章 30: Troll Hunting, and Reading Memories

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The time was ten minutes before the Halloween feast, and Quinn was on the first floor hiding in the History of Magic classroom, waiting for the feast to start, and in turn, the beginning of the first of many Halloween mishaps in the life of Harry Potter.

Recon, the tracking map, laid on the table in front of him. He was looking at the map and tracking people of interest on Recon. He saw Hermione Granger in the first floor's girl's lavatory.

'Probably crying in there because of Ron Weasley,' thought Quinn as he absentmindedly tapped on the map. There was still no sign of trolls, and Quirrell wasn't in Hogwarts as when Quinn spoke his name, the map didn't react.

Just a minute before the feast, the map reacted when Quinn searched for Quirrell, and the map switched to show the first floor, near Gregory the Smarmy's statue, a deep-violet spot showing Quirrell and a red spot with Troll written on it.

'He is here!' Quinn stood up from his chair and looked at the map. 'Gregory the Smarmy's statue, that is a secret passage, isn't it? Was he hiding a troll in that passage? Is this why the Troll didn't show up on the map?' The secret passage's entrances and the part of passages within Hogwarts premises were visible on the map, but the outer part of the secret passages wasn't part of Hogwarts, so they didn't show up on the map.

Quinn watched the map as the Troll and Quirrell parted ways as the Troll slowly wandered around the first floor, and Quirrell headed towards the staircase, but what happened next betrayed Quinn's expectation as Quirrell didn't climb down the stairs but climbed up to the second floor.

Quinn frowned as the map switched to the staircase and then the second floor, "Where is he going?" Quinn began tapping his feet as he felt the events change from his canon knowledge.

'No, don't rush. Quirrell might have something to do and might get back to the feast after this. The books didn't specify when Quirrell entered the Great Hall to reveal the Troll.'

Quinn's hunch turned out to be correct as Quirrell stopped next to the stairs to the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor's office. He disappeared into the secret passage there, and a minute later, Quirrell emerged with another Troll.

"Another Troll?! What is happening?" Quinn pounded his fist on the table as he decided to look at the first Troll and got another shock when he found Ivy Potter in the girl lavatory with Hermione Granger.

"What is she doing there?! Come on, people, why are you doing this to me?" Quinn whined as he didn't know what to do.

'Which Troll should I go to?'

Quinn needed to decide quickly, and after thinking about it, he decided to go to the new Troll on the second floor. The second Troll was hanging out near the staircase, and if it made its way to the stairs, the Troll might meet the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw students when they are going to their common room.

He decided to leave Hermione and Ivy in the hands of fate. He convinced himself that they won't be harmed and would come out of this unharmed.

'Fate's a bitch, but she has her moments. Let's hope she doesn't screw this up,' Quinn thought as he levitated Recon beside him, and the second Quirrell was on the ground floor, he ran up the stairs to the second floor.

"Let's take down a Troll, shall we?" Quinn looked at Recon, and before proceeding forward, turned himself invisible. He didn't want any ghosts, house-elves, or portraits seeing him fight a troll.

He smirked and quoted a line from the books, "I don't need a cloak to become invisible."

Quinn followed the path to the Troll by observing Recon and stopped just a turn away from the Troll. He deactivated Recon and stored it in his clothes.

He walked ahead, and after turning right on a corner, saw Quirrell's second Troll.

The Troll was twelve feet tall; its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredible. It held a massive wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.

A terrible sight right out of a horror movie, but Quinn had been in the magical world long enough to have seen a lot of magical beasts, and the sight of Troll didn't disturb him, but the smell sure did. It was so bad that Quinn wanted to leave right away, but he had work to do.

"Let's get this over with you smelly bastard."

Quinn primed his magic for battle, and for his first course of action, immediately sent a highly charged Dark Art's version of Explosion charm toward the Troll's groin, aiming for the delicate part of a male's body. The result was as Quinn expected as the Troll moved his hands towards the region of the explosion while roaring in pain and shook.

During his studies, Quinn had found some interesting facts about some non-dark that could be used to cause damage to a person. It turned out that spells like Explosion charm that exploded objects, Severing Charm that could be used to cut objects, Reductor charm that turned objects to dust were inherently created for non-living targets.

