The muffled sobs echoed around the bare walls of the bathroom, giving Harry pause as he rued the necessity of ruining this private moment. But, having to choose between ruining her pity-party and letting her stay in the path of a rampaging troll, there was only one obvious choice.
"Hermione?" He called gently into the room, cocking his head to listen for the reply.
"H-h-hello?" She stuttered in between wracking sobs. "wh-wh-who's there?"
"Its me, Harry."
A wail echoed from the leftmost stall, causing Harry to wince. The fact that the mere mention of his name and presence sent the poor girl into such a state did not sit well with him.
"Hermione. I know you're not in the mood to talk to me right now, but we have to go. Now."
"W-w-why?"
"Because there's a bloody troll coming right this way, so unless you want to get smashed into Hippogriff feed, it's past time to get out of here!"
He heard her give another heartrending sob. "You can't fool me." Her hoarse voice came from the stall. "No troll could ever get into Hogwarts. Go, and leave me alone."
Stupid, smart girl. "They can and they have." Harry snapped, not in the mood to deal with her annoyingly astute observations. He switched to a more peaceful tone. "Please, believe me, there is one coming right this way. I don't want you to get hurt. C'mon, let's go."
"You don't care!" She wailed angrily. "You don't care about me at all! You just want to hurt me again! Well guess what, Potter? I shan't be coming out. I'm not about to fall for any of your tricks! Now go, and leave me the hell alone!"
Harry recoiled at the bitterness and spite that was wrapped in every word that spilt out of the little cubicle. His heart roiled in a sea of self-recrimination as his mind flashed back to everything he had said about her. It hurt him to know that there was not a positive epithet amongst them.
"Please. Just leave me alone." A small voice added from the cubicle. A broken, lonely voice that rocked Harry to his very core. He knew that feeling. He knew that feeling all too well. It was a feeling he'd spent years trying to repress as he scrapped and fought in a world he didn't understand, afloat in a sea of privilege, bias, and hatred that he felt no kinship with. In truth, it was a feeling he'd never known Granger would understand. Even in her most vulnerable moments, she'd always seemed so stubborn, so proud, so confident in her knowledge and herself. And yet, here she was.
"Hermione. I-well I." He sighed sadly. "I'm sorry. I truly am. I can't really express how sorry I am. For everything that I've said. For how I've acted. For how-" He choked a little, feeling tears running down his face as he thought about those empty, dead eyes looking up at him. "For everything I've done."
They shared a silence for a moment. A silence that lasted an age. A silence another small, lonely voice that cried out to Harry like his had cried out to her.
"Really?" It asked softly, as if it was in a dream.
"Re-"
Suddenly, the bathroom was filled with the sounds of a door slamming against stone.
"Granger?"
"Hermione?"
Two voices called breathlessly in unison as their steps echoed on the tile.
"Ron, Neville?" Harry said incredulously as the familiar faces came into his view. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Harry?" They looked at him blankly, taking in the tears running down his face. "What the bloody hell are you doing in the girl's bathroom?" Ron shouted, his face red. "Is Hermione in here? Harry, you have to come with us, there's a troll in the dungeons!"
A voice came from the cubicle that was a far cry from the one Harry was with a few moments ago. It sounded controlled, and sharp. "I'm in here, what's going on?"
Ron and Neville jumped at the unexpected source of the voice. "Hermione, there's a troll." Ron said, as if that wasn't clear enough the first time he said it. "We've come to get you to the common room." Neville added helpfully.
Harry looked at them, wide-eyed. "Guys, its not in the dungeon, it's here! Its in the next corridor!"
"What? Then why did Quirrell say it was in the dungeons?" Ron demanded.
"Because he's insane!" Harry shouted back, adding to the fever pitch of insanity than seemed to be sweeping the room.
"You promise you're not having me on?" Hermione said from the cubicle
"We promise!" The assembled group outside chorused impatiently, their fear bleeding through in their voices.
"Fine. I'm coming out, but if you three are planning something I'll tell a Professor and you'll all be in nothing but trouble!"
The cubicle door opened, to reveal a tired, ragged Hermione Granger. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her face was streaked with tears. Her upper lip was quivering with fear, and she looked at each of them with narrowed eyes, as if expecting the other shoe to drop. Her bushy hair, normally in a state of orderly disorder, was now an exercise in chaos theory, and her robes were creased.
Everybody looked at each other expectantly in a surreal moment of confusion. Surely escaping from mortal peril had not been so easy? Then, as one, they all wrinkled their noses as a miasma of mould, sweat, and a thousand other unnameable smells washed over them, hitting them like a solid wall.
Ron and his quick mouth were the first to react. "Urgh, what's that smell? S'disgustin." He said in between shallow breaths.
"It's the troll, it's here! C'mon, we need to-"
A loud crash echoed around the bathroom, followed by a blast of odorous air as the beast peered into the room. It looked at the four students, frozen in varying states of fear and disgust. Stupidly, it just stared at them for a moment, as if confused by the notion that there were four potential sources of meat just standing there. Then, its face lit up in a terrifying caricature of a smile. It squeezed itself through the doorframe, its fatty stomach scraping against the edges.
Harry was the first to speak, forcing a reply through frozen lips. "Run!" He cried as the monster began to walk towards them with its long, loping strides. Ron and Hermione reacted immediately, pulling themselves away from the sight and dashing to the back of the room. Neville didn't. Neville stood there, transfixed by the sight.
Harry wasn't having any of it. Pulling his arm to behind his back, he released a mighty open palm slap that went right across Neville's cheek.
Neville recoiled with a cry, his hands going to his face which was already going red with the force of the impact.
"Go!" Harry commanded, pointing to the back of the room. Neville's white face nodded, and he retreated hastily.
