Switched

"I would like to put it on the record, Harry, that this is a very bad idea," Danny said, following his roommate up the nearest stair, toward the sound of a terrified, high-pitched shriek and a polluted river stench which had to belong to the troll.

Harry looked back over his shoulder, grinning, said "Noted," and continued on without so much as breaking stride, with the same degree of concern for the fact that he was probably going to get himself killed as he'd had when Quirrell came tearing into the Great Hall shouting about a troll in the dungeons, and the entire Feast had erupted into pandemonium, and they were ordered back to their dorms. Which was to say, none.

He had perked up like a dog scenting a gnome, his entire demeanour taking on a new level of intensity, magic practically crackling in the air around him. "Troll? I want to see a troll! Danny, don't you want to see the troll?"

"What? No, I don't want to— Do you have any idea how dangerous trolls are, Harry? They're huge, like Hagrid-sized, and— Where are you going? Harry? No! We are not going to—"

"Well, you might not be going to try to get a look, but I definitely am," Harry had declared, laughing and slipping away into the crowd toward the nearest side-door out of the Hall.

Danny had wavered for several long seconds, long enough for Prefect Morningstar to shout at him to catch up as they herded everyone toward the main door, torn between trying to catch up with Harry and drag him back up to the Tower and just evacuating himself like a sane person.

Long enough that he saw Professor Quirrell— Who everyone seemed to have forgotten in the chaos, which...what the hell? He'd just fainted, in the middle of the Great Hall! Danny didn't like him, but he still thought maybe the Headmaster or Madam Pomfrey or someone should've checked on him. —crawl out from under a table (so, had he just faked fainting? again, what the hell?) and creep toward the same side-door Harry had taken, looking around furtively in a way that couldn't possibly have been more suspicious if he'd tried, but— Was he using an attention-diverting charm or something? Because no one else seemed to notice. Danny had only noticed because of the little twinge from the Mysterious Sowilo carved into his forehead (because apparently carving runes into the head of her infant son was the sort of lunatic thing Bellatrix had done when she was trying to be nice and protect him) that always happened whenever Quirrell was around (even though Harry insisted that Quirrell was about as threatening as a wet noodle). It was consistent enough Danny had started to look for him reflexively when that happened.

Honestly, that — Quirrell acting all suspicious — decided Danny more than anything. He might not want to get anywhere near a bloody troll, but he did want to know what Quirrell was up to.

He'd run into Harry trying to figure out which way the Defence Professor had gone after he left the Great Hall — apparently the other boy had headed downstairs, but changed his mind because it had "felt wrong" and the troll definitely wasn't in the dungeons. (No, he didn't know how he knew that, because in addition to being bloody mad, Danny's roommate was just sort of weird and...eerie like that.) After Danny explained that he still wasn't looking for the bloody troll, he was following Quirrell because he was being weird, Harry had agreed that investigating the Defence Professor was more important than chasing down a troll, because he definitely believed there was something mysterious and suspicious about the stuttering professor, even if he "clearly" had the killing instincts of a particularly pathetic rabbit or squirrel or something. According to Harry. (Danny thought the fact that he seemed so un-threatening was actually more threatening, somehow, than if he were just a normal Defence Professor...insofar as "normal Defence Professors" existed. Whatever.)

Before they could catch up, though — assuming Harry wasn't just striking off very confidently in a completely random direction, and actually had some way of knowing which way Quirrell had gone — they'd run into Snape, who had told them in no uncertain terms to stop running around like idiots and go back to their Tower, and if he found out they hadn't he was going to revoke Harry's permission to read other shite in Potions for two weeks. Since Harry actually respected Snape, this was apparently a good enough threat to convince Harry that it was better to go back to the Tower than continue hunting for the troll (and/or Quirrel). Danny had thanked the professor profusely and begun dragging Harry back toward Ravenclaw.

But then they'd heard a terrified, blood-curdling shriek from the top of a nearby staircase, and a frustrated bellow, and the thud of very heavy footfalls over their heads, and Harry had apparently decided that he really should have been in Gryffindor — come on, Danny, we have to at least see who that was, they might need help! (Honestly, Danny was pretty sure "they might need help" actually meant "I still want to see a troll, and if I have an excuse that I was helping someone, I might not get in trouble for it.")

