Marcy frowned after hearing about the three-headed dog and that it was guarding something, presumably whatever Hagrid had removed from Gringotts. She took out a small blue-covered book and started writing in it. Everyone looked at her curiously, for she had two books, one blue and one yellow, which she often wrote in. "Aha!" she exclaimed. She took out the yellow book and flipped through it. "Can you tell me any of the people who were at the Leaky Cauldron on July 31st, Emily?"
Emily's brow furrowed in thought. "Well, besides Tom the barman, there was a guy named Dedalus Diggle. And a woman named Doris Crockford shook my hand repeatedly. There was also an elderly witch named - er - something Elderidge. Oh yeah, Professor Quirrell was there as well. Said he was picking up a book on vampires. I don't now the names of the rest."
Marcy looked up at that. "Professor Quirrell was there too?" She flipped a few more pages and tapped an entry she had made. "That's not good." She looked up and regarded her friends silently for a few minutes. "I have a special ability," she said finally. "I can see people's auras and tell if they're good, evil, neutral, or unpleasant but not evil. I can also sense some other things, like if someone has suffered grief, had an unrequited love, or is lying, but those don't work all the time like with my seeing auras, and it's doesn't happen for each person. I'm also a Seer. Well, I can see flashes of the future at times, and my parents and grandparents have told me that I blanked out a couple of times and said prophecies."
The rest were very surprised by this information. "Which means I can see that the rest of you are very nice and wonderful people. I also foresaw that I would become friends with a number of students. Anyway, what I sensed about Professor Quirrell was not good."
"Quirrell?" asked Ron, surprised. "What could be not good about him? It's Snape that's more likely-"
"Snape isn't evil," interrupted Marcy flatly. She flipped to the entry she had made about Snape and read, "Professor Severus Snape is essentially a good person, but does have an unpleasant nature. He has had an unrequited love once and suffered a loss. Is currently afflicated on how to treat his students, as he has favored Slytherin for so long and it would look odd if he started being fair to everyone."
"What about the other teachers?" asked Padma curiously.
"Basically that they're all on the side of good, except for Professors Binns and Quirrell," replied Marcy. "Binns I can't use my Gift on because he's dead and it doesn't work on ghosts, and Quirrell is just plain evil and somehow has two auras. The second one is pure evil and somewhat scary, and if I had to assign a colour to it, it would be black. And there's a green streak showing that he was in Slytherin. The auras I see of witches and wizards in Britain all have a streak the colour of whatever house they were in Hogwarts, or the qualities of that house if they're under eleven. Some have more than one streak if they could fit in more than one house."
The others were extremely surprised by the news. "Quirrell has more than one aura?" demanded Ernie. "But how is that possible? He's only supposed to have one aura."
"I suppose he could be possessed," responded Marcy with a shrug. "But in any case, he does have two. One is black with a few small streaks of grey, which means neither good nor bad, plus two streaks of blue and green. The blue one is slightly larger, which means the person with that aura was in Ravenclaw. The other is all black except for the green streak meaning Slytherin."
"This is very interesting," said Ling thoughtfully. "If Quirrell is possessed, and both he and the person possessing him are evil, then why is he even teaching at Hogwarts? And that stutter!"
"The stutter could either be a flaw or an act. As for him teaching here, Dumbledore obviously doesn't have the Gift of seeing auras, and neither do the other teachers, so they don't know."
"Why don't we go to Dumbledore and tell him about Quirrell then?" asked Justin.
"And do you think Dumbledore will automatically believe the words of students about another teacher?" asked Hermione wisely. "He could say that we're mistaken. Or he would believe us to an extent, but not fire Quirrell and instead just keep a close eye on him."
Emily sighed. "Okay, Quirrell is up to no good, and may be possessed by an evil person. The other teachers aren't evil, or are at least on the side of good, since Snape does act a bit evil to anyone not in Slytherin, particularly Gryffindors. And Marcy can't use her Gifts on ghosts."
"Well, not completely," said Marcy. "I can tell how or why they died. Like with Nearly-Headless Nick. Well, I don't need any Gift to tell how he died. It's rather obvious he died from a botched beheading. But I do have a general idea of why he was beheaded. A spell he did in order to help someone went awry and before he could correct it, he was sentenced to beheading by Muggles."
"What about the other house ghosts?" asked Daphne with interest.
"The Grey Lady stole something and ran away, and then was accidentally murdered by someone sent to bring her back. The Bloody Baron committed suicide in a fit of remorse and grief over something he didn't mean to do. As for the Fat Friar, I don't know why he died, only that he wanted to remain on earth as a ghost and guide students, particularly Hufflepuffs, after death as he did in life when he was the equivalent of a chaplain here at Hogwarts. Oh, and Binns really did the die the way students tell it. He simply died in his sleep in front of the staff fire and he, or rather his ghost, just got up the next day and went on teaching as usual."
