Troll Wanted: Dead or Alive

Milo opened the door a crack and peeked through. The room was pitch dark, but his sense of smell confirmed his suspicions.

Crap.

He, ever so quietly, closed the door and looked back at his companions.

"Right," he whispered. "So, there's a Troll on the other side of this door."

His companions stared at him blankly for a few seconds, then cursed sulfurously.

"The same one as before?" Ron asked after venting for a moment. "If we're lucky, it'll be so scared of Hermione here that it'll lie down and play dead when we enter."

"Could be," Milo said, "But I wouldn't count our lives on that. Frankly... I'm not sure we can take him." The last encounter he had had with a Troll had proved definitely, dreadfully, defenestratively disastrous. He looked at his comrades, whose faces were ashen. They'd thrown everything they'd had at it, and it had still gotten away. Hermione and he had been seriously injured.

"Wait!" Ron said, his face brightening suddenly. "Milo can just blast it like he did that door!"

"Yeah..." Milo said, "about that. That was kind of a one-off. Sorry, guys. What else have we got?" Maybe they should have tried to solve the last puzzle after all—the fickle being that ran the universe appeared to be punishing him for his brute force approach.

"If we had a large quantity of dust, I suppose I could use Ventus again," Hermione mused. "But even that didn't finish off the last one."

"How about a Hippogriff?" Ron suggested. "Like back at the Duelling Club. That Hufflepuff was in the hospital wing for three days—mind, I reckon he was just trying to skive classes."

"Didn't prepare Summon Monster," Milo admitted, "but I have something that's almost as good for this. I only give it even odds of winning, though, so I suggest we run past it while it's distracted. Sound good?"

"Not particularly," Hermione confessed, "But I don't see that we have any other option."

"Great. This spell takes six seconds to cast, so open the door for me at the count of five, okay?" Ron nodded, and moved to stand by the heavy, iron-studded wooden door. Milo rolled up his sleeves, adjusted his Arcanist's Gloves slightly, and began casting. Ron swallowed nervously, his hand on the doorknob.

"Summon Skeletal Troll!" The door flew open, and a towering nightmare of a figure appeared before them. Without pausing to look closer, Milo and the others bolted through the door, an almost-physical wall of putrid stench assaulting their noses. In the darkness, he heard someone gag, but kept running until he hit the far wall. Undead had Darkvision out to 60 feet, so Milo wasn't worried about his summoned monster. If anything, the undead Troll likely had the advantage over the living one in this lighting. Milo felt around at the wall that he was touching, searching for an exit.

Then he encountered a problem.

"Where in the Infinite Layers of the Abyss is the thrice-damned door?" he hissed quietly. It was so dark that he could barely see the blue-and-gold of his own gloves.

"Lumos," Ron cast, and his wand glowed, clearly illuminating the door—and them.

"No!" Hermione shrieked, staring at the lit wand. She covered her mouth in horror, looking around nervously for the Troll. Milo prepared to launch a salvo of magic at the Troll that he was sure was about to fall on them like a landslide.

Nevertheless, nothing happened.

"I thought you said there was a Troll," Hermione whispered accusingly.

"I smelled a Troll," Milo said. "I just assumed there was one, too. I mean, it makes sense, right? This dungeon was probably made by the top Hogwarts teachers, each one making a single room—Professor Sprout did the Devil's Snare, probably—and Quirrell has this whole Troll thing going on, so I figured—"

"Found him," Ron said, the light of his wand revealing the unmistakable cadaver of an ex-Troll. "Big ol' bugger's dead already. Ruddy convenient, that is."

"Perhaps Quirrell killed him on the way in?" Hermione suggested. Milo shrugged, dismissing his skeleton with a casual wave.

"Looks like."

The next room simply had a large table with seven mismatched bottles arranged on a thick tablecloth. As soon as they entered the room, purple flames appeared behind them, blocking their escape. Black flames guarded the door on the other side of the room.

"Bugger," Ron muttered. "This has 'Snape' written all over it. We should have brought shampoo; any fire made by that git would probably bugger off in fright after one whiff of it."

"Look!" Hermione pointed at a small roll of parchment on the table. "Wingardium Leviosa." The roll floated over to her.

"Why not just pick it up?" Milo asked.

"All this talks of traps must be making me paranoid," Hermione confessed. "I felt I couldn't be too careful—especially if Professor Snape" (she shot a look at Ron) "had anything to do with it."

"You're learning, young grasshopper," Milo said sagely.

"I'm actually older than you are," Hermione pointed out. "I'm twelve, after all. You're only eleven."

"Ish," Milo corrected. "Eleven-ish. Birth date still unknown. Anyways, what's on the paper?"

"It's a puzzle!" she said, a smile growing on her face. "One of the potions will let us through, I just need to figure out which. It's brilliant—a lot of wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here forever."

"You don't say?" Milo asked. So wanded magic wasn't Intelligence-based after all. Interesting. Very interesting.

"The only catch is, three of the bottles are poison—the rest are wine, except for one that lets the drinker go back, of course—so it's important I figure out which is which. Now just give me a second. Let's see..." Hermione looked at each bottle closely, and re-read the parchment several times. "I've got it!"

"We drink from the little one," Ron said.

"—we drink the smallest one!" Hermione finished. "Oh. How did you figure?"

"Quirrell must have drunk one when he went through earlier," Ron said. "Harry too, for that matter. The small one is clean and the others have all got dust on."

"...I see."

"But don't worry about it—a lot of the greatest wizards couldn't notice what's right under their noses, either," Ron said teasingly.

