Survivor

Harry Potter was sitting down at his table with Daphne while having absolutely nothing to do once again. Today’s transfiguration was following the general criteria of their classes so far: turning wood into some kind of metal. At the start of the semester, they were turning matches into needles. Now, they were turning a moderately sized stick into a steel pipe. The addition of carbon to the iron to make a strengthened alloy was meant to make it more complicated. Harry, of course, was twenty points richer and inconceivably bored. 

Daphne was making respectable headway compared to the rest of the class, competing head to head with Granger for who would make the most progress besides him today. By the end of the class period, Granger won out by a hair, and Daphne was glaring at the bushy-haired girl and her stick-shaped piece of steel like she was ready to kill both of them. Upon seeing Potter’s smirk, Daphne repressed her anger and gave her signature eye roll.

“It's very easy to act like you have the high ground when you're always first. We’ll see how hard you scowl when we go to defense later.”

Harry nodded his head lackadaisically and took it in stride. It still very much annoyed him that DADA kicked his ass so hard, but he had long since deemed it a lost cause. Just as everyone started to get up, Professor McGonagall approached his table.

“Good morning, Mr. Potter. You performed very well today, as always.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Harry said with a quick glance at Daphne. 

“Do you think you could stay after class for a few moments today? I have something that I wish to discuss.”

Never one to turn down a teacher’s request if he could help it, Harry gave a nod. Once Daphne left the room along with the rest of the students, Harry walked up to McGonagall’s desk and took a seat at a chair that sat in front of it. He waited patiently for the professor to clean her chalkboard before she, too, sat down to speak.

“You are unbelievably skilled at my subject, Mr. Potter,” she told him. “So skilled, in fact, that I do not believe you will gain much from the rest of this semester’s class.”

Harry gave a small nod. It was true; he had been thinking exactly the same thing since the first day of class. That being said, he waited for her to get to whatever it was she wished to actually tell him.

“You know, I told you that your father was something of a prodigy in this field. I am here to tell you now that he did not come anywhere near close to what you are capable of in his first year.”

Like with every time his parents were mentioned around him, he treated the information with the reverence he felt it deserved.

“Did you know him well?” Harry asked quietly.

McGonagall let a small, kind smile grow on her face, “Yes, I did. I knew both of your parents very well, especially James. Charlus Potter, your grandfather, was a good friend of mine back in the day, so I knew his son from a young age. I am… assuming that you do not hear about your parents often?”

Harry concealed his emotions but remained truthful, “Not from a reliable source, Ma’am.”

An air of sympathy took over her face, and the woman leaned forward in her chair before crossing her arms on the table in front of her. She looked at him straight in the eye and made her decision.

“I cannot do much for your current predicament in my class besides giving you more advanced work that I will not be able to personally supplement during our class time, but what I can offer you is an hour of my time at noon on Saturdays. If you would like to come to this classroom at that time, we can have tea while I talk to you about your parents and teach you some of the more exciting bits of my subject.”

Harry smiled as if a god had just offered him a sacred boon. This was an opportunity that was stolen from him for his entire life! He could finally hear what his parents were like from someone who actually knew them. 

“I would love that, Professor. Is there anything else?”

“No, Mr. Potter, have a good Halloween.”

“Thank you, professor.”

With that, he exited the room to find Daphne waiting by the door, leaning against the wall. Once she saw him swing open the door, they started walking together. Halloween at Hogwarts was something else. The candles in the Great Hall were replaced with floating jack o'lanterns that would hover above the students and talk about them behind their back every once in a while, skeletons had a habit of dancing across the halls to Halloween tunes that Harry hadn’t heard before in the muggle world, and suits of armor seemed to enjoy trying to spook whoever happened to be walking past them during the school day. Dumbledore even replaced his huge wizard hat with a twisted, skeletal tree, which acted as a perch for his phoenix, when he announced that they would be hosting a Halloween feast. 

All of the festivity was somewhat exciting for Harry who spent every Halloween stuck in his cupboard while Dudley got to dress up and take to the streets with his friends. Professor Flitwick even handed out strange candies after his class yesterday! It was the first piece of candy he had ever received for Halloween, and he doubted that he would forget the man’s kindness anytime soon. 

“What did Professor McGonagall want?” Daphne asked him casually.

“She wanted to offer me advanced lessons on Saturdays,” he answered without telling her about the mention of his parents. 

She wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Teachers were known for giving private lessons to people who excelled in the subjects they taught. Magic was too dangerous for people to be skipping grades, so teachers usually appeased their higher-level students by offering them an easily more tantalizing option to attend private tutoring. Harry felt an apt amount of pleasure that Professor McGonagall apparently saw him as one of the students worthy of such treatment. 

Their only other class for the day was DADA, so the two of them decided to hang out around there until class started. After that, they were going to go back to the Slytherin dorms and practice the levitation charm they learned the day before until they felt good enough to use it on an examination. It took a few hours before the professor opened his door, and they were the first ones in when he did.

Once all of the seats were filled, Professor Quirrel stepped up to the podium in his classroom and began his lecture.

“Hello, students, today is Halloween,” he paused as the entirety of his class awaited whatever he would say next. As it turned out, his no-nonsense style of teaching garnered their respect. “As such, I will let you choose what creature we speak of today, even if it is beyond the scope of the class. Any magical creature or being is up for discussion. First come first serve, so say what you want to learn about quickly.”

Of course, when given a choice, children would choose to learn about the things their parents had told or warned them about during their childhoods.

“Dementors!” the pureblood students requested without a second to think. 

Voldemort had to stop himself from smiling in a way that he shouldn’t when the suggestion of Dementors hit him. They held a soft spot in his heart as one of the only creatures he couldn’t kill. Everyone feared him; even the most powerful of creatures respected him. Dementors, though, cared very little about him, and it was difficult to show them otherwise. All they cared for was food, and if Voldemort could not provide that, they would be just as much of a nuisance for him as they were for everyone else, possibly more considering it was not a common occurrence for a Death Eater to have a Patronus. 

“You wish to speak of dementors?” He smiled when all of the students nodded their heads. “You will not be capable of doing any of the things we speak of in this lecture, but I promise that you will walk out of this room with nothing but the best theoretical knowledge of how to deal with dementors as is possible to impart upon you in an hour.”

Professor Quirrel began teaching, and all throughout the lesson, Harry felt the nagging compulsion to speak with the professor about the things he said. The stranger was adamantly against it, but something about the man just appealed to him. The DADA professor thought so similarly to himself that he couldn’t help but want to talk to him despite the stranger’s warnings. Even if the man was dangerous, did that mean his knowledge wasn’t worthwhile? Was Harry in danger when he could teleport away with the Zouwu anytime he wanted? 

“It is both humorous and worrying that your hubris only shows when dealing with one of the two people whom I actually want you to treat with fear.”

The stranger possibly had a point, but it was the middle of the day, everyone knew where he was, and his desire to resolve his conundrum was too strong for him to deny; so when class ended, he approached the man at his pedestal. Professor Quirrel was walking over to his desk at the back of the classroom when he sensed someone behind him and glanced to see who it was. When he saw which of his students decided to stay after to speak with him, an intrigued, deadly grin grew on his face.

“Mr. Potter,” the man said in a silky, smooth voice. “I do not believe we have spoken outside of class before today. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The man sat at the chair behind his desk and gestured for Harry to take a seat. Once they were both comfortable, Harry asked what he was dying to know.

“... Sir, you talked a lot about dementors today, but I'm really confused about an aspect of the lesson.”

The man squinted as if he was somewhat disappointed. 

“Elaborate,” he demanded with a subtle power behind his voice that forced Harry to respond.

“It’s just… you said that spells can’t kill them, and a Patronus only truly repels them, but you also said that they can be caught on fire, and you said that fire can scare them. How can they be scared of fire if it can’t hurt them?”

Just like that, the unbearable pressure went away, and a large smile grew on the man’s face. Whatever Harry said pleased his professor greatly. 

“I will answer with a question, Mr. Potter. When you think about your worst fear, the thing you dread beyond anything else, is it death or pain?”

Harry froze for a moment and thought about it. The answer was that he saw pain as inconsequential. Death was something he'd obviously rather avoid, but it wasn’t a real fear for him. It wasn’t even in his top ten. There were quite a few fears, actually, that he would explicitly choose death before ever experiencing again.

“No sir,” he answered.

“Then why would you assume that an immortal has no fears?”

It made a lot of sense. Professor Quirrel really was something else. He read so many autobiographies about adventures with magical creatures involved, so he knew about dementors before even stepping foot on the grounds of Hogwarts, but never had he heard someone describe the creature as something more than an abomination that does nothing but feed. Professor Quirrel grounded them, made them feel relatable and understandable… defeatable, even.

“What about fire makes an immortal fear it?”

Professor Quirrel smirked once again and leaned back in his chair, “You tell me, Mr. Potter. If you were immortal, literally incapable of choosing death, what would you fear?”

Harry needn't contemplate for a second.

“Being trapped.”

The response was immediate. That was, of course, his greatest fear anyway, but it would be doubly so if he couldn’t die. At least if someone confined him now, he could escape to death’s arms instead of facing the agonizing torture of helplessness. If that option was taken from him, then being trapped would be something he could not escape and so very much worse because of it. Professor Quirrel’s face was almost split in two by his grin.

“Very good, Mr. Potter. Yes, dementors care little for being attacked by anything, but I promise you that they will begin to panic when they realize you are capable of confining them. That, however, does not explain why fire, an element that cannot physically contain them, scares them so much. Think harder and tell me what would scare you the most if you were unkillable.”

Harry tried as hard as he could, and he was shocked to find that his second greatest fear was the answer. It was scary, somewhat, that the dementors shared his most intimate fears. Perhaps the fears of someone who did not care about death were the same, by necessity, as those to whom death was not applicable. 

“... Living powerless… Sir.”

Professor Quirrel looked more pleased than Harry had ever seen him. Power in its rawest form almost suffocated him where he sat, but he held on nonetheless.

