Unintended Consequences

The smell moved ahead of the creature almost as a clear sign, and it was overwhelming to the point that tears rose to my eyes even before I completed my turn to face the Troll. If that was possible, the sight was even worse: it was a twelve feet tall mass of somewhat bulging, dull, granite-grey skin. The lumpy body ended with a bald head perched on top like a coconut, and the whole image really didn't make justice to the short legs thick as tree trunks that ended with flat feet capable of turning my insides into pancakes.

A muffled scream reminded me of the reason I was in this situation in the first place. Yeah, I don't want to imagine what kind of smear those feet would be able to turn Hermione Granger into.

Obviously, since I needed to be focused and ready to react to the momentarily undecided mountain troll, maybe seizing the moment and figure out how to make sure everyone went home safely, the only thing I could focus on was the image of a mushy, red and brown paste splattered on the stone floors of the girls' bathroom.

The troll blinked owlishly at me, before his hand tightened his grip on the unbelievably threatening club he had dragged behind himself. Of course, he has the fucking club. What next? 10 damage against Ravenclaws?

Another couple of screams joined the soundtrack of my curiously detached panicking, and where the image of myself as a pancake hadn't managed to make me move, the shrill voices of the other two 11 years old did the trick.

Irritation managed to break through the rather unexpected wall of fear that had paralyzed my thought process only to let me spiral into a nonsensical mental trip: there was something to the voices of pre-teens that managed to set me off in a way that I hadn't thought possible.

It's likely because I had to share a dormitory with a bunch of them for the past years, I guess I should be grateful that Potter didn't use Parseltongue, that sounded creepy, not only annoying like a mosquito in your ear. Even as my mind fluttered from thought to thought, I raised my wand, a focus I had spent countless hours refining allowing me to regain control of myself.

And with control of myself, came control over my surroundings: a brief sweep of my wand, aimed at the weapon of the enemy, made it my ally.

The wooden club, that had been raised in order to squash me, shivered: my magic ran over the wood, rekindling the memory of life it once held, my focus giving a shape to that spark of will that accompanied every being's existence.

The cracks over the bark of the club assumed a precise scheme: black and green scales as big as my thumbnail taking the place of wood, while two round protrusions of the badly pruned branch blinked, revealing slitted yellow eyes, and the top of the blunt weapon opened its mouth, hissing angrily at how the troll was manhandling it.

The mountain troll grunted in confusion while his beady eyes, which looked ridiculously small even for his undersized head, moved onto the suddenly alive reticulate python that was suddenly threatening it.

Moving unlike any natural snake, the transfigured reptile fell over the shoulders of the troll before the latter could react, swiftly wrapping itself around the coconut-like head of the creature as I took a step back, the brief hyper-awareness that accompanied my best transfigurations fading while my free hand found the quaking shoulder of the 11 years old witch that I wanted to save in the first place.

Well, she's alive, and she'd be traumatized in any case. My first and only attempt at hero-ing wasn't going exactly as I had pictured it, mostly because the Gryffindor girl had to be stubborn and mistrustful at the worst possible moment, but it was still better than the die-as-a-pancake-future my brain had kindly provided me with.

The troll roared in defiance as the reptile constricted its coils around its head and neck, and while the massive creature stumbled forward, I briefly ran sideways, letting it pass us by while I dragged the more or less flabbergasted kid after me, soon reaching the other two first years busy gaping dumbly at the scene before their eyes.

Potter was more book-like than how I remembered him in the movies, with an untameable mop of black hair over his head, wide green eyes under thick lenses, and a scrawny frame almost swallowed by his school robes.

Weasley on the other hand, sported the hazel eyes of the rest of his family, the carrot-orange hair even more striking given the paleness that the encounter with the troll caused him.

"Does nobody listen to the professors, these days?" I frowned, ignoring the stark hypocrisy surrounding my statement while I rounded back on the troll, who was still stumbling around with no rhyme or reason, his vision obscured by the unforgiving coils of my transfigured snake.

