One moment there was a warm fire, fresh parchment and a blank head. Then there was mist, hedges and a flash of silver in the corner of this eye.
Now, Cecil spun, terror rising in his throat. The occasional flash of silver and blue he had been following hadn't reappeared. Either he'd lost it in the Maze or the owner was just around the corner in a slowly expanding pool of deep red blood, and …..
Shaking his head sharply to dislodge the images, Cecil took a deep breath and brushed his blonde fringe from his eyes. Taking out his wand, he whispered "Lumos" softly, waving his wand in the backward circle. The huge hedges reflected the light, filling the corridor with a buttery glow as he slowly advanced through the twisted paths.
-0-0-0-
Left, left, right, middle fork, left, right, left fork, dead end. Ellie exhaled sharply, her breath rising as a misty barrier between her and the hedge. She took two steps backwards, looked right. Nothing. Two more back, look left. Still nothing. Spinning around, the blackness of the Maze opened up before her, a great gaping maw of some beast composed of shadows. Pulling the silver quill from her dark hair, Ellie scribbled the thought down in her leather-bound journal. She returned both book and quill to their original positions, twisting her hair back up and securing it. A faint light caught her eye, and she froze. Slowly, she walked backward till her back hit the hedges, then back a bit further to blend into the wall of wood. As the light got closer, she drew her wand, holding it loosely as she ran her fingers over the scarred edges. The light grew, and with it the sound of heavy breathing. Ellie peered out of the hedge, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had been stalking her since she entered the Maze. Her quill caught the light emanating from the wand, sending a flash across the path. Cover blown, she jumped out of the hedge.
"Mucus ad Nauseam!" A boy-shaped silhouette stood in the middle of the path, the Lumos charm slightly blinding her. Her Curse of the Bogeys shot off towards him, missing by half an arms' length.
"Hey, whoa! Peace earthling!" Ellie raised an eyebrow slightly. "Ok, not the most elegant of surrender speeches, but at least you're not shooting at me anymore." The boy licked his lips nervously and extinguished his wand.
"I wasn't shooting at you. See? No gun." Stowing her wand back in her pocket, Ellie started to walk towards him. Cecil's eyes went wide, and he backpedalled so fast he almost fell over. He looked so funny, Ellie just had to grin. She was still grinning when the Doxie appeared above her and sank its double rows of razor-sharp teeth into her shoulder.
-0-0-0-
The next few moments happened in slow motion for Cecil. He managed to stay upright by hitting a corner of the hedge, giving him the perfect view of the Doxie removing its teeth from the girl's shoulder as she fell. The creature rose slowly till it was level with Cecil's head, and then dove straight at him. He ducked with a shout, and the Doxie crashed into the hedge above him, burrowing straight through and disappearing. As soon as he was sure it was gone, Cecil ran over and dropped to his knees beside the girl.
"Hey, quill girl. Can you hear me?" Tentatively, Cecil poked her uninjured shoulder. She coughed and sat up, rubbing her shoulder.
"Ow. Damn Doxies." She blinked several times, the started to stand up.
"Hey, don't do that. You got bitten, you need medical treatment. We gotta get the professors." Cecil stood up, pointed his wand at the sky above the hedges.
"Vermillious! Vermillious!" Frustrated and frantic, Cecil shook his head. "Work goddamn it!"
"Try slash and jab, the jab and slash does nothing. You've got to be very careful to get the movement right as well as the incarnation, otherwise the spell is nothing." Slowly, Cecil turned around. Ellie was leaning against one of the trees that grew at every intersection, watching his attempts.
"Have you ever done this spell outside of a classroom?" Cecil felt the anger building up inside his chest again, a vessel with not enough space. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to do this under pressure? I'm doing the best I can, for you might I add, yet you stand there with Doxie venom coursing through your veins acting like you've not a care, then you have the nerve to criticize me for attempting to get you help!" He ran out of words then, and raised his eyes to meet hers with a defiant stare. "I don't even know your name!"
"Ellie."
"What?" The anger infused his word as he nearly hurled it at her.
"My name is Ellie. I'm in Ravenclaw, as well as your DADA class and the Doxie didn't bite me, which is why I'm still standing. See?" She undid the dragon clasp at her throat, hanging her cloak over the tree branch. Pulling aside the neck of her robes, she showed him the strip of leather protecting her shoulder.
