Chapter Five of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“Stay after class, Mr. Potter.”

Harry hid a soundless sigh and just shook his head when Ron glanced at him in concern. Ron glared at Snape, and so did Hermione, although she was subtler about it. At least she herded Ron out of the room.

Harry turned around and looked at Snape. The professor loomed over him, and his eyes were dark and piercing and awful. Then again, everything about the way he treated Harry was awful. Harry thought he was kind of a fool for expecting anything different.

“Yes, sir?” he asked, when enough time and silence had gone past that he thought Snape might just have him stand there for years.

A sneer wrinkled Snape’s mouth up. “Mr. Malfoy told me that you have attacked him multiple times.”

“Because he attacked me, and he threatened to murder my owl.”

“What?”

“Oh, did he leave that part out? Amazing.”

Snape continued to stare at him, slow gaze tracking back and forth over Harry. Harry stared back. He had heard that if you maintained eye contact with people, they would think you were honest. No one had ever believed him when he did that, but he did want to show Snape he wasn’t afraid of him.

Snape blinked and glanced off to the side, and Harry rubbed his forehead. It felt a bit like a pressure against his mind had gone away.

“Did he,” Snape said softly to himself. He appeared to be thinking. Harry stood there with his hands clasped behind his back and waited.

Snape finally turned back to him. “I don’t like you, Potter.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.”

“Enough,” Snape snarled, and Harry relaxed a little. At least Snape was back to treating him normally now, and that should be enough to get them past the awkward moment when Snape pretended to believe Harry. “You will not be punished for your actions against Mr. Malfoy, but you have detention tomorrow night at eight for your cheek. Now, get out of my sight.”

Harry just nodded and left. Really, that had gone better than he could have expected.

He did have to reassure Ron that Snape hadn’t force-fed him any potion that would turn him into something awful later. Hermione stood by with her arms folded and shook her head while Ron questioned Harry about that. “Professor Snape wouldn’t do something so terrible,” she said.

“So what you’re saying is,” Ron said with a grin, “he would do something a little less terrible?”

“Ron!”

Harry settled back against a wall to watch Ron and Hermione bicker. Really, at this point, it was almost as fun as watching Quidditch.

*

“P-please stay af-after class, Mr. P-Potter.”

Harry concealed a sigh and shook his head at Ron, who was giving him a concerned look as he left the classroom. Hermione had already walked out with her nose buried in a book. Harry turned around to face Professor Quirrell.

He really didn’t know what to make of the man. Professor Quirrell had seemed normal enough when they met in Diagon Alley, just excited to meet Harry Potter, but he was a stuttering mess at Hogwarts. And Harry didn’t learn a lot in his class because of the piercing headache he had all the time from the smell of garlic in the man’s classroom.

“Yes, sir?”

“You must have wondered why you did not receive specialized Defense instruction.”

Harry blinked at the man. The stutter had disappeared. That was strange. Was it that the man was nervous in front of so many students, but fine if he was alone with just one?

That could be it. But his roommates could be engaging in some kind of complex welcoming ceremony by bullying him, too. Harry knew what explanation he was more likely to believe.

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Why would you be giving me specialized Defense instruction, sir?”

“Why, because I am the Defense professor, of course!” Quirrell had a horrible smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. “And you are the vanquisher of the Dark Lord. Why would you not expect it from me?”

Dark Lord. That was a name that Harry heard from the Slytherins and some of the history textbooks he’d looked up when it became clear that Binns’s class was going to be a waste of time.

He gave Quirrell a little smile and shook his head. “But he’s dead, sir.”

“Wh-where did you hear that, Mr. Potter?” Quirrell asked, as though he had suddenly remembered he was supposed to stutter.

“From Hagrid, sir.” Harry widened his eyes. “I know that he was expelled when he was in third year, but he seems really smart! And he didn’t say that you would have to teach me how to protect myself. I mean, protect myself more than the other students. I’m just famous for something my mum probably did.”

“Now, why would you say that?”

Damn. Harry had assumed that his words would make Quirrell less interested, but instead, he was staring at Harry with an intense gleam in his eyes that definitely hadn’t been there a short time ago.

