Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own bleach or any of the things from other franchises. The listed properties belong to J. and Tite Kubo respectively.
As the troll wound up to hit Neville's shield a red glow covered its club, enhancing it as the weapon swung down. The impact shook the armament, cracks forming in some of the larger pieces.
Harry took aim with his heilig bogen and said, "Neville, keep it steady." the blonde gritted his teeth and nodded as the Quincy shot at the troll's shoulder. It went straight through the joint, and the beast let out a shriek as the arrow tore through its flesh. Their elation at the attack's success and the backwards stumbling of the troll lasted only a moment before it roared, the wound glowing as it knitted itself back together.
The troll looked at them, and a dot of crimson light swirled gradually into existence in front of its mouth. The oppressive aura grew with the cero, the potential danger the beast could cause rising exponentially. They had to end it quickly or this weird troll-hollow hybrid could threaten other students.
Harry rattled off instructions as a mad plan formed. "Su, disrupt the Cero with rubble," a grunted 'way ahead of you' answered him as debris all around floated up and pelted the troll's head, weakening the Cero's formation. This also tilted it enough that Harry didn't risk shattering the mask with his next shot, tinted a navy blue because of his new rain dial. The tranquillity aspect projectile dispersed the other attack and injured its other shoulder, however it was already healing as the arrow hit the wall.
"Neville, Hermione, I'm about to do something crazy risky. You want to try it?" getting nods from both, Harry grinned and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. "Let's do this." and without a second to rethink the possible dangers, he channelled Sun flames into the pair of them.
Neville's eyes glowed a soft golden yellow as his inhibitions faded away, all the little thoughts unrelated to the fight drifting off. Little revelations started firing in his mind as Neville reached out for the Soul in his wand. He didn't need to imitate either of his parents to make them proud: they would be proud of his path regardless, that was what family did, and trying to copy someone else would only hinder your own potential. In essence, everyone's path is different, their own.
So when his wand's Soul pinged, Neville pulled on it as his reiatsu sang and flowed into the focus. Forest green tinted energy covered the wand, causing it to morph. When the plantlike glow faded, Neville instead carried a small staff with interweaving vine motifs, topped with a slightly jagged crystal. This gem radiated a slight green luminescence, and held two hollow hexagons, one rotating within the other. "Staff of passage: sage." he intoned fiercely.
Immediately vines burst from the stave and between the floor tiles, wrapping around the troll's club and part of its hand. The beast tried to struggle, but the plants wouldn't budge.
Meanwhile Hermione was having a similar and yet different experience to Neville. As the world slowed to a crawl and grey bled into her surroundings, a new figure appeared in her field of view.
The woman was in ancient greco-roman attire with a toga covered partially by bronze body armour, as well as slim elbow length gauntlets. Resting in her left hand was a large-bladed spear. The spearhead was separated into three parts by glowing navy lines, and the core of the blade was a swirling golden copper alloy. Most notably was her heterochromia, her right eye being a glowing sea green.
She smiled amusedly at the sunshine yellow glow coming from Hermione's left hand. Chuckling, she said to the girl, "you aren't quite ready to hear my name little tide, however accessing my abilities alone is less taxing. So bear the name others gave me with pride, and fight!" The unknown woman let out a small giggle. "Just don't take too long reaching my true name, the physical boosts will be quite beneficial."
As time started flowing once more, Hermione gathered a mass amount of reiatsu, both from around the area and within herself, and let her instincts guide its form. Neville opened a path of attack by restraining the troll, and she was going to take it. With a cry of "erode and shatter the unbreakable, Salacia!" the energy took on a tangible state, becoming a long double-edged dagger with a tanto handle, smooth and without a guard.
The water around the bathroom rose up towards the zanpakuto, and following the whipping motions of the blade sliced clean through the troll from shoulder to hip. Quickly she flipped the blade around so that it faced the way it came, and slashed upwards to tear through the mask. Slowly the body crumpled to the ground, the cleaved through parts sliding off of each other with a series of wet thumps.
As the four were calming down and dismissing their weapons, Su pouting about not getting to land a good hit in, the door slammed into the wall from where it had swung closed. There in the doorway were several of the teachers, specifically Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall and Quirrell. "What in the name of merlin happened here!?" the transfiguration teacher gasped.
Harry looked at his exhausted friends, the trashed lavatory, the very damaged, very dead troll and then back to their teachers. "No comment?" he tried. That did not go over well, and after a brief explanation the four first years got sent to the infirmary.
Not long after they arrived Daphne, Tracy and Blaise showed up, looking even more beat up than the others. Tracy was using a sword like a cane and had blood running down her nose, Daphne's left sleeve was missing and her arm was dotted with burns, but Blaise seemed to have taken the most damage. The left half of his shirt was burnt away and still smouldering, leaving the cuts and burns across his torso visible while also letting everyone see the distinct tattoos going down his arm, disintegrating into nothing as they walked. Aside from this he seemed the least worn out from whatever happened. Speaking of which…
"The fuck happened to you guys?" Su eloquently questioned once they'd all settled.
None of the three seemed to particularly care about the ravenclaw girl's rudeness however. "sono accaduti dei cazzo di troll, ecco cosa!" Blaise snarled with uncharacteristic rage, to the point he resorted to swearing in Italian.
"Uhh," Neville started, "does anyone mind translating? Because I don't know about you guys but I don't know… Italian I want to say?"
"Yes. He said something along the lines of trolls happening, so I can only assume that you three ran into your own grey skinned, mask wearing asshole?" Hermione filled in, earning an appreciative look from Blaise for the translation.
"Try assholes, there were two of them. They hit like trucks," Daphne winced as she jostled her arm by accident. "Course, the other students were barely any help, seeing as they just tried the same things repeatedly, even when they were shown to not work."