“You are truly brilliant, Mr. Potter. It makes me feel… liberated to find a student who comes to such astoundingly accurate conclusions on their own. Yes, you are right. Dementors cannot die, so being without their powers would be agony of the highest order, especially since they need them to eat. Their power, as you know, finds its domain in the cold and the darkness. They consume heat, sap life, and smother light. Flame, though, gives all three in equal measures. To be engulfed in fire is synonymous with being powerless when it comes to a dementor. A Patronus, oddly enough, does the same thing as fire in a more direct way. Controlling an immortal is not so different from controlling anyone else, Mr. Potter. All you have to do is find what they fear. ”

A shiver ran down Harry’s back, and he had to struggle to keep a reaction from showing on his face. Now, he understood. Professor Quirrel was a brilliant wizard, yes, but the stranger did not respect him just for his magical prowess; the stranger respected Professor Quirrel because of the way he thought. The man understood what made life tick. Professor Quirrel was dangerous in far more ways than one. It was scary to watch the man break down how to bring something like a dementor to its knees both physically and metaphorically. 

“Enjoy your Halloween, Mr. Potter. Come to me if you wish to have another one of these enlightening conversations again.”

Harry nodded and walked from the classroom with a barely controlled shudder in his legs. He regretted starting that interaction almost as much as he reveled in the knowledge he gained. He had the feeling that the offer just made by Professor Quirrel could give him knowledge beyond anything this school could give him, but was it truly worth getting closer to a man who obviously earned the wariness that the stranger had for him? He knew the answer before he even asked the question. 

Knowledge was power, of course.

Leaving the DADA classroom, he once again found Daphne waiting for him. The two of them began their walk to the Great Hall. They wanted to fetch a small snack before going back to the dungeons, so they decided to take a small detour. On their way, they heard a voice that neither of the two particularly wanted to hear.

“It’s wingardium leviOsa, not leviosA. The bint couldn’t shove her wand any further up her own arse if she tried. No one cares about the bloody levitation charm.”

Who else could possibly be here to mar their peaceful morning if it wasn’t Ronald Weasley? The boy had become a persistent pain in their backsides ever since Harry made the Slytherin quidditch team. Harry, of course, knew that the reason Weasley tended to stay out of their business at the beginning of the semester had everything to do with Longbottom tightening the redhead's metaphorical reins. As time passed and Harry annoyed him once again by making his house’s team, Weasley apparently decided that it was worth it to start expanding his horizons from Draco Malfoy and butt heads with the big kids despite Longbottom's apparent disapproval. 

Daphne and Harry were quite a bit higher on the totem pole than Malfoy, Harry due to his transfiguration abilities, and Daphne due to her indisputable connection to him (though her skills in potions were particularly astute), so Weasley probably felt that starting conflicts with them instead of Malfoy lifted his own reputation by association. In reality, the only thing Weasley was even slightly respected for was his prowess in DADA, and his own skill in that subject was vastly outshone by Longbottom. His silly squabbles with Slytherins did little to help the way everyone else viewed him, and his problems seemed to finally extend from Slytherin to his own house due to that fact. 

Granger, one of the few Gryffindors that Harry could actually tolerate in small doses, heard the crude insult. Unfortunately, she did not deal with it like the rest of Weasley’s usual targets. Instead of pushing back and realizing that Weasley was respected by no one who wasn’t among Longbottom’s small circle of cohorts, she crumbled under the harsh words and gave Weasley the validation and pleasure he wanted. She pushed past the small group of laughing friends and ran away with tears in her eyes and sobs in her wake.

“Classy, Ron,” Neville snapped with just a dab of irritation coloring his disappointed tone.

Well, at least someone had a problem with it among Weasley’s friend group. The fact that it was Neville irked him, but at least he didn’t just get away with it completely. Still, Harry was having a good day before Weasley interrupted it, and it was hard to pass up an opportunity to mess with such an aggravating human.

“Damn, Weasley, you have such a way with girls, don’t you?” Harry snidely asked the self-satisfied boy. 

“What’s it to you, Potter?” the redhead clapped back with an ample amount of venom.

“Oh, nothing,” Harry drawled in response. “I could just swear that I heard you complaining about her correcting your pronunciation of one of the simplest spells we're going to learn all year. Are you telling me you're actually struggling with it?”

There were no Slytherins around to back him up like there usually was because Harry and Daphne left DADA late. Still, Ronald had charms with Ravenclaw today, and all of them were already suitably annoyed by Weasley’s attitude as well. A small gaggle of ravens laughed under their breaths around him even as most of the Gryffindors attempted to bind together in the interest of not letting a snake attack one of their own.

“Oh, bug off, Potter,” said a boy with the last name of Finnigan. “I don’t wanna hear shite from the one who still can’t cast a tickling jinx.”

Daphne was a vicious girl when it came to her ability to weave words together. She could tear Harry apart and did so on a regular basis. She was also, as it turned out, extremely protective. The blonde very much followed the idea of, “Only I am allowed to hurt my friends,” and it showed whenever someone insulted him in a way that she perceived as malicious.

“Oh?” she asked with her eyes innocently looking at the ceiling and a pointer finger on her chin. “Could you tell me what your class rank is again, Finnigan? I only keep count of the top twenty.”

Finnigan’s face turned red with anger as more laughter from the Ravenclaws started accompanying the two Slytherins’ insults. The unfortunately dull boy sputtered under the pressure, and Ronald, always the predictable hothead, was the first to draw his wand. The laughter turned into gasps, jeers, and cheers of students who wanted to egg on the conflict. 

'Threat,' Harry’s wand whispered in his ears, but he forced its reaction down this time. 

There were moments when he wanted his wand to respond with its usual relentless force, but he was the decision-maker in this relationship, and he wasn’t about to let his wand go wild anytime it wanted just because some incompetent prick decided to start a fight. The Irish one drew his wand second, and a few of the more rambunctious Gryffindors followed. It was some kind of pack mentality that only applied to idiots. It didn’t matter who started the fight or how stupid they thought it was, they would rather go down with the idiots they knew than let them fall alone for their mistakes. 

The fingers of Harry’s right hand gently caressed the handle of his wand from its position in his front pocket even as a taunting grin grew on his face. Between getting on the quidditch team, being top of his class by far in transfiguration, and his conflicts with Weasley and the rest of Gryffindor, Harry and Daphne garnered a bit of a “take no shit” reputation throughout the two months they'd spent in the castle thus far, so it was of no surprise to anyone that they stood their ground in the face of a bunch of wands. All of them were so ignorant and naive, pulling lethal weapons out just because they were a little miffed. They didn’t understand that all of these overreactions just made them look silly and detracted from their impact and perceived power. It was hard to take them seriously when they drew their wands at the end of every argument. 

“Are you sure you want this, Weasley?" Harry asked with a hint of malice traveling in the undercurrent of his question. "I don’t think you want this.”

Everyone else might think that his incapability with DADA made him useless here, but Harry knew differently. He still hadn’t revealed Jason to the student populace, but the snake was hidden under his robes and ready to go. He was also aware that his wand was apparently fucking wicked when it wanted to be. It shot at Quirrell without an ounce of hesitation on his first day of class, and he was oddly confident that it would do so again if it had to.

The tension grew by the second until Harry was almost sure that a spell would be cast. That was when the tension was broken by the best possible person in the castle.

“And just what is going on here?” came the condescending, low drawl of Professor Snape. “... Well? My question was not rhetorical.”

“Finnigan, here, decided to insult Harry’s intelligence due to his performance in DADA. I was confused, so I asked Finnigan what his rank was. I don’t know why it made them all so angry, but they decided to pull their wands instead of giving an answer.”

Professor Snape’s smirk could’ve cut through the outer walls of the castle. 

“Hmmm… I believe he was somewhere around ninety-seven the last time I checked the rankings, Miss Greengrass,” Professor Snape told her and the rest of the audience with a neutral look that was actually anything but. “As for everyone with their wands out: Finnigan, Weasley, and Thomas… you will be spending your Halloween feast with Caretaker Filch.”

“WHAT!?” Weasley shouted with a rage that could melt the floors with its intensity. “They started it!”

Professor Snape glanced around the room with a gently tapping foot and a subtle hum, “That is odd, Mr. Weasely, because it seems like they are the only ones without wands in their hands. Do not make this worse for yourself. Put your wand away and go to Caretaker Filch. I will know if you do not.”

The redhead shoved his wand into his robes with a growl and stared at Professor Snape with a fire in his eyes Harry had never seen in another person before. It was almost impressive that Weasley could come up with such an extreme amount of hatred out of nowhere. He was also severely disappointed at the same time. That look was the same that Harry had when his uncle used to punish him after Dudley fucked something up. To think that Weasley was so sheltered and spoiled that he could look that way at a man punishing him for drawing a wand on another student. 

“Fucking snake. You’ll get it soon,” Ron snarled at Harry under his breath as he walked by.

Looking up at Professor Snape, Harry received a small nod, and the man walked away in a billow of black fabric. Once he was gone and the crowd dispersed, Harry gave a wink to a decidedly undisturbed Neville Longbottom and walked away with Daphne at his side. 

The Great Hall was absolutely beautiful during the feast. Professor Flitwick displayed his prowess with charms at the beginning of the festivities by enchanting the shadows to dance along the walls like they were performing some kind of Broadway play. The atmosphere was lively and fun, especially at the Slytherin table. What was usually one of the more reserved tables in the hall was currently hosting the most rambunctious conversations due to the fact that the first years were having the time of their lives picking on the absent Gryffindors. 

“I can’t believe the Weasel pulled his wand!” Malfoy guffawed from the other side of the table. “My father always said they were a bunch of lowlives, but I didn’t realize it was this bad!”

Harry and Daphne exchanged a look from their positions next to each other, and Natalie rolled her eyes from across the table. The majority of the team didn’t sit with Harry most of the time, but Natalie and her friends decided to stay occasionally. Most of the team generally disliked Malfoy due to his complaints about their teammate, but Natalie was much more irked than the rest mostly because Pucey decided to drag her name into the gutter with him as his "partner in crime" or some such nonsense. Honestly, they played on a team together and kicked ass. Harry would hardly consider that to be some kind of nefarious scheme.

The rest of the Slytherins, though, were having great fun alongside Malfoy at the moment. Apparently, it was not common at all for students to be given detention during a holiday feast. Not even the Gryffindors' Head of House could fight for them when so many students and a teacher caught them with their wands pulled on unarmed students, so that was where the dice landed.

