This was a class Harry had been waiting for. He of course had been flying since before he could remember, but that didn't mean that a class about flying wouldn't still be fun. All first years got six lessons in broomstick flying to make sure they knew the basics. Hopefully it would be less boring than the rest of his classes.

A few minutes into the lesson, Harry knew that it was indeed going to be as boring as the rest of his classes. Several other Gryffindors and Slytherins, like Ron, Greengrass, Lavender Brown, and most of all Malfoy looked like they felt the same way. When Neville was let to the hospital wing to fix his wrist, Harry knew the entire thing was officially a waste of time. He didn't even have his books with him to pass the time.

Malfoy picked something off the ground. "Look, he forgot his Remembrall. Seems appropriate."

The Slytherins were laughing as Harry stepped forward with his wand. "Hand it over Malfoy."

While he tried to hide it, Harry knew that Draco was scared of Harry's wand pointing at him. He quickly grabbed his broom and pushed off into the skies. "Come and get it," he taunted down to Harry as the Slytherins cheered.

Now Harry was really starting to get annoyed. Ignoring Madam Hooch's order not to fly, he followed Draco into the air. Draco tried to outfly Harry but Harry didn't bother messing around with that. He cast a summoning charm on Draco's broom. The pull backwards while Draco was trying to fly forwards meant that the broom came to a stop midair, and Harry flew over to collect the Remembrall. Now Draco really did look panicked. "Fine then Potter!" he yelled. "Catch!"

As Draco threw the Remembrall, Harry could have just summoned it like he did the broom. But a wild thought flashed through his head. He could make it. Swiftly pocketing his wand, Harry dove towards the ground. Somebody screamed as he hurtled towards the Earth, but Harry could indeed make it in time and caught the Remembrall in time to pull up and make a smooth landing. Just a minute later the Gryffindor cheers faded as McGonagall marched up to Harry.

He really thought he was busted as McGonagall led him through the castle. 'Aunt McGonagall' had always been kind enough to Harry, but she was also stern and a stickler for the rules. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Twenty minutes later Harry left a meeting with McGonagall and Oliver Wood with a smirk on his face. Not even his dad could have claimed to be Seeker his very first year at Hogwarts.

Line Break

Harry really didn't like Defense class. To be honest, he didn't love any of his largely useless classes, but he dreaded Defense. And not because of the curriculum, but because of the teacher.

Quirinus Quirrell was a wizard with very dark magic. Harry could sense the dark aura from the other side of the room. This in of itself wasn't necessarily a bad thing, many good wizards had darker magic. Harry himself had a slightly dark magic. All it meant was that curses and other malicious spells were a tad easier for him to cast. But Quirrell's dark magic had something wrong radiating off of it. Quirrell elected not to live at the castle during the school year and was fairly insular even while teaching and so the first Defense Against the Dark Arts class was Harry's first time in close proximity with the teacher.

Harry had strong magic. It meant that he could feel the latent energy within Hogwarts and other highly magic places, and could easily feel the magic within other witches and wizards as well. The first class, he had spent most of the time looking around the classroom, trying to see if anyone else could feel the twisted energy coming off of Quirrell. That the muggleborns didn't notice anything wasn't a surprise. They hadn't grown up around magic and wouldn't have the inherent knowledge of how to feel magic. The ability was like learning a language. Learning your first tongue as a baby is easy, everyone does it. Learning another language later in life is harder.

But what surprised him was that none of the half-bloods or purebloods showed any discomfort either. Longbottom, Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson, Weasley, and Greengrass were all in the room, and not even Ron with his staunchly light magic so much as twitched.

That very same evening Harry had sought his grandfather out, finding him in the middle of a beginning-of-the-year report from McGonagall.

"Mr. Potter," McGonagall said firmly. Before he had always been 'Harry' but now that he was a student McGonagall called him 'Mr. Potter.' He had been sorely tempted to say 'no, that was my father' the first time. "This is an important meeting. Whatever you need to say, I'm sure it can wait."

"But it's about Quirrell!" Harry had cried. "He doesn't feel right."

That got McGonagall's attention. Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully. "What did you feel? Remember that having darker magic than oneself doesn't make somebody bad."

"Obviously I know that," Harry said. "He's the same as Sirius. But… I can't really describe it. Somebody just feels, almost dead I guess. Nobody else noticed. I asked Ron, he just said that Quirrell has dark magic."

McGonagall looked at Dumbledore. "Maybe you were right."

"So you can feel it too?" Harry asked. He wasn't just being crazy, there was actually something wrong.

"What you are describing only appeared after Quirinus returned from his trip studying vampires in Romania," Dumbledore said. "When I questioned him about it, he said that he had triggered an old curse he couldn't identify outside one of the enclaves. I sent him to be evaluated by the Ministry, and they cleared him without issue."

