//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16:  Troll 
// Story: A Hogwarts Harmony 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Professor Flitwick paused to peek around the corner, see what was making that grunting noise.
It was Halloween evening, right about the start of dinner- and it’d taken him a couple minutes to clean up after his last class of the day, so he was a bit behind all the students.
Well…  he had been a bit behind them, but then on his way down, he’d noticed a faint but absolutely putrid scent, and started following it, looking for whatever someone had done.
After a number of corridors, the scent getting continuously stronger thanks to his sniffing spell always pointing him in the right direction, he’d heard that lumbering, grunting noise.  There was also a kind of scratching noise, like whatever was lumbering down the corridors was dragging something.
This was the second corner he’d looked around since hearing that noise.
He spotted it.
There was…  it had to be a mountain troll.  But how had it gotten in?
It looked to be about twelve feet tall, judging by how it had to duck to fit through the ten-foot doorway into…  that looked like the girl’s bathroom on this floor.
He had yet to see a girl tall enough to require a ten foot door, though, so he wasn’t sure why they were that tall.  Maybe they had been made for Hagrid’s nonexistent sister…?
Still, though, it was a troll.
If it was going into the bathroom, it would have bottled itself up nicely- he could sneak up to the door and-
“What the-?  Impedimenta!  Expelliarmus!  Wingardium Leviosa!  Oh, that worked.  Depulso!  Impedimenta!  Depulso!”
He froze as he heard the cry of alarm, followed by a quick stream of incantations from inside the bathroom.
Towards the end, the troll shot suddenly backwards out the still-open door, froze in midair…  and died, as its own club followed it out like a bat out of hell and plunged, handle-first, into its owner’s face.
He stared.
“Eeew,” whoever was in the bathroom said.  “Scourgify!  Um, Evanesco!  Oh, that…  er, worked briefly.  Um, Incendio!  Aguamenti!  Evanesco!  Scourgify!  Alright, that seems to have done it.”
He shivered as he waited, listening to their footsteps approaching the doorway.  Who had just…  squashed the troll like that?  Then, after simply vanishing the pouring blood didn’t clean the floor for long, thought to cauterize the wound- and extinguish the flames- before vanishing the blood again?
It had to be a fourth or fifth-year student.  A sixth-year would have used silent incantations…  and he’d heard the Impediment Jinx, something that was generally agreed to be fourth-year material.  Though, perhaps it was a sixth-year, but one that wasn’t practicing their silent incan-!?
A tiny girl stepped out of the bathroom and around the troll, her wand in her hand.  Well…  not tiny; the girl was taller than him, but that wasn’t hard, considering his goblin ancestry.  This girl had to be a first- or second-year, yet she seemed alarmingly calm as she stepped past the troll.
That said, her appearance was rather…  refined, in spite of her Hogwarts uniform.  She had braided her dark brown hair elegantly.
She paused when she saw him, blinking owlishly.  “Ahh-!” she began.
“Did…  Did you do that?” he asked.
She glanced back at the troll.  “Um…  it was raising its club.”
He snorted.  “Oh, you’re not in trouble,” he promised.  “That’s a Mountain Troll, and it needed eliminating anyways.  But how on earth did you defeat it like that?”
“Uhh…  I used magic?  Disarming charm didn’t seem to do anything, though.”
“It wouldn’t,” he informed her.  “Trolls are naturally magic-resistant.”
“Impediment jinx worked fine,” she observed with a shrug.
“Well yes,” he answered.  “It doesn’t directly target its target…”  He paused.  “Hmm…  Let me rephrase that.  It doesn’t act directly on its target, instead freezing the air around said target, which makes its function independent from its target’s magical resistance.”
“Ahh,” she nodded.  “Might also be why the vanishing spell only worked on the blood.  I tried to get the whole body.”
He sighed.  “Yeah, vanishing usually won’t work on a living or even recently deceased creature anyways, simply because the magic of their life is too strong for it, even if they have a low magical resistance.”  He paused.  “Were you…  the only one in there?”
“Um…  Yes.  I was just finishing up when it came in.”
“You…  weren’t scared?”
She shrugged.  “I was, but I’ve been studying.”
He snorted.  “Studying mighty hard.  You’re…  a second-year, right?”  She wasn’t wearing her nameplate, so he couldn’t just read her name and year off of that.
“First,” she corrected.  “Arienne Fox.”  She paused for a second.  “Um…  Can I ask which subject you’re a Professor of?”