*Clink!* *Clink!* *Clink!*

All of the students looked up at the Headmaster as the bearded man tapped a fork against his glass. Albus Dumbledore stood up with a kind smile and began to speak.

“Hello, students, and welcome to yet another Halloween Feast at Hogwarts. We are right in the middle of our semester. To the ones of us taking important exams this year: enjoy the feast and savor the time you have to relax. To the ones of us who are new: take this time to acclimate yourself to the nature of our school; you have a long road to travel yet.”

As he took a seat, food appeared on all of the tables, and noise exploded around the hall. Harry began to stack his plate to the max with as much food as he could grab. Quidditch practice was three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The amount of effort he put into those practices made his appetite spike like never before. If he would’ve known that physical exertion was all he needed to bring his body back into the realm of being healthy, he would’ve started flying like a demon much earlier. Finally, after an entire summer of eating and half of a semester, he was actually starting to look normal for a kid his age. 

Harry was about halfway done with his meal when something made the hair on the back of his neck raise. The beast within him was very unhappy about something, and he didn’t know what. Similarly, he caught Professor McGonagall looking around the hall with squinted eyes. She was an animagus too, the only other one in the castle as far as Harry knew. If both of them were reacting badly, then something was amiss. 

*BAM!*

The closed doors of the Great Hall shuddered and shook. Something big just slammed into it from the other side. Everyone in the hall went quiet and stared at the door for obvious reasons.

*BAM!*

There it was again. Something was trying to get in, and if the beast didn’t like it, then Harry was sure that he wouldn’t either. Harry looked up to the head table and analyzed Albus Dumbledore. The old man seemed to be faintly curious about the disruption, but it made Harry feel much better that Dumbledore didn’t look honestly anxious in the slightest. 

*CRACK!*

The thing smashed into the door one last time, and it broke under the force. The doors flew off of their hinges, and through the demolished entrance leapt a gigantic dog. It was probably as tall as Harry’s animagus form, but it was thankfully not quite as long. Its size, though, was hardly the most disturbing part of the creature. Its hide was covered by sleek, pointy crystals colored a deep, elegant greenish-blue. The crystals framed the thing’s face, leaving only its shining eyes and open maw unprotected. Its armor jutted out at its elbows and knees, and its crystal-encased claws scraped across the ground and left marks in the stone floor as it crept forward. It was huge and menacing. It swept its head across the hall, looking for anything that looked to be a threat. Before it could take another step, Albus Dumbledore stood from his seat and raised his wand.

Harry could do nothing but marvel at the expert usage of magic the old headmaster put on display over the next few seconds. Dumbledore's wand flowed like water, and the effects of his magic made it seem as though the headmaster used multiple spells at the exact same time. The doors were lifted from the ground and simultaneously placed on either side of the beast to restrict its movement. At the same time, the floor rippled as if it was turned into a liquid. Like the dog was standing on quicksand, it sank into the stone floor and was rendered helpless in seconds. 

Everyone was staring in awe at the trapped hound as the floor solidified and kept it in place. Harry, though, had eyes only for the headmaster. 

The stranger smugly huffed under his breath.

Twice in one day, his advice to Harry was validated. Harry wasn’t sure who he was more intimidated by anymore. Certainly, Professor Quirrel was a very powerful and intelligent man. Looking at Albus Dumbledore in the moment; with his magic pulsing around him, his eyes twinkling with power, and his cloak billowing from the force of his own magical output; the man looked like danger personified. Was this what Gellert Grindelwald saw before he did battle with the strongest wizard of their era? Harry couldn’t even begin to imagine standing before that when things were about to come to blows. 

Shouts, screams, and whoops filled the hall as the students reacted to the danger and Dumbledore’s response to it. It was pandemonium, and no one knew what was going on.

“STUDENTS!” Dumbledore shouted. The entire hall went dead silent in an instant. No one, not even Malfoy, was going to disobey that man after such a display of magical prowess. “That… is a viridian hound. They are armored, carnivorous, and pack hunters. Prefects, Head Boy and Girl, you will stay here with Professor McGonagall and our Groundskeeper, Hagrid. Your job is to keep the students together and safe. The rest of us will deal with the intrusion.”

Harry watched the head table as the professors went to do what they had to do. During his watching, he noticed that Professor Snape seemed to be particularly bothered by something even as he took a vial from his cloak and spelled it into the creature, making it pass out where it stood in just a few seconds. What was bothering the man, though, he couldn’t tell, but there was more going on behind the scenes than everyone else thought. 

“Interesting…” the stranger hummed in his head.

“What?” Harry asked.

“Viridian hounds are very difficult to control. Someone went through a lot of trouble to get them in here.”

“You think someone snuck them in?”

“Oh, certainly,” the stranger confirmed. “The dogs are smart, but they aren’t native here, and they wouldn’t particularly care to come inside of a castle like this. The question isn’t if they were brought in, but why someone took the effort to bring them at all.”

Harry understood the stranger’s curiosity. It was something that he wanted to know as well. If someone was going to bring them in, then there must have been some kind of motive. Why would they want to bring something like that into a school though?

“I am certain that it is Quirrell. The only reason someone would need those hounds would be for a distraction. Someone from the outside would be caught by the castle wards immediately, and Quirrell isn’t here for no reason. He is the only one who could be up to something here.”

It was certainly a theory. The real problem was that Harry had no clue why someone would want to come to the school in the first place. Professor Quirrell could handle a bunch of magical dogs; that wasn't up for debate. Why, though, would someone so powerful focus their attention here? It could have perhaps been the Boy Who Lived, but if the perpetrator’s target was a first-year, why would he perform his attack during the one time when every person who could possibly give him help would be in the exact same room with him? There was no reason for something valuable enough to cause trouble like this to be in a school either. Surely, this kind of stuff should be going down in the ministry or somewhere with more defensive measures. 

“You don’t understand enough about our world, Harry. Things are different here than with the muggles. The government isn’t necessarily the strongest entity in our world like it is in the mundane. That is only true in the mundane world because power comes with weaponry and technology there. Here, power is given to whoever can use their magic the best, and everyone has magic. 

“Albus Dumbledore is more than just a man. The world is either in awe of him or absolutely terrified. When he entered the war against Grindelwald, the entirety of the Axis alliance released a run-on-sight order for everyone except their Mages. There were possibly eight sorcerers in the opposing armies aside from Grindelwald himself who could fight with Dumbledore and survive. The rest of their battle wizards were told to avoid confrontation completely. That is the man we are dealing with. If Dumbledore wants something valuable hidden in his school, not a single person alive could contest him, not in the United Kingdom.”

That was something Harry had trouble comprehending. Muggles simply didn’t possess enough power on their own for him to have a reference to compare the situation to. He was attempting to reconcile his apparently whacky professor with a man whom entire countries deemed to be too dangerous for their armies to battle without a select few individuals on the front lines. The very thought was inconceivable, but if the stranger was to be believed, then it was true no matter what he could personally wrap his head around. Certainly, the headmaster’s effortless handling of a supposedly very dangerous creature was indicative of a scary combatant. 

Actually, now that he thought about it, didn’t Dumbledore warn them about the third floor? He supposed that something could be hidden there. It would explain the interest of a third party and give an understandable need for a distraction.

“The what?” 

“The third-floor corridor. You were there for the conversation; it happened during the entrance feast. Dumbledore said to avoid it or die, basically.” Harry responded, surprised that the stranger actually managed to miss something.

“When you are walling your mind off with enough competency to keep the likes of Albus Dumbledore and Quirrell from viewing your thoughts, then you can criticize my inability to focus on a seemingly innocuous entrance speech,” the stranger snarked at the boy. “But it does make sense. This distraction could be a method for him to check things out. With all of the professors in direct combat with a pack of magical hounds, he could be feeling out whatever Dumbledore has in store for potential thieves.”

Harry didn’t do anything physically to express his agreement, but he did most definitely agree. Admittedly, the stranger’s theory only really worked if his personal opinions of Quirrell were right and the DADA teacher was the only one in the castle with something to hide. Harry could only vouch for the fact that the man was dangerous, but he also didn’t know about half of the staff, so he couldn’t make a decision one way or another on the potentially nefarious motives of anyone else. 

There was a pause between the two of them which Harry spent looking between Daphne and Natalie respectively. His pureblood friend was as composed as ever. She really did have an excellent amount of control over her body language. She displayed nothing but the utmost confidence. Natalie was her usual enigmatic self. Harry could tell that she was still practically gushing over Dumbledore’s impressive showcase of magic. Neither of the two seemed to be worried at all about their own safety. 

“I think you should take advantage of this opportunity as well, Harry.”

… What?

“Don’t tell me you forgot your motto already,” the stranger asked with a smile in his voice that Harry could practically feel. “Knowledge is power. There are few pieces of advice more wise and useful than that. There are things going on here that neither of us understand. You either control the game, or the game controls you.”

Harry was going to protest. His inclination toward preserving himself was almost enough to convince him to leave things well enough alone, but the weeds of doubt and fear could not suffocate the seeds planted by the stranger. Harry could see the chains threatening to wrap around him. As much as he loathed going along with the stranger’s advice, the man was absolutely right. 

This school was not simply a place to teach children at the moment. There were dangerous games of high risk being played around him, and both he and his friends were getting caught in the middle. There were deadly hounds roaming the castle for reasons he did not know. Plans and schemes were already in action, and the very school itself was being used as the stadium. He was already in the arena, so he either played the game too or hoped that those around him could keep his head attached to his shoulders. All he ever wanted was freedom, and the latter option would be anything but. 

“How?” was all Harry asked in response.

For the first time since he found the necessary emotions within the boy for him to take a legitimate form, he truly felt that Harry rose to the occasion. Surely, the boy was prodigious, smart, and talented. The stranger would even admit that the boy actually managed to impress him with a few of the things he’d done so far this year such as managing to make the Slytherin team against all odds. What he didn't see in the boy was the drive, the ambition! The boy wanted to master magic, yes, but he didn't want to do anything with it. The goal was without direction, a whim at best. True power came with conviction, with desire!

This was the drive he wanted to see! There was no particular reason for Harry to risk his neck here. There was no underlying cause to this besides gaining power.

“You have been keeping your most versatile and powerful abilities hidden. Keeping them a secret, though, doesn’t mean not using them at all.”

