Q

[Susan Miller]

No: HPFGUIDX 97253

Ah. So many things to respond to in this post.

<snipping my quote - everybody knows it by now>

> > Um, just How, Exactly, would everyone know what happened 
> between Harry and Quirrell? The only two people who were there 
> were Harry and Quirrell. Dumbledore arrived later.<
> 
> Pippin quotes: 
> ***
> Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off--the pain in Harry's 
> head was building--he couldn't see--he could only hear Quirrell's 
> terrible shrieks and Voldemort's yells of  "KILL HIM! KILL HIM!" 
> and other voices, maybe in Harry's own head, crying, "Harry! 
> Harry!"
> ****
> 
> Now, when Dumbledore came running to the rescue, did he 
> come alone? Not according to this passage.

You have a point. But let's continue the passage:

***
He felt Quirrell's arm wrenched from his grasp, knew all was lost and 
fell into blackness, down ... down ... down ...

Something gold was glinting just above him. The Snitch! He tried to 
catch it, but his arms were too heavy.
He blinked. It wasn't the Snitch at all. It was a pair of glasses.
**

>From reading the whole thing, I got that there was a lot of confusion 
on Harry's part beginning at the start of your quote and not settling 
down until he recognized the glasses. Even Harry doesn't know if the 
voices were real. I had always imagined that they were vaguely 
remembered voices from his hospital stay. It would be easy to confuse 
the sequence of events in such a state. But granted, others could 
have joined Dumbledore in the dungeon.

>  They would be handy to have along, especially  
> since the potion for getting past the fire was all gone. 

Actually, I've pondered this before. I wondered why Quirrell didn't 
just drink all the potion and effectively close the door behind 
himself. Or at least move the bottles around or steal the riddle? But 
I think the charms reset themselves between breaches. The chess set 
reset with new pieces. But for Dumbledore, the point is moot. 
Wouldn't he be able to remove all the charms on the way? It would be 
pretty silly if he put up blocks that might keep HIM out, too. That 
justs leaves Fluffy and the troll that they would really have to deal 
with.

They would 
> not need to know any of the conversation   to know that Quirrell 
> had gone after the Stone and Harry had stopped him, which 
> seems to be what everyone knows. 
> 

Well, okay. But I liked my version better.

> As for using the Stone to save Quirrell, he had drunk unicorn 
> blood. It would be no mercy to keep him alive.
> 

That's not what Firenze says.

***
Page 258 US edition:

"But who'd be that desperate?" he (Harry) wondered aloud. "If you're 
going to be cursed forever, death's better, isn't it?"

"It is," Firenze agreed, "unless all you need is to stay alive long 
enough to drink something else - something that will bring you back 
to full strength and power ... "
***

By that, I think the elixer cancels the cursed half-life problem of 
the unicorn blood.

Dipping into metathinking for a minute - what purpose did the whole 
unicorn blood episode give us? Quirrell didn't need the unicorn blood 
to stay alive with Voldemort in him. He was feeling the effects, but 
he was in no danger of dying. We needed to meet the Firenze and the 
centaurs. What other possible purpose could it have had other than to 
provide an excuse for Quirrell surviving until Book 7? Voldemort is 
used to having his hosts perish when he leaves them, but he never had 
a host with unicorn blood before. That's why he thinks Quirrell is 
dead.

I'm standing by Redeemed!Quirrell.

~ Constance Vigilance, who has no idea why Yahoomort changed my 
perfectly good subject header into the single letter Q. There was 
more to it, honest.