On the day before Halloween, Harry woke up early to the sweet, enticing smell of roasted pumpkin drifting in from the corridor.
The corridors and classrooms of the castle had all changed their look. The people in the portraits had put on bizarre costumes, some wearing over-the-top wizard hats, others wrapped in billowing black cloaks, waggling their eyebrows at passing students and letting out the occasional cackle.
Black vines crawled along the walls, dotted here and there with grinning jack-o'-lanterns. Their ghostly green light flickered in the dim corridors, casting shifting, mysterious shadows.
After finishing their classes for the day, Harry, Hermione and Ron went downstairs toward the Great Hall.
That evening there was to be a pre-Halloween feast, an event no less grand than the Sorting Ceremony, and every year of students would be attending.
When they entered the Great Hall, multicolored decorations hung from the walls, and a thousand bats conjured by the professors swooped back and forth across the ceiling like low-hanging clumps of dark cloud.
The young witches and wizards clustered together, tucking into the delicious food.
Golden, crispy roast turkey, enormous pumpkin pies, brightly colored sweets, all kinds of oddly shaped pastries and steaming pumpkin soup – every dish looked like a masterpiece of magic.
Ron was, as usual, stuffing his favorite chicken drumsticks into his mouth, smearing grease all over his face. With his words half smothered by food, he mumbled, "Mmmf, I heard there are going to be special performances tonight. Apparently Professor Dumbledore's going to use Transfiguration to turn some skeletons loose to dance for us."
"And there'll be a magical-creature show as well. Hagrid said he was going to invite a unicorn to make an appearance," Hermione added excitedly.
Harry was looking forward to it too. Unicorns were extraordinarily mysterious and precious magical creatures; even their hair alone could be used as wand core.
Perhaps he could analyze the structure of a unicorn's magic and use it to develop spells of purification or protection.
Harry bit into a chocolate bar, already planning to head into the Forbidden Forest later to get on good terms with the unicorn and see if it would let him study it.
He wondered what unicorns liked – would berries rich in magical energy do?
Just as the feast was growing livelier and livelier, the doors of the hall burst open with a bang.
Professor Quirrell rushed in, looking utterly panic-stricken.
His robes were askew, and he was panting heavily as he staggered toward the front of the hall, knocking over several chairs with a clatter that instantly drew every eye.
He barely managed to steady himself and stammered out, "T–t–troll, there's a troll in the dungeon classroom!"
No sooner had he finished than he pitched forward onto the floor and fainted.
The hall erupted into chaos, to the point that Dumbledore had to wave his wand and send several bursts of multicolored fireworks cracking across the air above them before everyone finally quieted down.
"Prefects, take your Houses back to the dormitories at once," Dumbledore said in a low voice.
Percy shouted, "Everyone, this way! Don't get separated. As long as you do as I say, there's no need to be afraid of any troll!"
But the students didn't seem convinced; they were still in a panic.
Everybody knew that trolls were powerful and vicious beings, and that to them, wizards were just another kind of food.
They had a habit of rampaging through wizarding villages, leaving devastation in their wake and brutally killing countless witches and wizards.
Fear weighed on everyone's hearts, and Percy's speech only made them more terrified.
At that moment, Harry used magic to amplify his voice and shouted, "Everyone calm down! Listen to Prefect Percy – we'll be fine!"
His magic wrapped around his words, laced with a soothing suggestion, and the hubbub died away as the students fell quiet one after another.
As soon as they heard Harry speak, voices rose from the crowd: "That's right, we've got Harry! He's really strong, he can even beat professors!"
"We're safe, don't be scared, we've got Potter!"
Seeing how nothing he said had any effect while Harry only had to open his mouth for the entire crowd to settle down, Percy couldn't help wearing a complicated expression.
He thought to himself that if his words worked less well than Harry's, he was a pretty poor excuse for a prefect.
Then again, when he thought about it, it was only natural. Even he admired Harry a great deal – how much more must the younger students?
Harry set off with the other Gryffindor students toward their common room.
But as they walked, Harry, Hermione and Ron gradually slowed their pace until, without noticing, they had fallen to the back of the line.
By the time they were close to the Gryffindor common room, the three of them had slipped away entirely, and none of the other students had noticed.
In a secluded corner, Hermione asked in puzzlement, "Harry, why did you pull us out of the group?"
Harry gave her a mysterious smile, grabbed them both by the arms and headed for the dungeon classrooms at a run.
As they ran, he explained, "There are still students down in the dungeon classrooms. They might be in danger, and we ought to help them. Besides, don't you want to see what a troll looks like? It's the perfect chance to practice spells on it!"
Harry had already noticed that many students were missing from the Slytherin table; Pansy was one of them.
Some of the students who weren't in the hall had gone back to classrooms for things they'd forgotten, some had gone to the bathroom, some had returned to the Slytherin common room. Scattered across the first floor, the dungeon classrooms and even the deeper dungeons, any one of them could run into danger.
Magic in the wizarding world wasn't exactly famed for its sensory range, and the professors might not get there in time, so Harry had decided to rush over as quickly as possible and stop some unlucky student from blundering into the troll.
If the troll swatted someone with its club and turned them into a splattered meat patty, that would be rather bad.
Besides that, Harry also meant to use this to toughen up Hermione and Ron.
Having been put through strict training by the Sorcerer Supreme, Harry knew that battle was the best way to increase one's strength.
A wizard who had been tempered by real combat was worlds apart in fighting power from one who had never set foot on a battlefield.
This was also an important step in his "loli-raising plan"!
Hermione and Ron were startled to find that as they ran, thin threads of electricity, like lively silver snakes, spread out from Harry's palms and in the blink of an eye wrapped around all three of them.
In an instant, the current had encased their whole bodies. A faint sizzling filled their ears, followed by a slight numbness, tingling and prickling as if countless tiny needles were gently stabbing at their skin.
Then, something strange happened. They could clearly feel a wave of heat surge through them, filling every limb and bone with inexhaustible strength, every muscle taut with power.
Their running strides became incredibly light; each lift and fall of their feet seemed to kick up a gust of wind, and their speed shot up by more than thirty percent!
"Harry, what spell is this?" Hermione asked in amazement.
The corners of Harry's mouth quirked up in a slightly proud smile. "It's a new spell I invented – Current Reinforcement. It uses electric current to stimulate the nerves and muscles, temporarily enhancing the body."
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