This was Linus’s first Halloween at Hogwarts.
Though it was only early evening, the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was already sparkling with stars.
Thousands of captive birds circled beneath the starry expanse, and golden droplets fell from the sky now and then, transforming into colorful candies as they landed in the children’s hands.
Over at the Gryffindor table, Linus had his parchment pressed against *Hogwarts: A History*, writing frantically.
Hermione, who hadn’t brought her textbook, sat beside him in anxious disbelief.
She hadn’t expected Linus to be studying even on Halloween Eve.
“Honestly, you can’t be doing this—at least not today!”
“Don’t worry, enjoy your holiday for once.
Have some roast chicken.” Without even flicking a wand, Linus made a piece of roast chicken float effortlessly from the platter into Hermione’s plate.
Hermione’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“A nonverbal, wandless Levitation Charm?
When did you…
didn’t we just learn that spell in Professor Flitwick’s class this morning?”
Comparing the discrepancies between the 1873 repairs of the East Tower in the official history and Fermi Carroll’s memoirs, Linus replied, “My progress is just slightly ahead of our peers.”
“But nonverbal magic is at least sixth-year material!” Hermione said, still reeling.
“That just means the Hogwarts curriculum is falling behind the times,” Linus said, never one to find fault in himself.
“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” Ron sat down heavily beside Linus.
After their “life-or-death” experience in the three-headed dog’s room that night, the carefree boy had come to view Linus as a great mate.
On top of that, this mate was an absolute prodigy, willing to share notes, and lacked the preachy nature of the other top student—making him the ultimate friend for an underachieving Ron.
“Discussing the combined impact of nineteenth-century figures on Hogwarts’ campus culture and the future direction of youth magical education.
Care to join, Ron?” Linus asked, biting into a carrot ring.
Ron shook his head like a rattle instantly; just hearing the topic was enough to put him to sleep.
Harry entered the Great Hall right about then and took a seat beside Ron.
“How was practice?” Linus asked.
Harry glanced around surreptitiously like a thief before whispering back, “Not bad.”
“I know you’re the secret weapon, but isn’t that a bit overly cautious?” Linus looked at him with amusement.
“Can’t be helped.
Wood gives us pep talks every single day.
If we lose the match because I leaked something, I can’t imagine how crushed he’d be,” Harry muttered under his breath.
“If you ask me, there’s no keeping it secret anyway,” Ron said, shaking his head.
“Even that big lump Marcus Flint has been quietly asking Gryffindors in his year about who our new Seeker is.
The other houses are bound to know by now.”
Another golden droplet drifted down from the ceiling.
Linus caught it—a piece of toffee, lucky enough—and casually handed it over to Hermione.
Suddenly, Professor Quirrell burst into the hall, disheveled and with his turban askew.
Terrified, he sprinted straight toward Dumbledore.
“Troll—in the dungeons—” he gasped out before fainting dead away on the floor.
Panicked chatter from students, Ron’s loud gasp, weird shrieks from the Weasley twins, and the thud of Crabbe swooning in panic filled the entire hall at once.
“Silence!” bellowed the Headmaster, holding his wand to his throat to amplify his voice with a Sonorus Charm, quenching the uproar.
“Prefects, lead your respective houses back to the dormitories.
Professors, follow me to the dungeons.”
Having issued his orders, Dumbledore rushed off.
The prefects gathered the students according to instructions.
Percy quickly led the Gryffindors out of the Great Hall toward their tower.
Linus glanced at Hermione walking beside him and breathed a quiet sigh of relief inside.
The first-year troll incident was probably the biggest danger Hermione would face anytime soon.
Thankfully, he had kept an eye on her movements all day—the girl had actually assumed he skipped the library today because Madam Pince took a holiday for Halloween!
On the way to the tower, Linus spotted a shadow flickering out of sight around a corner.
*That figure looked like Quirrell…
but that direction doesn’t lead to the fourth floor.
Isn’t he supposed to feign unconsciousness in the Great Hall and then head out to probe the defenses of that room?
Something’s fishy.
