Chapter Twelve

Harry's first week passed mostly without incident, barring two exceptions. Like the other students, he was given his class schedule the next morning at breakfast, and straight afterwards trooped off to the first of his classes. Harry – to everyone's surprise but his own – got all of his spells right on the first try, which made Hermione scowl jealously and double her efforts in class. The teachers all took note of Harry's status as an apparent magical prodigy and looked at him approvingly, especially when he tried to explain to the other students what they needed to do to get their spells right.

Well, most of the teachers did, anyway. And that brought Harry to the first incident.

Friday morning – at the end of Harry's first week of classes, almost – Harry, Ron and Hermione had double potions with the Slytherins. The class was taught by Professor Snape, who, according to Ron, always favoured his Slytherin students.

Harry, remembering Snape's dark glower and the malice he exuded towards Harry, felt a small amount of trepidation as they walked down to the dungeons for their first potions lesson.

It wasn't that he was afraid of Snape – Harry wasn't much afraid of anything. It was more that Harry had a strong suspicion that things weren't going to go particularly well, considering the potions professor's attitude. And considering the volatile substances they were going to be working with, that could end in disaster.

Harry took a seat in the potions classroom, and waited for Snape to call the roll. Almost immediately, things began to go wrong.

Snape paused when it came to Harry's name on the roll, and said softly, "Ah, yes – Harry Potter. Our new – celebrity."

Malfoy and his friends sniggered, and Harry thought, This one's going to be trouble.

Snape moved onto the next name on the list; however Harry had a feeling that Snape hadn't finished with him yet.

Harry proved to be right. Snape gave a sinister, mesmerising speech about the potential of potions, and then his eyes narrowed back in on Harry.

"Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Harry had read his potions book right through in the month before classes started, along with his other class books. Nowhere in it was that question addressed.

"I don't know, sir," Harry was forced to admit. Snape's lips curled in a sneer, and he tutted.

"Clearly," Snape drawled, "fame isn't everything."

Hermione had raised her hand, and was now waving it around in the air, obviously wanting to answer Snape's question. He ignored her, however, still intent on Harry.

"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

That question wasn't in the textbook, either. It was clear to Harry that Snape intended to humiliate him by asking him questions he couldn't possibly know the answer to – but the question was, why?

"Don't know that either, sir," said Harry, focusing all of his attention on Snape. "Is there something I've done to upset you?"

"You survived when your mother died!" Snape snarled at him. "Lily should have survived, not you! I'll never forgive you for being the reason she was murdered!"

Snape's jaw snapped shut as he realised what he'd just said. Whispers went around the classroom.

"It seems to me," said Harry, "that that's not a very fair reason to be picking on me, Professor. It's all well and fine to have those feelings, but to act on them when you know it wasn't my fault is unprofessional."

Snape, in front of the fascinated eyes of the entire class, turned a nasty purplish-red colour.

"DETENTION!" he bellowed, and then, like he couldn't stop himself: "Of course it was your fault! You're a Potter!"

"You have a problem with Potters?" Harry asked, keeping his eyes on Snape.

"I hate Potters!" Snape yelled for the entire class to hear. "Bumptious, big-headed, self-obsessed–"

It was clear he meant to go on, but Harry got the gist.

"I think I've heard enough," he said, and Snape's compulsion to tell all cut off.

Snape wasn't stupid, however, and he looked even more enraged.

"What did you do to me?" he roared at Harry, and sprang forward as though to grab hold of him.

There was an instant of great confusion.

The next moment, the class were all sitting sedately at their desks, and Snape was standing at the front of the room, shaking his head.

"Potter –" he began, and a funny look crossed his face. He turned on Hermione. "You! What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Hermione looked delighted to be asked.

"They're the same plant," she said promptly.

"Five points to Gryffindor," said Snape, and the funny look crossed his face again. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. Well?" he suddenly asked the class. "Why aren't you all copying that down?"

There was a rummaging for quills and parchment. As Harry set up his parchment and quill, Ron, sitting on his right side (Hermione was on Harry's left) leaned in and whispered, "Harry, did you bewitch Snape?"

Harry shrugged.

"Good on you, mate," Ron whispered, and sat hurriedly back in his chair as Snape glanced at them.

Snape told them all to group themselves into pairs, and while everyone was doing so, Harry glanced at Neville, who looked utterly petrified.

"You two work together," Harry muttered to Ron and Hermione. "I'm going to work with Neville – look at him, he's shaking."

And so Harry walked over to sit next to Neville, who looked surprised at Harry's sudden appearance.

"Morning, Neville," Harry said cheerfully. Neville stuttered out his own good morning as Harry sat down next to him.

Snape gave them instructions for making a simple potion to cure boils. Neville's hands shook as he started to crush the snake fangs with the flat of his knife, and Harry quickly took the knife off him.

"You put things in the cauldron as I finish them," Harry said, with quiet authority. "I'll cut them up and crush them."

Neville nodded, looking pathetically relieved. Harry sent a frown in Snape's direction.

He could just stop Snape being an awful git altogether, of course – but that was too close to messing people about, Harry thought. Giving Snape a personality transplant, tempting though it was, would be crossing a line, and Harry knew it. It was one thing to force Snape not to take out his bad temper on the students, and to make sure he was fair – but to actually change who Snape was, that was something Harry wouldn't do.

