Neville was on his way back for a shower. Sweating out the breakdown products of Suppressor Toad and Snapes potion gave him troll powered (and partially troll derived) body odor. Being a boy on the cusp of his teenage years, his body odor was already a force to be reckoned with, but even he allowed hexing at twenty paces was a rational response to the troll enhanced post workout essence of Longbottom. The thing was, the stairs were not cooperating.
He wanted to go down to the Dungeon to the Hufflepuff dorms and showers, but every staircase he stepped onto switched and connected upwards. Five times he tried, and five times he failed. On attempt number six his stomach began to growl and he realized if he fought this long enough he could miss breakfast. Fine. Up first, then down when the staircases have had their little fun.
Upon arriving at the third floor, Neville saw Peeves the Poltergiest with two armloads of fresh dungbombs laughing maniacally as he came down the corner. He knew those Zonko products, he had been caught more than once. If you tried to wash yourself off before they had got their full stentch out, you ended up turning bright pink with yellow polka dots.
Neville's legs decided he had some sprint left in them and he took off down the passage past the shiny holographic Dumbledore icons waving a stern finger over the flashing word "Forbidden". Upon reflection, that should have warranted another thought, but he was equal parts stinky and hungry, with the threat of double stinky and forever hungry rapidly approaching from behind.
Charging into the long hallway, he saw only a single door, and it was locked. At the beginning of the year, Neville would have been trapped, but at this point in his therapy he had more than enough power, and his control was a work in progress.
Snapping his wand from the dueling holster in his right forearm with a practiced flip, he thanked Hermione and the long years of finding it easier to appease his Gran than argue with a witch with a "very firm opinion on what Neville should do next", that he had been forced to practice all of the charms in the first and second year syllabus with Harry and her until they had a firm grasp of control in both low and medium draw spells. Neville, niavely, had thought that the Heir Longbottom, being a Hufflepuff of law abiding tendencies would not actually need to perform magical break and enter.
"Aloh Homoura!" Neville said firmly, casting the unlocking charm and yanking the door open in one motion.
Slamming it shut, Neville didn't bother with the locking hex, as that would not stop a ghost or poltergeist. He cast the third year high powered version that was technically illegal for those not employed on the short list of Ministry professions allowed to use spells the standard Auror door breaker won't work against. The thing is, both his parents were Aurors, and his gran made them read all of their diaries, and they both took excellent notes.
"Coloportus!" The spell coated the door in spectral chains and Peeves hit the door like a tomato tossed from the Griffindor Tower. His precious dung bombs bounced all over the hall, and Neville heard the wheezing gasps of Mr Filtch the caretaker pounding down the hall, determined to confiscate them.
If Neville couldn't leave at the moment, at least he could be sure the two problems would remove themselves shortly. Turning to look in the room he saw a trap door in the middle of the floor, and some odd looking runic frames, used for moving furniture between floors that was too delicate to levitate and too magically potent to apparate.
There were three very large dog bowls, Neville made a mental effort to decide while in a medium sized room not to think at all about the three giant sized dogs that might go with those bowls. The last thing he noticed was a mirror. Clearly magical, it glowed with a soft silver radiance that made you think of moonlight on a very dark pond.
Drawn forward, he heard a song, just below the level he could make out words. It drew him forward until he was facing the mirror. He saw himself. Behind him St Mungo's Hospital was in flames, burning to the ground, and Neville's wand was still trailing flames from burning it. Before the burning hospital, a man and woman in Aurors robes danced passionately before the fire, eyes only on each other. They were strong, vital, and so very present. They turned to look at Nigel through the glass, and he finally saw why everyone said he looked like them.
He had only ever seen his parents looking like skeletons trapped in an endless scream, tortured with the cruciatus curse, and locked behind their own well trained occlumency shields that would force attackers to break the mind before they ever broke it open. They were tortured until they broke, and then beyond. Trapped forever in unending torment, he had only ever seen their faces locked in that endless loop of horror.
