That evening, in the Great Hall.
Thousands of live bats fluttered across the walls and ceiling, while ghostly candlelight glowed from inside hundreds of pumpkins.
Golden plates were piled high with Halloween delicacies.
Morrin sat at the Slytherin table, idly cutting into a rare steak.
Across from him, Draco was enthusiastically mocking Ron.
“Did you hear?
Weasley made Granger cry in Charms today.
Buck toothed little know it all’s been hiding in the girls’ loo all afternoon.” “Hermione Granger?” Morrin’s knife and fork paused.
His [Logical Mind Palace] immediately retrieved the relevant plot point.
Halloween.
Girls’ loo.
Troll.
She may be rather noisy at times, but she’s an excellent enforcer of rules and a future technical backbone.
Letting an asset of that quality get destroyed by a brainless troll would hardly be in my interests.
Just then, Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the Great Hall.
His enormous turban sat crookedly on his head, and his face was white with terror.
“Troll, in the dungeons!
Thought you ought to know!” Then he collapsed face first onto the floor.
Chaos instantly erupted throughout the Hall.
“Silence!” Dumbledore rose to his feet.
Several bursts of purple sparks exploded from the tip of his wand.
“Prefects, lead your Houses back to their dormitories immediately!
Teachers, come with me to the dungeons.” The students began moving in a frightened mass.
Amid the confusion, Harry and Ron did not follow the Gryffindor procession.
Instead, they ducked low and slipped towards a corridor on the other side of the Hall.
Morrin watched them go and shook his head helplessly.
What troublesome business partners.
He picked up his cane.
Rather than following the Slytherins back towards the dungeons, which would take him straight towards the troll, Morrin turned and headed for the girls’ lavatory on the second floor.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The second floor girls’ lavatory reeked.
The smell was a nauseating mixture of old socks and a public toilet that had never once been cleaned.
A twelve foot mountain troll was awkwardly squeezing its way through the doorway, dragging a massive wooden club behind it.
Its skin was dull grey like granite, and its pitifully tiny head sat atop its enormous body like a coconut.
Hermione’s shrill scream came from inside.
By the time Morrin arrived, the situation had already descended into chaos.
The troll swung its club and smashed a row of sinks to pieces.
Pipes burst apart, sending jets of water spraying in every direction.
Hermione was huddled against the wall, trembling so badly that she had even forgotten to draw her wand.
Harry and Ron were trying to distract the creature by throwing pieces of broken wood at it.
“Oi!
You great lump!” Ron shouted, hurling a length of pipe at the troll.
The troll turned.
Its tiny, murky eyes were filled with brutish rage.
It raised its club, preparing to bring it crashing down on Harry’s completely unprotected head.
“Tch.” A quiet click of the tongue came from the doorway.
“I wouldn’t particularly mind replacing a business partner, but the Boy Who Lived brand is still worth quite a lot.” Harry and Ron instinctively looked back.
Morrin White stood in the shattered doorway.
He wore an immaculate black robe, one hand resting on his jet black cane.
The expression on his face was not so much frightened as…
Disgusted.
The troll smelled appalling.
“Morrin!
Run!” Harry yelled.
“That thing’s too strong!” “Strong?” Morrin chuckled and stepped into the flooded lavatory.
“Talking about strength in front of a half giant is rather like lecturing Gringotts on greed.” The troll noticed the new little creature.
With a roar, it abandoned Harry and swung the club, which was thicker than Morrin’s entire body, straight at him with a vicious rush of wind.
If the blow landed cleanly, an ordinary wizard would be reduced to pulp.
Harry and Hermione shut their eyes in despair.
But the expected sound of splintering bone and flesh never came.
THOOM**!** A dull impact shook the room hard enough to make their hearts stop.
Harry opened his eyes.
They nearly popped out of his head.
Morrin had neither cast a spell nor dodged.
He had simply raised his cane in one hand and caught the troll’s club directly against its shaft.
The seemingly slender cane did not move an inch beneath the troll’s full strength blow.
