Hermione had watched Professor Quirrell carefully for months.

He was a poor teacher, sure, but Hermione wondered if there was something more.

His stutter, for example, was inconsistent. He'd stutter on different consonants at the beginning of a words, but not stutter on the same consonant later in the same sentence. Sometimes, the stutter dropped completely, before being picked back up, as if he had remembered he had forgotten it. There were no repeated syllables or vowel sounds – only easy-to-stutter consonants.

She'd also learned that before, he'd been the Professor of Muggle Studies. She wasn't sure how being a teacher of Muggle Studies qualified one to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, but his lack of actual proficiency in the subject definitely showed in the lack of accuracy in the information he was teaching them.

His bad teaching had a purpose to it, though. He didn't just get things wrong – he taught them things that would purposefully make them weak to Dark Magic. His instruction on what to do if a small, dark creature bit you would heal your wound, sure – but it wouldn't extract the dark magic from it. His advice on how to run away was to run as straight and as fast as possible to gain the maximum distance, even though everyone in the Muggle world had long since worked out the best way to flee from fire was to zig-zag.

And from what the older students had said, Quirrell had changed. He hadn't used to be so scared, and he never used to teach wrong information before. He'd used to be meticulous about checking his sources, apparently, which couldn't be more different than his teaching style now.

It had been with curiosity that Hermione approached him after class one day.

"Professor?"

He looked up, nodding to her as her classmates filed out of the room.

"Miss G-g-g-granger."

"I was wondering if you would sign this," she said, handing him a slip of parchment. Quirrell glanced at it, then looked at it again, before looking up at her.

"This is a request for books from the Restricted Section," he said.

No stutter now, she noted.

Aloud, she said, "Yes. I'm interested in learning more about rituals."

Quirrell raised an eyebrow. It was a trait Hermione had never seen him have before.

"Why do you want me to sign this?"

"I'm curious to learn what they consist of, so I can better protect myself against them," Hermione recited. "We learn a lot about protecting ourselves from modern magic, but not about protecting ourselves from old magic."

Quirrell snorted and moved to sit down behind his desk. Hermione stared at him.

"Miss Granger, neither of these books has a thing to do with defense from ritual targeting," he said. "They are exclusively about rituals and how to do them."

He's read them? Hermione was surprised.

"I didn't know that. After all, I haven't read them," she said reasonably.

Professor Quirrell gave her a sharp look, and again Hermione felt like she was interacting with someone entirely different than her tentative Defense professor.

"Miss Granger," he said, looking at her. His eyes were piercing. "Why do you want these books?"

Her anger at Pansy rushed to the forefront of her mind, almost against her will, and Hermione found the truth spilling from her lips.

"I want to retaliate against a housemate who keeps bullying me and insisting that I'm a Mudblood," she said, her anger leaking into her voice. "I don't know enough spells to do something good through charm work, so I was hoping I could find something to work and adapt in a book of rituals."

"And you want to do a target ritual to affect her?" Quirrell's voice was perfectly even. "Some would consider that dark magic."

"Surely it depends on the ritual, professor," she said, her eyes wide and her voice innocent. "And at this point, it's all hypothetical, anyway."

Quirrell's lip curled. "Of course."

To her surprise, he signed the form, and added two more books to the top of the list.

"You will find these to be better references for ritual creation," he told her. "The other two are more grimoires of rituals than instructional. But I'm sure you'll find all of them… illuminating."

Hermione stared at him, and he smiled. It was an oily, odd sort of smile. His eyes darkened.

"I know what it is like to be in Slytherin and be bullied for not being a pureblood, Miss Granger," he told her quietly. "The House of Slytherin was supposed to be for the ambitious and the powerful, and nothing else. Many people have forgotten what our founder stood for and wanted."

Hermione nodded slowly, picking up her form. The way he was looking at her, something dark inside his eyes – she felt frightened.

Frightened. Of Quirrell.

"If you w-w-would like any further help," he said, his eyes losing their edge, "let me know. I am always h-h-happy to h-h-help an enterprising young scholar."

"Thank you, sir," Hermione said, recognizing her dismissal. "I appreciate the help."

She left quickly, clutching her form, and went straight to the library.

Madam Pince gave her a sharp look when she handed her the form, but after testing it for authenticity, she went and got the requested books for Hermione, who thanked her quickly and went to the back of the library to read.

Before she started in on the books, she stopped to check on something else.

According to the yearbook for 1984, Quirinus Quirrell had been sorted into Ravenclaw.

Hermione looked down at the picture of his cheerful face, smiling up at her happily from amongst his classmates.

She shivered and closed the book, before reaching for one of her new ones and disguising the cover.

Ravenclaw, not Slytherin, the back of her mind echoed. He lied, or it was not Quirrell talking to you.

Hermione resolutely ignored the voice in her head and determinedly got to work.