Now he saw them free and laughing. So alive, so in love. Free of St Mungo's, free of the torture they had been in his entire lives. He looked upon their faces and saw what he could be. Neville looked upon the mirror and reached for it. Everything he ever dreamed of could be his if he just reached out to the mirror and let it show him how.
NO!
Neville pulled himself back gasping. He was not the only one. Harry lost his mother and father to death, if not to endless half life in agony. Neville would not get his salvation if Harry could not get his. He would get Harry and Hermione. They would use the mirror to find the way to their happy endings too!
He cancelled his coloportus and charged the stairs. Without hesitation, they connected directly to the dungeons, growing long enough for the task to put him right at the Hufflepuff dungeon corridor. Neville did not note that the staircases never did that. The Mirror of Erised's suggestions were even subtler than they were powerful.
"Harry, Hermione. You have to come see this. I found something magical, something Dumbledore has been keeping locked up on the third floor corridor. Harry, it can give them back! Harry, I swear upon my magic, it can give them back!" Neville was in an emotional state beyond tears, rage, or hope.
Hermione and Harry ran after him.
Dumbledore reacted when his wards were triggered, and had the time to walk casually down the secret passage to the room he left the Mirror of Erised. He had no hope he could catch Voldemort with it directly, but every hope Voldemort would be fooled into using Harry as his tool, never knowing Harry was the test to see if partial alien souls could indeed be bound in the Mirror of Erised.
It had been used in ages past to free the possessed of their inhabiting souls, but after thousands of angry ghosts, demons, and monsters had been trapped in it, the mirror began to consume not simply the possessor, but the host as well.
Once he had tested it on Harry, he would place the Philosopher Stone that promised Voldemort a new immortal body inside a mirror he would have to stand before with Harry Potter to extract. He would mourn Harry Potter's sacrifice, but if it spared the world from a reborn Voldemort, it was for the Greater Good. He disillusioned himself in the corner, and awaited the show.
Neville rushed into the room and charged the mirror. Dumbledore saw the faces of Frank and Alice Longbottom as they had been when the served him in the Auror of the Phoenix. His best and brightest, casualties of the last war. There was no cure for them, they were trapped forever in endless and unknowing agony, but he needed them to survive. Killing is always wrong, and as long as they lived, he did not have to add them to the ghosts he hid from in his dreams each night.
Harry moved to the mirror and froze in shock. A face looked back at him. His face.
Green eyes, the silver soweillo rune in his forehead gleamed above green eyes that burned with intelligence and ambition. The eyes were above a hooked goblin nose and a wide mouth filled with goblin fangs. His fangs. He was Harry Potter, son of Griphook and Frithweaver, Goblin of Gringotts.
His eyes teared as he reached out to the him that should be. The mirror whispered to him, whispered it could make it all true. Beside Neville, he reached for the mirror and wept, willing to wait forever if that is how long it took the mirror to tell him how to make it so.
Hermione looked in the mirror, and she saw herself with Harry and Neville, they looked strong and happy, as did she. Noodle was around her shoulders and turned to her and hissed to her. She hissed in reply.
SHE UNDERSTOOD.
Hermione reached out to the mirror, talking to the snake in the mirror, and it responded. She was a parselmouth! She felt a head pound into the side of hers and turned to look at Noodle who hissed at her.
Wait. What was he saying? Why couldn't she understand him. She turned to the mirror and the snake in the mirror hissed at her, and she understood. She turned to Noodle who turned his head to one side and flicked his tongue the way he did when people made hissing noises at him, and thought that was somehow actual parseltongue.
She looked at the mirror. That wasn't parseltongue. That was an illusion making hissing noises at another illusion. You could not learn parseltongue. It was a bloodline ability. Hermione would never have it. The mirror was a lie.
The mirror was a lie and a trap. Pulling out her wand she pointed it at the mirror and screamed "LUMOUS MAXIMUS!"
