A/N: I've always felt that Quirrell was so overlooked as a character. He is the only wizard besides Harry that has been known to share a soul with Voldemort. The greatest question I have about Quirrell is: Why? What would cause a Ravenclaw that taught Muggle studies to ally himself with Voldemort of all people? So I've tried to answer that question. This was beta'd by my wonderful bestie, Courtney. Reviews make me a happy author. So do cookies.
The final day of classes was drawing to a close. Quirinius Quirrell's class of third years grew restless as he reviewed every Muggle prime minister for the fourth time. Only a few Ravenclaws were actually paying attention; a couple of Gryffindor girls were passing notes and giggling quietly in the corner of the room. Quirrell sighed, and then nonverbally summoned their note off of one girl's desk before vanishing it in front of the entire class.
The two girls sat, mouths gaping. "Be grateful I didn't read it," the professor said in his usual soft voice. Every student in the class shifted in their seats before picking up their quills again. Quirrell sighed again; knowing that very few of them would be able to comprehend the lesson after ignoring more than half. Why was he always scheduled a class right after lunch? That was when the students were at their most rowdy. But Quirrell knew that most of the other staff members thought his class was a joke, especially Severus Snape.
Even as a Hogwarts professor, Quirrell was still a loser.
He always had been, ever since his first day at Hogwarts. Quirrell tried to repress the memory of that fateful day. September 1st, a month after his eleventh birthday. His mother had yelled at him earlier that morning for trying to levitate his trunk down the stairs. He had broken a vase. The long sleeves of his shirt covered up the bruises she had given him, but Quirrell didn't care. He was getting away, finally.
Maureen Quirrell had been sorted into Hufflepuff. In her day, she was quite beautiful, and she probably still would have been if she smiled. During her seventh year, Maureen had been positively radiant, and had caught the fancy of many boys. Though not the smartest, Maureen was clever, and it was probably only her Muggleborn status that kept her out of Slytherin. She knew that her choice of boyfriend could greatly impact her future in the magical community.
If only Maureen had not taken notice to the handsome boy lurking in the shadows. His name was Faustus Nott, but he permitted a small group of Slytherins who would later on become some of the first Death Eaters and Maureen to call him Faust, at least during their school days. He was exactly the type of boy that Maureen's mother warned her about. He whispered sweet things in her ear, and charmed up baubles bought for her with his family's immense fortune. And she never told a soul about their relationship. He told her it was because his family would disinherit him, but really it was because he didn't want his fellow Death Eaters to know he was using a pretty piece of Mudblood flesh for his more carnal urges.
And Maureen supplied these needs, but she was not as cautious as she should have been. Pretty soon, she was pregnant. She told Faust, knowing he would be upset but hoping that he would be willing to make an honest woman of her. Instead, she saw Faust's dark side he had been hiding from her. He pulled his wand on her and threatened to kill her if she told a soul he was the father. Maureen stared up at the man she had loved with every part of her, and ran away from him.
The next few months were the worst of her life. She contemplated killing herself and the baby more than once, but found that she just didn't have the willpower. Maureen tried to keep her pregnancy a secret, but even with the looseness of her robes, people were bound to notice after a while. It was the first day of spring when she was discovered. Everyone was down at Hogsmeade in the lightest clothes they could find while she was swaddled in robes. Albus Dumbledore, the Transfiguration teacher, gave her a knowing look when she walked into The Three Broomsticks with a craving for butterbeer. Maureen wasn't surprised when she found the note, with a small bag of Galleons attached, from Headmaster Dippet requesting that she quietly leave the school.
When Quirinus was born in late September of that year, Maureen showed little love for her newborn son. Her mother, Kathy, had given birth to Maureen very late in her life, around her mid-forties. Mr. Edmund Quirrell, the boy's grandfather, was already deceased from the very natural Muggle manner of a heart attack. Kathy was a kind woman, but her memory was growing very poorly, very quickly. If Maureen hadn't wrapped herself in her cocoon of self-pity, she would have recognized the early signs of her mother's Alzheimer's.
The Quirrell family lived in a fairly rural area that had a large forest behind it. The forest was home to a great many trolls. As a child, "Little Q" as his grandmother called him often wandered around in the forest and tried to make friends with the trolls, because there was no one else to play with. A particularly ugly one had tried to eat Quirinus when the little boy exhibited his first show of magic by miraculously escaping from the great beast. From then on, the other trolls let him hang around them. Quirrell, a naturally curious and bright boy, quickly picked up on their language, and within a few months was practically fluent in Troll.
So by the age of eight, Quirinus, while not terribly happy, at least had the company of the trolls. They might have been stupid, but at least they were warmer than his perpetually distant mother and his ever forgetful grandmother who thought he was a stranger half the time. It didn't last, though. On his ninth birthday, his grandmother was had an unusually clear memory. She had remembered his name and that it was his birthday that morning, and was set on making him a cake.
Quirrell remembered sitting on his couch, reading one of his mother's old Hogwarts textbooks when a large thump resounded from the kitchen. His grandmother was sprawled out on the floor with cake batter all over her. Quirrell hurried over to his grandmother, nearly tripping over his own feet. He grabbed the old woman's hand, and was surprised at how cold it was.
"Do you want me to call an ambulance? Should I get Mother?" Quirinus asked frantically, practically pleading with the old woman. His grandmother was not speaking, just making sounds with her mouth. The little boy's eyes were enormous when he began shouting. "Help! Mother! Help! Something's wrong with Grandmother! Help! Anyone!" Quirrell wished he could magic to heal his grandmother, but he couldn't do any sort of proper spell. He didn't even have a wand; apart from his mother, he hadn't even seen another witch or wizard.
