Troll Alert
In the end, Harry found himself unable to complete either goal, unfortunately. Hermione, as it turned out, was in the Girls' Toilets on the first floor, and Harry didn't exactly fancy getting into trouble with about half the schools population by entering - so, he was at a loss about what to do. He ended up asking Parvati to maybe please check on Hermione.
His search for that room Tom was looking for was even less successful - according to Tom, it was on the seventh floor, opposite to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and his (failed) attempts to teach Trolls ballet, but all Harry found there was a stone wall, with no indication that there was a room behind. 'There always was something odd about that room', Tom grumbled. 'Wish I could remember how I first accessed the damned place...'
'A spell, maybe?', Harry asked as he paced the corridor.
'Mmph, no, I don't think so - I might be mistaken, but I think you may need to will the room into revealing itself.'
'So... I just think about wanting to find whatever room his supposedly here?', Harry asked, confused.
'If I'm not mistaken, yes. I know, it sounds stupid, but the place is opposite of that tapestry, I think common sense doesn't really have any place here.'
'Alright', Harry sighed. 'I want to find the room that's hidden here... I want to find the room that's hidden here...'
Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.
'Bloody hell', Tom grumbled.
'Should I try 'Open Sesame'?', Harry cheekily asked.
'Ha ha, hilarious.'
'Why are you desperate to get in there, anyways? Is there something of yours you left behind?', Harry wondered.
Tom shrugged. 'Might be - people used that room to hide all sorts of junk they didn't want found, and I'm curious what interesting things we might find.'
'So, in other words, we're looking for a place where people would hide stuff they don't want anyone else to find... okay, what the hell?'
Harry stared at the freshly appeared doorway in front of him with a bewildered look. 'Is that place for real?'
'Ah, that's how it works', Tom grumbled. 'I knew it was something stupid... well, let's head in.'
Unfortunately, they didn't get the chance to explore the Hiding Room, as time for dinner - and thus, the feast - approached, and Harry, after much deliberation, decided he might as well attend - who knew, maybe this was a chance to make new memories of Halloween?
And at least he wouldn't go to bed hungry this evening, as the Hogwarts food was amazing as always. Whoever was employed to work in the kitchens was hopefully getting proper pay, because they sure as hell deserved it, he thought as he munched on his steak.
'House elves don't get paid in the classical sense', Tom explained near-unprompted. 'They form a bond with whoever employs them and essentially leech off their magic in return for service - they can't live without it, and they genuinely love doing all sorts of housework. Leads to them getting the short end rather often, though.'
'But not at Hogwarts, right?', Harry asked concerned.
'Hah! I seriously doubt that. Place had the highest number of elves working here in my day, and from what I know, their kind always tries to get hired here, so I don't think it's a bad workplace.'
Harry glanced over to where Ron was seated and devouring his food. 'As long as they don't mind having to clean up after people with no table manners.'
He turned to Parvati. "Did you manage to get through to Hermione?", he asked.
The girl sighed. "She's still in the bathroom, but I think I managed to convince her to come back to the dorm - I was looking to bring up some snacks after the feast." She threw Ron a dirty look. "He really overdid it this time."
"Yeah, he did. Hopefully he learned something", Harry grumbled. 'Tom, do you know how to get into the kitchens by any chance?'
'Do you even have to ask?', he answered. 'It's down in the basement, the entrance is another portrait - a fruitbowl, you need to tickle the pear to enter.'
'Alright, I'll head down there in a bit, then, grab a few bites for Hermione, as well...'
'Looking to have dinner with her?', Tom teased. 'My, my, you sure move fast.'
Harry surpressed an eyeroll. 'I'm looking after a friend, Tom - a friend who's not in a good mood right now.'
Tom groaned. 'At least you still got a few years to figure it out', he grumbled just as the doors to the Great Hall swung open and Professor Quirrell hastened inside, face contorted in fright.
"Troll!", he yelled. "Troll - in the dungeons - thought you ought to know."
As the teacher collapsed, panicked murmurs could be heard across the tables. Harry simply groaned. 'Is one decent Halloween too much to ask for?', he wondered.
'Apparently so', Tom grumbled. 'Bloody hell, did that genius have to cause such a ruckus? Some defence 'expert' he is...'
"Prefects, guide your houses back to their dormitories immediately!", Dumbledore instructed loudly.
The prefects obliged, and Percy began yelling out instructions to everyone, especially the first years, and slowly but surely, they started to move towards the stairs.
'I hope Dumbledore realizes that if the troll is in the dungeons, he's sending the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs right into its path', Tom grumbled.
'Pretty sure I saw him head down there with them', Harry said before realizing something. 'Bloody hell, Hermione doesn't know about the troll!'
Tom cursed under his breath. 'And of course, no one else has realized that - bathroom's this way, if you run, you can alert her and get back before anyone else notices.'
Sure enough, Harry slowly fell back before sneaking off in the direction of the toilet, picking up the pace - before coming to a screeching halt when he saw a massive, dark shape grunting and moving down the corridor.
"Oh bugger", he and Tom said simultaneously as the troll moved, dragging a large wooden club on the floor, sniffing around the area before opening a door, sniffing some more and entering.
'Can we just lock it inside?', Harry asked as he ran.
'We could, only that he just went into the girls' bathroom', Tom cursed. 'Damnation, Hermione's as good as dead.'