A blast of light so powerful it caused everyone in the room, including the hidden Dumbledore, to cry out in agony, flared back from the Mirror of Erised, shocking Harry and Neville from its spell. Grabbing them by their collars, she dragged them from the room.
Dumbledore rubbed his eyes. Yes, the mirror quite definitely had the power to bespell Potter, and would be a trap that would indeed be able to catch Voldemort. It was quite ironic, Voldemort sought the Philosopher's Stone for the same reason he created his Horcrux; immortality. When he was trapped in the mirror, he would indeed achieve it. In a sense.
Dumbledore's laughter trailed off. One troubling thing. While Dumbledore would be able to lead Harry Potter to where he became both bait and trap to Voldemort using his friends, he would have to make sure young Harry stood alone at the end, lest his friends lead him away from the path of necessary sacrifice. Too much had been lost already for him to allow it all to be for nothing.
One more child, three possibly, his soul could bear that much. No one else could be trusted to do what was necessary.
In the Hufflepuff dormitories, three first years took long punishing showers. No one could spot tears in the shower, and none of them were ready to face anyone with the wounds the Mirror of Erised had opened laid bare.
Charms class the next day was with Ravenclaws and the three friends were counting on the mercurial half goblin Professor Flitwick to break their lingering bad mood. This was Samhain, Halloween, and while Hermione was slated to sneak off with the coven for a midnight celebration they boys would never be allowed to hear about, Harry and Neville pretty much had the feast and back to the dorm rooms to look forward to.
Harry and Neville were engaged in the magic intensive and relatively simple work of turning the magical candles into glowing Jack-o-lanterns for the Great Feast. Hermione was working with Professor Flitwick and the Ravenclaw Hellen Dawlish in teaching the Spectral Glamour, a charm that would give the students the same sort of glowing translucence as the House Ghosts for the duration of the feast of Samhain, the feast of the dead.
Not all the students were able to grasp the subtleties of the illusion charm. It was a delicate spell, while having some structural similarities to both the disillusionment charm and the illumination charm, it also borrowed fairly heavily on some of the notice-me-not charms as what it wove wasn't really the illusion of a ghost so much as the failure to see colour and depth in the image of the student. Effectively making them seem as ghostly, without burning the huge amount of energy required to make them truly partially invisible or floating.
Duncan Inglebee a Ravenclaw beater, was hardly a fan of the Longbottom/Potter Hufflepuff beater duo since their drubbing at the hands of the Hufflepuff team 240-70, and being lectured by the rather large mass of hair purporting to be a mud blood witch was more than his pure-blooded teenage ego could stand.
"I don't know why you are bothering with the Spectral Charm at all mud blood. With that swollen mass of hair burying your head you look like a pumpkin head all year. Maybe if you lie down, you will look like an Acromantula, your head makes a better spider's ass anyway!" Duncan snarled, as his forth attempt at the charm failed, as he had put more, rather than less power as Hermione had instructed him.
"Mister Inglebee, that is not the behaviour Rowena Ravenclaw expects and demands from her House. The House of the Wise gives humble thanks to those who offer correction and instruction for we prize no thing beyond knowledge. Ten points from Ravenclaw, and we will see if you are done with detention before the next Quidditch game, or you will spend that game with Mr Hagrid cleaning the chicken coops!" Professor Flitwick said, charging his Ravenclaw with the fury of the goblin warrior his mother's blood passed to him.
Harry and Neville had exchanged nods with Professor Flitwick as they followed a furious Hermione as she fled the classroom. She fled at a pace that argued spiral dancing in the fields with witches had at least similar exercise benefits to beater training, as the boys could not catch her before she ran into the girls lavatory and slammed one of the cubicles closed.
They could hear her crying, but as it was a girls bathroom, they couldn't exactly follow. Not sure what to do, they paused and while they were trying to come up with an answer from the teenage boys book of emotional wisdom on dealing with wounded girls, a third figure slid from Harry's robes and slithered to the door.
"$ Useless one, you may redeem yourself to become almost useless one by opening this door so that I may enter to sooth Mouse-Giver. $" Noodle hissed as he reared at the door, gesturing to the handle with his head.