"HELP! Oh, God! HELP!" the girl the troll had cornered screamed. Danny hadn't recognised her voice, terrified as she was, but it only took one glimpse of her bushy hair in complete disarray to identify Hermione Granger. She had her wand out, but she clearly didn't know any spells that would help her escape. "Lumax!"

Oh, he took that back, that was actually a good try. An absolutely blinding flash of light appeared between the girl and the troll. The enormous creature — stooping to avoid hitting its small, round head on the ten-foot ceiling, wide enough that it seemed to fill half the corridor, with long arms and short, stumpy legs like a grotesque, hairless gorilla, its lumpy grey skin covered only by a ragged loin-cloth, a large club in one hand — bellowed in pain, thrashing blindly at Granger, who seemed little better off than the troll. Probably hadn't realised quite how bright that charm would be. Closing her eyes definitely wouldn't have been enough to stop her seeing spots through her eyelids — the only reason Danny and Harry weren't as blind as the troll was that it had been in the way, shielding them from the painfully bright spell. She tried to sidle around, get out of the corner it had her backed into, but lost her nerve as a wild swing of the club missed her by inches and scrabbled back, pressing herself into a nook behind a statue of a faun instead.

So basically, she just made it angry, on top of frustrated or hungry or whyever it was chasing her in the first place.

Harry obviously agreed, and equally obviously thought that the thing to do when faced with an enraged troll was to pick a fight with it, because of course he did, he was completely insane!

Honestly, Danny wasn't entirely sure how he felt about his roommate. He wasn't very much like Danny (and everyone else) had expected the Boy Who Lived to be, aside from being sort of terrifyingly good at magic.

Danny was very good at magic — charms came easy to him and metamorphs could explain transfiguration like nobody's business. Dora had taught him so much about her favourite subject that he suspected he could pass an OWL in that subject today, if he had to (at least the written part — some of the OWL transfigurations had a higher initialisation threshold than he could manage) — and Mum had been teaching him since he was seven, so he knew much more than practically everyone else in their year, but Harry had been teaching himself magic — wandless magic — since he was three or four, and had picked up literally everything Danny had shown him within a couple of tries.

Well, everything except sketch animation and light illusions, but that was because he was one of those people who was really bad at seeing things as they were in terms of what's visible right now and how that changed as an object moved, not because he couldn't do the magic. He could do sound illusions just fine.

Danny didn't really know what he had expected from the Boy Who Lived. Maybe for him to be an outgoing, popular bloke? Maybe for him to be a little conceited, fame gone to his head? Probably not the ten-year-old saint from some of the worse Boy Who Lived novels, but he definitely hadn't expected him to be nearly as dark as he was — his magic was colder and sharper than Mum's — or for him to be so hyper all the time. He usually stayed up later than Danny (reading in the dark, because he was also just creepy) and woke up before him.

And he was always doing something. Usually a serious, productive, work-like something. Reading textbooks or practising spells or going to the scary librarian's muggle subjects lessons or exploring or helping the groundskeeper (because Dumbledore had apparently decided that Harry had too much free time on his hands, he basically had twenty hours of non-punishment detention every week just to keep him busy) or writing to Danny's mother and studying all that boring Society shite Mum thought was so important for Danny to know, and Danny bloody well hated. Voluntarily. The closest Danny had seen him come to actually relaxing was reading the Ciardha Monroe novels, and even then, he went and compared them to the Ciardha Monroe journals, because it's sort of an important thing about a society, isn't it, how history is represented for kids, versus what actually happened? And also, how cool was Monroe!

He definitely hadn't expected the Boy Who Lived to have been raised by muggles and basically have known nothing about Magical Britain until a month before he started school, and if he'd known that, he probably wouldn't have expected Harry to go about learning everything he could about their country like it was his job, living alone in Knockturn Alley for that month and interviewing perfect strangers about their work and the government and the best places to go for coffee and if there were magical trains other than the Hogwarts Express, and why.

He hadn't expected Harry to be a pushover, but he really hadn't expected him to be as aggressive as he was. Most of the time he was nice enough. Sort of stand-offish and awkward, sometimes, but not a bully or anything. But Danny had absolutely believed him when he'd said he needed to get out of the Castle before he clawed someone's eyes out, and his reaction when Danny had shown him an illusion of himself unconsciously flaring his aura had been...disturbing, putting him very obviously on edge — tense, like he was ready to jump into a fight at any second. But not anxious about it, excited.

