Harry potter and the Time of Retirement
Everything related to Harry Potter belongs to JKR
Chapter 10
Once again classes were over for the day, and Harry was in the common room reading his secret copy of the book about ghosts and possessions, giving it one final reading before his 'big night'. Most of its content revolved around rituals, which were not exactly common knowledge as the powerful magic involved in them tended to be dangerously unstable and the results they provided usually came at an high price for the performer. Luckily, Harry only needed one of the simplest spell written on it to determine whether he had a soul fragment inside his scar or not; just to make everything more complex though, the book strongly hinted how this kind of magic could be strongly reinforced by the time and placement of the casting itself.
That was why, after a bit of reasoning, Harry decided to wait until this moment - the night of Halloween - as its nature of a celebration of death, spirits and magical powers would hopefully influence the strenght of the spell. As for the placement, not being interested in going out of the castle to some creepy graveyard, Harry decided that the room of requirement, with its Horcrux somewhere inside it, would have to do. So he sat there reading, and waiting, and trying to ignore the chatter of his house mates around him.
"The whole thing is muggle, don't deny it! To take away our chance to wear a costume is unfair" said Justin, exasperated, to an equally frustrated Zacharias.
"It's. Not. Muggle! It has druidic origin, it's older than your silly paper toys" countered the other boy.
"Like creating pumpkins is that much different than buying them at the store. And it's plastic anyway, retard" pressed on Justin.
"Whatever that is, you can stick it up right your..." started an angry Zacharias, only to be interrupted by Ernie.
"Shut up! Both of you! Or at least go somewhere else."
"Like, the other side of the castle" added Wayne.
"It's not my fault he is a dumb muggleborn" said Zacharias but, before Justin could answer, Sally-Anne stood up and left for the girl's bedroom. Al the other girls, after a moment of hesitation, left and followed her – but not before throwing fire-filled stares at Zacharias who suddenly seemed really uncomfortable.
"...ouch" was Harry's only comment on the scene.
Justin seemed ready to say more, but in the end just calmed down on his couch. An awkward silence followed, and Wayne moved next to Harry.
"What are you reading, Harry?"
"Schoolwork."
"Again? It's Halloween, try to have some fun" insisted Wayne.
"Not my favourite holiday. Beside, it's only to pass time before dinner."
"Ah." More silence followed, until Harry just closed his diary and turned towards him.
"So, what did your family do for other Halloweens?"
"Mmmh... a couple times we went to Diagon's Alley, to have dinner there, but mostly we stayed at home with our relatives. Usually someone would share some horror story" said Wayne.
"Yes, we do that too usually" added Ernie from his corner.
"My family didn't do anything specific, but my cousin has been invited to his share of parties or nights out" said Harry.
"Oh. I wonder how... how parties are without magic" said Ernie.
"Food, music, gossips Ernie. Maybe some games" said Harry.
"An horror movie here and there" added Justin with a smile.
"Movie? Those images that mimics our paintings?" asked Wayne.
"You know them? Which is your favourite?" said Justin.
"No, sorry Justin – never saw one. They don't seem that interesting, to be honest. No sounds, no colors... come on" said Wayne.
"It's still nice that you can have something like that without magic, though" said Ernie.
"Ehm... guys..." tried to start Justin, while looking unsure. Harry snorted, and preceded him.
"Today's movies have both sounds and colors, Wayne. Some of them are really fun."
"Oh. Ok." More silence followed, until Harry stood up.
"I'll see you later, guys. Wait for me before leaving for dinner, ok?"
"Why, where are you going?" asked Ernie.
"I'll take a shower. We are just being bored, here" said Harry, and left. He could hear no voices behind him.
No matter the disastrous start, the Halloween banquet ended up being quite entertaining for their little group. The Great Hall was full of bats flying between the candles, for once enclosed in pumpkins. The food itself was great, with lots of sweets and pumpkin-related dishes. Everyone was having fun, and the girls had even restarted talking to Zacharias. Harry itself was relaxing, enjoying his food and exchanging idle talks with the kids sitting around him. Well remembering what happened during his original first year, he had noticed how Quirrell was missing but there was nothing he could – or wanted – to do.
Beside, just for extra caution, he had checked for Hermione's presence at the Gryffindor table and indeed she was there, as he hoped; either without Harry around no one insulted her this Halloween or, more likely considering how once again she looked bored and isolated, she did not try to help anyone and no one paid her any attention. His sense of guilt awakened once again, but Harry soon crushed it: he could not force others to befriend her, and he did not want to do it himself. As he had learned long ago, it's next to impossible to save people from themselves; so, he forced his attention back to the food and the conversation between the other Hufflepuffs.