Harry glared at Noodle. "$ How are you supposed to comfort her? You can't even talk to her. She isn't the speaker, I am! $" Harry hissed.
Noodle turned away, as if he could not be bothered to face Harry for the rest of this conversation. "$ She does not need to be a speaker to understand me, nor do I need to make those horrible grunts that pass for human to soothe Mouse Giver. I am who she needs right now. You exist to run down hallways, and to open doors. So. Open. The. Door. $" Hissed Noodle angrily.
Harry was angry, frustrated and helpless. Being lectured by a snake was not helping.
"$ If you can't even talk to her, how are you supposed to help you slithering idiot!$" Harry hissed.
Noodle turned and bared his fangs in open threat. "$ I LISTEN, now. Open. The. Door. $" Noodle hissed as the broken sobs sounded from inside the bathroom.
Neville did not speak parsletongue, but he wasn't nearly the idiot his family had convinced themselves he was. He broke the impasse by pulling open the door. Noodle bowed as he shot through the gap like someone scaled up a racing black mamba to Rock Viper size. In seconds, they heard a much more soothing hissing, and the sobs became less broken and began to slow.
Wordlessly, the turned back to class to find young Mr Inglebee and his desk surrounded in a rather large bubble, which from the way it looked, seemed to be a one way mirror that allowed sight and sound to pass out, but trapped Mr Inglegee in a complete isolation bubble. It would seem Professor Flitwick was giving his errant Ravenclaw a sensory deprivation time out. They made a mental note, quite independently, not to get on the wrong side of the Ravenclaw House Master.
Hermione still hadn't joined them when the Halloween feast started, and they were beginning to become concerned.
The doors to the Great Hall burst open, and Professor Quirrell burst in shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Troll, in the dungeons. Troll in the dungeons!" He said dramatically, then paused, threw up a limp wrist to his forehead like a stage actress swooning, then gasped "Thought you should know."
He then passed out into a thoroughly useless puddle where the Defense of the Dark Arts professor really ought to be standing.
"Isn't that the sort of thing we have a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for?" Griped Neville, who hated having to take notes from the stuttering idiot. He wasn't a natural note taker, and quills were not good at correcting when you mistook a stutter for a true syllable.
Harry's heart froze. "Neville, Hermione is still in the bathroom. She doesn't know about the troll." He gasped.
Dumbledore was instructing the Prefects to gather the students and take them to their common rooms, which was stupid as the Hufflepuffs and the Slytherin common rooms were in the Dungeons where the troll was supposed to be.
The rest of the professors were forming into squads to presumably hunt the troll.
"Well, the prefects and seventh years should be able to at least block a troll from getting to us, so we will be okay. Hermione will be okay if she stays put and the troll is really in the dungeon, not the third floor." Neville said.
Harry turned to his friend and rolled his eyes. "And whose word do we have the Troll in the Dungeons?"
Neville looked at the drama queen Quirrell passed out uselessly on the floor and shuddered. Neville completed the thought with the sort of resignation a life of bitter disappointments and cruel fate had more or less beaten into him.
"And we do know of the terribly secret thing that is being protected from You Know Who just happens to be on the third floor two corridors from the girl's lavatory. With the professors running to the dungeon, the students headed to the Dungeon or Towers, this would be a great time to set a troll loose on the third floor and make a quick grab at the terribly secret thing. I mean, it isn't like Hermione will be killed on purpose; no one actually controls a troll, they just sort of point and hope for the best." Neville sighed eying the Hufflepuff prefects who were sorting out the older students' responsibilities and clustering the younger students in groups led by a senior.
"How are we going to get away. Our Prefects aren't Griffindor, they can count, and they aren't Slytherin, we can't just bribe them to look the other way." Neville asked, before Harry threw something silvery around them and the world went a bit blurry.
