Time rewound slightly. Harry and Ron were enjoying the Halloween Eve feast in the Great Hall.
Watching bats flutter through the sky, sitting inside a giant pumpkin, and eating delicious Pumpkin Pasties, Harry was delighted. To him, Hogwarts was practically paradise. He absolutely loved it here!
Here, he did not have to endure his aunt and uncle's family bullying him, nor did he have to see Dudley's stupid face every day. He could eat lavish meals daily, live in a spacious dormitory, and sleep in a soft bed. Most importantly, he had his good friend Ron here to play with him every day.
It would have been even better if people did not keep running up to him, shouting and trying to look at the scar on his forehead.
Actually, he did not mind people wanting to see the scar on his forehead. When he first met Ron on the Hogwarts Express, he had shown it to him quite casually. The problem was that those people simply never stopped. They looked at it during the day, then at night; they looked at it today and wanted to look again tomorrow. Even with Harry's good temper, they had made his scalp tingle with irritation, and he was starting to want to curse them out.
Just as Harry was savoring the present, imagining the future, and quietly grumbling to himself, an untimely crash interrupted his thoughts.
Their Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—Professor Quirrell—suddenly slammed open the doors of the Great Hall.
He staggered up to Professor Dumbledore's table and shouted, "Troll... in the Hogw-Warts c-castle. I th-thought you sh-should know."
After saying that, he toppled face-first onto the floor and fainted.
Harry was very curious. Professor Quirrell looked as though he was about to faint at any second, and he really