Chapter 42

Quirrell smiled. There was no warmth whatsoever in his expression. Milo gave the cage a light push, and it drifted in front of him with surprisingly little effort. He was reminded of his brief adventure with Neville that morning, pushing the cage after Quirrell. The Giant inside seemed more perplexed than frightening as Milo guided the cage down the ever-shifting hallways of Hogwarts, only half paying attention to his surroundings. Quirrell was right—it really was impossible to see from behind this brute. Every so often, Quirrell called out a direction to him. Milo wondered briefly why Hogwarts had such a cage—it looked reasonably new, and could likely hold something quite a bit bigger than its current occupant—before remembering who the residents of the Forbidden Forest were.

"So," Milo asked, more to make conversation than anything, "this is who we were looking for in the forest?"

"L-l-looks like," Quirrell said from the other side of the cage. "H-H-Hagrid caught him covered in u-u-unicorn blood. W-w-we'll know f-f-for sure if the u-u-unicorns stop d-d-disappearing."

"Go figure," Milo said. "I sort of thought it would have been one of the Death Eaters, or Snape."

"W-w-why?" asked Quirrell.

"Isn't it obvious? Well, we know You-Know-Who is returning, right? But he's supposed to have died, and you guys don't have Clerics or Wish."

"Clerics? Wish?" Quirrell asked.

"Where I come from, death is pretty cheap. Well, not cheap, exactly, but with enough diamonds and the right spellcaster, pretty much anyone can be brought back from the dead in some form. Clerics are the best at it by far, but a Wizard like me can pull it off, too, with some difficulty." Milo explained.

"You can do this? You can bring back the dead?" Quirrell asked sharply.

"Not yet, but maybe in a few years at this rate. Unlike back home, there's only a few methods available to you people for cheating death that I could find in the Hogwarts Library—Scholar's Touch is so broken!—and those methods were as follows: Flamel's Stone, Unicorn's Blood, and becoming a vampire."

"Go on," Quirrell urged.

"In order of preference, the order is probably the Stone first, then the blood, and lastly becoming a vampire. There wasn't much I could find on any of these subjects—they're probably in the forbidden areas in the library, or books written by authors whose names start with letters after F—but from what I can tell, there's no mention of a cure for Vampirism, so it'd be a last resort. All I could find about the unicorns was that whoever drank their blood would be cursed to living a 'half-life,' which is cryptic as a crypt tick but sounds at least halfway better than total unlife."

"So, why not simply assume he's after the Stone?"

"Oh, he is, of course. Dumbledore's supposedly guarding it, but there's about a million and a half problems with that —he runs a school, and he's chief whatever of the thingamajig, and Supreme Muggle of the other thing. He can't be on guard twenty-four hours a day like an orc in a ten-by-ten room guarding a treasure chest. So in practice, the staff of Hogwarts are defending it, and while Dumbledore is this legendary wizard, you aren't. I mean, you and McGonagall clearly know what you're doing, and while you're a match for his minions, if you could take You-Know-Who, you would have last time. But here's the thing: You-Know-Who is weak right now, or he'd already be Dark Lord of the world already."

"That he would."

" What's more, he's politically crippled—Hells, even the Malfoys have publically renounced him. He can't storm the castle personally, and he doesn't have enough minions to do it for him outright. He probably only has a handful of loyal Death Eaters left, and they're all vying for who's going to be top guy when You-Know-Who returns. He might not even know about their existence."

"Not all of his servants are Death Eaters, boy."

"Really? I thought that was just the catch-all term for it here."

"Interesting. What does this have to do with unicorns?" Quirrell asked. His voice sounded somewhat hoarse.

"You would know more than anyone else, Professor," Milo said. There was a brief silence, and Milo heard a rustling of robes. "Vampires, Professor, vampires! There's only three ways for him to return, and they've all been mentioned in the story. Three ways, a pretty significant number, if you ask me. So, there's likely followers going for the Stone, the Blood, and rounding up friendly vampires as we speak. You're a trained combat wizard, Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts at the best school in the country, and pretty clearly high level. And yet, even you got captured by vampires—so, unless they were the vampire of Merlin himself, your captors had to have help from a wizard. A Good wizard wouldn't help vampires, so it had to have been an Evil one—maybe working for You-Know-Who. So, one of his minions has more than likely succeeded in rounding up some poor sucker, no pun intended, to vamp our Dark Lord. That means that another minion, if he wants to top the first one, has to one-up vampires. That means unicorns, because the Stone is too well defended. The dead unicorns would have implied that the second, at least, was successful, and You-Know-Who can return, if he hasn't already, in some sort of limited form. That it was this Giant sort of throws a wrench in my thinking, to be honest. Means we have to be even more careful about Snape getting the Stone."

"Snape?" Quirrell asked, surprised.

"I'm surprised you hadn't put it together. Snape's after the Stone for sure. He's probably one of those minions I was telling you about, and You-Know-Who doesn't even know he exists. Or he does know. Or he is You-Know-Who in disguise. Amounts to the same thing, really. So we have to be on the lookout for Snape."

"Why," Milo heard an unfortunately-familiar voice, "do you have to be on the lookout for me, exactly? Is it because you're skipping detention?"

Ah, nuts.

"Ah, ah, no Professor," Milo stammered. "I was just helping the Professor—the other Professor—with this Giant, and we were going to the dungeon anyways, so I was just going to see you right after."

"Interesting," said Snape. "Because you're heading in completely the wrong direction. This is the third floor—the dungeon is that way." Why has Quirrell become so attached to the boy? Snape thought. He must know what I'm up to, and he's trying to prevent me from having him expelled for Lucius. What's his game? Is he after the Stone?

"The b-b-boy is with m-me, Severus," Quirrell said fiercely. Why has Severus become so attached to the boy? Quirrell thought. He must know what I'm up to, and he's trying to prevent me from feeding the boy to Hagrid's dog. What's his game? Is he after the Stone?

"Is he, now?" Snape asked. "I'm afraid I have prior arrangements with him."

"He c-c-can have his d-detention later. I n-need him now, this is of upmost i-importance," Quirrell maintained.

"Discipline is what's important, Quirinus," Snape pressed. Milo wondered why it was so important to Snape that he get Milo for detention... oh, Milo realized suddenly. He's going to kill me. I'll just ready a Glitterdust—wait, no, that didn't work so well last time. I'll just be on my guard, and not get caught flat-footed. Hopefully Quirrell can get rid of him.

"Th-th-the Troll is what's m-most important. You c-can have him a-afterwards."

"Milo," Snape commanded, "come with me at once. You have detention; this transparent method of escaping it shames your house and our school. Come with me, or I'll see to it that you're expelled."

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