At one point, predictably, the doors of the Hall opened and Quirrell ran inside towards Dumbledore, drawing everybody's attention to him.
"Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know" he said, before fainting down to the floor.
'Drama queen', thought Harry.
In any case, chaos instantly spread around the hall with kids of all ages screaming and standing up. This time, though, Harry noticed how actually only the earlier years seemed afraid while the older ones, the ones who were screaming the most, seemed more entertained than scared. Soon, anyway, everyone was brought back to silence by the firecracker expelled from Dumbledore's wand.
"Prefects" he rumbled "lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately!"
All at once, the prefects started barking orders with the first years getting all closer to each other. Slowly, all Hufflepuff's students were walking in the hallways, towards their common room. All the girls appeared almost terrorized by now, and the boys did not look much better.
"You better be careful, kids" said a male prefect. "Trolls are huge and ferocious, if we meet him don't make a move or it will eat you all in a second!"
"...really?" asked hesitantly Hannah.
"Oh, absolutely! I heard once that a Troll killed 3 dragons all by himself, and then banged their heads together until their brains..." he seemed really into his story, and all the kids from first and second years were so enthralled by him they had stopped walking, but an older girl, apparently a seventh year, came and slapped his head.
"Could you stop terrorizing them?" she said, with an irritated tone.
"Come on, it's Halloween! Don't spoil my – their! fun" he answered, resentful.
"Only because Quirrell wanted to be stupid, it's no good reason to scare them to death!" she hissed getting closer to him, but everyone heard her anyway.
"Wait, you mean... - He set this up?" said both Ernie and Justin together.
"I doubt that a troll could manage to get inside Hogwarts, kids... and Quirrell fainting because of it? No, I am sure this is a ruse" she said with conviction.
"That you just ruined, by the way" added the prefect. She turned angrily towards him but, before she could say anything, a series of loud spell noises came from the hallway where the rest of the house had turned, only for it to turn back to silence. Immediately, they both draw their wands and ran onward, paying no mind to the first and second years who, after a couple seconds of confusion, started following them. Harry was unsure if he should draw his own wand but in the end he decided not to. This was a single troll, and something told him that...
Yes: once they all passed the corner they could see the body of the troll laying down on the ground, with several bloody gushes on his skin and his club reduced to fragments. Seventh and sixth year students surrounded him, and no one seemed hurt: around them, younger students were looking at the troll or just chatting between themselves.
"Uh... so there was a troll, apparently" was the intelligent comment of the male prefect.
"I can't believe Dumbledore allowed this! What if anyone got hurt by that monster?" complained the older girl.
"By a troll? Maybe if it caught some of the younger kids walking alone... but I am sure they planned it well" he said. At this, Harry rolled his eyes, unsure on what was more ironic in this situation.
"I thought a single troll could kill 3 dragons together. Can't it?" he asked without even looking at the prefect.
"Of course it can! They are deadly! Stay away from it, it could stand up any second now!" he said, but his tone had lost a lot of conviction.
"Too late for that, sorry" said Ernie.
"Yeah. I am starting to think I could have taken it on" added a nearby 2nd year girl.
"Ok, that is being silly" said the older prefect in a bossy tone. "Trolls can be dangerous, and younger years should always run away from them. Got it?"
Slowly, all the students started chatting between themselves while the male prefect was debating the situation with his female counterpart. After a short talk, as she kept everyone away from the body of the troll, he left for one of the hallways; to find Dumbledore, assumed Harry who was now looking at the painting 'hiding' the entrance to the kitchens. Maybe the troll had followed the smell of food this time? Not that it mattered.
When Dumbledore finally arrived, he ordered all the other students to keep walking towards the common room: and so they did, leaving the corpse – and the nervous looking faculty members – behind them.
A long, long mess followed in the common room of Hufflepuff that night: students were talking between themselves, eating the food that had been brought in from the great hall and overall celebrating Halloween with as much chaos as they could. Of course, the topic of the night was the troll, with several older students bragging on what spells they used on it. The atmosphere was so festive that even Harry would have dived right in, had it not been for the time passing and his almost ruined plan of sneaking out and finally casting the possession related spell; in hindsight, he should have predicted how the students would have been awake long past usual sleeping times, for Halloween; what he didn't anticipated was being locked inside the common room.
