“TROLL! IN THE DUNGEONS!” Quirrell sways, just for a few moments, and adds, “Thought you ought to know.”

As he drops forwards and down in a dead faint, screams break out across the Halloween feast, and it’s only when large firecrackers burst from Dumbledore’s wand that everyone shuts up.

“Prefects! Lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately!”

“Ignore him! Slytherins, stay where you are.”

Francois speaks loudly above the roar as the others begin to file out of the hall. Dumbledore, as is apparently common for him from what the older Slytherins have said, had apparently forgotten where their house is. The others continue to move out of the room, except one red-and-gold clad Gryffindor.

“Harry!”

“Neville, you need to go upstairs – we’ll be fine in here, you guys are up in the tow-”

“Harry, Hermione isn’t here. She was crying in one of the girl’s bathrooms – she doesn’t know about the troll!” Harry's blood runs cold as he stares at Neville's panicked face.

“Potter,” comes Blaise’s alarmed tone.

“Potter, don’t you dare-” Malfoy chimes in, horror on his face.

“Oh, Merlin,” Nott mutters, and clutches at his own forehead in tired resignation as Harry runs toward the door and slips out between two Hufflepuffs. He’d left Neville behind – and, in fairness, that’s probably for the best, as Harry just needs to get one person away from the troll, and if Neville were to faint it’d be a bit hard to drag him away.

“Hermione!” He yells down the corridor, and he rushes to the bathroom at high speed, skidding on the flat tile as he enters.

“H-Harry?” Hermione’s face is wet with tears as she peeks out of a bathroom stall, and Harry can’t help but feel a sharp pang of pity in his chest; he’s going to have a go at whoever made his friend feel this way later, but for now they need to get out. He grabs at her hand and begins pulling her toward the door, but she freezes in her place.

“There’s a troll, Hermione, we have to-”

“Ha- Harry-”

“No, we have to-”

“Harry.”

The stench hits him, and Harry looks up and around, where the troll stands in the doorway. It’s huge, and the stinj it gives off is overpowering; its skin is grey and thick, and it must be twelve feet tall, a thick, oaken club hanging from one of its stubby hands and trailing on the stone.

“Oh, God.” Harry pulls Hermione across the room at speed and she runs, stumbles, with him: the troll follows, its small, stupid head tilting to the side. Harry runs desperately through the few spells he knows, and settles on one of the ones that he can do.

“Right, okay, Hermione, listen to me – get your wand. Aim for its eyes,” he tries to keep his tone reasonable as he holds up his hand, forcing himself not to shake.

“Harry, we don’t know any spells-” Even as she argues, Hermione's holding up her wand like he is.

“Listen to me. Aim for its eyes-”

Both of them shakily raise their wands higher as the troll advances, steps making loud, rumbling stomps on the tiled floor and cracking it in places.

“Say Scourigify on the count of three, and then we split up, you jump to the right, and I jump to the left. Okay?”

"But what does it-”

“WE HAVEN’T GOT TIME, HERMIONE-”

“Right, right, okay, one- two- three-”

“Scourigify!”

There comes a somewhat sickening sound of soapy, invisible brushes scrubbing over bulging, yellowed eyes. The troll gives an earsplitting howl, and the two of them jump apart, running for the door as it brings the thick bludgeon it had in its hand onto the floor and throws tile and stone into the air.

Harry slams the door shut as they leave, turning the key in the lock, and then he collapses backwards – but he doesn’t hit the floor. No, that would be far too lucky for Harry Potter: his back hits, instead, the scowling form of Professor Severus Snape.

“Oh, God.” Harry whispers, and Snape grabs him by back of his robe, pulling him away from him and shoving him to stand with Hermione: McGonagall, Quirrell and Dumbledore are all assembled – they probably heard the yell.

“Professors!”

“We didn’t knock it out. We just locked it in,” Harry says hurriedly.

McGonagall huffs a sigh as Quirrell whimpers. “Severus, shall we?” Her tone seems more like the one you'd use to get rid of a stubborn dust bunny than a twelve foot troll, but Harry's Head of House doesn't bat an eyebrow. Snape adjusts his sleeves, and he follows McGonagall into the bathroom with the same air of purpose: Quirrell, with a quick murmur to Dumbledore, moves down the corridor and leans against the wall, fanning himself with one shaking hand.

