Two nights before, my left eye looked almost normal.
Almost.
The white was still slightly bloodshot, and a few thin red lines remained beneath the lower eyelid. If I looked at a bright window for too long, an unpleasant throbbing started, but I could see normally.
That was enough.
At least for me.
Hedwig apparently had a different opinion.
She was sitting beside my plate, looking at me with the expression of a creature that had just discovered its owner was an idiot.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
I reached for a piece of bacon.
She pecked my finger.
"Ow."
Blaise looked up from his tea.
"You lost to an owl."
"It was an ambush."
Hedwig took the bacon.
Draco snorted.
"Maybe she should follow you into the forest. Apparently she has more sense."
"Let's not exaggerate."
"You lost your sight."
"For a moment."
Draco put down his fork.
"That is not an argument in your favor."
"Quite the opposite. It came back."
Blaise studied me for a moment.
Not the eye.
Me.
"That might be the most Peverell answer you could have given."
"I'm not sure whether that's a compliment."
"It wasn't."
Hedwig swallowed the bacon and stretched her neck toward my plate for another piece.
I moved it away.
"No."
She tilted her head.
"Don't look at me like that."
Draco frowned.
"You're talking to an owl."
"At least she listens."
Blaise nodded toward Draco.
"I understand the choice."
"You're both unbearable."
It was normal.
Ordinarily normal.
The Great Hall was full of conversation. Someone at the Gryffindor table was arguing about homework. Several Ravenclaws were revising something before lessons. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows and reflected off the golden plates.
No one here looked like someone who had watched Voldemort drink unicorn blood the night before.
Harry did.
He was sitting on the other side of the hall and had been glancing in my direction for several minutes.
Once.
Twice.
The third time, our eyes met.
He did not look away.
Right.
That was predictable too.
He caught me after Transfiguration.
Not literally.
Harry did not have instincts for self-preservation that bad.
"Oliver."
I stopped by the stairs.
Hermione and Ron were a short distance away. Hermione looked at Harry, then at me, but said nothing. Ron looked as though he very much wanted to stay while simultaneously not wanting to look as though he wanted to stay.
Harry nodded toward them.
"I'll catch up."
Hermione hesitated for a second.
Then they left.
I looked at Harry.
"Sounds serious."
"The forest."
Of course.
"What about it?"
Harry said nothing for a moment.
"That thing stopped."
I leaned one shoulder against the stone wall.
"I noticed."
"That's not what I mean."
"I guessed."
He frowned.
"It happened when you..."
He stopped.
I waited.
"When I what?"
Harry opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at my left eye.
Then back at me.
"I don't know."
That was more sensible than most theories he could have come up with.
"I do a lot of things I don't understand."
"You don't look like that bothers you."
"Depends on the thing."
"Were you shouting?"
I almost smiled.
"No."
"Exactly."
Harry ran a hand through his hair.
"You didn't cast a spell. You didn't even take out your wand."
I said nothing.
"Oliver."
"Harry."
"What did you do?"
I could tell him the truth.
Not all of it.
I pressed.
Two words.
It would tell him nothing.
It would only create more questions.
"I tried to stop him."
Harry watched me for a moment.
"And you did."
"For a second."
"That's more than I did."
That sounded worse than it should have.
I straightened.
"Don't turn it into something it wasn't."
Harry let out a short laugh.
"You can really say that after bleeding from your eye."
"Is that a common problem?"
"With you? I'm starting to suspect it is."
For a moment, things were almost normal.
Then his expression became serious again.
"Firenze told me what it was."
I did not move.
"Yes?"
"Voldemort."
The way he said the name was still different from most people.
There was no automatic pause.
There was fear.
But not superstition.
"I see."
Harry studied me more carefully.
"You're not surprised."
Damn.
"After what I saw, it would be difficult to be."
"No."
He shook his head.
"That's not it."
I stayed silent.
"You looked like you knew before Firenze said anything."
"Harry, half the school has been talking for months about someone trying to get to the Philosopher's Stone. Then we find something in the Forbidden Forest drinking unicorn blood. The list of candidates isn't long."
Technically true.
Very broadly technically.
Harry did not look convinced.
He did not press.
That was new.
"Firenze said drinking unicorn blood keeps someone alive even when they're close to death."
I nodded.
"But at the cost of a cursed life."
"Yes."
Harry looked toward the window.
"So if it really was Voldemort..."
"Then he has a problem."
"The Stone."
I knew what he was thinking.
The Philosopher's Stone.
Immortality.
A body.
Return.
Exactly the same path I knew.
"Possible."
Harry looked at me again.
"We should tell someone."
"You should."
"We should."
"Sounds similar."
"You were there."
Right.
"Talk to Dumbledore."
Harry scoffed.
"Just like that?"
"That usually works better than hunting Voldemort at eleven."
