Summary of the last chapter:

Hagrid takes Harry into the Forbidden Forest for his detention to help him find an injured unicorn. Most of their trip is uneventful, but eventually, they both find the dying unicorn in a clearing, a dark shadow looming over it and drinking its blood. Harry experiences another burst of pain in his scar and head and Tom passes out again for a minute. The centaurs escort Harry and Hagrid out of the forest, not without warning them of dire things to come.

A/N: I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and since there's only one more day of 2023 left here on my end of the world, Happy New Year to you all! Thank you so much for following me and 'my' Harry on this journey! It's been a fun ride so far and I hope you'll enjoy the few remaining chapters of this story!

Doubts and Suspicions

When the news that Harry had been delivered to the hospital wing after a detention gone wrong reached Severus Snape, he had to firmly put up his Occlumency shields to keep his temper in check. While he strived (and mostly managed) to appear unmoved and unimpressed in most situations and successfully kept his face a carefully controlled mask when he felt unsure, uneasy or uncomfortable, he was not good at hiding or controlling his anger. But he had vowed to himself that he wouldn't literally turn into the spitting image of Vernon Dursley when raging with fury; it certainly wouldn't do Harry any good.

"What the hell were you thinking, Minerva?" he demanded to know when they exited the hospital wing, after Poppy had administered a calming draught and a dreamless sleep potion to a very shaken first year. "Sending a child out into the Forbidden Forest full of dangerous creatures for detention! Since when is that considered adequate punishment in Hogwarts?"

"You are one to talk, Severus!" his colleague defended herself, but there was no zeal in her voice. In fact, she appeared just as shocked. "You are the one who punishes students for sneezing in your classroom!"

"By deducting house points!" Severus snapped angrily. "I have them prepare ingredients or scrub cauldrons in detention, I do not send them into life threatening danger!"

"Neither do I! Hagrid asked me to let him oversee Harry's detention. I thought he needed help tending to the mooncalves or going fishing for nocturnal eels! How was I to know he'd drag the boy into the Forbidden Forest? Believe me, I already gave him my piece of mind about that when he came in." Minerva, as the professor who had assigned the detention, had been the first to be alerted by the school nurse.

"What did he have to say for himself?"

"He said that Albus knew he was going to go into the forest to find an injured unicorn and that he didn't object to him taking Mr. Potter with him. But he was inconsolable about what has happened and almost in tears. He said it was all his fault and that he shouldn't be trusted with children or information, whatever that means."

Severus stared at her, aghast. Hagrid showing poor judgement wasn't surprising. But what had gotten into Albus to approve such a hare-brained suggestion? "We'll never allow Hagrid to supervise a detention ever again," said the Potion Master, clearly enunciating every word for full impact. "Are we in agreement on that?"

The head of Gryffindor nodded emphatically. "Absolutely."

"Then I'm going to have a word with Albus and make our position on that quite clear." Robes billowing, he turned on his heels and rushed to the grand staircase and up the tower that would take him to the headmaster's office.

His mind was reeling, not only with anger. Listening to Albus' suspicions about the Dark Lord's spirit possessing the defence teacher and now hearing that said defence teacher was slaying unicorns for blood were two different things. What had transpired today in the forest filled him with dread. The Dark Lord was close to being back for good – the consequences were so dire that he didn't even dare to think about them.

"I suppose you've heard?" he asked Albus without preamble on entering his office. For once, the headmaster's eyes were not twinkling. He didn't even offer lemon-drops, which was a good thing given Severus' current mood.

"Yes, Hagrid just informed me. He was desolated."

"Then would you care to explain why you thought it a good idea to let Hagrid escort a minor into the Forbidden Forest in the night to chase after the Dark Lord killing unicorns?"

"We didn't know what was killing the unicorns until they stumbled upon him, though I admit I had my suspicions. Hagrid had found a dead unicorn the week before, and then shortly before the detention a trail of blood, indicating that another one was injured. It could have been anything."

