You're a protagonist Harry
Chapter 24 – In the dark of the night
…
"Don't be a stranger Harry."
"Come and see us again, won't you?"
"Nighty night Harry!"
"Goodnight ladies," he waved as he exited the Hufflepuff common room and escaped into the hall. "Blimey but they are friendly."
And grabby too if you let them. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he had a sneaking suspicion there was an overrepresentation of his fan club currently sleeping in Hufflepuff.
"And she acts like it wasn't totally intentional. That girl."
Clementine had attempted to look guilty when she'd given him up to the clutches of her housemates, but he could tell she was faking it. He wouldn't be surprised to find out this had been her plan all along, sneaky little woman.
Despite that, he couldn't help but like the girl a bit. How could he not like someone as keen on flying as he was, and willing to share too.
The catalogue wasn't very big, a slightly thick magazine and nothing more, but within its pages was the answer to his problems. At least, that problem. He had lots of problems, and sadly, most of them could not be solved by throwing money at it.
"Just as well. My dividends haven't started coming in yet anyway."
And just to remind him of his inadequacies, a torch he was passing sputtered then popped like a tiny explosion. He glared at the impish torch. Stupid thing thought it was so smart.
"If I had my wand I—well I'd do something, you better believe that!"
He'd only had the thing a couple months; he didn't know that many spells yet. Magic was still very new to him, a fact he understood, but one that didn't make it any easier to deal with his sorcerous failings.
He was still exploding candles. Bad enough he'd done one, then two before they'd refused to give him any more for the night, but he'd continued this into his next lesson, and the next, and the next. He couldn't figure it out and neither could anyone else.
Now, truth be told, Cassidy wasn't doing all she could to help him. She said she was, but he knew she was lying. The truth was in her eyes every time she looked at him. In retrospect, his unwanted advances probably hadn't helped, but there was no unburning that bridge so he kept it up just to see how far he could push her.
He kept his wand handy though just in case she tried to seal his mouth shut again.
She hadn't, yet, just glared at him and waited for him to explode the next candle. It was infuriating on numerous levels. One of those levels being named Seamus Finnegan, his dormmate with the propensity for exploding things, who'd only exploded two candles before finally getting a handle on it.
He still exploded other spells, but only Harry continued to have trouble lighting a simple candle without turning it into a hot white mess.
"This cannot continue. They're going to start calling me sparky boom boom man soon."
Technically they already did, just not to his face. That would undoubtably change if he didn't get a handle on this thing.
Pondering the injustices of his existence, he came to a crossroads and stopped. Blinking, blinking, he looked around, and pondered aloud, "Where the heck am I now?"
One flight of stairs. He'd gone up one flight of stairs and already he was lost.
"This is getting so old. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have the stairs move around should have been shot the moment they suggested it. I need to start carrying around a compass, or a map, a map would be great."
Funny how he'd never heard of any. Funny. Haha.
"Let's see, I'm only on the second floor so, no Fluffy to worry about. Sooooooo, this way."
It was foolish choosing a direction at random, given how that had worked out last time. But he was tired, it was late, he just wanted a shower and a bed. Didn't even have to be his.
But as he skulked through shadowed halls, he felt he was coming no closer to any kind of bed. "Shouldn't there be torches in here," he wondered aloud, trying to fill the silence with something other than his own labored, nervous breathing.
The portraits lining the halls appeared empty, quite unlike the ones he'd grown accustomed to which were often lively, if not at the very least attentive to those passing. Cobwebs covered most, suggesting he'd stumbled into a little used corridor. The armors as well seemed under attended, covered in old webs and layers of dust.
"This is not the right way," he told himself and made to turn around only to stop when he felt his shoe shift oddly. "Dammit!" at some point it had come untied, and he knelt in the dusty old hall to tie it.
He wouldn't later be able to say what it was that tipped him off. A faint squeak. A shift of the air. Whatever it was, he looked up just in time to execute a diving leap that spared him a bloody decapitation.
The halberd struck hard, wedging itself an inch into the floor.
"Bloody hell!" he cried, adrenaline surging, bringing his exhausted body back to full readiness in an instant.
And good thing too. The night wasn't done with him yet.
He pulled a backward somersault, keeping his feet when the sword struck stone floor instead of squishy wizard, and that squishy wizard gaped when he found himself surrounded by mobilizing assailants. The armors lining the hall with their cobwebs and dust shook themselves to life, hopping off their pedestals and staggering surely, if unsteadily, toward him.