So Snape patrolled the classroom, giving points to people who were doing well, while Harry weighed nettles and cut porcupine quills, and Neville put them in the cauldron whenever Harry told him to.

By the end of the class Neville's hands were steadier, and he looked less terrified of Snape. He and Harry were given a grudging five points for their potion, as was Malfoy, who according to Snape had stewed his slugs perfectly. Snape sent Harry a dark look, certain that Harry was responsible for his newfound fairness: Harry just gave him an amiable grin, and began packing up his things.

As the class finished, and the students left the classroom, Harry knew that he was going to need to keep a close eye on Snape.


The second incident wasn't an incident as such, because nothing had really happened. But it was a source of concern for Harry, all the same.

The day before Harry's disastrous potions lesson, Harry had had his first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, with Professor Quirrell. Quirrell wore a turban, and stuttered a lot, and by the end of the first class most of the first years had decided that as a teacher, he was next to useless, but generally harmless.

Harry, however, had formed quite a different impression of Quirrell, and on Saturday morning he sat down and wrote Aziraphale and Crowley a letter about it.

Dear Aziraphale and Crowley, Harry wrote, I hope you're both doing well. Hogwarts is amazing, and I'm really enjoying my classes so far. I have two friends, now: Hermione, who I met at the book store in Diagon Alley, and Ron, who I met on the train to Hogwarts. They're both in Gryffindor with me, which means we share all our classes, which makes it much easier to spend time together. But that's not what I wanted to write to you about.

Harry paused, his quill poised above the parchment, and thought. Then, with what he wanted to say carefully worded in his mind, he began to write again.

There's something badly wrong with Professor Quirrell, our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. He's not alone in his own head. As far as I can work out, he's sharing hat space with a sliver of someone else's soul. It's only a tiny bit of soul, all ragged and torn, and it feels evil. Really evil. Like there's no good in it at all, and never was.

The next bit was hard to write.

Looking at it made my scar hurt, and when I took a close look, I realised that there was an even tinier piece of the same soul inside my scar. So I took it out, and put it in a jar for safekeeping. I decided that I wanted to collect any more bits of soul that were lying around, and suddenly all these random objects were sitting in a pile in front of me, and each of them had bits of soul in them. I've put them in my luggage for the moment, but I'm not sure what to do with them. The only one I don't have is the one inside of Quirrell. It seems to be properly aware, unlike the other pieces of soul, and I didn't want to mess with it.

One of the objects was a diary, and when I wrote in it, the piece of soul inside it wrote back. I made it tell me who it was, and it said that it was Lord Voldemort's horcrux. Apparently there's a spell wizards can do that splits their soul into pieces, so that they're immortal for as long as objects with the bits of soul in them are kept safe. I didn't ask any more questions about that, because I didn't think that was the sort of spell I wanted to know about.

Anyway, if you could tell me what I should do about the pieces of soul, including the one inside Quirrell's head, that would be really helpful.

From Harry.

Feeling satisfied with what he'd written, Harry folded the parchment and put it in an envelope, upon which he wrote out the address for Aziraphale's bookstore. Sealing the envelope, he left the dormitory and headed up to the owlery, where he gave the letter to one of the owls to post.

Harry didn't like having artefacts of unspeakable horror locked in his luggage; it wasn't safe, for one thing. The horcruxes kept trying to influence the minds of anyone who walked past them, and only Harry's efforts stopped them. And for another, having something so evil so close to him was keeping Harry awake at night.

Aziraphale and Crowley would know what to do, he thought, and the thought was a comforting one.


Aziraphale called Crowley the moment he received the letter, and the two of them opened it together. Aziraphale began reading it aloud, only to falter when he got to the part about the bits of soul; Crowley read the rest of it over his shoulder, turning the colour of curdled milk. When he got to From Harry, Crowley sat back in the nearest chair.

"Bloody, buggering–" he began.

For once, Aziraphale didn't chide the demon for his language. The angel looked pale and sick at the contents of the letter.

"Can't believe the evil bugger was mad enough to split his soul," said Crowley, who while just as horrified as Aziraphale was, was rather more used to this sort of thing. "Amazing, isn't it, what the human brain can come up with. I mean, who thinks, oh yes, this is my immortal soul, I wonder if there's a way I can hack it into pieces, that sounds like a grand idea–"

"Crowley," said Aziraphale, and Crowley stopped. "What do we do?"

"Tell the kid to destroy the wretched things, would be my suggestion," said Crowley. "Last thing anyone wants is for them to be left lying around, especially in a school."

"You're talking about the complete destruction of a human soul," said Aziraphale.

Crowley took a long look at him, and said gently, "There's not much left for him, angel. There's no way he'd get into Heaven, after what he's done, and not even Hell will take him in that state. The destruction of his own soul is his doing – all Harry would be doing is finishing what the mad bastard started."

"Did you know it was possible?" asked Aziraphale. He was very pale, but very calm. "The division of a human soul?"

Crowley shrugged.

"It happens every now and then, with wizards – I think it was that weirdo Koschei who first worked out how to do it. Idiots who care more about supposed 'immortality' than the structural integrity of their own soul."

For a moment Aziraphale didn't respond. Then: "I suppose there is no coming back for him, is there?"

"Voldemort's crossed the moral event horizon, and no mistake," Crowley agreed.

Aziraphale sighed, and said, "Let me get my writing set."