They could be used on humans and could definitely cause bodily harm but weren't efficient magic-wise. The amount of magic used to cause substantial damage to the human body didn't sit well with Quinn, and the creators did not design the formation of these spells for living beings, so he leaned into Dark Art's spells for bodily harm.

Dark Arts spells were specially crafted for causing harm to the living and caused much greater damage with less magic and more efficiency.

"Aaargh!" roared the Troll in pain. Quinn might have overdone it with the Dark-Explosion charm's strength.

'Ouchy! Well, at least I know the Troll is a male,' thought Quinn but didn't stop; he had to continue as trolls were dangerous beings.

'I have to get rid of that club in his hand,' planned Quinn, and to accomplish disarming the Troll of his huge club, immediately shot a Dark-Reductor curse on the Troll's club bearing hand, causing the Troll to drop the club.

Quinn noticed why the Trolls were classified as highly dangerous magical beings. The heavily charged Dark-Reductor curse Quinn just shot right now would have turned a person's hand to a bloody pulp, but all it did to the Troll was causing a flesh wound.

'Need to practice the Dark spells to increase my mastery,' analyzed Quinn, not considering that he was basing his standards on a tough-skinned Troll.

Quinn's eyes flashed as he sent a Banishing spell towards the fallen club to distance it from the Troll. The club went flying away from the Troll, and with the club away from the Troll, Quinn raised his hand and aimed towards the Troll; taking a deep breath, Quinn started a continuous spell chain of Dark-Explosion charm and Dark-Reductor curse on the Troll's body.

"Aargh!" "oOoOO!!" "Rawr!" The Troll's scream echoed in the corridor as the spell did damage to the Troll.

In the empty corridor with fire torches as the only source of light, every other second, a dark spell would be shot from Quinn, illuminating the surroundings and zap towards the Troll, aiming for weak spots like the face, neck, kneecaps, and not the least the groin. Quinn, without mercy, ripped the Troll's body bloody, not stopping until the Troll fell down to the ground with a heavy thump, causing slight tremors to pass through the floor.

From the groans and grunts of agony coming from the Troll, Quinn could hear that the Troll was alive, but having been the one to do damage, Quinn was sure that it won't be standing up anytime soon.

'And, Ron Weasley knocked the troll down with a blunt blow to the head,' speculated Quinn as he compared his method of dismantling the Troll to the canon's Troll fight.

Taking out his pocket watch, Quinn looked at the time. He had spent a considerable amount of time here; he needed to join the other students to avoid suspicion. Quinn turned away from the Troll and ran away. As he ran, Quinn activated Recon and looked for the Ravenclaw students; he found them moving up the staircase and decided to blend in with the crowd at the stairs. Quinn waited until they were a little ahead of him and then lifted his invisibility.

Making sure that he wasn't seen, he entered the crowd and pushed his way into the horde of students to reach Eddie and Marcus.

"Hey, mates." casually greeting his roommates as nothing had happened, and Quinn hadn't just returned from a fight with a Troll.

Eddie grabbed Quinn by the robes and harshly whispered, "Where in the world were you?! Do you know what is happening out there?! I was worried about you, man!" If they weren't on the stairs, Eddie would have pulled Quinn into a hug.

Quinn put on a nervous expression and spun a story, "Well, I was in the library and was running a little late. I was walking to the Great Hall, but then nature called, and I had to visit the loo. When I was done and was finally on my way to the Great Hall for the feast, one portrait warned me that there was a Troll loose in the castle and told me that the students were returning to their common rooms, and then I found you guys here."

Eddie and Marcus breathed a sigh of relief that Quinn didn't meet or saw the Troll.

But, Quinn was a little occupied as with other thoughts; to make sure that professors did not suspect him when they found the second Troll, he had rushed to join the students, so he hadn't the time to check what happened with the first Troll, he wasn't sure if Ivy and Hermione had escaped unharmed. Currently, he wanted to get to the common room and check Recon for their status.

After a long and thorough roll call in the common room, Quinn hurriedly climbed up the stairs to the boy's dorm, went to his bed, and drew the curtain for the excuse of privacy for changing clothes; he took out Recon and sharply whispered, "Hermione Granger."

The layout of Recon switched to a corridor near the Gryffindor Tower. Quinn saw Hermione, Ivy, Harry, Ron, and Lily Potter walking towards the Gryffindor common room.