He had to crack a grin at that.  She might not have been wearing her nameplate, but he was- so she would be easily able to tell that he was a Professor, though apparently unable to tell what he taught.  She evidently wasn’t one of his direct students, and her Instructors clearly hadn’t told their class how short their Professor was.  “Ahh,” he observed.  “Professor Fillius Flitwick, Teacher of Charms and Head of Ravenclaw House, at your service,” he bowed, then straightened back up again.  “Fox…  You’re a muggleborn, aren’t you?”
She blushed and averted her gaze.  “Y-Yeah.”
“Don’t be ashamed, girl,” he commanded her.  “That’s not something to be ashamed of.  Not many first-years can do what you just did- hell, not many fourth-years could do that!”  He paused.  “So…  Twenty points to Gryffindor, I think, for such an, ahh, efficient takedown of that Mountain Troll at such an early point in your education.  It’d be more, but I don’t think I can get away with that.”
Miss Fox let out a snort of laughter.
He chuckled as well.  “Anyways, they’ll be starting the Halloween Feast right around now,” he informed her.  “Why don’t we go down and join it?”
She nodded eagerly.  “Yeah!”
They began walking down together.  As usual, Flitwick had to jog to keep up with her much longer strides, even though she was only a foot taller than him- a fact that seemed to amuse her, though she didn’t say anything about it.
“I have to ask,” he muttered, as they descended the main staircase.  “Where’d you learn those spells?”
“I’ve been studying,” she answered quickly.  “And Hailey helped.  She knows everything.”
“Hailey, huh?  Might that be…  Princess Hailey?”
“Ahh…  Yes.”
“Do you know what her surname is?”
“Ahh…”  She paused.  “Yes, but she’d prefer I don’t tell anyone.”
“Ahh, no problem.”  He paused as well, as they walked across the Entrance Hall.  “So…  if she’s been…  was there a reason she wasn’t with you?”
She shrugged.  “We had different classes for the last period today, so we were going to meet in the Great Hall,” she answered.  “Astronomy ran a bit late, and I stopped to use the bathroom on the way.  Didn’t expect any trolls.”
Flitwick pushed open the door to the Great Hall.
“Troll…  In the dungeons…  Thought you ought to know…”
Professor Quirrell, the speaker, collapsed to the floor in front of the staff table.
“Troll?” Flitwick asked.  “Do you mean the one Miss Fox just killed upstairs, or is there another one?”
“Prefects,” Dumbledore called, after silencing the panic with some purple firecrackers from his wand.  “Lead your Houses to the dormitor-!”
“NO!”
The single, shouted word echoed down from the ceiling as a hard, deafening command, and the room fell instantly silent.  Interestingly, Flitwick heard the word coming from the ceiling outside the Great Hall as well- someone, presumably a student given how young it sounded, had hijacked the rarely-used Castle Announcement System.
“All students stay here, in the Great Hall, where we know the trolls aren’t.  Heads of Houses, do a headcount, then keep watch in case a troll comes here.  Headmaster, pick some teachers and go hunt for any and all trolls in groups large enough to be certain to defeat them risk-free when you find them, even if it surprises you.  Search the entire castle, and find how they got in, not just where they are.  Make sure this won’t happen again.  All the rest of the teachers stay here to help protect the students.”
By the time the order finished, it was evident who it was:  Princess Hailey was marching up the row, arms folded as she glared at the headmaster, her lips moving in time with the echoing commands.
Finally, silence descended on the massive chamber.
“Good thinking, Princess!” someone called, somewhere in the room.  Their solitary voice sounded dim in the vast chamber, but was no less audible for it.
Dumbledore heaved a huge sigh, but complied.
He was helped by how several of the Professors that don’t normally join feasts showed up minutes later- Professor Babbage of Muggle Studies, Professor Vector of Arithmancy, Professor Sinistra of Astronomy, and Professor Babbling of Ancient Runes, all coming to help ensure the safety of the students, or volunteer to help hunt for trolls.
Then Filch arrived, with two Hufflepuffs in tow.





“... to help protect the students.”
Cedric Diggory waited a couple seconds, just in case whoever had really good lungs was going to keep talking, then looked both ways down the passage he was standing in.
He didn’t see anything.
So he turned back the way he’d come, and turned the corner back to the library, where he’d been doing some last-minute studying and had lost track of time a little bit.
He would wait in a place where he knew the trolls weren’t, and not try to traverse the Castle that they might be in.





“Well,” Dumbledore began resignedly.
