A vaguely human shaped, twelve foot tall, very ugly looking creature carrying a small tree over its shoulder had shambled into the intersection and now seemed confused about which way to go. Staros and Harry backed up to the bathroom door, hoping to escape notice and carefully, Staros turned the door handle. Quietly as they could, they eased the door open and slipped inside. They pulled the door just as quietly shut and pushed the bolt lock into place. A muffled sniffle was heard behind them.
"This is a girls' loo, you two better get out," said Hermione, somewhat louder than the two boys thought appropriate, her face streaked with tears.
"As much as I would love to leave, Hermione, we can't," whispered Staros. Harry nodded and motioned them to be quiet as he pressed his ear against the door.
Noticing they were acting rather odd, Hermione asked, "What's going on?"
"Shh… keep your voice down. Somehow…" started Staros. Then all hell broke loose as the door was ripped back from the frame and the three children stared up at the troll who looked to be trying to figure out what was in his hand, turning the door this way and that.
"Bollocks…" said Harry, standing almost directly under its feet.
The troll heard him. Dropping the door behind it, it looked down at the three small children in confusion for just a few moments before it decided that they should be smashed with its club.
Just as the club began to arc down, Harry dived quickly to the side while Staros shoved Hermione into a stall and used that force to fall to the side himself. The club came down onto one of the sinks, shattering it and crushing the flagstones under it. Hermione screamed, Staros pissed himself, and Harry started to curse quite proficiently (years with Vernon had given him a very complete vocabulary to work from).
Harry picked himself off the floor as the troll was looking around, trying to see if it had squashed them. He then picked up a large chunk of the broken sink and threw it at the troll's head. This seemed to verify to the troll that they had not been squashed and it needed to try again, this time swinging sideways at Harry.
Harry ducked, tucked and rolled under the club in a surprisingly acrobatic move (years of dodging Dudley) which smashed into the bathroom wall and shook the whole castle it felt like. Staros pulled out his wand but was still in a bit of shock trying to get his mind into gear as to what he could possibly do to something this size.
The troll, seeing Hermione shut the stall door she was in, pulled the club back across the room in a wide swing for the stalls. The club met little resistance as it tore through them like paper. Fortunately, Hermione had also ducked to the floor so she was relatively unharmed.
"Get up! Run!" Harry yelled at them both, throwing another chunk of debris at the troll. This diverted attention back to him, so Staros darted in to grab Hermione's arm and shoved her not so gently towards the side of the troll that would allow them to escape notice and hopefully dodge out the door.
The troll swung his club back at Harry, who again dodged the very large piece of lumber. As he did so, Staros shoved Hermione out the door where she stopped and turned, "Harry!"
Staros' world slowed to a crawl. He and Hermione could escape. However, he would owe that escape to Harry Potter, last of his line, who would most likely die for their freedom. He'd owe a debt rather too large to pay to a boy who would haunt his life forever. This was not acceptable.
"Damnit, Harry! Run you idiot!" Staros took a page from Harry and threw a large rock at the back of the troll's head. Seeing that this didn't cause enough effect, he quickly looked around and cast the Accio charm they learned last week at a rather large piece of flagstone. Since it was on the other side of the troll, its very rapid summoning caused it to slam right into the troll's knees and then swing up between the troll's legs. Apparently, human shaped included certain sensitive spots as the troll paused for a moment and then let out a howl of pain that probably was heard on the other side of the Forest.
Harry took this moment of distraction to dart past the troll and rejoin Staros and Hermione. The three took off running down the corridor, hoping to escape before the troll recovered. They were not so lucky.
The troll was now maddened past any miniscule point of reason it once had. Swinging around, the creature brought its club through the wall to its left as it turned to chase the children. Letting out a roar not quite as loud in anger, it gave chase to the small things that hurt it.
"Any ideas?" yelled Hermione as they ran for their lives.
Harry started to shake his head then yelled, "Stairs!"
Not knowing exactly what he meant, Staros and Hermione followed Harry as he turned down another corridor toward the central staircases. As the troll was gaining on them, anything was better than nothing. Reaching one of the narrower staircases, Harry quickly ran over to the bannister and slid down to the next floor. While a completely reckless move since a slip could mean a fall down several floors of empty space, the troll with its massive club made falling seem less like suicide, more like escape as Staros and Hermione followed suit.
Picking themselves up, Staros turned to Harry and said, "Now what?"
