Reviews:
BMS: I go back and forth on that, but I'm leaning on 'no' at the moment.
Chadbunger: I estimate that it will end around the fourth or fifth year, as for the pairing I'm not doing any 'slash' pairings. I have nothing against them or people who like them but it's just not something for me.
The Viking Stranger: See, I'm glad someone understands. Also that sounds fun.
Don1st: Yes, but in later chapters.
ShadowRealmComics: Maybe.
Chapter 22 -
"So," Emma said as she, Laura, and Jean walked down to the great hall for dinner while Harry had headed up to the owlery to deliver their latest batch of letters. "are you planning to try out for the quidditch team next year?" She asked Jean.
"Oh yeah!" Jean grinned excitedly, having enjoyed their lessons on riding broomsticks. She had naturally been a natural, as was Harry and Laural, the twins having evidently not inherited their grandfather's dislike of flying. Emma, in Jean's opinion, was not that bad at it, but hardly at the same level as herself and the twins. "I think I'm going to try out for seeker if the spot's still open."
"Oh, I'd try out for chaser," Laura said with a dreamy smile.
"And I'd happily be sitting in the stands and dutifully be fulfilling my obligations in cheering for the pair of you," Emma said with a small smirk. "do you think Harry would join?" She asked.
"Oh, if he does then he needs to try out for chaser or beater." Laura grinned.
"Ok, I hate to be 'that' person but am I the only one who can see the problem with letting a mutant with anger issues and super strength have access to a heavy ball and bat in the middle of the air?" Emma raised an eyebrow, giving both girls a disbelieving look.
"Are you kidding me? That'd be great!" Laura laughed.
"Oh right, you're brother and grandfather are violent psychopaths," Emma sounded as if she had just remembered that. "I suppose you're expected to be at least a little bit insane." She added along with a deep suffering sigh, Laura maturely responded by sticking out her tongue.
"Silence!" A voice boomed just as they stopped outside of the hall, causing them all to blink and stare at each other.
"Ow," Laura said in a dry voice as she rubbed her ear. "glad I have a healing factor or I'd be deaf. What's happening?"
"I don't know, but it sounds serious, I feel like we should work out where Harry is," Emma replied. "he gets into enough trouble without us."
"Give me a sec," Laura sniffed the air before letting out a disgusted noise. "what is that?!" She blurted out, a disgusted expression on her face.
"What's the problem?" Emma asked with a frown on her face.
"I had Harry's scent but then I smelled something really horrible as well," Laura answered, shaking her head.
"Let me try and find Harry." Jean placed two fingers against the side of her head, she searched through the castle, using her powers, eventually finding Harry. But when she did, she also found something unexpected. "Oh." She breathed out.
"Oh? What's 'oh' supposed to mean?" Emma asked before she used her powers to reach out just like Jean had done a moment ago. "Oh." Emma blinked once she discovered what Jean had.
"Is Harry alright?" Laura asked Jean. The redhead frowned just before Professor Dumbledore and the four heads of houses exited the hall, followed by the rest of the students.
"What's going on?" Laura frowned.
"Ah, girls, it's good to see you all here. A troll has gotten into the castle," Professor Sprout explained. "you need to quickly evacuate with the other students and return to your common room."
"Wait!" Jean said loudly, causing everyone to stop and look at her. "You don't need to worry, the troll is being dealt with," She said confidently, causing more than one person to stare at her with disbelief.
"Miss Grey, what do you mean?" Professor Dumbledore asked with a frown on his face.
"It's Harry, Professor," Jean answered. "he's dealing with the troll now."
"How do you know?" Professor Flitwick asked quickly.
"I sensed him with my mutant powers, he's fighting the troll right now," Jean answered. "I think that he..."
"Oh please," Snape scoffed disbelievingly, interrupting her. "are we truly supposed to believe that this little girl can somehow sense Potter from here? And even if she could, it's hardly like Potter can handle a troll, the brat is just a first-year."
Professor Snape, firstly can you please stop insulting students? It's far from professional," Emma began, glaring at Snape. "secondly, a troll is just a magically resistant brute. Harry, on the other hand, is an extremely powerful, fast, and very durable mutant, which combined with the admittedly small amount of magical knowledge he possesses, makes him an extremely formidable foe."
"Ten points from Hufflepuff for such stupid nonsense!" Snape snapped. "There's no way that Potter could defeat a troll, I would bet my..."
CRASH!
Every single student and teacher turned their heads towards the moving staircases just as another loud crash was heard, their eyes widened when they saw a troll falling down and crashing against each flight of stairs before landing on the floor in front of them, causing a great many students to scream in terror. The teachers had raised their wands, in case the troll got back up, but they quickly realized that it wasn't necessary. They, just like everyone else had noticed the fact that Harry was on top of the troll, and not just that, but he was also repeatedly stabbing it in the chest with his claws. Quite a few students couldn't help but look away as the troll's blood poured out of his body.
"Harry, Harry!" Laura called just as Harry slammed his claws through the side of the troll's head, Harry pulled them out and bellowed into the air before stabbing the troll two more times in the chest. "Harry!" Laura shouted once more, though this time she actually managed to get Harry's attention. Harry's head snapped towards them and a surprised look appeared on his face as he seemed to finally register that he was not alone here.
Harry let out a few deep breaths to calm himself before he pulled his claws out of the troll's chest, he slowly climbed off the troll and faced the others. Despite being eleven, he looked quite intimidating, not that surprising when he was covered in blood, metal claws were hanging out of his hands and a dead troll was behind him.
"Harry, you're covered in blood," Emma covered her nose with her mouth. "and it smells."