Aqua Fall let out a soft sigh.  The last half an hour or so had been draining; the Headmaster had, without consulting the Princess, gone straight to her and asked her to arrange groups of ‘capable Equestrians’ to help search the Castle.  She’d done that- or more accurately, she’d taken the request straight to Morning Sun, the senior-most Equestrian in the school despite being a first-year.  They’d quickly arranged groups of students to comb the school as well, mixing Guard talent and experience, where they could find it, with upper-year students’ magical knowledge.
It had gone surprisingly well, she had to admit.  Only one troll had been found, and it had been traced back to the main front doors.  All they’d learned was that someone had let it in.
And, of course, that someone had encountered it already, leaving them perhaps the cleanest Troll murder scene Aqua had ever seen.
It was also the only one she’d ever seen, but that didn’t invalidate the point.
Eventually, though, they’d cleaned up the troll, declared the Castle safe, and sent the students to bed.
Well… most of them.  She, as the Student Instructor Program Management Team Lead, was to be party to the staff meeting Dumbledore had called after the Halloween Feast.
“We found the troll,” Dumbledore finished.
Flitwick raised an eyebrow.  “Just the one?”
He nodded.  “It was…  already dead, with a great big hole in-!”
“They get the idea,” Aqua interrupted.
He heaved a sigh.
“Cleanest murder scene I’ve ever seen, but that’s clearly what it was,” Aqua continued.  “Stabbed to death with its own club through the head, no blood or anything- and no sign of a struggle, either.  According to our tracing spells, it walked in the front doors early this morning, and hid out in a few closets.  Someone let it in and held it, deliberately, within the Castle- probably to use it as a distraction.”  She paused.  “So, who crushed it before Quirrell ever reached the Great Hall?”
Flitwick raised an eyebrow.  “You know it was already dead by then?”
She nodded.  “Bodies cool and decay quickly, and with the right magics, it’s pretty easy to determine the exact time of death.  That thing was dead for almost ten minutes before Quirrell arrived- he must’ve gotten unlucky with the stairs?”  She looked at the Professor in question.
He nodded.  “M-Must’ve also ma-made some…  s-sub-optimal n-navigation ch-choices in my p-panic,” he stuttered.
“I still think you need to see a therapist about that stutter,” she advised him, then turned to Flitwick.  “So…  you knew it was dead?”
He nodded.  “Watched a first-year, Miss Arienne Fox, completely flatten it.  She used a clever application of a levitation charm to disarm it and the banishing charm to both move it away from her and propel the club after it.  There was also an impediment jinx to stop it from hitting the wall- then she combined pyromantic, aquamantic, vanishing, and cleaning charms to cauterize the wound and remove the spilled blood so she didn’t have to soil her shoes when walking past it.”
“That’s a lot of spells for a first-year,” Professor McGonagall observed.
He nodded.  “A lot of intermediate-ranked spells for a muggleborn student that’s known she’s magical for a total of three months,” he agreed.  “Said she’s been ‘studying’.”  He sighed.  “Nevermind the creative use of utilitarian spells in a defensive context- it surprised her while she was ‘finishing up’ in the bathroom.  I gave her twenty points.”
“Only twenty?” Professor Snape asked, raising an eyebrow.
Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow briefly, then turned to Flitwick.  “You didn’t stop it before-?”
“I’m sure he’d only just spotted it and hadn’t realized she was there,” Professor Sprout observed.  “From the sound of it, this Arienne was quite the speedy spellcaster, and probably had that troll down to a fare-thee-well by the time anyone could have realized she was there and responded effectively.  Had she not been there, those bathrooms would make excellent bottles to crush it in with minimal resistance.”
“Not that Arienne needed that,” Flitwick observed.  “She needed all of five seconds and it was dead before it could react, walls be damned.”
Dumbledore looked at Aqua.  “Is she one of your people?”
Aqua scowled.  “I suppose she could be, but with a name like Arienne, I seriously doubt it.  Even then, most of the Equestrians have been having trouble learning anywhere near that fast- I expect even Twilight would need to be at least a second year, more likely third, to be able to do that from self-study.  I’m betting she had some pretty focused help, or perhaps studied in a very specific direction and happened to get lucky.”  She paused.  “And maybe she really is a genius.”





“Ahh, Miss Fox?”
The girl looked up.  “Hmm?”
“Chief Student Instructor Aqua Fall here would like to talk to you before you leave.”
Aqua nodded her head, acknowledging Student Instructor Sandy Cog’s use of her title- the one that ‘Student Instructor Program Management Team Lead’ had been remodeled into shortly after the year had begun.