“How ever did you manage to evade a troll, Mr Potter, Ms Granger?” Dumbledore’s eyes are twinkling in a way that Harry can’t really comprehend – is he amused? Does he find it funny that two eleven-year-olds just fought a troll?

“Er-”

“It was my fault, Professor.” Harry stares at Hermione, unable to say anything. “I thought I could deal with the troll myself, so I went looking for it. Harry’s the only reason I’m not dead right now.”

“Is that true, Mr Potter?” Dumbledore asks, eyes twinkling with a further intensity.

“Um, n-” Hermione elbows him hard in the side, which Dumbledore politely pretends not to notice.

“Yes, sir.” Harry says through gritted teeth.

“Mr Potter,” Snape speaks silkily, and to Harry’s complete surprise, he is smirking slightly, lip twitched up at one corner into a horrifying parody of a self-satisfied smile.

“If you would be so kind as to tell Professor McGonagall and myself- which of you thought to utilize a simple cleaning charm on the troll’s eyes?”

“Me, sir,” Harry says somewhat guilty, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “I, um, I didn’t know any other spells except one to dry ink and one to iron clothes, and its skin looked really thick and I didn’t think-”

“Shut up, Mr Potter.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry breathes out, gasping in breaths after getting a bit too worried and spitting out one word after another.

“Twenty points to Slytherin, Mr Potter, for ingenuity in the face of- certain death.” The way Snape says death is more than terrifying, but Harry tries to ignore it as McGonagall stands up beside him, and says crisply,

“Fifty points from Gryffindor, Ms Granger, for being so stupid as to attempt suicide by troll.”

“And for being unlucky to have a Head of House that doesn’t even notice when you’re not at dinner, I guess,” Harry says bluntly, and McGonagall looks at him with fury on her features, but she doesn’t bite at him immediately.

“How dare you?”

“Mr Potter, I believe Ms Granger said she went looking for the troll after Professor Quirrell’s call for alarm,” Professor Dumbledore says.

“She did say that, sir. But what actually happened-”

“Harry!” Hermione protests, but Harry ignores her.

“Is that someone from your pit of lions made her cry. At least in my house we display loyalty. To the right people, that is.”

He says this with a glance at Hermione, who looks furious as she stares at him. McGonagall is very, very red in the face, and Harry opens his mouth to speak further, but Snape’s hand settles on his shoulder and his thumb and forefinger squeeze hard at the junction of his neck and shoulder: Harry chokes out a short noise of pain, and shuts his mouth.

“I believe I shall remove my loyal snake to the dungeons,” Snape says in a light, soft murmur, and then he turns Harry with him, striding down the corridor with Harry next to him. It’s after they’re two corridors away and Harry knows that McGonagall won’t hear him that he asks,

“So I have two weeks of detention, then, sir?”

“I believe a month will be sufficient, Potter.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“No, Potter, you are not,” Snape says, with a fatigue that seems to be a bit early for barely a month into the year. “Potter, I would like to ensure that you realize your arrogance is not a quality I find endearing. In the event of a repetition, you will wish th-”

“Sir, is your leg alright?” Harry speaks suddenly as he notices something off about the other man’s stride, and he looks at a tear in the other’s robes; blood shows on the black fabric, illuminated thanks to the flickering firelight of the torches on the walls. Had the troll got him? Snape is horrible to him (Harry knows full well the points were a crow over McGonagall rather than a boon for him), but Harry can’t not feel guilty about him sustaining an injury from the troll.

“Mr Potter, I am talk-”

“Sir, you’re bleeding, are you okay? Did the troll get you? I'm so sorry, I can walk down to the common room-”

“Potter-”

“You really should go and see Madam Pom-”

“Potter!” Snape snaps, and Harry flinches back at the sharp raise in tone. He stares at the other man, his eyes wide. Snape’s face is not angry, as such, but certainly curled into an irritated snarl, and then it fades into impassivity.

“Go to bed. And in the event that your essay for tomorrow is not completed, regardless of this evening’s misadventure, you will instead serve two months of detention with me.”

“It’s already done, sir. can bring it to you now, if you like.”

“One month and one week for your cheek, Potter. Go. To. Bed.”

“Good night, Professor Snape,” Harry says obediently, and he tries not to chuckle to himself as he rushes down to the common room: he does hope Snape's leg will be fine, though.