Harry Potter and All Hallow's Eve
As Halloween had approached a carnival atmosphere had seemed to penetrate the school. Students were still going to class and doing homework, but there was a definite sense of imminent celebration. Like the leadup to Christmas, Harry thought. Harry had never enjoyed Christmas, which always involved far too much helping his aunt: polishing the silver, cooking supper, moving Dudley’s heaps of presents, discarding the wrapping paper, and washing up. And so, Harry felt a certain apprehension about the forthcoming celebration on the night of Halloween.
There was also the newfound knowledge of why they were celebrating. They were celebrating because Voldemort (Harry refused to call him You-Know-Who when he did not, in fact, know who) had died. And with him Harry’s parents had also died. If Harry’s aunt and uncle were to be believed, it would have been better if Harry had also died.
So, Harry found it hard to look forward to the anniversary of their deaths. His old childhood nightmare, involving green light and screams, had started to come back. Now he knew that the green light wasn’t a traffic signal, but a spell, and that his parents had been targeted, rather than a random accident. Sometimes, in his dreams, his parents spoke to him. They told him he wasn’t living up to their expectations. Or that they wished he had died with them. Or that they hadn’t really been a witch and wizard and that people had only told him that to comfort him, and that they really had died in a car crash.
Harry spent the night before Halloween sitting up with Suku and Nagara trying not to fall asleep. Suku flew in and out of the dormitory window, catching moths and bats for Nagara and himself, and letting Harry stroke him as he digested each beakful. Things in the forest rustled and shrieked. Harry had never heard anything at night other than cars before. He wondered whether he ought to be afraid of the things making noises. But he was safe, wrapped in his duvet on the window seat in their dormitory at the top of Gryffindor tower. The things in the forest couldn’t hurt him here.
Breakfast was rowdy. A lot of the students were used to the small celebrations in their homes on the anniversary of the downfall of Voldemort and received packages from their parents. Harry sat in silence. It hurt, in a way it had never hurt before, to know he was an orphan, could never receive a package of sweets from his parents. He set down his spoon and stared moodily at his porridge and chocolate frogs croaked noisily up and down the table.
Neville bundled him out of the Great Hall towards the greenhouses shortly after noticing this, and the boys sat in silence in the warmth of Greenhouse 2 watching Nagara play with the Devil’s Snare cuttings. Professor Sprout found them there five minutes later. Normally she berated any students found in the Greenhouses without supervision, but this time she looked rather sad herself. Harry thought perhaps she made an exception because Neville was already as good as some of the third years. At any rate, her pre-occupation allowed him to retrieve Nagara and store the snake under his hood again.
As class began to occupy Harry he came out of his funk, and even began to feel hungry before Charms, regretting leaving the Great Hall without eating. It had been a long time, he reflected, since he had felt hungry at the Dursleys. Charms class was chaos, and even Harry was laughing by the end of it. He and Seamus took it in turns to try to make their feather fly. By the time Harry eventually managed it Nagara had poked its nose out to see what all the fuss was about, and started trying to catch the feather in midair. Harry hastily ushered the snake back under his robes, and Seamus, taking his turn while laughing at the look of horror on Harry’s face, managed to make the feather explode with a bang that rattled the windows.
Neville was paired with Hannah-from-the-boat. She was usually Neville’s partner when the houses were working together, and he talked about her as a friend. Harry had been worried that Neville would drop Harry’s friendship in favour of hers, but Neville seemed able to be friends with lots of people. They were playing a game with their charms, seeing whether they could make the feather fly in the same pattern as the other. Professor Flitwick pointed it out to the class with delight and suggested that they all try it.
Ron, on the other hand, was working with Hermione-with-the-hair and he was having a far worse time of it. Harry thought she was probably trying to be helpful, but pointing out to Ron what he was doing wrong was not the right way to go about it. When she effortlessly floated her feather to the designated circle on the ceiling and held it there for the prescribed ten seconds, to applause from Professor Flitwick, Ron looked about to murder someone.