"I got burnt as a child. The leather has some sort of potion infused in it which lets out a constant stream of cooling potion so the burn doesn't crack or dry out or anything."
"Oh." Cecil slumped against the opposite tree in defeat. "Ok. Sorry I yelled at you. I'm Cecil, by the way."
"It's ok. Shall we continue?" Cecil nodded, and after Ellie had refastened her cloak, the two students set off through the Maze.
-0-0-0-
They'd been walking for nearly twenty minutes when Cecil grabbed Ellie's arm.
"Look. Ghosts." He pointed down a vast, open stretch of Maze to a clearing. "I think that's Rowena."
Ellie nodded excitedly. "Yea, I think you're right. Maybe we can ask them how we got into the Maze in the first place. Do you think they'd know a way out?"
"Probably, I mean, we can at least ask them." Cecil set off towards the ghosts, turning to watch Ellie as she pulled the quill out and wrote something down in the tattered journal. "Are you coming, or no.. Aahh!" Something tangled around his ankle, tripping him. Lying on his back, struggling to draw breath, Cecil noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Still coughing, he rolled over, staring at the homework he had been doing before being pulled into the Maze.
"How the hell did you get here?" He coughed, reaching out for the water next to his book. His hand touched it and went straight through, the desk vanishing. "What the.."
"Imps." Ellie reached down and pulled Cecil to his feet. "There's string stretched across the path, that's what you fell over. Plus the bucket suspended from the tree, Im guessing there's something not nice just waiting to fall on..." She broke off as something landed with a splat at their feet, closely followed by one on Cecil's shoulder.
"Oh yay, slugs." Simultaneously, they turned to go back the way they came, only to find it had become overgrown. Suddenly, the slug rain increased, coating them both in slime and the occasional whole slug. They started to run towards the ghosts at the end of the path, the slime making the ground slippery. "In here, there's a shelter." Ellie overshot the break, skidding along and bumping into a hedge. Almost immediately a thin arm snaked out and pulled out the quill, causing her hair to fall around her shoulders in dark brown curls. Cecil caught her hand as he ran through the break, pulling her away from the Imp and into the clearing.
-0-0-0-
"Here." Ellie handed Cecil a piece of moss from the roots of the corner trees. "It might help get some of the slime off." She'd already done the same, as there were traces of green among her hair.
"You got your quill back." Cecil took the moss and started to wipe down himself. "And there's no slime on you apart from your hair."
"I have a spare quill in case, and my cloak has a permanent Impervious Charm on it. Really useful for snow, and slug rain."
-0-0-0-
The Bowtruckle attacked just as they were about to leave, whipping out and cutting Ellie across one cheek, while reaching out and wrapping its long fingers around Cecil's wrist. She stumbled backwards, tripping and almost falling. She was saved by someone catching her mid fall and snaking their arms around her chest to hold her.
"Thanks, Cecil. Much appreciated." Ellie patted one arm before attempting to stand upright by herself.
"Um, Ellie?" She looked up, freezing when she saw Cecil still held firmly by the tree as it attempted to get to his eyes. "Little help here?"
-0-0-0-
Cecil fought to keep his head tucked into his shoulder. The Bowtruckle had hold of his right arm and across his chest. It had managed to cut his cheek several times, and a nick above his eyebrow dripped blood into one eye.
As a result, the strangled scream that echoed across the clearing was sudden and very scary. Even the Bowtruckle froze, giving him enough time to loosen the constraint on his chest.
"Ellie? Ellie, are you ok?" Cecil asked, fighting to rid himself of the branch that was intent on removing his eyes from their sockets. He cried out as a hand grabbed his, pulling him away from the suddenly loose grip of the malevolent tree. He heard a cry, and almost slipped as he was pulled back into the slug rain. Thankfully no slugs were falling from the sky, only the slime on the ground remained.
"What happened?" he asked, wiping blood out his eyes.
"Just run. I'll tell you later." After about 100 metres, the slime stopped and they ran into a massive garden, full of flowers and other plants. Cecil stopped short, almost running straight through the ghost hovering in from of them.
"Clear to clear." Ellie glanced at Cecil, and shrugged when he raised a questioning eyebrow. "Clear to clear." The ghost said again, flew straight at them. They ducked and it swooped overhead, vanishing into the hedge that had suddenly grown over the entrance to the Imp's passage.