All of the professors gathered at the broken door and followed Dumbledore into the halls. The headmaster turned around and swept his wand, repairing the doors perfectly and reattaching them to the opening that no longer existed. Harry was further impressed by the headmaster when the wooden doors were transfigured into metal, utilizing the stuff he'd been doing in transfiguration all semester for something practical and worthwhile. Tendrils of gripping iron grew from the edges of the door like vines and dug into the stone wall of the castle, efficiently sealing the entrance. Harry doubted that even a creature as large and strong as those hounds could smash it down now, possibly including himself. 

The students were now alone with McGonagall, Hagrid, the Prefects, and the Head boy and girl. Certainly, this was much better for him than it was before when the entirety of the staff was keeping watch, but he still did not know exactly how he was supposed to remove himself surreptitiously. He wasn’t worried about anyone in Slytherin outing him if he left, but he would get caught for sure if he didn’t do something spectacularly brilliant. The problem was that he was not sure how transfiguration could get him out of here, and that was the only subject where he felt like he could do anything of true brilliance. 

“Oh, Harry,” the stranger drawled with a smirk. “When will you learn to stop underestimating the power of magic? You can do so much more than you give yourself credit for.”

Harry was about to contest that statement when his mind was assaulted with foreign images. His head began to pound with the force of extra memories and experiences digging into his brain. It hurt like hell, but it was enlightening and invigorating at the same time. 

Serpensortia: A conjuration that turns air into any snake of the caster’s desire. 

He had countless memories of a handsome, young boy casting the spell in his school days. Harry was oddly confident that those memories combined with his transfiguration prowess would allow him to cast the spell without problems. What was a problem, however, would be if he could pump out enough power to make the spell useful. A snake or two wouldn’t be a problem, even large ones, but they would not be enough to distract an entire hall. Harry wasn’t sure if he could conjure enough of them to keep everyone distracted enough to disappear without attracting attention.

“Yes, this conjuration is not difficult at all, especially for someone of your particular talents and affinity for snakes. Your power, though, would be a problem. As prodigious as you are at transfiguration, you are still a child. Remember this, Harry, there are always more ways than one to accomplish your goals with magic. It is as adaptable as you make it. If one avenue is out of your grasp, find one that isn’t.”

Once again, Harry was floored by the amount of knowledge the stranger held. It wasn’t even just his toolbox of magical spells but his overall grasp of how magic worked too. He felt as if he was speaking to a true master of his field sometimes when the man came out with wisdom like that. 

Harry forced the cringe to stay off of his face as he was assaulted by another type of spell he didn’t know. 

Gemino: It was a duplication spell.

Harry’s specialty wasn’t charms, but he was still quite talented in the field. There was a subtle application of the spell, though, that would serve his needs nicely. The stranger was right; while he could not directly conjure a massive amount of snakes from thin air, he could most definitely conjure one and duplicate his creation with little trouble. It would, of course, be much easier to create more of what already existed than to make a ton of them from scratch. 

“Be subtle with it, Harry. You must choose your target carefully. Keep in mind how the gemino charm works. Send it where it will have the greatest effect.”

He did exactly that. From the stranger’s personal experience with the spell, he knew exactly how the charm functioned. The spell was fundamentally a reaction-based duplication of mass. It responded to forces acting upon it. When something pushed hard enough on its surface, it would trigger the reaction, the item would heat up, and then it would duplicate.

Placing his hand into his robe pocket and grabbing his wand, Harry flipped it around in his hand and pointed the front end of it up the sleeve of his robe. He laid his head upon his folded arm in mimicry of his usual displays of boredom, and he used that arm to hide his face from view.

“Serpensortia,” he whispered under his breath. 

Starting from the tip of his wand, the tail end of a coral snake was built from the molecules of air within his robe. The snake coiled around his arm as it formed, staying tight to his limb just like he wanted and keeping its form from pressing against his clothing and alerting those around him. It was about two feet long, perfect for being covert, but it was colorful and alerting. Once he attracted attention, the snake was sure to look dangerous. That was what he needed: something small enough to remain undetected but had enough pizazz to hold someone’s gaze once it revealed itself. 

“Go through the bottom of my robes and target a younger Ravenclaw. Someone older than first year but not one of the upperclassmen,” Harry whispered to the snake once it wound its way up to the collar of his robes. 

Jason was not happy at all with the intrusion of his space, but he obediently made way for the coral snake to go down Harry’s robe and exit on the floor by his feet. Once it was free of his robes and not touching him anymore, he flipped his wand back around and pointed it at the coiled serpent.

“Gemino,” he whispered.

Harry smirked to himself when he felt his magic wrap around the conjured snake. His new companion began to slither under the table, keeping itself from brushing another student and searching for an opening to cross tables. He couldn’t see his snake without looking suspicious, but as it was his conjuration, there was a certain level of awareness between the two of them via his magic.

The snake turned out to be just as intelligent as Jason when it came to completing his given task. It displayed patience and awareness that Harry was certain any ordinary snake would not be capable of replicating, and when it passed between tables, it did so completely unnoticed by the anxious and distracted children. The coral snake went under the Ravenclaw table and approached the foot of a child that Harry presumed to be around second or third-year. 

That was very good. His target needed to be of a particular skill level. The snake needed a force to press against it hard enough to trigger the duplication. A first-year would be completely incapable of producing a force like that under normal circumstances, and a higher year would just vanish the snake completely without triggering the charm. He needed a student that could produce some legitimate force without being skilled enough to deal with the magic efficiently. 

When the coral snake smacked its head against the Ravenclaw’s shoes, the snake heated up and split into two identical snakes. The commotion and the heat alerted the Ravenclaw, and the already scared girl jumped out of her seat upon seeing the eyes of a rather freaky snake staring up at her. The original snake followed the girl out, hissing at her all the way. In her panic, the girl whipped out her wand and used the first spell that came to mind. Professor McGonagall and the older students were too far away to stop her.

“Alarte Ascendare!” the girl squeaked with a flick of her wand. 

Everyone at the Slytherin table was staring across the room and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. That meant no one saw Harry smirking devilishly as his conjuration was sent flying into the air like a ragdoll. The snake smacked against the ground, and everyone watched it with bated breath as it righted itself on the floor and began vibrating intensely. Another Ravenclaw screamed from across the table due to the arrival of the first duplicated snake while the one in the middle of the floor split into two. 

Chaos descended in the hall as the two snakes dashed off in different directions to harass other students. Around the Ravenclaw second-year was, of course, her friends. All of the low-year students knew nothing about how to get rid of the snakes without triggering the duplication, so they banished the threatening reptiles across the hall where the two split into four. On the other side of the table, the other two snakes were wreaking havoc as well. By the time McGonagall got the older students together and started to actually vanish the snakes, there were so many of them slithering around that they were doubling faster than they could be vanished. 

Once even the Slytherins got dragged into the pandemonium, Harry stood from his seat and backed up against the wall. All of Harry’s friends were trying to group together, but it was easy for him to slip away. Daphne, to her credit, realized that he was missing, but it was far too late for them to actually find him. With all of the students running around like headless chickens, it was so very easy for him to let the beast take over. Orange hair began to sprout across his body as his teeth grew into fangs, and as his eyes turned yellow, crackling energy consumed him, and he disappeared from an unnoticed corner of the Great Hall to appear somewhere else with a mighty clash of thunder.

On the exact opposite side of the hall, a black-haired boy with a scar on his forehead slung a cloak over his shoulders, raised the hood over his head, and disappeared completely before skirting around the edges of the room and leaving the Hall through the door in the back.

Harry appeared on the third floor in a storm of crackling energy and ruffles of fur. The young Slytherin was far from being able to accomplish a complete partial transformation, but his practice with the beast did allow him to utilize a small bit of the zouwu's particular brand of electric power without fully succumbing to a transformation. Once he regained his bearings, the fur retracted into his skin, his teeth went back into his mouth, and his eyes reverted to green. 

There were teachers everywhere around the castle right now with wands ready to dish out lethal damage, and he just made a lot of noise with his appearance. The only reason it was even remotely intelligent for him to teleport like that in the first place was the very convenient fact that there should be about an entire floor of viridian hounds between him and the nearest professor. Even the stranger's prime suspect, Quirrel, couldn't get here faster than him due to the abilities granted to him via his animagus form. If anyone was even slightly close to his location, though, they would have heard quite a distinctive noise. In order to remain undiscovered, he would have to use every ounce of the stealth skills he fought to own while with the Dursleys. To help him further, the cold feeling of viscous liquid dripping down his head and covering his body told him that the stranger once again made him invisible. 

"No," the stranger corrected firmly. "What I did was coat you in a liquid that displays the environment behind you. It is an adaptive camouflage. I told you once that anything could fool a muggle. These are not muggles, and if you are not careful around them, they will notice your presence. It is unlikely, but teleport immediately if you feel a sort of warm wave pass over your body. If you do not, they will most certainly find you."

Harry nodded to himself. When he was in the dark at the Dursleys, he couldn't tell. Right now, in the dim light of the torch-lit corridors, he could see what he failed to before. Looking down at his hand, he could tell that it wasn't perfectly transparent. 

He could see the outline of his hand, but it was retextured to look like the floor beneath him. As he waved his limb around, the coating on his skin rapidly adapted to the texture of the floor beneath him. 

It hurt his head to look at, but he understood the basics of it. The coating on his body would act almost akin to an octopus. It was constantly analyzing the environment and actively morphing itself to match with it. It was imperfect but valuable. If he was careful, it would do its job well, especially if the things and people running around weren't looking for it.

Moving over to a wall in order to make his camouflage work better, he crept down the third-floor corridor. His goal was extremely simple. All he had to do was find out why the headmaster warned against going to this corridor in particular. Once he figured out what the danger was, he could start working out why the danger was needed. If he was competent enough, the games going on around the castle would reveal themselves soon enough. 

"Hide!" came the urgent advice of his temporary ally. 

Harry pressed himself against the wall of the corridor and let his ears transform into those of a zouwu. With animal senses working in the place of his own, he could hear the swift and sure steps of what sounded like a male adult. Harry stayed absolutely still as the steps grew closer. He was practically unnoticeable against the shaded wall like he was. 

