Quirrell Dropped the Act

"Isn't it obvious? I had a feeling you might have seen through me at last year's Quidditch match. But after tonight, my master will return to life. I'll trample those hidebound old fools underfoot, and your corpse and Harry's will rot somewhere dark and damp!"

Quirrell's features twisted with malice. Nothing remained of his old timid, cringing manner.

His words and his expression shattered Harry's last hope. "It... it wasn't Snape?"

At the mention of Snape, Quirrell burst out laughing. Clutching his stomach, he said, "Severus certainly doesn't look like a good man. He's like an old bat in a pitch-black cave. If he turns up at the scene of a crime, everyone suspects him first. With someone like him around, who would suspect a fra... frail... cow... cowardly... in... incompetent little professor who stutters?"

"You did... all those terrible things?"

Harry's nails dug into his palms. He wanted the pain to wake him from this nightmare.

"Yes. I broke into Vault 731. I let the Mountain Troll loose on Halloween. And at the Quidditch match, I was the one who cursed your broom and tried to kill you..."

To Quirrell, the two boys before him were as good as dead. His master would soon return to life, and Quirrell would rise beyond everyone else's reach. He had nothing to fear, so he admitted everything.

"What about Snape? What part did he play in all this?"

"Him? Ha! He wanted to save you, Chosen One. Those eyes of yours look just like your mother Lily Evans's. He loved Lily to the marrow of his bones, though he hated James Potter just as fiercely."

"On Halloween, if he hadn't seen through my plan and gone to stop me in the Third Floor Corridor, I'd have had the Philosopher's Stone long ago.