Harry turned to look at the monster that was approaching. It looked back at him with cruel yellow eyes as it raised its club, ready to strike. It was still a few metres away, giving him a few moments. Harry wasn't about to waste them. He dashed to his left, running into the cubicle Hermione had vacated just moments earlier. As far as he was concerned, they had one chance. Trolls were notoriously clumsy and stupid. They would undoubtedly go for the group with the largest amount of prey. In other words, Harry's housemates. That left him at a loose end. Pulling his wand out of his sleeve pocket, he pointed it at the opposing wall.
"Epoxomise!" He cried, casting a sticky green goo that stuck at about waist height on the wall opposite.
"Harry, what are you doing?" Ron shouted as the thing began to close.
"Funemconjuro!" He cast, tracing his wand in a rough approximation of an 'S', and flicking it at the end. Immediately, a rope shot from his wand, landing on the gooified spot. It was not a moment too soon. With one end of the rope trailing from his wand, and the other stuck on the wall, the troll was too focused on his prey to see anything else. Its foot caught on the improvised tripwire. With a startled bellow, it fell heavily, its reactions too slow to stop itself from falling onto its hand. The beast head cracked onto the tile, shattering it fully in half. Its club fell from the thing's hand, coming to rest a metre or so away from Neville, Ron, and Hermione. Then, after the tremendous crash, there was a short, stunned silence. Harry strode out from the stall triumphantly, the rope disappearing from reality as he shook his hand (which, ably supported by his wand, had taken the brunt of the animal's weight.
Ron spoke up first. "Is…is it-"
The beast let out another bellow of pain, its hand flailing about to find purchase with which to haul itself up.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Ron said in fright, point his wand at the fallen troll's club. To everybody's surprise, the heavy weapon began to rise as the troll crawled forward, reaching with its long to grab one of its target. It heaved itself forward again as the club continued to rise. Harry tensed as it came within half a foot of grabbing Neville, who flattened himself against the wall, his face white tiher fear. If Ron didn't drop it soon – he needn't have worried. Ron released the spell and the club, robbed of its levitating force, bowed to the whims of gravity. Point first, it fell towards the ground, landing on its former owner with a sickening crack. The skull was stoved inwards, and the beast fell silent.
Harry whistled in silent amazement. Ron Weasley, performing a spell flawlessly and vanquishing a troll…all in the span of a minute! He never thought he'd see the day. Harry's compatriots, meanwhile, seemed more concerned with the blood spilling out of the troll's skull than the success of Ron Weasley. Ron was ashen-faced, alternating between staring at his wand and the giant. Neville had his eyes shut, and Harry was certain he was sobbing to himself. Hermione, open mouthed, was just looking at the fallen troll.
Harry just smiled contentedly. Disaster averted. He felt he had enough evidence to get Dumbledore to force Quirrell to remove his turban, and he had helped kill the trespassing troll (hopefully gaining the admiration of the school as he did so.) Suddenly lighthearted, he wondered at how badly it could have gone, especially the first time. If Snape hadn't been there to…to stop Quirrell…
On reflex, Harry gasped in shock. Snape! Snape probably wasn't heading to the third floor to stop Quirrell, he was probably rushing to protect the Boy-Who-Lived who had been left in danger of the invading troll, as where the rest of the faculty! Which meant that the Dark Lord himself now had access to the Philosopher's Stone. And it was all Harry's fault.
Well, he'd be damned if he was going to let Quirrell get away with it. He'd beaten the possessed bastard once, and he could do it again.
"Neville!" He snapped impatiently, startling the group out of their stupor. "Go to the dungeons. Now. Go and tell the teachers Quirrell is trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone. They'll know what I mean. You two go with him. I'm going up to the locked room on the third floor.
Everybody looked blankly at him for a moment, before they all began talking back at him at once.
"The what?"
"W-w-w-what? Harry, what are you, what are you talking about?"
"The Philosopher's Stone? As in The Philosopher's Stone?"
"Shut up!" Harry shouted back. "Quirrell's trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone, which is hidden behind a number of obstacles behind the locked room on the third floor. I'm going to keep him busy until the teachers get there. Now go!"
Hermione was the first to reply. "Harry, a teacher would never do such a thing! They're here to educate not to steal-"
"Now is not the time to debate, alright? Do as I say, now! Trust me. Please."
The three looked at each other for a moment.
"Mate, if you're gonna stop Quirrell, you'll need help. Blimey, I know you're Harry Potter and all, but you're only a first year! I'm coming with you." Ron said simply, his voice with a depth of seriousness Harry never knew it could convey.
"I'm coming too." Hermione said, her voice shaken but her tone firm.
"I-I-I'm coming too, Harry. I dunno how, but I can help."
Harry looked at the three in surprise, and with a little anger. The last thing he wanted right now was to put his friends in danger!
Wait.
Friends? Were these people, for so long his nemeses and targets, really his friends? He shrugged off that discomfiting question, returning to the task at hand.
"No! You guys, I can do it, really, I don't want you guys risking your lives for me! Please, just do what I ask."
"Sorry, Harry, but no. You saved our lives, mate, we're gonna try to save yours back."
"Precisely. I couldn't've put it better myself."
"Yeah. What they said."
Harry fiddled with his glasses in frustration. Couldn't they have chosen a better time to prove their loyalty. Still, he didn't have time to argue, and admittedly they could be useful. "Fine. Ron, Hermione, with me. Neville, I need you to run down and tell the teachers. Don't let anybody stop you, not Percy Weasley, not Malfoy, not anybody. Can you do that?"
"I-I think so."
"You can Neville, I know it." How could he not? It wasn't exactly a hard task to run down two flights of stairs and find a teacher. "Alright, let's do this."
With that, Harry turned on his heel and hurried out of the room, his friends following close behind.