"Dunno, that was as far as I got."
As the three felt, heard and then saw the troll coming to the top of the staircase, Staros was hit with an idea.
"All of us, aim for the left sandal and summon it to us."
The other two looked completely lost, but pulled their wands. The troll was just starting down the narrow staircase.
"Now! ACCIO SANDAL!" Staros shouted, hearing the others say the same spell.
Normally, something like this wouldn't do any good. Trolls, being quite large, dense, and invariably stupid, were quite resistant to magic. Their clothing, if it could be called such, was not.
The troll's left sandal, a quite ingenious piece of work for a troll, consisted mainly of a large piece of leather of some sort with leather strings tied around and through it and bound to their ankles while holding in place several pelts from who knows what as protection from dogs, sharp rocks, other trolls, troll children, and most insects as the bugs never survived the stench of the collected refuse wrapped in the hides. It did not protect the troll from what happened next.
The troll's left foot went a slightly different direction that the rest of the troll. Normally, this wouldn't matter since trolls had a strange, innate ability to correct for their awkward size and often misshapen limbs. But on a narrow staircase, narrow for humans being about four feet across, for trolls about the human equivalent of running down a slanted two-by-four, the ability to correct its footing was limited. So when its foot went one way, the leg pushed it down to meet the bannister, tore through and then nothing, resulting in the troll tumbling down to its left and off the staircase to plummet down several floors of empty space and land with a very loud CRACK! as the flagstones underneath buckled. The trio of students collapsed onto the floor.
A few mindless moments later they were found as the professors, drawn by the troll's roars and the sounds of destruction arrived from various points around them. McGonagall came in from the corridor next to them first, looking as stern and unforgiving as ever. From the third floor stairs came Snape, followed quickly by Quirrell who appeared to have completely recovered from his fainting spell earlier. As they began climbing towards the ledge the trio sat on, McGonagall started in on them.
"What on earth are you doing? Why aren't you in your dormitories? Don't you know there's a troll loose? From the sounds it was making it must be close! Come on, up with you! We'll get you out of here!"
Hermione stood and shook her head.
"No need professor. The troll fell down there," she said, pointing down the stair shaft. At this point, Snape and Quirrell had arrived and they caught Hermione's revelation. Snape idly looked over the railing and saw the troll's, body its head bent at an odd angle, and smirked ever so slightly.
"Indeed. And just how did it find itself down there, Ms. Granger?" Snape asked.
"We sort of… summoned its shoe, sir," said Harry.
Quirrell had been standing at the rail, looking rather lost and dazed when Harry said this. His head snapped around to look at the boy but the motion seemed too much for his already stressed constitution and he paled slightly before sitting himself down and for all the world looking like he was about to have a coronary.
"Professor? Are you all right?" asked Staros, hoping to divert some of the attention away from them, with limited success as at this point, most of the other professors were arriving from different locations.
Quirrell waved aside the boy's concern but allowed himself to be pulled over to a bench in the corridors. Meanwhile, Dumbledore and Flitwick wanted to know how they had summoned the troll's shoe and how that resulted in the troll's falling to its death. Knowing that they were in for quite the grilling session, Staros asked if they could all sit somewhere more comfortable, and less smelly, while they told the story. Dumbledore agreed and led the way to his office, asking Snape and McGonagall to attend since it involved students from both houses.
Settling into the Headmaster's office, and politely declining the lemon drops he offered everyone present, Harry and Staros proceeded to tell the tale of how they managed to be in a girls' bathroom with a full grown mountain troll… and a girl. During this time, the reasons for Hermione's impromptu disappearance were made know, namely Ron's insulting and rude behavior, par for the course for the young Weasley. Professor McGonagall was not amused.
Having heard the stories from the trio of students, the professors asked a few simple questions, berated them for their blatant stupidity, and then praised them for their ability to think on their feet. The Accio of the troll's shoes was so inspired, Snape actually almost smiled, but made it perfectly clear that further Gryffindor-like actions from anyone in his house was not to be tolerated. McGonagall, having recovered from her brief brush with a coronary, deducted twenty points apiece from the students. Seeing their dismay, Dumbledore then awarded them fifty points apiece for their bravery and quick thinking. After they left the offices for their dormitories, Snape also awarded an additional thirty points to Staros for his proper warning of both his own house and that of Hufflepuff, going on to state that while friends were nice and business associates were ok, people who owed you a debt were always the best.