Disclaimer – Everything you recognise belongs to JKR. All the rest is simply me playing in her sandbox.

-oOoOo-

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

Chapter 8

"Where have you two been?"

Professor McGonagall's stern voice slid the two first years to a halt as a flurry of teachers appeared from around the corner that they'd been racing towards.

"Professor … troll … girl's toilets," Harry wheezed.

A sharp, piercing glance was all that they were spared before Professors McGonagall, Snape and Flitwick strode, or in Snape's case, limped, towards the toilets.

"Don't even think about going anywhere," Professor McGonagall threw over her shoulder.

Harry and Hermione shuffled closer to the wall as Professor Quirrel scuttled past them. He threw them a nervous look as he patted as his large purple turban.

Hermione slumped against the wall, head down. Harry eyed her carefully, trying to see if she'd been hurt at all, but her bushy hair had fallen to cover her face from his scrutiny.

"Hermione? Are you alright?" he asked tentatively.

A nod was the only response that he got and before he could question her again, he was distracted by the returning teachers.

"Well, I think that it's safe enough at the moment for you two to tell us what in the world you thought you were doing down here with a troll on the loose?" Professor McGonagall's thin lips asked.

"Uh, Hermione was in the toilets and then that troll just barged in and started wrecking the place," Harry tried to explain.

Professor Snape straightened from where he'd been rubbing his leg and scowling at Professor Quirrel, in the process letting his robes fall to hide what looked like a large bite mark to Harry.

"I'm sure that Mister Potter here was simply playing the hero instead of doing as he was told. He seems to have a propensity for not following instructions," he intoned.

"What instructions, Professor?" Harry asked, confused.

"All students were instructed to head straight from the Great Hall to their common rooms, Mister Potter," Professor McGonagall supplied.

"Oh, but we weren't at the feast," Harry replied.

"You weren't at the feast?" a surprised Professor Flitwick squeaked, "why ever not?"

"Um," Harry began, glancing at Hermione, not sure what to say.

Suddenly, Hermione straightened. "We weren't at the feast because I was … I was … upset and h-hiding out in the toilets. Harry, I think, came to find me."

"I see," Professor McGonagall's eyes narrowed. "Then could you kindly explain what happened to the troll? It was unconscious on the floor with a quill stuck up its nose!"

"Um, that was me, Professor," Harry admitted quietly. "I saw it go into the toilet where Hermione was and I … I wasn't thinking. I jumped on its back and then it fell down and I used the first spell that I could think off – the locomotor spell – and the quill went up its nose and then I just grabbed Hermione and we ran for it."

Harry sheepishly looked around at the four teachers, only to find various combinations of shock, disbelief and outright terror (on the part of Professor Quirrel, of course) plastered on their faces.

"I'd be dead if it wasn't for Harry," Hermione spoke up in as strong a voice as Harry'd heard her use since the ordeal began.

Professor McGonagall was the first to find her voice. "Five points from the both of you for not being where you were supposed to be. And Mister Potter, twenty-five points for sheer dumb luck! Now, if you aren't injured at all, straight to Gryffindor common room, thank you."

Harry nodded, desperately trying to contain the smile that threatened to break out on his face.

"Mister Potter? I believe that this is yours," Professor Flitwick stated, holding out Harry's repaired bag, before leaning in. "I've repaired your belongings, but if I was you, I'd think about getting a new quill."

-oOoOo-

A wall of noise hit them the instant that the Fat Lady's portrait swung aside to admit their entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room.

"There they are!" Fred Weasley (or was it George?) exclaimed, hand outstretched in Harry and Hermione's direction.

"The Heroes of the Hour!" George, or at least the other twin, declared.

"The Terroriser of Trolls!" Fred declared as he and his brother rapidly approached.

"Whoever said that the club was mightier than the quill …" George told the air in general.

"Never met these two!" They finished together as each twin hoisted one of them on to their shoulders.

Suddenly, the whole of Gryffindor House seemed to be crowding in close, reaching out to shake their hands, slap them on the back, clapping, whistling, cheering, banging mugs on tables and stomping feet in excitement.

Hermione grinned nervously and shot a look across at Harry. The poor boy looked stunned, as though he was trying to shrink within himself and disappear.

Eventually, they were released to stand on a table, where the red-headed twins plopped down, rested their heads on their propped up hands and batted their eyes at the pair of them in adoration.

"So, tell us, Boy-Who-Lived-To-Terrorise-Trolls, what's the best way to rescue the Damsel in Distress?" George asked, eliciting a swathe of laughs and giggles from the packed common room.

"And remember, there's no need to gloss over the details or leave anything out," Fred stated.

Harry looked around, unsure what to say or do.

"But, how do you already know?" he finally asked. "We came straight here. We haven't told anyone what happened."

"Except the professors," Hermione corrected him. "And I doubt that they told you all."

"Right you are, Hermione," Fred replied.

"The Fat Lady told us," George finished.

"What these two buffoons are forgetting to say, is that you were standing beside the portrait of Wendell the Weird when you were talking to the professors earlier and he rushed straight up to tell the Fat Lady," Alicia Spinnet supplied.

"Then, if you've already heard the story, you won't need to hear it again," Hermione stated as she tried to get down from the table.

The twins though, were having none of that.

"Oh, no, you don't, Hermione," Fred stated, pushing her back towards the centre of the table, "we all want to hear the story properly."

Harry sighed as he looked around at the expectant faces and came to a quick decision. Best to get it over with quickly.