"Nobody else can feel what you two do," McGonagall said. "When I really concentrate, I can catch a hint of something, but nothing substantial."

"Without probable cause I had no reason to remove Quirrell from his post. Now perhaps…" The Headmaster stared off into space for a moment. "I will keep a close eye on Quirrell," Dumbledore promised.

"Do you think he's been corrupted by black magic?" Harry asked.

"If I thought that I would not have left him on the staff," Dumbledore assured Harry. "Hogwarts is safe. I do not know what happened to Quirrell. Likely it is as he says, an ancient curse was triggered that scarred his magic. His spells appear unaffected and the Ministry found nothing wrong in their evaluation."

"So it's fine," Harry said.

"Yes, I do believe everything is fine," Dumbledore assured him.

"That still leaves the question of why only you two can feel something wrong," McGonagall said.

"Well there is the obvious answer."

McGonagall nodded. "Yes, there is that."

Harry was lost now. "What's the obvious answer?"

"You two have more pure magical potential than virtually anyone else I've met," McGonagall said. "Certainly more than me."

"Oh," Harry said. "Right." He knew that he had an unusually strong magical ability, but it wasn't something he thought about often. It was just a part of him.

Back in the present, Harry was counting down the minutes until class was over. It was all theory work on the smokescreen spell anyways. Sometimes Harry really wondered about the curriculum. The teachers literally trained the pranksters. He scribbled down some ideas on the bottom of his notes page. The lumiosa spell was proving more difficult to perfect than he expected. Now it looked like he might have to change the incantation.

Ron leaned over. "Still working on it huh?" he whispered. Harry nodded. "You're almost as bad as bloody Hermione. At least you aren't so obnoxious about it."

Harry frowned but didn't correct his friend. Hermione Granger wasn't very fond of Harry because of the unfair advantages that let him get years ahead of his classmates. She was clever and driven, but a muggleborn, and that gave her an inherent disadvantage. She wasn't wrong with everything she said, but that didn't mean Harry wanted to hear about it in every conversation.

Later that class, Hermione corrected Ron's incorrect answer in front of the whole class. Harry could sympathize with Ron in the situation. He could have given the correct answer too without appearing so pleased to correct somebody.

"No wonder she doesn't have any friends," Ron said as they were walking back to their dorms. "She's a bloody nightmare she is."

Somebody bumped into Harry's shoulder from behind. It was Hermione, trying to keep in tears as she half walked, half ran away. "Quiet down Ron," he said.

"Well she is," he protested.

Harry pulled his friend over to the side. "Look," he whispered. "I don't like her much either. But she's got enough work entering the wizarding world as a muggleborn without you telling everyone around how much you don't like her."

"Alright," Ron acquested. "Maybe you got a point."

"Ron," Harry said. "You're my best friend. You're the only person that doesn't act weird around me because I know a lot of magic."

"It is really weird," Ron muttered.

"But you talk really loud," Harry finished, clapping Ron on the shoulder.

The Great Hall was fully decorated for All Hallow's Eve. Groups of enchanted bats flew near the ceiling of the Great Hall while the floating candles had been replaced with jack-o-lanterns. The food was themed for the holiday too. Boxty, pumpkin pie, cider and more all joined the usual robust lineup the house elves offered.

"This still feels a day early to me," Harry heard Angelina Johnson, one of his Quidditch teammates say. "My family celebrates Halloween."

In many places, the wizarding world was split on whether to celebrate All Hallow's Eve, or the muggle Halloween. At least in Britain muggleborns always celebrated Halloween, unless they really wanted to try to integrate into wizarding society, purebloods without exception celebrated All Hallows Eve regardless of political orientation, and half-bloods like Angelina were split. Hogwarts was an old institution, so the feast was held on the thirtieth instead of the thirty-first.

Everything was going splendidly until Quirrell, who Harry hadn't even realized had been absent, burst into the hall. "Troll! In the dungeon!" Everyone stopped to look at him. "Thought you would like to know." As he fainted, the hall erupted into shouts and fear.

Dumbledore quickly stood and moved to take control of the situation. He shot several sparks and bangs into the air to grab attention. "Prefects!" he shouted. "Escort your housemates to your dorms. Slytherin will stay here."

"Why would Slytherin stay here?" Ron asked.

"I think Dumbledore just said that Slytherin's dorms are in the dungeon," Harry said. "That's interesting."

As the prefects moved to herd students to their dorms, Harry surveyed the faces of his housemates. Some looked excited, some nervous, a few trying to hold in tears of fear. As Gryffindor moved towards the doors Harry realized one face was missing. "Where's Hermione?"

"I heard she locked herself in the girl's bathroom and wouldn't come out," Neville said.

