A/N: I do not own Harry Potter or any character thereof. Only the story line is mine so please don't sue! I don't own anything!

Chapter 27

As Halloween approached, Harry felt some sadness creep into his life. Until Hagrid had told him, he never knew what day his parents had died on. He told Ron this because his friend had noticed that his mood had changed.

"I'm sorry Harry. I didn't know." Harry and Ron were playing chess in their dorm room before astronomy.

"It's alright. I'm probably being stupid. They've been dead for a while ..." Harry trailed off as he made his move.

"You're not being stupid. I'd probably be a mess right now," admitted Ron just before he announced, "Check mate!"

Harry picked up his wand and flicked it as he said, "tempus". It was 10 minutes before they had to leave. (Harry had found that spell in his books earlier that week.)

"Time to die," the voice said as he laughed. He saw the man raise his wand and send a jet of green light at him.

Harry sat up gasping for air. Once he recognized his surroundings and de-tangled himself from his sheets, he put his glasses on. The bed clock showed the time to be 4:15 am.

Harry scowled. He quickly showered and dressed. As he packed his book bag, he noticed Scabbers on his bed chewing on his sheets for some odd reason. He quickly petted the rat before taking the sheet out of his mouth.

After finishing with his bag, he grabbed his wand and went down to the common room to sit in front of the fire place. He really did not want to go to class today.

The whispers and stares around him had started to pick back up. He assumed that it was because of the anniversary of the day that he, somehow, miraculously defeated Voldemort. Nobody seemed to be inclined to remember the fact that it was also the day that he had lost his parents.

He had sat and stared at the fireplace for so long that before he knew it, Ron was poking him telling him to come to breakfast.

During the meal, Ron was doing his best to get Harry to smile but he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

He looked up to see Oliver Wood walking towards him.

"Hi Oliver," said Harry after pushing away his untouched food.

"No practice today," he whispered. "McGonagall seems to think that the feast tonight is more important. Honestly ..." He walked off muttering.

Harry looked at Ron. "Feast?"

"Yeah. There's always a Halloween Feast. Great food!" Ron said as he reached for more sausage.

"I don't think I'll go tonight," muttered Harry.

"What? You have to. Come on. How can you turn down good food? It might take your mind off of things."

Harry grumbled but said that he would think about it.

During charms, they were going to make something fly. The class had been itching to try this since Flitwick had made Neville's toad zoom across the room.

Harry already knew that he could do it. While everyone was asleep one night, he had tried it because he was bored and couldn't fall asleep. However, he levitated a chair as opposed to Neville's toad.

Flitwick had partnered everyone. He had put Harry with Seamus and Ron with Hermione. Harry noticed that neither of those two looked pleased with the arrangement.

Harry had learned a couple of weeks ago that if he let Hermione do things first, a lot less glares were sent his way. In truth, he only seemed to do better than her in charms and defense (even though those were only essays). They appeared to be matched in potions - as far as he could tell anyway. The rest of the classes were not as easy to him, but she, however, seemed to have no trouble with them.

He let Seamus try to levitate the feather first. As he watched, he heard Hermione correct Ron's pronunciation and proceed to levitate her feather with no problem.

"Well done Ms. Granger!" Flitwick exclaimed.

Just as Harry was about to try, Seamus managed to catch the feather on fire, which Harry promptly put out with his hat. As Flitwick gave them a new feather, he saw Ron glaring dagger's at Hermione.

"You try, Harry. I'll go again in a minute," Seamus muttered as he leaned back in his chair.

Harry levitated it on the first try, which earned some praise from the professor then he let Seamus try again. Ron finally got his to raise by the end of class, but he was still in a foul mood.

"It's no wonder no one can stand her," he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor, "she's a nightmare, honestly."

Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face - and was startled to see that she was in tears.

"I think she heard you."

"So?" said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. "She must've noticed she's got no friends."

Hermione wasn't in flying lessons after lunch, which made Harry worry a bit.

Harry used his afternoon to catch up on homework since there was no Quidditch practice today. It also took his mind off of his parents for a while.

"Come on Harry, please go to the feast."

After listening to Ron for 10 minutes, he agreed.

On the way out of the portrait hole, he and Ron over heard Parvati Patil tell Lavender Brown that Hermione had locked herself in the girls bathroom and refused to come out, that she was crying.

Ron looked slightly ashamed of himself.

However, once they were inside the Great Hall, all of Ron's attention focused on the live bats flying over head. Harry was slightly curious at them as well but his heart really wasn't in the celebrating mood.

Harry wasn't very hungry either, which was strange since he really didn't eat much during the day. He had just taken a bite of chicken when Quirrell had run in screaming.

