"I'm not sure why no one uses his name."

"I'm not, either. I guess they figure it might summon him or something, which, who knows, with this kind of magic."

"Yes. Anyway, go on."

"So we got someone who may or may not be his follower posing as Defence Professor to—get access to the Stone, or kill you, or both? Where does Snape figure in this? I expect if he weren't trustworthy he wouldn't have spent as long as he has as Professor but on the other hand they did hire Quirrell."

"And Professor Snape has some sort of grudge against me and I don't know why. But he was protecting me from Professor Quirrell's curse and I don't know why that either."

"Presumably even if he has a grudge he doesn't want you dead. But why was he casting the counter and not, say, Professor McGonagall? And if he knew it was Quirrell why didn't he just stop Quirrell right there and then?"

"He might not have known who it was but that still doesn't explain why he was the only one who noticed it happening at all..."

"Maybe they did but it only occurred to Snape it could be a jinx instead of something else?"

"Why would that be?"

"It could be he knew about Quirrell or about someone so the possibility was close to the surface, or maybe it's just closer to the surface for him in general because he's interested in the subject or maybe it's just very rare and he's much smarter than the other Professors who were watching it."

"Hard to tell which of those - I suppose we could look up jinxes like that and figure out how common they are..."

"And maybe try to figure out whether other Professors know about Quirrell at all, or suspect anything—we said we'd do that yesterday, didn't we, I haven't seen Snape yet since then."

Nod.

"But I think McGonagall will be more forthcoming than Snape, anyway. We should—probably write these things down..."

"Should we?"

"Yeah, so we don't forget, and so we know what we've considered and in what order and to get organised and such. I—was sort of dragged here by a bird," he says, glancing at Muninn, "and I don't have my pen."

Victor hands him a notebook and pencil.

He starts scribbling. "So do we know of anything Quirrell could want around here other than the Stone and you, dead?"

"I can't think of anything else he'd be obviously likely to want here, now - he did try to kill me, and someone did try to steal the Stone, and it would be an awfully big coincidence if it turned out he was actually after Salazar Slytherin's mysterious secret room the whole time."

He snorts. "Mysterious secret room. Yeah, we go for the simplest explanation as our number one hypothesis, first. If he is trying to kill you and is trying to steal the Stone, what can we do, and does that answer change depending on whether he is a Death Eater or not?"

"...we probably can't do very much. Well, not if Professor Dumbledore did a good job hiding the Stone."

"I'm not sure 'the third-floor corridor door he warned everyone about and which has a giant three-headed dog' counts as 'well-hidden' as opposed to 'obvious trap.'"

"And I'm not sure anyone who puts a giant three-headed dog in a school behind a door a first-year could open can be trusted to do a good job protecting something important."

"Yeah, also that. Maybe most students just heed this sort of warning? I somehow can't picture the twins hearing this and not rushing to test it but perhaps Dumbledore's special."

"First-years get lost. And the castle is easy to get lost in. I certainly wouldn't have opened the door if I'd known where I was."