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Part Eight

"Mr. Potter, if you would stay behind for a moment, please."

Harry's hand immediately went to his wand, and he didn't care if Quirrell thought that was weird. He called up his magic and let it hover around him, the way he had when he'd accidentally lit Malfoy on fire. One thing Nott and Zabini had told them was that his magic had thickened and made the air hot before he did that, and he was pretty sure that he knew how to do that when he wasn't so angry, how to keep it ready.

He was going to defend himself if he had to.

Quirrell had chased the other students out of the classroom as they finished the Defense exam, and now he stood staring at Harry. His eyes might have had a red rim around them, but honestly, Harry was too far away to see that.

It didn't matter. Harry breathed in and out and tried to feel the way he had when he'd attacked Yaxley and the other Ravenclaws.

Of course, he knew that he couldn't handle Quirrell the way he'd handled them. Quirrell was an adult wizard and an experienced duelist. Harry had a different plan. But thinking like the way he had to handle other enemies was a benefit.

"Here we are, Mr. Potter, Alone at last."

Harry could have said something about how messed up that sounded, but he didn't see the point. He wanted to save his breath. He relaxed his stance a little, though, so maybe Quirrell would think that Harry wasn't ready to enact his plan.

It didn't work. Quirrell drew his wand in a smooth motion and leaned near enough to whisper, "I heard you talking about the Mirror in the library, Mr. Potter. I know you have experience with it. You are going to come with me to the Mirror."

What the hell? That wasn't at all what Harry had thought this was going to be about.

But he was still ready when Quirrell's eyes turned completely crimson and he fired a spell. Harry dodged and rolled, going across the classroom and underneath one of the desks. It looked like the spell had conjured a mass of ropes, which spilled messily across the floor where Harry had been.

Quirrell clucked his tongue and turned to face Harry. He didn't look surprised, just annoyed. "Really, Mr. Potter. Are you going to try and get out of this? I suppose that you would rather I took one of your little friends instead?"

That proved Quirrell didn't really understand Harry, at least, or he wouldn't have threatened other people. Harry felt part of him relax, even as the rest keyed up, and he moved one hand forwards and called on the thick feeling of his magic in the air.

A desk behind Quirrell burst into flames. He started and turned towards it.

It was the only opening Harry needed. At once he was on his feet and sprinting for the classroom door, and rolling on the floor again as a spell came at him from behind. He heard Quirrell shouting for him to come back, but Harry lowered his head and kept pelting up the corridor and towards the staircase that led down towards the Great Hall.

He couldn't stand up to Quirrell. He'd never been able to stand up to Dudley, either.

But Harry was faster than either one of them.

He skidded down the corridor, on his side or his back as often as on his feet, ducking underneath the spells that Quirrell was casting at him. Quirrell was shrieking for him to come back, with what sounded like two voices—his normal one but without the stutter, and a high-pitched one that made Harry shake with fear. But he kept coming, and Harry kept running, and then he reached the great staircase.

With Professor McGonagall standing at the bottom of it and a few older Gryffindors gathered around the Weasley twins, laughing.

A spell nearly seared Harry's hair off. He grabbed hold of the railing and began to slide down the staircase, his feet lifted and his arms clasped around the banister. He heard someone gasp and then laugh.

And then the first light of Quirrell's spellfire struck red shadows down the staircase, and people's laughter turned to screams.

Harry landed near the bottom of the staircase and ran so fast down the rest of it that he felt like he was falling. He saw Professor McGonagall's wide eyes, and ran straight to her even though he'd avoided her most of the year because she seemed so disappointed about his Sorting. "Professor!" he gasped. "Please, he's chasing me!"

"What are you talking about, Mr. Potter?"

"Come back here, boy."

It was the high-pitched voice that was speaking now, because Quirrell hadn't yet rounded the corner. When he did, and found himself standing at the top of the staircase and pinned by several pairs of eyes—and more every second as more students hurried over—he froze.

Then he adjusted his robes and chuckled a little. "Mr. Potter, did you really have to make a scene?"

"You were the one who was talking about a mirror and making me come with you," Harry said loudly. This particular part went against all his instincts. When he'd talked to teachers before about Dudley bullying him, they'd never believed him. But he was going to do this, and that meant using as many allies as his voice could make him. "I don't know what you're talking about, but your eyes were turning red, and—"

"Red?" Professor McGonagall abruptly snapped towards Harry, her own eyes wide. "Are you certain of that?"

"Yes, Professor."

McGonagall spun towards Quirrell and lifted her wand. "I think you need to come with me, Quirinus," she said. "Come with me and remain quiet until Albus comes back. He'll want to talk to you."

Harry had thought that Quirrell would try to get himself out of it, claim that Harry was mental or laugh off the spells he'd been casting as some kind of training exercise. But it seemed that the mention of Dumbledore tipped him over some kind of edge.