Harry's heart was racing as he and Ron were being led by Percy back towards the dorm.

Harry suddenly grabbed Ron's arm. "I've just thought - Hermione."

"What about her?"

"She doesn't know about the troll."

Ron bit his lip. "Oh, all right," he snapped. "But Percy'd better not see us."

As they rushed towards the girls bathroom that Parvati had mentioned, they heard footsteps.

"What's Snape doing?" Ron whispered.

"Dunno. He's supposed to be in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers."

They quietly followed Snape. Harry pulled Ron into a cubby hole behind a statue. "He's heading towards the third floor," whispered Harry.

They then turned back towards the task of finding Hermione. As soon as they reached the first floor, a putrid smell reached both of their nostrils.

"I think the troll's left the dungeon," Ron muttered.

They watched as the twelve foot troll entered a room. As soon as they locked it in, they high fived each other then started to go search for the girls bathroom.

As soon as they heard the scream, they realized that they had already found the girls bathroom that Hermione was in.

They had just locked the troll in it.

When Ron and Harry entered the bathroom, Harry felt his breath catch momentarily. Then - well he didn't know if he could call it instinct or not but that's what he did call it - instinct kicked in.

A quick scan of the room found Hermione against the wall trying to avoid drawing the Trolls' gaze. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled reading something about trolls skin being thick and impervious to most magic.

'Ropes', Harry thought. He then realized that he didn't know how to make them yet.

Then an idea hit. "Confuse it!" Harry shouted to Ron.

Together they yelled at the troll and threw bits of the stall doors at it that the troll had already destroyed.

While the troll was focused on Ron, he tried to get Hermione away but she seemed frozen in terror.

Harry distracted the troll while Ron tried to get her, but she still wouldn't budge.

Suddenly without knowing why he did it, Harry jumped onto the trolls neck to distract it that way (aided by magic he suspected later) and while it didn't notice Harry, it did notice Harry's wand - which had lodged itself up it's nose.

Mad with anger, the troll starting waving it's club around trying to get to Harry. Hermione had shrank even lower with fright. Ron, however, pulled out his wand and yelled the first spell that came to his mind.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

Ron guided the club up and let it drop on top of the trolls' head as Harry jumped to safety.

The troll collapsed less than a foot from where he was standing. It actually shook the castle floor.

Now that the troll was unconscious and he had reclaimed his wand, he felt some of the adrenaline leave him, until he heard the footsteps.

His heart pounded fiercely as he saw McGonagall, Snape, and Quirrell glaring between them and the troll.

But what came as the most shocking event of the night was when Hermione told the teachers that she had broke the rules and that they had saved her.

Ron and Harry were still discussing things when they approached the Fat Lady and gave her the password.

It was then that Hermione Granger became his and Ron's friend. After all, there are just some things you couldn't share without ending up liking each other and knocking out a twelve foot mountain troll is one of them.

Later that night, Harry reached for his journal and wrote about the days events and also how he missed his parents. It was around 1am before he finally fell asleep.

Severus hated Halloween. All he wanted to do was hide all day, but he knew that he would not be allowed to. By breakfast time, he had yelled at 3 people and taken points just because he could.

During breakfast he glanced over at Potter and saw that he looked sad as well.

'He did lose his parents,' Severus admitted to himself.

He didn't have a clear view of the boy, but he could see that he told Weasley that he didn't want to go to the feast.

Truthfully, Severus couldn't blame him, but for the staff, it was unfortunately mandatory.

He then scowled at himself as he realized that he was feeling sorry for the boy.

He felt the Headmaster's gaze on him but ignored it.

He took lunch in his quarters just to hide from everyone else.

He tried to do that again come time for the feast, but Albus was standing at the entrance to his chambers. He knew that he should have used the floo network from his office.

As the food appeared, he realized that Quirrell had not. Just as he was about to point that out, Quirrell had burst into the room yelling about a troll in the dungeons.

Severus gave Albus a quick look and slipped out a side door to head towards the 3rd floor. He opened the door a little and saw that 'Fluffy' was still there.

The next thing he knew is that he was being shoved into the room. The dog snapped at him with one of it's heads and scratched his leg.

Just as it snapped again, he managed to disillusion himself and crawl to the side of the room. After he regained his balance, he opened the door to find Quirrell staring at it.

He canceled his spell the same time that he place a hand around Quirrell's neck.

"Well, well. What do we have here? Trying to get rid of me Quirrell?" Severus whispered words were in a deadly tone.

"I ... I w-would never t-t-try to kill y-you S-Severus."