The man who ended up coming into view was none other than his Head of House. Severus Snape looked around the corridor with squinted eyes as he approached the door on the far end. The man's suspicious gaze swept right past him, and Harry allowed himself to smirk. Whomever Professor Snape wished to find was apparently not someone he expected to conceal themselves in a similar manner to Harry.

The potions master stopped in front of the door, spoke a phrase under his breath, and opened it. Harry wasn't capable of seeing around the man's tall frame, and he wasn't about to move in the presence of someone like Snape. Once the professor was done, the man had another good look around the corridor before sweeping away with his wand drawn. 

"So little Severus is playing the game too?" the stranger asked with a smirk.

It would seem so. Harry wasn't sure what the man said to open the door, but with his path now open, he decided to approach it for himself. The closer he got, the stranger he felt until his legs almost forced him to leave on their own.

"Stop, Harry," the stranger harshly commanded him.

Harry did as he was told, still confused as to his unreasonable desire to leave. Why would he want to go? Didn't he want to look in that door? Was it even worth the risk? Maybe this was beyond him.

"Quiet your mind, boy. This is the ward scheme talking, not you. Of course, it is beyond your skill. As talented as you are at transfiguration, you are but a child meddling in things created by veritable gods of your time. You are capable of playing this game like you want to because I am here with you. Fortunately, when you actually decide to work withme, we can act on a more competitive level."

That was fine by him this one time. He wanted to know what was going on, and the stranger apparently did too. If the price for knowledge was to work with the manipulative bastard, then he would do it. 

"Interesting…" the stranger observed with a hum. "This door is heavily warded. What you are feeling is a repulsion ward. It attempts to invade your mind and convince you to move away from the rune. If you had let me teach you Occlumency when I offered my services, then this wouldn't be such a massive problem for you. Fight the rune for a moment longer."

  It took a second, but Harry felt his magic drain along with the desire to flee. His eyes widened just a little.

"Can you take my power?" Harry asked the stranger suspiciously.

"Of course, Harry. We share the same body. I only have so much to use for myself, so I am using yours unless an emergency arises for now."

That made him massively uncomfortable, but he decided to put it away for now. The stranger was right. If the power should go to anyone in an emergency, it should definitely be the one with the most knowledge of magic. With that in mind, he let himself wait. 

"The door is protected against pretty much every kind of entry. They made it stronger by sacrificing efficiency through the use of a passcode. We cannot break through this without the code, not without spending weeks or months gathering power or spending a vast amount of time to figure out a weakness or hole in their ward schemes."

The stranger sounded begrudgingly impressed. He didn't get what the stranger meant by "sacrificing efficiency" to make the wards stronger, but he didn't doubt the man's truthfulness. It wasn't a complete bust though. They now knew the first step to enter the room, and they knew that Severus Snape, at the very least, suspected the same foul play with the invasion that they did. It was a small step, but first steps weren't often big ones. They now had a goal in mind: find out the passcode and discover how much Professor Snape knew or suspected.

"Rip!!! Kill!!!"

Harry's entire body shook from the power of the voice.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES, POTTER! AGAINST THE WALL NOW!"

This was the first time ever that Harry had heard the man panic like that. Scorn and viciously scathing tones were a normal occurrence. Shouting, though, seemed to be below the stranger… until now.

Harry slammed his back to the wall and jammed his eyes shut. He was just in time to see a gigantic snake even taller than him turn down the corridor and dash at the door. He didn't dare open his eyes as the creature bashed its head straight into the door. Harry didn't know why he had to keep them shut, but he wasn't going to risk it.

*BAM!* 

It slammed against the door again.

"ACROMANTULA IN MY SCHOOL!?"

*BAM!*

The door broke this time, and half of the wall came down with it. Chittering and screeches came from the now opened wall, and the stranger decided to give him input again. 

"Meeting gazes with the snake will kill you. Create something that breaks the connection."

Meeting? So it was okay as long as one of them couldn't see the eyes of the other? With that in mind, he opened his eyes to look at the floor and picked up a small piece of shattered stone. Pulling his wand, he cast a spell at the rock and watched it change into a pair of aviators. Thank god for his natural transfiguration abilities.

With heavily tinted glasses placed upon his camouflaged face, he looked into the room and realized the snake was even larger than he thought. The thing was quite a bit taller than him, but its real size was in its length. The thing was longer than an entire bus, and it moved fast for its size. 

That was when he noticed the enormity of the room itself. It was more like the size of a gladiatorial arena than a room in a castle. The roof was extremely high, and trees were growing from the stone floor beneath him. It ended up creating a smooth mix between stone and forest. The floor rose and cracked to let the trees break through the surface, and vines latched to every nook and cranny they could find. A light layer of fog fell over top of the ground and created an ominous, eerie feel to the dark forest which filled the room. 

The entire forest was echoing with the panicked skittering and squeals of whatever lived within it. The snake called them acromantulas. It seemed to be hunting them right now though he couldn't see anything through the vast area of thick trees. 

"To think that it was important enough to use the basilisk…" the stranger wondered aloud. "Retreat, Harry, we have our knowledge, and this is beyond what you or I can handle in your body."

Harry didn't need to be told twice. He was out of the room and down the corridor in a second. It was good that he chose to take a look at the situation. This was so much bigger than he originally expected it to be. There were magical creatures in play far beyond what he could even comprehend as a new wizard coming straight from the muggle world. 

"You are right," the stranger told him. Apparently feeling generous due to Harry's display of efficiency and ambition, he decided to tell a bit of what he knew and suspected. "Acromantula are a very vicious, very intelligent, very large species of magical arachnids. They are capable of human speech, and they are undoubtedly the most dangerous creatures near Hogwarts. In a colony as large as they were in that room, they are extremely dangerous. 

"They must be here for a reason. The only purpose they could possibly serve would be as a deterrent for possible intruders. Whatever is in that room, Dumbledore wants it hidden badly enough to risk the lives of every student in the school. One of them escaping through that door could kill a very large section of the school before someone skilled enough could get there to deal with it."

The stranger was right as usual. Putting something like the stranger described inside of a school was a massive risk. The only possible payoff would be the protection of something valuable. How valuable, though, would something have to be for a wizard as supposedly brilliant as Dumbledore to see the presence of those monsters as necessary. On the subject, whoever wanted to get into that room was determined if they let loose such a dangerous creature alongside those hounds. 

'Threat!' his wand howled in his mind. 

Harry was so deep in thought that he was completely blind to the world. His wand, though, was more than aware. Turning his head due to the notification, his eyes landed on the massive form of a crystal-covered hound in mid-leap to his left. Harry had come upon an intersection, and the damn thing was smart enough to wait there for him and jump the moment his back was turned. 

Harry was certain that his life was going to end. He had no idea what to do. His wand pulsed with power, though, and it drew his gaze to where it shot from his sleeve on its own and into his unknowingly awaiting hand. 

It was shocking and somewhat terrifying to find out that he had no control over his wand arm. He didn't catch the wand, and he wasn't moving it in the slightest. It was as if his wand was manipulating him as it forced him to point it beneath his left arm and at the lunging beast. 

The tip of his wand glowed with power before it shot off a bolt of vibrantly green lightning. He, as usual, had no clue what curse it chose to use, but whatever it was looked absolutely lethal. It zipped across the small space between him and the dog with quick, jerky, zigzag motions. It was so very close to saving his life until the spell hit the top of the hound’s head and glanced off of the crystals protecting it.

The green bolt flew into the wall and scorched it with the sheer potency of its power. The dog continued with its lunge, and its front paws pierced through his robes and dug into his shoulders as he twisted around to face it completely. Its mass shoved him to the ground, and its crushing weight fell on top of him. 

The stranger was attempting to do something with Harry's magic, but the beast was already descending upon him. Jason was trying to extend his head from Harry's sleeve and bite the dog’s exposed underside, but he would be dead long before the venom took effect. Harry's eyes flickered from green to yellow, signaling the beginning of his transformation, but he was shocked out of his attempt by the exclamation of a young, female voice.

"Praefoco!"

Harry couldn't tilt his head back enough to see who had cast the spell, and he didn't recognize the incantation. What he could see, though, was a single gigantic line of barbed wire whip around the creature's neck from above. The dog was going for his throat, but Harry was beyond relieved to find that the wire was more than up to the task of restraining his attacker. 

The creature tried to turn its head and locate what was managing to restrain it. When it found itself incapable of twisting or turning, it decided to reel back for a second strike. While the wire held back its first attempt, the second was done with much more vigor. It was possible that the wire might not hold against a more determined movement. 

That was exactly why four more lines of wire flung through the air and wrapped around the creature's neck from different angles with decisive, powerful snaps. With five separate lines of barbed wire squeezing the creature's neck, they managed to keep the dog from lunging forward after rearing back. It was with barely concealed awe that he watched the wires pull back on the dog's neck and slowly lift its head into the air. 

The wires scraped nastily against the hound's crystalline armor and would've dug into its trachea if the crystals around the rest of its neck didn't make the noose's circumference too large to touch its exposed skin through the smallish gap in its armor. The hound thrashed and yelped, violently struggling to regain some semblance of control as its front paws were pulled from his shoulders. Once it was finally forced to stand on the tips of its back paws, its trashing became something more akin to clumbsy flailing. 

If Dumbledore's display of magic had been the pinnacle of finesse, then this was a showcase of malicious power. Its back paws were eventually lifted completely off of the ground, and Harry was finally free to crawl backward with his hands and get to his feet. With his better view, he saw what the spellcaster had done. 

From the castle's ceiling sprouted five spiked lines of thick wire. They were very well spaced, creating a wide base for the wires to hold the dog from while converging on a single point: their target's neck. The wires left it dangling from the ceiling as the creature howled and screamed, swinging and jerking its bottom half in an attempt to dislodge itself from the wire's grip. 

"Diffindo!"

That spell he recognized, and Harry watched the distinct crescent of a cutting hex fly from behind his shoulder and slit the thing's exposed belly wide open vertically. It cut all the way through it, leaving its innards and guts to spill from the gigantic slice running up its entire midsection

"Are you okay?" came the female voice in a calm, stoic, but obviously concerned and caring manner. 