The tiles beneath Morrin’s feet, however, shattered into a spiderweb of cracks under the tremendous pressure and sank three inches into the floor.
“That’s all you’ve got?” Morrin looked up at the troll looming over him.
A faint red gleam flashed through his eyes, the savage sign of his [Half Giant Bloodline] surging to life.
[High-Tier Magical Creature Detected: Mountain Troll] [Consume an Extraction Attempt?] No.
Morrin rejected the prompt without hesitation.
Traits this worthless aren’t worth wasting my savings on.
The next instant, he moved.
A flick of his wrist activated the [Crushing Force] Trait within his wand.
A tremendous rebound blasted the troll’s club aside.
Morrin immediately stepped to the left.
Taking advantage of his lack of height, or perhaps, in this situation, his advantage in height, he slipped inside the troll’s reach.
His cane drove forward like a black sword and slammed brutally into the troll’s soft belly.
“GRAAAAGH!” The troll howled in agony.
Its enormous body actually folded around the blow like a prawn.
Morrin was not finished.
Using the force of the strike, he leapt into the air, spun once, and brought his cane whipping around with the added force of centrifugal momentum.
It struck the side of the troll’s knee.
Crack*.* The sound of breaking bone rang through the lavatory.
The twelve foot troll crashed to the floor with an enormous splash.
It rolled about clutching its knee, not even having had enough time to understand what had just happened.
“That’s…
it?” Ron asked.
His cane slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
“No.
Not yet.
Finishing off your opponent is basic etiquette in corporate warfare.” Morrin landed lightly and elegantly straightened his tie, despite the fact that it had not moved at all.
He walked over to the troll’s head, raised his cane over its coconut sized skull, and gave it a gentle tap.
Thunk.
Physical Stun.
The troll’s eyes rolled back.
It went completely limp.
Morrin produced a spotless white handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped the greasy residue from the troll’s skin off his cane.
Then he casually tossed the handkerchief onto the creature’s enormous body.
He turned towards the three Gryffindors frozen in shock in the corner.
“Miss Granger.” Morrin looked at Hermione, still curled against the wall, and spoke in an even tone.
“While tears may be a woman’s weapon, when facing asset liquidation, I mean, a threat to your life, a wand is considerably more useful.
Also, that isn’t how you use the Levitation Charm.” Hermione stared blankly at him.
Tear tracks still marked her face, and she could not manage a single word.
At that moment, hurried footsteps thundered down the corridor, followed by the violent crash of the door being thrown open.
Professor McGonagall rushed in, with Snape and Quirrell close behind.
The moment McGonagall saw the scene, her lips went white.
An unconscious troll.
Water covering the floor.
Three thoroughly traumatised Gryffindors.
And one Slytherin standing beside the troll’s head, calmly adjusting his cufflinks.
“What on earth were you thinking?” Professor McGonagall demanded, her voice cold with fury.
Snape, meanwhile, bent down to examine the troll.
His gaze lingered for several seconds on its visibly shattered knee and the heavy bruising across its abdomen.
Then his head snapped up towards Morrin.
Those injuries…
They had not been caused by magic.
They were pure blunt force trauma.
“Explain yourself, White.” Snape rose, a complicated gleam in his black eyes.
“Why is a Slytherin here?
And…
did you beat a troll with your cane?” “I got lost on my way to the library, Professor,” Morrin lied without batting an eyelid.
“Then I heard someone calling for help.
As a member of Hogwarts, I could hardly stand by while fellow students were in danger.
As for the troll…” Morrin shrugged and raised the heavy cane.
“It appears to have a slight calcium deficiency.
It fell over once and lost consciousness.
Perhaps the school floors are simply too slippery.” The corner of Snape’s mouth twitched.
A fall had shattered its kneecap?
Professor McGonagall, however, clearly had no desire to investigate the matter any further.
She deducted points from Harry and Ron for disobeying instructions.
Then she awarded Hermione points after Hermione lied and claimed that she had gone looking for the troll herself.
Finally, Professor McGonagall turned her gaze towards Morrin.