I Was Just Going to Dinner

Hogwarts on Halloween Eve had more atmosphere than usual.

Strings of Jack-o'-Lanterns had gone up early in the corridors. Orange candle flames floated in midair, swaying gently in the drafts and lending the ancient stone walls a little warmth.

Someone among the older students had slipped a wizard's hat onto a suit of armor. The people in the portraits were livelier than usual, too. Several old wizards in high ruffled collars had, for once, stopped arguing and were earnestly discussing whether flying bats would appear in the Great Hall again this year.

The faint aromas of roasted pumpkin, gravy, and desserts hung in the air.

They had been drifting down the corridors since evening, offering the first-years something close to spiritual encouragement.

After nearly two months at school, everyone had begun to understand one thing: life at Hogwarts was not easy.

Gavin didn't see it that way.

He found it fulfilling.

Over the past two months, his schedule had settled into a routine:

He got up in the morning and trained Cedric first.

More precisely, he trained Hufflepuff's future hope.

At first, Cedric had thought a "personal coach" would just give him a few pointers about a Seeker's field of vision, speed, and route selection. Then, at six on the first morning, he arrived at the pitch bleary-eyed and found Gavin already waiting with a sheet of parchment covered in tiny writing. He realized it might not be as simple as he'd imagined.

From that day on, Cedric's mornings were no longer his own.

Whether Cedric's flying had undergone a dramatic improvement after two months was hard to say. His mental resilience, however, had visibly improved.

Gavin was reasonably satisfied with that.

After training Cedric came classes.

After classes came the Room of Requirement.

He studied magic and practiced the Levitation Charm, the Slowing Charm, and Transfiguration.

Lately, he had been venturing further into Transfiguration, gradually drifting toward more dangerous and more interesting territory.

Partial transformation.

Transforming living things.

Reinforcing specific structures.

Making inanimate objects mimic the behavior of living things.

If Professor McGonagall heard those terms, she would probably fall silent for two seconds before politely reminding him that first-year homework did not need to go quite that far.

But Gavin couldn't help himself.

Transfiguration was too fascinating.

It was like a key inserted into the surface of reality. The deeper he went, the more he felt there was another door ahead, and another behind that one. Beyond each door seemed to lie a glimpse of what wizards called "truth."

So when the evening bell rang on Halloween Eve, Gavin left the Room of Requirement with one question still on his mind—

How far was he from truly conjuring food? What other conditions would he need to meet?

He headed down from the Seventh Floor. The stone steps stretched quietly beneath his feet, while the distinctive bustle of the holiday carried faintly from the Great Hall. The students were plainly more excited than usual. Some hurried along; others held pumpkin sweets. A few children dressed as young wizards were already singing in the portraits. They weren't very good, but they made up for it with enthusiasm.

Dinner should be good tonight, Gavin thought.

When it came to holiday feasts, Hogwarts inspired hope far more readily than it did with theoretical instruction.

Then, on the fourth floor, he caught a smell.

It wasn't the aroma of food. It was a stench.

It was like going into a restaurant ready for a feast, only to discover it was an outhouse.

Rotten, filthy, damp, and carrying a reek like rags left soaking at the bottom of a swamp for over a decade. It was nothing like Hogwarts's usual smells of mildew, herbs, or underground classrooms. This was heavier, more savage, like a mountain of thoroughly fermented rubbish trying to insult everyone's sense of smell simply by existing.

Gavin stopped.

"...Troll."

The smell was hard to mistake.

Before he could go any farther, hurried footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

Harry and Ron were running toward him, and neither looked well.

The three met at the corner.

Ron spotted Gavin first and visibly froze.

"Gu? What are you doing here?"

"Going to dinner," Gavin said with a frown. "Then I smelled what you two clearly smelled too."

Harry looked more tense than usual and spoke quickly.

"Hermione's still in the Girls' Bathroom. She doesn't know the troll's out."

"So you're going to find her?"

"Yeah." Ron nodded.

But Ron was plainly pale. He knew how dangerous it was to run around where they might encounter a troll at any moment.