The thunderous exploding of the wooden bathroom stalls when the troll ran through them made me realize that, sadly, the black and green reptile wasn't able to exercise enough strength to strangle the grey-skinned humanoid, given both the unreasonable power in the flailing body of its target and the dimension gap between the two.

Potter and Weasley started stammering out a gurgling mess of excuses towards Hermione and justifications towards me, but I tuned them out: "In hindsight, levitating that club and whacking the troll on the head would have been more effective."

Of course, my first reaction would be transfiguration. I berated myself silently, given that I knew how an 11 years old Ronald Weasley would have been able to knock out the troll, using something that didn't even come close to the mastery of the Levitation Charm. Was it my fault if transfiguration was so cool that it tended to be my go-to solution for any given problem? "Well, if he can't manage only because of the dimensions..."

At least the kids and I are between the troll and the exit now. I pointed my wand at the black and green reptile that was angrily hissing at the troll, and I uttered an incantation that I had never tried on a living being, never mind in the unholy mixture of Animation and Transfiguration that my snake actually was: "Engorgio."

Another shiver appeared to run across the gleaming scales of the reptile, the twists and turns of the troll slowing down minutely as the weight on its shoulders grew at an unreasonable rate: the coils of the snake multiplied, the single scales reaching the size of my palm in the space of a single heartbeat, while the following hiss of my transfigured creature put to shame all the precedent ones. Its not like magic acting directly on it would help, their magical resistance is kind of relevant.

This time the roar of the troll came out muffled, the raised arm that originally had been holding the wooden club unable to circle around the bulk of my successful transfiguration, the other one slowly being constricted against its chest with no available angle for the grey-skinned humanoid to leverage its strength.

Between a random spin and another, the troll hunched forward and slightly bent its knees, the intention of ramming against a wall clear: "Don't think so."

A whip-like motion of my wrist saw me summon an entire toilet from one of the bathroom stalls being ripped away, the pipes unleashing the thankfully clean water in a high spray while I jabbed forward with my wand: my improvised projectile acted as a boulder and rammed in the back of the troll's left knee. The sudden lack of stability, coupled with the unreasonable weight of the reptile constricting its upper torso and head, caused him to fall flat on the stone floor.

Once I was sure it wasn't going to be able to jump to its feet in a timeframe that could be dangerous, I turned again towards the three first years, which were obviously still exactly where they'd been before.

"Of course, you didn't run to get a professor," I sighed, once more feeling hypocrisy set over my shoulders like a warm mantle, "because that'd be the smart thing to do, and you're Gryffindors."

Just as I realized that I should have simply left the bathroom as soon as the Troll passed me by, maybe dragging the kids away as well, Potter raised his hand, palm outstretched, unleashing a hiss that was wrong in all the ways it could: it crept up my spine and buzzed in my ear, making the hair stand on my arms while I turned, just in time to see the rather gigantic snake I had brought into the world in the process to unhinge its jaw to swallow the unconscious troll on the wet floor.

With another uncomprehensible hiss, the snake reared up from the enemy it had successfully defeated and stared down the green-eyed wizard who stood just a little to my left.

A wizard who was suddenly the undisputed focus of the other two Gryffindor students and myself. Well, does this increase or decrease my chances at becoming older than 17? We'll have to see.

I rounded back to look at the young Harry Potter, who had just spoken with the bloody giant snake I had transfigured from a wooden club: something that in theory was under my control, and that instead obeyed the 11 years old kid's command.

How far does that control extend? Looking at the Chosen One, I pointed without looking at the green and black giant snake: "... Tell it to backflip."

AN

I know, I know, I've already given him the Marauders Map, with no forewarning or story leading up to it, but I'll recover, I promise.

I actually used a coin to make the MC use transfiguration or charms, and the chance to mess up with Potter's Parselmouth status was too rich to let it slip by, and I still haven't used many transfigurations in any of my HP fics, so I thought I'd give it a try here.

The next chapter will see a few reactions, as well as some context and history, being given for Cedric's placement in Ravenclaw.

As always, you can check out my other fics on my profile and (if you want and have the means to) support me on Cloudninestories d o t net.

For now? Opinions? Ideas? I hope I've managed to make this scene entertaining if not impossibly original.