Harry was still so shocked by the display and awed by the power that he couldn't respond properly to the question. Instead, he nodded shakily and turned his head to see who saved him. It was the fifth-year prefect, Gemma Farley. 

She stood so unbothered and strong despite the confrontation, and it contrasted so heavily with his obviously frazzled and panicked mental state that he both admired her for her abilities and envied her at the same time. He had no idea she was so dangerous when they spoke at the beginning of the year, yet here she was, defeating a magical creature of such extreme size like it was easy. 

That was what Harry wanted to be. The stranger wanted him to be defiant and brazen with his strength. He wanted Harry to gleefully accept and display his differences while damning the ones beneath him. 

Harry just wanted to be calm. He wanted to be capable of defeating any threat he may face, but he still wanted to be approachable. He wanted to be unafraid and free, strong but casually so. Looking at the way she held herself in this moment and comparing it to the prefect who helped him with his appearance at the beginning of the year, he saw the image of what he wished he was reflected in the form of another. It was agonizing and inspiring at the exact same time. 

"Thank you," Harry eventually responded. 

"You're welcome," she responded in a kind, calming tone that somehow managed to soothe his vibrating nerves. "Do you know what's going on in the castle?"

Harry could tell her what he knew, but that would be tantamount to admitting that he was in the Great Hall and chose to leave relative safety on purpose. Instead, he responded in a way that would shed light on the situation without revealing his secrets. 

"I don't know. I was in the bathroom, but when I came out, I heard noises I didn't like, so I went this way. Apparently, that was a bad decision."

Farley nodded her head and gave a small smirk at Harry's attempt to be humorous after such a serious brush with death.

"Quite," she told him. "These are viridian hounds. They're pack hunters, and they are very intelligent. It's likely that the ones you heard could smell you and attempted to herd you into the one I just killed."

That was when he heard the howl of an approaching dog from the hallway he had just come from and another from the way he was previously going to go. When a third came from the same direction as the dog currently hanging above them, Harry realized that the beast's noises might've been more of a call for help than the pain-filled exclamations of a dying creature.

Farley was looking around them with analytically staring eyes and cursed under her breath. Unfortunately for her, Harry was most definitely corralled to this exact location on purpose. Farley was more right than she knew. They were smart, smart enough to approach in such a way that they managed to perfectly surround the one who killed their friend. 

"Well," Harry said, trying to remain as calm as she outwardly seemed. "Can you handle three of them like you did with that one?"

Farley shook her head, making her dark, mid-back length hair sway from side to side, "The one on you was distracted. I got the chance to restrain it before the fight started. I can probably take one and win, but three is definitely too much. The other two will get me from behind the second I try to trap the third."

The three hounds appeared at the ends of their respective halls at around the same time. Harry's eyes turned yellow, and he could see the hounds staring at their dead pack mate before looking murderously at the only two possible culprits. Their approaches slowed to a deadly stalk, and they cautiously began closing the distance between them. 

"It seems they have come to the same conclusion as me," Farley observed. "They're smart enough to know that I killed one, but they're also confident enough with their numbers to take a try at us. They're being cautious, but they won't hold back for long."

Harry anxiously glanced around them. They were cornered. He felt trapped and helpless. It was the same emotions that eventually drew the zouwu from within him in the first place, and it was growling in his chest at the very thought of those beasts getting their hands on him as the first one did. 

The situation was dire. They were going to lose and die if something didn't happen. There were professors everywhere, but the castle was big enough that immediate help was unlikely. Farley was an extremely impressive individual, but that didn't mean he trusted her. Still, he saw no way out of this without help. 

He thought about just grabbing her and disappearing, but where he landed might’ve caused a lot of problems. The Slytherin common room was an option, but zouwu teleportation was loud, and the chances of a professor being down in the dungeons or, god forbid, another student who didn’t go to the feast wasn’t negligible. He was also fairly certain that the two of them could do this if they stayed. The chances were higher, at least, than whatever random dice he rolled if he teleported somewhere else in the castle. He would stand his ground with her, and that would be how the night ended. Either they would come out on top and he would get away with his scheme for the night, or they would lose.

The stranger loved that option.

"I…" he shook his head with a frustrated, growling huff. "I might have a way to take two if you can actually handle one of them."

She looked at him with extreme skepticism while still keeping her wand pointed at the third hound. Gemma was preparing to plow a path for Potter and attempt to hold off the three hounds herself for as long as possible, but things were certainly bad enough for her to at least consider begrudgingly putting her faith in a first-year before basically killing herself for the kid. 

"Are you absolutely sure?"

The boy looked extremely conflicted, but he eventually nodded with conviction. "I can, but I need an oath that it stays to yourself."

She would've bristled if she didn't have a trunk in her mindscape where she shoved all of her unnecessary emotions. Did that little brat just demand an oath from her!?

"Why?" she demanded with a low voice.

She could tell by the way Potter flinched that she had frightened him on some level, but he remained completely unshakeable in his decision. "A vow, Farley, or we both die!"

Was Potter seriously going to bargain with both of their lives to get what he wanted? She couldn't help but respect the absolute gall a move like that took. The kid might have been an audacious little shit to try bossing Gemma Farley around, but she found herself agreeing to the terms due to the sheer amount of confidence it took to go down such a bold route.

"Fine," she said, pumping her magic into her agreement to bind herself to her word. "I swear to keep the stuff that happens here to myself in every way. You better have something good, Potter."

The dogs were dangerously close to them now. Whatever Potter was going to do, he better make it fucking fast. She could no longer let her eyes stray from the dog if she didn't want it to blitz her during her lapse of attention, but she couldn't help it when the most animalistic growl she had ever heard came from the throat of a human child. 

Turning her head just a bit, she watched the boy's body grow broader and bulkier as his hair turned orange and sprouted around his head like a mane. She couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to when the unmistakable tail of a zouwu sprouted from the boy's tailbone. Farley couldn't contain her shock within her Occlumency-forged mindscape when the boy fell onto all fours and stretched to an even larger size than the viridian hounds.

Even as a juvenile, the zouwu was massive. It might've been only slightly larger than the adult hounds, but it struck an extremely intimidating pose. The dogs were all just as shocked as her, but the new threat seemed to make them feel even more inclined to fight. 

That was bad. 

They were going to pounce at exactly the same time, and that might've ended up overwhelming Potter. If they got past him and managed to take her down, then he would certainly be overwhelmed by all three. As a juvenile, the mythical creature might be able to take on two viridian hounds at the same time, but three would definitely be too much. 

Seeming to sense that danger, Potter's long tail wrapped around her midsection multiple times, and the zouwu's body curled protectively around her. Electricity coursed through its mane as it stood its ground against three creatures of similar size to itself. The zouwu snarled, and it was absolutely menacing. 

The deep, crackly sound reminded her of mightily grumbling thunder in the middle of a hurricane, and it had the same effect on the hounds. They hesitated, and it chose that moment to strike. Lightning pulsed hard around its mane, and the zouwu opened its maw while facing one of its two opponents. 

The zouwu roared loud enough to shake the entire corridor, and with its roar came a storm of branching lightning. It swirled and crackled like a whirlwind of god-like energy before engulfing one of the hounds completely. The attack was divinely powerful and timed perfectly, but the hound's crystals made excellent insulators. Curling in on itself, the hound made a sort of shell out of its armor, and its crystals took the full force of the lightning for it. The attack hacked away at its hard-earned growths of protection, but it stood its ground, and while the zouwu was focussing its attention, the second one pounced. 

Still keeping its tail wrapped around her in case the third hound took a chance too, the beast stopped its storm of lightning. It lifted its left arm and wrapped its hand around a crystal that sat on top of the lunging hound's head. Using its monumental strength, the zouwu smashed its second opponent into the ground and attempted to grind away at the armor on its face by twisting it against the stone floor. 

Farley was shocked to find a snake coiled around the zouwu’s arm, and when the giant cat lifted the hound’s head into the air, the snake stuck its head out and struck three times in succession right on the hound’s throat. She wasn’t sure how much snake venom would affect a creature like that, but it was certain to be better than nothing. Unfortunately, the first one managed to uncurl itself soon after its friend got bit and leapt into the zouwu's side, freeing its brother and sending both itself and the zouwu into a wild, dangerous tumble down the left branch of the intersecting hallways. 

The beast's protectively hovering tail was taken with it, and the third hound made its move. 

"Depulso!" 

She swung her wand wide, sending the repulsive force to the side of the dog before bringing her wand back the other way and slamming the repulsion hex right into its ribacage. The sprinting dog was tossed into the hallway wall and smashed quite a bit of it to pieces beneath its armor. Whipping her wand along the ground, she transfigured the pieces of resulting debris into a multitude of tiny caltrops. One of the biggest weaknesses possessed by the viridian hounds was the fact that only the outwardly facing parts of its body were armored.

It was practically impossible to harm them through their crystal coating without a veritable ton of magical power, but their underside was  vulnerable, and Gemma meant muggle animal vulnerable. There were zero viable protections on their underside, so the right application of magic could fairly easily restrict their mobility or fell them entirely if the witch or wizard could manage to get around the armor to the spots that actually mattered. 

Their paws, like their underside, were completely unprotected. Stepping on those caltrops would be just as bad for it as it would be for her if she didn’t have her shoes on. Unfortunately, the beast was too smart to step forward once it looked at the floor and noticed that the ground didn’t quite look right.

Instead, it crouched low on its powerful legs and leapt over the metal traps to land right on top of its prey.

Exactly like she wanted...

“Confodio.”

A piercing curse shot from her wand like a bullet and straight through the bottom section of its chest. It thrust just slightly to the right of its heart but punctured vertically through both ends of its left lung before breaking through the back of its haunch and shattering on the armor that covered the outside of it. The animal fell short of her and slapped against the ground with a hole through its body. It was a close thing, but the creature was just dull enough to make a predictable decision in the face of a seemingly straightforward problem. 

Turning away from the dead animal, she walked a few steps back to the intersecting hallways and went left with the hopes of aiding in Potter’s two-on-one fight. As expected, the zouwu was still battling valiantly about halfway down the hall, but it was still young. The two viridian hounds were being very intelligent with how they approached the fight, and the zouwu was ill-equipped to deal with their armor. 

