Chapter 28: The Troll
The footsteps grew louder, the scraping sound confirmed that something was drawing closer, and then the smell reached me. It was a revolting smell that turned my stomach.
"Right. Stay in the bathroom..."
I pushed the door of the girls' bathroom open a crack and looked in. The girls, who had practically been about to come out, froze and stared at me.
"When I shout, open the door and run for the staircases."
At that moment an unfamiliar Patronus appeared beside me.
"Mr. Black, you and your companions are to return to your common room. Immediately."
The voice coming from the Patronus was Flitwick's.
"This is not a matter for discussion."
"Right... not for discussion..."
I nodded, with a slight edge of irritation. I could have tried to send a Patronus back, though whether I could have managed one in these circumstances was debatable, but then I would have nothing left for whatever was coming.
"Draco?"
The Patronus dissolved, and I looked at the bewildered girls.
"We do this the way I said. I draw it towards me, and you slip past to the staircases. Once you reach the common room, tell Flitwick where I am and what I'm up against."
"I can send a Patronus too..."
Penny looked at me inquiringly, and I gave her a firm nod.
"Expecto Patronum!" A quiet cry, a flick of her wand, and a glowing cat formed beside her. "Professor Flitwick, we are on the third floor, outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Something is approaching us. We need your help urgently. Penelope Clearwater." She gave a small nod to her Patronus. "You know what to do."
It raced off down the corridors, and I shut the door right in Penny's face, not wanting her involved in what was coming. Less than two minutes later, a vast shape heaved around the corner.
Mountain troll... hide resistant to magic... rudimentary intelligence, but slow-witted... physical attacks most effective.
With that in mind, I swept my wand and transfigured an axe from my robes. It would not hold its shape for long, but...
I had taken several quick steps away from the bathroom door when it opened behind me.
"What are you doing out here?!"
I looked at Penny with irritation. She looked from me to the troll, gave a small squeak of pure fright, and then stepped decisively out of the bathroom.
"Stay in there! When I shout, run for the staircases!"
"Penny! I will thrash you!"
"We need to survive first..."
She positioned herself slightly in front of me with every apparent intention of shielding me, and I had to step past her.
"Don't get in front of me. Can't you see I've got a weapon?"
"Graa... food..."
"Slow and steady backwards... very slowly..."
One step back... another... on the fifth, the troll finally broke from its stupor.
"Food not move... food go in mouth..."
With those words, it picked its club up from the floor. It had been dragging it, which explained the scraping sound, and raised it.
"If you can hit the club with a Levitation Charm or anything else to get it out of play, I'd be grateful."
"Understood... Reducio!"
The troll lurched into motion, and Penny threw five or six Shrinking Charms at it before one finally connected with the club, which shrank. The troll's hand clenched tighter on it instinctively, and the wood snapped. At that point both halves immediately sprang back to their original size.
"OOOOOH!"
The troll was very offended by this and decided to pick up speed, its lumbering steps breaking into a run.
There was no time for words. I took four sharp strides forward, ducked under the troll's swinging arms, and slashed across the single most sensitive part of the male anatomy.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The troll grabbed at itself and crashed to its knees, but the momentum of its run carried it forward, and it pitched straight onto its front, then began rolling from side to side. I threw myself clear just in time and ended up on the far side of its head.
"Bad idea..."
I shook my head, then swung the axe hard in a short arc, channeling magic through my body and coating the blade, and brought it down in one clean blow on the conveniently presented leg. Physically I was not powerful enough to sever it completely, but I cut clean through the bone, leaving only a little flesh and skin.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Run! NOW!"
I bellowed it, and the girls burst out of the bathroom and sprinted, not toward where the troll had come from, but straight ahead, toward the staircases. I was vaguely amazed that they could hear me over the troll's roaring, but that was hardly important now. I surged with magic again, broke into a short run, saw Penny Clearwater sending Slashing Hexes at the troll's head from the side, then ran up the wall. I pushed off from it and was airborne, flying toward the troll's head, axe raised for the final stroke...
Thwack.
The axe sank in with a rather unpleasant sound, and the troll gave two convulsive jerks and went still.
"Is it over?"
Penny Clearwater stared at me with unconcealed disbelief. I did not relax.
With some effort, I wrenched the axe free from the troll's skull and pulled it back.
"Step to the side a bit. There's about to be quite a lot of blood."
Penny Clearwater looked at me and moved a few paces sideways, and then I swung three more times and took the head cleanly off. It rolled a short distance along the floor.
"There. Now it is."
"Yes..."
"You forgot to meow."
"What?"
Penny Clearwater gazed at me, then added with some uncertainty:
"This is really the only thing on your mind right now?"
"It is now... it was not before, given that there were other concerns..."
"...but the concerns have been resolved. So yes, I am genuinely bothered by the fact that you seem to think this little incident has released you from meowing."
"You absolute idiot..."
Penny Clearwater shook her head.
"What on earth is going on here?!"
McGonagall reached us first and immediately launched into her grievances.
"Filius sent you a Patronus message while I was standing right there! Why did you ignore his instructions?! Or did you simply want to show off?!"
"Professor, it's rather difficult to withdraw to the Ravenclaw common room when you first have to reach the staircases, which were on the same side as the troll's approach. Yes, he was in the side corridor rather than on the stairs themselves, but even so..."
I shook my head slightly and pointed with the axe at the corridor from which the troll had come.
"And what is that thing in your hand?! Students are not permitted to carry bladed weapons in school!"
