“I hope you are not about to say anything stupid along the lines of ‘don’t try to kill people’,” Professor Quirrell said. “I shall be unhappy if that is the case.”
“Not valuess difference. True misstake, given your goalss. Will you hurt me, if I act the part of the teacher toward you, and teach lessson? Or if misstake is ssimple and obviousss, and makess you feel sstupid?”
“No,” hissed Professor Quirrell. “Not if lessson iss true.”
Harry swallowed. “Um. Why didn’t you test the horcrux system before you actually had to use it?”
“Test it?” said Professor Quirrell. He looked up from the brewing potion, and indignation came into his voice. “What do you mean, test it?”
“Why didn’t you test if the horcrux system was working correctly, before you needed it on Halloween?”
Professor Quirrell looked disgusted. “You ridiculous—I didn’t want to die, Mr. Potter, and that was the only way to test my great creation! What good would it have done to risk my life sooner rather than later? How would I have been better off?”
Harry swallowed a lump in his throat. “Therewasswayforyoutotesstyour horcrux ssysstem without dying. The general lesson is important. Do you see it now?”
“No,” Professor Quirrell said after a while. The Defense Professor gently crumbled one of the last bellflowers together with a strand of long blonde hair and then dropped it into the potion, which was bubbling brighter, now. Only two more bellflowers remained on the Potions table.
“And I do hope your lesson is a sensible one, for your sake.”
“Suppose, Professor, that I learned how to cast the improved horcrux spell and I was willing to use it. What would I do with it?”
Professor Quirrell answered at once. “You would find some person whom you found morally abhorrent and whose death you could convince yourself would save other lives, and murder them to create a horcrux.” “And then what?”
“Make more horcruxes,” said the Defense Professor. He picked up a jar of what looked like dragon scales.
“Before that,” Harry said.
After a time the Defense Professor shook his head. “I still do not see it, and you will cease this game and tell me.”
“I would make horcruxes for my friends. If you’d ever really cared about one single other person in the entire world, if there’d been just one person who gave your immortality meaning, someone that you wanted to live forever with you—” Harry’s throat choked. “Then, then the idea of making a horcrux for someone else wouldn’t have been such a counterintuitive thought.” Harry was blinking hard. “You have a blind spot around strategies that involve doing nice things for other people, to the point where it stops you from achieving your selfish values. You think… it’s not your style, I suppose. That… particular part of your self-image… is what cost you those nine years.”
The dropper of mint oil that the Defense Professor was holding added liquid to the cauldron, drip by drip.
“I see…” the Defense Professor said slowly. “I see. I should have taught Rabastan the advanced horcrux ritual, and forced him to test the invention. Yes, that is supremely obvious in retrospect. For that matter, I could have ordered Rabastan to try marking himself onto some disposable infant, to see what happened, before I took myself to Godric’s Hollow to create you.” Professor Quirrell shook his head bemusedly. “Well. I am glad I am realizing this now and not ten years earlier; I had enough to chide myself for at that time.”
“You don’t see nice ways to do the things you want to do,” Harry said. His ears heard a note of desperation in his own voice. “Even when a nice strategy would be more effective you don’t see it because you have a selfimage of not being nice.”
“That is a fair observation,” said Professor Quirrell. “Indeed, now that you have pointed it out, I have just now thought of some nice things I can do this very day, to further my agenda.” Harry just looked at him.
Professor Quirrell was smiling. “Your lesson is a good one, Mr. Potter.
From now on, until I learn the trick of it, I shall keep diligent watch for cunning strategies that involve doing kindnesses for other people. Go and practice acts of goodwill, perhaps, until my mind goes there easily.” Cold chills ran down Harry’s spine.
Professor Quirrell had said this without the slightest visible hesitation.
Lord Voldemort was absolutely certain that he could never be redeemed. He wasn’t the tiniest bit afraid of it happening to him.
The second-to-last bellflower was dropped into the potion, gently.
“Any other valuable lessons you would like to teach to Lord Voldemort, boy?” said Professor Quirrell. He was looking up from the potion, and grinning as though he knew exactly what Harry was thinking.
“Yes,” Harry said, his voice almost breaking. “If your goal is to obtain happiness, then doing nice things for other people feels better than doing them for yourself—”
“Do you really think I never thought of that, boy?” The smile had vanished. “Do you think I am stupid? After graduating Hogwarts I wandered the world for years, before I returned to Britain as Lord Voldemort. I have put on more faces than I bothered counting. Do you think I never tried to play the hero, just to see how it would feel? Have you come across the name of Alexander Chernyshov? Under that guise, I sought out a forlorn hellhole ruled over by a Dark Wizard, and I freed the wretched inhabitants from their bondage. They wept tears of gratitude for me. It did not feel like anything in particular. I even stayed about and killed the next five Dark Wizards to try taking command of the place. I spent my own Galleons—well, not my own Galleons, but the same principle applies— to prettify their little country and introduce a semblance of order. They groveled all the more, and named one in three of their infants Alexander. I still felt nothing, so I nodded to myself, wrote it off as a fair try, and went upon my way.”
“And were you happy as Lord Voldemort, then?” Harry’s voice had risen, grown wild.
Professor Quirrell hesitated, then shrugged. “It appears you already know the answer to that.”
“Then why? Why be Voldemort if it doesn’t even make you happy?” Harry’s voice broke. “I’m you, I’m based on you, so I know that Professor Quirrell isn’t just a mask! I know he’s somebody you really could have been! Why not just stay that way? Take your curse off the Defense Position and just stay here, use the Philosopher’s Stone to take David Monroe’s shape and let the real Quirinus Quirrell go free, if you say you’ll stop killing people I’ll swear not to tell anyone who you really are, just be Professor Quirrell, for always! Your students would appreciate you, my father’s students appreciate him—”
Professor Quirrell was chuckling over the cauldron as he stirred it. “There are perhaps fifteen thousand wizards living in magical Britain, child. There used to be more. There’s a reason they’re afraid to speak my name. You’d forgive me that because you liked my Battle Magic lessons?” Seconded, said Harry’s inner Hufflepuff. Seriously, what the hell?
Harry kept his head raised, though it was trembling. “It’s not my place to forgive anything you’ve done. But it’s better than another war.”
“Ha,” said the Defense Professor. “If you ever find a Time-Turner that goes back forty years and can alter history, be sure to tell Dumbledore that before he rejects Tom Riddle’s application for the Defense position. But alas, I fear that Professor Riddle would not have found lasting happiness in Hogwarts.”