Chapter 5: Heat of the moment

For myself, I was perfectly happy to leave the third floor corridor and its monstrous guardian well alone but Hermione and Neville shared a distressing habit of prying into things that did not concern them. That habit got meinto danger more times than I care to remember. It is just a shame that I could not foresee where all their prattling about the third floor corridor and 'Nicholas Flamel' would lead. Neville had managed to wheedle the name out of Hagrid, with whom he got on splendidly. No idea why. I still could not understand a blessed word the man said.

No, I did my best to put the whole incident behind me, as did Malfoy. Oh we both went around bragging that we had all but re-enacted Dumbledore v.s. Grindlewald, and had been mere seconds from claiming victory when Filch stumbled in, but neither of us was keen to arrange a rematch. We had met on the 'field of honour', despite possessing about a thimbleful of honour between us, and that was enough to keep our reputations intact.

Things passed pretty unremarkably until Halloween. Halloween is a big deal in the magical world and Hogwarts was always decked out splendidly for the feast. Live bats; animated skeletons; blood dripping down the walls; no expense was spared. The food that year was surpassingly good. Not that I tasted much of it. I slipped out early with a third year from Hufflepuff (don't remember her name; smashing tits, though). We were soon busy getting acquainted with one another in the girls' toilets on the fourth floor. And, not being at the feast, we missed Professor Quirrel's warning that a cave troll was loose in the castle.

I was seated in one of the cubicles, the girl bouncing away happily on top of me, when I heard the troll's growl; a sound not unlike someone pouring a sack of gravel into mud. Then followed the thud, scrape, thud of the troll shuffling through the door, dragging its club behind it. All of which presented me with a dilemma. When a gentleman is interrupted in flagrante by a man-eating cave troll, should he flee or finish the job at hand first? In the event I did not have a choice: the troll's growl had wilted me like a crocus caught in a forest fire. I dumped the girl on the floor and scrambled for my trousers: no easy task, I can assure you. It is difficult enough to get dressed when you're in a blind funk, never mind being stuck in a three foot wooden box with another person.

I opened the door a crack and peered out. The troll's vast, grey bulk blocked the door; my only escape. It was sniffing the air, its great knobbly head turning back and forth. I slipped back into the cubicle.

"You distract it," I hissed to girl, "while I go get help."

She shook her head, too terrified to move. I sighed.

"Alright. Stay here, okay?"

She nodded.

I leapt out of the cubicle, still fumbling with my belt buckle. The troll swung round to face me. It snarled, rattling the tiles on the wall.

"Hey, you!" I shouted, waving at the troll, "In there!" I pointed to the toilet cubicle, "Tasty nom-noms in there!"

The troll roared, blasting me with a smell like an open sewer, and lumbered forwards.

"Not me, you stupid bastard!" I cried, falling back, "There! She's in there! Eat her, not me!"

The troll swung its club. I ducked. The club crashed into a stone sink, which crumpled like an eggshell.

On all fours now, I scrambled to the troll's right, trying to slip past it. The troll turned, swinging its club in a long arc that smashed the row of cubicles to splinters. I could not see the girl in the debris but I did not care: all my thoughts were for myself. It takes far more than a good pair of udders for me to stick my neck out for somebody. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. Let the devil take the hindmost, that's always been my philosophy.

I had dropped to my belly to escape the troll's last swing. Now I was crawling for the door again but the troll was too quick. The club slammed into the floor ahead of me, spraying me with chips of tile. I rolled aside and found that in blind panic I had actually drawn my wand. In desperation I thrust it at the troll and screamed, hoping that by some miracle I might cast a successful enchantment:

"Bugger-off-o! Be-gone-y! Err… die-o? Oh fuck!"

The troll swung again. I rolled aside, avoiding the club by mere inches. Suddenly yesterday's Charms lesson came to mind. Somehow, some of Flitwick's piffle had lodged itself in a corner of my brain:

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The troll's club rose out of its hand, turned sedately in the air and dropped onto its head with a dull 'thud'. The troll frowned, as if unsure what had just happened, and fell backwards with a crash that must have been heard right through the castle.

