Chapter 122: Rumours
The girls' lavatory was cold. The cubicle was colder still.
The stench spread like despair.
Hermione knew the odds were against her. Only now did she realise how foolish she had been.
In the Hope Room, she had so many friends, such precious friends… yet she had shut herself in a bathroom to cry over people who did not matter.
Not far away, the scrape of the troll's enormous feet on the floor was horribly clear.
But Shawn was faster than the troll.
"Do not be afraid, Hermione. Take my hand."
She stared in disbelief. Shawn's figure blocked the shadow beyond the cubicle door.
He gently helped Hermione to her feet, then used Transfiguration to turn the door of the neighbouring cubicle into a bench for her to sit on.
It also meant he was now completely exposed to the troll's gaze.
"Shawn! Look out!" Hermione cried, finding strength from nowhere as she saw the troll raising its club.
"Stay in there. If you come out, I will be distracted," Shawn said quietly. Then he shut the cubicle door.
The troll's club sliced the air with a vicious whistle. A massive shadow swallowed Shawn.
Facing this hulking brute, Shawn suddenly wondered if Ron knocking it out with a club in the story had been a bit too much like a fairy tale.
As things stood now, using Levitation to wrench the club from its hand would be like uprooting a tree with the Levitation Charm.
Still…
"Flipendo!"
[You practised the Knockback Jinx once at Expert standard, Proficiency +50]
A flash of bright light. The club jerked upwards as if caught and shoved back by invisible giant hands, swinging away just as it came down.
Shawn froze for a heartbeat, an untimely thought cutting across his focus.
Why was my first instinct the Knockback Jinx?
Am I… really the Dark Lord?
The troll lurched to move again. Shawn flicked his wand. The door of the third cubicle transfigured into two eagles, which let out piercing cries and stooped on the troll.
In an instant, one eye was pecked blind.
Behind them, Shawn's breathing deepened. He never stopped moving. Knockback Jinx and Levitation tugged and twisted at the club in the troll's hand.
Soon, the club tore free of the troll's hand and hung in the air under Shawn's control.
Thinking for a moment, Shawn used Levitation to wrench every cubicle door loose except Hermione's.
When the troll finally fought off the eagles, it found itself facing a club three times larger than before.
As expected, it saw stars. And probably its great‑grandmother, too.
Only when the troll's bulk crashed to the floor behind the door and its bald, coconut‑like head lay squashed almost flat did Shawn step back into the cubicle.
He could already hear noises outside the lavatory. Hermione's face, blotched by crying, did not look its best. He handed her a wad of tissues.
He had done it so naturally that he caught himself wondering why.
Perhaps it was because he had seen too many dead bodies back at the orphanage, he thought.
Inside the cubicle,
The moment she saw Shawn's face, Hermione lowered her wand. She stared at him for a long moment before realising there were still traces of wetness at the corners of her eyes.
"You are really late…" she said, voice trembling, as if she were trying to cram all her hurt and worry for her friends into that one sentence.
"Yes. That is on me," Shawn said softly, offering the tissues.
"It is not! It is my fault! How could I care about what those idiots said and forget who my real friends are?" Hermione had thought her tears were gone. Seeing Shawn rush in despite the danger, she realised there was still so much she needed to say.
…
At the doorway,
After a tremendous crash, the heavy door still would not budge. Justin and Neville were as frantic as ants on a hot cauldron.
"Use Alohomora!" Harry shouted, racing down the corridor, Ron white‑faced at his side.
"Can you do it? I will try…" Ron's hand shook as he raised his wand, but he spoke the spell steadily, as if the crisis had unlocked something inside him.
The lock clicked. They knew it had opened, but the door did not move an inch.
As if something huge were blocking it.
Justin's eyes reddened. With a roar, he slammed his fist into the door. Neville, understanding at once, did the same.
Ron barrelled into them with a howl, then howled again as he stumbled straight through…
Shawn pulled the door open just in time to see Ron topple head‑first onto the troll's corpse. He stared for a moment.
"Ron!" Harry yelped. Ron had ended up face-to-face with the troll's flattened head.
"Urgh…" Ron staggered up from the floor. One look at the troll's two‑dimensional skull, and he shrieked again and collapsed in a dead faint.
Inside the room, the six of them stood around the troll, momentarily lost for words.
"Shawn, Hermione… are you all right?" Justin asked first. Only after checking them both over and seeing no injuries did he finally breathe out hard.
Neville had started shaking again and would not even look at the troll.
Harry shook Ron awake. The two of them looked at Hermione with complicated expressions, then stole furtive glances at Shawn.
"We are fine," Shawn said with a small smile.
Looking at their worried faces, the nasty things Ron and Harry had said earlier vanished from Hermione's mind.
They had actually risked their lives to find her.
At the same time, she frowned at Justin and Neville and gently offered them tissues – their knuckles were bloody from punching the door. The cuts were still oozing.
"Good. As long as you are all right… so the rumour was true?" Justin wiped his hands, then cautiously asked the question on his mind.
"About you taking on a troll one‑on‑one, beating a werewolf with your bare hands…" he said.
"Merlin, did Professor Snape really give you ten Galleons and cook you two dishes himself?!" Harry blurted. His focus always drifted whenever Snape was mentioned.
At the door,
Professor McGonagall, who had just arrived, wore a stern expression touched with something odd. Professor Snape's eyes looked murderous.
"Harry Potter! How dare you so blatantly break school rules! What nonsense have you been up to?" he barked, striding in. His glare cut straight to Harry, his voice thick with icy fury.
"Even if you were lucky enough not to be killed, why were you not safely in your dormitory? Our famous little celebrity thinks he can defeat a troll?!"
Then he looked down and saw the troll. His expression shifted. His gaze snapped to the wary young wizard nearby.
Shawn lowered his head. Some instinct told him the professors were more terrifying than the troll.
Snape's voice sounded like it had been forced through clenched teeth, laden with barely contained rage.
"Ravenclaw loses one hundred points. Shawn Green. For daring to come looking for a troll. Do you really think you are a troll yourself?!
"Then let me regretfully inform you: trolls fight each other too."