Currently, Potter was on his back with a hound bearing down on top of him, trying to use his insanely strong, long arms to hold the offending hound back before it could wrap its jaws around him. The second viridian hound was waiting patiently on the sidelines. The zouwu took a deep breath and roared out another storm of lightning, but this one was pointed right at the hound’s face. While its helmet of crystals did protect it, the thing still recoiled from the blinding flash, and with its small retreat, Potter found his hold.

Heaving with both of its arms, the zouwu managed to flip positions with the hound. It wrapped its hands around the crystals protecting the hound’s neck and bashed its head into the stone floor once, twice, thrice… Still, it wasn’t enough. The armor on the back of its head protected it from the ground, and it wrapped far enough around its neck to keep Potter from sinking his teeth into its throat. 

She did suppose that a real zouwu would’ve tried to use its claws on the hound’s exposed belly or use its lightning on it while it was underneath of its massive weight if the excess power was available to it, but Potter wasn’t completely a zouwu, and it was obvious that he lacked experience in fighting with other animals. Before he could do any more damage, the second hound pounced and pushed Potter off of its partner. The snake was still around the zouwu’s arm, but it was closer to Potter’s shoulder instead of his forearm and was struggling to find a place to intervene through the violent struggle.

This was her chance.

She could try to knock it off of Potter with a repulsion hex, but that would just bring things back to square one, and she didn’t much like the thought of trying to hit the hounds without hitting the zouwu when they were tumbling around so much. No, doing that would be bad for both of them. 

However… 

The top of that hound’s head was distinctly scuffed and filed, almost as if it had been ground against the stone floor. She happened to remember that immediately after it had been jammed into the floor, Potter’s little friend got involved.

That was the one bitten by the snake.

She didn’t want to send it flying, but she wasn’t a Slytherin for nothing. Oh, how she always wanted to use this spell. 

“Invalesco,”

Intensify… It was a spell she'd come across in a book held within the Slytherin’s prefect room. There were many books exclusive to that room, just as there were many in the head boy/girl room and presumably the pinnacle’s room too. The one she spoke of mainly dealt with the intricacies of poison and venom magic. There was a lot of creative stuff that someone could do with toxic materials if they were smart. 

One subsection of that book happened to have a bit to say on the use of small dosages for massive effects. Sometimes, it wasn’t beneficial to set things up with the kind of toxins that killed efficiently, but it was also true that inefficient toxins had a lower likelihood of success. For example, it was relatively common for servants to test drinks before their master. In such a case, efficient poisons would've been identified before the target consumed them. 

Instead of risking survival, assassins would put an extremely inefficient poison in the goblet of their high-class target, and, once it was consumed, they would use a colorless spell to amplify it within the body of their target. Of course, she wasn’t sure how that would translate to a snake bite, but, if there was any time where such a spell would be of use to her, it would be at this moment.

Farley’s magic reached out from her wand like a tendril as it diffused into the air similar to a summoning charm. It reached out toward the hound and wrapped itself around its body, leaking into the bite wounds like an infection. It traveled through the hound’s bloodstream, magically enhancing the poison’s potency into something that could kill a creature the size of an elephant. 

The hound swayed slightly where it stood as the boomslang’s venom became potent enough to practically demolish any hope of its blood clotting whatsoever. Even the small puncture wounds from its fangs started to bleed like water was flowing through its veins. The zouwu noticed when its opponent weakened, and it wasted no time with slinging the thing off of him and getting to its feet. 

Potter was obviously lagging at this point. The zouwu was huffing loudly, and its arms were having trouble holding its body up in its default position with right-angled elbows. Instead, its elbows were held at an obtuse angle, holding its upper-body higher instead of staying locked so close to the ground. Still, the creature was keeping itself from falling, and it faced the last viridian hound without fear or hesitation. 

The hound began its sprint, and it was too difficult for Gemma to get a shot off around the huge frame of her ally. She was forced to watch it approach the young zouwu with no support. It held its ground, and lightning permeated the air around its form. The very second that the hound was going to make contact, it disappeared with a crackle of static electelricity. Instead of using it for long distances, it appeared directly above the viridian hound, balancing on its crystalline back like a cat while holding its head with a vice-like grip. 

That kind of short-range teleportation was not a typical move for a zouwu. It much more resembled how duelists would use apparition to reposition in a fight for a more advantageous position. As she already pointed out, though, Potter wasn’t entirely a zouwu. Apparently, a human in a zouwu’s body wasn't necessarily doomed to create only negative instincts because that was an extremely tactical use of the creature’s abilities, and an actual zouwu never would've thought to do such a thing. With its hands holding the hound by its head, the zouwu hopped off of the thing’s back and heaved itself up to stand on two legs. It lifted the hound into the air with it, and the zouwu slowly, methodically, and powerfully used its hands to pry the hound’s mouth open. 

She stood by what she said. A juvenile zouwu just wasn’t a good match for a hound. Unless it had lightning attacks ready to use on the hound’s weak points, it was difficult for it to do any damage. It seemed that, in the absence of any other legitimate plans of attack, Potter chose to damage the one thing he knew would work. 

Its bones, muscles, and ligaments.

No matter how strong the hound’s armor was, it was still a creature made of flesh and bone. Instead of fighting around the armor as she did or brute-forcing the thing into taking lightning straight on its underbelly like a zouwu, Potter chose to bypass the armor completely and go straight for its core.

He placed both of his hands inside of the hound’s open mouth and pulled. It tried to close its teeth around his fingers, but a zouwu apparently had more strength in its arms than the hound had in its jaw because Potter kept opening it wider and wider until…

*CRACK!*

The hound’s jaw broke on both sides with a vicious yelp and opened to make a 180-degree angle. Still, the zouwu kept pulling. The hound was screaming as its jaw began to tear and its skin and muscles started to part. In an amazing and terrifying display of strength and violence, the zouwu managed to rip the hound’s entire lower jaw straight from its skull. 

Still alive but barely conscious, the hound was bodily tossed across the hall by its top incisors to tumble against the ground where it would soon greet death. With blood and gore coating its hands and soaking its fur, the zouwu lifted its head to the ceiling and roared until there was no air left in its lungs to expel.

With the battle done and its victory noisily expressed, the zouwu slunk back onto all fours and panted heavily, just barely managing to bring out enough energy to keep its stomach off of the ground. All Gemma could do was stare for a moment as her brain processed what she'd just witnessed. It was one thing for someone like her to take on a viridian hound like she had and win by playing against its weaknesses. It was something else entirely for a first-year to come out of nowhere like that and force a victory from the jaws of defeat. It was an awe-striking and chilling experience.

Wait… 

First-year.

Fuck! She was so focused on the fight and so enraptured by the moment and her victory that she forgot she was currently staring at a very exhausted, very injured, and probably very traumatized eleven-year-old boy with no training and no Occlumency mindscape. Her eyes roamed over the beast’s body, and she tried to assess just how bad Potter’s injuries were.

Luckily, with the way it still seemed to be standing without any awkward leaning or weird stances other than those caused by its obvious exhaustion, it was likely that at least most of his bones remained unbroken. That was somewhat unsurprising though simultaneously relieving. Zouwu were simply big creatures, and their skeletons were made to fit that stature. It was tough to break bones like that.

What really worried her were the lacerations. Viridian hounds had that crystal coating, which extended down to their paws and over the outside of their claws. They were lethally sharp, and they used them exorbitantly in this fight. Potter was sliced wide open all the way down the left side of his abdomen, and his shoulder and thighs especially suffered due to the thrashing of the hounds’ front and back paws during their wrestling. 

Approaching the transformed boy slowly, she went inside of his field of view. Immediately, the response was hostile. Gemma knew very little about animagery, but what she did know was that magical animagi were quite a bit more than a rarity. As someone who was mostly ignorant on the matter, she chose to approach the beast with caution. Of course, animagi like McGonagall were basically just humans with a different body and a few odd quirks, but there was no telling how much or little the characteristics of a zouwu affected him, especially when he was wired up after a brutal fight. 

Raising her hands and crouching a little lower to make herself even smaller than she already was compared to the zouwu, she continued approaching at her slow, steady, consistent pace. She was hoping that if she remained unthreatening, Potter would at least recognize the person he began and ended this fight with as someone who wouldn’t hurt him. Luckily, once she got closer and the zouwu took a slow, tentative sniff of her outstretched hand, its hostility faded, and she swore that an exhausted smile worked its way onto the gigantic cat’s face.

Reaching out a little further with her hand, she gave its cheek a few small scratches before going after his hands. The young zouwu surrendered them easily, but they were far too bloody for her to see anything beyond the coating of red.

“Scourfigy,” she whispered.

The blood went away in an instant, and what she was left with were two severelyinjured hands. 

Of course.

She was a fool for not checking them first. Potter was forced to grapple with the viridian hounds, and the only places to grab were those sharp, rough, unyielding crystals. That wasn’t even mentioning when he reached into the hound’s mouth with his bare hands. They were shredded to all hell. 

“Can you turn back on your own?” she asked.

The boy was far too exhausted to even hear her, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. She didn’t know much about animagery at all, but she was a fairly deft hand at transfiguration. She could revert things back to their original form with relative ease.

“Regressus.”

The zouwu morphed back into the form of Harry Potter without protest, but the boy was pretty much already dead to the world. The snake that'd fought with Potter the entire time was coiled against the boy’s chest, but since it wasn’t being difficult with her, she let it be. Deciding that it would be very bad to leave the kid with his injuries any longer, she levitated him with her wand and began to carry him to the hospital wing. It was true that there could be more of those viridian hounds around, but it was also true that Potter was bleeding profusely from his many wounds. She would just have to risk it and hope that the professors had already cleaned up most of them. 

Speaking of which, no one stumbled upon their fight, but Potter made a lot of noise. To make matters more complicated, she was under oath to not reveal anything that really happened after she made her promise, not that she would’ve revealed anything if she had the option. The boy proved to be interesting, and such talents would be wasted if she simply threw him to the wolves right after their shared fight. 

Still…

She would certainly have some explaining to do if anyone heard that shit.

Neville Longbottom removed his cloak once he was officially out of the Great Hall. He wasn’t sure exactly what or who made that show with the snakes, but it was certainly useful for Neville. The teachers were already hunting, but they weren’t aware of any wayward students or their locations, and he knew where one was for a fact. 

