“Ah…” A few days later, at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, Will yawned his way through slicing into a sausage so plump it looked ready to split.
Sylvia slid the ketchup toward him, eyeing the dark circles under his eyes.
“What’s been going on with you lately?
Are you sneaking out at night or something?”
“No, just been buried in studying.” He yawned again mid-sentence, already weighing whether a Wideye Potion was worth it this weekend, or whether he should just sleep through it instead.
His recent push into runes had paid off.
His progress there now sat at Level 1 (89/100), and his Charms experience had climbed considerably alongside it.
Coming from anyone else, “I’ve been studying so hard I forgot to eat or sleep” might have sounded exaggerated.
From Will, Sylvia didn’t doubt it for a second.
“You haven’t been spending every night in the Room of Requirement, have you?”
“Where else would I go?
It’s a lot more comfortable than the dorm.” Ever since Will had asked the room for something “comfortable and livable,” he rarely bothered going back to his actual bed.
He had a single room anyway, so nobody noticed either way.
“Fair point.” Sylvia thought it over for a moment.
That room really was spacious, warm, and genuinely comfortable, windows being the only real drawback, though the Slytherin dorms didn’t have any either.
Which gave her an idea.
“Will, could I use the Room of Requirement too sometime?”
“Whoa, hold on now.” Will shut that down immediately.
First period was Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class most students treated as a free period in disguise.
Some slept.
Some doodled.
Some read ahead or finished other homework.
Nobody paid much attention to Quirrell’s stammering lectures at the front.
Albanian vampires, ancient hags, none of it registered with anyone.
Will usually spent the hour reading and quietly grinding experience on the side.
Yawn.
Today, though, he was seriously debating whether to just catch up on sleep instead.
At the staff table, Dumbledore watched him yawn from below, his expression giving nothing away.
…
“Today we’ll be discussing…
discussing the ancient…
the Wendigo, and the dark wizard…
M-Metiss, who first developed the…
the Wendigo Transfiguration Charm.” Quirrell stumbled through the incantation itself, and the moment he finished, Will’s head snapped up from half-sleep, hand shooting straight into the air.
The gesture drew immediate attention.
Even students who’d been messing around glanced over, curious what their resident academic star was doing, since Quirrell’s classes ranked somewhere alongside Professor Binns’s in terms of engagement. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
“Mr…
Mr.
Behrens?
Something…
wrong?” Quirrell looked genuinely startled.
No student had ever raised a hand in his class before.
“The spell structure behind the Wendigo Transfiguration Charm looks remarkably close to runic patterns, and the pronunciation echoes several ancient runes almost exactly.
But as far as I understand it, those particular runes don’t produce a transfiguration effect at all.
How did Metiss adapt them to achieve that result?” Will’s question left the rest of the classroom completely lost.
Most first-years barely knew what a rune was, and here was Will discussing spell architecture directly with the professor.
It landed somewhere between baffling and surreal, like drifting off during basic arithmetic only to wake up mid-lecture on advanced calculus.
“Who…
what…
what’s even happening right now?”
“What is he even talking about?”
That summed up the room’s reaction fairly well.
Quirrell’s eyes swept the confused classroom before he made his way over to Will’s desk.
“That’s…
that’s a property of runes, combined with…
variant structures, it’s…
for example…”
Will’s expression twitched slightly.
The stammering was maddening to sit through.
Ten minutes in, Quirrell had produced little beyond fragmented half-sentences, and Will felt a headache building with no clarity in sight.
Seeing the confusion on Will’s face, Quirrell sighed.
“B-Behrens…
come to my office after class.
I’ll…
explain the runes properly there.”
Will blinked, thoroughly puzzled.
He couldn’t focus on the rest of the lesson after that, turning the invitation over in his head, weighing whether to actually go.
Part of him considered heading straight to Dumbledore’s office instead, laying everything out.
But how exactly would he explain already knowing who Quirrell really was underneath that turban?
After turning it over at length, Will decided to go to the office after all. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Voldemort’s priority right now was almost certainly the Philosopher’s Stone.
Striking at Will prematurely, risking exposure this early, would gain him nothing.
There was no logical upside to it.
On the other hand, if the meeting produced real experience, that was worth something regardless of who sat across from him.
Every session with Flitwick had paid out solid gains, and Quirrell, whatever else he was hiding, remained a genuinely accomplished graduate underneath the stammer.
…
“Professor.” Will pushed the door open.
Quirrell sat back on the sofa, sipping tea with an easy, unhurried air, and gestured for Will to take a seat across from him.
Every trace of the nervous stammer had vanished.
What remained was confident, composed, almost elegant, as though the man Will had known until now had simply been a costume.
Will let a flicker of surprise cross his face.
“What’s this?”
“A convincing disguise saves a great deal of unnecessary effort.
I’m merely a new professor, after all, no reason to invite extra scrutiny.” Quirrell poured him a cup of black tea.
“I never fully understood the old apprenticeship system among wizards until recently.
A wizard’s attention is finite.
It shouldn’t be wasted on the mediocre, so I’ve learned to be selective about where I invest it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Will settled into the seat across from him, genuinely uncertain for a moment whether this was truly Quirrell speaking, or something else entirely.
He quickly filled his thoughts with unrelated static, just in case.
Voldemort was known to be skilled in Legilimency, and cluttering his own mind seemed like the safer bet.
He had no intention of drawing attention by raising Occlumency here.
Dumbledore might share things with him in confidence.
Voldemort certainly wouldn’t extend the same courtesy.
“It’s not simply a compliment, Mr.
Behrens.
Talented students earn preferential treatment, always have.
Looking at you, honestly, feels rather like looking at a younger version of myself.
Sharp.
Confident.
Exceptional.
If anything, you carry yourself with even less restraint than I did.”
Something wistful crossed Quirrell’s face, his voice tinged with nostalgia.
Will felt any lingering doubt disappear entirely.
This was Voldemort, without question.
“In that case, Professor, would you walk me through that runic variant properly?” Will kept his expression carefully neutral, though he noted the way “Quirrell’s” smile widened slightly at the word Professor.