"What did he mean?" Cecil asked, turning to Ellie. To his surprise, the Ravenclaw was kneeling in the dirt, looking under a plant. Suddenly she stuck her hand under the plant again, and pulled up what looked incredibly like a potato with stumpy legs.
"De-gnoming time," she grinned, handing him the gnome. Cecil carefully took it, holding it upside down by one leg while it screamed "Geroff me!" at him.
"You start over that side, I'll do this one. Shouldn't take all that long." Ellie took off her cloak again, laying it on the stone wall at the edge of the garden. It took them both a bit of time to get into the rhythm of de-gnoming, but soon the gnomes were swarming to the surface to see what was going on, and then it was just a case of picking them up, spinning them and throwing them. As they worked, Ellie explained how what Cecil had missed during his tussle with the Bowtruckle. Apparently the Hag had set her clearing up halfway along the Imp's path, hoping to lure people to the relative safety. Then, she would catch the children that came through, and she would eat them unless they got away.
"So how'd you escape?" Cecil snatched his hand back from a gnomes head before it could bite him.
"Easy. I stood on her foot." Ellie grinned, looking very pleased to have such a simple solution.
"Cleared. You may go." Both students looked up, startled, at the sound of the ghosts' voice.
"Huzzah!" Grabbing her cloak from the wall, Ellie put it on and checked her wand was still in her pocket. Cecil stood up, brushing the dirt from his green robes. Joining Ellie, they stood in front of the ghost, waiting. Standing one minute, falling the next.
-0-0-0-
The wind was rushing past her ears so fast Ellie was concerned she was going to have her wand wrenched from her grasp. By arching her back, she was able to stabilise long enough to yell "Verdimillious" above the wind, and illuminate whatever they were falling towards. She could see the ground approaching at a frightening rate, but she simply waited; the calm of the storm.
For Cecil, the fall was anything but calm. His scream was lost in the rushing air, and he tumbled head over heels. This was every nightmare come true, and from the occasional glimpses he could get, Ellie seemed perfectly calm. Taking a deep breath, Cecil tried to flip himself to copy what she was going. Arch back, hands and knees parallel. You're crawling, that's all. Crawling vertically at high speed. The ground seemed to be getting closer with every blink, and Cecil was starting to worry when a bright pink light started to build above him. After about 20 blinks, the pink light sped past him, covering a section of floor in bright pink light. Spongify. Clever and hopefully working.
They hit the floor one after the other, Cecil then Ellie. The floor was still hard, knocking the wind out of them, but thankfully not their brains. Cecil curled up on his side, wheezing slightly as he tried to suck in oxygen. His lungs felt like, well, like he'd just fallen down a deep deep well. When he could breathe well enough to speak, he asked, "How did you know the floor was wood and Spongify would work?"
Ellie looked down, seeing the polished, slightly spongy surface as if for the first time. Then she looked up, grinning. "I didn't know."
Soon enough they were both walking around, mapping out their cell with Lumos charms. Eventually Cecil got bored, and went to the centre of the well.
"Verdimillious." This time he got the motion right, creating green sparks a couple of metres from the pink ground. In the magical light, the outline of a door slowly appeared out of the gloom. Ellie reached out and opened it, only to be met with a blast of fire and smoke aimed straight at her. She quickly slammed the door and backed away from it, feeling her eyebrows.
"Fire crab."
-0-0-0-
Suggestion after suggestion was traded back and forth as they tried to figure out a plan. Obviously, in order to get out of this Maze of challenges (which was rather like their DADA lessons if truth be told), they would have to get past the Fire Crab. Eventually, they came up with a plan.
"Ready?" Ellie asked, her hand on the door knob once more.
Cecil swallowed. "Ready." She nodded, pulled her hood up, then opened the door and slipped through, pressing herself against the stone wall of the Fire crab's room. As the column of fire subsided, Cecil followed, leaving the door open. Together, they slowly started to creep around the sides of the room, the occasional movement attracting the crab. Its jewelled shell reflected the candles in the chandelier, throwing a kaleidoscope of colour across the room. The opposite door looked tantalizingly close, but Cecil forced himself to go slowly. Across the room, Ellie readjusted her grip on her wand, holding her cloak with her right hand to stop it moving as much. The Fire crab turned its black eyes to stare at Cecil, and then back to Ellie.
