AN: Sorry the last couple of posts have been so hastily compiled! It turns out two jobs, one school, one play, one martial arts class and one half of one social life are not conducive to the hermitesque lifestyle required for serious writing. Go figure.

As this portion of the story is drawing ever so slowly to a close, so is your chance of getting your vote in about whether I make the next installment a new story (sequel-style) or simply continue on this one. You can either tell me in the comments or vote on my profile or both! I take it all into consideration.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to those of you lovelies who have commented, subscribed, favourited, or some combination of the three. I especially wish to thank my two or three mysterious "Guest" commentators, as I have no other way of doing so.

Enjoy!

End Author ramble.

"Are you working for Coach?"

Quirrell stopped and turned, looking hastily around for the source of the voice.

"You think an Amplifying Charm will fool me for long, Snape?"

"Don't need to fool you for long, do I?" Harry's voice trembled only slightly; he was trying very hard to sound brave. "You working for Potter?"

Quirrell laughed. "James does draw attention to himself, doesn't he? With someone as impressive as him around, who on earth would notice or suspect p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-professor Quirrell?"

Harry felt his world flipping, distorting, disconnecting and reconnecting in a way that didn't seem to make any sense at all…he had got the wrong end of the stick, and not even the wrong end of the stick he'd thought he'd got…

"It was you, the whole time? Everything? But…but Potter tried to kill me!"

"No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to James at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I'd have had you off that broom; I'd have managed it before then if James hadn't been following you around, muttering the countercurse."

"The countercurse?"

"Trying to save your life. What a waste of time, when after all that, I'm going to kill you tonight. Come on out, Snape."

"You sure know how to motivate a bloke."

"You'll have to eventually, and you can't Amplify your footsteps…and even Disillusionment charms wear off eventually."

"Disi…? But why kill me?" Quirrell turned his back, thinking that the voice came from behind him. Keep talking, thought Harry.

"You were far too nosey, scampering about the castle like that. For all I knew you'd seen me letting the troll in on Halloween."

"You…"

"You must have seen what I chose to guard the Stone? I have a special gift with trolls. Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Jimmy put that pretty little head of his to work for once and went straight to the third floor to head me off…and not only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn't even manage to bite James's leg off properly."

"But Potter…he always seemed to hate me so much." Maybe he could start running. His voice would still be amplified, at least until he was far enough away to make no difference; he could find another hiding place, get someone to help him, if only he knew where he was…and his Amplified voice should cover his footsteps…

"Oh, he does," said Quirrell, peering sharply to the left as if he suspected that Harry might be hiding in one of the classrooms. "Heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn't you know? But he never wanted you dead."

The mirror. Of course. Potter had been sorted that same year, into the same House. They would have shared a dormitory.

"And they disliked each other," said Harry slowly, "and Potter was trying to take it out on me…?"

"On the contrary," said Quirrell. "They were dear friends."

What? That can't be right. No, that doesn't seem right at all…

Quirrell went on. "The simple fact is that Potter blames you for your father's death. After all, Severus never would have been killed if he hadn't been trying to protect you."

"What? How do you know that?"

Quirrell smiled and send an experimental pulse through the air, probably to try to detect if Harry was still in the open. Harry ducked back behind his suit of armour.

"When you serve Lord Voldemort," Quirrell said, "you learn many things."

Lord Voldemort.

Harry had thought his world was upside-down. He now realised it had heretofore been mildly crooked. Askew, at most. Now his world was upside-down, inside-out, and backwards.

"Lord…Voldemort?"

That horrible, red-eyed face in the flapping black robes. That high-pitched laugh. That flash of green light that had killed the parents he had never known…

"But he's dead," said Harry, hearing even as he spoke Hagrid's voice on that evening in the hut on the rock: Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion…

"Idiot boy!" said Quirrell. "As if the greatest wizard of all time could ever really die! I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it….Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me." Quirrell shivered suddenly. "He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me…decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me…"

"So…so he's…here?"

"He is with me wherever I go…"

Quirrell's face changed suddenly; he took on an expression of intense pain. A horrible, rasping-voice, the stuff of nightmares, began to speak, and the voice seemed to be coming from Quirrell himself.

"Stop listening to his questions," the voice hissed. "Find him!"

"But, Master, I don't know…"

"Reveal him, you fool!" said the voice. Quirrell's face twisted. He raised his wand.

"Homenum Revelio," he said.

Harry felt a whooshing over his head, as though some great bird had just swept by him.

"Ah!" Quirrell whirled, levelled his wand and pointed it directly at Harry's head. "Out you come, Snape. If you try to run, I will make you wish you had never been born…out you come…"

Harry tried moving to his left, but Quirrell blasted the suit of armour out of the way and kept his wand trained on Harry, just as if he could see him. Harry could see, even in the pale moonlight, that Quirrell was trembling a little, though certainly not for fear of Harry.

There was nothing for it. Harry moved forward and stood in the middle of the hall, clutching his wand. He was fairly certain Quirrell couldn't really see him, if he could just think of a spell…

"Where is it, Snape?"

"Where is what?" said Harry.

"Don't try to lie to me, Snape. I know you have it. Where is it?!"

"Let me speak to him…" said a high voice, though Quirrell hadn't moved his lips. "Let me speak to him face-to-face…"

"Master, you are not strong enough!"

"I have strength enough…for this…."

Harry felt rooted to the spot. He couldn't move a muscle. Petrified, he watched as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. What was going on? The turban fell away. Quirrell's head looked strangely small without it. Then he turned slowly on the spot.

Harry would have screamed, but he couldn't make a sound. Where there should have been a back to Quirrell's head, there was a face, a terrible face. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.

Harry knew that face. He knew now that he had seen it a thousand times in his nightmares, though he never remembered it after he woke up. It was the face on the shape his boggart had taken; the face that belonged to the high-pitched voice and the high-pitched laugh and the green light.

The face of the most evil wizard ever born.