Chapter 35: Stop it, Harry and I are like brothers.

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After breakfast, Harry left the table with Wood and the others, while Hermione and Ron planned to return to the common room—the Gryffindor students were preparing banners and cheering props for the Quidditch match.

Cohen, meanwhile, was summoned to Quirrell’s office.

“The Dark Lord has a plan…”

Quirrell shut the office door tightly and cast a silencing charm before lowering his voice to Cohen.

“We’re going to work together to kill Harry Potter.”

“Thank goodness. You’ve finally come to your senses.” Cohen pretended to sound relieved. “So? How are you planning to kill him? There’ll be a whole crowd of teachers and students watching today.”

“Once he mounts his broom, we’ll both cast curses on it. We’ll make it look like an accident—a flying-broom accident—and send him to his death.”

“True. It is his first match, after all. A first-timer making a mistake is perfectly normal.” Cohen nodded.

“The spell is—”

“Wait.” Cohen had no intention of letting Voldemort use him as a hired hand so easily. “I’ve already invested a great deal of time and effort in your cause…”

Quirrell stared at him in confusion. He had assumed Cohen would be very interested in this. After all, whenever Cohen slaughtered small animals in his office, the look in his eyes was almost more Voldemort than Voldemort himself.

Cohen wordlessly held out one hand.

“What are you doing?” Quirrell asked, evidently assuming Cohen wanted a high five or a handshake. He placed his own hand on Cohen’s.

“What are you doing?” Cohen shook it off with disgust. “I want wages. Helping you is risky—I could be exposed. I’ve paid my tuition, at the very least. What if another teacher catches me murdering a classmate? Who’s going to compensate me for my losses?”

“That little matter…”

Quirrell found Cohen’s peculiar train of thought difficult to understand, but it was hardly a troublesome request.

The Dark Lord’s objective was far more important than a few Galleons. This child’s ideals simply lacked sufficient grandeur.

Resigned, Quirrell took out three Galleons and placed them in Cohen’s hand.

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“Harry is my dearest friend, my brother in all but blood… We even sleep together every night…”

Cohen sighed.

Did Quirrell really think three Galleons would fool him?

Hogwarts professors made at least one hundred and fifty Galleons a month!

“?”

Quirrell could scarcely believe his ears.

“You’ll have to pay more,” Cohen continued.

“…”

…

In the end, after extorting one hundred and eighty Galleons from Quirrell, Cohen agreed to participate in the plan to eliminate Harry.

The plan was doomed to fail anyway. With so many teachers around the pitch, even if Harry fell, he would hardly be allowed to hit the ground hard enough to suffer serious harm.

Cohen suspected Voldemort had issued the order merely to vent his frustration. Harry had played dirty, equipped himself with a magical counterattack effect, and killed Voldemort by reflecting the damage back at him.

“Have you memorized the spell?” Quirrell asked uneasily.

“I have.”

Cohen demonstrated it on Quirrell’s turban. The scarf, magically fastened to his head, instantly came loose and fell away, revealing Voldemort at the back of his skull. The sudden contact with the cold air made him sneeze.

“If you don’t believe me, I can demonstrate it again—”

“That won’t be necessary!” Quirrell hurriedly stopped him. Before Voldemort could lose his temper, he hastily wound the turban back around his head.

The sudden exposure of his bald scalp made Quirrell shudder as well.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk…”

No wonder bald men wore hats in winter.

Cohen gazed at Quirrell’s bald head with pity—

Then Quirrell drove him out.

Carrying the heavy money pouch, Cohen returned to the Gryffindor common room in satisfaction.

The Gryffindor students were busily preparing supplies for the match, including—but not limited to—a banner painted on a bedsheet soiled by Peter Pettigrew. Cohen suspected Pettigrew had wet the bed after a nightmare. Disgusting. The banner read, POTTER MUST WIN.

There was also a large pile of red-and-gold “cheering sticks,” along with some sort of tubular object designed to amplify sound. Not every wizard knew how to cast a Sonorus charm.

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“Cohen! Look at Hermione’s spell!” Ron waved the banner excitedly. “The paint is alive!”

“You don’t have to wave it—I can see it.” Cohen hurriedly dodged. He had no desire to touch a bedsheet stained with some unidentified substance by a middle-aged, short, lecherous rat-man.

“Now Harry will definitely be able to see it. What’s that in your hand?” Ron asked enthusiastically, suddenly noticing the money pouch Cohen was carrying.

“Pocket money from working for a professor. It’s not as though I wasted those extra shifts at Quirrell’s on weekends for several weeks.” Cohen spread his hands. “When is the Quidditch match? Should we go find a good seat?”

“Preferably at the very top,” Cohen added. “The view is wider up there.”

Of course, that was so he could keep Harry under constant observation.

Even though he had taken Quirrell’s money, Cohen had no intention of genuinely helping him.

With spells from Snape, Quirrell, and Cohen all layered onto Harry’s broom, Quirrell would never be able to tell exactly what Cohen had done.

Following Cohen’s suggestion, the Gryffindor students immediately set off for the Quidditch pitch at ten fifteen, lest the Slytherins seize the best seats at the very top—as though a quarrel over seating could somehow affect the outcome of the match.

When they arrived at the circular pitch, quite a few students were already scattered throughout the stands. The weather was pleasant, and everyone was eager to see how Harry would perform as the first first-year in a century to join a Quidditch team as Seeker.

“Hagrid? You came this early too?” Cohen spotted Hagrid sitting in the highest row. The giant looked somewhat nervous.

“Of course—I wouldn’t miss Harry’s first match!” Hagrid rubbed his dark, beetle-like eyes, and a sound like a sob came from his nose. “Just like his father… Oh—would you like to sit here with me?”

Apart from Cohen, Ron, and Hermione, none of the young wizards dared sit beside the enormous Hagrid.

It was not because Hagrid was frightening, but because his movements were always so large that anyone sitting next to him was liable to get elbowed.

Almost simultaneously, during the five seconds they spent waiting for the match to begin, Cohen and Hermione pulled books from their bags.

“Wait—you two—it’s Saturday!” Ron stared in disbelief at the pair who insisted on reading even at a Quidditch match.

“Waiting for the match to start is boring,” Cohen said with impeccable logic. “You know, we only get seven years to study at Hogwarts. Once you subtract the holidays, that leaves just two hundred and sixty-six weeks. We don’t have much time.”

Hermione hummed her agreement beside him.

“That sounds like something my distant great-uncle said after coming down with dragon pox. He was always complaining that he didn’t have much time left to live.” Ron’s mouth twitched. “We’ve still got hundreds of years before graduation—”

“Only six and a half years,” Hermione corrected him without lifting her eyes from the book. “Not hundreds of years, Ron. You need to take your studies more seriously.”

Cohen neither agreed nor disagreed.

His remark about two hundred and sixty-six weeks had merely been an excuse. He had not originally intended to become such an overachiever at a time like this.

But he needed to hurry up and learn the counter-curse to Quirrell’s Disruption Curse. Otherwise, his own involvement might genuinely send Harry plummeting from his broom. He had to at least put on a convincing performance in front of Quirrell and make it look as though he were participating in the spellcasting.

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