"This is my dad's invisibility cloak. Dumbledore said it can beat any witch, wizard, or ward. I say we sneak out of the Great Hall, then sprint for the lavatory to let Hermione know we need to get back to the common room. Then we sneak back to the rest of Hufflepuff somewhere en-route and pretend we were always there!" Said Harry, awash with a brilliant plan.
Neville shrugged. They would end up caught by the Troll or Filch. Hopefully the troll. The troll wouldn't hand you over to Professor Sprout for the 'I am not mad I am disappointed' speech. That one made Neville feel like someone ripped out his heart and dipped it in one of Snapes cauldron eating potion disasters. Still, it was a plan. They made it out of the hall as they heard Cedric Diggory calling their names in tones of rising urgency.
The choice to do the stairs under the cloak proved wise as they noted Quirrel then Snape both go up the stairs just before them, but turn down the forbidden corridor, not the ladies loo.
They got to the girl's lavatory in a dead sprint and Harry opened the door to Neville with a cough.
"Blimey Neville, I thought you showered after class. You smell more like a troll now than after your morning run." Harry joked as they spotted Hermione at the bathroom mirror, trying to fix her face while Noodle hissed soothingly from the next sink.
Neville had time to give himself the sniff test in confusion, having had the shower, and smelling less like a troll as most of the toxins were already sweated out. He had just turned to complain to Harry when the shadow of something moving fast towards them from above activated Nevilles finely honed beater reflexes and he grabbed Harry, throwing them both to the ground.
The shattering of wall and door prefaced the entrance of a twelve foot grey skinned and more or less invulnerable mountain troll into the third floor lavatory. Hermione screamed, and Neville, upon due reflection, felt that was indeed the correct response. They were indeed going to die. In a girls lavatory. His gran would finally have that heart attack, and it would indeed be his fault.
Harry drew his wand and put all his power into the stunning charm, striking the troll right in its center of mass. In return, the troll swept his club through three bathroom stalls, one heroic Hufflepuff, and two bathroom sinks.
Harry was blasted by the debris before the club caught him, so only stunned and not killed as he witnessed the troll skin proving exactly as invulnerable to spell fire at the level of first or even third year students as their Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook had insisted. It was good to know that stuttering or not, Quirrel did indeed know his stuff.
The troll raised the half tree is used as a club, prepared to end one Harry Potter, goblin and saviour of the wizard race, only to suffer repeated failures when he tried to bring it down.
A trembling witch, brown eyes burning under a mass of hair that ought to have made her look less threatening than she was, felt the air around her tremble with the power as she overcharged her spell to a level dangerous to wand and witch alike. Her intent pure, her focus beyond that of a laser, she moved her hand with a casual swish and flick that was very close to perfect within both time and space to the runic construct, even as her incantation rang with the harmonic power to manifest her will upon the tides of magic.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Hermione incanted, pitting all of her will and magic against not the magic resistant troll, but the tree it was wielding as a club. It held against one tug, then a second, as the troll gathered its second hand to double the power and bring the club down on the offending witch, a black whip struck from one of the two remaining sinks and latched its fangs into the meaty flesh just above the troll's knee.
Rock Viper venom is a wizard killer, it is a beast killer. It is the equivalent of a very strong potion, growing in power as the snake matures. As a bonded familiar to a parsletongue, Noodle's venom was already several times stronger than his fully adult mothers. It acted to force the blood to clot, turning to sludge in the troll's veins and arteries. It paralyzed the nerves, blocking transmitters at every junction, causing weakness and paralysis. It was enough to kill a man in a single bite, to stop a lion, tiger, or bear in a single strike. Noodle continued to pump venom into the troll, enough for half a dozen strikes.
Noodle pumped until he had nothing left, but the trolls magical regeneration and unbelievable mass made it beyond any snake less than a basilisk to kill. The troll roared, letting go of its club as it slapped Noodle off his leg, leaving the snake to flop brokenly against the wall.
"Noodle!" Harry cried, as he was sure he just saw his familiar die, yet his cry was lost in the roar of the troll as his bitten leg failed and he crashed to all fours on the bathroom floor.
