Quirinus Quirrell had always admired power. Being a man who had lived his life with none, he couldn't help but be attracted to the heroes in the books he read and the stories he heard as a child.
Quirinus was weak and feeble. He was trodden on and pushed aside, ridiculed and tortured with constant reminders of his own incompetence. Quirinus, he was told, is a half-blood with filthy muggle blood. It got worse over the years of course, but that was the beginning. It was enough.
He read. He often woke up with the last book splayed across his face. He learned to read while walking and never left home without a book. He learned jinxes, charms and hexes children his age had never heard of. His dreams and nightmares were filled with images of failure and triumph, fame and accolades no wizard had ever enjoyed.
He excelled in school. His parents swelled with pride.. He was still an outcast at Hogwarts, even with other Ravenclaws, but he became obsessed with the idea of chasing power- for good of course, always for good, because no one liked a villain. They were ugly, despised, loathed and everything Quirinus hated about himself.
There were fleeting crushes throughout his life, brief episodes of lust and true love that was answered with slammed doors and disgust (there was at least one case of pity, but it was drowned out with more vivid memories of unkind laughter). But his relationship with knowledge never failed him, and he passed both his O. and N.E. with the perfect scores everyone had come to expect of him. He was proud then. He was sure that with this he could achieve the power he thirsted for. With knowledge, he would be admired.
Of course, life was much more difficult than his fantasies led him to believe. People still received him with disdain; their immediate reaction to his appearance was often disheartening skepticism.
But suddenly there was a disturbance in the wizarding world, the faint rumbles of something huge and terrifying. It grew underneath their feet, crept into the corners of their universe and spread, clawed its way into the hearts of wizards and witches and took them in.
There was war. There was blood and battle and Quirrell watched with fascination. It had been years since there had been a force confident enough to attempt domination on such a scale. A single man, a wizard with extraordinary talents, had risen and sought to forge a new order. He had followers and admirers, but Quirrell remained unnoticed in the distance. He waited.
After the great wizard disappeared, Quirrell went looking for him. It was for the sake of returning home with the news that he had found the demon that had plagued their lives: oh his name, he dreamed, his name would be carved in stone for an eternity, children would learn about him, and he would shoulder the glory with the air and grace of a saviour:
Quirinus Quirrell, the man who found Lord Voldemort.
Everyone believed that the wizard was gone for good, but Quirrell knew better. No one with that kind of supremacy disappeared into thin air, especially when faced with a lone child. There were questions that weren't being answered, and Quirrell was curious. He would answer them.
He really should have learned from the first time, he realised later. Life rarely worked in his favour. The great journey he ventured on never ended in the glory he had dreamt of as a boy.
He was confident in his own belief of what was good and evil. He set off with that in mind: he was good, and He Who Must Not Be Named was evil. Black and white, darkness and light: there was justice and Quirrell was clever enough to know exactly what that was.
He was a fool, he realised, as soon as he looked upon the force he had spent so many years chasing after. Years of study had taught him nothing. .
Voldemort showed him, showed him everything he had ever wanted. The Dark Lord knew ways that had been forbidden for centuries, things that had been locked away for the good of the wizarding world.
"There is a story the Muggles have," Voldemort told him. It was in Quirrell's last moment of doubt, the edge of a precipice that would send him plummeting from grace and into the realms of Dark Magic. "The story of a garden and a serpent."
He listened with rapt attention. Even in this emaciated state, barely alive and desperate for something beyond basic existence, Voldemort still exuded a power that no one on Earth possessed.
"The humans believe in a god that created them," Lord Voldemort began, his voice rasping through cold air that shivered with his words. The forest seemed so much darker here, closer to hell than anywhere else Quirrell had ever been. "There was first a man and a woman. This god made them a garden and let his children run free. In it he put a tree but denied them the fruit."
He waited.
"A serpent knew that the fruit contained knowledge. He told the humans to eat the fruit, and with it their eyes were opened."
Quirrell never forgot that stare, the glare of a man who had cut his soul into fragments in order to win his dream. It was pure, unchallenged determination, and he wanted to fall into it and become drunk with it.
"I am the serpent," the Dark Lord told him, "Follow me, and I will grant you the knowledge they have denied you."
Quirrell fell to his knees and bowed to his master. He had been a fool he knew, a stupid young boy with fantasies that were nothing in the face of a wizard who knew more than any god.
There is no good and evil, his master would remind him: only power and those too weak to understand it.