I need to check what he’s up to.*
No sooner said than done.
Linus whispered to Harry and the other two, “Cover for me.” Confused as they were, Harry and his friends complied.
At the next junction where the crowds of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws crossed paths, Linus quietly cast the Disillusionment Charm on himself, turned around, and sprinted back in the direction he remembered.
Turning several corners, he caught sight of Quirrell’s back in the distance.
Linus slowed his pace, stealthily creeping closer while maintaining his Disillusionment Charm.
Ever since advancing to Lv4, he had acquired an unlisted, strange magical sense—an acute perception of invisible entities nearby.
No textbook mentioned a precedent for this, but unsure whether a high-level wizard like Voldemort possessed detection capabilities of his own, Linus didn’t dare get too close.
Quirrell had gone to all the trouble of using a troll to lure away Dumbledore and the professors, yet surprisingly, his destination wasn’t the corridor at the end of the fourth floor.
*This doesn’t match the history I know.
What changed?* Linus watched in bewilderment as Quirrell slipped into Snape’s office.
*If he’s stealing potion ingredients, he could come anytime at night.
Why right now?*
Quirrell stayed inside Snape’s dungeon office for quite some time before emerging.
After shutting the door behind him, he ruffled his clothes, put on a panicked front, and scurried through several corridors to rejoin the other professors searching for the troll.
Linus stopped tailing him, deciding to ask Snape next Saturday if anything was missing from his office.
Turning around to head upstairs, he reached Gryffindor Tower, only to find Harry, Ron, and Hermione nowhere to be seen.
“Have you not seen them at all?” Linus asked, grabbing Neville’s sleeve.
“N-no. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
They didn’t seem to come back with everyone else.
It…
it was so chaotic on the way, I didn’t notice,” Neville stammered, his voice sounding close to tears, as though he were the one responsible for losing them.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find them,” Linus patted Neville on the shoulder, reassuring himself as much as Neville.
With that, he burst out through the portrait hole in a swift dash.
Ten minutes earlier, in the Gryffindor procession:
“Where did Linus go?” Harry whispered to Ron.
“No idea.
Maybe he went to solo the troll,” Ron speculated wildly.
“Impossible.
A troll isn’t something a first-year wizard can take on,” Hermione rejected flatly.
Ron countered indignantly, “Linus hardly counts as a normal first-year.
He knows more than my two older brothers combined!”
Hermione was about to retort when she recalled Linus’s astonishingly skillful Levitation Charm from dinner, and secretly found herself agreeing with Ron.
“What do we do then?
We can’t let him face a monster like that alone.
We have to help him,” Harry said worriedly.
“Right, help him,” Ron repeated.
Hermione remained silent, anxiously wringing the hem of her sleeve with her fingers.
The Gryffindor procession bumped into a panicked crowd of Hufflepuffs, allowing Ron and Harry to slip into the Hufflepuff group.
Hermione quietly followed behind them.
At the next corner, the trio slipped away from the Hufflepuffs.
“Which way do we go?
Do you know?” Ron asked as they ran.
“Professor Quirrell said it was in the dungeons.
Let’s check there,” Harry suggested.
“No.
If it were in the dungeons, Professor Dumbledore, who went first, would have already resolved it,” Hermione analyzed.
“The direction Linus vanished in earlier looked like it led toward the second-floor Transfiguration classroom.
Maybe we should check the second floor.”
By a stroke of remarkable luck, as Harry sprinted into the second-floor corridor, he locked eyes with the troll standing at the far end.
The beast was terrifyingly massive—twelve feet tall with a single eye situated in the middle of its face, pale green skin all over, and carrying a wooden club proportionate to its immense size.
Drool dripped from its jaws onto the wooden floorboards, sizzling and burning tiny holes into the wood.
Unfortunately, Linus was nowhere in sight.
Whether he hadn’t found the troll yet or had already been defeated and swallowed whole was unknown.
Harry refused to entertain the worst-case scenario.
In truth, he didn’t even have time to think about anything else, because the troll was already shouldering its giant club and charging toward him with agility that defied its hulking size.