Harry Potter and the Spirits Within
Chapter 10: Hallow'een Horrors
Summary: The night Lily and James Potter died is well known. What no one suspected, or even imagined, was that their spirits remained with their son.
Disclaimer: As much as I would love to own (or live in, magic rocks) the 'Potterverse' … I do not.
A/N: Several people have commented on a few points that I'd like to address. First, Draco casting Trixie out of the family is not so much removing any position she has or doesn't have; it's more that he will not give her asylum should she ever come to Malfoy Manor, effectively banning her from his house. This would be a big problem for her as she would have nowhere else to go. Second, Pettigrew on the map, remember the twins have only had the map for two years at most. They said in Canon that they found it in their first year but not when in that year. It could have been at the end of the year. Also, I'm sure they had better things to look for on the map than their annoying brothers (remember Scabbers was Percy's before he was Ron's and Percy may have left him at home or in his dorm during school), even for a prank. Rest assured though they will notice him sooner rather than later. Finally, Zacharias Smith, it is never mentioned when he was sorted, and I'm taking it as artistic licence that he was at least a year above Harry and crew and as he has such an abrasive personality Harry would have gone out of his way to avoid him, he may show up later though.
With the map now available to the group, tailing Quirrell became much easier. Harry and his friends were able to keep tabs on Quirrell for the rest of the week leading up to Hallow'een. The day of the 31st dawned with nervous energy flowing through the students. For most it was the excitement of the feast that night, but for the twelve friends following Quirrell it was anticipation of what he was planning to do. For most of the day everything was normal, or as normal as a school of magic can be. However, when it came time to go down to the feast, the pulses of the twelve students and one professor started racing. Fred and George brought the map with them and sat at the end of the table near the door, and furthest from the teachers, with Neville, Dean, and Seamus sitting next to and across from them to keep people from seeing what they were doing.
There was a brief altercation when Ron demanded that Neville, who was next to them, move so he could sit with his twin brothers. They were lucky he was so rude about it or Fred and George would have had to be rather nasty to him for no apparent reason to get him to leave. As it was, his attitude got him snubbed by the group and he chose to sit at the other end of the table, closest to the teachers. Harry, Justin and Ernie, Hermione and Padma, and Draco and Blaise all sat at the same ends of their tables as the Gryffindors, and were able to fairly easily converse with one another across the aisles. The food had just appeared and the twelve were tentatively loading their plates when Quirrell dashed into the room, his face a mask of terror and his turban askew. He raced up to Dumbledore as all eyes followed him, twelve of those pairs narrowed in suspicion.
"Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know." He exclaimed to the Headmaster without a single stammer before he fainted dead away.
Harry and the others exchanged significant glances in the ensuing commotion; they each had noticed his lack of stutter. Harry could see the twins pouring over the map before looking up and shaking their heads in unison.
"It won't show non-humans, aside from werewolves." James said. "We needed the species available to program it into the map and the only one we had, or cared about at the time, was Moony."
Harry was about to answer when Dumbledore shot purple firecrackers from his wand and everyone quieted. "Prefects, lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!" He ordered.
The majority of the school were already on their feet when Harry, bolstered by his parents, shouted over the din, "That's a terrible idea!"
You could have heard an owl pinfeather drop with how silent the Great Hall became after this proclamation. No one had ever contradicted Dumbledore before. He looked at Harry and quirked an eyebrow, is eyes twinkling annoyingly. "And why do you think sending the students to the safety of their dorms is such a bad idea, Mr. Potter?"
Harry succeeded in not rolling his eyes, though it was a close thing, "Because, sir, Professor Quirrell just said the troll was in the dungeons, and two of the Houses are in that direction. The Hufflepuffs are down a floor and the Slytherins are in the dungeons, you really want to run the risk of sending them into the same location as the troll?"
Dumbledore blinked and shook his head, "You are quite right Mr. Potter," he turned to the teachers at the table with him, "Minerva, Filius, Severus follow me to secure the troll, the rest of you stay here with the students and seal the doors behind us." With that he and the three named professors swept out the door, closing it behind them.
