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Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
He did not like this situation. Not one bit. Hogwarts and her ever present watch over her students was absent here, which meant a few things could have happened, none of which boded particularly well for him.
For one, it could have been Dumbledore himself who could have told(read: Ordered) Hogwarts to not to keep watch on the Golden Trio, this area or on the troll, which was impossible because that would mean he had some prior idea of the attack as well as the nature of the attack, on top of knowing where and when Hermione and the Golden Trio will be.
Basically impossible, unless one had the Time Stone and the associated techniques refined over millennia of use, or were just straight up capable of tapping into nearly omnipotent power sources. That narrowed the list down to only two known people.
The Ancivent One and Odin himself, though Odin was growing old and tapping into the Odin Force to do something as disturbing as reading the future, will no doubt further accelerate his death, not something he wishes to happen.
Safely crossing that option out, it meant that either Tommy boy had somehow affected Hogwarts' Ward Matrix, which seemed unlikely since the battle required to get something like that out of Dumbledore was sure to shake the entire castle, or it had something to do with that conjuration.
Something he could not sense or see from a distance, not with the conjuration looking like a stupid troll who was not doing much of anything, except advance slowly towards the Golden Trio, who were soon going to be backed into a wall, with no way out but through a troll that was sure to be stupidly more durable than a normal troll, owing to how it was made.
Things immediately clicked for him as he realised why the Troll was capable of getting past his senses.
The Unicorn Blood or Essence. Whatever was used, it was not used to just conjure the troll in a way that bypassed Hogwarts' detection matrix, but also in a way so as to blind Hogwarts in this area.
It was just a theory at the moment, something he had no way of testing at the moment, but it was the only one that made the most senses out of all the outlandish options his mind threw at him. Dumbledore did not seem like a fool who could hand over something as supremely important as the Hogwarts Ward Matrix to Tommy boy over some petty threat like taking a student hostage, but what did he know? His interactions with the Headmaster had been pretty limited, not to mention done under his alter alias, which was treated like the global enemy number one by some people at the ICW, no doubt due to Wakanda's meddling.
Shaking his head, he took out a small pebble from his pocket. It was just that, a piece of rock that was shaped into its current shape using magic and then covered in his magic for weeks on end, making it quite malleable to his magic. It was currently the best he could do in terms of weapons that would get past the Hogwarts' Wards as well as any surprise inspections that might happen. He was not worried about his magically expanded trunk since Hogwarts had rules against that, but anything out of that trunk was fair game to be confiscated.
Turns out, when all the people in power were Noble houses who valued bloodline pretty much over everything else, they tend to make rules that would either benefit their bloodline or, at the very least, protect them from as many consequences of their actions as possible. Any spatially expanded trunk was exempt from any search by the School, with no exception whatsoever. The School could lock the trunk or order the trunk to be sent back home or out of the castle, but they could not open or inspect it, which was pretty big.
The round pebble rippled and flowed seamlessly in his hands under the influence of his magic, before it turned into a small arrow, with a very sharp edge, as much as he could make it without collapsing the whole thing.
Just as an experiment to gauge the relative toughness of the conjuration, he let the arrow float mid air before gesturing it forward, masking the sound of the arrow suddenly accelerating, watching intently as the arrow impacted the back of the troll and…..nothing.
The arrow broke into pieces, but that too withered into nothingness a moment later. Nothing even hit the ground as the troll continued walking forward, brandishing its club around and hitting the ground to wreak more of the tiles.
A chill ran down his spine as multiple arrows hit the troll at increasing speeds, all with the same end result. The complete disintegration of the arrows. Cruising in his mind, he tried to come up with something that would get the Golden Trio to safety without revealing his identity, as this whole thing had suddenly jumped a couple of steps in terms of the threat rating.
Of course, Tommy boy could not be satisfied with making an undetectable monster that could fool one of the best ward systems on the planet. He had to make the troll deadly to touch as well.
He had coated one of the arrows with a hardening as well as sharpening enchantment, which was the limit of what the small material could hold, but it resulted in the same. Broken arrow pieces that withered to nothingness before they hit the ground.