"Funny hearing that from you."
"I'm learning from my mistakes."
Harry looked at my eye.
"Only starting today?"
"Let's not exaggerate."
This time he actually smiled.
A little.
Then he left.
I watched him go for several seconds.
I could stop him.
Tell him about Quirrell.
About the turban.
About what was attached to his soul.
About how Snape had been trying to keep him on his broom from the start.
About how the mystery they had spent months solving had an answer standing in front of them in every Defense lesson.
I did not.
Not yet.
That phrase had been doing far too much work lately.
Quirrell saw me that same day.
Defense Against the Dark Arts started normally.
Meaning badly.
Quirrell stood at the board talking about identifying curses placed on objects. His voice trembled in the familiar way.
So did his hands.
I came in with Blaise and sat in my usual place.
Quirrell looked over the class.
His gaze moved across faces.
Stopped on me.
And his voice went silent.
Not a stutter.
Not a drawn-out syllable.
Just silence.
It lasted maybe a second.
Enough.
Something behind his eyes changed.
So slightly that if I had not known what to look for, I would have noticed nothing.
Quirrell blinked.
"...as I was saying, not every curse leaves a visible trace."
I almost laughed.
Almost.
I did not use Death's Sight.
I did not need to.
For the rest of the lesson, Quirrell behaved almost exactly as he always did.
Almost.
Twice, he looked at me when he thought I would not notice.
Once, he adjusted his turban when he came closer to our side of the classroom.
He never came directly beside my desk.
Before the forest, he regularly walked between the rows.
Not today.
Blaise leaned slightly toward me.
"What did you do to the professor?"
I looked at him.
"Nothing."
"He looks like you stole money from him."
"Maybe he just doesn't like me."
"That would be healthy."
"Nice to know you're worried about me."
"I'm not."
"What a relief."
Quirrell looked toward us.
We both fell silent.
There was no conversation after class.
He did not stop me.
Did not say anything strange.
He did not need to.
I left the classroom among the first students.
Voldemort remembered me.
This time, I did not need Death's Sight for something to look back.
The next few weeks passed suspiciously normally.
My eye stopped hurting.
First the redness faded.
Then light stopped bothering me.
After several days, I could read in the evening without throbbing under the eyelid, which I took as sufficient evidence that Pomfrey had been dramatic.
I did not tell her that.
I was not suicidal.
Exams began taking up more and more of school life.
Hermione created a revision plan.
Then a second one.
Then corrected the first.
Ron claimed that simply looking at them drained his will to live.
Draco complained about the amount of material in a way that suggested the professors were personally conspiring against his family.
Blaise told him that if the Malfoys really controlled the Ministry, Draco should use his connections.
Draco was offended with him for a full seven minutes.
Hedwig returned to her habit of landing beside me during breakfast and demanding food as if she personally paid for my upkeep.
The world continued.
Quirrell kept teaching.
Harry kept watching him differently than before.
So did Hermione.
Ron still suspected Snape.
Some things took more time.
I limited my experiments.
Not completely.
That would have been excessive.
I simply stopped testing every interesting thing merely because it existed.
For a while.
I almost believed the year might end normally.
Of course, that was when Harry Potter found me.
I was in the library.
Actually.
Not as an excuse.
I had a Transfiguration book open and was trying to understand why the author needed nine pages to explain something McGonagall had managed in three sentences.
Someone stopped on the other side of the table.
I looked up.
Harry.
Hermione.
Ron.
All three of them.
That never meant anything good.
"What happened?"
Harry looked around.
"Not here."
I closed the book.
Madam Pince gave us a look full of personal offense as we left.
We stopped in an empty classroom a little farther away.
Harry closed the door.
"Snape is going after the Stone."
I sighed.
Ron immediately crossed his arms.
"There it is again."
"What again?"
"You're always defending him."
"I'm not defending Snape. I think he's an awful person."
"Oliver."
Hermione.
I looked at her.
"What?"
"Harry didn't make this up for no reason."
"Of course he didn't. Harry never gets into trouble for no reason."
Harry ignored that.
"Hagrid told us how he got the dragon egg."
That got my attention.
I did not show it.
"A man in a pub. Wearing a hood."
Hermione continued.
"He talked to Hagrid about magical creatures. About Fluffy."
Well then.
"What exactly did Hagrid say?"
Harry clenched his jaw.
"That music is enough. Fluffy falls asleep."
Silence.
I knew this scene.
Of course I did.
Ron continued.
"Snape knows."
"How?"
"Because it had to be him."
"Except it wasn't."
Ron looked at me in disbelief.
"What?"
"It wasn't Snape."
Harry stepped closer.
"Oliver, we don't have time for this."
"I agree."
"Snape tried to get past Fluffy. He got bitten. He threatened Quirrell. He tried to get information about how to get farther."
"Snape tried to save you during the match."
