Professor McGonagall was followed closely by Snape and Flitwick, while Quirrell shuffled along timidly at the rear.
Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a weak sob, then fell backward onto a toilet, clutching his chest tightly.
Snape bent down to inspect the troll. The moment he entered, he had noticed the burns across its head and the unnatural cuts on its neck, though they had already healed.
Professor McGonagall stared at the four young wizards.
Tierra noticed that Professor McGonagall's lips had gone white and that her entire body was trembling. Great fury seemed to be brewing in her catlike eyes.
"What on earth were you playing at?" Professor McGonagall demanded again, her voice heavy with icy anger. "You four are lucky it didn't kill you. Why weren't you staying quietly in your dormitory?"
"Professor McGonagall, this is what happened..." Tierra was about to recount everything exactly as it had happened, though naturally, he would have to conceal his own part. In his view, children having conflicts with one another was perfectly normal.
Besides, with Harry as an accomplice, the school could hardly expel all of them for real.
But Hermione stepped out from the corner and beat him to it.
"Professor McGonagall, it was me! I went looking for the troll because I... I thought I could handle it by myself. You see, I'd read about them in books, and I thought I knew them very well."
Tierra could not help looking at Hermione in a new light.
Seeing something in a book or film was one thing. Actually encountering it in real life was another.
The fact that Hermione dared to risk expulsion to cover for Tierra was already remarkably brave.
After all, for Hermione, expulsion was a punishment even more terrifying than death.
Hermione