It took less than a minute for the teachers to arrive on the scene. They pulled the Hufflepuff girl out of the ruined cubicle. Fortunately for her she was unharmed, and fortunately for me she had been too scared to take in what I had been shouting at the troll. She began babbling on about how brave I had been; that I had tried to fight the troll off single handed. I'm often lucky like that.

While everyone else was attending to the girl, I noticed that Snape's leg was damp with fresh blood. Something had clearly bitten it: something large and, I guessed, residing in the third floor corridor. He quickly twitched his cloak round to hide it. Ho ho, I thought, what have you been up to while everyone else is looking for the troll? I was wondering if I could possibly blackmail Snape when Professor McGonagall spoke to me:

"And what, pray, were you doing here, Mr Potter? All students were ordered to return to their dormitories immediately."

I adopted an attitude of becoming modesty.

"I thought I might help look for the troll, Professor," I explained, "I didn't intend to fight it but when I saw that… err…erm…"

"Rebecca," the girl sniffed.

"Rebecca! When I noticed that Rebecca was in danger, well," I fixed McGonagall with a look of simple nobility, "I don't see how any decent wizard could have stood by."

McGonagall raised an eyebrow but she did not question my story:

"You are very lucky young man, Mr Potter. Not many first years could have taken on a fully grown cave troll and lived to tell the tale!"

Lucky? She didn't know the half of it! I made my exit as soon as I could and returned to the common room, only to be interrogated by Ron, Hermione and Neville. I claimed to have got lost on my way back from the feast and had stepped in to defend the girl when she had been cornered by the troll. Ron and Neville lapped it up. I could tell Hermione was doubtful but she seemed far more interested in the bite I had spotted on Snape's leg.

"He must have let the troll in," she said, "He tried to get past Hagrid's dog on the third floor while the other teachers were searching for it."

"He's trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone," said Neville, brow furrowed in righteous indignation.

"The what?" I said, only half-listening to their conversation.

"The Philosopher's Stone. It's a magical stone that grants its owner unlimited wealth. It can also be used to brew the Elixir of Life; the secret of eternal youth," explained Hermione. She had my undivided attention now:

"There's only one in existence, made by a wizard named Nicholas Flamel. That's what the dog is guarding. Flamel must have given it to Dumbledore for safekeeping."

"Oh," I said, "Shame. I don't see why you're both getting so worked up about it. It's not like we can get at it with that bloody great dog standing guard."

"It's Snape who's trying to steal it. And I doubt he will stop at one attempt," said Neville, completely missing my point.

"Good," I said, standing up and heading for my bed, "With any luck the dog will eat him and we won't have to endure his company anymore."

It did not take me long to forget all about Snape and the Philosopher's Stone (and yes, it is the Philosopher's Stone. Bloody American publishers. Not even the Imperius Curse can overcome some people's stupidity). News of my 'battle' with the troll spread quickly. Combine that with the key role I played in Gryffindor's victory over Ravenclaw in the Quidditch league and I was getting so much tail that I was forced pass a few onto Ron, just to give myself a breather. One of the perks of being Harry Potter's sidekick, I guess.

Behind the scenes, however, my encounter with the troll had shaken me pretty badly. Cheating on college essays was one thing but I was beginning to appreciate just how dangerous the magical world could be. I set to some fairly strenuous extra-curricular study with Hermione, learning a handful of spells that would be useful in a tight spot. Nothing fancy; in truth, Expelliarmus is the only spell I would ever claim to have truly mastered. Oh, and Spolio but that has rather limited uses…

Christmas came and I was inundated with presents from my various admirers and cronies. Mostly tat, of course, but there was the anonymous gift of my father's old invisibility cloak. God bless Albus Dumbledore, the old fool. I think he intended that I use it to investigate mysterious happenings around the castle or to hide from my enemies. Needless to say, I quickly found some thoroughly disreputable uses for it. I say again: God bless Dumbledore.

The holidays ended and Hermione and Neville returned, still wittering about the Philosopher's Stone. I ignored them. I had come up with a delightful scheme to torment Hagrid, perhaps even get the hairy lump sacked. Hagrid's fascination for exotic and dangerous magical creatures was well known. This gave me an idea. Through the Weasley twins I was put in contact with a shady old dealer from London called Mundungus Fletcher. He was able to sell me an illegal dragon's egg he had smuggled into the country. Then it was a simple matter of our insinuating ourselves into the crowd at the Hog's Head (in disguise, naturally), waiting for Hagrid to become sufficiently drunk and 'losing' the egg in a card game.