Interesting. It's not Wisdom-based, either. Could it be... (Milo shuddered at the thought) ...Charisma? It would explain why Grabbe and Coyle were failing most of their courses, and why Voldemort was simultaneously the greatest dark wizard alive (or possibly undead, Milo thought, fingering a wooden stake in his belt) and had an impressive cult following. Dumbledore, too, for that matter (except for the 'dark' part). Fortunately, PCs were explicitly immune to the effects of high-powered Diplomancy.

"We... have a slight problem," Hermione said in a small voice.

"Oh?"

"There's only enough for one of us," she said. "Hardly even that." She was right—the bottle was tiny.

Tiny... but full.

"The potion must replenish itself," Milo pointed out. "Assuming Quirrell and Harry came through here—and everything we've seen suggests that they have—they both had to have drunk from that bottle, which is nevertheless full to the cork. So all we have to do is go through one at a time. The only question is..."

"Which order do we go in?" Hermione asked.

"I was going to say, 'how long does it take to refill,' but yours is valid. The only two questions are: which order do we go in, and how long does it take to refill?"

"That, and 'what's on the other side, and does it want to eat our faces,'" Ron added.

"Right. Our three questions are: which order do we go in, how long does it take to refill, and what's on the other side, and does it want to eat our faces? Oh, and, how about, 'did Hermione pick the right bottle, or will the first drinker turn blue and die?' So our four questions are: which order, how long, what's on the other side—"

"—and does it want to eat our faces off—" cut in Ron.

"—Right, and does it want to eat our faces off, and did Hermione pick the right bottle."

"Wait," Hermione said. "Didn't you say your robes made you fire proof? You had me set you on fire and everything."

"Fire resistant," Milo corrected in a pained voice. "And it's only rated against regular fire. Against fancy black fire? It depends: how much does the DM hate me? The answer? Probably a lot." Milo could still remember the disastrous 'Use Spontaneous Divination to get Cleric Spells' fiasco.

"DM?" Ron asked in a puzzled voice.

"Disgruntled Mechanics. If you push the rules... sometimes, the rules push back."

"O-kay. Let's pretend I never asked, and I'll pretend you're not completely daft."

"Fair enough. How about you two play Fighter, Rogue, Wide-Mouth-Spiked-Pit-Trap to determine which of you goes first, and I'll chance the fire. The other one waits for the potion to refill and charges in to save us from whatever horrific fate we've found ourselves in. I'm thinking the giant squid that lives in the lake will figure in here somehow."

"I hesitate to ask, but... Fighter, Rogue, Wide-Mouth-Spiked-Pit-Trap?" Hermione asked.

"Sure. The Fighter Power Attacks the Rogue for quintuple the Rogue's HP, the Rogue uses Trap Sense and discovers and disarms the Wide-Mouth-Spiked-Pit-Trap, the Fighter has no skill ranks or good abilities other than Strength and Constitution and falls into the Wide-Mouth-Spiked-Pit-Trap. It's abstract, I know—for example, it assumes the theoretically possible but, in practice, impossible event of a Fighter engaging a competent Rogue in a fair combat—but really, when it comes down to it, it's just common sense."

"Oh, so just like Rock, Paper, Scissors, then," Hermione said.

"What is this Rock, Paper, Scissors of which you speak?"

"Well, rock bends the scissors, the scissors cut the paper, and the paper... well, I guess it wraps around the rock," Ron explained.

"I'd always assumed the paper was too flexible to be beaten by the rock," Hermione said. "Which is why it 'wins.'"

"Psht," Milo muttered. "The paper is probably a scroll of Rock to Mud. It's the only explanation that makes any sense."

"Regardless," Hermione cut in, "let's play, shall we? Milo, count us off."

"Three... Two... One..."

"Paper!" Hermione said, at the same time that Ron said "Wide-Mouth-Spiked-Pit-Trap!"

"Hooboy..." Milo muttered.

Eventually, Ron won out with rock ("I assumed you'd think I was the sort of person who always chose rock, so while I was going to trick you by choosing scissors, I realized, you might have guessed that I'd use my cunning ploy and that what I should really be using is paper, but then I remembered your scores in History of Magic so, taking into account the fact that you were a brainiac, I one-upped you again, which put me right back to rock. Bloody brilliant, I say.") against Hermione's scissors ("I assigned each move a number—paper was one, rock was two, scissors was three—and divided the third line of Snape's riddle by three, because three there are three of us (if it came out to four, it would wrap around and would count as 'paper,' of course, and five would be rock) to simulate a random move, which would thus be impossible to guess.")

"Ha!" Ron exclaimed. "I win! Who's clever now?"

"You were lucky," Hermione stressed. "There's a difference. Just because you were right doesn't mean it was the smart decision."

"Right," Milo said. "Drink up, and let's go rescue Harry."

Ron's grin vanished immediately.

"Ah, bugger. I forgot the prize was 'almost-certain grievous injury, with a side of dismemberment.' I should have lost."

"Who's clever now," Hermione muttered under her breath. Milo didn't think that he was supposed to hear it.

Milo walked over to the flickering black fire, feeling the heat rolling off of it. This was, oddly, reassuring—it was a weak implication that the fire did, well, Fire damage as opposed to something eviller, like Cold or Negative Energy. Or (Milo shuddered at the possibility) Level Drain. All things being equal, death was generally preferable to level loss. At least it was only a temporary inconvenience.

Beside him, Ron chugged the tiny bottle and shivered.

"It's like drinking ice water," he said, and passed the empty bottle to Hermione.

"I'll follow as soon as it refills," she promised. "Be careful, will you? If your theory is right, and each of the Heads of Houses and Quirrell made a room... well, this was the last one. Good luck." She looked like she wanted to say more, but decided against it and stepped back.

"Best take it at a run, you think?" Ron suggested.

"Agreed. Ready?" Milo asked, backing up a bit so he could Run through the fire.

"Ready."