"Okay, let's get back to Quirrell and whatever's being hidden at Hogwarts," said Susan. "What are we going to do about it?"
"There's not much we can do," replied Diana. "Just keep an eye on Quirrell and practice Defence on our own, since we're not learning much practical stuff in the class, just theory."
"Well, this room is perfect for practicing spells," pointed out Seamus. "We've got books with the information, and that empty area surrounded by cushions to actually do them."
"All right then," said Blaise. "We can look through some of the books on Defence that are in this room and then partner up and practice as many of the easier spells as we can tomorrow."
The others were in complete agreement of the idea and began leafing through the Defence books.
The next day, while they were practicing Disarming, a house-elf appeared. This one was female and Alex instantly recognized her. "Adelly! What are you doing here?"
"Adelly is telling Master Alex that his father is fully recovered from the flu," she answered. "Master Malfoy is visiting Master Carrow now."
Alex groaned. "Now he'll know that I'm in Gryffindor." He turned to the others and explained, "My father's cold turned into the flu the day after we left for Hogwarts. My two letters home only said that Hogwarts was great and that I was doing well in classes. I didn't mention what house I was in, and the only other people that can tell him are the parents of Slytherins, like the Malfoys and Parkinsons, if their kids wrote them about it, which they probably did. Since Father was ill, he wouldn't have any visitors that could tell him, and I doubt he would have read any letters, or I would have heard of his displeasure earlier. But now he's going to find out."
"That's terrible!" exclaimed Hannah. "Is your father going to be awful about the whole thing?"
Alex shrugged. "I don't care. I've spent my entire life being a rebel and going against what my family says, except for common sense stuff like brushing your teeth and being polite to others. If I actually cared about what Father thinks, I would have asked to be Sorted into Slytherin, not Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. Or let the Sorting Hat put me in Ravenclaw so that while Father wouldn't be happy that I wasn't in Slytherin, he would still accept it. Adelly, you can go now."
Adelly bowed and left. "But how is your dad going to react besides being angry?" asked Dean.
"How should I know?" returned Alex. "I suppose he'll send a Howler, though." Noting the puzzled looks on the six that were Muggleborn or raised in the Muggle world, he paused to explain about Howlers and then continued, "If he's mad enough, he could disown me, which I frankly don't care. But if he decides to withdraw me from Hogwarts and send me to Durmstrang because he thinks I'm being corrupted here, I will care. Durmstrang is a school somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia that focuses on the Dark Arts. I don't want to go there. The headmaster is Igor Karkoff, who was a Death Eater, but avoided Azkaban by turning in a bunch of other Death Eaters." Seeing puzzled looks on Terry's, Justin's, and Dean's faces, he clarified, "Death Eaters are what the followers of Voldemort are called, and Azkaban is the wizarding prison."
There were winces from most of the people in the room. Marcy frowned and snapped, "It's just a stupid name! There's nothing to be afraid of! Hitler was a Muggle that was responsible for even worse things than Voldemort ever did, but Muggles aren't afraid of saying his name."
"But Hitler's dead, and has been for almost fifty years," pointed out Emily reasonably. "And he never actually did the deeds. It was his underlings and those appointed to positions of power within the camps that actually carried them out. Hitler mainly commanded everything. On the other hand, Voldemort really did torture and kill people. Like my parents."
"But Voldemort was never responsible for the deaths of over ten million people, was he? He never had people locked up where they were worked and starved to death or died of disease. The ones that weren't locked up got killed, but it wasn't as quick and painless as the Killing Curse."
"Okay, that's enough," interrupted Anthony before Marcy went on a full-blown rant or it turned into an argument. "We'll try not to be so scared of V-Vol-You-Know-Who's name in the future, Marcy. Now, can we please go back to our original subject on Alex's situation?"
Alex sighed. "As long as Father doesn't try to send me to Durmstrang, I really don't care what he does. If he does try to send me to Durmstrang, I'll run away and find someplace else to live."
Tracey opened her mouth to point out he had nowhere to go unless the family of one of them offered a place, but he firmly said that he didn't want to talk about it anymore. They respected his wishes and went back to working on Disarming.
The next morning, at breakfast, an owl bearing a scarlet envelope landed at the Gryffindor table. Alex made a face and opened the Howler as several students stuck fingers in their ears.