"This is definitely not the right way." But his way back was cut off by yet more of the animating armors marching woodenly toward him, palming their weapons with intent.
Surrounded. He was completely surrounded. Old and worn they may have been, the armor and their weapons; still, they were metal, he was flesh; soft, squishy flesh, so when they started swinging, he started dodging.
"Whoa! Hey!"
Swords and spears, mace and axe, all came, and all missed. This was not so reassuring as it may have seemed. The armors were packed so closely together he could not hope to break through, and each miss was just one more swing away from a hit. There were nearly two dozen of them, only one of him, and he had no weapon to speak of.
His fists would do less than nothing against iron plate armor, he was trapped.
One of the halberds was raised carelessly, it struck an old torch which magically exploded into life before fizzling out again. The sudden light gave his attackers no pause, but it did give him an idea. A crazy, desperate idea, the best kind when get right down to it.
The trick was finding his focus as he danced around swinging weapons. His attempts to find it allowed a lucky swing. The mace glanced off his leg, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to knock him down, but to his great fortune, not hard enough to break anything.
The sword that followed might have; he dove under it and between his attackers legs, getting to a wall he used to lever himself to a standing position and put his back against so all his enemies were before him.
They came slow, not cautious but poorly articulated. It didn't much matter, the why. Their speed gave him time, just enough time. The heat rose, swelling in his chest. He heard it roar in his ears like an angry wind. Power swelled. The sword rose to strike, then.
Boom.
The fiery explosion knocked all the armors into pieces that flew outward from the epicenter. Harry was not spared either, but already pressed against the wall, the damage was minimal. He felt the heat, the pressure of the blast but was thankfully spared its full wrath, unlike the armor now lying strewn across the floor.
"There's—an irony—to all this—somewhere. I know—there is," he panted, surveying his handiwork as he peeled himself off the wall.
They were all down, not a single one with more than a hinge attached. And it was a hinge that drew his attention, down toward the far end of the hall the way he'd come, a hinge was moving, but not like it should have been. It looked as though it were caught on something, something that was trying to move. And as he looked, he thought he could almost see it.
It was like something made of glass, but more liquid, and vaguely human in shape. It moved sluggishly, and if he listened carefully, he could almost swear he heard it groaning. Caught in the blast like everything else, most likely.
"Hey!" Harry shouted, staggering off the wall to get a better look.
Whatever it was must have heard him. It shifted quickly, scrambled to its feet, and began running. Given its nature it was hard to see, especially in the dark, but the constant shifting as it moved gave him enough to follow, and follow he did, as fast as he could.
"Wait a second! Hey!"
They flew down the hall, feet thundering the darkened corridor as Harry pursued his near invisible quarry. Attacker? Maybe. It did seem suspicious, the attack especially. Who or what would have known he'd be traveling down that hall with enough foreknowledge to prepare such an attack? For that matter how long would such an attack take to prepare.
He had many questions which he intended to have answered as he rounded the corner into lighted halls and stopped dead, eyes scouring the length, "Where'd he go?"
The hall was bare, empty as far as he could tell.
"Dammit! DAMMIT!" They were gone, or were they?
With its shifting form it could be anywhere. Standing perfectly still would it be truly invisible?
"Potter!" Jumped like a frightened cat. The turbaned man showed no signs he was amused by this comical reaction. "What are you doing?"
"Professor Quirrell!" he exclaimed, struggling to both catch his breath and keep his heart from beating straight out his chest.
"Are you alright?" the turbaned man asked. "What's going on? I heard a loud noise and came to investigate. Was that you?"
Harry nodded, wheezing. "Armors. Back there. Attacked me. Someone. Invisible. Chased them. Up here. Did you see?"
His defense teacher looked at him as though fearing for his sanity. "See? No, I haven't seen anyone, anyone but you."
Harry bit back a curse. It wouldn't do to let it out in front of a teacher.
"Why don't you get along to bed Harry. I'll have a look around, see if I can find anything."
Feeling the weight of defeat settling in, he didn't try to argue. Nodding, he began a slow slouch in the direction Quirrell indicated. His least brave teacher, turned and proceeded back the way Harry had come, walking in a way Harry thought looked very stiff.
"Probably trying not to piss his pants," he muttered uncharitably. "Of all the people I could run into, it had to be him." He'd heard the prefects patrolled the halls at night. Made sense the teachers probably did as well. "Least it wasn't Snape."
That would have been suspicious as all hell.