Through the hullabaloo Professor Quirrell lay on the floor, ignored by almost everyone. After a few moments he sat up, looked around at the assembled students, the locked doors, and the remaining professors and a look of absolute fury passed over his face for a fraction of a second, before he stood and sat with his fellow professors. It could have gone completely unnoticed if it hadn't been for the twelve students watching him for any bizarre reactions. Those twelve stood and formed a cluster next to the doors, so that Quirrell would have to pass them to leave. They knew they wouldn't be able to stop him, but they would know he was gone and be able to follow him on the map. After forming their huddle, Fred and George activated the map in the centre of their group and located the troll hunting professors. Three of them were in the dungeons. McGonagall and Flitwick were by the Slytherin dorms, and Dumbledore was by the potions lab. Judging by their pace and speed, they were just walking, and they hadn't found the troll yet. Snape, however, was heading straight for the forbidden corridor of the third floor at a rapid clip. He entered the door leading to the corridor and suddenly started dancing around, acting very odd. They couldn't figure out what he was doing, but given the warning from Dumbledore they assumed he was dodging something.
~*o o*~
What the inhabitants of the castle didn't know was that the troll wasn't in the dungeons. He was currently roaming around the first floor, knocking paintings off the walls and crushing suits of armour. The residents of those frames that got damaged would have summoned the professors, but for one minor success in Quirrell's plan; the only portrait in the dungeons was a still life. A bowl of fruit that doubled as the door to the kitchens, and was incapable of housing any other painted creation. Also, there were no paintings in the Great Hall, so no one was able to be told of the damage occurring to the first floor until the three professors returned from the dungeons. The troll had been causing plenty of carnage on the first floor when it came to a staircase and stopped, it looked up towards the second floor and down towards the ground floor before tromping down the stairs to the Entrance Hall dragging his club behind him. It trudged over to the doors to the Great Hall, and, behind them, the student population of Hogwarts. Harry and his friends, positioned near the door as they were, heard the club thudding down the stairs and scraping along the floor, growing louder and louder as it grew closer to the doors. They looked at each other in shock and fear before rushing to the high table and causing the hum of conversation to quiet.
"It's right outside the door! We could hear it coming down the stairs! The troll is out there!" Harry said to the teachers staring at them. If he'd had the option he wouldn't have told Quirrell, but as he was sitting with the others there was no avoiding it. Professor Sprout rose to her feet and held her lit wand above her head to draw all eyes to her without arousing the suspicion of the troll outside the door.
"We must remain quiet and calm, all first through fifth years get back here behind the high table, sixth and seventh years in front of them to protect them." She paused as the troll pounded on the doors to the Great Hall, causing the students nearest to race to the high table in fear. She then turned to the other teachers, "We'll stand in front of the students. If that troll gets through those doors we have to protect the students." Everyone started moving into place as the troll banged on the door again, it shook ominously, but held. The teachers and upper years pointed their wands at the door as it shook in its frame again as the troll pounded on it, apparently smelling the people inside. Harry and his friends were pouring over the map, watching Dumbledore and the other professors still walking through the dungeons, obviously oblivious to the plight of the students. Snape however was rushing back to the Entrance Hall; his inked footsteps seemed a bit erratic, as if he were having trouble walking.
Suddenly the doors crashed inwards, one flying completely off its hinges. It sailed over the heads of the assemblage and crashed into the wall above the younger years where Professor Sinestra, the Astronomy professor stuck it to the wall with a well aimed sticking charm. Meanwhile, the troll had shuffled into the room and spied the masses of people.
