Chapter 22
"Please—please be quiet. Answer this… question."
As the halting, stuttering voice rang out, a brief silence fell over the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom—even the dust motes seemed to hang motionless in the air.
Half the students turned their gazes toward Guan Qiong, the other half toward Professor Quirrell at the front.
Quirrell's body trembled uncontrollably, his face pale and tense, as though he might faint at any moment.
Behind him hung a magically enlarged image depicting an Eastern magical creature known as the "face-sore spirit"—a grotesque affliction where a human-like face would grow upon a person's body, capable of speaking, and in some tales, even feeding.
This was an addition he had inserted on the spot; it wasn't in *The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection*.
He had just explained the creature's eerie habits: it sprouted from a person's flesh, bore a human countenance, could speak, and sometimes even consumed food.
In every recorded case, those afflicted with such a face-sore inevitably perished.
Quirrell's question had been: if one encountered such a situation, what should be done?
Gabin—known to his friends as Gray, though most simply called him Gray—rose to his feet, brows slightly furrowed.
There was nothing inherently wrong with a teacher calling on a student.
The only issue was that Gray was a mute; he could not speak.
No professor had ever called on him to answer a question—not even Snape, who delighted in tormenting Gryffindors, nor Professor Binns, who seemed to favour him.
It was rather like asking a cripple to run a hundred-metre dash.
Gray gazed at the quivering Quirrell and wondered whether everyone else had forgotten to give him a Christmas present, leaving him the only one who had—and thus earning special attention.
Still, Quirrell was the professor, and Gray had to respond in some way.
Quirrell stared at Gray with a mixture of hope and fear, sweat beading on his forehead. He pressed a handkerchief to his head to staunch the flow.
Gray pondered: the usual remedies would be fire, blade, potions, or antidotes. If those failed…
As he considered, Quirrell's expression suddenly shifted. With a sharp flick of his wand, every copy of *The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection* in the room flipped to the same page—the one they had covered in the previous lesson.
Behind him, the image of the face-sore spirit faded rapidly, replaced by the proper lesson content.
**How to Deal with Cooing Rats**
"Gray—Gray—you—you may sit down. We—we shall continue with today's lesson," Quirrell stammered.
Gray sat, utterly baffled. The other students looked equally confused, unsure what Quirrell was playing at.
But Quirrell's oddities were legion; this incident barely stood out. Far more memorable were the ever-present turban around his head and the persistent reek of garlic that clung to him.
"The—the cooing rat is a—a creature commonly encountered in households," Quirrell began in his signature stuttering style. The students below had long grown accustomed to it.
Some daydreamed, some stared into space, some hurried through homework for other classes, some read books—none paid serious attention.
Gray simply covered his ears with his hands to block out Quirrell's voice and studied the book on his own.
The cooing rat resembled an ordinary rat in most respects, save for the pigeon-like feathers sprouting along the sides of its forepaws.
And rather than the typical "squeak," it uttered a soft "coo-coo"—hence the name.
Its teeth carried a toxin once used in the brewing of one of the ingredients for the Forgetfulness Potion, though that use had since been discontinued.
The danger was not immediate, but it could lead to grave consequences. Those bitten suffered holes in their memory, forgetting things progressively until—without prompt treatment—the mind fragmented entirely, leaving the victim in a persistent vegetative state.
The most perilous cases involved victims who forgot they had been bitten and thus failed to seek the antidote. One infamous example told of a man bitten while setting out on a deep-woods expedition; he forgot the way home and wandered for five years before emerging. By then he remembered almost nothing except his own name. Fortunately, the antidote restored his memories.
By the time Gray had finished reading the entire entry on cooing rats and noted the herbs whose scent could repel them, Quirrell was still droning on with his "coo-coo, coo-coo," having covered scarcely a third of the material.
Gray scratched his head in resignation.
In other classes, when bored, he could sometimes use his magical sight to observe elsewhere—catching glimpses of intriguing or strikingly beautiful magical circuits.
But not in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Behind Quirrell's head lurked Voldemort's fragmented soul. Gray had no desire to peer in that direction and risk drawing the Dark Lord's attention.
As for Quirrell's bizarre behaviour earlier, Gray understood the implication: the professor had tried to hint at his own affliction—a parasitic face upon his body, much like the Eastern creature he had described.
But Gray was no saint, and Quirrell was far from innocent. He had already attempted to kill Harry. Rather than report Quirrell directly to Dumbledore, Gray preferred to stay low-key and avoid attracting Voldemort's notice.
He certainly had no intention of helping extract Voldemort or "save" Quirrell.
So Quirrell's desperate signalling had been wasted—like winking at a blind man.
The lesson ended swiftly. Quirrell hurried from the room, while the students drifted out in small groups, chatting about what came next.
Hermione packed her things methodically: quill, textbook, wand, and the little wooden cat pen-holder—which stretched lazily as she lifted it. It was designed specifically to hold quills.
As she picked it up, Hermione glanced toward Gray—just as he looked her way.
She gave a small huff, her expression tinged with disdain, then tucked the cat into her bag.
Once Gray had gathered his own belongings, he joined her, and the two walked together toward their next class.
"Professor Quirrell was so strange just now—he actually called on you to answer, then suddenly dropped the whole face-sore topic. What do you think he was trying to say?" Hermione asked as they walked side by side, wrinkling her small nose in puzzlement.
"Who knows? He's always strange," Gray replied. A few sparks of light drifted from his wand, floating before Hermione's face.
She agreed; she couldn't fathom why the school had hired him. In a Muggle school, someone like that would never qualify for a teaching certificate.
"Is what Professor Quirrell said about the face-sore spirit real? A person growing another person's face on their body?" Hermione asked.
"Probably exists somewhere—I'm not sure. You know I grew up in Britain; I just happen to have Eastern blood," Gray answered.
Hermione pictured the image and shivered, deciding not to pursue the topic further.
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