Severus couldn't believe the headmaster's calm aplomb. "Anything that injures and kills a unicorn is dark and dangerous and evil!" he stressed, wondering why it was even necessary to point it out.

At this, Albus heaved a deep sigh. "Yes. You are, of course, right, Severus. It was a calculated risk."

Severus finally lost control of his features. "What?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Harry needed to see with his own eyes what 'evil' is – what 'evil' is capable of, what we are fighting against and what he will be facing one day. He needed to know how far Voldemort was willing to go in his quest for power."

Dumbfounded, Severus stared at the man who had been his mentor for many years. He had wondered before how much of this 'mentoring' was in truth 'pulling his strings', but seeing how manipulative the headmaster was even with the child he had sworn to protect made him see things in a different light. "You want him to feel that he has no other choice … that he's duty bound to fight against the Dark Lord."

"Harry has no choice in this, Severus. Voldemort will come for him eventually, it's inevitable. I think it's best to have some control over the when and the how. While still a child, Voldemort can't hurt him. Lily's protection made sure of that. I didn't plan on having him come face to face with Voldemort in the forest tonight. As you know, I'm hoping that such an encounter will eventually take place in the castle, where help is available and where Hogwarts can provide its own protections."

"What are you planning to do – shove them both down the trapdoor at the same time?" asked Severus, not hiding his sarcasm. "I agree that Quirrell – or rather the Dark Lord who seems to drive him - will make a move for the stone at some point. But I don't know how you expect Potter to find out when, and I'm still not convinced that the boy will go after him if he does."

"You underestimate the power of fate. It will happen, Severus, and it will happen before the end of the school year, as Quirrell won't be here for the start of the next. The curse on the DADA position will see to it."

Severus wasn't sure if the encounter with the Dark Lord was so inevitable as Albus made it out to be. He wouldn't even be in the castle right now if Albus had hidden the stone elsewhere. There was no telling if it would have hindered him in his quest to regain a body, or if it would have made it easier and less predictable. But Severus couldn't shake the feeling that they were using a child they had a duty to protect to serve some 'greater good',

He left the office with the uneasy feeling that Albus might be lying to himself by talking about fate and inevitability while at the same time pushing for things to fall into place according to his plans.

Yet Severus didn't know what to do about it. He was duty-bound just as Albus claimed Harry was. He had pledged his life to Albus and his fight against his former master. But he had also sworn to protect Lily's son. Severus, for the first time, started to wonder if both goals were mutually exclusive.

*'*'*'*'*'*

Thanks to the potion Madam Pomfrey had given him, Harry slept peacefully despite his traumatizing encounter in the forest. The events of yesterday seemed like a bad dream in the light of the morning sun which came in through the huge windows of the hospital wing.

Looking back, Harry couldn't quite understand why he had been so shaken. He had seen dead animals before, and while the idea of drinking blood was certainly repulsive, it didn't explain the deep horror he had felt seeing that cloaked figure hovering over the dead body of the magnificent creature - death and evil triumphing over beauty, purity and innocence.

It had scared him. He knew that life was cruel and certainly no fairy tale, even if magic had turned out to be real. But rationally knowing it and seeing it, feeling it in his heart – it was as if a tiny piece of innocence had died in him as well.

This cloaked figure – though reason told him that it had to have been hiding a human beneath it – hadn't seemed human.

"You know who it was," said Tom quietly. He had woken some time before Harry, as his own mind had not been calmed by the potion as effectively as Harry's. He had thus had some time to think things through, and there was only one conclusion.

"Quirrell", said Harry. "It must have been Quirrell. It was exactly the same when I looked into his eyes during Defense class and you fainted. You almost did again."

"Yes, it was exactly like that. And I'm not sure it was an attempt at mind reading that caused it. But Quirrell – how can he be a monster killing unicorns by night and a stuttering, scared-of-his-own shadow teacher by day?"

"Tom … Do you think it's possible that Quirrell has another person in his head, just like I do – except that his isn't nice?"