The student that Sandy Cog was speaking to met Aqua’s eyes for a fraction of a second, nodded in acknowledgement, and resumed packing up her belongings with an “Okay.”
A minute later, the girl finished packing up and made her way up to the front, where Aqua was waiting.  “You wanted to talk to me?” she offered.
“Ahh, yes,” Aqua agreed, as Instructor Sandy Cog left with the rest of the class.  “Specifically, I’d like to ask you a few things about what happened on Halloween.”  She paused.  “Er…  it was you, that Professor Flitwick met on the way to the Great Hall for dinner?”
The girl tilted her head.  “That Professor Flitwick…?”  She paused.  “Oh, you mean that troll that was breaking into the girls’ bathroom without permission.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “That male troll.”
Aqua had to laugh at that.  It was true, the troll had later been identified to be a male mountain troll- but its gender had most likely not been the reason she’d killed it.  “Ain't no boys in the girls’ toilet,” she agreed.  “Aside from that, I heard you used some pretty advanced spells in that fight?”
She blinked.  “They were advanced?” she asked.
“Uhh…  Yeah.  Impediment jinx, vanishing charm, cleaning charm, conflagration spell, water conjuration…  All beyond first-year level, and with the exception of the vanishing and cleaning spells, fourth-year or above.”
“...  Huh.  They didn’t seem any harder or more complicated than anything else we’ve been doing…?”
There was a pause.
“Ahh…  Yeah, you know what, you’re right.  They’re probably taught later because of the inherent dangers of using spells like those.  But-!”
Aqua cut herself off, focusing instantly on a chair about halfway across the room.  It had just twitched…  but there was nobody left in the room.  Was someone invisible?
Arienne picked up on it quickly as well, turning in the same direction and going silent as she searched.
“Who’s there?” Aqua called.  “Reveal yourself,” she commanded.
The silence held for two seconds.
Quite suddenly, Arienne whipped her wand out and slashed it across that entire half of the room.  “Aguamenti!”
The stream of water from her wand formed a massive bow as it slashed out across the room- and, just three desks away, the middle of it splashed against someone invisible, just to the side of the chair that had twitched.
Aqua drew her wand, but Arienne was faster.
“Revelio!  Expelliarmus!  Stupefy!  Incendio!  Confringo!”
The first spell missed, though they heard a man gasp as he dodged.
The second connected, causing a wand, a silver knife, and a crystal flask to spring out of thin air and fall to the floor, the last shattering into a million pieces when it landed.
Her third spell flew wide and, like the first, vanished against the far wall.
Her fourth shot a huge gout of fire across the room- and in its wake, while they still couldn’t see the yelling man, they could see his outline, as his clothing and, presumably, hair all caught fire.
Her final spell was definitely meant as a deadly blow against what was basically confirmed to be a hidden attacker…  and her aim was true.
However, the man was quite suddenly gone with a ripple Aqua recognized as a portkey, moments before it would have connected…  and the spell cratered the far wall of the classroom.
“Portkey,” Aqua barked.  “He got away with a portkey.”
Arienne sighed and lowered her wand.  “Damn.  That’s the third time, too.”
“The third-!?” she began, then took a deep breath.  “Um…  How would you like to be the HSI for Defense, then?”
“The what?”
“The HSI for Defense.”
She blinked.  “Uhh…  I don’t think I’m qualified for that.”
She tilted her head.  “Where’d you learn all those spells, then?”
“Uh, Hailey taught me.”  She grinned.
“Hailey…  You don’t happen to mean Princess Hailey, do you?”
“Ahh…  I do, yes.  She knows, like, everything.”
“Damn.”  She paused, then looked back to where the knife and wand had fallen.  “Alright.  Um, if you feel safe, you’re welcome to go…  I need to pick this up and report it to the DMLE.”





That evening, at dinner, Albus Dumbledore had a noticeably shorter beard than usual.

The following morning, he missed breakfast entirely, because Director Amelia Bones had arrived early in the morning, and was busy interrogating him about why his wand had been sent to her office as having been taken from an invisible assailant in the school.





Dumbledore shivered as he sat down at the staff table for lunch, and peered down the Hall to the Gryffindor Table, where the Princess and Miss Arienne were getting along so nicely.  It was a relief that the Princess had been in a much better mood lately, even showing herself to the Castle so often while she played with Arienne.  Arienne, the girl that Harry had so obviously taken into his protection…  before promptly vanishing, save only for classes- he didn’t even come to meals any more!  Had the Princess kicked him and his protection aside, in order to play with her friend?