“She’s a nightmare,” he told Harry and Neville as they were leaving the classroom to go to lunch, “it’s no wonder no-one can stand her.” Harry felt someone knock into him and looked up. He couldn’t see the person’s face, but the frizzy mane of hair told him all he needed to know.
“I think she heard you,” he told Ron.
Ron affected indifference, but Neville said, “I’m going to see if she’s alright.”
“She will be,” Ron called after him.
“I’m going.” Harry had never heard Neville sound so cross before. In truth, he, too, felt concerned that Hermione-with-the-hair had been so upset by Ron’s comment, but he was also hungry and looking forward to lunch.
“She’ll be fine,” he heard Ron moan beside him, “she’s just gone off because she’s upset, but she’ll forget all about it in five minutes if she’s left alone. You should see my sister. Fred broke her arm when she was six, and by lunchtime she was going on as if nothing happened. Mum didn’t even realise it was broken until Ginny couldn’t put her mittens on.” Harry hoped Ron was right.
When they entered the Great Hall Harry forgot all about Hermione-with-the-hair. He even forgot his hunger. The hall had been decorated in their absence, and now live bats darted across the ceiling, carved pumpkins stood at intervals down the tables, not yet lit, but exciting in their eerie leers. Harry helped himself to sandwiches under the baleful glance of one particularly awful pumpkin who appeared to be being tortured. It made Harry feel quite cheerful by comparison.
He was debating picking up a packet of sandwiches for Neville when the boy appeared. He plonked himself down next to Ron and snatched at the plate of chicken and ham triangles in front of him. “She’s crying,” he told Ron, harshly, “she says she doesn’t want to see anyone, and she wished she’d never heard of Hogwarts. She said that if wizards are going to be as bad as you, she doesn’t want to be a witch anymore.” Ron looked decidedly uncomfortable at this.
“You should apologise, Ron,” Harry urged.
“You can’t,” Neville snapped, now reaching for egg-and-cress, “after she told me that she ran into the girls’ toilets by the entrance hall and wouldn’t come out. What’s-her-name went in to talk to her. Violet? Lavender? Magenta? Lavender I think, the one in Gryffindor.”
“Lavender,” Ron confirmed. All three boys were feeling gloomy when they traipsed off to transfiguration after lunch.
Hermione-with-the-hair didn’t appear for the rest of the day. Lavender-Violet-Magenta checked on her after transfiguration and reported that she would stay where she was thank you. Even Ron looked worried as they lined up outside the Great Hall to wait for a crowd of rowdy Ravenclaws to go in to dinner. Then they saw the final decorations of the hall and everything was put out of their minds: the bats fluttered low over the tables, the pumpkins were lit and in each corner enormous orange caverns held instruments which groaned out mournful airs.
Nagara, unusually active today, snapped at any bats that came close to Harry’s head as they sat down. It caught one or two as the feast appeared on golden plates and hissed happily “I don’t need Harry-nest-mate to catch flying-leather-mice. I’m big!” Harry tried to shush it, and after a few more snaps it folded down into his collar again. Harry felt slightly disturbing crunching coming from the nape of his neck for the rest of the meal.
Harry was just reaching for a profiterole tower to pass it along the table when Professor Quirrell rushed in, turban askew and eyes wild. He raced to the top table, stammered “t-t-troll! In the dungeons! Thought you ought to know!” and fell into a faint. In the ensuing pandemonium the profiteroles went un-regarded. Harry, Ron and Neville all begin to follow Percy who was calling loudly for the Gryffindor students when Ron stopped them both. “Hermione,” he whispered, “she doesn’t know about the troll.”
Neville began looking for a teacher, but Harry nodded to Ron, “alright. If we’re quick no one will notice in this lot.” They scuttled off, and Harry heard Neville shout “Oi!” behind them. He hoped that the boy had the good sense not to follow them.
