Hari’s eyebrows were climbing as her voice rose.
She was crying again, but at least it wasn’t all self-pity anymore.
Anger he understood.
Bits of debris were whipping around the room as she began to shout.
“I just wanted to find a place where people were like me!”
It was only Hari’s quick reflexes that saved him.
He lashed the bits of porcelain out of the air as everything airborne burst into shrapnel that flew away from the enraged girl.
“Tell me something,” he said as the tinkling died away.
“Did you need a wand to do that?”
“What?” she snapped.
He gestured to the ruins of the bathroom.
“It looked to me like you were levitating what I’ll call a hundred pounds of miscellaneous detritus and then turned it into a giant fragmentation device.” He smiled.
“Did you need a wand?”
She looked around.
“That was me?”
“Yes.”
She looked around.
“I guess I didn’t.” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she would have landed face first in the shards on the ground if he hadn’t caught her.
“So a girl’s fainted into my arms.
Dad still has me beat by three years.
Oh well.”
“MISTER POTTER!”
He turned, Hermione in his arms still.
“Yes, Professor?” he asked mildly of the cat-lady who was looking more than a little harried.
“Oh, hello Professor Snape, Professor Stutterfaces.”
“Twenty points from Slytherin, Potter,” hissed Snape.
His heart wasn’t in it though.
He sighed.
“For whatever it was you did.”
“I killed a Mountain Troll, Professor Snape.” He turned to Stutterfaces.
“Can you guess what I used, Professor?”
The glare he got was impressively dark for a man who usually jumped at his own shadow.
Or just about anything, really.
“Sheer, dumb luck?”
“No, no, no, Professor.
I used lightning and a transfigured spike flung at high speed.” He watched as Stutterfaces’ fingers twitched.
“What were you doing here, Mister Potter,” asked Professor Cat.
“Do you really want to know, Professor?”
“I wouldn’t have asked, Mister Potter.”
“Killing a Mountain Troll and saving a student.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“YOU WHAT?” the cry came in triplicate.
“Shhh,” he nodded down at Hermione.
“She’s fainted.
I’m trying not to wake her.” Professor McGonagall twitched a little.
“I should take her to the medic and .
.
.” Hermione was levitated out of his arms.
“I think I shall do that,” Professor McGonagall was nearly snarling.
“You have detention tonight.”
“That makes three, right Professors?” Hari looked over at the other two Professors.
“Wonderful.
To avoid making anyone jealous, I shall ignore them equally.” He crouched and leapt straight up, vanishing into the apparently solid stone of the ceiling.
“Did .
.
.” McGonagall looked at her colleagues.
“Did he just jump into the ceiling.”
“I can’t even be bothered to take points,” grumbled Snape.
“It’s not like there are any left to take.
Not even his idiot father and that band of monsters you had, Minerva, managed to get to zero, let alone maintain it for two months!”
X
X
Hari strolled into the Great Hall.
Professor Dumbledore was drinking a cup of tea and gave him a cheery smile.
“Welcome back, Mister Potter.
Can I assume that the Troll is no longer a threat?”
“Do Mountain Trolls normally survive being blasted by multiple lightning strikes and then nailed to stone by a spike to the head?”
“Not usually, no.”
“Then yes.” Hari sat down with his companions.
“Well yes.” Hari blinked.
“I mean, I went over how to kill one in class.
Honestly, I think I over did it.”
“Killed a Mountain Troll?” asked Blaise.
“Yes.”
“Killed as in dead?”
“You heard Professor Headmaster, right?” asked Hari.
“He said they don’t usually live through spikes to the head.
And I only did that to be sure.
It was already dead.”
“Are you really surprised, Blaise?” asked Daphne.
“It’s Hari.”
“True.”
X
X
The next morning, the talk of the castle was the fact that Harry Potter had singlehandedly saved a student and killed a Mountain Troll.
Even the Gryffindors had a hard time complaining—although most of the younger years voiced the opinion that it would have been nice if he’d waited until Granger had been killed before Hari got to the Troll.
Since classes had been canceled on the grounds that several Professors were busy tightening wards to prevent Trolls from wandering the halls and at least one classroom was currently under repair until such time as the minor flaw of a broken wall could be mended, Hari disappeared until lunch.
During that time, he was wandering the outside of the Astronomy Tower and found no less than seven secret passages that led to various parts of the dungeon.
And one that led to the girl’s side of the Slytherin dorms.
He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen, but since to find it, one needed to walk along the walls of a stone tower, he wasn’t certain that it was something anyone else could find.
X
X
At lunch, Hari decided to try something new.
So he sat down at the Hufflepuff table between several first years.
“What are you doing here?” asked the redhead he recalled being something like Bones.
Her tone wasn’t accusatory, just confused.
“In a few moments?
Eating lunch.”
“Yes,” murmured her blonde friend.
Priest something?
“But I think what Susan was asking was why are you eating here?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a Slytherin?” asked an older boy across the table.
“And?”