He had fully turned around the corner by now, palming the 4 remaining rocks he had in his pockets, melting them down into slag before creating a very small pocket knife, loaded with kinetic discharge enchantments. Sharpening an arrow did nothing, and this knife was not any sharper than before, so the next best thing was to push the entire conjuration back.
He had not expected something like this to happen, and thus had come with what he thought to be overkill in terms of weapons. After all, in canon, three First years had managed to defeat a troll, albeit barely. Now, it was a high tier conjuration with a disintegrating aura around it. He had not expected to use anything more than the bare minimum in terms of magic, if he had to step in at all, since he trusted Harry to deal with a single troll post Dumbledore training.
He winced as he took a few steps back, took off the stealth enchantments, and held the knife in his hand firmly before running and skidding to a stop, with heavy breathing, as if he had run a long distance before finally reaching.
"Shit!" He cursed loudly, on purpose to see if he could draw the conjuration's attention away from the Golden Trio. Seeing that it was unsuccessful, he shouted, "Hey!" drawing Harry's attention to himself.
He acted as much as he could. Holding onto the knife in a white-knuckled grip, his body trembling a bit, his body language presented in such a way that it was only a moment's decision away from bolting away in fear, so that when Dumbledore inevitably looked at the memories, there were as few pointed questions as possible.
All three of them had their wands raised towards the troll, meanwhile, he was running towards the troll with a knife in his hand. It looked completely dull, as if it was a normal chipped blade, but it was anything but as he kept a close watch on the troll before ducking at the last moment, skidding on the floor before swiping the flight towards the troll, supercharging the enchantment by pumping as much magic as it could handle. He could instantly enchant it once more anyway, he thought to himself as a veritable blast of force pushed him towards the Golden Trio, with the troll taking multiple heavy steps back.
The force had wrecked the floor even more, throwing up dust in the air for a moment. But even through that, he knew that the troll was pushed back successfully. He grinned at his success, even as he actively enchanted the knife once more.
He could probably only do that twice or thrice before the material gave away, losing its structure.
"The heck, mate!" Ron shouted in his ear, as he scrambled to stand up, purposefully slipping once before being pulled up by Harry, whose one hand continued to aim the wand at the troll, which was just brandishing its club in the air, trying to disperse the dust cloud, which was supposed to be impossible since basically the entirety of the castle was one big Clean Room.
He too kept the knife pointed in the direction of the absurdly durable troll. A gun would have been far more apt, considering the BOOM! his knife made but he did not have the mass for the bullets, not to mention the complexity of the transfiguration.
"S-Stay back!" His voice trembled as he took a step back, hitting someone, likely Hermione, by the sound of her voice. So far, he would give himself 10/10 for his acting and the last minute save, but that was not his goal. This was all supposed to be a supervisory activity.
The troll was truly dangerous, and he wondered just where the f*ck the other teachers were. Had they truly not realised that Harry and Ron, arguably some of the most attention magnets in the entire castle, were absent? At a time when there was a troll loose in the castle? A creature that is dangerous to even the older students, let alone the younger ones.
"How did you do that?" he had to blink as Harry's calm voice reached his ears. He looked to the side, and saw Harry's gaze never straying from the troll, with his wand pointed solidly at the troll, whose silhouette was visible to them.
Playing up the role of a sacred kid, he replied, gesturing to the knife in his hand, "This is something my family gave me. It is supposed to be a relic. It can take some magic from you and create huge blasts in front of it. It's like a cannon going off, trust me." His voice gained a little bit of excitement at the end before he continued in a listless voice, "I don't know why it didn't work on the troll. It can supposedly push back even dragons!"
Okay, a little bit of overexaggeration, but if he truly pushed it without any concern for future enchantments, he could probably push back some of the weaker dragons, and it would be a very gentle push.
"Can you do that again?" Harry asked him, a shield blooming at the edge of his wand.
Hmm. Curious about his plan, he played along with the boy.
"Yes, I think. My father told me it can only be used three times before it needs to recharge."
"That's just great, isn't it?" Ron muttered from behind, and Hermione rightfully elbowed him in the gut for that, judging from the grunt.
If you would like to read ahead 12 chapters ahead, you can head to my P*treon.