Okay, I really should stop adding new stories, but while going on with Meddling Giant, I really felt the complete absence of canon events acting as a supporting plot: I have to do way more work out of scratch, which while satisfying, isn't something I can just write at the drop of a hat.

On one hand, I'm having a blast with magic recently, and while I've tinkered with a Dishonored-My Hero Academia crossover in which Midoriya gets the Outsider's mark and embarks on a road of corruption, Harry Potter is just that much easier to play with.

On the other hand, as some of you may know, I really wasn't satisfied by the complete lack of a story in 'The Bigger Picture', which I tried to recover in 'A Tale in Agalesia', but without being able to escape the weight of my Original David Taylor character.

So, I'll try again with a classical SI in the Potterverse, this time working through characterization, plot, and lore at the same time.

I've already rambled about SI's classic starting point in the introduction of 'A Meddling Giant', so I'll try something new with this fic and start 'in medias res', revealing the uneventful past of the MC through flashbacks or references clearly understandable. (the first 35o-somethign words are quoted directly from the Philosopher's Stone.)

Bear with the things that seem different for no reason for the first two chapters, eventually everything will be reducible to a divergence point caused by the MC's conscious or unconscious interference.

(the fact that this plot bunny basically kidnapped my ability to write about anything else and it's threatening my muse with a gun has nothing to do with it)

With no further ado, I give to you this fic.

Obviously, I own nothing.

Misplaced

On their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls' bathroom and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall, where the Halloween decorations put Hermione out of their minds.

A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.

Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore's chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, "Troll - in the dungeons - thought you ought to know."

He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.

There was an uproar. It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore's wand to bring silence.

"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

Percy was in his element. "Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I'm a prefect!"

"How could a troll get in?" Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.

"Don't ask me, they're supposed to be really stupid," said Ron. "Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke."

They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron's arm.

"I've just thought - Hermione."

"What about her?"

"She doesn't know about the troll."

Ron bit his lip.

"Oh, all right," he snapped. "But Percy'd better not see us."

Ducking down, they joined the Hufflepuffs going the other way, slipped down a deserted side corridor, and hurried off toward the girls' bathroom.

On another staircase, the thick group composed by the students of Ravenclaw's House moved with hurried steps, the prefects leading the children, as well as the older students, didn't even think to check for stragglers of any kind: after all, if one wasn't capable of walking he or she would have been in the infirmary, and they all had received clear directions to go back to their dormitories.

Besides, no matter how academically fascinating some might find a Troll, meeting one in the restricting environment of Hogwarts' corridors, which were exactly of the dimensions needed to allow the Creature to employ its reach without leaving any victim many options regarding an escape route wasn't particularly smart.

And being smart was one of the things that Ravenclaw's folk prided themselves on.

So nobody paid attention when Cedric Diggory, a rather brilliant 4th-year student with the reputation of often having his head in the clouds, eventually found itself at the end of the group of students, and nobody noticed when, from a turn to the following one, he simply was no longer among his housemates.

Cursing myself in the privacy of my own thoughts, I jogged lightly, if purposefully, across the empty, familiar halls and corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Slinking away from the group of Ravenclaws right next to a secret passage hadn't been an event dictated by chance.

Not like being dropped in the Potterverse, at least. I grimaced as I accelerated, my legs propelling me up a short ramp of stairs and then through an empty hallway. Or letting the Hat do his work with no attempts at manipulation on my part.

I ducked under a tapestry hanging over a boulder-sized tunnel, my wand finding its way into my waiting hand and illuminating the otherwise dark passage in an uncaringly cold white light: "Why did I decide to fucking poke my nose in this?"

My free hand ducked into a deep pocket sewn into my robe, snatching out a familiar piece of parchment that I still hadn't been capable of replicating: "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Well this whole story isn't good for my mental wellbeing, that's for sure. Under the tap of my wand, ink rose from the parchment, and it spread while I unfurled the Marauder's Map, revealing to me almost the entirety of Hogwarts' secrets.

"Fucking hell, if I wasn't so angry with myself, I'd watch this for hours." I muttered angrily as my jog slowed down to a purposeful stride, my eyes scanning with sharp focus every girls' bathroom present on the parchment.

Ignoring the countless other names and the gaggle of professors moving about, I soon spotted the name of Hermione Granger floating over a pair of inky footprints, revealing to me that I was only two floors and a corridor away from her position, a distance that I could cover quickly by employing yet another one of the countless passages that littered the ancient castle.