Covering himself in hiding spells, even assuming it would have worked with so many older wizards around, would not deactivate the wards on the door, nor would prevent his dorm mates to notice his absence when they went back to sleep. In the end, with only 30 minutes missing before midnight, he decided that if there was no easy alibi around he would create one: quickly thinking on what to do, he approached the group of his year mates that were busy chatting.
"Wow, crazy night. Ernie, pass me some of that juice" started Harry, innocently.
"Here. Anyway, I insist that by using either Incendio or Diffindo I could have taken it."
"You are crazy, Ernie. We can cast those, ok, but they would never work on a troll" commented Wayne.
"Why not? It's fire, it's cutting, and what if I aim them at its head?" said Ernie with disdain.
"He would get angry, catch you and turn you into marmelade" said Justin, laughing.
"I too would bet on the troll" said Zacharias.
"Do you think the body is still out there? I would love to see it again" said Harry.
"No idea. It has been only a couple hours, but I doubt Dumbledore would just leave it on the floor" said Wayne.
"That thing stinked even when alive. A lot" added Zacharias.
"Even so, I think it's worth going and see for ourselves. Who else wants to join?" asked Harry to everyone else.
"Wow, Harry, you want to sneak out? With everyone watching?" asked Ernie.
"Sure, why not. It's Halloween, we should do something fun. Eh, Justin?" answered Harry, turning towards him. Unfortunately, Justin did not seem convinced, at all.
"I don't know... we could get in trouble."
"They are going to be on guard, with all the mess that happened" added Zacharias.
"No, it was all a joke, you saw it. I think tonight is the only time we can sneak out, and just say 'It's Halloween, professor, sorry' if we get caught" said Harry, standing up. His peers started looking at each other's faces, surprised at this sudden development.
"Well, it would be fun" said Zacharias.
"It's a risk" said Ernie.
"I am going, but maybe you should stay here guys. Put on your teddy bear pajamas and go to bed. I'll tell you all tomorrow morning" said Harry with an arrogant smile. In reality, he was scared that he failed in pressuring them and his absence would look even more suspicious when he left.
"What the heck, i am coming" said Wayne, standing up.
Zacharias watched them for a second, then he too rose from his chair. "It's Halloween. Let's get out."
At this, reluctantly, even Ernie and Justin stood up. Harry just nodded to the main door and started walking, everyone else in tow. They approached it, drawing only uninterested glances from the older students on the way. One of them, a 5th or 6th year boy, randomly said without even turning his head "It's useless, brats. The door is locked."
Harry kept walking though, but said to the others "Don't worry, I have an idea". Once in front of the, completely immobile, door, he started talking again:
"Ok, listen. It's closed by magic, so we should probably try that unlocking charm... Alohomora."
"That is your plan?" asked with incredulity Zacharias. Before anyone else could talk, and turn them all against him, Harry insisted.
"Yes, it is. What did you expect? If we try all together it could work" he said, while taking out his wand. No one copied him immediately, but he pressured them with his stare and when Wayne took out his, he immediately added "On three. Ready?"
Everyone else prepared, with obvious reluctance. Ernie said, with a low voice "We are going to look really dumb..."
Still, on three, everybody cast Alohomora – except Harry. If there was a time to put on use all those hours of boredom during classes, spent experimenting with spells and their effects, to fruition this was it: and so, Harry clearly said Alohomora but pushed his magic to cast the strongest confundus he could manage. This would also tell him if during his previous night raid to the library, being paranoid had been useful or not.
With Harry's slight surprise the door opened, even if only partially. Partially was enough though, and all the kids passed trough. Behind them, a voice could clearly be heard shouting "Wait, where are you..." but Harry pushed the door shut before whoever was talking could finish. A couple pounds on it could be heard, though, another clear sign they had been spotted.
"They saw us, Harry! We are in trouble, as I said!" accused Justin. Harry, though, barely shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, yeah, the room was packed."
"True. I am just impressed we did it" said Ernie.
"We are out, might as well enjoy it together" added Wayne.
"Hufflepuff's spirit all the way, eh? But you can stay here and cry, Justin" said Zacharias. Before he could answer, Harry interrupted them all:
"We passed, let's go. It's not even far."
And, with that, everyone started walking again. Getting rid of them was the next step, but doing that did not worry Harry. Everything at its pace.