"I wonder why," Harry said as he gave Ron a look. "C'mon, we're going to get her."

"What? Why?"

"Because it's your fault she's in there in the first place," Harry said.

"Why can't a teacher do it?"

"The teachers are all busy with the troll. Trust me, we'll be fine," Harry said confidently. "Don't tell anyone," he told Neville.

It took next to no effort for the pair to slip out of the pack. With only six prefects to watch over seventy kids Harry and Ron just walked into a side corridor. If anybody saw, they didn't say anything.

As they headed off, Harry and Ron spotted Quirrell, now not fainted, hurting off somewhere followed by Snape and barely weren't spotted.

They made their way to the girl's backroom without any sign of the troll until they spotted the smashed doors. Inside, a terrified Hermione was curled into the corner as the troll smashed stalls. If it had been any smarter, Hermione would already be putty.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Harry couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement as adrenaline shot into his veins. This was a chance to really test his knowledge, to be a hero from a story. Trolls had spell-resistant armor and Harry's aim was not near good enough to hit the eye, so he quickly assessed the environment like Sirius and McGonagall had trained him to do in duels.

He levitated a broken off door and banished it at the troll's head. "Over here stupid!"

Ron tugged at Harry's arm. "What are you doing? We're going to die!"

Harry shrugged him off. "We're going to draw it into the corridor!" he yelled at Hermione as the troll started to walk over. "When it's out of the room, run for it." The girl made no acknowledgment. "Well fuck." She was shell shocked.

"Harry!" Ron screamed as he ran out into the corridor. The troll swung at Harry, who ducked out of reflex. "Are you crazy!" Ron yelled. Harry realized he was laughing. This felt great. The troll swung again, and this time Harry levitated a broken chunk of the wall into the path of the massive club. The rubble was smashed into many pieces, one of which cut Harry just above the eyebrow, but he was otherwise ok. As the troll prepared to swing again, Harry started moving towards Hermione and summoned another chunk of rubble from the other side of the room. It hit the troll in the back, who then turned around to see what attacked it from behind. Harry ran the rest of the way to Hermione.

He hauled the shell shocked girl to her feet. "Run!" he yelled into her face. This seemed to break through to her, and she started sprinting towards the door.

Ron was shooting off sparks to distract the troll, but two moving targets proved more enticing. Unexpectedly, the troll turned and sent an overhead strike to smash both Harry and Hermione. Harry was forced to cast the shield charm, something that he had learned in his free time a few weeks back, and pray to Merlin that it held. Whether or not his shield could withstand the full force of a troll was never answered, because Ron yelled "Wingardium leviosa!" and levitated the club out of the troll's hands.

"Drop it on him," Harry said quickly. Ron did just that and the troll dropped to the floor, out cold.

Harry let his shield disappear and wiped blood out of his eye. Abruptly he realized that his heart was beating very fast, and that everything was suddenly very quiet.

Only thirty seconds too late, McGonagall arrived at the scene, followed by Quirrell and a suddenly limping Snape. "What in Morgana's graces are you all doing here?" McGonagall demanded.

"It's my fault," Hermione said before either of the boys could answer. "I've read all about trolls and wanted to see one." She lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Ms. Granger, I thought that you of all people would show more sense than that," McGonagall said as Quirrell cast a stunner at the troll's eye to ensure it stayed asleep.

"While I appreciate the effort, that isn't what happened," Harry interjected. He was too proud of his work to hide it.

"Harry," Ron hissed.

"Ron and I noticed that Hermione was missing and realized she was still in the bathroom, so we came to get her figuring all the teachers would be busy," he explained. "The troll turned out to be here so we distracted it so it wouldn't smash Hermione. I went in to get Hermione out of the bathroom, and Ron ended up knocking it out with its own club."

"You mean to tell me you intentionally fought a troll? And you, Mr Weasley, went along with it?" McGonagall asked incredulously.

"Such extreme arrogance," Snape hissed.

"There was no time for anything else," Harry reasoned. "And this wasn't Ron's idea." Perhaps adrenaline and the excitement of success was making him stupid. He didn't even care if he got in trouble, he just wanted the teachers to know what he'd done.

"You risked a fellow student's life then?" Quirrell asked.

"Ron's fine. He knocked the troll out," Harry said.

"That will be two weeks of detention with me personally," McGonagall said, waving a finger in his face. And fifty points from Gryffindor for sheer stupidity, no matter how noble the intentions. As for you," she said turning to a terrified looking Ron, "fifty points for quick thinking."

Harry frowned and wiped blood out of his eye again. He had plenty of quick thinking too.

McGonagall noticed. "I don't want to see any sort of displeasure from you Mr Potter," she warned. "And now you will explain this to the Headmaster."