Quirrell gave a screech like some huge bird and spoke in that high, cold voice. "You will not conquer me!"

He started to duel Professor McGonagall, and it became clear immediately that he'd only gone so easy on Harry because he wanted him alive to take to the Mirror of Erised for some reason. The spells that charged towards McGonagall were brilliant red and green and purple, and Harry flinched from the way the air felt when they passed.

McGonagall cast a shield that absorbed most of them, probably because deflecting them would have hit the students. Her lips were bloodless, but she still snapped her wand down and stomped her foot on the ground as she cried, "Leonsortia!"

The air around her glowed for a second. Then lions were charging out of it, and up the stairs towards Quirrell.

At the same time, a targeted red light came from one of the staircases above Quirrell. Harry reckoned that one of the other professors had joined the fight, or maybe one of the older students.

"Get out of the way!"

Snape was between Harry and McGonagall suddenly, setting up a shield that glowed like gold. He roared over his shoulder, "Get out of here, all of you! Idiots!"

Harry was glad to do so. He ran towards the dungeons, and got caught up in a tide of Slytherins heading the same way. The Hufflepuffs were right behind them, sobbing with fear.

Some of the Slytherins were doing the same thing, but the rest were only pale and blank-faced, mostly the older ones. They walked at the back of the group, facing towards the duel, with their wands lifted.

Harry watched them over his shoulder, and thought that was the way he wanted to be, strong and confident, retreating when he had to, but able to defend himself.

"Harry, are you all right?"

Harry blinked and turned around. Nott and Zabini were running towards him, their faces ashen. Harry shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, Quirrell was trying to kill me, but I don't know why."

Nott muttered something. Zabini closed his eyes.

"What? Do you know why he was trying to kill me?"

"No," Zabini said, turning around to walk with Harry. Nott was slightly ahead of them, glancing back and now then as if to make sure that Harry wouldn't run away. Harry frowned. Did they think that he'd wanted to have Quirrell chasing after him? "Just that—this seems to keep happening to you. Why?"

Harry shrugged. "Malfoy hates me because of my blood, Snape hates me because of who knows why, and Quirrell—well, his eyes turned red. When I told Professor McGonagall that, she suddenly started dueling him."

Nott and Zabini turned and gaped at him. So did some of the older Slytherins who were walking just ahead of them, and Millicent Bulstrode, who had been off to the side.

Harry gripped his wand.

"Are you certain?" one of the second-year Slytherins whispered. Harry thought her last name was Vaisey. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yeah. I saw that he had red eyes once before, but this was a lot closer. And he tried to kidnap me, and he talked in two voices, one of them a lot higher-pitched than the other—"

"Back to Slytherin!"

Harry would have objected that he thought they were already going there, but the older students picked up the pace then, and Harry was swept along. He did notice that Vaisey and Pucey, from the Quidditch team, had formed up into a kind of square around him, along with Nott and Zabini, and hid a sigh in his shoulder.

He wasn't going to try and escape, for Merlin's sake.

Probably just don't think a half-blood can be telling the truth.

In the common room, a team of older Slytherins split off to guard the door. Flint and Pucey seemed to be the ones telling them what to do. Well, the Quidditch players had a higher status in Slytherin, Harry knew that.

Malfoy did try to speak up about something different as the older ones herded Harry to a couch near the fire. "Why should he get all the attention? Do you think that Potter actually did—"

"Shut up, Malfoy," Flint snapped.

Harry blinked and fought the urge to laugh as Malfoy gaped. Even if this turned out to be a lot of pain for Harry, it was worth something to see Malfoy forced into silence by an older pueblood he had to respect.

Then Flint spun to face Harry, and Harry tightened his hand on his wand.

"Red eyes," Flint said flatly, as if he were Snape quizzing Harry about the potions ingredients that no other students had to answer questions on. "You're sure about that."

"Yes."

"Potter, do you know what this means?"

"No."

Glances flew around the room, being exchanged over his head. Harry could feel the prickling of a blush in his face, but he ignored that. It was not his fault that he had been raised by Muggles in absolute ignorance. They could deal with it.

Flint finally turned back to him and ordered, "Tell us what happened between you and Professor Quirrell."

Harry did, keeping his voice as flat as Flint's. He left out some of his inner thoughts, of course, and just said that he had distracted Quirrell with accidental magic and got out of the classroom, then run towards the part of the school where he thought students and professors were most likely to be.

"Accidental magic, right," Malfoy said.

Harry thought Flint would ignore him, but the Quidditch captain turned towards Malfoy. "What do you mean? Spit it out."