Snape sensed that there was something not right about Quirrell. His gut feeling had him leaning in and whispering into his ear in a very quiet voice, "I was not one of the Dark Lord's favorite's without reason Quirrell. I could simply kill you right now and blame it on the dogs."

"S-S-Severus w-what are y-you t-t-talking a-about?"

Snape raised an eyebrow at him.

"I w-was here to c-check t-that m-my part of the p-protections w-was still s-safe."

"You still haven't given me any reason why I shouldn't just throw you in there with the dogs."

Quirrell began to struggle with the hand that was still around his neck.

Snape felt his left arm tingle slightly, which caused him to mentally flinch, but he showed no outward sign of it.

"Just so you know, I don't believe you for one second, but seeing as how I have no proof -" A loud crash echoed through the empty halls.

They both separated then headed towards where the noise originated from, but not before Severus sent a silent locking charm towards the door.

They met McGonagall in the corridor and followed behind her into the girls bathroom.

The smell from the troll was horrendous. The unconscious thing was sprawled into the middle of the floor. He rolled his eyes when he saw Quirrell sink down on to a toilet seat. The next thing he saw was Potter and Weasley.

He gave Potter a swift searching look. He could not believe his eyes. These two had obviously just bested a mountain troll.

It was McGonagall that spoke first.

When Granger spoke up, (he was unaware that she was even there because she had been crouched low on the floor against the opposite wall), he could tell that she wasn't telling the truth, at least not the entire truth.

Potter and Weasley were doing their best to act like none of what she said was a surprise. He narrowed his eyes at them.

After McGonagall sent everyone away, she herself turned to go hunt down the Headmaster. Severus was sure that since Quirrell had been the one that let the troll in to start with, he could be the one to clean it up.

"After all, you are the Defense Against the Dark Art's teacher," he sneered as he turned and walked away.

He then headed towards the Headmaster's office and sat in a chair to wait on him.

Albus and Minerva entered about 10 minutes later talking about the incident. Neither looked surprised to see Severus there.

"You are aware that Granger was lying wasn't you?" Severus asked as he rolled up his pants leg to look at the wound that he just remembered he had. (He felt the blood trickle down his leg which is what made him remember it.)

"What do you mean she was lying and what on Earth happened to your leg?" Minerva demanded to know.

"Oh, she was telling the truth about what happened, but not the circumstances leading up to it." He then cast a quick cleansing charm to clean the wound.

Albus looked at him and noticed that he didn't answer the second question.

"Either way, there was no denying that Potter and Weasley took on a full grown mountain troll - and won!" Minerva was grinning, quite proud of them.

Severus was applying some anti-bacterial ointment he had summoned from his personal stores. After he was finished, he muttered a healing spell with his wand then placed bandages over the still open wound. It would take a few days to heal.

"I happen to agree with what you told both boys Minerva. It was sheer dumb luck." Severus smirked at her.

After a minute or two more, she excused herself to make sure that there were no more wanderer's out in the hallway.

"What happened to your leg Severus?" Albus asked very concerned.

"Fluffy."

"Fluffy? Ah ... so the troll was a distraction."

"Yes. I would prefer you to see the memory."

Albus nodded as they headed towards his pensieve. He also included the bathroom portion just so Albus could see his Golden Boy.

After they returned from viewing the memory, they sat down.

"Why did you tell him what you did about Voldemort?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure. Call it a gut reaction, but I'm certain that he is working for the Dark Lord. I'm just not sure how, nor am I sure how I know that." Severus frowned because he wasn't explaining things the way that he wanted to, but it seemed that Albus understood what he was trying to say.

"Did your Dark Mark do anything when you were near him?"

Severus nodded. "Towards the end, when Quirrell was having issues breathing, it tingled a bit, but it's not changed in appearance or anything like that. I've checked. I'm sorry Albus if I shouldn't have said what I did, but it felt like it was the right thing to do."

"It's alright. I trust your instincts. Do you think he will approach you for help?"

"I'm not sure. We might need to do something to dissuade him from doing so for several obvious reasons."

"I'm sure we could think of something." Albus had a twinkle in his eye that told Severus it wouldn't be pleasant.

After he had showered and crawled into bed, he turned his head to see a picture of Lily on his night stand and let his last waking thought be of her.

A/N: Thanks everyone for the reviews so far! They encourage me! (Grin)

A/N: This story will stick mostly to canon of the Sorcerer's Stone book, and some quotes are from the book directly. However, every once in a while, a scene or two from the movie may sneak in. (All that of course aside from the fact that a lot of scenes from my own mind are sneaking in as well - evil cackle!)

A/N: Some of what's written in the Sorcerer's Stone will change to suit my whims for my own story! Don't hate me! (Evil smirk!)