Hogwarts is my Home

Chapter 6: Halloween (SS CH 10)

I went to bed on October 30 dreading the next day. Not for myself, but for Harry. How many people were going to make fun of him tomorrow? Tease him for not dying alongside his parents.

At Halloween breakfast, I tried to look for Harry- let him know I was here if he needed me, but I didn't see him. Two classes later, it was time for lunch and I saw him standing in front of the doors to the Great Hall.

I walked over to him and gently touched him on the shoulder. He turned around. His face lit up when he saw me. "Hi, Toni. What's up?"

"I'm just checking how you're doing today."

"I'm fine," he said slowly.

Then it dawned on me. "Do you know what today is?"

"Halloween?" The look on my face signalled to him that wasn't right. "No...why?"

I looked down an adjacent corridor and saw it was empty. "Come here." We walked about halfway into it, me not wanting to tell him out in the open for everyone to hear.

"Today is the day your parents died, Harry. The day you defeated You-Know-Who. I didn't know if you knew, and I wanted to be sure that if you didn't, that I was the one who told you." The corridor was too dark to tell his expression, but it couldn't have been good. He didn't say anything to me, so I led the way back to the Entrance Hall.

He sat next to me at lunch but not at the feast that evening. He didn't look sad, though, so I figured he was fine by then. 

After classes were done for that day, I ran into Professor Dumbledore; but it didn't seem like a chance meeting. It was as if he had been waiting for me. "Antonia, mind we have a chat?" he asked me at once.

"Um, sure?" I didn't think I was allowed to say no to a teacher. We walked to the now emptied classroom I had just exited.

"You know what today is for young Harry, then?"

"Only that his parents died." So he shared the story- the whole story. The good, the bad, the terrible things Lord Voldemort did to so many witches and wizards. 

"Did you hear me tell Harry?"

"I lurk in the shadows, Antonia, and that was a dark corridor. Might I suggest not making your friends sad by reminding them of their past?" He started to walk away.

"But Sir, I just didn't want him to hear it from the wrong person. I feared someone else may make fun of him or call him cruel for not acknowledging the day."

He slowly turned around. "Oh, so I see- your intentions were pure of heart."

"Of course they were," I uttered, slightly offended.

"Then share the good parts of the story. Remind him that there is light in the darkness, and that light shines brighter than ever. Goodbye now." He left me standing alone with a lot to think about.

Professor Quirrell burst through the doors of the hall with his turban askew and terror on his face.  All eyes were him as he sprinted all the way up to the Head Table, shouting, "Troll! Troll! In the dungeons! I thought you ought to know." And then he fainted right in front of Dumbledore.

The room erupted with screams. Trolls were not a creature one wanted to mess with. 

Dumbledore stood up. "SILENCE!" That didn't work, so he shot off several fireworks. "Prefects, lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

Percy shot off the bench. "Follow me. Stick together and follow my orders and the troll will be nothing to fear. Make way! Excuse me, I'm a prefect!" 

It took reaching the door for me and the twins to realise: Rian would be going to the dungeons where the troll was. So we stopped and waited until we saw her and grabbed her arm and created a circle around her so we could sneak her into Gryffindor tower.