"Mischief managed." The ink disappeared from the parchment while I quickly folded it and placed in the inner pocket of my robe, where I had been almost religiously keeping it since I first stole it from Filch's office during my own first year, before the Weasley twins enrolled and could claim what canonically they would own until it'd become Potter's turn.

I turned off my wand with a thought as I left the hidden passageway and ran through an abandoned classroom, only to slide behind a pig-faced gargoyle and drop down a bolthole that led to a descending staircase. I passed empty suits of armor that occasionally nodded to my passage, paintings who started to chatter animatedly among themselves with me as a subject of their gossip, and the endless trail of torches that managed to maintain the castle well lit, something that, in hindsight, was far beyond the power of mundane fire.

I sprinted for the thirty meters long corridor left before the entrance to the bathroom, which from the quiet was still containing only a crying 11 years old girl.

With the mirror wall hanging over the sink, I caught a glimpse of myself as I moved in: my bronze and blue tie was slightly askew, my short hair luckily couldn't fall on my slightly sweaty forehead, while my expression was...

I blinked, a serene visage being painted over the heavily frowning one I had been sporting until a second before, and with a deep breath, I centered myself. No need to freak out the girl before I manage to get her out of here.

"Hopefully before the troll comes." I muttered to myself, taking a step forward and raising my voice.

"Hello?" I started, the bullshit capable of pushing the girl I knew only from books read in another life to move quick finding its way to my lips almost faster than I could think: "I'm a Ravenclaw Prefect, the professor ordered everyone to retreat immediately towards their Common Rooms, hop-hop!"

A sudden shriek, immediately suffocated, rang out of the third bathroom stall on my left, a sudden sniff following immediately along with an almost shy nose-blowing into a napkin, the toilet being flushed likely as an after-thought, as a frazzled girl left her hiding place.

Fuck was I ever that small? Hermione Granger sported the untamed bushy hair she would be eventually infamous for, along with the incisors that briefly peeked from behind her upper lip: in any case, what brought a light frown to my face were the puffy eyes and the blatant signs of heavy crying still present on her face.

Realizing that I was a boy, she actually jumped - Jumped! Who does that? - a step backwards: "This is the girls' bathroom!"

Her objection to my presence escaped her before she could think it through, and given her furious blush, I could tell that she realized the same thing, only to late to shut up, then her eyes narrowed: "You don't have a prefect badge."

She took a whole step back this time, her brown eyes darting around as if looking for an explanation, her back straightening as if her spine had magically turned into a bar of tempered steel.

"Two out of two," I snarked, While did I decide to get involved again? "But there's a troll roaming in the castle, and the students truly need to get in their Common Rooms."

"What kind of stupid prank is this?"

"Prank?"

"You're a boy, not a prefect, and now there's a troll?" she glared at me while crossing her arms, "What is going to happen when I follow you out?"

Of fucking course she doesn't believe me. My shoulders slumping in defeat, I tried to find the silver lining: "Well, at least I tried..."

Admittedly, lacking context, and given her lack of knowledge about the future, it made sense that she'd be suspicious of a stranger who presented himself as something he was not, right before declaring a sudden danger, and especially only after the first lie had been spotted. Can I count my attempt as a sufficient change from the original storyline?

And with that question, I remembered clearly why I decided to stick my neck out, even if I did so suddenly, with no plan, and likely not using my resources to the best of their capacity: ultimately, ignoring the why and how I ended up into the body of Cedric Diggory, I only knew that the original me died at 17 years old. Which would suck so bad.

My solution up until Potter entered the stage for his sorting? Change the parts of the story about me, and leave the Chosen One to the task that he would so wonderfully fulfill. A grimace briefly appeared on my face before I smoothed it out. Well, eventually he will.

Then of course, the part of my personality that made me some kind of decent human being noticed that the Chosen One right now was 11 years old, and so was the girl that a Troll could squish with impunity. Didn't I observe a few changes that might have been attributed to my 'different' existence? Was I willing to risk the 'Power of Plot' against the life of an 11 years old girl?

Nevermind that without her Harry and Ron will fail miserably at solving the Dark Lord problem. And I was back to my problem of having Hermione Granger, the -for now- helpless girl I wanted to help, not believing me and refusing to leave the danger zone.

I turned once more, my wand in hand and distractingly luxuriating in the indescribable feeling of being able to change the surroundings on a whim, and I was about to petrify the girl in order to levitate her out when she screamed.

Then the smell hit me.

The troll had arrived.