"We need to help him!" he said, his tone desperate, pleading. "Come on you guys! We need to do something!"
Lisa snapped out of her fright first. She looked at the troll, then at Neville, then at the other four with her.
"Maybe we could... if we attack it together we might be able to do something."
"It's as good a plan as any," Terry muttered in a shaky voice. He held up his wand and sent another stinging hex the troll's way with both Neville and Lisa doing the same. Neville's fizzled out again. Lisa's and Terry's hit, but it still didn't do anything.
"Come on you two," Neville pleaded with Susan and Hannah. "We need your help."
Hannah sucked in a deep breath, then turned wide eyes to Neville. After a moment, she closed her eyes and tried to control her frantic breathing. She still looked frightened, but it seemed as if she was at least not allowing it to control her. Susan came around at the same time and looked at Harry, her eyes gaining a determined glint that shown clearly under her fear.
"Ok," she whispered as she and Susan both pulled out their wands. Lisa, Neville and Terry followed suit, and all five of them sent a stinging hex at the troll. This time the spells not only hit, but the combined stinging hexes actually caused the creature to yowl in pain as it stumbled forward. Harry used the distraction to send another piece of armor at its face in the hopes it would stay focused on him.
It was not to be. It seemed that the combined stinging hexes hurt more than the armor hitting it had, and thus the troll deemed the five behind it a larger threat.
Harry swore as it spun around and began charging at the five with an earth-shattering bellow. Even worse, his friends had frozen when they saw the behemoth rushing towards them with its club arm raised. He needed to do something and he needed to do it fast if he wanted to get all of them out of this in once piece.
In a last ditch effort, Harry pumped massive amounts of magic through his body, enhancing it beyond anything he had ever done before. He wouldn't be able to hold it for long, not without suffering severe consequences, but it would hopefully be enough for this.
He raced down the hall, his magically enhanced body almost but not quite matching the troll's own loping speed. Damn those much longer legs. He needed to slow this thing down.
A flick of his wrist and several dozen pieces of armor crashed into the creature's legs and feet, making it stumble. It lost its balance, crashing onto its hands and knees. Harry used that time to catch up and then did the unthinkable, not to mention the incredibly stupid.
He jumped onto its back.
It was hands down the dumbest thing he had ever done in his life, but Harry was barely even thinking straight at this point.
He flicked his wand and a stream of rope shot out. It looped around the troll's neck three times, then Harry caught the end with his other hand and tightened it.
The troll jerked upwards to its feet with an angry roar, its club lying forgotten on the ground. Its hands reached back to try and grab him, but the rope keeping him up began lengthening and Harry slid onto its lower back where it couldn't reach him.
For a moment, Harry dared to hope he had finally been given some breathing room. The troll couldn't reach him, he was finally up close, and he had a small window of opportunity to hurt it, if he could actually find a means to hurt it.
That thought was dashed into tiny pieces when the troll, unable to remove him from its back, began thrashing around like a raging bull in an effort to throw him off.
Harry was flung about like a rag doll. His right hand remained grasping the end of the rope tightly, while his left still had his wand clutched firmly, but that meant little when the rope had so much slack that his body was still violently flung off the troll's back. He could only count his blessings that the troll had not yet smacked him into a wall as there would be little to no chance of him getting up from that.
Seeing his plight, his friends once more began casting stinging hexes at the troll. Despite there good intentions, however, it was probably the worst decision they could have made. Rather than bring the beast down, the spells merely enraged it further. Its thrashing and shaking and floundering picked up in intensity, and Harry found himself getting smacked into several suits of armor that banged up his legs and back as he was tossed about like a fruit salad being handled by a mad chef on crack.
Barely containing his flinch when the bones in his shin snap as they hit hard metal, Harry began shunting the pain to the side and focused on reeling the rope in so he could find better purchase on the troll's back. No matter what happened, if he wanted to have any hope of surviving the next few seconds much less this encounter, he needed to have some kind of footing to keep steady.
It wasn't an easy task, especially with how violent the troll shook and the amount of pain his legs were in, but he had felt far worse before. The rope tightened as it 'moved' back into his wand like a fishing line being reeled in. His feet touched the troll's back and, for a moment, Harry began hoping that he would have some time to think up a plan. Even a second to catch a breather would be nice.
Apparently, it was too much to hope for.
The troll felt his feet as they planted themselves on its back and, having not had any luck catching him so far, decided to do probably the only thing it could to get him off.
It rammed into the wall back first.
Harry would have screamed in pain as the feeling of being crushed by mountains of muscle and the dense, hard granite of the wall speared through his body, but all of the air had been driven from his lungs, so all that came out was a pained rush of breath and a shaky gasp.