After a while, Kathy Quirrell let out a gasp, and then stopped breathing altogether. Quirinus continued to hold her hand until his mother came home several hours later. Maureen stepped into the kitchen and surveyed her young son next to her mother's body. Almost without thinking, she pulled out her wand and pointed it at the little boy. It had been a great many years since she had performed magic, and she was not even sure why she carried her wand anymore. It only seemed to exist to remind her of the world that had used and rejected her.
"What happened here?" she said quietly, gesturing towards the body. Quirrell swallowed nervously.
"She was making me a cake, and I was in the other room when she fell. I held her hand. I yelled for you, but you weren't here," Quirrell babbled. His mother's expression worried him. She looked at him like a pest she wanted gone, probably forever.
"Did you call the police? You do know how to operate a telephone. They could have helped her. They could have stopped her from dying. But it's too late now, she's dead and I'm left with you!" Maureen screamed wildly, aiming a stinging hex at her son that did not come close to hitting him. Then she let out a large, frustrated sigh and reached for the phone. Before dialing, Maureen turned to her son. "Go to your bedroom and stay there. I'll be up to deal with you when the medics leave," she hissed.
The bell signaling the end of the day snapped Quirrell out of his reverie. Some of his pupils were already scrambling out of their seats. He raised one pale hand, stopping them. "I want one roll of parchment on how any one of the Muggle prime ministers affected wizarding history. You can choose whichever one you like," he dismissed them with a wave of his hand. The groups of thirteen year old wizards all clustered into cliques of wildly jabbering teenagers, save for one redhead Gryffindor holding at least three books, one of which he was reading while walking.
Quirrell waited until all of his students had left the classroom before making a mad dash to the faculty lounge. If he was lucky, she would be there when he arrived. After stopping a few feet in front of the door to both adjust his tie and adopt a normal pace, Quirrell entered the lounge, trying to act casual with all of his might. She was sitting at small round table with a rather large teacup in front of her. Only the tea leaves remained, and Professor Trelawney was apparently reading them. When Professor Sinistra noticed Quirrell walking into the room, she mouthed Help me, while gesturing towards Trelawney.
"And that, dearie, is a rabbit. This cup is an unlucky one, I'm afraid," Trelawney said in her typical misty voice. Quirrell rolled his eyes. He didn't believe in fortune telling, especially when a fraud like Trelawney was spewing it. Professor Sinistra caught his skeptical expression and had to hide a smile behind her hand. She stood up, taking the mostly empty cup to the sink with her before casting a cleaning spell on it. Quirrell followed her over to the sink.
"Good afternoon, Quirrell," she said as she openly winked at him. The two teachers had been friends for several years, but Sinistra had called him Quirrell or even just the letter "Q" because she thought Quirinus was, "a mouthful of weird sounds, and not really a proper name." He called her Sinistra in his head, even though she kept insisting that everyone called her Rory, except her delusional mother. Sinistra was constantly complaining about her uptight mother that she was nearly always at odds with. Even the name her mother had chosen for her, Aurora after the morning dawn, contrasted with Sinistra's love of the night. Quirrell thought Rory was a coarse name, too harsh for the beautiful woman who donned it. Sinistra slipped off the tongue, like the hissing noise of a snake.
"So I went on a date last night," Sinistra said, breaking Quirrell out of his quiet reverie. He gulped, and hoped she couldn't hear it. She seemed rather preoccupied stirring milk into her tea. Quirrell had noticed that recently she had stopped adding sugar to her tea. Probably embarking on one of her unsuccessful, not to mention unnecessary diets. Sinistra looked fine to him. Better than fine, really.
"H-how was it?" Quirrell asked, hating the way his voice stuttered when he was nervous. Personally, he hoped for his sake it hadn't gone well. He knew exactly what to say about a bad date. He would spend ten minutes bashing the guy while inserting just enough compliments towards Sinistra that she would have no idea how much he had hopelessly fallen in love with her.
"All right. He seems a little too good to be true, if you know what I mean. Kept going on and on about some banshee he banished or something. I expected a quiz at the end of the date. Also, was I aware that he received an Order of Merlin, third class? Because he was happy to mention it fourteen times last night," Sinistra said, pulling a face half at the bitter tea, and half at the memory of last night. Inside, Quirrell sighed a little in relief. She did not seem the least bit entranced by this stranger.
"That doesn't s-sound alright to me. What's this bloke's name, anyway?" Quirrell prodded. Sinistra sighed, knowing that Quirrell, once he knew, would look at her with face that barely covered his opinion of her poor taste in men.
"Gilderoy Lockhart," she muttered quietly. Quirrell's eyes widened slightly, and Sinistra waved her hand in front of his face. "Don't give me that look! I know I'm vain and shallow, but his hair! He's got really nice hair! It's probably nicer than mine!" Sinistra shouted, laughing slightly. Quirrell half-smiled, because she was wrong. He thought her long, dark hair was perfect, even when she hadn't even tried to tame it. Quirrell had been a few years ahead of Lockhart in Ravenclaw, and he had been a complete idiot.
"D-doesn't he have a book out?" Quirrell said, trying to sound nonchalant. He surveyed Sinistra over the top of his teacup. Quirrell knew that Lockhart had published a few books, and had even read one of them, Travels with Trolls. He noticed many a similarity to that and the notes of a fairly reclusive expert whose work with the species Quirrell admired.
Sinistra giggled. "Wouldn't you know it, he's published several. And, I quote, "they're well on their way to becoming bestsellers, judging by the amount of fan mail I get.'" She accompanied her impersonation of the narcissistic author with a cheesy wink. The two continued their mockery of Lockhart, and for the briefest time, everything was tea and laughter and sunlit summer afternoons.