I cleaned the axe with a charm, cast Finite Incantatem on it, and pulled the restored robe back on.
"Minerva, calm down... you heard what Miss Clearwater reported through her Patronus, and you heard Mr Black's own account. It appears they had no viable way to reach the common rooms. Quirrell informed us about the troll far too late, and by the time I sent the Patronus, it was no longer in the dungeons."
"Filius!"
"What concerns me considerably more is how these students came to be in this situation in the first place."
"We were just..."
Lavender and Parvati tried to offer some version of the story, but I decided to step in.
"As I understand it, after your lesson, Professor McGonagall, Miss Brown offered to help the sixth Weasley with the material, and he responded rather rudely. This upset Miss Brown, and she decided to miss the feast. Miss Patil, displaying the qualities of a true Gryffindor, would not leave her friend alone. Both girls missed dinner, and from there, you know the rest."
"Miss Brown, Miss Patil, is that accurate?"
"Yes..."
Both girls nodded, throwing slightly reproachful glances in my direction. It was clear they would have preferred it if the full background went unsaid. Well, they were Gryffindors, with their own peculiar notions of what was proper. I was a Ravenclaw, and had no particular concern for those notions. I simply told the facts.
"I see..."
McGonagall composed herself slightly.
"Mr Black, you have already taken your exams, but I must note that Transfiguring your robe into an axe was a brilliantly conceived solution, and the Transfiguration itself was executed at an exceptionally high level. Twenty points to Ravenclaw. And a further fifty points for coming to the aid of students from my House. You did not know what danger awaited you, yet you did not panic, and you ensured the safety of both of them and your own housemates."
"Thank you, Professor, though I doubt it would have gone so smoothly without Penny."
I shook my head.
"What do you mean, Mr Black?"
Flitwick studied me closely, then looked at Penny.
"Simply that her Reducio shrank the troll's club, which snapped in its grip and left it without a weapon. Then, when the troll was on the ground, her hexes aimed at its eyes distracted it from what I was doing, which first allowed me to take out its foot so that the girls could get clear..."
I nodded towards the girls standing with the professors.
"...and then, naturally, allowed me to land the final blow. Without her help, it would have been considerably harder to manage."
"Excellent... Miss Clearwater, twenty points for a wonderfully precise application of Reducio, used at precisely the right moment, and a further fifteen for quite remarkable courage in drawing the troll's attention so that your companion could act freely."
Penny smiled, visibly pleased.
"Now then, back to your own common rooms, everyone. Off you go."
"Right..."
I walked over to Parvati and Lavender and looked at them.
"...Come along, we'll walk you to your common room."
With that we formed a loose escort around the two Gryffindor girls and set off towards their tower, and within a couple of minutes the conversation had taken on a life of its own, which was not surprising. Parvati had been swapping places with her sister for weeks and was practically one of ours already; Padma knew Lavender, and Lavender, through the twins, had made friends with everyone almost immediately.
The cheerful girlish chatter did not stop until we reached the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.
"Caput Draconis!"
"Quite right, in you go..."
Lavender said the password, and I noticed that the Fat Lady was not entirely happy about it being spoken in front of a student from another House, but she held her tongue.
"Draco... thank you. If not for you and Penny, we would have been killed tonight..."
Lavender went to Penny first and hugged her briefly, which clearly moved Penny more than she expected. Then she came to me and kissed me on the cheek with a rather self-conscious air, before promptly bolting through the portrait hole.
"Penny, thank you..."
Parvati hugged our prefect too, then came to me.
"...Draco, if you hadn't been there... Well. Thank you."
She kissed me on the cheek as well, just as Lavender had, and disappeared, pulling the door shut behind her.
"If you think I'm going to kiss you, you are very much mistaken."
Tracy was the first to break the slightly prolonged silence that had settled as we turned back towards our own tower.
"I am not insisting on it, and for those who had their eyes and ears covered, I will note for the record that I neither asked for nor hinted at any such thing."
"And I suppose you're going to tell me it was unpleasant!"
Tracy's voice was pure sarcasm.
"Naturally I am not going to say that. Older girls may be my preference, but gratitude from sweet little first-years..."
I shook my head.
"You're disgusting..."
"Tracy..."
"What do you mean, Tracy?! What do you mean, Tracy?! Daph, he's clearly angling for us to kiss him too!"
"I don't mind. When I think about it, it was because of him that three girls are alive tonight."
"Three? I thought there were more of us..."
"There were, yes."
"...but originally there were Parvati and Lavender. Then Padma was heading there. Three first-year girls. And if we're being honest, if Draco had not stood there, we would most likely have left Padma to search on her own. Because Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain."
Penny Clearwater kept answering Tracy's outbursts in a perfectly calm voice. I could tell she was slowly beginning to process what had actually happened. The delayed shock was settling in.
"I agree with Penny Clearwater. We would not have followed Padma ourselves. She is our friend, yes, but we would only have passed the message that her sister was not in the Great Hall. There was nothing obviously dangerous about it at first..."
Daphne shook her head.
"...so the fact that you, Penny Clearwater, and I ended up there comes down to our own choices. And he saved us as well. He even tried to keep Penny Clearwater out of the fight, and then acknowledged that without her help the troll would have been considerably harder to deal with..."
Talking like this, we made our way back to our common room. Tracy muttered darkly, kissed me on the cheek, and vanished into the girls' dormitory. Padma followed a moment later and did the same. Daphne did it with complete composure.
"You know... thank you."
With that, Penny Clearwater kissed me on the nose and fled to the dormitory.
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