"Oh," she said. "Ah - Professor Quirrell has woken up and says that you may -"
The Hogwarts infirmary was a brilliantly open space, skylit on all four sides despite seeming to be located squarely in the middle of the castle. White beds in long rows stretched out, only three of them occupied at the moment. One older boy and one older girl on opposite sides, both lying motionless with their eyes closed, probably unconscious and spell-bound while some healing Charm or Potion reconfigured their bodies in uncomfortable ways; and the third occupant had the curtain drawn around their bed, which was presumably a good thing. Madam Pomfrey had pushed him along with a hard shove and told him not to gawk, and Harry had needed to remind himself sharply that some people still didn't know who the Boy-Who-Lived was - either that, or Madam Pomfrey's identity was bound up with her absolute dominance of her own hospital, etcetera, whatever.
Behind the rows of beds were five doors, leading into the private rooms where they stored the patients who would be staying for days instead of hours, but whose condition didn't warrant a transfer to St. Mungos.
Windowless, skyless, unlit but for a single smokeless torch on one of the solid stone walls; that was the room behind the middle door. Harry had wondered whether professors could ask Hogwarts to change itself; or if the infirmary always had a room like that available, for people who didn't enjoy the light.
In the center of the room, between two equal bedstands that looked to have been carved from the same grey marble as the walls, rested a white hospital bed, looking vaguely orangish in the unsmoking torchlight; and within that bed, a white sheet pulled up about his thighs and wearing a hospital gown, sat Professor Quirrell with his back slightly propped up against the headboard of the bed.
There was something frightening about seeing Professor Quirrell in one of Madam Pomfrey's beds, even if the Defense Professor appeared uninjured. Even knowing that Professor Quirrell had deliberately arranged his own apparent defeat at Severus's hands, to give himself an excuse to recover his strength from Azkaban. Harry had never actually watched anyone dying in a hospital bed, but he'd seen too many movies. It was an intimation of mortality, and the Defense Professor was not supposed to be mortal.
Madam Pomfrey had told Harry that he was absolutely forbidden to pester her patient.
Harry had said, "I understand", which technically did not say anything about obedience.
The stern old healer had then turned, and started to say to Professor Quirrell that he was absolutely not to overexert himself or... upset himself...
Madam Pomfrey had trailed off, hurriedly turned around, and fled the room.
"Not bad," Harry observed, after the door had shut behind the escaping medical matron. "I've got to learn how to do that, sometime."
Professor Quirrell smiled a smile with absolutely no humor content, and said, his voice sounding a good deal dryer than its usual dryness, "Thank you for your artistic critique, Mr. Potter."
Harry stared into the pale blue eyes, and thought that Professor Quirrell looked...
...older.
It was subtle, it might have just been Harry's imagination, it might have been the poor lighting. But the hair above Quirinus Quirrell's forehead might have receded a bit, what remained might have thinned and greyed, an advancing of the baldness that had already been visible on the back of his head. The face might have grown a little sunken.
The pale blue eyes had stayed sharp and intense.
"I am glad," Harry said quietly, "to see you in what appears to be good health."
"Appearances can be deceiving, of course," said Professor Quirrell. He gave a flick of his fingers, and when his hand finished the gesture he was holding his wand. "Would you believe that woman thinks she has confiscated this from me?"
Six incantations the Defense Professor spoke then; six of the thirty that he had used to safeguard their important conversations in Mary's Room.
Harry raised his eyebrows, silently quizzical.
"That is all I can manage for now," said the Defense Professor. "I expect it shall prove sufficient. Still, there is a proverb: If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it. Consider it to apply in full measure. I am told that you were trying to see me?"
"Yes," Harry said. He paused, gathered his thoughts. "Did the Headmaster, or anyone, tell you that we can't go to lunch any more?"
"Something along those lines," said the Defense Professor. And without changing expression, "Of course I was terribly sorry to hear it."
"It's more extreme than that, actually," said Harry. "I'm confined to Hogwarts and its grounds indefinitely. I can't leave without a guard and a good reason. I'm not going home for summer, and maybe not ever again. I was hoping... to speak with you, about that."
There was a pause.
The Defense Professor exhaled a breath like a brief sigh, and said, "We shall just have to rely on the known fact that the Deputy Headmistress will personally murder anyone who tries to report me. Mr. Potter, I intend to keep this conversation on track so that we may conclude it quickly, is that understood?"
Harry nodded, and -
In the light of the single torch, shaded toward the reddish end of the optical spectrum, the snake's green scales were not very reflective, and the blue-and-white banding hardly more so. Dark seemed the snake, in that light. The eyes, which had seemed like gray pits before, now reflected the torchlight, and seemed brighter than the rest of the snake.
"Sso," hissed the venomous creature. "What did you wissh to ssay?"
And Harry hissed, "Sschoolmasster thinkss that woman'ss former Lord iss the one who sstole her from prisson."
Harry had thought about it this time, and carefully, before he had decided that he would reveal to Professor Quirrell only that the Headmaster believed that; and not say anything about the prophecy which had set Voldemort on Harry's parents, nor that the Headmaster was reconstituting the Order of the Phoenix... it was a risk, a significant risk, but Harry needed an ally in this.
"He believess that one iss alive?" the snake finally said. The divided, two-pronged tongue flickered rapidly from side to side, sardonic snakish laughter. "Ssomehow I am not ssurprissed."
"Yess," Harry hissed dryly, "very amussing, I am ssure. Except now am sstuck in Hogwartss for next ssix years, for ssafety! I have decided that I will, indeed, sseek power; and confinement iss not helpful for that. Musst convince sschoolmasster that Dark Lord iss not yet awakened, that esscape was work of ssome other power -"
Again the rapid flickering of the snake's tongue; the snakish laughter was stronger, dryer, this time. "Amateur foolisshnesss."
"Pardon?" hissed Harry.
"You ssee misstake, think of undoing, ssetting time back to sstart. Yet not even with hourglasss can time be undone. Musst move forward insstead. You think of convincing otherss they are misstaken. Far eassier to convince them they are right. Sso conssider, boy: what new happensstance would make schoolmasster decide you were ssafe once more, ssimultaneoussly advance your other agendass?"
Harry stared at the snake, puzzled. His mind tried to comprehend and unravel the riddle -
"Iss it not obviouss?" hissed the snake. Again the tongue flickered sardonic laughter. "To free yoursself, to gain power in Britain, you musst again be sseen to defeat the Dark Lord."
In reddish-orange flickering torchlight, a green snake swayed above a white hospital bed, as the boy stared into the embers of its eyes.
"Sso," Harry said finally. "Let uss be clear on what iss propossed. You ssuggesst that we sset up imposstor to imperssonate Dark Lord."