A To Z Blogging Challenge 2024 - Villains ! - Q Is For Quirrell

 

Professor Quirinus Quirrell, teacher of Defence Against The Dark Arts in Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, is the first teacher Harry Potter meets when he is being introduced to Diagon Alley by Hagrid the groundskeeper. He is wearing a turban. There is a reason for that as we learn in the course of the novel and film. 

He seems timid and stammers, gaining the sympathy of Harry and his friends, who suspect Professor Snape as the villain plotting to steal the Philosopher’s Stone hidden in the school. They witness Snape apparently threatening him and take it for bullying. At the school’s Quidditch match, Hermione assumes Snape is casting a spell to knock Harry off his broom, killing him, and distracts him with a fire spell. 

In fact, Snape is protecting Harry from Quirrell, who is next to him and is the one casting the spell. 

In the course of the novel, Quirrell lets loose a troll, which goes to the girls’ toilets, where Hermione is hiding out crying. Fortunately Harry and Ron go to warn her, and Ron finally gets the “Wingardium Leviosa” spell right, knocking out the troll with its own club.

He tries to kill Harry at the Quidditch match.

He kills a unicorn on behalf of his master and drinks its blood, which is meant to bring back life. 

We eventually learn what’s under that turban: the face of Voldemort, whom he met while travelling through Albania, where the villain was hiding out in various animals. 

All this time, he has been playing a part. He is happy to admit that to Harry when they meet under the school, where Harry, Ron and Hermione were on a quest to find and protect the Philosopher’s Stone from being stolen for Voldemort, who needs it to bring himself back to full life. 

Harry finds the stone in his pocket while confronting Quirrell at the Mirror of Erised. That is when Quirrell takes off his turban, revealing the face of the Dark Lord underneath.

Voldemort orders Quirrell to kill Harry, but Harry’s mother’s love has cast a protective spell that doesn’t allow Voldemort - or his host - to touch him. Harry faints, Quirrell dies, abandoned by Voldemort. 

What can we say about him? He’s hosting Voldemort, but not possessed by him. He seems to know what he is saying in that last scene with Harry; he’s speaking for himself, not his master. I see him as one of the many people who has been fooled by whatever persuasion Voldemort has used to gain his followers. Some of those have come to regret it, such as Draco Malfoy. By the end of the series, Draco has lost his enthusiasm for being a Death Eater; Quirrell hasn’t. He might be regretting being forced to touch Harry, which hurts, then kills him, but until then he is desperate to get that stone for his master.

In my opinion, a true villain. What do you think?