CHAPTER 34: ANATOMY OF A THEFT - DISTRACTION


The incident was never too far away from Sparhawk's mind as the days flew by in focussed effort. On the one hand, there was the training for the Quidditch match on top of what Sparhawk already put himself through. On the other hand, there were the sessions of, well, mostly figuring out magic with Aphrael. It usually went something like this. He and the Goddess would hunker down with some book from the library, which Sparhawk would read through with surprising ease ( he wasn't some backlands barbarian, after all). Then he would let Aphrael digest and dissect the magic and in short pieces of the day snatched from his busy schedule, the Goddess would guide him through the motions. It was surprisingly effective.

As it was, it seemed barely like the blink of an eye before Halloween, some sort of local pagan festival adopted by the Church, from what Sparhawk was able to glean, was upon them. Classes had gone as these things usually go, with all professors trying to add a little something to the festive cheer. Flitwick finally had them try the levitation charm that Sparhawk and his friends obviously knew beforehand. McGonagall had them try to change balls into miniature pumpkins, which predictably was pretty darn easy for Sparhawk at this point. Snape canceled all his classes. The day was a ray of sunshine.

Night found Sparhawk and his posse hurrying down to the great hall, which had been suitably decorated for the festivities. Giant leering pumpkin faces, which he'd been informed were called Jack'o lanterns floated around in unnerving silence, while here and there a few truly monstrous specimens rested. They had witnessed Hagrid carving up the six-foot tall pumpkins and Sparhawk had to admit that despite his rough outward appearance, the man had delicate hands.

Warrick was suitably impressed by a little cluster of mini-sized pumpkins flying by on bat wings, while Hermione was trying to hide her being suitably impressed behind an academic mask. "They must have combined transfiguration and the levitation charm somehow," she mused, "those wings look too small to support the pumpkins by themselves."

"Must be magic" mused Warrick.

"You don't say..."

His other two friends, being from wizarding families and probably more used to this type of thing were nevertheless still impressed. Children as a whole, Sparhawk decided, were a group easily impressed.

Well, except for Aphrael.

"Parlour tricks!" she spat out

Sparhawk nodded along amiably.

"And whoever thought to make pumpkins the focus of a festival? Absolutely ridiculous!"

Sparhawk grunted.

"And that's not getting into the..."

"Jealous much?" he asked.

"What? Oh, come on, Sparhawk! Don't be ridiculous"

"Well, it is the first religious festival we're attending hereabouts. You're just feeling cross it's not yours"

Aphrael was silent for a long minute.

"Well, maybe" she admitted, sulking as well as one can when one is an incorporeal mental construct.

"Well, if you be a good girl and stop insulting the nice festivities, I'll round up Hermione and the lads to give you a nice little ceremony. What about that?"

She seemed to consider it a moment.

"What are you planning?" she asked, finally caving in.

"Well, I'm rather new to this High Priest thing. What do you have in mind?"

Aphrael grinned.


Quirinus Quirrel was a man with murder on his mind. But being the pragmatic individual he was (unlike a certain someone residing on the back of his head), he realized that once he'd gotten around to murdering the boy-who-lived while making it look like a convenient accident though, the school would be awash in official types and Dumbledore's blood would be up. And when the old man wasn't being a complacent senile fart like he was currently, Quirrel was sure he'd be sniffed out in no time.

So that left him until the first Quidditch match of the season to get to the philosopher's stone. And what better time for a bit of burglary but All Hallows' eve.

Now, the anatomy of a good burglary in residence is much like the anatomy of a pocket-picking. There are two essential components. The distraction and the clutch.


Kra'argh the mountain troll was not what one considered to be the usual specimen of his species. Cursed with a curiosity that constantly pushed him to get the snot beaten out of him on several occasions during his childhood, he had, subsequently, grown up to a huge brute of a mountain troll who beat the shit out of his antagonists by virtue of sheer size alone.

But somewhere within that massive slab of smelly meat, there still lurked that young troll who had tried questioning the wisdom of hanging a goat's intestines on the horns to ward off the ague. The beating for questioning the tribe healers had been of enormous proportions. And so it was that Kra'argh, mountain troll extraordinaire followed the unfamiliar spoor of something dead yet alive, beyond the familiar reaches of the tribeswood, down into the sparsely wooded valleys below.

Once out of the cover of the tribeswood, good cover was hard to find, and so the troll had opted to hide by day, which was something of a minor miracle in itself when you considered his size and track the spoor by night. Now, it was not just the strange oxymoron of the scent (though his poor trollish brain never said that word) that pulled him, but something other mixed in it, something that seemed to reach deep into the primal parts of his brain, something that had survived millennia of change, and pull.

And so Kra'argh tracked like the master tracker he was, the journey becoming increasingly perilous as the human settlements became thicker. Once or twice, he'd had to put down some barking dog or unpleasantly surprised human who'd stumbled onto him. He knew that he should stop, knew that he had broken so many mandates of the tribe elders and tribe shamans, that when he got back, he was going to get the beating of his life if he didn't beat the shit out of the other party first that is. But he still couldn't stop.

One fine night, as he huddled in a tiny wood just off an even tinier village, all at once the scent disappeared. Frowning in confusion (though it was ever so hard to tell with trolls) he rolled to his feet and circled, trying to pick up the scent again. And pick it up he did. But this time, it was an eye-watering blast of garlic. So maybe Kra'arg, mountain troll extraordinaire could be somewhat forgiven for the fact that it let the dark shape get the drop on it before all went dark.


