“Now why are you eating unicorns?”
“Ah,” Professor Quirrell said. “As to that…” The man hesitated. “I was drinking the blood of unicorns, not eating them. The missing flesh, the ragged marks upon the body—those were to obscure the case, to make it seem like some other predator. The use of unicorn’s blood is too wellknown.”
“I don’t know it,” Harry said.
“I know you do not,” the Defense Professor said sharply. “Or you would not be pestering me about it. The power of unicorn’s blood is to preserve your life for a time, even if you are on the very verge of death.”
There was a stretch of time when Harry’s brain claimed to be refusing to process the words, which was of course a lie, because you couldn’t know the meaning you weren’t allowed to process, without having already processed it.
A strange sense of blankness overtook Harry, an absence of reaction, maybe this was what other people felt like when someone went off-script, and they couldn’t say or think of anything to do.
Of course Professor Quirrell was dying, not just occasionally ill.
Professor Quirrell had known he was dying. He’d volunteered to take the Defense Professor position at Hogwarts, after all.
Of course he’d been getting worse the whole school year. Of course illnesses which kept getting worse had a predictable destination at their end.
Harry’s brain had surely known already, somewhere in the safe back of his mind where he could refuse to process things he’d already processed.
Of course that was why Professor Quirrell wouldn’t be able to teach Battle Magic next year. Professor McGonagall wouldn’t even have to fire him. He would just be— —dead.
“No,” Harry said, his voice a little shaky. “There has to be a way—”
“I am not stupid nor particularly eager to die. I have already looked. I had to go this far simply to last out my lesson plans, having less time than I had thought, and—” The head of the dark moonlit figure turned away.
“I think I do not want to hear about it, Mr. Potter.”
Harry’s breath hitched. Too many emotions were bubbling up in him at once. After denial came anger, according to a ritual someone had just made up. And yet it seemed surprisingly appropriate.
“And why—” Harry’s breath hitched again. “Why isn’t unicorn’s blood standard in healer’s kits, then? To keep someone alive, even if they’re on the very verge of dying from their legs being eaten?”
“Because there are permanent side effects,” Professor Quirrell said quietly.
“Side effects? Side effects? What kind of side effect is medically worse than DEATH?” Harry’s voice rose on the last word until he was shouting.
“Not everyone thinks the same way we do, Mr. Potter. Though, to be fair, the blood must come from a live unicorn and the unicorn must die in the drinking. Would I be here otherwise?”
Harry turned, stared at the surrounding trees. “Have a herd of unicorns at St. Mungos. Floo the patients there, or use portkeys.”
“Yes, that would work.”
Harry’s face tightened, the only outward sign behind his trembling hands of everything that was welling up inside him. He needed to scream, needed some outlet, needed something he couldn’t name and finally Harry leveled his wand at a tree and shouted “Diffindo!”
There was a sharp tearing sound, and a cut appeared across the wood.
“Diffindo!”
Another cut. Harry had learned the Charm only ten days previously, after he’d started getting serious about self-defense. It was theoretically a second-year Charm, but the anger pouring through him seemed to know no bounds, he knew enough now not to exhaust himself and he still had power yet.
“Diffindo!” Harry had aimed at a branch this time, and it plummeted to the ground with a sound of twigs and leaves.
There didn’t seem to be any tears inside him, only pressure with no outlet.
“I shall leave you to it,” Professor Quirrell said quietly. The Defense Professor rose from his tree stump, the unicorn’s blood still moonlit on the black cloak he wore, and drew his hood back over his head.
Chapter 101: Precautionary Measures, Part 2
Harry stood, panting, in the midst of a brief wasted circle amid the forest, more destruction than a first-year should have been able to reach, by himself. The Severing Charm wouldn’t bring down a tree, so he’d started partially Transfiguring cross-sections through the wood. It hadn’t let out what was inside him, bringing down a small circle of trees hadn’t made him feel any better, all the emotions were still there but while he was destroying trees he at least wasn’t thinking about how the feelings couldn’t be let out.
After Harry had run out of available magic he’d started tearing off branches with his bare hands and snapping them. His hands were bleeding, though nothing that Madam Pomfrey couldn’t fix in the morning. Only Dark magic left permanent scars on wizards.
There came a sound of something moving in the woods, like the hoofbeats of a horse, and Harry whirled, his wand rising once more; some part of his magic had returned while he was working with his hands. It occurred to him for the first time that he was out in the Forbidden Forest alone, and making noise.
What emerged into the moonlight was not the unicorn Harry had expected, but a creature with a lower body like that of a horse, gleaming white-brown beneath the moonlight, and the bare upper chest of a male human with long white hair. The moonlight caught the centaur’s face, and Harry saw that the eyes were almost as blue as Dumbledore’s, halfway to sapphire.
In one hand the centaur held a long wooden spear, with an overlarge metal blade whose edge did not gleam beneath the moonlight; a gleaming edge, Harry had once read, was the sign of a dull blade.
“So,” the centaur said. His voice was low, powerful and male. “Here you are, surrounded by destruction. I can smell the unicorn’s blood in the air, the blood of something innocent, slain to save oneself.”
A jolt of sudden fear brought Harry into the now, and he said quickly,
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“I know. The stars themselves proclaim your innocence, ironically enough.” The centaur took a step toward Harry within the small clearing, still holding his spear upright. “A strange word, innocence. It means lack of knowledge, like the innocence of a child, and also means lack of guilt. Only those entirely ignorant can lack all responsibility for the consequences of their actions. He knows not what he does, and therefore can be without harmful intent; so says that word.” The deep voice did not echo in the woods.
Harry’s eyes flickered to the spear-tip, and he realized that he should have grabbed his Time-Turner the moment he saw the centaur. Now, if Harry tried to reach beneath his robes, the spear could strike him before then, if the centaur was fast enough. “I read once,” Harry said, his voice a bit unsteady as he tried to match deep-sounding words to deep-sounding words, “that it’s wrong to think of little children as innocent, because not knowing isn’t the same as not choosing. That children do little harms to each other with schoolyard fights, because they don’t have the power to do great harm. And some adults do great harm. But the adults who don’t, aren’t they more innocent than children, not less?” “The wisdom of wizards,” the centaur said.
“Muggle wisdom, actually.”
“Of the magicless I know little. Mars has been dim of late, but it grows brighter.” The centaur took another step forwards, bringing him almost