It roared mightily, swinging its club over its head before slamming it into the marbled floor, leaving a large dent. Hagrid, the Grounds Keeper, jumped to the side and leapt at the troll at an angle, wrapping his great arms about the trolls' meaty neck. Hagrid was stronger than the troll, but the half giant was a good three inches shorter than the twelve-foot tall troll, not that it made much difference. The troll spun, flinging Hagrid in an arc, causing the teachers nearby to back up. They pushed the students further back and erected shields surrounding the spectators as the troll swung backwards with its club, smashing Hagrid across the back. Hagrid released his death grip on its neck and dropped to the floor, kicking out its feet and knocking it down also.
The crash was like the clanging of the gates of heaven, dust floating down from the rafters as the titans wrestled and trade punches, each trying to gain control of the massive club. The brawling pair moved so fast that none of the professors could get a shot on the troll. Finally, after what felt like hours, the troll found itself pinned to the floor, Hagrid's knees upon its chest. The troll pummelled Hagrids legs, trying to knock him off. Everyone in the Great Hall winced in unison, and a few students were sick, when a sharp crack rang out and blood ran afresh down Hagrid's left thigh. The half-giant groaned through gritted teeth as he raised the weapon high and brought it down with a sickening crunch.
He stood shakily on his good leg and leaned against the remaining door to the great hall, using the trolls club as a crutch as Snape finally appeared in the Entrance Hall, ashen faced and dragging a badly broken and bleeding leg at an almost run. How the man had managed through the pain he had to have been in was a mystery to those in the Hall. Madam Pomphry, who had been tending to Hagrid as best she could, hurried quickly over to Snape and set his leg with a wave of her wand. The added pain proved too much for the head of Slytherin House, who slumped to the floor unconscious. Waving her wand again she levitated him into the Great Hall and onto the Slytherin table, where an attentive seventh year banished the tableware and transfigured a pillow and sheet for the injured Potions Master.
Hagrid, meanwhile, had stretched out on the Hufflepuff table with his own massive transfigured pillow and tent of a sheet, and was slowly removing his moleskin coat and the shirt beneath, leaving them on the table beneath him. It was immediately obvious when the shirt came off that many of his ribs were broken, a few protruding from his darkly tanned skin, his snapped femur could be seen projecting from a rip in his darkly stained trousers. The shield spells were removed and the students moved forward to the tables, a few sitting, most standing, all still in shock. Several had thrown up during the fight and a fair few had fainted; including, apparently, Professor Quirrell again. Harry and his friends had been near the back corner where the door had hit. Padma had been one of those who had fainted, right at the beginning, when the door nearly fell on them, before Sinestra had stuck it to the wall. They had placed her under the High Table, hoping it would keep her safe if things could have possibly gotten anymore pear shaped.
Madam Pomphry had given the troll's head wound a superficial examination and pronounced the creature dead before Professors Sprout, and Vector levitated the trolls' body out of the front doors and onto the grounds. Just as they were passing it out the doors Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Flitwick returned from the dungeons. Madam Pomphry spied them immediately and rounded on them, "Just where the bloody hell were you three? I've got the entire student population in shock, a Potions Professor with a shattered left leg, and a Game Keeper with thirteen broke ribs and a compound fracture to his femur. We could hear that thing tromping down the stairs from the first floor! There's no telling where it came from and what it destroyed on the way here!"
Professor Dumbledore was staring at the body floating out the front doors, following the drip of blood from its head to the trail of it leading to the Great Hall. He looked with wide eyes at the massed students, many of them shaking and crying. He looked to the pale forms lying on the two house tables, and the many unconscious students scattered about the floor, some had their heads pillowed in friends' laps, while others had been supplied with transfigured pillows. In the back of the Hall, Professor Sinestra was removing the Hall door from the wall and levitating it back to the doorway to be repaired and replaced. He turned and looked at Professors McGonagall and Flitwick, both of whom had sat down, looking faint. McGonagall had tears in her eyes and Flitwick was shaking like a leaf. Professor Dumbledore turned back to Madam Pomphry and shook his head, "We didn't hear it, we were in the lower dungeons, I am so sorry." He looked around at the traumatized students, "Everyone, I am so sorry."