Harry closed his eyes in thought. One troll fused with a hollow was bad enough, but three completely eliminated any possibility of it being natural. That left some form of hollowfication or frankensteinian fusion done on purpose. "How did you deal with them?"
"Well," Blaise started, "one of them knocked me into a wall with a cero after I had to push Malfoy out the way, the gormless twit. However that did have the benefit of getting me to realise my abilities, and letting me form…" slowly, a mask formed in his hand. It had no mouth and was only differentiated from a blank oval when he put it on by the eyes and the black markings running along the jaw, over the nose, under the eyes and in the middle of the forehead.
Taking it off and dismissing it, Blaise continued. "Anyway, manifesting the mask gave me the power to control shadows, which I used with one of the Knight statue swords to launch a crescent shadow blade with a lucky strike, cutting the hollow mask in half and killing it."
Blaise then pointed at his housemates. "Then they come up with the dumbest fucking plan ever to kill the other one."
Harry let out a deep groan. "I can tell I'm going to regret this, but what did you two do?" he asked.
Daphne and Tracy started muttering under their breath.
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"We said," Daphne replied, "that I goaded it into firing a cero at me to keep it in place, while Tracy altered the club using Fullbring to stab it through the mask from behind, while hanging off of its back. This had the added side effect of making it fall on her when the troll died."
"Oh my god," Harry groaned. "You're all feral! The three of you are all completely barmy!"
"Yes, I quite agree." called a new voice. The seven turned to look at professor Dumbledore calmly walking towards them, a soft smile on his face. "It is probably for the best then, that normality tends to be rather less interesting and fun."
"Professor," Harry greeted, "I assume that you're here to get a reason for why we were at the location of the troll?"
"That would be correct, among other things."
The eleven year old Quincy got himself comfy, because this was going to take a while. "Right, so the reason we were there is because Hermione was there. After charms…"
After giving a basic explanation of the evening's events as well as context in regards to the nature of their abilities to Dumbledore, the group headed off to bed to rest and get ready for the next day. The headmaster however gathered his staff to the break room, sitting at the table and preparing for his own brand of chaos: overly competitive teachers.
As the last two, professor Babbling and Hagrid walked through the door, the elderly man prepared himself for the disbelief and other potential reactions his information could cause. "Right, now that we're all here we can begin with our meeting. Minerva, Filius, Poppy, Severus, did your respective students get to their dorms alright?"
All four replied with affirmatives, with only the head of hufflepuff not elaborating more than necessary. Upon hearing the replies, Dumbledore smiled and nodded. "Good, good. Quirinus, any news on how the trolls got in?" the constantly stuttering man shakily put together an explanation, saying he found a hole burnt through the castle door and radiating an odd form of magic. At this last point the headmaster put on a serious expression.
"Yes, I had already guessed that what I'd found would have to do with it, however this confirms it. While you were doing your own tasks I had gone to the hospital wing to ask the students involved for their accounts of the incident, and learnt some rather stunning information, both in regards to the trolls and magic in general," he started.
For the next five minutes the one man who Voldemort feared gave a basic run-down on the different forms of spiritual power, how Harry and his friends came across these forces, their relation to magic as they knew it and most importantly how all of it came into play during the evening's incident. By the end of it the staff were in various states of shock, although Quirrell looked strangely thoughtful.
That night as the defence professor slept, a strange change occurred, his facial structure shifting subtly. His eyes opened with a crimson glare completely unlike the mild mannered teacher, and the entity got out of the bed to walk over to their desk. The being sat down and sent a pulse of magical energy through the wood to reveal a secret compartment, from which he removed a leather notebook.
Reading through it, the creature possessing Quirinus Quirrell made a number of faces: a snarl of hatred, a snort of disbelief and a raised eyebrow of intrigue, before he finally put the log down and laughed. He laughed long and hard, with a distinctly sinister note to it as he pushed his chair back and walked over to the wall mirror.
"So," he murmured, "this power must be what the prophecy was referring to, this 'Quincy spirit signature' as you put it to that old codger. But you not holding your cards to your chest will be your undoing, when Lord Voldemort tears you to ribbons and becomes a god!" With a final mad cackle the possessing spirit reached for the changed portion of his magic, lifted his arm up and dragged it back in a clawed motion. Gleeful red eyes observed as a mask formed, paper white and modelled after a snake skull, and wrapping completely around his head.
Word count: 2176
Whoo, good lord this has been a while coming! Merry christmas to everyone who celebrates, if you don't celebrate, or celebrate something different that's cool too, I hope you enjoy the season as well.
Now, on to the chapter. We get a fight scene!... kinda. There was supposed to be a second one for the slytherin group in the form of a flashback, but that was mostly what delayed it. Turns out that someone without experience in fight choreography can't typically write a dynamic fight scene in which two of the opponents are twelve feet tall, so I hope you can bear with the exposition.
The teacher's are now aware of the spirit world! Will that come into play somehow? Yes, will they gain spirit powers? Maybe, does it matter at all? Hells no! This is more because that's what I'd legitimately expect to happen, even in the semibackwards wizarding world.
And we finally see voldemort! The additional factor of spirit power has affected his possession, and we get a hint as to how terrifying he can be. This is the man, or wraith I guess, that held Britain in a death grip, and he shows that off and demonstrates his mastery of energy by forming a hollow mask basically straight away.
Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy christmas and write chapter nine, hopefully it won't take as long as this one.
Ja ne!
quick update: on the second I'm hopefully going to be uploading a new chapter to my oneshot log, based around Izuku taking training to truly silly extremes to be the first quirkless hero. If any of you could read it and give your honest opinions, both on that and this story of course, that'd be much appreciated.