"Ooh, your science is so hard..."
Harry lay on the baize couch in Professor Quirrel's room and stared up at the ceiling and wondered who would paint a ceiling gray. Then he marveled at the baize couch. It was portable, yet soft! What genius had thought to combine two such heterogeneous concepts as portability and softness? It must have been Professor Quirrel! He must have an enormous IQ, thought Harry, and briefly swooned.
Next to the couch was a box of Turkish Delight, to which Harry helped himself, and a bookshelf containing the collected works of John Norman, which he'd read before.
Suddenly he felt a sense of Foreboding, and backed away from the door just as Professor Quirrel came through it.
"Good evening," said Quirrel with a sadly hopeful smile, fetching a mop. "Would you like to discuss your Dark Lord career path now, or would you rather hold off until later?"
"I don't want to be a Dark Lord."
"Of course you do. Everybody wants to rule the world. Especially you. I could tell by the way you said 'Thank you, sir, may I have another' 279 times. No one would put up with that kind of abuse without an ulterior motive."
"What about Jim Caviezel?"
"I saw that movie 37 times," said Quirrel. "But remember, even in that mythos God is the original Dark Lord. He invented darkness. You see? Ulterior motive. Rationalization!"
"Genius!" cried Harry.
"Thank you," said Quirrel. "So, you want to be a Dark Lord. I can help you with everything from study guides to job placement services. Where shall we begin?"
"I need a moment," said Harry. "This makes everything clear! When I was being socialised as a muggle, and the neighborhood urchins gave me a ball to play with just so they could take it away again, and I kicked them all in the kidneys and most of them died and my parents had to take me out of school which is what I wanted all along — and I killed and ate my mathematics tutor, Dr. Moriarty —"
"Total Dark Lord."
"Are you sure it's not just my dark side?"
"The wizard soul is a Möbius strip," said Quirrel confidently.
"WIZARDS HAVE SOULS?"
"Yes, but muggles don't, well-known fact."
Harry reeled. His world view had been upturned in the space of sentences. It was almost enough to make him want to verify these claims scientifically, but hey, almost only counts in certain sports he didn't play and couldn't remember.
"How did you get away with the mass murder, by the way?" inquired Quirrel.
"I was only five. I was still cute, then. Oh, and wait! I feel guilty about it."
"Even about the teacher?"
"Yes! The only reason I ate him was that we had two bottles of relish about to expire."
"Hm," said Quirrel, tapping Harry's cheek.
"Please don't tap my cheek, Professor. My head goes Jimi Hendrix when you do that. ...Or that one. ...Especially not those."
"Yes," said Quirrel, retracting his hand. "Well, we can work around the whole guilt thing, make it work for you. Have you ever heard a song called 'The Masochism Tango'? You can learn to enjoy the screams of your own tormented conscience if you work at it."
They both laughed.
"But seriously," said Harry, "my parents don't like it when I murder people, and I'm kind of down on it personally because my original parents were murdered by Lord Voldemort."
"I know they were, Harry, I was there."
"What? Why?"
"...I was delivering a pizza. They had no money. Then Voldemort came. It was a terrible tragedy for all involved. But you can overcome such scruples in time, I assure you."
"Still," said Harry, "it doesn't quite fit my career goal, to learn all that is learnable and ascend to godhood. I mean, you can't get good information out of people by torturing them — I know, I've tried."
"So have I, so have I," said Quirrel wistfully. "It could have revolutionized test administration. Perfect scores, all around, but no... So, Dark God. Right. I expect I've got some pamphlets around here somewhere, I think Durmstrang offers a post-doctorate program in that area..."
"Say, that reminds me!" said Harry brightly. "Only three months ago, I'd planned on becoming a scientist—"
"SCIENCE?" spat Quirrel. "I cannot picture you wasting your days in a white lab coat doing pointless things to rats!"
"How about doing pointy things?" said Harry timidly. "In order to create biowarfare agents?"
"Oh, well, that's all right then."
