Why wasn't it exploding into dust? This was the hysterical question Heri's fevered mind kept asking. All the other monsters she had destroyed immediately turned to ash; this was the first time she had dealt with an actual corpse! This was the first time she was soaked in blood. Oh, Gods, she had a corpse on her hands! There was a dead carcass just laying in the corridor! How was she going to fix this? She didn't know how to dispose of a body! Would they expel her when they found her? Would she be sent to jail? Tears of terror and panic streamed down her cheeks. What the hell was she supposed to do now!? "MS. POTTER!" a horrified voice rang out. There, at the turn of the corridor were a trio of professors, McGonagall, Snape, and Quirrell. Quirrell let out a yelp at the sight and fainted dead away. The remaining two, being of stronger dispositions, quickly hustled over to where Heri sat trembling at the withdrawal of adrenaline and sobbing with fright. McGonagall pulled Heri out of the cooling blood and drew her into a comforting embrace. She checked Heri over discreetly and was relieved to find nothing worse than bruising. As McGonagall did her best to calm Heri, Snape inspected the beast. He frowned harshly. "What in Merlin's name happened here?" "Really, Severus!" McGonagall scolded. "Give the poor girl a moment!" "I-i-i-it . . ." Heri stammered, her eyes bleary with tears. Wasn't she in mountains of trouble? "I w-was ju-sst . . ." McGonagall shushed her. "Hush now, dearie. Take a deep breath." Heri sucked in a shuddering breath and held it. After a few seconds, she released it slowly. She did this a couple times more before her trembling stopped. Alright, so they weren't angry at her; she could turn this in her favour. "Isn't that better?" the Transfiguration professor soothed. "Are you ready to tell us what happened?" Heri nodded hesitantly. "I was coming down from the owlery, professor. I was headed back down to the dorms. That— that . . . whatever that thing is ran right into me when I turned the corner. It tried to kill me! It tried to hit me with that—that—" Heri waved her arm sharply at the fallen club. "I tried to run but it caught me and it picked me up and I was so scared and—!" "Ms Potter!" said McGonagall, cutting off Heri's increasingly raising voice with a little shake. "It's alright now. It can't hurt you anymore. However did it come to die in such way?" Heri shot the body a wild-eyed look. "I was kicking and scratching and trying to make it let go but nothing worked, not even when I hit it with spells! It was swinging its club at me and I was— I was pulling myself out of the way, and I didn't know what to do, professor! I thought I was going to die!" "How did it die, Potter?" Snape said in his dark tone. Heri let all of her anxiety and confusion lace her words. "It got me in the side when I moved too slow, sir. I don't know how I did it but I managed to get the bat thingy out of its hand and I whacked it as hard as I could! I think I hit it in the head. It dropped me but it almost landed me as well so I just kept whacking at it until it stopped moving." The two conscious professor looked at the weapon in question. It was almost the size of the girl that had used it! As if to validate the truth of what Heri said, Snape identified what he knew to be brain matter and shards of bone embedded into the club. "You . . ." McGonagall couldn't have been more gobsmacked if someone had slapped her with a fish. "You lifted that heavy thing and bludgeoned the troll to death?" Heri flinched at the blunt words. She nodded warily. "I've always been strong for my size, ma'am." Snape and McGonagall looked at each other blankly. 'Strong for her size' was an understatement! Snape dragged the glistening weapon from where it lay when Heri had dropped it. He offered the handle to Heri purposefully when she did little more than stare at it. Now that she was coming down from her battle high she had to use two hands, but she hefted the club up as if she were lifting a stack of textbooks. There were no words to describe the expressions on the professors' faces. "A fine mess," Snape muttered. He gave Heri a hard, searching look. "Why were you not in the Great Hall, girl? I have never known a student that would rather spend time in the owlery instead of fattening themselves up at the Halloween Feast." Heri looked at her bloodied hands. "Hagrid told me that my parents died on Halloween. I didn't really feel like celebrating, sir." They spent no further time on questioning Heri. As Snape proceeded to revive Quirrell to help him with the cleanup, McGonagall ushered Heri away from the scene. "To the Hospital Wing with you," the older woman said. "No doubt a Calming Draught will do you a bit of good." They had planned on keeping the incident hushed up. They didn't account for three Gryffindors, the Twins' younger brother, Neville, and the Granger girl to come across them while running about the halls when they should have been in their dormitories. Their screams at seeing Heri looking like the body from a murder-mystery could be heard halfway across the building. The story was all over the school by the next morning. Christmas came and passed in a far more pleasant manner than Heri had ever experience.
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