“Well, because it’s true, sir. I was a baby, and he killed my mum right before he tried to kill me. So she must have done something, right?”

Quirrell stared at him for a moment more, and then gave an abrupt, tinkling laugh. Harry had never heard a worse laugh in his life. “Well, you are right, of course, Mr. Potter! No one would expect you to have killed the greatest Dark Lord of our time.” He waved his hand at the classroom door. “Go on, then. Catch up with your l-little friends.”

Harry ran out with just a nod for the professor. He found Ron and Hermione waiting for him around the corner. Even Hermione looked concerned when Harry told them what his conversation with Quirrell had been like.

“We should at least try to keep an eye on him,” Hermione said, after Harry had talked her out of going to a professor. Harry knew they wouldn’t listen to him. No one ever did, except for his friends. “Figure out why he would talk to you like that, Harry.”

“He could be into Dark Arts and things,” Ron said, nodding. “He ran into vampires somewhere, and there’s a curse on the Defense post, there must be, professors don’t even last a single year…”

“What if he’s doing research to try and end the curse?” Hermione asked, and they were off.

Harry trailed behind his friends, revolving things in his head. The way Quirrell had stopped stuttering. The way his smile hadn’t reached his eyes. How he’d avoided calling Voldemort by his name, but hadn’t called him You-Know-Who, either.

Something is really wrong with him. Even if he is doing research on the curse on the Defense post.

So Harry resolved to watch Quirrell. At the moment, he didn’t know what else he could do. Coming to Hogwarts had taught him that he was a lot more limited than he’d believed he was when his wand came to life in his hand.

*

Harry waited outside the gargoyle that he knew guarded the Headmaster’s office, and tried not to be nervous. After all, the one time he had met the Headmaster, he’d been perfectly nice, if a little strange.

He just hoped that Headmaster Dumbledore wouldn’t see what Harry was going to tell him now as tattling or something like that.

The gargoyle finally leaped aside, because of some criteria that Harry couldn’t determine, and he ran up the moving staircase as fast as he could. Then he knocked on Professor Dumbledore’s door, and tried not to gasp in relief when the Headmaster spoke in a cheerful voice, asking him to come in.

“Thanks, sir,” he said, stumbling in, and then blinked at the silver instruments and the phoenix and what looked like a large stone bowl on the desk. But he shook off the temptation to ask the Headmaster about them. “Sir, it’s about Hagrid.”

“Oh? I had thought that you considered him a friend, Mr. Potter.”

Harry sighed. Dumbledore’s voice was cool, bordering on cold. Yeah, he probably was one of the Gryffindors who thought you should never report your friends to anybody. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble, sir. It’s only that he has a dragon egg, and he lives in a wooden house, and I’m really worried about him burning down his house. Or getting hurt. Or harming the dragon, even though he doesn’t mean to. He’s not a professional dragon breeder, he doesn’t know what they eat—”

“Please calm down, Mr. Potter.”

Harry bit his lip, hard, the way he sometimes did when he was suffering under some unfair punishment that Dudley got him put into, and nodded. “All right, sir.”

“I knew that Hagrid had a dragon egg, and I hoped that he would come and speak to me himself. But I cannot be angry that you did it on his behalf. You did not wish to see a friend suffer, and that is an admirable trait.”

Harry smiled at Professor Dumbledore, and didn’t resent him sounding a little surprised. It was a bit unfair to think that Harry wouldn’t care about his friends because he was in Slytherin, but, well, Harry hadn’t seen much friendship in the Slytherin dormitories, either. Only bullying, and the people who stood aside and watched it.

“I will speak with Hagrid myself this afternoon.” Professor Dumbledore stood. “In the meantime, perhaps you can spend some time outside with your friends Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger?”

“Thanks, sir. Hagrid won’t get in trouble for this?”

“Oh, no! He has not actually hatched or bred a dragon, which means that he has committed no crime.”

Harry nodded, relieved, and trotted back down the stairs. It sounded like the Headmaster was getting Hagrid out of trouble on a technicality, but what were technicalities for, if not to get your friends out of trouble?

And he was going to join Ron and Hermione, although in the library instead of outside. They were doing research on the kinds of curses that could be put on jobs and how you could remove them, to see if it would help them understand Quirrell any better.