'Like hell she is', Harry responded and whipped out his wand. 'I can distract it while she makes a run for it - if you know any good spells, Tom, please tell me.'
'Oh, I know plenty of good spells, but they require practice!', Tom grumbled. 'Distract the bloody thing, get her to move, once you're both out, lock the damned door.'
Harry tore the door open and ran into the bathroom - only to find Hermione pressed up against a wall, shaking with fear, screeching with fright as the troll delighted in destroying the sinks.. The beast was over twelve feet tall, with ugly grey skin and a head that was almost comically small in proportion to the rest of its body - and it was headed straight for Hermione. Harrys eyes raced across the room to try and find some means of distracting the beast.
"Wingardium Leviosa!", he cast on a large shard of wall tiling and sent it flying towards the troll, maybe in the hopes of cutting the beast - he suceeded in hitting it, but apparently, the trolls skin was hard enough that the shard simply shattered against it. Still, it got the beasts attention, and it turned away from Hermione and grunted angrily at the puny human that Harry was.
'Well, you got its attention', Tom said. 'Now what?'
"Get out of here, Hermione!", Harry yelled, but to no avail. Hermione waswhite as a sheet, clearly in shock, and simply stood there trembling, while the Troll moved towards Harry - who did the only thing he could think of doing: he ran towards the troll and slid between its legs to Hermione while firing off a Severing Charm at its groin - he missed, the troll simply grunted and brought the club down onto the ground in front of him, as though it wanted to swat the wizard who was buzzing him. Fortunately, Harry was already behind it by that point, with Hermione, but now, he found himself faced with a wholly different problem - namely, the troll was now blocking their exit, and had realized that the two puny humans were behind it.
'Well, you got the damsel, but do you have an escape plan?', Tom yelled.
"Diffindo!", Harry cast again, this time aiming at the trolls chest - and while some scratches appeared on it, the beast came with too hard a skin to cause some serious harm, as not even a sliver of blood showed.
'Yeah, that was it!', Harry yelled in response. 'Do you have anything quick to stop that thing?!'
Tom cursed violently. 'Blast it all', he said. 'I know one curse that'll stop the troll for good. But I'll need to be in control, the spell's too complicated for someone your age, and it requires serious intent to work!'
Harry shook violently as the troll slowly approached, club in hand. 'Alright, just get us out of here alive!', he answered... and suddenly found himself encased in a dark, formless prison - his scar, he recognized, the switching had worked, even if it hurt like hell. He could feel Tom groaning in pain as he fought the pull back into his place, and he saw and felt him raise the body's arm, wand in hand, just as the troll raised its club to bring down on the two students --
"AVADA KEDAVRA!", Tom yelled, using Harrys voice, and a bright green flash erupted from the tip of his wand, that same green flash which haunted Harrys nightmares, and for the briefest of seconds, he could hear his mother scream, begging Voldemort to spare his life, to take her instead, and he inadvertedly felt his consciousness be pulled back front, while Tom yelled in pain as he was yanked backwards, back into the scar --
Harry saw the troll keel over backwards, a stupefied expression on its face, club still in hand, and the room briefly shook as it landed on the floor, and Harry, his wand still in hand, knew just what had happened. He sank to his knees, exhaustion and disgust setting in, disgust for the fact that he had just used the same spell to kill the troll that had killed his parents - not even the fact that he had Tom cast it, he had chosen to let him take control. He couldn't help it, he retched then and there, his dinner landing beside the dead troll, that bloody beast that likely hadn't even realized its own impending doom, and then he started to violently cry.
He barely even heard the door fly open, and he did not notice Professor McGonagall had entered until she stood over him, angrily asking what the hell had just happened before seemingly recognizing his obvious distress and calming down a bit.
"It's alright, you two", she said, surprisingly gentle before quickly shooing Quirell out, and when Harry gasped in pain when he felt Snape try to enter his mind again, she took this as an indicator that the Potions Master was unwelcome, as well. "Let it all out, lad, it's alright now."
Professor McGonagall then turned to Hermione. "Miss Granger, can you maybe explain what has transpired?"
Hermione sniffled. "I... I was hiding in here - Ron, he'd said such nasty things, and then... I heard someone enter, and I smelled this awful smell, and I just... I just froze!", she cried. "I didn't even see Harry enter - I - I - He yelled at me to run, but I... I couldn't - he fired off some spells, one of them, the last one, there was this green flash, and it hit the troll and then it - it just - oh god, is it dead?"
"Shh, shh, don't you worry now, child", the teacher said. "Mister Potter, what exactly were you thinking?"
Harry sniffled as he drew a breath. "When -- when Quirrell came running in, Hermione wasn't at the feast - I realized she had no idea there was t-tr... that it was here. I knew she was in here, so I figured I'd warn her, maybe get her to come with to the dorms, but then I saw it, and I was too far away to get help, so I... I thought if I distracted it, she could escape, and I could lock it in or something... when that... when it didn't work, I just cast spells, tried to keep it from hurting us -- what have I done?" He broke down again, violently crying, and he felt as though he had to vomit again, even though his stomach was already empty.
"You saved your life, and that of Miss Granger", Professor McGonagall gently said. "Come now, you two, let's get you to the Hospital Wing - everything will be alright."