The tiny madman very obviously liked doing dangerous shite just for the thrill of it, and he'd been positively upset there wasn't a Duelling Club anymore because he really, really wanted to learn how to fight with magic. Danny honestly wasn't sure whether he had no sense of self-preservation to speak of, or if he was just that confident that he wasn't really going to be hurt doing whatever stupidly dangerous thing he was doing now. Danny might have expected him to go looking for trouble, but in the sense of ferreting out any mysteries or plots going on around the school (like with Quirrell), not in the sense of spending entire nights out in the Forbidden Forest or playing fetch with a thrice-cursed cerberus, even if it was "just a puppy...a really big puppy" or climbing the walls of the Castle.

Or picking a fight with a half-blind, fully enraged bull mountain troll when he obviously didn't know anything about trolls.

How did Danny know that Harry knew nothing about trolls? Because he threw a chain of cutting curses at its back like a suicidal idiot.

Not only were trolls highly resistant to magic, but they healed stupidly quickly. And since cutting their heads off was one of the few ways to actually kill them, they responded to cutting attacks much more violently than they would to blunt force or fire or even explosions. Everyone who knew anything about trolls knew that.

The troll, still half blinded by Granger's charm, wheeled around, roaring a challenge, making it impossible for Danny to hear himself shouting, "Great job, moron!"

Harry, the madman, let out a little giggle. "You should probably get Granger out of here. Diffindo!"

He had good aim, Danny would give him that. The Severing Charm caught the troll right across the face, purple spell light slicing across its nose between its eyes and taking a chunk out of its right cheek, blood spattering across the nearest wall, to the horror of the few portraits which hadn't already fled. And to get an unpolarised spell to do that much damage to a troll, Harry had probably put enough power into it to cut a human's head in half, which was absolutely ridiculous, especially for a bloody first-year. (Had Danny mentioned lately that his roommate was terrifying?)

It didn't last, though. In the three seconds it took for the troll to identify the tiny, stick-wielding human as the threat and charge, the wound was already closed.

"Go left!" Harry snapped, pushing Danny toward the troll's off side and charging toward the monstrous creature himself, screaming like a banshee, which did serve as a distraction, he guessed. The troll wasn't even looking at him, swinging its club at the tiny, fast-moving target which was Harry Potter.

He ducked around a swipe that would have taken his head off if it had connected and dove between the monster's legs, twisting and rolling into a backward somersault, coming back to his knees with another curse already on his lips, aiming at the spot where he'd just been standing and the club the troll brought down nearly a full second too slowly to catch him, cracking the marble of the floor with the force of the impact. "Thrymmátise!"

The club exploded, foot-long splinters flying in every direction. As with Granger's light charm, the troll caught the worst of it, and about half of the shrapnel flew harmlessly down the empty corridor (or rather, puncturing canvases, toppling suits of armour, and breaking windows, but not directed at any of the three students, at least), but Danny had to cast quickly to shield himself from losing an eye, and he didn't even know what Harry had done to make the deadly wave break around him, rather than turning him into a human pincushion. One of his weird wandless spells, maybe? He followed up by transfiguring a few of the impromptu stakes the troll's healing hadn't already pushed out of its body by the time it stumbled around to face him again into freaking spears, increasing their size by a factor of ten and then banishing them, which was surprisingly effective — two of them punched straight through the beast, staggering it. The third dug deep into its gut, forcing it to pull it out before it could resume its attack.

It slumped to its knees, breathing hard and bleeding freely, but Danny was sure it wasn't done for.

He dragged Granger to her feet and out of her nook. "Come on, let's get out of here before it heals!" She nodded frantically, clinging to his arm, unable to take her eyes off the monster. "Harry! Let's go!"

Harry grinned. "You go. I'll stay and distract it."

"Don't be a bloody idiot!"

"I'm not. If we all go, it will follow us. If I stick around for round two, you can get Granger out of here."

Danny, who had sort of been expecting him to say something like that, came back immediately with, "Or, just throwing it out there, all three of us could head upstairs through one of the little narrow secret passages your new friend there wouldn't fit in if he laid down on his side, and—"

Granger interrupted with a terrified little scream, pointing at the troll hauling itself back to its feet behind Harry, still angry, but now much warier of the tiny wizard. "It's moving! Potter, watch out, it's moving!"

He spun on his heel to throw a Bludgeoning Curse at its face, knocking it back off balance like a sucker-punch to the nose, its tiny skull hitting the wall with a very wooden-sounding crack.

