The the first omake in chapter eleven, combined with the “philosophy of fanfiction” in the “more info,” at HPMOR.com, strongly suggests that Voldemort is possessing Quirrell, but Quirrell isn’t wearing a turban because Voldemort found some smarter method that wouldn’t be trivially easy for Rational!Harry to figure out. Other major clues that something is up with Quirrell are:
His mysterious illness
Chapter 20 strongly hints that he turned the Pioneer Plaque into a horcrux.
And those are just the clues we got in the first 20 chapters. In another comment in this thread, I made a rather long list of clues restricting myself to thinks Harry knows about.
My idea for this is that Voldemort is on the back of Quirrell’s head, but then the Quirrellmort composite polyjuiced himself back into Quirrell, so that he doesn’t have the huge vulnerability of having a face on the back of his head.
(This explains the mystery of why he blocked the polyjuice detection spell that was cast at him at the ministry.)
On the other hand, Dumbledore and McGonagall both know some reason that Quirrell’s nature is absolutely not to be inquired about by anyone. Dumbledore even evaded the Aurors’ question on the subject. If the secret that they are guarding is that Q=V, then either they’re all on V’s side or they’ve been jinxed or blackmailed in some way. I don’t find any of those possibilities credible. That implies that there is some other secret in play about Quirrell’s nature. I don’t think there’s room for two such secrets, the other one being Q=V.
More likely, Q contains a fragment of V but Q remains in control. Q’s lapses into zombieness are a side effect of what it takes to stay in control. Inquiries are dangerous because of the possibility, as with Harry under the Sorting Hat, of awakening the fragment to self-awareness. Q is valuable to Dumbledore and the forces of light because of the insight he can provide into Voldemort’s history and how Voldemort thinks. Perhaps control over that piece of V will also be useful for magical reasons.
The the first omake in chapter eleven, combined with the “philosophy of fanfiction” in the “more info,” at HPMOR.com, strongly suggests that Voldemort is possessing Quirrell, but Quirrell isn’t wearing a turban because Voldemort found some smarter method that wouldn’t be trivially easy for Rational!Harry to figure out. Other major clues that something is up with Quirrell are:
His mysterious illness
Chapter 20 strongly hints that he turned the Pioneer Plaque into a horcrux.
And those are just the clues we got in the first 20 chapters. In another comment in this thread, I made a rather long list of clues restricting myself to thinks Harry knows about.
My idea for this is that Voldemort is on the back of Quirrell’s head, but then the Quirrellmort composite polyjuiced himself back into Quirrell, so that he doesn’t have the huge vulnerability of having a face on the back of his head. (This explains the mystery of why he blocked the polyjuice detection spell that was cast at him at the ministry.)
On the other hand, Dumbledore and McGonagall both know some reason that Quirrell’s nature is absolutely not to be inquired about by anyone. Dumbledore even evaded the Aurors’ question on the subject. If the secret that they are guarding is that Q=V, then either they’re all on V’s side or they’ve been jinxed or blackmailed in some way. I don’t find any of those possibilities credible. That implies that there is some other secret in play about Quirrell’s nature. I don’t think there’s room for two such secrets, the other one being Q=V.
More likely, Q contains a fragment of V but Q remains in control. Q’s lapses into zombieness are a side effect of what it takes to stay in control. Inquiries are dangerous because of the possibility, as with Harry under the Sorting Hat, of awakening the fragment to self-awareness. Q is valuable to Dumbledore and the forces of light because of the insight he can provide into Voldemort’s history and how Voldemort thinks. Perhaps control over that piece of V will also be useful for magical reasons.