Without stopping to discuss it, Harry and Ron hurried toward the fourth-floor Girls' Bathroom.

Gavin watched them go.

He knew how this would end, of course. In theory, he didn't have to do anything. At the crucial moment, Ron would use that awkward old Wand of his to cast the Levitation Charm and drop the troll's club onto its own head.

The standard answer, confirmed by the original story.

The problem was—

Gavin had always been curious.

How had Ron managed, with a secondhand Wand and under that much pressure, to cast a Levitation Charm strong enough to lift a troll's heavy weapon?

Besides, in theory, there was no danger in taking a look.

Barring any surprises, Ron would handle it in the end.

Gavin decided to go see the famous moment for himself.

The corridors had descended into chaos.

Scattered screams, pounding footsteps, and teachers calling for order sounded in the distance. But this corner by the Girls' Bathroom was so out of the way that its quiet felt even more wrong. The troll's stench grew stronger, almost tangible.

Just as he reached the door, a tremendous crash came from inside.

Something huge and heavy had struck the floor tiles.

Then Hermione screamed.

Harry and Ron shouted after her.

"Wingardium—" Ron began the incantation.

Harry was clinging desperately to the troll's neck, while Ron was lifting its club into the air.

Gavin hurriedly pushed the half-open door, hoping to get a clear look. He hadn't expected the door to have ideas of its own.

Instead of swinging aside, it toppled straight backward.

Bang.

At almost that exact instant, Ron's already-raised Wand visibly faltered.

He instinctively turned his head to glance at Gavin.

That fleeting look was enough to throw off the Levitation Charm that should have brought the club down smoothly.

The club jerked upward, rose another little way with a wobble, then abruptly lost its lift and fell heavily.

The troll froze.

Harry froze.

Ron froze too.

And in that instant, Gavin realized one thing with perfect clarity:

Oh, no.

The next second, the troll, thoroughly enraged by the fallen door and the club behaving wildly on its own, whipped its head around. Its tiny eyes, almost too small for its face, locked onto Gavin by the doorway.

It roared.

Then it charged straight at him.

"..."

Gavin sighed inwardly, very quickly.

Would you believe me if I said I was just passing by?

The troll clearly had no intention of letting him explain.

With the other three in front of him, he knew he couldn't retreat.

He hesitated no longer.

He drew his Wand.

With no combat experience to rely on, Gavin put everything he had into his first move.

He raised his Wand.

"Vera Verto!"

He snapped the Wand downward.

The stone tiles beneath the troll suddenly twisted.

The once-hard, level floor seemed to come alive. Its stony surface split, curled, and stretched under the force of his Magic. In the blink of an eye, it sprouted a thick, dark-green vine with a cold, damp sheen.

It burst through the gaps between the tiles and instantly coiled around the troll's shins and ankles.

Already charging at full speed, the troll stumbled as its feet caught. Its enormous body lost its balance and began pitching forward.

Gavin's second spell followed immediately.

"Gravipressus!"

The Slowing Charm.

He had begun teaching himself the Spell after Professor Flitwick mentioned it in Charms class.

It wasn't an official Spell in Hogwarts's standard textbooks. Gavin had found its incantation in the library and learned it by practicing in the Room of Requirement.

The spell took effect at once.

The troll fell visibly faster.

The Slowing Charm worked like a Levitation Charm in reverse, increasing the gravity acting on its target to slow its movements.

Gavin still didn't understand what "increasing gravity" actually meant in the context of the Spell, but that hadn't stopped him from using it.

Something suddenly dragged the troll's entire body downward, sending it falling as if someone had sped up time.

Harry and Ron stared, dumbfounded.

Hermione leaned against the wall, watching with a deathly pale face. She had even forgotten to scream.

Gavin had no attention to spare for them.

Only one thought remained in his mind:

Kill it.

A troll wasn't the kind of opponent you could deal with neatly by shining a light and tripping it. It was too big, too heavy, too filthy, and too hard to kill. Unless you finished it thoroughly, it would flatten you with that club the next second.

So he cast his third spell without hesitation.

