[HPforGrownups] Re: Quirrell's Tenure (Again)

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 44075

Gwen:
> So it seems to me it's actually possible that Quirrell's "vampire" 
> incident occurred during a previous year, while on sabbatical, and 
> that the Voldemort incident occurred more recently. That, or perhaps 
> Voldemort was the vampire, but it occurred at least two years 
> previously, and Voldy only saw the need to possess Quirrell at the 
> start of Harry's year. Still problematic, though.

Eloise:
The first problem I see with this is that it seems to assume (forgive me if 
I'm wrong) that either Quirrell really did change after his encounter with 
vampires, etc, or that he spent a year or more pretending to have changed, 
despite there being no ongoing plot to steal the Philosopher's Stone.

Isn't the whole point of s-s-stuttering P-p-professor Quirrell is to distract 
attention from his being the one intent on stealing the Stone? That's what 
I'd always thought. He miraculously loses that stutter when he confronts 
Harry at the end, doesn't he?
We know he's still in full control of his powers from the way he manages the 
trolls, both on Hallowe'en and on the night he tries to steal the Stone. I 
don't imagine he was stuttering the bucking broom jinx, either.

So the vampire story seems to be a cover and there seems no reason to pretend 
a personality change  a year or two before attempting to steal the Stone.

*But*, you ask, why does Quirrell affect the change *before* the attempt at 
stealing the Stone from Gringotts fails?
I originally thought that this made the whole situation even more FLINTy, but 
I'm not sure that it does. A competent DADA professor might be open to 
suspicion of stealing from Gringotts, I suppose.

The second problem is that Voldemort gives us the time scale in the 
graveyard. He states that he met Quirrell four years previously.

Gwen:
> <>There's one other possibility. IF Quirrell is just returning from 
> sabbatical during the summer of 1991, and IF he encountered 
> Voldemort, and not a vampire, on that trip, and IF the speaker is 
> Hagrid, not Percy, then Hagrid could know about the change in 
> Quirrell's character because he's been at Hogwarts over the summer.  

Eloise:

Yes, Hagrid (and he was the speaker) would know of the change of personality, 
but not that he was frightened of his own students, (unless we start assuming 
things about students staying over the summer, for which we have no evidence) 
which is what he says.

Gwen:
> 
> Wait--I think that might work. He was in the Leaky Cauldron because 
> he was at Hogwarts and overheard or found out about Dumbledore 
> sending Hagrid to pick up Harry and the philosopher's stone and bring 
> it back with him. So he sped down to London to try to beat Hagrid to 
> it. That's why he was in the Leaky Cauldron, instead of at school or 
> in Hogsmeade. But Hagrid already had time to observe that Quirrell 
> was jumpier and more skittish than he had been, so he has the 
> authority to say that it must have been something that happened while 
> he was away.

Eloise:
I think that's as close as we're going to get. But I can't make the evidence 
tie up.

Going back a bit in your post,
Gwen:
>> "They [HRH] had never yet had a Defence Against the Dark Arts 
>> teacher who had lasted more than three terms" (UK ed., p. 155).  
<snip>
>Thus, a teacher who lasted one year could be said to have also lasted 
>three terms.

Eloise:
Ali has clarified the British school term situation.
My (British) reading is clearly that HRH have never had a DADA teacher who 
has lasted more than a year.

*But* despite understanding the *words*, I do think the *meaning* of the 
sentence is ambiguous. It could be read either to mean that HRH had never 
themselves had an individual DADA teacher for longer than a year, *or* that 
none of the teachers they had had had survived in the job for longer than a 
year. (Three hads in a row! Think that makes sense!)

I don't think we'll ever find a solution to this one! Not unless a little 
text change creeps into a future edition. Like being frightened of his 
shadow, instead of of the students! 

There's another interesting thing about what Hagrid says: he was all right 
while he was *studying out of books*, but then he went off for a year to get 
practical experience.
You could read this to mean that he went staight from studying, to practical 
research (perhaps in preparation for his appointment at Hogwarts?) to his 
first teaching job.
But we're still left with the 'frightened of the students' problem and the 
fact that Percy recognises Quirrell. Though Percy puts his nervousness down 
to the fact that he's dining with Snape, which might either indicate that 
Percy knew Quirrell before and recognises a change in his demeanour, *or* 
that he recognises him because he is new and thinks that, naturally, Snape is 
putting him on edge, so even this evidence is in the end ambiguous, I think.

It's a FLINT, if you ask me.

Phyllis has posted a couple of messages whilst I've been writing, some of 
which agrees with what I've said, some of which doesn't.
I'll just take her up on this:

Phyllis:
>Since I have another opportunity to add fuel to my "Quirrell only 
>lasted one year" theory, I came across another line in GoF that I 
>also thinks confirms this: "Snape had lost out on the Defense Against 
>the Dark Arts job for four years running" (I don't have my book with 
>me, so I may not have quoted this exactly, but this is the gist, 
>anyway).

Eloise:
This is just part of the student rumour thing again, IMO, combined with 
Harry's viewpoint.
Whether Quirrell was teaching at Hogwarts or not during the year before he 
went to Albania, he was not at Hogwarts the year before Harry started and the 
student rumour machine would surely have predicted that Snape would want to 
get the job in his absence. In fact, given that someone must have been 
teaching the year before Harry started, it should say, 'five years running', 
which is a give away that it's Harry's POV.

Eloise





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