Under Percy Weasley's frantic commands, the Gryffindor students merged into the rushing tide of bodies heading toward the upper floors of the castle.
Footsteps pounded against stone.
First-years sniffled.
Older students whispered anxiously.
Panic hung thick in the air.
Everyone wanted distance—distance from the word troll, from the dungeons, from the unknown.
And yet—
Amid that desperate current flowing toward safety, one figure stopped.
Lucian Thornwick.
He had been in the middle of the Gryffindor group.
But as the crowd surged around a corner, he quietly came to a halt.
Students rushed past him on both sides, brushing his sleeves, nearly colliding with him—yet he did not move.
"Hey! Thornwick! What are you doing? Keep up!" a Gryffindor upper-year shouted.
Lucian did not respond.
Instead, beneath dozens of startled and confused gazes, he turned.
And walked the other way.
Not toward Gryffindor Tower.
But toward the lower corridors.
Toward the dungeons.
Toward the troll.
Gasps followed him.
"Is he insane?"
"He's going the wrong way!"
"Someone stop him!"
No one did.
Because the look on his face—
It was not reckless.
Not confused.
It was calm.
Too calm.
Not the calm of ignorance, but the calm of someone who understood the situation perfectly—and had already made a decision.
That composure unsettled them more than panic would have.
Lucian knew exactly where the troll was.
His perception extended beyond ordinary magical awareness. A coarse, foul aura lingered below—brutish magic tangled with the stench of damp stone and decay.
Near a bathroom.
And two smaller magical signatures were moving toward it.
Harry Potter.
Ron Weasley.
Lucian's expression did not change.
A mountain troll, he evaluated coolly.
Approximately twelve feet tall. Dense muscle mass. Thick dermal resistance. Limited intelligence. Moderate magical resistance. Slow reaction time.
A near-perfect test subject.
Days earlier, while dissecting the underlying principles of the Levitation Charm, Lucian had stumbled upon something deeper.
Not simply lifting objects.
Not simply manipulating force.
But restructuring gravitational vectors within a defined space.
He had constructed a new spell in theory—
One built not for elegance.
But for domination.
He needed live data.
Energy stability.
Resistance thresholds.
Material response under spatial distortion.
A troll provided excellent metrics.
This was not a crisis.
It was an opportunity.
"I know who that is," a Ravenclaw seventh-year prefect muttered suddenly, eyes widening.
"Who?"
"Lucian Thornwick. First-year. The one who rewrote potion structure. The one who created wandless flight. The one Dumbledore gave fifty points to."
Recognition spread quickly.
Students stared again at the lone figure descending into shadow.
He did not hesitate.
Torchlight flickered across his black hair and sharp profile, casting long, shifting silhouettes against the stone walls.
He walked as though entering a private laboratory.
Not approaching a monster.
"Is he actually going to fight it alone?"
"He can't be serious…"
"He's mad."
A pause.
Then someone whispered quietly—
"Or perhaps… that's what greatness looks like to ordinary people."