Always impulsive, Ronald Weasley just had to talk bad about a sensitive girl to half the school. Now, she was out in the middle of some kind of attack, and his best mate was sitting in the middle of detention somewhere around the castle too. That redheaded bastard was lucky that Neville liked him too much to beat him around the head because he would be in the hospital wing for weeks after tonight if Neville liked him even a single ounce less.

He didn’t know what those animals were beyond the name Professor Dumbledore gave the Great Hall, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out their shtick. The dogs were the big type of creatures who used their amazing defensive abilities to almost recklessly pursue offense. By Dumbledore’s response to them, those dogs were either extremely hard to actually damage through their armor or very easy to trap. Either way, he knew how he needed to fight them. 

Unfortunately, transfiguration was never his thing. Fortunately, though, he hardly needed it.

Hermione Granger was apparently last seen crying in a girl’s bathroom on the first floor. Hopefully, the teachers would have cleared out most of the danger already, but he had to get Granger back to the hall safely for his own conscience. That was, of course, why he was here right now. 

Eventually, he came upon the bathroom, and, when he opened the door, he could hear the panicked sniffles made by a girl who was just caught in the act of crying her eyes out. He was in a rush, though, so there wasn’t much time for him to wait for her to collect herself. Rushing over to the stall, Neville knocked with the urgency of someone running from the devil.

A startled Hermione unlocked the door and swung it open with red, puffy eyes, but she squeaked upon seeing that a boy was standing outside of her stall and slammed it shut in his face.

“What are you doing in here, Longbottom!?” she screamed. “Your friend making fun of me isn’t enough, so you've chosen to invade my privacy too!?”

“Listen!” Neville exclaimed. “I’m sorry that my friend was a git. I promise, he isn't always so thoughtless, but there are dangerous magical creatures roaming around the school, Granger! We need to get back to the Great Hall. The teachers are securing the castle, so I came out here to get you.

The girl laughed at him, and Neville was beginning to get impatient. They needed to get out of here. He was fairly confident, sure, but Granger was most certainly out of her depth.

“You think I didn’t figure out your friend lied about his rat? Do you honestly believe that I’m going to let you trick me twice?”

Okay, he felt pretty bad for that one. It was funny back when it happened, but it seemed in poor taste after what was going on at the moment. Still, whether or not they happened to be boorish toward her this semester was irrelevant. He needed to get her moving; she could hate him after they were in the Great Hall.

“Alohamora!” 

The slide lock keeping the door shut suddenly clicked to the side, and he threw the door open even as Granger looked both confused and scandalized at the same time.

“H-how did you kn-know that spell?” she asked before getting cut off by a hand grasping the sleeve of her robe. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing!?” 

She pulled her other hand back and moved to smack him for grabbing her, but Longbottom yanked her along with a surprising amount of strength and ruined her windup. He forced her across the bathroom and creaked the door open just a bit, peeking through the crack before swinging it the rest of the way and pulling her out behind him.

“I’m trying to save your ass, Granger!” Neville shouted at her in an urgent and intense whisper. 

Still being dragged behind the speeding boy, she found herself confused. “You… you're telling the truth?”

“Obviously!” was his irked response. 

The two of them came to an intersection, and he flattened them against the wall before carefully looking around the corner. One hand was keeping Granger exactly where he needed her to be while the other was on his phoenix feather wand. He didn’t see any of those hounds, so he assumed it was safe. Leading her around the corner, he started going down the next hall. He would’ve been using his cloak more liberally, but its one weakness would be creatures with strong noses. For all of its mythical abilities, it couldn’t stop his scent from getting out some way, and Neville was slightly ashamed to admit that he hadn't dedicated the time or effort into learning how to conceal the aspects of his presence that his cloak couldn't hide on its own.

He was rather methodical about how they moved. He was making sure to check every hall before making a turn. He refused to be caught by surprise. Unfortunately, he wasn’t expecting an intelligent ambush from a pack of dogs. 

There was nothing in the halls, but he didn’t think to check the individual rooms covered by closed doors. If he would’ve paid more attention to Hagrid’s ramblings over the years, he would’ve realized that more than a few magical creatures had enough intelligence to set up rudimentary traps. They crossed by an abandoned classroom. There were only a few more turns left before they were home-free. The only warning he got was an almost imperceptible scratching sound on the other side of the closed door before it was shattered to pieces by a gigantic, armored dog. 

It burst from the room at exactly the right moment to catch them right on the side. Hermione shrieked as her life flashed before her eyes. Neville, though, was a bit too busy swinging his wand to panic.

“Depulso!”

Neville’s wand lit with unbridled strength. His core pulsed within him, and his hair began to defy gravity due to the energy coursing through his skin and into the air. An indomitable wave of magic left his wand and slammed into the dog like a freight train. He couldn’t help but smile dangerously when the dog was lifted mid-sprint and sent flying back into the wall on the other side of the classroom. 

The dog’s armor might’ve kept it from serious damage, but there were not many things that could stand up to the power that defeated Voldemort. He might've been young and lacking in finesse, but he had magical power in spades, and Albus Dumbledore was among the most brilliant teachers the world had ever known. This creature was biting off far more than it could chew if it thought that it could approach him directly and win.

Hermione was shivering behind him, but he couldn’t allow her to stall on him. The dog was already shaking off its disorientation. It wouldn’t be making the same mistake twice. 

*BAM!*

The door behind them just shattered as well. Neville didn’t need to see it to know what it was. Those dogs were fast for such heavily armored creatures. He wouldn’t be able to spin fast enough to cast a spell. 

“Itinerantur.”

Pointing his wand the way they came from, Neville cast the only mobility spell he knew. It was honestly a simple charm. It was standard self-propulsion in the opposite direction of wherever his wand was pointed. With Granger still held by her sleeve, he sent both of them soaring down the hallway. 

The dogs immediately began giving chase. They were much faster than Neville could go. Even with the heavy use of his movement spell, they would catch up soon in a straight-up race. 

… It seemed there was no choice. 

He really didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t about to die here. He only felt sorry for those poor creatures. Holding Granger close and skidding to a stop on the floor, he gave her a hard stare and commanded her temporary obedience.

“Stand behind me, but do not leave. If there are more, then they will be coming here for sure. You will die if you take one alone.”

Granger nodded shakily, but she looked at him with wide, scared eyes. “B-but will you fare any b-better?”

In answer to her question, he took a few steps forward and pointed his wand in front of him. Albus was going to be so pissed that he used this spell, but this wasn’t some playground game anymore. These animals wanted him dead, so he would need to respond in kind. Flitwick, at least, would respect him for his ruthlessness in combat.

“Lacero,” he incanted with a massive sweep of his wand. 

A blade of dark magic sliced through the air, and the dogs, as expected, dipped their heads and kept going. They were using their passive defense to continue their offense when it shouldn’t have been their turn. When his blade hit their armor, though, it didn’t stop like most would’ve expected; it gouged deep into their crystal coating and sank into their flesh. It wasn’t quite deep enough to create what would be considered a serious injury, but it was more than enough to scare them and halt their charge. 

With the knowledge that running away would only mean taking more shots, the dogs restarted their approach with vigor. Neville could respect them for their valor. The game was simple. Either he killed them during their charge, or they killed him when they arrived. He chose to stand his ground. Win or lose, he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Blade after blade of legitimate dark magic fueled by years of suffering due to the actions of a not-quite-deceased Dark Lord was sent flying down the hallway. Each one cut straight through their armor and sent shards of crystals clacking against the stones. There was honestly not much more that he could do besides try to banish them again. It was fortunate for Neville that he seemed to be winning the game. 

His blades had such a heavy impact that the dogs were forced to a stop when they made contact, and Neville made sure that his spells were all far too wide for them to be skirted around. Hit after hit landed on the creatures until, finally, about three meters away from him, they collapsed into two heaps of mangled flesh and crumbled armor. They made the choice to play a game of strength. That was a competition Neville refused to lose.

Both of them were uninjured, but Neville was absolutely exhausted. Breaking through two sets of armor like that took a lot of energy. With that knowledge in mind and shuddering legs, he looked back at a stunned, scared, and horrified Hermione Granger. She most definitely hated him now if she disliked him before. 

“I…” Neville tried to explain himself, but he came up short and gave a small sigh. No, there was no justification that would matter. Granger was undoubtedly a sheltered child just like Ron. If she didn’t understand why what he did was perfectly okay and reasonable, then there was nothing that could possibly convince her otherwise. It was a mindset that a person either had or didn’t. Apparently, she didn’t. “I would appreciate it if you kept this to yourself. It isn’t a big deal if it gets out, but everyone has an image they want to maintain, right?”

She took a few steps back, still looking afraid of him. He refused to put his wand down in hostile territory, but he reached out with his other hand to try and convince her of his harmlessness toward her. When she flinched at his slow movement, he averted his eyes to the floor and gave a huff. 

Of course, she would react like that. Everyone else seemed to. 

“Look,” he said eventually, pulling out his cloak. “It won’t really protect us from having a confrontation if there are still more out there, but if you’re with me, then any further creatures will probably ignore you for the sake of attacking the obvious target. Put it on, and when we get to the hall, you can take it off and go to the Gryffindor table.”

He held out the cloak, but when she refused to take it, Neville rolled his eyes and gave a humorless laugh. He tossed the cloak at her and walked past her like she didn’t exist. If she couldn’t handle what he just did, then fuck it. That wasn’t his problem.

“Save the world, Neville,” they told him, only to despise the methods he needed to use to do it as if they had the right to push their burdens onto his shoulders and then expect him to solve all of their problems in a way they found tasteful.

“No need to thank me or anything, Granger. I only saved your fucking life.”

She didn’t respond and merely put the cloak over her head. He didn’t know if she was following him anymore, but he didn’t really care. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand why she was afraid, but that didn’t mean he was just going to be okay with it. He wondered, for a moment, what she would think if this situation somehow happened again without him there to save her. 

Would she then realize that his actions weren’t those of a monster? Then again, maybe wondering such a thing did condemn him in a way that his recent actions didn’t. What did it matter anyhow? It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t show up to save her again if he had to. He would show up to save anybody, to sacrifice himself for everybody. 

That was, after all, what he was born to do…