Halloween (II)

"Confringo" the voice said calmly.

The troll's head immediately exploded in a burst of flames, causing blood and pieces of flesh to splutter everywhere, including Harry's robes.

The body of the troll flew backwards and cracked the bathroom wall, destroying all the stalls in the process. It made a loud 'thud' sound as it hit the floor.

Harry took a deep breath, bewildered at the turn of events. He was completely shocked. What kind of powerful spell was that? It could cause the troll's head to immediately explode?

He felt like vomiting seeing all the blood and guts splattered on the bathroom floors and walls and stifled his nausea with all his will power.

Harry wiped the blood off his face and looked at his surroundings. He saw Hermione covered in troll blood, rooted to the ground and staring blankly behind him; he saw Ron, who was covered in blood as well, shivering and looking terrified.

Finally, he turned to see the source of that lazy voice,

'It's him.' He thought, shocked that it was the Slytherin boy who had tried to befriend him.

From what he had seen so far, the boy was not obnoxious like the other Slytherins and was quite fun to talk to. Coupled with the fact that he was the most popular boy in their year, Harry had a very positive impression on him and liked being his friend.

'How did he get here? And why is he frowning? Didn't he just kill the troll?' Harry questioned in his mind, confused on why Gavin was seemingly upset.

'That was too sloppy for my liking.' Gavin thought at the same time as Harry, frowning.

He was honestly rather annoyed at how limited his current spell pool was. Lately, he had been devoting nearly all his time into research for The Magic Series Codex and hadn't trained in spells past the second year.

'Confringo' was the only advanced spell that he currently had in his arsenal and the only reason he even decided on using it was because he would have been too late to save Harry and Ron had he used his flames; everything happened in the span of 2 minutes, and his fire power was currently not enough to instantly incinerate the troll.

Gavin would have preferred using a less gory spell that could take down the troll cleanly. Though, to be honest, the blood and gore didn't affect him too much; it was simply necessary to take down the troll right then and there so he discarded all his emotions and simply focused on that task.

However, Gavin knew that if that were a human being, he probably wouldn't be so calm as he is now.

'The plot is really deviating, these guys would have definitely died here had I not intervened...Well, I somewhat expected this…I have a lot of work to do…' he thought, slightly worried.

Gavin finally focused his attention on the frightened trio.

"You guys alright?" he asked, looking at the three of them.

"I suppose." Harry said, looking back at him. Hermione didn't answer and just stared blankly, too terrified to speak. Ron couldn't hold it anymore, and immediately vomited his dinner right beside the corpse of the troll.

"Doesn't seem like it." Gavin chuckled, responding to Harry.

Harry was about to respond to Gavin when Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, and Quirrell burst into the bathroom.

McGonagall looked horrified once she saw the headless troll corpse lying on the now destroyed bathroom floor. Snape was shocked as well, raising his eyebrows and walking to the corpse to inspect it. Quirrel looked like his soul had left his body.

"What are you all doing here?!" McGonagall shouted, fury visible on her face and tone.

"You realize you could have died just now. You should count yourselves lucky!" she continued, scolding the four of them sternly.

"Blasting charm, an extremely potent one at that. This should not be something a first year is capable of." Snape started, looking away from the troll corpse.

"Is this your doing Everhart?" he continued, stoically.

"Yes, Professor." Gavin replied curtly, turning his Occlumency to the max in order to block Snape from peering into his mind.

"Interesting." Snape responded flatly, walking back towards McGonagall.

McGonagall's frown eased slighlty once Gavin admitted to it, which confused him.

"What happened here?" she then asked, looking at all four of them.

Harry proceeded to tell her everything that transpired, causing McGonagall's face to turn a bit ugly upon hearing Harry tell her that Gavin had just saved the three of them from imminent death. McGonagall looked at Gavin intently before saying,

"30 points for Mr. Everhart for defeating the troll, and saving his colleagues, and 5 points for Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley for their courage."

She then looked at Professor Quirrell, who was still looking frightened and said,

"Professor Quirrell, I trust you can take Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, and Mr. Weasley to the infirmary"

"Y-Yes, will do." Quirrell responded meekly.

McGonagall nodded and then turned to face Gavin, who was admiring his wand with a lazy expression.

"As for you Mr. Everhart, you'll follow me to the headmaster's office."

'I'm finally meeting that old man huh?' Gavin thought as soon as he heard McGonagall's instruction.

Harry, and Hermione looked worried as soon as they heard that, thinking Gavin would be punished, or worse expelled, for using dark magic, but McGonagall paid no heed to their attempts to speak up and simply walked out of the bathroom. Ron was still looking frightened.

Gavin smiled at Harry and Hermione reassuringly, before following McGonagall out of the bathroom.

The journey to the headmasters office was mostly silent as neither McGonagall nor Gavin said anything.

"Sherbet Lemon." McGonagall muttered in front of the statue to the headmasters office.

The statue immediately moved and revealed a spiral staircase that led upwards. McGonagall and Gavin climbed it and soon reach the office of Albus Dumbledore.

'Let's hear what this old man has to say.' Gavin thought, immediately he entered the office and set his eyes on the wizard currently hailed by many as the greatest wizard of modern times.