"Really?" Harry said in a dry voice before he looked down at himself and then back up to Emma. "What would make you say that? I...I just don't see it." He said sarcastically before his eyes narrowed when he spotted Professor Flitwick. "You." Harry pointed his claws at the small teacher.
"Me?" Professor Flitwick squeaked, looking quite shocked and very confused.
"Yeah, you," Harry said as he walked closer and stopped a couple of feet away from everyone else, ignoring how tense they were. "clean these." Harry gestured with his head towards his claws.
"I...I beg your pardon?" Professor Flitwick asked, his confusion surpassing his other emotions.
"I'm covered in blood and you're the charms teacher, clean me," Harry said before Jean coughed, Harry glanced at her and saw she had crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him. Harry sighed before he turned his attention back to Professor Flitwick. "I meant clean me please." Harry robotically corrected himself.
Later that night, after some extensive questioning, Harry was finally allowed back into the common room. He had been quite annoyed as he entered the common room. 'Honestly, how am I supposed to know anything about the troll? It was there, it attacked me and I killed it. It's not that hard of an explanation to follow', he thought to himself. He was very annoyed with how Snape and Dumbledore kept questioning, not to mention he didn't enjoy Dumbledore's attempts to make him feel bad for killing a troll.
The elderly headmaster had repeatedly tried to get him to admit to feeling bad about it but Harry was honestly not sure why, it's not like he did anything wrong. The troll attacked him first, he had just been defending himself, and honestly, he had done the rest of the school a favor by getting rid of the troll, given that they didn't have a healing factor like him and his sister, so honestly it was very annoying being lectured instead of praised.
Also, he wasn't quite sure what the old headmaster had expected him to do, he only had a first year's education in magic, the only other thing he could use was his claws and the only thing they did was cut and stab things. Not to mention that they all knew he was unstable, he had used his claws against at least four members of the staff on their first meeting. Heck, even he knew that he was unstable. So, it was basically inevitable that the troll was going to end up dead.
"Surely, you feel some remorse for killing the troll? It was a simple creature." Dumbledore had said. Harry had stared at him for several long seconds before he had come up with his response.
"How many drugs are you on?" Harry had asked, not joking in the slightest, though that was apparently a rude thing to say.
"Wotcher Harry!" Tonks interrupted his thoughts as she rushed over to him, she paused and sniffed him, once she deemed him suitably clean she pulled him into a hug. "So, how's it doing, Troll killer?" Tonks grinned as she guided him over to where Laura, Jean, and Emma were sitting. The two of them ignored the fact that the other Hufflepuffs in the room were staring at them.
"I got lectured by the headmaster," Harry said, his lips quirking up slightly at the title that Tonks had given him. "Did I miss anything important?" Harry asked as he sat down with the girls, Tonks sat down with him.
"Ah," Tonks's smile grew wider, informing Harry that he had indeed missed something important. "well, while you were gone, some members of the house were getting all frightened and crap because of you."
"I'm not that scary, am I?" Harry frowned.
"Well, I'm sure that the troll would disagree." Emma drawled.
"Go ahead and ask him then, see what he says." Harry gave her a small grin.
"Anyway," Tonks continued. "some of them were getting all scared and were starting to talk about kicking you out when your girls and I defended you," Tonks said in a very proud voice. "I pointed out that if you wanted to kill any of us then you would have done it by now."
"True," Harry agreed. "I am nowhere near patient enough to wait for a right moment."
"Same," Tonks snorted. "oh and Laura said that they should be thankful that you stopped a troll from killing any of them."
"Well, that's not a statement that I would disagree with." Harry sent Laura an appreciative look. "Thanks."
"Anytime." Laura smiled at him just before Tonks continued speaking.
"Oh, and then little red over here..." Tonks ignored the protest at that nickname from the redhead in question. "...told them that she would not accept any of them discriminating against her friend and if anybody did it then she'd hang them by their underwear from the tallest point in the tower." Harry blinked at that and looked at Jean who was supporting a mild blush.
"What?" She said defensively.
"Just a little surprised," Harry said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. He turned his attention back to Tonks. "anything else?" He asked.
"Oh yeah," Tonks nodded. "Emma over here decided to point out the hypocrisy in the house of loyalty turning their back on one of their own members after he defeated a monster, she also threatened to tell the teachers and learn the addresses of their families so she could send them letters that would describe how idiotic their children are. " Harry snorted before sending a grin to Emma.
"There are only a select few people that are allowed to insult you, they weren't on the list." Emma shrugged, deciding that that explanation was more than sufficient.
"Love you too, Emma," Harry smirked at her.
"Still, how the hell did a troll get in here?" Laura wondered.
"Curses!" Lord Voldemort's voice hissed out from the body he was possessing, after somehow being discovered he had hoped to make at least one more attempt to find the philosopher's stone. He had been looking for it for too long to simply give up so easily. Besides, he had been hoping that the fact that everyone thought he was gone would have proved advantageous and would have allowed him to make use of the fact that everyone would have dropped their guard.
His plan had been simple, lure a troll in and try to get the stone, but that had gone horribly wrong when the Potter brat ended up stumbling across the troll just as he had been directing it, he had fortunately been undetected thanks to a combination of spells, but he did have to quickly cancel his plan since it was obvious that Potter's fight with the troll would draw too much attention.
Despite his great desire for the stone, he knew it was better to give it up for now. Things were far too chaotic here and he didn't want to risk another confrontation, he had to get out of here and come up with another plan. He felt himself rise and exit the body that he had possessed, he had to possess a younger person to be able to easily force his will on her, he barely noticed as her body fell to the floor, dead. Still, it hardly mattered to him if she died, one less mudblood was good for everyone as far as he was concerned.
It would be half an hour later that the Hogwarts teachers would stumble upon the body of Hermione Granger.