The two raced down the deserted corridors leading to the girls’ bathroom by the entrance hall. Nagara stuck its head up at the commotion but stayed where it was. Then Harry smelled something. It smelled a bit like public lavatory, and he wondered whether one of the girls’ toilets they were heading towards was blocked. As they turned the last corner, they saw it. The troll was an ugly mottled grey-green and its arms seemed too long for its body. In one hand it dragged a club which seemed to have been made by simply pulling a branch off a tree. It still had bits of dead leaf attached. It stopped in a doorway, sniffing. It didn’t seem to have noticed the two boys standing as if paralysed 30 feet away. Instead, it followed its nose into the room it had stopped by.
“We could try shutting it in,” Harry whispered.
“OK,” Ron mouthed, looking rather grey himself. A clatter of feet on stone interrupted them as Neville, panting, caught up.
“What are you doing?” he said, loud in the silence.
“The troll’s just gone in there,” Harry explained as Ron shushed Neville in a loud hiss, “we could shut it in, get Hermione, and be back to the tower.”
“It takes about ten people to fight a troll properly,” Neville protested, now speaking in an urgent whisper himself. A scream sounded from the room the troll had entered. The three boys turned as one, realising the only conclusion.
“Hermione!” Harry wasn’t sure who said it, or whether they all said it together. All he knew was that he, Ron and Neville were running towards the troll and the girls’ toilets.
In the corridor the troll had looked large, but in the confines of the bathroom it looked huge. It seemed to tower over the three boys who clattered in, and over Hermione, cowering under the sinks. Even her hair seemed to have shrunk at the sight of it. Harry stopped just inside the doorway, trying to think of a plan. Ron dodged him, Neville didn’t. Harry felt himself cannon forward into the troll’s legs. This sudden assault stopped it from its advance on Hermione, and Ron dodged round it, grabbing her robes and pulling. “Come on!” he yelled. At the sound the troll started forward again, and Harry did the only thing that made sense: he grabbed the leg. Nagara struck, sinking tiny fangs into the thick tree-like leg in front of them. The troll stopped, shaking the leg holding Harry. Not expecting this Harry felt himself get thrown into a stall, the flimsy partition wall collapsing under him.
Dazed, he heard Ron shouting, Hermione’s shrill yelling, a crash and then a much louder crash and very final thump. Extricating himself from the stricken stall he saw the troll, now prone. Neville had his wand out and looked stunned. Ron still held Hermione’s robes. She was on her feet now and had moved towards the door, but they were all still: a tableau staring at the stricken troll. It appeared, Harry saw, to have beaten itself to death with its own club.
Nagara slithered across the tile to Harry and he bent to pick it up. “Cold!” the little snake complained as Harry tried to stand. He felt dizzy and decided to squat back down again. Still slightly dazed he petted the snake, trying to comfort either it or himself.
A series of bangs sounded outside the bathroom and the room was suddenly filled with teachers. Nagara slithered up Harry’s sleeve as he jerked backwards, landing on his bottom amid the wreckage of the bathroom stall.
In the end it was Neville and Hermione who explained that Hermione had been sulking, the boys had felt she ought to know about the troll and had come to take her back to the tower, how they had been intending to be away for only a few minutes, and that the troll should have been in the dungeons, no-where near where they had found it. Harry listened while looking blearily at the floor. He realised he’d lost his glasses when he flew off the troll’s leg and tried to look around for them, but it made his head hurt, so he stopped.
Madam Pomfrey, the matron, fussed around him, declared that he needed to go to the hospital wing for the night, and helped him to get there, trailed by the other three and Professors McGonagall and Snape. Professor McGonagall took five points from each of them for disobeying direct instructions from teachers and then awarded the points back for showing thoughtfulness for their friend. Madam Pomfrey gave all four pepper-up potions, which made steam come out of their ears, and caused Hermione’s hair to become even frizzier. She insisted Harry stay overnight in the Hospital wing for concussion and sent the others back to Gryffindor. They went with very bad grace but, when Professor McGonagall threatened to take another five points for disobeying instructions again, they went.