Quirrell closed his eyes tightly. With an expression of facing death unflinchingly, he grabbed a corner of the purple turban and then—with a dramatic flourish—yanked it off.
The entire turban was pulled free and thrown to the ground with a soft whoosh.
Quirrell's bare head was exposed. It looked surprisingly small and was completely, shockingly bald, without a single hair.
Dracula looked at his smooth, egg-like bald little head, frowned in disgust, and ordered sharply:
'Stop playing tricks. Turn your body around.'
Quirrell slowly, reluctantly, turned around, displaying the back of his head to the assembled professors.
The professors were all stunned into silence.
Professor Sprout immediately covered her eyes, a clear red mark appearing below her forehead from the swift, almost violent, hand motion. Snape's mouth and eyes twitched simultaneously, his normally controlled facial features completely contorted in a grimace of revulsion. Professor Flitwick, who had been in the middle of eating a biscuit, spat it out directly onto the floor after seeing the back of Quirrell's head.
Dracula, however, was the most direct. Visibly disgusted, he raised his hand and—with an almost invisible flick of his wrist—slapped Quirrell's head from across the room with a blast of air. Quirrell was sent spinning around several times before falling heavily to the ground. He smashed a large hole in the floor of the professors' lounge, just large enough for the back of his head to become rather firmly embedded in the floorboards.
It turned out that on the back of Quirrell's head, there were 3 extremely hideous scars—2 above and 1 below—pieced together in such a way that they resembled an ugly, undeniably sinister human face.
This grotesque visage thoroughly disgusted the professors, making them lose their appetite for days to come.
Despite being psychologically unwilling to believe it, as the fair and impartial Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall had to admit that even if Quirrell's scars were ugly, there was indeed nothing else under the turban.
So now, in a rather awkward turn of events, the villains in this particular drama had somehow become the professors themselves.
They were like a group of vicious and evil bullies, forcing the weak, pitiable Quirrell into a corner, stripping off his last piece of dignity—his protective turban.
'Are… are you satisfied now?' With his head still embedded in the ground, the pitiful Quirrell sobbed in accusation, his voice muffled by the floorboards. 'I… I always used my turban to cover… cover these ugly scars, just afraid… afraid that you and the students would dislike me. If… if laughing at me makes you happy, then I… I accept it…'
Hearing Quirrell's truly pathetic words, Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout—the 2 kind-hearted, middle-aged women—were directly moved to sympathy.
Professor Sprout said sentimentally, her voice thick with emotion, 'Oh, poor Assistant Quirrell! It is all our fault for uncovering your wounds like this.'
'Rest assured, Quirinus. Hogwarts will definitely not wrong an innocent person!' Professor McGonagall also comforted him, her usual sternness softened by a wave of pity.
After thanking them profusely, his voice still choked with emotion, Quirrell carefully pulled his head out from between the splintered floor tiles. Then, clutching the back of his head, he limped out of the professors' lounge.
After Quirrell left, Snape looked at Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout with an expression of utter contempt.
'Heads of Houses, because of your… kindness, our last clue has now been cut off,' he said, his voice dangerously low, each word seemingly squeezed out from between his clenched teeth.
'Oh, do not say that, Severus.' Seeing that the 2 ladies' expressions were turning decidedly unkind towards Snape, Professor Flitwick quickly stood on the table. He tried to block the line of sight on both sides by tiptoeing, chirping, 'Minerva and Pomona just did not want to wrong an innocent person. I think Assistant Quirrell is quite pitiful. Why not observe him further?'
'Womanly benevolence,' Snape snorted coldly, his lip curling in a sneer.
Then, he flung his long black cloak dramatically behind him and, with a demeanour of utter indifference to their opinions, swept out of the professors' lounge like a large, disgruntled bat.
'Severus is really so impolite!' Professor McGonagall was so angry that she almost chased after him to let him experience what it meant for women to "hold up half the sky"—and perhaps a Bludger or two.
The good-tempered Professor Sprout quickly grabbed Professor McGonagall's arm. 'Minerva, forget it. It is not worth it. You also know that Severus has always been like this…'
Because of this unpleasant interlude, the professors dispersed, clearly unhappy with the outcome.
Dracula, however, stayed until the very end.
He slowly walked to the pit in the ground, looked at the purple turban that Quirrell had—conveniently or perhaps genuinely—forgotten to take away, and fell into deep thought.
A faint scent of inferior perfume still emanated from the turban. It was already very faint; only a vampire with such a keen sense of smell could easily detect it now.
Dracula had not noticed it before, but now he suddenly remembered that he had not smelled that strong, cloying perfume on Quirrell for some time. This might also be the reason why the other professors had not been too unfriendly to Quirrell today.
If Quirrell had come to the professors' lounge reeking of that overwhelming smell as he had before—let alone whether Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout would have pitied him—it was more likely the 2 ladies would have been the first to be unable to bear it. They would have chased Quirrell, that walking biohazard, right back to his office.
Dracula recalled all of Quirrell's abnormal behaviour—the garlic, the troll stench, the overpowering perfume—and gradually, a vague truth began to coalesce in his mind.
From the very first time he had met Quirrell, the man had been using all kinds of strong smells to cover up another scent on his body.
First, it was the smell of garlic, which Dracula had detested, so he had ordered Quirrell to remove it.
Later, Quirrell had replaced it with the smell of a troll's sock—one that likely had not been washed for centuries—and the general miasma of an uncleaned public toilet. The troll's smell alone could make a person with a normal sense of smell vomit, yet Quirrell had managed to carry such a potent odour and live normally for a whole day. In this regard, he was indeed a brave—or perhaps merely desperate—man.
Finally, Quirrell had removed the troll's overpowering stench and had only left the strong, cheap smell of inferior perfume.
Because the smell of perfume was slightly more "normal", and Hogwarts had no explicit rule stating that professors could not wear perfume, Quirrell had managed to get away with it. This had lasted for most of the semester.
As Christmas approached, the professors were extremely busy with end-of-term preparations, and no one particularly cared about the man who doused himself in perfume every day anymore.
Dracula continued to recall…
It seemed that the smell of perfume on Quirrell's body had begun to gradually dissipate before Harry's first Quidditch match.
Thinking of this, Dracula took out the Hogwarts deed from his pocket. He looked at a small room on the enchanted map—a room that was surrounded by layers of profound protective magic and, crucially, could not be monitored by the deed itself.
That was Quirrell's office.
'Interesting.'
Dracula's lips curled slightly into a knowing, almost predatory smile. He then stepped away, disappearing on the spot with barely a whisper of disturbed air.
Inside Quirrell's office, the bald man knelt respectfully. He was holding a diary in both hands, placing it carefully on the desk in front of him.
'I have finally cleared myself of suspicion, Master!' he said, his voice trembling with a mixture of relief and excitement. 'Master, rest assured! I will definitely help you get the Philosopher's Stone!'
A misty, black-haired boy's phantom quietly appeared above the diary.
He nodded slowly towards Quirrell, a sinister, calculating smile also appearing on his translucent face.
***********
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