Neville knew he was balls at fine control, but as he was fully panicking right now, he had all the magical power he could ever want. He stuck his wand right into the eye of the troll and screamed out "Lumos Maximus!"
If Hermione's maximum light was enough to blind a room full of wizards, the young Lord Longbottom's full power was enough to sear the eyes of even a fully grown mountain troll. It would heal, but for the moment, it reared back away from the burning light.
Hermione who could do no more than hold the heavy tree she had snatched from the troll, saw it's head beneath the hovering club. With the last of her magical power, she stopped holding it up, and with a wild downward slash of her wand and will, pulled it down like a guillotine onto the trolls head.
Stunned, the troll fell unconscious to the ground, head right at Hermione's trembling feet. Harry was no goblin warrior, he could never make a blade longer than his dagger, but it was a goblin fighting knife, the size of a Viking seaxe or American Bowie knife. Charging it with all of his magical power, he climbed the shoulders of the fallen troll and rammed the blade into the neck of the troll, cutting between the third and forth cervical vertebra in a desperate attempt to sever the spinal cord and kill the troll.
The troll went still, his spinal cord severed, but troll regeneration is literally inhuman. No other living creature heals as quickly and completely as a Mountain Troll. It began to heal.
"It's not enough!" Shouted Harry.
Neville had a moment. He only really learned one dueling jinx. The knock back jink. The jinx that cast your magical power not at your enemy, but between them and the ground. The jinx was useful because many shields only covered the wizard, not the ground. It was powerful enough at normal strength to toss a grown man back a dozen yards.
Harry was desperately sawing with his magical goblin blade at the spinal cord. Neville took his father's wand, his only inheritance. His Gran always swore he would never be half the wizard needed to wield it, but he was bloody well going to be good enough for this. He jammed it beside Harry's goblin sliver blade inside the trolls spine, between the heavy spinal bones.
"Harry, overcharge Flippendo with everything you have. On three. One, two," Neville shouted, hoping Harry was listening, and he remembered right that Harry could cast any contact type spell through his knife. Flippendo wasn't supposed to be, but needs must when Morgana's casting.
"Flippendo!" The two young wizards shouted, each of them pouring all their little overcharged cores had to offer into a very small space made of flesh that did not like allowing magic to pass. It was like setting off muggle dynamite inside someone's spine.
Three professors charged over the shattered wall to the girls lavatory to hear two voices shouting the knock back jinx that could not possibly stop a standing troll. No DADA text book had ever recorded the effects of two massively overcharged spells being detonated inside a troll spinal column. Perhaps this would make a new entry. The effects were somewhat noteworthy.
Miss Granger had one leg shattered as the troll head was cut entirely off and blasted into her. Harry Potter had his right hand and forearm shattered when the explosion threw him backwards, and his knife ended up wedged hilt first in the stone of the ceiling. Neville Longbottom would no longer have to worry about being worthy of his father's wand, as the wand itself exploded in the kind of white/silver fire that comes from Unicorn hair giving up all of its magic in a single burst. Not that Neville would be needing a wand until both of his broken arms were at least to the point they could be recognized as human limbs.
Professor's Flitwick, Sprout, and McGonagall looked on in something between shock and horror as Hermione Granger, in a degree of focus that ought to be beyond her, demonstrated her resolve and preparation for daily life at Hogwarts as she dragged a leg not facing the right way behind her across the floor. She pulled out the one healing potion that she had, and poured it into the open mouth of a limp and possibly lifeless black Rock Viper.
Samhain had passed, and while Hermione may not have danced with her coven on the feast of the dead, it was her and her two companions upon whom the ritual was focused, two companions, and one not quite dead snake.
They did not wake until dawn on the second day. Upon waking, they faced something somewhat more intimidating than a Mountain Troll in a lady's loo. There were goblins and grandmothers, and no small number of questions. Reasonable questions; and as everyone knows, those are almost always the most dangerous ones at Hogwarts.