor the pure-blood fanatics had any reason to take his class, and so as members of each of these populations had disappeared from Hogwarts, Quirinus' world continued to be generally unaltered. Nevertheless, it was an inevitable truth that the school was again to become rambunctiously overpopulated.

"I can't wait," he muttered, willing that this would be enough to end his conversation with his overeager coworker.

It was not.

When he finally escaped from breakfast, feeling that his ears could bleed from the sheer volume of enthusiastic yammering, he resolved to spend the rest of the day as isolated as possible. It was evident that the excitement enflaming the castle would not soon dissipate, and would only lead to exhaustingly sentimental reunions as students whose faces he had forgotten returned to school.

Maybe it was better when people were afraid. They certainly were quieter.

Quirinus' time of peace seemed to slip right away, for before he knew it Monday morning had come and he inevitably found himself at the front of the dusty Muggle Studies classroom as his sixth year class filed in.

Quirinus had taken great care that morning to ensure that no aspect of his classroom looked out of line. He didn't want to give his students the slightest reason to think class would run any differently that normal today.

As the door burst open and the first group of students loudly flooded in, Quirinus knew that his efforts had been for naught. None of the normal Monday morning grogginess showed in his students, as their faces were fully alert with the thrill of rumors and tall tales. He resigned himself to standing in silence, waiting for the rest of the class to arrive.

It was a relief when the clock struck the hour and Professor Quirrell could take control. "Now, now, that's enough talk," he said, thinking as he did that it would have been wise to prepare a silent assignment or exam for the day. He'd have to see if he could pull something together before the third year class that afternoon.

"Where is Gilbertson?" He asked, suddenly noticing the empty seat in the front row.

"Went to see his parents," piped him the squirrely boy who sat beside the empty seat.

Quirinus scoffed to himself. The war was supposedly over, and students were still using it as an excuse to shirk their responsibilities.

"Right. Well, today we'll be finishing up our unit on Muggle Economics. If you'll take out your notes…"

"Sir?"

Quirrell stared for a moment, as if expecting to find that the Ravenclaw student had in fact raised her hand, not brazenly interrupted him, but no such truth revealed itself.

"Yes, Baker?"

"I just thought I'd ask, sir, if you knew anything about how the Muggle authorities are reacting to… well, you know."

Quirinus managed to hold in his internal sigh of frustration. "Well, you've been doing your assignments, haven't you? Following Muggle news?"

"Well, yes," the girl responded, "But you know how the Muggle newspapers are. It's all very sensational. They've been so busy reporting on their interpretations of the celebrations, that they don't stop to look at the cause of it all, or that the unexplainable incidents they've begun to grow accustomed to are no longer violent in nature."

"Well, Muggles will do as Muggles do," Quirrell said, frustrated at his student's eloquence.

"Well, at least they get to do what they do a little longer," a boy sitting in the corner called Carter smirked, "You know… without getting killed and all."

"Well observed," Quirrell said shortly.

"Yes, but isn't there more to it than that?" Baker rushed on, again not bothering to raise her hand, "Beyond the obvious matter of life and death, hasn't what it means to be a Muggle changed considering recent events?"

The squirrely boy in front, Malcolm, joined in, "Yeah. Even after the obliviators do their work, the Muggles still notice things. In the papers, like you said."

Quirinus could not stand being ganged up on in this way. He was the teacher, what he said went. So he just needed to tell them the conversation was over.

But despite his resolve, he couldn't seem to find the words to do it, especially with Malcolm in the mix. Malcolm, with his matted hair and his dark eyes and his red robes. Even without looking at him Quirinus couldn't avoid seeing how similar he was to Rheys, one of Quirinus' old classmates of whom he had less than fond memories.

"That's all very well," he began, not knowing how to finish his sentence.

Maybe You-Know-Who had been on the right track after all, and Quirinus had never given it a second thought while he was around. Well, it made no difference now.

"And what about Muggle born wizards?" another student jumped in, "What will it be like for someone to discover they're part of a magical world, and realize that that magical world is responsible for the destruction in their own past?"

There was a murmur of thoughtful agreement as Quirrell stared from student to student in disbelief. "This is… completely off topic."

"But sir, I think it's very relevant," Baker retorted.

"Yeah. I mean, this is Muggle Studies after all," Malcolm said, demonstrating his gift for pointing out the obvious. "And it's like history happening now."

Quirrell fought back a twitching in his eye as he looked at Malcolm.

Muggle Studies indeed. The entire reason Quirinus had been willing to teach this sordid class in the first place was that he had never taken it as a student, and therefore had no humiliating memories to associate with it. Well, that had all changed when he became a teacher.

Even before she opened her mouth, Quirinus knew Baker was about to speak again.

"What do you think, Professor?"

Muggles be damned. The Dark Lord's death was the worst thing that had ever happened to Quirinus Quirrell.