Leaving the Great Hall turned out to be considerably harder than reaching the staff table had been.
Panic had taken full hold, and students were moving in every direction with the collective logic of a startled flock. Henry raised his voice to a carrying pitch without shouting.
"Excuse me! Please make way, we need to reach the Slytherin line!"
Daphne followed close behind him, her face pale but her eyes steadier than they had been.
The experience of going against the crowd to deliver information to the Headmaster himself appeared to have produced something new in this usually quiet girl, a straightness in her bearing that hadn't been there before.
Under Farley and Higgs, the Slytherin column was rather more orderly than the others, though fear was still moving through the group like a current beneath the surface.
Draco spotted Henry and Daphne pushing their way back and grabbed Henry's arm the moment they were close enough.
"Where were you? Quirrell, that idiot—"
"We reported something to Headmaster Dumbledore," Henry said, keeping his voice low but clear enough for the Slytherins immediately around them to hear. "A classmate who may be in danger."
"Danger? Now?" Pansy's eyes went wide.
"The Gryffindor girl," Daphne said, noticeably calmer now. "Granger, she didn't come to the feast. She was crying alone in the bathroom. His Highness felt the professors needed to know."
The reaction around them varied. Some students looked indifferent, some merely curious, a few quietly impressed.
Farley caught the exchange and directed a sharp look toward Henry. He met it calmly, and she gave a single small nod before turning back to the group.
"Keep formation! No running! Stay behind me!"
The familiar smell of cool, damp air settled over the students like a balm as they descended. When the stone doors of the common room closed behind them, the distant sounds from the direction of the Great Hall were cut off entirely.
Dark green and silver-grey, the soft crackle of the fireplace, the weight of velvet curtains against the stone, the common room wrapped itself around them, and several students audibly exhaled for the first time in some minutes.
They settled in clusters on the sofas and chairs, the conversation a low, urgent murmur.
Draco, making a visible effort to reassemble his usual composure, managed something approaching his ordinary tone. "There's no reason to worry. Even if a troll were somehow stupid enough to find its way down here, the protective enchantments on the entrance are not to be taken lightly. And Professor Snape will have things in hand."
His fingers, resting on the arm of his chair, were trembling very slightly.
Pansy leaned toward Daphne and asked, quietly, "You genuinely heard Granger crying? At a time like this, when she wasn't even at the feast?"
"Yes," Daphne said, in an equally low voice. "That's why His Highness felt it couldn't wait. If the troll had been anywhere near that corridor—"
She left it there.
Henry had taken his usual armchair by the fireplace and sat quietly apart from the discussion. Lucy appeared noiselessly at his elbow with a cup of steaming mint tea and withdrew again without a word.
Farley, who had seen this kind of thing happen before, did not even blink.
Henry held the warm cup in both hands and watched the green flames, his thoughts moving steadily through what he knew and what was likely happening elsewhere in the castle.
After roughly an hour, as the murmurs in the common room began to shift from raw panic toward tired speculation, information started arriving through the channels that did not require the doors to open.
The Fat Friar came first, drifting through the wall with the Bloody Baron floating in behind him.
The ghosts, unlike their living counterparts, were not confined to their own common rooms—centuries of cohabiting the same castle had produced a set of unspoken customs, and occasional visits between Houses were not unheard of.
The Fat Friar's round, transparent face was bright with the particular excitement of someone who has witnessed something extraordinary and is very pleased about it.
"Merlin's beard, what a business!" he said, settling into the air above the hearthrug with evident relish. "There really was one down in the dungeons, half a head taller than Hagrid, carrying a club like a felled tree. Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick brought it down together, beautiful spellwork, binding and Stunning in combination. Professor Sprout followed up with some variety of vine that had the thing trussed up like a parcel."
"Were any students hurt?" Farley asked, cutting through the ghost's enthusiasm with the precision of someone who had identified the only question that actually mattered.
"None! Thank goodness!" The Fat Friar waved a transparent hand. "The dungeons were largely clear by the time it came to it, most everyone had been evacuated. Except—" he paused, drawing out the suspense with practised ease as a chorus of impatient voices pressed him on "—except for Potter and Weasley from Gryffindor! I cannot tell you how those two got there, but they had clearly gone after their friend, that formidably clever little witch, Granger! They nearly blundered straight into the troll!"
A collective intake of breath moved through the common room.
"And then?" Draco asked, leaning forward despite himself, his reasons for wanting to know somewhat difficult to disentangle.
"And then," the Fat Friar said, his expression shifting into something almost reverent, "the Headmaster appeared. I still cannot tell you quite how. He was simply there, standing between those boys and the creature, as though he had been there all along. The troll swung its club. Dumbledore raised one hand, no incantation, nothing, and the club snapped clean in two. Then the troll was down on its knees as though pressed there by something the rest of us couldn't see, and that was that. Dragged out and gone."
He settled back in the air with the deeply satisfied expression of someone who felt their evening had been entirely worthwhile.
The account was inevitably somewhat embellished, but the shape of it was clear enough: Dumbledore had arrived in time, the situation had been resolved, and Potter and Weasley were shaken but unhurt.
"And Miss Granger?" Daphne asked, quietly.
"That little witch!" The Fat Friar patted his translucent middle with something approaching fond approval. "She was in that gloomy bathroom on the second floor to begin with, crying so hard that even Moaning Myrtle was complaining about the noise. But the Headmaster reached her before the troll came anywhere near, a portrait on the second-floor corridor showed him there with her while the creature was still being subdued below. She's quite safe. Frightened, naturally, but safe. She's most likely with Madam Pomfrey, or perhaps being spoken to very seriously by Professor McGonagall."
"How did the Headmaster know where Granger was?" a fourth-year asked, with genuine puzzlement. "And so quickly?"
"That," said the Bloody Baron, in the low, measured voice he used for almost everything, "was His Highness Henry."
He did not use Henry's surname. He did not use Mr. Welsh. He said His Highness Henry, with the particular precision of someone who has decided that a title is accurate and intends to use it accordingly.
Every face in the common room turned toward the armchair by the fire.
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