"ALEXANDER THESUS CARROW, YOU ARE A COMPLETE AND UTTER DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY! LUCIUS MALFOY CAME BY TO VISIT, INFORMING ME THAT YOU HAD INSULTED DRACO, BEEN SORTED INTO GRYFFINDOR, AND ARE FRIENDS WITH MUDBLOODS, HALFBLOODS, AND BLOOD TRAITORS. HOW DARE YOU ACT LIKE THIS! I THOUGHT I HAD RAISED YOU TO BE A PROPER PUREBLOOD AND HEIR OF THE CARROW FAMILY. I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU WERE ABLE TO BECOME FRIENDS WITH EMILY POTTER AND TWO MUDBLOOD GIRLS BEFORE STARTING HOGWARTS, BUT WHEN I DO, IT WON'T GO WELL FOR YOU! YOU ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE AND CAN EXPECT TO BE PUNISHED WHEN YOU COME HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. YOU HAD BETTER START ACTING PROPERLY NOW, OR I'LL SEND YOU TO DURMSTRANG!"
With that, the envelope burst into flames. When all that was left was ashes, Alex swept them to the floor, an I-don't-care look on his face. After several seconds of shocked silence, conversation resumed, but it was mostly about the contents of the Howler.
Three days later Halloween arrived and students woke up to the smell of baking pumpkin. In Charms class that day, Professor Flitwick announced that they would be practicing the Levitation Charm. The Gryffindor/Ravenclaw class went well, but the Hufflepuff/Slytherin class didn't go so smoothly. Diana, to her disgust, had been paired with Draco Malfoy. When Malfoy didn't get the spell right, Diana had snapped at him and then did the charm correctly. Though Professor Flitwick awarded five points to Slytherin for it, Malfoy was sour for the rest of class.
When class ended and everyone was out in the hall, he snapped, "How dare you try to show me up! You're a stupid little Mudblood that's not fit to even clean my shoes, much less attend Hogwarts. I hope you suffer as sticky an end as your cousin's parents did!"
Diana, who was already annoyed at having been paired with him, snapped. Instead of anger, however, her feelings were deeply hurt. "You little-!" She made a feeble attempt to slap him and then ran down the corridor, barely able to contain her tears.
Emily, Hannah, and Susan ran after her, while Daphne and Tracey rounded on Malfoy. "I can't believe you, Malfoy!" Tracey burst out, eyes flashing with anger. "You deserve to live without magic!" Daphne slapped him hard and then the two girls went after Diana as well.
Diana spent the rest of the afternoon in the Founder's room, crying. The rest of the Hogwarts gang tried to comfort her and only went to class because she insisted, not wanting them to get in trouble for skipping it. After class, they went back and succeeded in finally soothing her just before the Halloween feast. Unfortunately, partway through the feast, Malfoy made a comment that upset Diana again. She got up, said she was going to the bathroom, and insisted that Tracey and Daphne remain for the rest of the feast.
A few minutes after that, Professor Quirrell burst into the Great Hall. "Troll—in the dungeons—thought you should know," he gasped. With that, he collapsed into a dead faint.
There was instant pandemonium, which ended only when Dumbledore used his wand to let out a few firecracker noises. He asked the prefects to lead the students to the common rooms, except for the Slytherins, who would go to the library as their common room was in the dungeons.
Emily, however, recalled seeing Diana leave the feast earlier and realized that she wouldn't know about the troll. She quickly told her Hufflepuff friends about it and then went off to ask Daphne and Tracey where Diana was. The other four Hufflepuffs followed her.
In the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor groups, Hermione and Alex had realized the same thing Emily did, and the rest of the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors in the Hogwarts Gang went with them to ask the Slytherins where Diana was. Blaise answered, "Malfoy said something that made Diana upset again and she went to the bathroom. She told Daphne and Tracey not to go with her."
"Well, we're going to have to find her and warn her about the troll," said Terry, sighing.
"All nineteen of us don't have to go, do we?" asked Ling in some alarm. "This is a big group."
Marcy nodded. "Diana is our friend." A strange look crossed her face for a second and she gasped. "Wonderful. I got a flash of the future that showed Diana encountering the troll and all of us coming to her rescue. So I suppose we had all better go. Come on, guys."
The nineteen of them nervously left the other students and went off in search for Diana, keeping an eye out for teachers and prefects so that they wouldn't be caught. Neville wondered out loud how a troll could have gotten into Hogwarts. Padma shrugged and replied that she'd read that trolls were stupid, and Ron suggested that maybe Peeves had let it in for a Halloween prank.
Suddenly a very horrible and foul odour reached their nostrils. If Emily had to describe it, she would say that it was a mixture of rotten eggs, extremely smelly socks, the kind of lavatory no one ever cleaned, and a bag of Dungbombs that had been just set off.