Gavin thrust his Wand toward the floor.

It was the crudest, most direct act of full-force Transfiguration he could currently manage.

The stone tiles split with a roar.

The Girls' Bathroom floor burst upward as though an invisible giant hand had punched through it from below. Shattered stone and dust sprayed into the air. A moment later, a gray-white spike of stone, hard and almost blindingly sharp, shot up from the ground. Its angle was so vicious it might have been calculated: it met the falling troll's head squarely and drove straight into its right eye.

Pff.

The sound wasn't nearly as loud as Gavin had expected.

Just a short pop, a little like puncturing a fish's swim bladder.

The spike pierced straight through the troll's eye socket.

Its enormous head seemed to hang nailed in midair, its forward momentum stopped dead. Then dark red, almost black blood and murkier brain matter burst from the other side. Hot and foul-smelling, they splashed across the tiles, walls, mirror frames, and sinks, leaving a broad spray of appalling stains.

Harry stood rooted to the spot.

Ron went white. His mouth hung open, but not a word came out.

Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

The only sound left in the bathroom was a few drops of liquid sliding down the tiles.

Still caught in its forward lunge, the troll gave one twitching shudder.

Then it stopped moving altogether.

It was dead beyond any doubt.

Gavin stood where he was, Wand in hand, his chest heaving.

"...Oh, no. I think I overdid it."

The feeling of having his Magic drained away was like coming off an endless work shift, with nothing left in his body.

Gavin felt as though someone had scraped the inside of his skull hard with a spoon. The edges of his vision darkened, and the sounds around him began to fade.

He swayed.

Harry seemed to call his name.

Ron moved too, apparently trying to catch him.

But Gavin could no longer hear anything.

He had time to confirm only one last thing—

The troll really was dead.

Then his vision went black, and he pitched forward.

When the teachers arrived, they found a scene that would have silenced any normal adult wizard for two seconds.

The Girls' Bathroom was a wreck.

Broken glass, overturned stall doors, shattered floor tiles, cracks in the porcelain sinks, and filthy blood that had yet to finish running down half a wall. The troll lay like a filthy little mountain, its head pierced clean through by a spike of stone that had grown from the floor. Its death had been gruesome.

Professor McGonagall rushed in first and stopped dead just inside the doorway.

Behind her, Professor Sprout drew a sharp breath.

Professor Flitwick's eyes widened.

Even Snape, whose face usually suggested he was prepared for anything, looked briefly stunned.

The moment Professor Quirrell saw the scene, he let out a delicate gasp entirely in keeping with his character, then fainted.

"Merlin..." Professor Flitwick murmured.

Professor McGonagall swept her gaze across the scene.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all on their feet. They looked awful, but none appeared to have suffered a fatal injury.

Then she saw Gavin lying on the floor.

"Mr. Gu!"

Snape crouched down almost at once.

He moved with startling speed. His black robes fell beside the shattered glass and blood as he reached to check Gavin. The instant his fingertips touched him, his expression darkened.

“No injuries,” he said in a low voice. “But he's exhausted his Magic.”

Professor McGonagall bent over him at once. "How bad is it?"

Snape did not answer immediately.

He examined Gavin more carefully, pressing his fingers to his temple and the side of his neck. His expression grew grimmer by the second. By the time he looked up, the bathroom was so quiet that even the dripping blood sounded harsh.

"Very bad," he said.

Professor Flitwick's expression changed at once.

"Take him to the Hospital Wing—"

"The Hospital Wing may not be able to handle this," Snape interrupted.

Even Professor McGonagall froze for a moment.

She looked at Gavin on the floor, her voice unusually strained.

"You mean—"

"He drained himself dry," Snape said. "Madam Pomfrey may not be able to help him."

He paused. His cold gaze swept over the dead Troll, then returned to Gavin's face.

"If we wait any longer, he'll die."

The bathroom fell deathly silent.

Halloween Eve should have been a night for eating Pumpkin Pasties. Instead, it had veered completely off course.

Gavin lay there quietly, his face pale, his fate unknown.