Oh it was great fun. The idiot thought that the dragon was harmless as a kitten. He bought it toys, even gave it a name. It wasn't until the fledgling dragon set the roof of his hut on fire that he conceded that it should be returned to the wild. Naturally the sainted Neville Longbottom came to his rescue, smuggling the beast out of the castle and all without getting caught, lucky bastard that he is.

How he found the time to help Hagrid I will never know, what with also being a straight 'O' student, star Quidditch player and self-appointed guardian of the Philosopher's Stone. It was about this time that he mentioned having overheard Snape threatening Professor Quirrell about the Stone and the three-headed dog, but it was all so much bumf to me. Oh I nodded and pulled a noble face when he was talking, trying to play my part as the amateur troll-slaying hero, but as far as I was concerned the less I had to do with the whole affair the better.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple where I am concerned. It was a late evening, towards the end of May. I had stumbled back to Gryffindor Tower after a party in the Ravenclaw common room. I had just settled in front of the fire with my pipe when Neville burst in.

"Harry!" he cried, full of earnest distress, "Harry, it's Snape!"

"What, where?" I looked round, fearing for a second that Snape was about to loom out of the shadows and spoil an otherwise pleasant evening.

"The third floor corridor! He's going after the Stone!"

"Good for him," I said, settling back into my armchair, "I hope that dog's hungry."

"It's no use," said Neville, in agonised tones, "He knows how to get past it. Hagrid told him!"

"How?"

"In a pub, down in the village. Over a card game, I think."

I shifted awkwardly in my seat. I vaguely recalled some talk about three-headed dogs in the Hog's Head. Had Snape been one of the hooded figures round that table? More importantly, had he recognised me? Just possessing a dragon egg is a serious crime in the magical world. If he had seen me in the pub Snape could have had me up in front of the Wizengamot the next day.

"So?" I said, pretending to be unconcerned, "Guarding that Stone thing is Dumbledore's business, surely?"

"But that's just it," said Neville, "Dumbledore's gone; called away to the Ministry. I am sure it's a trick to lure him away from the castle. Snape must be going after the Stone tonight, now. We have to stop him."

"Steady on," I said, trying to prevent my rising feelings of panic from creeping into my voice. I could see Neville had devised some mad scheme to get us both killed chasing after Snape and I needed to get out of it.

"I know you're itching to get after Snape," I said, "It's admirable; damned admirable. But you can't just go rushing in after him. This is a matter for staff, not students…"

"There's no time, Harry," he said, pleading, "And I doubt they'd believe us anyway. We have to go now, you and me, before it's too late."

I could see the lunatic was determined to get himself blasted to bits, and I wanted no part in it.

"Be reasonable, Nev'. You don't think Dumbledore would have left the Stone unguarded, do you? I am sure there are more defences besides the dog…"

"But if Snape has worked out how to get past one defence, what's to say he hasn't worked out how to get past the rest? Come on, we have to go…"

He turned his back on me, heading towards the portrait. What happened next was pure panic on my part. Faced with a choice between almost certain death at the hands of a maverick Dark wizard and having it be known that I, the Boy-Who-Lived, duellist and troll-slayer, had refused to act in the hour of need, I chose a third option: I drew my wand and cast the first spell that came into my head:

"Petrificus Totalus!"

Neville fell forward onto his nose, stiff as a board. I just stood and gaped. I don't know what shocked me more: the fact that I had jinxed him or that I had successfully cast it.

In keeping with my run of luck that evening, Ron and Hermione chose that moment to appear from their respective dormitories.

"Harry? Neville? What happened?" Hermione demanded.

I gawped at her, my mouth flapping uselessly up and down.

"Harry, what happened mate?" said Ron, staring at me with those stupid, trusting puppy dog eyes. My mouth responded while my brain was still fogged:

"Snape! Snape's going after the Stone. Dumbledore's gone and Snape... Snape's going to steal the Stone. Neville… tried to stop me going after him."

Sometimes I really hate my mouth.