Harry could feel Tom's surprise. "That makes alarmingly much sense! Do you remember what the centaur said in response to the question 'who would do such a thing'?"

"Yes," Harry whispered. "He said: someone desperately afraid of not existing."

They both fell silent as the words of the centaur gained new significance and gravity in light of what they had just found out.

Harry hesitantly posed the question that had just crossed both their minds. "Do you think that by drinking unicorn blood, his other soul is hoping to gain a body of his own?"

Tom took his time to answer. "I can't see how," he finally said. "Quirrell drinks the blood and then what? His body just magically splits in two? We didn't see it happen."

"I wish we could talk to Firenze once more and ask him what exactly happens when you drink unicorn blood."

"Well, first of all, you would probably give him a right scare with that question, and secondly, I doubt you'd get a clear and concise answer out of a Centaur. They seem to speak in riddles all the time."

"Then what do we do instead? Tell the teachers that Quirrell has a unicorn-murdering twin in his head? They'll ask us how we know and then what do we say?"

"They won't believe us anyway. And we have no proof."

"Tom!" Harry sat up straight as another thought hit him. "Do you think … do you think it's possible that 'evil twin' can somehow speak through Quirrell's mouth? If he can – he might not have a stutter! Then Quirrell might be the person who gave Hagrid the dragon egg after all!"

"Which means he knows how to get past Fluffy and is only waiting for an opportunity to get the stone ..."

"Then we have to do something, Tom! We can't just let him get it!"

"Why? What responsibility do we have for the stone the headmaster was so stupid to hide in a school? And worse, to share the specifics of its protection with a chatterbox like Hagrid? If we're right, Quirrell is highly dangerous, and you're just a kid, Harry. It's not your responsibility!"

"But we can't just sit in his classroom knowing what he did, and what he is – and do nothing!" protested Harry agitatedly. The idea of sitting right there, face to face with a unicorn murderer hiding in his professor's head, was inconceivable. He might find out that Harry knew. And why should a unicorn murderer hesitate to murder children if they were in his way?

"Harry, calm down," said Tom's reasonable and calm voice in his head. "It's only one more DADA class before the exam, which is taken in the Great Hall, with other professors present. Just keep your head down or – if you think you can't do that - just pretend to be sick and skip the next class."

Okay, that was sound advice. One missed class wouldn't hurt him. They were doing revisions anyway. But Tom was missing a point. It was not just his own welfare he was concerned about. He couldn't let someone evil get the means to eternal life.

"Tom," Harry said, feeling a lot calmer again. "I won't rush and do something rashly heroic like going after the stone myself. I'm not stupid. But we need to tell someone."

"Fine. Do that and let the adults deal with it."

*'*'*'*'*

"Professor Snape?" Harry peeped into his head of house's office a bit nervously.

"Potter." Why was he always sighing as if Harry's mere presence was causing him great discomfort?

"About the unicorn killer. I think it was Professor Quirrell."

As expected, that caught the Potion Master's attention. He paused in his marking and looked up in surprise. "And how, pray tell, did you come to this conclusion?"

"My scar hurt. My head felt like it would burst. Just as it did when Professor Quirrell looked at me in Defense class."

Professor Snape looked surprised. "Your scar hurt? I thought when you told me about the migraine you had in Defence class that it was your head hurting."

"Well, scar or entire head – what's the difference? It's feels the same to me, like someone shoving a knife through my scar into my head."

"And has that ever happened in other circumstances?"

"Never."

Professor Snape frowned. "Curious."

"Yes. Anyway – I don't have proof and I can't tell you about the other hints I have that point to Professor Quirrell being the one who is after the stone. Except that he used the troll on Halloween to get past the three-headed-dog who's guarding the trapdoor in the third floor."

"And how do you know about that?"

"Well, we accidentally ran into him when fleeing from Peeves. I know that's not much to go on, but I thought someone should know. Well, mission accomplished. I'll be out of your hair now. Good evening to you, Sir." And with that, Harry was gone, leaving a gobsmacked Professor behind.