"They are safe," sighed Quinn as he leaned on the backboard of his bed. Quinn continued to watch as the group reached the common room entrance, and it made Quinn smile as Recon showed the Gryffindor common room password, 'Pig snout.'

He turned Recon off, Quinn was hungry, and the food was ready in the common room. If he had stayed and checked on the Trolls, he would have found the professors moving towards the Troll he took down.

- (Scene Break) -

All the professors, excluding Dumbledore, Snape, and Binns, walked on the second floor. A ghost had told them about a second Troll on the second floor.

"The ghost seemed troubled by something. What was wrong with that ghost?" Pomona Sprout asked her colleagues as she recalled how the ghost had run away just after telling them about the second Troll.

Flitwick looked at the Herbology master and shrugged, "I don't know, but the ghost did seem awfully frantic."

When they reached a corner, all the professors smelled a rancid and offending stench. McGonagall stopped and warned, "Wands out, the Troll is just around the corner."

The professors didn't need a second warning as everybody drew their wands. Though they did hear Quirrell make a sound, 'Eep!' as the Defense Against Dark Arts professor fumbled to take out his wand.

"Don't lose focus," warned McGonagall as all of them turned the corridor to see a shocking sight. They saw a Troll, but not in the condition they were expecting.

"W-Why is it laying d-down," stuttered Quirrell as he looked at the second Troll that he had released in Hogwarts. Today wasn't panning out as Quirrell and Voldemort had planned, the first Troll was taken down the damned Potters, and now this second Troll was laying down in the middle of a corridor.

"Is it sleeping?" Aurora Sinistra, the Astronomy professor, took a guess.

Silvanus Kettleburn, the professor of Care of Magical Creatures, grunted in response, "No, you stupid girl, look closely; the Troll is bleeding." With his prosthetic legs, he moved towards the Troll.

"Kettleburn!" McGonagall tried to stop Silvanus, but the old professor kept walking towards the Troll.

"Oh, Morgana!" they heard Silvanus gasp. "Come here, right now!" Silvanus called out to them.

When they reached the Troll's body, they saw the gruesome sight that made all of them gasp.

"Merlin!" "What is this?" "Who-!" "How horrific."

They saw the terrible injuries and trauma on the Troll's body. Horrifying wounds that were bleeding profusely, leaking blood everywhere.

"These wounds..." muttered Lily as she took in the horrendous sight in front of her.

Silvanus looked at Flitwick and grunted, "Flitwick, check them."

The half-goblin immediately understood the meaning behind Silvanus' words and casted some spell all over the Troll's body, and the spell light all turned grey the second they hit the Troll.

"Dark spells," announced Flitwick as he looked at Silvanus.

"What!" McGonagall was shocked to hear that. She casted her own spells on the Troll, and they too turned grey on contact.

"Who could do this?" Septima Vector, the Arithmancy professor, wondered aloud. All the professors were wondering the same, someone had fought a Troll in Hogwarts with Dark spells, and no one knew who it was.

Some of them even noticed how the damage was isolated to the jaw, neck, kneecaps, and groin. Plus, they also saw the club far away from where the Troll had collapsed. The person who fought the Troll knew what they were doing.

"How did someone even know that there was a second Troll," asked Lily. She then turned to Quirrell and asked, "Professor Quirrell, is this the Troll from the third floor?"

Quirrell shook his head while fidgeting and stuttered, "N-No, t-the cloth-thes are different. T-This one is a di-fferent one."

McGonagall looked at all her colleagues and said, "Let's get the Troll out of here, this place needs to be cleaned before a student sees it, and I need to take to Albus about this."

- (Scene Break) -

The next day, Quinn had his ears up to listen if there was any news about the Trolls, but there was no news. No one was talking about there being a second Troll on the loose.

'The staff suppressed the news among themselves, huh,' speculated Quinn. He also noticed that even though people talked about the first Troll, no one chattered about the Potters, which meant that no one knew what happened yesterday.

Unfortunately, that also meant Quinn didn't have a clue of what took place yesterday. But, he had a way of knowing about it, and he was currently on his way to find out.

It was lunchtime, and Quinn was using Recon to tracking the position of Ron Weasley. He was waiting for Ron to be alone, so he could get some information from the redhead, and the chance came when Ron separated from his friends and headed to the lavatory.