Sparhawk mulled over how he'd get his friends to accept Aphrael's little demand. Oh, they wouldn't begrudge him a little ceremony. They were too nice for that. But the finer points of Aphrael's request involved some...inconvenience.

And so might Sparhawk have sat musing, quite oblivious to the excited chatter of Hermione, Warrick, Neville, and Cullinan courtesy of culinary delights, had not Quirrell suddenly run into the great hall, face flushed with exertion. He came to a stop in front of the headmaster, eyes gleaming strangely. "Troll in the castle... Thought you ought to know" before falling into a dead faint.

Naturally, Sparhawk was suspicious.


Quirrel played possum while around him the great hall erupted into chaos. Students began talking and the little ones began screaming as little ones are wont to do and no one could understand what was going on for a few moments. Then there was a loud bang and Dumbledore's voice shouting for silence.

If Quirrel was any judge of Dumbledore, the man had probably shot those snazzy purple firecrackers out of his wand. Very effective for grabbing attention. What was with wizards and shooting assorted stuff out of their wands?

He lay still as he heard Dumbledore give instructions to the prefects to get the students to their dormitories. Bad move that one, considering the Slytherin and Hufflepuff dormitories were in the dungeons, which was where the troll currently was. Had he forgotten to mention that? Oh, bloody hell. Well, any conscience Quirrel may have had been quashed quite thoroughly when Voldemort had taken tenancy up in the back of his head, quite literally at that. As it was he was more concerned with the legal types who were sure to follow on the tracks of a mass murder of students by some random mountain troll behind the doors of one of the safest (well, that was debatable) places in all of Great Britain. Oh, shucks, he'd just have to grab the Philosopher's stone ( which was surely in the third-floor corridor) and make like a mouse and scarper.

Yes, all this larceny was making quite the impression on Quirrel. Savvy?


Kra'argh woke up head pounding horribly. And considering that trolls butted heads quite frequently for sport and conflict, that was saying something. He was in some sort of chamber, all of stone. He shook his head, trying to clear the haze that seemed to be clouding his thoughts, but to no avail. It was like his brain was floating in some weed fuelled cloud. Not that trolls would know about weed, but you get the point.

He staggered and looked down to see his club firmly in his grasp. As it should be. He braced, rose to his full height, and took a deep breath, gathering his bearings. All around, there lingered, no, there wafted quite heavily the scent of man. And though Kra'argh was not a needlessly violent creature (okay, maybe sometimes), suddenly, there was just one thought in his addled brain. Kill.


Sparhawk's blood was up as Violet and Arthur led the students away from the Great Hall. He glanced back to see Quirrel being forgotten in a heap as the other teachers huddled in a conference of some sort with a headmaster. Sparhawk was sure the man was planning something, but what? He wasn't in a situation where he could shadow the man, dangerous as it could be, so loath as he was to do, he put the situation out of his mind. He'd brainstorm with Aphrael later.

Instead, he turned his mind to the subject of trolls. From his initial investigation into them since Hermione had mentioned them, he'd come to know that they were nothing like the trolls of his time. Well, mostly. They were still murderous brutes, but they were no longer clever and immortal murderous brutes. That was some comfort, at least.

As they trudged down the corridors, the two prefects with their wands out and flinching violently at every sound, he considered that maybe the Headmaster had erred sending them off to their dormitories instead of keeping them safe in the great hall. But with trolls, the situation was never an easy win. Suppose they'd been bunched up in the great hall and the troll had burst in on them? Sparhawk remembered how fast Gherwig (and he'd been grotesquely deformed) had been and he did not doubt that there would have been carnage before the teachers could have subdued it. Maybe.

They passed the corridor that led to the Slytherin dormitories, and Sparhawk strained his senses to catch any hint of the troll. And stopped short. There was just the faintest whiff of rotten meat and manure coming from that way, just the faintest. He moved a bit past the branch point and the smell faded to imperceptibility. He cupped his ears to see if he could catch any sort of sound...

His friends had noticed and had stopped with him, while the prefects, too nervous to keep as strict an eye as they should have on eleven-year-olds, blithely led the rest of their house further.

Hermione opened her mouth to ask a question, but Sparhawk silenced her with a wave, closing his eyes and concentrating hard. Was it his imagination or were there sounds of a scuffle coming from down the corridor? 'Damn it!' Sparhawk thought. Children's lives were at stake. He couldn't afford to take chances.

"The troll's down there" he whispered grimly.

The other children gaped. "But that's where the Slytherins are!" gasped Warrick, horrified

He turned to his friends. his first order of business was to get them out of harm's way. "Get to the prefects. Get the teachers, and quick!"

"But where are you going?"

Sparhawk pointed in the direction of the Slytherin dorms.

All at once, protests erupted all around.

"You're daft!"

"Are you mad?"

"I'm coming with you" That was from a pale-faced Neville. Cullinan nodded.

"Out of the question. Now go"

Neville had gotten a strange look on his face. "No, we aren't. You're our friend. We aren't letting you go alone!"

The others nodded vigorously.

"Someone has to go get the adults," Sparhawk tried in a reasonable tone.

"Hermione can do that. We're coming with you."

"It's not safe to send Hermione alone" Sparhawk hissed, his impatience rising, even as something plucked at his heartstrings.

"Same goes for you" Cullinan observed.

"Then I'll go with her," Warrick volunteered, while Neville nodded.

"Yeah, we're not letting you face a troll alone Sparhawk!" The fat boy was nearly shouting now, his face red. Gods, he did not know that the boy had it in him.

Sparhawk gave up.

"Fine. But stick to me and do what I say."


A/N: Read and review