The troll retaliated by throwing a nearby bust at him, which he ducked, sniggering. "So, obviously trolls are resistant to magic, and poking holes in it doesn't seem to stick. Any idea how you kill these things, Danny?"

"Er. Cut its head off?"

"Yeah, okay, that kills most things, I think," Harry scoffed. "But what are its weaknesses? Silver? Cold iron? Probably not wooden stakes, since it's already moving again. Cude!"

The troll bellowed at effectively being punched in the face again, sitting down hard in a puddle of its own blood, obviously a little disoriented.

"Iron," Granger said, nearly automatically, Danny thought. She didn't even really seem to be paying attention to what she was saying (most of her attention was clearly on the blood-covered troll, still reeling from the second Bludgeoning Curse) until he and Harry turned to look at her, somewhat surprised. Then she elaborated, "Bodrik the Trollslayer survived a gladiatorial execution by troll armed with an unenchanted iron short-sword before going on to become one of the leaders of the Twelfth Goblin Rebellion." When both boys continued to stare, she grew red. "Professor Binns just talked about him two lessons ago!"

"You actually listen when Binns talks?" Danny said, completely thrown. That was even weirder than her randomly knowing how to kill a troll.

"Of course I do! He's a professor!"

"Yeah, a dead professor..."

"Don't be such a corporealist, Danny. Ghosts are ex-people, too," Harry snarked, in a fairly passable impression of Blaise, which this was so incredibly not the time for. "So, swords are good, then?"

Granger nodded. "I think so? But..."

"Cude! Yes?" Harry asked, hunting through the wreckage of a suit of armour and coming up with a sword that was approximately as long as he was tall.

"But that sword's bigger than you are, and it's for display," Danny pointed out. "It's not sharp. Please, I'm begging you, let's just run?"

"That's what Featherweight Charms are for, and it is now," Harry shot back, casting the charm in question, then running a hand down the length of the blade, edges growing razor sharp in the wake of a silent, wandless charm, as though this was no more difficult than sharpening his quill. (Maybe it wasn't. A lot of the time, watching Harry do magic, Danny had to wonder how much magic really followed the rules everyone thought it did, and how much was just that they thought some things should be harder than others, so they were. Maybe it really wasn't any harder to levitate an X-wing than it was a rock, they all just needed a tiny weirdo who did magic like he breathed and might actually be an elf of some sort to point that out to them.) "You can run, but I'm staying. This is fun."

(Of course, the Yoda comparison broke down as soon as Harry opened his mouth and made it impossibly clear that he wasn't a wise spiritualist sage who had come to understand the fundamental truths of magic through the Power of Zen, but in fact an impulsive, danger-addicted lunatic who rushed headlong into fights with trolls and managed ridiculous feats of magic through the Power of Ignoring the Rules.)

"Fun?!" Granger echoed shrilly. "Are you completely mad?!"

"Yes, he is. You're insane, Harry."

The madman grinned, categorically not denying it. "That may be a significant factor in why it's fun. Doesn't mean it's not."

"Do you even know how to use a sword?" Danny was pretty sure he didn't.

"Er. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, really? I'm not exactly fighting Inigo Montoya here. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

The troll had shaken off the effects of the Bludgeoning Curse more quickly that time, and rather than immediately attacking, it ripped the nearest door off its hinges to use as a shield. And/or flyswatter.

It clearly realised that the sucker-punch that kept hitting it in the face was related to that bolt of blue energy, catching the next one on the door, which was not resistant to magic, but constructed of solid hardwood planks which took no more damage from the curse than the troll's small, rock-like head had.

Harry, accordingly, gave up on the Bludgeoning Curses, instead throwing an illusion of fire behind the troll to drive it out into the middle of the corridor where Harry would have more room to dance around it.

And dance was the only word to describe the fight which ensued, the boy ducking and spinning and sliding around the bloody marble, laughing and throwing the occasional slice or stab at the poor troll's hamstrings and arse.

Poor troll was also accurate, because the troll was very clearly outmatched — slow and clumsy and injured (it had lost a lot of blood, even if the actual wounds had healed, and healing like that had to be tiring, too). Harry was far more mobile. The match-up reminded Danny a bit of a grown man attempting to swat a little yappy, ankle-biting dog with a cricket bat. Not that he'd ever actually seen a grown man try to swat a yappy-dog with a cricket bat, but.