Quinn deactivated Recon and followed Ron to the lavatory. Just before he entered the lavatory, Quinn put on gloves and made himself invisible. Quinn entered the lavatory and waited for Ron to finish business, and when Ron was washing his hand, Quinn stepped behind him and took out a small vial of potion.

The potion in the vial was a sedative agent that would make the consumer calm and put them in a hazy state susceptible to suggestions.

Quinn was going to use Legilimency on Ron, but his level of Legilimency wasn't at the level where he could find the memories quickly. If Quinn wanted to target specific memories, it would take him time to find and reach said memories, and in this case, he didn't have the time. So, Quinn was planning to use this potion to render Ron into a semiconscious state and work with that.

He opened the vial and used the magic to manipulate the liquid to turn into mist, then he directed the mist to enter Ron through his nose, and the effect was almost immediate. Ron felt the potion's effects and felt the world turn cloudy, and an unnatural sense of emptiness and haziness fell on him.

"Wha' is happenin'?" Ron's words slurred, and the next second he felt his eyes get covered. Quinn, who was behind Ron, gently used his hand to make Ron close his eyes. He raised his other hand and put his index finger on Ron's temple, and spoke, "How are you feeling, Ron?"

There was a pause before Ron slurred, "Wierrdd~."

"It's okay, mate, everything is going to be fine. Follow my lead, and you feel normal. Do you want to feel normal?" Quinn guided Ron and made him feel comfortable.

"Yezz~."

"Good, now all you have to do is think about yesterday when you met the Troll. Can you do that for me, mate?"

Quinn couldn't search through someone's memories quickly, but if someone was thinking about them, then it would become mighty easy as the memory would be on the surface of the person's psyche. Quinn was using his words and the potion to bring yesterday's memories to the surface.

"Trull~?" as Ron said that Quinn used Legilimency and dived into Ron's mind, and as he expected, found the memory.

In the memory, Harry noticed his sister Ivy wasn't in the Great Hall. Then Ron and Harry recalled Parvati Patil telling them about Hermione crying in the lavatory and how Ivy had torn into them just after the Charms class when Ron had said rude things to Hermione.

In the memory, Harry spoke, "I am sure that Ivy went to see Hermione; they might not know about the Troll. We have to find them."

Ron replied, "Oh, all right," he snapped. "But, Percy better not see us."

On their way, they saw Snape, but Harry was too worried about Ivy to care about Snape, so he pulled Ron with him, and when they reached the lavatory, they saw the Troll.

The Troll had his club raised, but it was tilting sideways. In the memory, Quinn noticed that the Troll was trying to hit Ivy and Hermione with its club, but the girls had their wands out, pointed towards the Troll's club.

A flash of realization stuck Quinn, 'They are using the Levitation charm to keep the Troll's club away from them.' The Troll being the epitome of stupidity wasn't letting the club go and held onto it. It was trying to use its club to hit the girls.

Ivy looked at Harry and yelled, "Use the Levitation charm on the club. The Troll is too strong; we can't get it out its hand."

Harry was confused but followed nevertheless. He took out his wand, and Ron followed. Harry succeeded in using the spell with moderate success, but Ron was having trouble using the spell.

The memory switched to Hermione trying to teach Ron how to use the Levitation charm. The memory shifted back to the lavatory, and Ron properly yelled, "Wingardium Leviosa!"

The club that was now subjected to four Levitation charm pulled itself free out of the Troll's hands as the Troll tried to reach out for it, and then just like the canon, fell onto the Troll's head accompanied by a loud, sickening crack. The Troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the entire room tremble.

Quinn had seen enough, so he stopped and bought himself out of the memory.

"Good job, mate. You have done well. Now, everything will be alright, and when everything returns to normal, we will talk about Quidditch," calmly said, Quinn.

"Quiwwitch!" slurred an excited Ron.

Quinn removed his index finger from Ron's temple and took out another vial from his pockets, and vaporized the contents for Ron to inhale. It was the counter agent for the earlier potion.

The second Quinn was done, he removed his hand from Ron's eyes and walked away without looking away.

It took a few seconds for Ron to regain his mental facilities, and when he was back to normal, he had a pleasant urge to talk about Quidditch.

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Quinn West - MC - Troll Hunter - Experienced in Hypnotism.

The second Troll - Mountain Troll - Argh!

Ron Weasley - Gryffindor - "Hey, Harry, let's talk about Quidditch!"

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