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The students listened to the skeleton band's performance while happily enjoying the food spread across the long tables.
The atmosphere was festive, if slightly chaotic.
Just as Dudley was swallowing his twenty-eighth lamb chop, Professor Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, suddenly came running into the Hall. His face was full of panic, as if he had just seen something truly terrifying.
Professor Quirinus Quirrell, a Ravenclaw graduate, Hogwarts' current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and former Muggle Studies professor, was the stammering professor Dudley knew from class. Dudley did not have much of an impression of him, but he knew his smell very well.
Besides that strange cadaverous odor, there was also that overpowering smell of garlic.
It was worth mentioning that Quirrell had originally been very intelligent and had a solid theoretical foundation. But after making a research trip to Albania, he seemed to have become a completely different person.
When he saw everyone staring at him, he staggered over to Dumbledore's chair, leaned crookedly against the table, and said between gasps,
"A troll... in the dungeons... thought you ought to know."
The miserable state he was in made it seem as though he truly had been frightened half to death by the troll. And right after saying that, he pitched forward onto the floor and fainted.
The entire Hall erupted into chaos at once.
Dudley frowned slightly.
Just one troll?
As far as he knew, Professor Quirrell was supposed to be particularly skilled at dealing with creatures like trolls. Back in his student days at Hogwarts, he had even subdued a mountain troll once, and mountain trolls were even more dangerous and powerful than an ordinary troll.
If it were only a troll, then perhaps it still posed some threat to the students.
But to a fully grown wizard, that thing was basically no threat at all.
Quirrell's behavior could only be described as extremely strange.
Dudley raised his eyes toward Dumbledore. He did not believe for a second that the other man had failed to notice that.
Dumbledore first used Sonorus to amplify his voice, and with only a few words, he managed to calm the students who were already beginning to panic, especially the younger ones.
After all, when they could barely manage a proper spell even while holding a wand, a troll was without question a terrifying creature to them.
"Prefects, stand up."
Dumbledore's voice turned grave.
"Take the students of your Houses back to their dormitories immediately."
The younger students began following the prefect back toward the Slytherin common room.
Of course, that prefect was not seventh-year Carrow, but the fifth-year prefect who had guided them on their first day.
Dudley naturally went with them as well.
He had no special interest in a troll.
Mainly because the only part of a troll's body that was actually useful as a potion ingredient was its bogies.
And more importantly, those could be bought.
As for the smell of a troll, it was simply far too horrible...
How could it be described?
Probably something like a mixture of rotten onions and spoiled cabbage, with a touch of canned herring that had been expired for three years, all mixed together with rancid butter and the smell of old feces fermenting for dozens of days inside a latrine.
Not far away, a wave of that strange stench drifted through the air, and Dudley's eyes lit up.
"That's it. That's the smell."
Malfoy, who was right behind him, asked,
"Hey, D, what smell is that?"
Then he found out almost immediately.
"Urgh... what a stench!"
Malfoy clamped a hand over his nose and nearly gagged.
The others around them also started feeling nauseous. One or two truly could not hold it in and vomited. Then, like falling dominoes, the chain reaction began. One after another, they all started throwing up.
The troll stench mixed with vomit was indescribably brutal.
"Troll! It's a troll!"
The prefect finally seemed to understand what was happening. While scanning the surroundings in total alertness, afraid that the troll might suddenly appear, he began urging the students in a low voice to retreat the way they had come. But by that point, several of them were already bent over on the floor, nearly vomiting up bile.
To avoid a bottleneck, the older and younger students had different return routes.
Of the four Houses, only Slytherin went downward.
So none of the other three Houses were anywhere nearby.
At that moment, he was the only one there who could deal with a troll.
That fifth-year prefect looked extremely nervous. The fingers gripping his wand were clenched so tightly they had turned white. There was none of the calm he had shown when they first met.
When he realized that, among the entire group of younger Slytherins, only Dudley was still standing, the prefect showed a desperate expression.
"You, go call the other prefects and the professors."
There was no way he could abandon everyone and run away by himself.
"I think it's already too late."
Dudley pointed toward the figure beginning to emerge from the corner.
With a smell that strong, it was obvious the troll was already very close.
It was a monster around twelve feet tall, with dull skin like granite. Its massive, stupid-looking body resembled a heap of mud and stone, and atop it sat a tiny head, almost the size of a cocoa bean.
Its short, thick legs looked like tree trunks, supported by flat, hard feet covered in calluses.
In one hand, it carried an enormous wooden club that dragged along the ground, since its arms were far too long.
"Run! I'll hold it off!"
The prefect shouted, raising his wand toward the troll.
"Impedimenta!"
It was a simple but effective jinx, common in wizard duels, capable of greatly slowing an opponent down.
With a flick of his wand, blue-green sparks burst from its tip, and countless transparent barriers appeared around the troll, blocking its steps and reducing its already naturally slow speed even further.
Impedimenta could usually manifest in four different ways: stopping an opponent for a few moments, knocking them backward, creating physical obstacles in front of them, or simply slowing them down.
In that prefect's case, it was clearly taking the form of physical barriers.
Unfortunately, Impedimenta could be broken with pure physical force.
And brute strength was exactly the one thing a troll would never lack.
The troll let out a roar, raised its club, and brought it down hard.
The barriers shattered in an instant.
But the prefect seemed to have anticipated that already. All he wanted was to delay the troll for a moment. So he immediately followed up with another spell.
"Oppugno!"
Countless birds burst from the tip of his wand and began pecking at the troll from all sides.
But that level of attack was not even enough to tickle it.
The magical birds successfully drew its attention, and it started trying to grab them with its hands.
The prefect seized the opportunity and cast another spell, this time aiming at the troll's weapon.
"Reducto!"
The huge club exploded into a rain of fragments.
He had to get rid of the weapon.
If that thing swung even once horizontally, it would be devastating for them.
His wand moved again almost immediately.
From the surrounding walls, several vines burst forth and tightly bound the troll's limbs. Its body was even lifted into the air, preventing it from using its strength.
The prefect was using Transfiguration.
By all logic, facing a magical creature like a troll was something that should have been taught in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
But in Hogwarts' current state, Defense Against the Dark Arts might as well not have existed at all.
Which meant that, even as a fifth-year prefect, that boy had zero actual experience fighting trolls.
He was relying entirely on his own judgment.
And yet one move flowed perfectly into the next, with every spell cast at exactly the right moment. Both his spellwork and his Transfiguration were extremely refined.
The way that boy fought made Dudley's eyes light up.
At the same time, he found himself evaluating how he would react if he were facing that person instead.
He would probably kill his opponent before he even managed to cast the first spell.
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