"Cecil!" Ellie whispered. He looked up at her, still edging around the room. He registered her wide eyes and the shaking of her head at the same time his foot hit the candlestick. It fell, hitting the stone floor with a clang that echoed around the room. The crab whipped around, aiming at the source of the noise. They gave up on being quiet and ran, Cecil covering his head to try and avoid the fire he knew was coming.
Dimly, he was aware of Ellie casting the Knockback Jinx, blue light shooting past him to hit the creature on its thick grey skin, pushing it back slightly. Something grabbed his arm and the two students were pulled roughly into a circular chamber.
"What in the name of Merlin's beard are you two doing down here?" The tall man looked down at them as they stood up. His face was covered in shadow, and his hands were shaking.
"That's what we'd like to know," Cecil replied. "Neither of us knows how we got in here, one moment there was homework or whatever, the next the Maze."
"We've been following the challenges in the hopes that they lead to an exit." Ellie said. She'd moved away from the pair and was examining the different doors. There were twelve of them, arranged around the room like a clock face. The door leading to the Fire Crab's room had a six in roman numerals stencilled on it, the opposite one a highly ornate twelve. The rest had no numbers or any distinguishing marks.
"I wouldn't open them if I were you," the man said. "The entire room spins except for that circle. I've tried and anyways, there's nothing in half of the doors. I've tried that side from twelve to six and I was about to try that one when I heard you guys shouting." He gestured to the right side of the room, then to the door on the left of number six.
"Open it then." Ellie said. Her voice was cool, and she ignored Cecil's worried look. The man nodded, walking across and opened the door. There was an empty pedestal made of black marble carved into the wall, creating a recess.
Cecil and Ellie retreated back onto the circle in the middle of the room. The man turned to join them, but Ellie stepped forward. The room was beginning to spin slowly, picking up speed.
"Do you know what's happening to you?" she asked. The man hesitated. "It's ok; we're not going to hurt you. I need to make sure everyone is safe, that's all."
"I'm a monster," the man whispered. He was pale and shaking, sweat beating along his forehead as he fought the change. "I can't hold on for much longer, you need to get out of here."
Ellie nodded. Turning to Cecil, she said, "Behind one of these doors there's going to be a passage, or a device that can get us out of here, but we need to find it first. We've probably only got a few minutes at most, and there are twelve doors. So choose carefully."
"What's happening to him?" Cecil asked. She bit her lip, hesitating.
"He's transforming." High above them, a small window let in the light of a huge, pale, full moon.
-0-0-0-
When the room finally stopped spinning, Cecil stood in the centre, alone. Ellie was trying to talk to the man, trying to get information about the Maze and stop him turning so fast. Twelve doors, one to get us out. Trapped with a transforming werewolf. He looked at each door in turn, thinking.
A room with twelve doors that spins to confuse you. Number twelve and six have numbers, with six being the door you just came through. In this situation you know at least one door: number six. So you rule that one out in the hope it'll be easier. Eleven to go. Then again, six would be a good place to hide something; you think you know where it leads.
Cecil stepped forward, and opened the door.
-0-0-0-
"Ellie!" Cecil called. She glanced up, looking for him. He stood by an open door, a door with a shining golden cup balanced on the pedestal. "Come on, we need to go."
Glancing at the writhing form on the floor once more, she stood up and ran over to him.
"Ready?" He asked. "On the count of three… one, two, three!" Together, they curled their hands around the handle and vanished, just as the werewolf threw back its head and howled.
They landed in a dungeon, sprawling across the stone floor with the Portkey between them. Ellie rested her head back against the floor, smiling triumphantly.
"Hey, Cecil."
"Yea?"
"We made it." Sitting up, slowly because of the headache building in his head, Cecil looked around the chamber where they'd landed. Their Defence against the Dark Arts teacher stood outside, holding a clipboard and a stopwatch.
"Good job, both of you. I had the utmost confidence you would make it, and here you are." She smiled at them both. "You've passed first year DADA. If you go back to the classroom, you'll find the Prefects have some hot drinks and food. There is also first aid, should you need it. Congratulations once again." Cecil and Ellie looked at each other, and then started laughing.
"I did say the challenges looked a lot like our classes."