Chapter 1: He Should Have Known Better

"Longbottom's been neglecting his earmuffs," remarked Professor Sprout as Neville collapsed on the greenhouse floor.

"No, ma'am, he's just fainted," replied Seamus, looking down at him.

"Yes, well, just leave him there," was all she said before leading the class through an exercise in repotting mandrakes.

There had been a loud shriek as Professor Sprout yanked a young mandrake up out of its pot. That horrible sound was the last thing Neville remembered before starting to come to on the wooden floor.

"Where am I?" he thought. Then as he started to rise up he remembered he was in Greenhouse 3 for Herbology class. But where was everyone else? What time was it? The greenhouse was silent, the adolescent mandrakes now happily repotted. His class had apparently abandoned him.

He continued to rise up, but the sleeve of his robe snagged on a loose board. The end of it lifted away from the floor as he tried to free himself. Reaching down to unhook himself, he pulled on the loose piece of flooring. There were a couple of clicks and a clunk to the side of him as his sleeve came free. A hidden door in the side of the greenhouse slid open. The board, as it turned out, was actually a lever.

Neville cautiously crept over and peeked into the opening behind the door. It was pitch black inside. The smell coming up out it was like it had not been opened recently, if not in centuries. There was mustiness to the air that was less than inviting.

"What is this opening?" he thought as he pulled out his wand, curiosity getting the best of his normally cautious side. "I need to cast a little light in there. Who knows what is inside?"

"Lumos," said Neville, light pouring out of his wand and illuminating the area behind the door.

The passage, about two and a half feet by two and a half feet, seemed to stay the constant for a few feet, then it gave the impression it opened up, maybe into a room. The light seemed to be ricocheting around and returning shadow of things, maybe chairs or tables. It was hard to tell.

Many of his classmates would already be inside, investigating, but Neville was a bit more reserved and less adventurous. He needed a bit of time to build up the courage to inch inside, but the lure of the unknown passage was working on him. He was finding it harder and harder to contemplate stepping away from it, perhaps telling Professor Sprout what he had found.

He stayed there, peering into the opening for some time, trying to build up the courage to crawl in. Part of him hoped he would be interrupted by returning students, or Professor Sprout coming to attend to her plants between classes. That would give him an excuse to not go in. But such was not the case.

Neville could not resist any longer. With a deep breath, like he was going under water, he moved forward, entering head first until his knees felt the dividing line between the greenhouse floor and the inside of the passage. He hesitated but told himself he was going to do it. With another breath of the now musty air, he crawled all of the way inside.

"This is crazy," he thought over and over, but he pressed forward for several yards until he reached the end of the small passage and was poised to enter the larger unknown.

"C'mon, Neville," he thought with forced determination. "We can do this. Just do it."

He held his wand out as far as he could, trying to get any kind of a look, and kind of a hint as to what may lay in front of him. The walls of the section of the small tunnel of a passage were black, but the new area he was about to enter looked to be more of a dark tan or light brown. That determination would depend on how you, the casual reader, look at things.

Having braved entering the space, a major accomplishment for Neville, he pushed himself forward several more yards until he was on the edge of where he could get his first glimpse of what was in front of him.

It was quiet, so very quiet in here, just yards from where he had left the safety of the greenhouse to enter this new place. It was like he had crawled out of the world into a new, silent dimension.

He could hear his heart and other organs working, running his body in a machine-like fashion. He had never actually heard noises, such of these, in the past. He had never even considered that his organs made noises. He had always blindly assumed they just quietly did their work without comment.

His blood, filling some of the sonic void, sounded like a swollen river rushing past him. The outward pressure from the lack of external stimuli on his eardrums made him uncomfortable, almost nauseated.

With another small step forward on his knees, his head poked into a fairly large room of about twenty by twenty-five feet with an approximately ten-foot ceiling. The air was much fresher in it.

In the center was a solitary wooden desk accompanied by a plain, wooden chair with a fancily embroidered cushion. He could see the top of a quill and other items, not revealed enough to identify on the table. In the furthest corner, he saw a large, bronze globe. A very strange looking clock hung over it. Shelves of books were over the clock.

Not sensing any immediate danger, Neville inched into the room until he was able to stand upright. Once erect he could see several items on the table. There was an ornate ostrich plume quill resting in a standard brass stand, a crystal ink pot, writing paper, an open book resembling a ledger, a kerosene-style lamp, a china teacup and saucer decorated with red roses flanked by a matching sugar bowl with tongs, full of cubes, and a matching creamer, There was also an empty, plain white plate with a butter knife and jelly bowl. A silver candy bowl with a cover sat in the far right corner.

As he approached the desk, the lamp came to life, illuminating the room with a yellowish light from its flame. "Nox," he said, turning off the light from his wand.

The cup filled itself with a brown liquid smelling like Earl Grey tea. A hot biscuit appeared on the plate. A bright, yellow substance which looked like lemon curd filled the bowl.

"Curious," he thought, "but whoever normally uses this desk is clever. It would be nice to have snacks and food waiting for me in my room like this."

His curiosity was now peaked. He started to look around the room. The plain, brownish walls were anything but what they had first appeared. The two sidewalls and the ones behind him were covered ceiling to floor with rows of drawers, like a card catalog section in a library. "Very curious room," he thought.

Meanwhile, the class returned from their outdoor activities to the greenhouse. Professor Sprout wanted to evaluate how their mandrakes were adapting to their new pots and to dress up the soil with a sprinkle of fertilizer from Hagrid's collection of magical critters and creatures.

"Finnigan. Where's Longbottom?" Professor Sprout asked Seamus. "Is he still lying about over there?

"No, ma'am. He's gone. Maybe he thought the class was over and went back to the castle for lunch. "

"Oh, very well," she said with an exasperated exhale. "Never mind then. Just go ahead and finish up with your mandrake. When you see him, tell him he still needs to come down here and finish up this project if he wants a passing grade on it."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Seamus.

"That's not like Neville to just take off," said Hermione to Susan Bones. "He loves Herbology. I hope he is all right."

"Yes," agreed Susan. "That is peculiar."

Draco turned snickering to Crabbe and Goyle, calling Neville a stupid oaf.

Unknown to Neville, the entrance door had closed itself behind him. The board that acted as a lever had lain back down, its secret invisible to all who might look at it. Unless he could find a lever on his side of the doorway he was stuck there until he could find his way out the other end.

Class ended, and the students all headed up to the castle for lunch. They still had two more classes in the afternoon, so it was essential that they fuel up their systems. Neville was nowhere to be found during the entire lunch period.

"This is very curious," Hermione told Ron and Harry. "Neville never misses a meal."

"That is true," agreed Harry, looking at her, then Ron. "He is almost as bottomless as you when it comes to eating, Ron."

Ron frowned, grabbing a chicken drumstick, but he knew it was true, so he reframed from saying anything.