They all stopped, wrinkling their noses or pinching them shut, and then saw the troll appear, carrying a large club. It paused, then entered a doorway that had a key in the lock. "We could lock it in," suggested Justin nervously. "Then we get a teacher."
"No, you idiot, that's the girl's bathroom!" snapped Emily, too worked up to be polite. "Di could be in there!" Just then, there was a scream, proving her right.
"Diana!" they all gasped, and ran to the bathroom, not caring that they were scared of the troll.
It was something a squeeze to fit all of them plus a frightened Diana and a large troll.
"We need to do something!" exclaimed Tracey, drawing out her wand.
Dean grabbed a tap the troll had knocked off and threw it, yelling at the same time. The tap didn't seem to bother the troll, but the yells did. It turned and Emily darted past to pull Diana to the rest of the group. Everyone now had their wands drawn and were circled around the troll.
"Petrify it!" shouted Hermione. "We've been practicing the Full-Body Bind!"
"Good idea, Mia!" responded Ernie. "On the count of three! One—two—three—"
"Petrificus Totalus!" they all shouted at the same time. Twenty Full-Body Binds of varying strengths shot from their wands and hit the troll. It swayed and then fell to the floor with a crash.
Seamus nervously stepped forward and looked down at it. "It's knocked out. We'd better get the teachers and let them figure out what to do next with the troll."
The Hogwarts gang backed out of the bathroom only to discover that their respective heads of house had arrived on the scene. "What are you all doing here?" demanded McGonagall, looking furious. "Why aren't you all back in your dorms? Or in the library in the case of the Slytherins?"
"Er, they were looking for me, Professor McGonagall," said Diana timidly.
The four teachers looked at her. "Miss Evans!" exclaimed Snape. "Looking for you?"
Diana nodded. "I had gone to the bathroom and didn't know about the troll. They came to warn me, but the troll showed up just before they did, so we had no choice but to fight it."
"You don't mean to say that all of you felt the need to warn Miss Evans?" asked Sprout.
"We're her friends," said Alex defiantly. "And in Emily's case, her cousin. All twenty of us banded together regardless of the houses we're in and vowed to be friends."
The four heads were very surprised by this. "How interesting," commented Flitwick. "And quite wonderful. There hasn't been a case of such inter-house unity that I can remember."
"Yes, it is wonderful, but how did you all defeat the troll?" asked McGonagall.
"We used the Full-Body Bind," answered Dean. "All of us did the spell at the same time. We've taken to studying together and working on Defence on our own, since Professor Quirrell isn't a good teacher and we're not learning any practical stuff from him, just theory."
Sprout nodded. "I see. Well, that was good work. Most first-years wouldn't be able to successfully defeat a troll, even if there were twenty of you doing the same spell."
"I suppose," said Snape grudgingly. "But they were still were out-of-bounds."
"All right, then, five points will be taken from each student for it," said Flitwick briskly. "And they are each awarded fifteen points for defeating the troll and having inter-house unity."
"That's settled," said McGonagall. "If none of you are hurt, then you had all better go to your respective common rooms, where the students are finishing the feast. The five Slytherins in the group, please go to the library and tell your housemates that it's safe to go back to your common room. Food will be delivered there. I will inform Professor Dumbledore of this incident."
The Hogwarts gang nodded and left. Once they were far away enough so that they couldn't smell the troll anymore, they stopped and looked at each other. "That was rather unexpected," said Anthony. "After taking off the points we lost, we ended up winning fifty points for each house."
"Well, other than maybe Snape, all our Heads of house were pleased that there was inter-house unity going on," pointed out Susan. "And I think facing the troll made our friendship stronger."
Padma nodded. "I agree. There are some things you can't share without becoming friends, or even better friends if you're already friends, and defeating a mountain troll is one of them."
"So would any number of other dangerous situations," said Neville. "I can't believe I actually faced a troll. I guess having the rest of you there made me feel brave."
"You're already brave, Neville," said Ron. "Or you wouldn't have been Sorted in Gryffindor."
Hannah smiled. "All of us were quite brave to face that troll and petrify it."
"Well, we'd better go to our common rooms and finish the feast," said Daphne. "And those of us in Slytherin have to tell the others that it's safe to return to our common room."
The Hogwarts gang split up into groups of five and went their separate ways, planning to met up in the Founders' Room the next afternoon and discuss things further.
Author's Note: I had planned to have Alex get a Howler over his Sorting much sooner, but I forgot to include it when the time came. So instead, I created the excuse that Amycus Carrow was sick with the flu for over a month and was only able to send a Howler when he got well. I also included the troll scene after much debate with myself, since I wanted the heads of house and Dumbledore to find out about the Hogwarts gang and the inter-house unity that is going on among some of the first years.