"I was waiting outside the girl's toilets for Hermione," he began.

"What were you doing in there that made you miss half the feast?" Lee Jordan, the twin's best friend, interrupted.

"Is that something that we really need to know, Lee?" Fred asked.

Hermione scowled in the direction of the group of nervous-looking first years.

"I think that might be girl-talk, boys," Angelina Johnson stated forcefully, and Hermione had the impression that the Gryffindor Chasers would be pulling her aside later for a quiet word.

"Anyway," Harry continued, "a troll suddenly appeared."

"How big was it?"

"How can a troll just appear? Wouldn't you smell it first?"

Harry paused in confusion at the questions being shouted at him.

With a shrug, he continued. "After it went into the girl's toilets and I heard Hermione scream, I just had to do something. I wasn't thinking really. I sorta just jumped at it and landed on its back and hung on. And then, for some reason, it fell over."

"It slipped in the ink from the bottles that smashed after it ripped your bag apart," Hermione supplied.

Harry gave a nod to thank her for explaining that.

"Then I just locomotored my quill and it went up its nose," Harry continued.

"Ew, troll boogers!"

"You still got the quill, Harry? Can we have it?" the twins asked eagerly, receiving an eager nod.

"You used locomotor on a quill this early in first year?" Percy Weasley asked. "That's impressive magic."

Harry shrugged, eager to get to the end of the story so that he could get off the table and escape up to his dorm and his bed.

"Once it was down, I just grabbed Hermione and we got out of there."

"And that's where the professors found us," Hermione concluded.

"Yep, just as we thought," Fred said looking at his brother.

"Heroes just can't help being heroes," George stated with a grin.

"Uh, guys, can we get down now?" Harry asked.

Two long arms reached out to pluck Harry and Hermione back to the ground.

"Let's get this party rockin'!" Lee shouted.

Mugs were pushed into their hands as Fred held his own newly acquired mug in the air.

"To Harry and Hermione! Showing a troll what being a Gryffindor is all about!"

-oOoOo-

Harry successfully hid his amusement behind his large, chipped tea cup. Beside him, Hermione was frowning hard at the rock cake in her hand and attempting to gnaw at it with the side of her mouth.

He knew from past experience that that was probably the best way to eat one of Hagrid's rock cakes. Thakfully this time, he'd managed to pass on the cakes in favour of some treacle that Hagrid had made. There wasn't any improvement in this cooking either. Harry was of the firm belief that his giant friend should give up while he was behind and simply take all of his meals up in the Great Hall with the rest of the school.

But then, Harry mused, he'd miss out on getting to spend time with Hagrid. And getting to see some more pictures of his parents that Hagrid had managed to dig up.

"Hagrid," he asked, trying to distract himself from the faces that Hermione was pulling, "what sort of animal is in the third floor corridor?"

"Who tol' you about Fluffy?" Hagrid asked.

"Fluffy?" Harry repeated, before shaking his head. There was no way that the growls that he'd heard behind the locked door belonged to anything that could be named 'Fluffy'.

Hagrid's eyes darted backwards and forwards and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Forget I said anythin'."

Harry waited, staring at Hagrid, refusing to look away. Finally, Hagrid relented.

"Alrigh', ye don' have to stare like tha'," he grumbled. "Yeah, Fluffy's mine. He's a … dog, o' mine."

Harry looked across at Fang and tried to imagine the growls that he'd heard coming from the big boarhound. Somehow he couldn't do it and not just because Fang was the gentlest dog, in a slobber-you-to-death kind of way, that Harry had ever met. He just didn't think that Fang would be capable of producing a deep enough sound.

"A dog?" he finally said.

"Yeah, a dog. A big dog, o' course."

"How big, Hagrid?" Hermione asked and Harry could imagine her wondering the same thing that he was – why would you keep a big dog locked up inside a corridor of a castle?

"Well," Hagrid replied reluctantly, "have you studied cerebus' yet?"

Harry shook his head in stark contrast to Hermione's queasy-looking nod.

"Tell me, you don't have a cerebus in the school, Hagrid," Hermione pleaded.

But Harry was no longer listening. Instead, his mind jumped back to the bite mark that he'd seen on Snape's leg after the defeated the troll and he just knew that somehow, the potions professor had had a run in with Fluffy.

A small, nervous sounding knock interrupted Hermione's lecture on the amount of exercise that an animal needed in relation to its size.

"Come in," Hagrid called.

The wooden door was pushed open to reveal a pack of small, scared looking faces.

"Um, we … we were wondering if we could talk to … to Hermione for a minute," a nervous Ron asked.

After giving Harry a baffled look, Hermione rose from her chair and walked through the door. Harry quickly scrambled after her to watch from the doorway.

It seemed that Ron had been nominated as spokesman. All of their classmates, except Neville, clustered tightly behind the red-headed boy.

"Um, we just wanted to say sorry for what we said the other day," Ron mumbled.

Harry raised an eyebrow. From what Hermione had eventually told him, it'd just been one red-haired git who'd made so much fun of her that she'd ended up running of crying to the girl's toilets. It seemed that Hermione had left something out of her story.

Lavender and Pavarti, Seamus and Dean were all nodding emphatically along with the apology. In the silence that followed, Harry saw them scuffling their feet nervously in the dirt.

"Thank you for apologising," Hermione eventually replied.

"Maybe we can start again? As friends this time?" Lavender blurted.

"Yes, yes, I think I'd like that," Hermione smiled.