"You already said that."
"Because it hasn't changed."
Ron rolled his eyes.
"Maybe he was doing both."
"Maybe he also dresses up as Hagrid at night, but we don't have evidence for that either."
Hermione was not looking at Ron.
She was looking at me.
More carefully than the others.
"You know."
I said nothing.
Harry frowned.
"What?"
Hermione kept looking at me.
"For months, you've been saying it isn't Snape."
"Because it isn't."
"After the match, you said someone else was affecting the broom."
I nodded.
"I saw two magics."
Harry went still.
That part he knew.
But apparently only now did he truly connect everything.
"One was Snape's."
"Yes."
"And the other?"
I could still lie.
I could say I was not sure.
That I had only seen the structure of the spell.
That everything had been mixed together.
That several months had passed.
I had plenty of reasons.
Most were even good.
"Quirrell."
Ron blinked.
Harry simply stared.
Hermione did not look shocked.
More like someone who had just had something confirmed that she had not wanted to be right about.
"Quirrell?" Harry repeated.
"Yes."
"Professor Quirrell?"
"I don't know many others."
Ron laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
"Quirrell is afraid of his own shadow."
"He's very good at that."
Harry shook his head.
"No. I saw Snape with him. Snape was threatening him."
"Yes."
"So—"
"Because Snape knew."
Harry stopped.
Hermione spoke quietly.
"That Quirrell wants the Stone."
I looked at her.
"Apparently."
Ron stared between us.
"Wait. You were thinking that too?"
"I didn't know."
"But—"
"Ron."
He shut his mouth.
Harry was still looking at me.
There was something in his expression I did not like.
Not anger.
Not yet.
"Since when?"
There was the real question.
"That it was Quirrell?"
"Yes."
"For a while."
"How long?"
"Harry."
"How long?"
Hermione said nothing.
Neither did Ron.
I could tell the truth.
From the beginning.
I had known for years.
From a life none of you remember.
That would definitely complicate the evening.
"I was certain after the forest."
It was not the whole truth.
But this time it was close.
Harry went slightly pale.
"The forest."
Alright.
We had reached this part.
"Yes."
"What does Quirrell have to do with the forest?"
I looked at the door.
Closed.
Then back at Harry.
"The figure by the unicorn."
Harry did not understand for a second.
I saw the exact moment he did.
"No."
"Yes."
"That was Quirrell?"
"His body."
Ron took a step back.
Hermione frowned.
Harry looked as though I had just said something completely contradictory.
"Firenze said it was Voldemort."
"He was right too."
No one spoke.
Ron recovered first.
"How can they both be right?"
Good question.
Very complicated answer.
They did not need all of it.
"Voldemort is with him."
Harry went rigid.
Hermione looked at me so sharply that for a moment I wondered whether she was about to start using Will herself.
"With him how?"
"Close enough."
"Oliver."
"I don't know how much of a lecture on soul damage you want right now."
Ron looked pale.
"I don't."
"Excellent."
Harry did not take his eyes off me.
"So then..."
"Yes."
"That's why you stopped him."
I stayed silent.
Hermione looked at Harry.
"Stopped him?"
Harry did not answer.
Wonderful.
Another subject for later.
"We don't have time for that now," I said.
Hermione very clearly filed it away for later.
Unfortunately.
Harry paced a few steps across the room.
"Dumbledore's gone."
I already knew before he finished.
"He went to London. McGonagall said he received an urgent message from the Ministry."
Ron spoke.
"It's a trap."
"Well, look at that."
He looked at me.
"What?"
"Nothing. You're developing."
"Fuck off."
Hermione did not even reprimand him.
This was serious.
Harry stopped.
"If Quirrell knows how to get past Fluffy..."
"He does."
"...and Dumbledore's gone..."
"Yes."
"...then he'll go after the Stone."
"Most likely."
Harry watched me for another moment.
"Then we have to stop him."
I leaned against a desk.
No.
That was the correct answer.
No.
We were eleven.
One of us had nearly lost an eye barely a month earlier trying to press against a fragment of Voldemort's soul.
Dumbledore was out of the school, but McGonagall was not.
Neither was Snape.
Flitwick.
Sprout.
Several other adult wizards.
The logical solution was to find one of them and say:
"Quirrell has Voldemort stuck to his head and he's about to steal the Philosopher's Stone."
A difficult sell.
Still better than going down there ourselves.
I also knew what was under the trapdoor.
Devil's Snare.
Keys.
Chess.
Potions.
The Mirror.
Quirrell.
Voldemort.
Harry survived.
In the book.
In the book, he had not known about Quirrell beforehand.
In the book, I was not there.
Harry was still waiting.
So was Hermione.
Ron looked as though he already knew what Harry's answer would be and desperately wanted it to be something else.
I should say no.
Really.
"What time?" I asked.