"Actually, I was going to be a physicist," said Harry. "We're talking WIDE-SCALE destruction."
"How wide?" asked Quirrel, shuffling through his papers. "As a boy I imagined smashing the Moon through the Earth."
"Imagine crushing the Earth between two planes of solidified light until there's nothing left of it but free electrons!"
"You silly twisted boy, you," chided Quirrel, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. "If you completely annihilate the planet, you'll do away with all your victims, and what is a Dark Lord without victims!"
"Say," said Harry slyly, "did you just establish circumstances under which you'd find life not worth living?"
"Certainly not! Now get back to the subject. A Dark Lord is nothing without victims — he ceases to be, whether he wants to or not! It's logic!"
"Dark God, remember?" said Harry. "I'll create new life and torment that!"
"Hm," said Quirrel, and mopped drool from the other corner of his mouth. "That sounds quite...awesome. But there's a long road from Dark Lord to Dark God. Let's not destroy the Earth until we have established a secondary source of Nutella."
"Sure thing!" said Harry.
"Incidentally, this...solidified light thing, I would really appreciate it if you didn't tell the muggles about it. It's the sort of thing you should keep a secret."
"Oh, they already know," said Harry. "Besides, you can't keep fundamental principles a secret, they get rediscovered."
"You can with MAGIC," said Quirrel.
"What IS magic, by the way?"
"Don't know, don't care."
"I can see why you're not into science," said Harry.
"Oh, I love SOME science," sniffed Quirrel, raising his wand. "Planetario maxima!"
Suddenly Harry was in the midst of an endless field of stars, burning cold and ruthless, with the diamond clarity of a hammer of pure titanium descending upon an anvil of yielding flesh, whee-splat.
"Woo," said Harry. "How'dja do that?"
"This is a live feed from Pioneer 10," said Quirrel. "I cast a...spell on it pre-launch.
"Sometimes," he sighed charismatically, "when I get particularly irritated by absolutely everything in this absolutely irritating world, I enter the silence of my lonely room, turn on the universe, put 'Astronomy Domine' on repeat and smoke opium.
"And then, refreshed, I emerge as though from a chrysalis into the mundane world to kill and kill again."
"You are the greatest man who ever lived," said Harry.
"Am I the winner?"
"You're the winner."
"Am I the awesome winner?"
"You're the awesome winner over all awesome winners."
"Who's my little looooser?" said Quirrel, chucking Harry under the chin.
"I am, I am, I aaaaaammmmm!"
Abruptly, someone kicked down the door. It was Headmaster Gumblejack.
"YO!" he said, setting his massive hobnailed dragonhide boot down into a statically-electrified spreading cloud of crumbled splinters that was all that remained of the door. "What's all this crud I hear about mass spitgobbing the Boy Who Lived and Avada-Kedavring 40 of J.K. Rowling's best lawyers?!"
"GTFO OLD MAN!" screamed Harry.
Quirrel slapped Harry in the face. "Be nice," he said. "I don't have tenure."
"Um," said Harry meekly, "please gtfo, Headmaster, if that's all right with you..."
"?" said Gumblejack. "Well, all right. ...No, hang on, answer my questions!"
"This is a hurt/comfort fic," explained Professor Quirrel. "I thought it best that young Harry be hurt and comforted on a strictly professional basis in a formal setting. Also, there were 42 lawyers, but everyone hates lawyers. Oh, and incidentally, Harry is still quite angry about Professor Snupe riffling his synapses, I noticed that when I read his mind."
"Yes, I noticed it also," mused Gumblejack. "Just now."
"IS EVERYBODY READING MY MIND?" screamed Harry.
I know I am, how about you?
"I suggest Occlumency lessons at the school's expense," said Quirrel. "Although you'll have to find some trustworthy person to administer them."
"I DON'T TRUST ANYBODY ANY MORE," said Harry.
"Well, then, use your Time Turner and administer them to yourself," said Quirrel.
"That makes sense," said Gumblejack. "And it's economical, too!"