Because that was obviously what she and Arienne were:  Friends.  It wasn’t clear whether or not Arienne had the Princess’s protection, but it was distinctly possible.
A possibility that, combined with his detection ward throwing its metaphorical hands up at the Princess, meant he was mortally afraid of approaching Arienne while the Princess was anywhere near, for any reason…  and would prefer to stay away from the Princess herself as well, to the point where he wasn’t even going to try to sneak up on her for a blood sample, he’d wait for her time of the month.
…  Not that she seemed to have one, despite being visibly pubescent.
His most recent attempt to get close to Arienne…  had ended in an even worse failure than he’d thought possible.  He hadn’t even been trying to get a blood sample!  He’d merely been trying to get close enough- just within ten feet- to cast a silent, non-invasive charm she wouldn’t even notice…  which would tell him how long it would be until she experienced puberty- and, therefore, her first time of the month.
It was something he frequently did, when he noticed pre-pubescent muggleborn girls in the Castle, so he could arrange for older muggleborn girls to be able to comfort and teach the poor girl how to handle it, whenever she had her first time of the month.  He wasn’t even trying to get any of her blood- and had her crude disarming charm not hit him in the belt, causing his knife and flask to be ejected alongside his wand, Director Bones wouldn’t have begun to suspect that Dark Magic was taking place at Hogwarts!
It had been torture to deflect her suspicion, but he’d managed to do so.  Thank Merlin she hadn’t been able to find any legal justification to use veritaserum; Arienne, the only listed victim, was a true muggleborn, so her Magical House was just that:  No nobility, no tenure, no nothing, which meant she had the rank of the lowest commoners, and veritaserum actually wasn’t allowed, even if volunteered.
Still, though.  Why had she attacked him?  He was only trying to help- and it wasn’t even for anything that even might be considered bad!  He just wanted to make sure she wasn’t traumatized by her own body!
He didn’t do the same thing for descendents of magicals, because they already wouldn’t be traumatized.
Even so, he was aware he was a part of a very small minority of magicals- witches included- that knew girls even had a time of the month.  The reason was that all girls’ underwear sold at magical clothing shops was enchanted to make a majority of those ‘time of the month’ effects just disappear.  Time, mood…  everything.  The blood would still have to come out, though, since it didn’t serve to prevent their time of the month, just hide it.  As such…
As such, he could often tell the muggleborn and magical-born apart by whether their underwear was enchanted; thanks to his detection wards, he could sense those enchantments from across the room, without casting any magic or taking any…  inappropriate looks.  Those wards weren’t even designed to spot those enchantments, but other kinds, and just happened to catch them!
It wasn’t foolproof, though.  As an example, the Princess was definitely actually worthy of her claims, since he’d cast the House Verification charm at her from across the Great Hall during the Welcoming Feast, and it’d come back positive.  That meant she was definitely from the single oldest line of wizards left in existence, even though he’d been sure that would be Harry…  yet, she wore muggle underwear.
Then there were occasionally muggleborn that would wear magical underwear for some reason or another.  That happened especially often among those that were poor but had significant inheritances waiting for them in Gringotts- though he had no idea how they discovered those inheritances.  Perhaps it was just the first clothing store they got to once they gained enough money to…?  He didn’t know.
Not that it mattered.  He concentrated on his plate, shuddering at the thought of what Minerva would say if she knew what his thoughts had turned to.
But at least he’d gotten his wand back, so he didn’t have to floo to Diagon Alley to get a new one.
He hated Floo Travel.  It was the reason his nose was so crooked, after all- he made the famously-clumsy Potters look graceful.
It had been thirty years since he’d last used the Floo, and he did not want to change that!
That girl, though, Arienne…  His eyes picked her out of the crowd once again.  While her spell repertoire was alarmingly effective for a girl of her age…  she was also obviously an inexperienced caster.  She’d beat him with pure surprise advantage- he’d never expected her to start with water, so her first spell had disoriented him.  Not so much that he’d been unable to dodge the spell that would have broken down his invisibility, though it had been so much that he’d been unable to reestablish his bearings until after her disarming charm had hit…  after which point he’d been unarmed, and couldn’t effectively block or counterattack.  He could dodge, though- the first of her offensive spells, a simple stunner.  The second had produced far too large of a fireball for him to dodge.

The girl had a lot of power, which had allowed her crude spellwork to be just as effective as that cast by a more skilled caster like himself.  No doubt her spellwork was so crude because she’d been taught a very large amount of spells in a very short time- but once she had the time to refine her techniques, she was undoubtedly going to be a terrifying duelist.