Professor Quirrell came rushing in with a face full of terror.
"Troll!!!"
He ran to the front of the staff table, looked at Dumbledore, and in a trembling voice that echoed through the Great Hall, cried out,
"There's a troll in the dungeons! Did you hear me..."
Before he could finish, Quirrell fainted on the spot.
For a single instant, the entire Great Hall fell silent.
Then the screams of the little witches and wizards exploded through Hogwarts.
Malfoy was still clutching a chicken leg in his hand. He exchanged a horrified look with Goyle, then shrieked out loud. All the students instantly fell into chaos.
Ron choked on a little cake, and Harry had to force a huge gulp of fruit juice down his throat before he could breathe again.
"Silence!!!"
Dumbledore used the Amplifying Charm once more.
"Prefects of each House, take your students back to your common rooms. I am sorry, but the feast is over."
"The house-elves will send your food to your dormitories. Once you return, no one is to leave the common room!"
After arranging for the students, Dumbledore turned to Professor McGonagall and the others.
"Come. Let's go have a look."
Professor McGonagall and the others all stood up. Snape was not among them. The moment the commotion began, he had already left.
"See you tomorrow."
Altair waved goodbye to Hermione.
The little witch was obviously unhappy. She had never expected a perfectly good Halloween feast to end just after it had begun. She gave Altair a wronged little look, but still wished him good night.
Altair stayed at the very back of the Slytherin first-years. When they reached a corner in the dungeons, he slipped on the One Ring while no one was paying attention.
Then he headed straight for the girls' bathroom.
Sure enough, in the corridor not far from the bathroom, Altair found the troll.
He glanced around. Because this was close to the place where Myrtle had once died, there were no portraits hanging on either side of the corridor. And Myrtle herself was not here at the moment either.
Which meant no one would notice what happened here.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Altair did not hesitate in the slightest.
He was already invisible, so the troll could not see him, and the thing was slow-witted to begin with. All it saw was a flash of green light streak through the empty corridor for no reason at all...
And then it died.
Boom!
The troll's massive body crashed heavily to the floor. With a wave of his hand, Altair stored it inside his system space.
"Ding! Congratulations, Host, for triggering a side story event: Kill the Halloween Troll!"
"Ding! Congratulations, Host. Reward obtained: Story Points x100!"
A hundred story points in hand. Altair was delighted.
Then, with a thought, he said to the system,
"Deploy William Huggins right in front of me."
The moment his words fell, a dense wave of stench hit him head-on, at least ten times worse than the troll's. The troll had smelled like dirty socks mixed with a public lavatory. A stone-troll smelled of rotting flesh and rancid fish.
"ROAR!!!"
With an earth-shaking bellow, William appeared in the world of Harry Potter.
The troll Altair had just killed had been twelve feet tall, just under four meters, and weighed about a ton. But William, as one of the finest of the stone-trolls, stood nearly six meters tall and weighed a horrifying five tons.
It was easy to imagine how terrifying his muscles were, and how monstrous his strength had to be.
The instant William appeared, he began studying this unfamiliar world. He let out a roar, trying to summon his companions.
Altair, meanwhile, turned and ran back toward the dungeons as fast as he could, casting Scourgify on himself several times along the way.
By the time Altair reached the entrance to the Slytherin common room, only a few sixth- and seventh-year students had not yet gone inside. Taking advantage of the moment, Altair slipped into the common room.
Inside, the Halloween feast was still going strong.
Some of the older students were chatting and enjoying the food, not remotely worried about some stupid troll.
A number of first-years were sitting in a corner by the fire, listening to the older students boast about how many trolls they had killed over the holidays.
Malfoy and the other two were there as well. Goyle and Crabbe had not eaten enough in the Great Hall, and were now making up for it with all their might, their mouths smeared with cream.
Altair revealed himself in a shadowy corner, then headed for his dormitory.
Once back in his room, he climbed onto his bed and took out the Ithil-stone. With a single thought, William's image appeared within the crystal.
At that moment, outside the girls' bathroom on the second floor...
William roared several times, but got no answer from his companions. That only drove him into a more violent temper.
Just a moment ago, he had been in the Trollshaws with his brothers, eating roast meat and singing songs. Then a flash of white light had come, and suddenly he had been dumped in this strange place.
"Huff... huff..."
William's nostrils twitched a few times. Drool dripped from his mouth, which was packed with jagged teeth.
"I smell humans. So many humans!!"
William let out a foolish grin, took several heavy steps forward, then raised the gigantic hammer in his hand high overhead and smashed it viciously into the wall beside him.
His weapon weighed several thousand pounds, and no one knew what it had been forged from. With a single blow, he smashed a huge hole in the second-floor wall.
William peered through the hole and saw a classroom inside.
It was the History of Magic classroom. Altair and the others had only been there that afternoon.
William leaned closer, sniffed at it, then stared with wide eyes for a moment. He grunted twice, then began heading downstairs.
At the same time, Dumbledore and the others had failed to find the troll in the dungeons. Hearing the tremendous crash from above, they rushed up as well.