Danny didn't know about Granger, but he was suddenly finding it a bit difficult to be scared of the troll, now that it was a good way down the corridor, its attention fully occupied by Harry. Somehow, neither of them pulled the other away to safety, both transfixed by the sheer absurdity of the fight. Which was why they were still standing there when the Headmaster, along with Professors Flitwick and McGonagall came charging out of a nearby passage, guided by a furious portrait of a mounted knight, galloping through the now-empty frames with his lance in hand. All three of them had their wands out, but all three of them were (at least briefly) as shocked by the scene as Danny.

Then Professor McGonagall shouted, "Potter! What on Earth do you think you're doing?!"

The troll capitalised on Harry's distraction at hearing his name shouted by a very familiar, very disapproving voice, finally managing to make contact and whacking him halfway across the corridor. He hit the wall hard, crumpling to the floor, hopefully unconscious and not dead.

Then the professors sent a trio of stunning spells at the troll, the three spells together enough to overwhelm its resistance and knock it out.

Danny didn't really consciously decide to run to his roommate's side, he just sort of found himself kneeling there, desperately searching for a pulse.

Before he found one, Harry groaned, his eyes fluttering open, their pupils different sizes (not good...). "Ow. Wha'append?"

"You got batted across the corridor by the troll, what do you think happened, you lunatic?"

The other boy just blinked at him, as though his words made no sense (also not good...). Before he could come up with a response, Professor Flitwick bounded over to check on him as well.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Mister Potter, what in Godric Gryffindor's name were you thinking?" he exclaimed, casting a bevy of healing analysis charms Danny recognised, but couldn't cast or interpret himself.

It was probably a rhetorical question, but Harry apparently didn't realise that. "'Ooh, fun?' Now 'm thinking I should lie down..."

"You are lying down," Danny reminded him. Well, he was crumpled into a pile of limbs on the floor, at least. Trying to move him hadn't seemed like the best idea, just in case he hadn't been dead but his back was broken or something.

"Bed. Sleep," he groaned, straightening out his legs and back to actually lie down, fingers fluttering over his torso, poking at his ribs and occasionally wincing.

"My goodness, Mister Potter, don't move!" their Head of House exclaimed. "Just lie still, I'll levitate you to the Hospital Wing as soon as Albus and Minerva get that nasty thing out of the way!"

"Hospital? Don'eed an hospital, 'm fine, really..." He waved the professor away and attempted to sit up to prove it, only to be immobilised for his trouble. Danny could tell he really wasn't okay because he just seemed confused about why his arms and legs suddenly wouldn't move, rather than seriously annoyed.

"You have a concussion, Mister Potter! I'm afraid you will need to spend the night in Madam Pomfrey's care so she can monitor your condition while you recover."

"But what about the Revel?" he asked plaintively. "I said I would go, and—"

"Mate, that's only about five hours from now," Danny reminded him. He wouldn't be in any state to go even if they would let him just go back to their room, rather than having Madam Pomfrey watch him all night.

"I know. Plenty of time for a nap. An' my ribs are only cracked, back's not hurt, I can walk, get off me..."

"How is he, Filius?" the Headmaster asked, vanishing the blood from the floor and repairing the marble slab the troll had broken as he made his way over to them.

"I'm fine," Harry insisted, before Professor Flitwick could answer. "A few cracked ribs, bump on the head. Bruises. Can't move, but that's magic. Lemme up, Professor."

"He has a concussion. I'm taking him to Poppy."

"Nooo... I'm fine, really, I don't need— Just let me take a nap and I can still go to the Revel, just—"

"Hush, my boy," Dumbledore said, in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring way.

Danny thought it sounded a bit patronising, and Harry obviously agreed, glaring at him. "Not your boy, Sir."

The old wizard ignored him. "I'm sorry, Harry, but I'm afraid you will not be fit to attend the Revel tonight."

"Fit enough! I wanna go!"

"Out of the question."

"But—"

"No, Harry, they're right. I'll tell Blaise and Theo what happened. They'll understand. We'll tell you all about it when Pomfrey lets you out."

"You don't understand! I said I would go, and I can, so I have to. Let me up!" he demanded, eyes flashing with frustration, the flare of magic breaking whatever charm Flitwick had used to immobilise him.

"Mister Potter!" their Head of House objected.

"I'm sorry, dear boy, but we really cannot allow you to run off unsupervised in your current state," Dumbledore said, not sounding very sorry at all. Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a Sleeping Charm settled over Harry, forcing him into unconsciousness.