Indeed Dumbledore was hurrying down the corridor towards them. Harry gladly explained the entire situation, giving full details of the fight and giving fair credit to Ron. Neither Ron nor Hermione had anything else to add.

Dumbledore looked torn between being relieved and disappointed. "I suppose we should be grateful for your rash actions," he said when Harry was done. "Despite them being ill advised. Harry, Ms. Granger, to the hospital ward for you. Poppy will look you two over. Mr. Weasley, back to your common room. For real this time," he said, peering over his spectacles.

Both Ron and Hermione looked like they wanted nothing more than to be far away from the snoring troll and gladly let themselves be let away by Snape and Quirrell. As Snape took Harry and Hermione to the hospital ward, Harry turned around and grinned at his grandfather.

"Oh dear," Dumbledore sighed. "It appears I've raised a thrill-seeker."

"And as much as I dislike agreeing with Severus," McGonagall said, "you must admit he was right. Harry did display a remarkable amount of arrogance today."

"Which was certainly not helped by the fact he was right," Dumbledore said. "By Merlin's left armpit, how was a troll in the dungeon? It must have been let in."

"Quirinus?"

"I cannot think of who else. But why would Quirinus ever let a deadly creature into Hogwarts?"

"I had a chance to ask Severus what his wound is from while you were talking to Harry," McGonagall said. "It was Fluffy."

"That settles it then," Dumbledore said. "This was an attempt on the Stone."

"Why would Quirinus risk so much?" McGonagall asked. "How could this be worth it?"

"I have seen greed twist men before," Dumbledore said. "Perhaps that is the case here?"

"Shall I call for the Aurors?" McGonagall asked. "Quirinus can be in custody within the hour."

Dumbledore shook his head. "The Aurors won't take him. We have only circumstantial evidence and strong suspicions. Tell Amelia that I want an investigation opened on Quirinus. I need him watched day and night, and anything he's written to be searched. Hogwarts will be opened up fully to the Auror Corps. And I don't want Quirinus to know."

"That will be difficult," McGonagall said. "Are we really to leave him in the classroom?"

"I have little choice," Dumbledore said. "And who knows? Perhaps we are wrong."

Line Break

Harry and Ron were the Hogwarts equivalent of Quidditch stars the following morning. Their housemates in Gryffindor had asked questions, which of course led to a full retelling of events. Gryffindor had told their friends in the other three Houses at breakfast and soon Harry and Ron were surrounded by people wanting to hear the whole thing. Well, Harry, Ron, and Hermione. She had sat down next to them at lunch and neither had questioned it. Surviving a troll attack does wonders for bonding.

"Show us the shield charm," Padma Patil urged. Others had taken up the request too and soon Harry cast a blue shield between him and the Ravenclaw table.

A fourth year Hufflepuff punched the wall of energy as hard as he could. "It works," he declared as he held his wrist. Cheers went up.

For all Ron had wanted nothing to do with the troll the previous night, he was loving the attention now. "I don't really know how I thought to levitate the club," Ron bragged to Daphne Greengrass. Even several Slytherins had wandered over. "I guess it was just instinct."

"Was pissing your robes instinct too?" Harry joked as he took a bite of egg.

People started laughing as Ron sputtered. "I didn't piss my robes," he insisted. "Tell them you were joking Harry!"

"Just a joke guys," Harry said. "Nothing like that happened."

"They were both very brave," Hermione said. She seemed to have almost forgotten that Ron was the reason she had been crying in the bathroom in the first place.

"What was that for?" Ron said. "Now everyone's going to think I pissed myself while you were running in and dodging troll swings.

Harry waved him off. "I was just taking the mick. And I said I was just joking, relax."

Dumbledore watched from his seat at the head table as people crowded around Harry, even those from upper years. Harry's lucky heroics were making him and Mr. Weasley heroes. Ms. Granger was practically in hero worship. He would need to have a talk with Harry, and soon. All of this was going to lead to an inflated ego and sense of his abilities, neither of which were something that Dumbledore wanted in his charge. This was a situation that needed to be headed off quickly.

He took a sip of pumpkin juice. On the other hand, it was a heck of a story.

I love competent Dumbledore stories, so I made one of my own. And if you, dear reader, are thinking "isn't leaving Quirrell in the classroom despite suspicions he's a criminal seem contrived," you'd be right but I don't know how else to write this story. So sorry, you get a little incompetency from a competent Dumbledore.

And I just want to say that there is no way Hermione was acting perfectly normal around Harry and Ron the morning after the troll. And mean think about it, you're eleven about to be smashed by a giant monster and two other people your age waltz in and save your life. Yeah right you treat them like casual friends the next day. She'll get over her hero worship, it'll just take a minute.

Also, I'm going on vacation so don't expect an update for a few weeks. Till next time.