Malfoy brightened up. Harry narrowed his eyes, but Malfoy either wasn't looking at him or was too stupid to realize the consequences if he spoke up. "Potter went mental on me, like a Muggle, and burned me earlier this year," he said, looking around and soaking up the attention from the others like one of Aunt Petunia's roses drinking water. "He can call his magic on purpose. Don't let anyone tell you it was an accident."

That didn't seem to have the result Malfoy was looking for, because Flint kept staring at Malfoy, but Pucey turned to Harry with an incredulous expression. "That's what you did?"

"Yes," Harry said, bracing himself for the attack. He knew exactly which way he would dive off the couch. "I called up my magic and lit a desk behind him on fire."

"I don't believe it!" Millicent Bulstrode said.

"Go on and demonstrate, Potter," Pucey said. His expression now had turned into one that Harry couldn't read.

Harry gathered up his magic, thinking about what he could best burn to be a distraction in case they attacked. Then he decided that maybe they would attack him more if he attacked first, so he just made fire appear above everyone's heads, hovering under the ceiling of the common room.

Everyone gaped up at it. Harry ended the flow of magic a second later, and waited, tensely.

Pucey and Flint and Vaisey and everyone else, it felt like, pivoted to stare at him. Harry hunched a little.

"He could have," Pucey whispered, sounding like he was continuing a conversation that hadn't actually started.

"Yeah, he could have," Flint said, so it must have made sense to him. He turned to Harry, his eyes squinting so hard that they almost vanished. "Red eyes was a sign of the Dark Lord, Potter. For your information."

Harry stared at him.

"The Dark Lord is dead," Malfoy said, in a shrill little voice that made Harry look at him. Malfoy promptly flushed, but bulled ahead in the way that Harry would have been incapable doing right now. "What? He is!"

"There have been rumors…"

"Rumors," Nott said abruptly, and Harry twitched, because he'd actually forgotten Nott was standing that close to him. That probably wasn't a good thing. "Of his survival as a wraith, among other things. And that means he could have possessed Quirrell."

"But why Quirrell?"

"Would you suspect Quirrell, if you had to ask which one of our professors would get possessed?"

"That's not the point—"

Harry sat back on the couch and let them argue around him. He was thinking, himself, how Hagrid had said Voldemort might not have enough human left in him to die.

He shivered.

The couch dipped beside him, and Harry looked up to see Nott and Zabini sitting down. Zabini was the one who leaned forwards, eyes bright and intent. "You were lucky to have survived, if the Dark Lord was possessing Quirrell," he murmured.

"Yeah, I know."

"Were you lucky the last time?"

"What last time?'

"When you were a baby." Zabini clasped his hands in front of him as if he were stifling the temptation to reach out and shake Harry. "Do you think it was purely luck that saved you?"

"I was a baby. I can't remember!"

"But you must have some theory."

Harry shrugged, trying to hide how angry this was making him. Why did everyone think that he knew the source of Voldemort's secret weakness, or disembodiment, or whatever it really was? Just because something had happened that had saved Harry. And Zabini and Nott even knew that Harry had lived with Muggles and hadn't known anything about Voldemort and being the Boy-Who-Lived before this year. "For all I know, it was something my mum did that saved me."

Nott and Zabini exchanged glances. Then Nott said, "But the older Slytherins are going to want something more than that."

"I don't have anything more than that!"

Their voices had risen enough to attract attention from Flint and the others. Flint turned towards them with a frown. "Is something wrong here?"

"Yeah, actually." Harry stood up and faced the other Slytherins. They were all staring at him as if secrets were crawling under the surface of his skin and they could root them out this way. He hated it. "I don't know how I defeated the Dark Lord, okay? I'm not here to—I don't know, lead a crusade against him. I didn't know anything about magic until my birthday! I didn't know I was famous or about being the Boy-Who-Lived or anything. So stop treating me like some secret enemy or some secret source of wisdom. I'm neither."

The older Slytherins exchanged another series of glances. Then Flint said, "But you must have some idea—"

"No, I fucking don't!"

Harry expected one of the prefects or something to reprimand him for the language, but they just kept staring at him. Harry made a disgusted noise and turned his back.

"You were already keeping one secret, about your wandless magic," Pucey called after him. "You could be keeping this one, too."

"I didn't even know that wandless magic was a secret," Harry said, as he continued walking. "All I know about what happened when I was one year old is what you know. Probably less, since I didn't even know that red eyes were the sign of a Dark Lord."

"You could be keeping the secret, to have an advantage over us."

Harry reached the bottom of the stairs that led up to the bedrooms and turned around. What felt like the whole House was staring at him, even though he knew about half the people weren't there.

"Have you ever considered," Harry said, the words curling like ash in his mouth, "that your focus on secrets keeps you from recognizing honesty when you hear it?"

No one said anything, except a low murmur that Harry couldn't make out words in. He shook his head and walked away.