Despite feeling plenty fulfilled with his existing friend group of two, by Halloween, Harry had acquired another. Hermione Granger was rather bossy, in Ron's defense, but Harry had not minded her presence nearly as much. With her willing to answer every question in class, Harry was able to zone out completely and not worry about being called on.
Then, Quirrell fell to a dead faint in the Great Hall, and all the children started to scream in terror.
"Where's Hermione?" One of their classmates shouted over the chaos as the first years huddled together.
"Bloody hell," Ron said, looking rather sheepish. "Is she still crying in the bathroom about what I said?"
"Probably," Harry said. "It looks like she's going to die and it'll be your fault. Tough luck, mate."
Ron gave him a baffled look.
"Merlin's tits you're weird. Let's go find her, Harry, I don't want her to die just because she's annoying."
You didn't need to be a budding necromancer to find a troll. They could smell it from a corridor away, nowhere near the dungeons, thanks Quirrell. They heard a shrill scream from Hermione and began to run towards the sound. The girl's bathroom was half destroyed, and the girl was frozen in shock. Harry fired a blasting curse and then an incendio but with the troll's thick skin and high pain tolerance, it merely turned to look at the intruders in mild annoyance. Harry hesitated to use something stronger against the beast. He was a perfectly normal first year with two months of training under his belt, after all. He went for another shot of fire, aimed directly at its face.
Ron meanwhile, had dragged Hermione away. They stood shaking behind Harry, shamelessly using him as a human shield with their wands out, unsure of how to contribute. Ron levitated bits of rubble to throw at the creature when it began to raise its arm to strike them.
"Ron - the club!" Hermione pointed to the troll's wooden club which was about as long and thick as the children themselves. While Harry kept the thing thoroughly distracted with his vaguely age-appropriate spells, the other two raised their arms as one and screamed.
" Wingardium Leviosa!" The club flew from its hand and crashed into the ceiling, then fell with a mighty bonk directly onto the troll's skull. It tipped over backwards and crashed into the sinks, spraying them with water. As Hermione and Ron began to laugh hysterically, Harry whispered the Killing Curse at the unconscious beast. The curse left no traces but the large bump on its head left a much more reasonable explanation how three school children had managed to take down the creature. When the professors found them, Harry's bashful, innocent smile fooled all of them.
Clearly the other two children were not accustomed to near-death experiences, as they both followed him around like lost ducklings. Hermione, like the rest of his growing horde of minions, had declared herself a part of their group after Halloween. Somehow, her overbearing behavior became endearing, although she and the boys disagreed heartily on the subject of studying. Harry had been able to get by just fine completing all his essays last minute. Most of the material was review for him, and Harry couldn't bother to waste precious effort beyond the bare minimum for his homework. His brain could only hold so much focus, and that focus, was of course, better suited to goofing around.
She was very nice and funny when she wasn't hyperfocused on her books. With her being muggleborn, Ron a pureblood, and Harry raised largely outside of both cultures, they had many an interesting discussion about the differences between muggle and wixen societies. They made grand plans to spend a summer visiting cinemas and theme parks as well as ancient magical heritage spots like Stonehenge and the oldest magical districts in the Alps.
They all agreed that exploring the castle in their spare moments was a good mix of exciting and educational, so that was how the students spent the majority of their time. Ron wanted to find the kitchens, Hermione wanted to sneak inside the Restricted Section and Harry (whose ideas had been vetoed immediately) wanted to explore the Forbidden Forest. Absolutely nothing dangerous or exciting happened up until one DADA class, when Harry, who was bored out of his mind, was trying to subtly influence Professor Quirrel with Dark magic. His goal was to make him talk about something more interesting than vampires for once and discovered the man was possessed by something, and his body and soul had mostly been consumed by the creature. (Oh, and he was drinking unicorn blood, which was not only gross, but an amateur move) That the cowardly professor was secretly a really shitty necromancer made things much more interesting, and Harry was ready to investigate.
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