Rose broached the subject to Dmitri as Rafael left the table. "What d'you think of coming on a little adventure with us this morning?" she said, imbuing her words with a sneaky shred of mischief. "You know, get your mind off of things."

He looked at her blankly, an almost dead look in his eyes. "Vhy now?" he asked limply.

"Lorcan and I found a secret passage under the school. We can go down there for a bit before the task." She cocked her head. "It'd be an adventure…"

"And you wouldn't have to go to Transfiguration," added Albus, uncharacteristically excited to be skipping class. Rose shot him a look, asking him to be more subtle.

"We'd have you back in time for the task," said Rose, though she intended to have him far underground when the task began. "C'mon, you need a bit of relaxation."

Dmitri was silent for a long moment, then nodded. "I think I vill," he finally said.

"Perfect!"

Rose had to fight the urge to let her perky smile falter and fade as the meal ended. She hated to miss class- she knew she would be in terrible trouble, not even thinking about all the work she would be missing- but her friends were worth it. It was just good that she had friends like Albus and Lorcan, friends who would go along with this plan.

They waited in the Gryffindor common room until the first bells rang. The Fat Lady still didn't know how to tell Lorcan and his twin apart, so as far as she knew, she was letting Lysander in to grab one of his textbooks. When the four of them slipped out, she was too immersed in a conversation with her friend Violet to wish them goodbye.

"Vhy is James no coming?" asked Dmitri as the group reached the third floor. He had been quiet for a while, and it was apparent that only desperate curiosity made him speak now.

"James had other plans," said Rose carefully. "He had to take care of something for me."

In truth, she had decided to not tell James about where they were going with Dmitri. He would disapprove- "Bravery in the face of danger," he would have said. It was a motto of his. Rose understood it, but now was not the time. If what Lorcan saw turned out to be true…

Besides, they didn't need bravery. All they needed to do was to keep Dmitri away from the task- and any danger that would come along with it.

The corridor was not difficult to find. The wall torches were not lit- Lorcan and Rose led the way with their wands lit. The walkway was piled high with boxes and various magical devices that looked to be centuries old. The group climbed over what appeared to be a section of a pillar carved with ancient runes and symbols. Rose desperately wanted to stay and examine the runes- they had become a hobby of hers the previous summer- but Albus tugged her forward.

Lorcan stopped in front of a door, paused for a moment, regarding it curiously, then said, "This is it."

It was not, in fact, the door from the drawing; it opened easily without the key Rose held in her pocket. The room it revealed was also being used as a storage space. Up against the far wall, Rose could just make out the curve of a gilded mirror frame. It was obstructed by an immense gargoyle statue, unusual in the fact that it had a ring of eyes running around its head. She could have sworn one winked- but it was just a flicker of light playing games with the shadows.

"If this is the room," she said, ignoring the gargoyle, "then there's a trapdoor somewhere." She looked at the life-sized stones depicting three witches wearily. It could be a long morning.

With all four of them in the room, there was only enough space to shift one object at a time. Rose, who had been practicing, levitated each statue, piece of furniture, and unidentifiable object covered in dust, each time giving Albus a long glance at the floor beneathto check for a trapdoor.

"I think I've got something," he said at last. Rose carefully floated the colour-changing maypole to the side and set it down as Lorcan and Dmitri made their way to Albus.

"Well, that's a trapdoor alright," assessed Lorcan calmly as Rose knelt. A square of the floor had wood running in the opposite direction- that alone would have drawn her eye, even if it hadn't been for the hinges and latch.

She pulled it up and was met by a puff of dust. Coughing, she waved the air in front of her face to clear it. Once she could see again, she stuck her wands down the hole, shedding light on a drop that descended into darkness.

Rose recalled everything she knew about what lay below. Besides what her parents had told her, she had done extensive research on the chamber after realizing where the key fit. Not much was documented- her parents and uncle never spoke much of their first year at school when asked to comment, and their stories were usually the same.

"The fall used to be cushioned by a plant," she told the others, "but that's gone now. I reckon it's stone floors below, or at least hard wood."

Lorcan jerked his wand, and a coil of rope flew to him. "I figured we might need it," he explained. "For, y'know, anything."

Albus helped him anchor one end of the rope under an immense statue of Lutifare the Lucid, then they tossed the other end through the open trapdoor. It slid down, but they could not tell the length of the drop.

"I'll go down first," Rose volunteered, sticking her wand in her pocket. She would need both hands to manage the rope. "Follow down after I call up that it's okay."

Albus gave her an almost reproachful look, but Lorcan nodded. Dmitri's face was still mainly blank, though he leaned over the open space with a look of mild interest.

Rose slid her body down through the hole, clutching onto the rope nervously. She didn't have much upper-body strength, and the rope immediately scratched at her palms. Clenching her teeth, she slid her elbows off the edge of the hole-

And began to fall.

She let out a small shriek. The coarse rope burned straight between her hands as she struggled for purchase. As a last effort to stop her fall, she threw out her legs and leaned backwards, gripping the rope as thought Death itself was beneath her. After a few bumps, she slid to a stop.

"Are you okay?" Albus' voice echoed down the drop, full of worry.

"Gimme a minute," she replied gruffly. Keeping her back and legs pushed out, she clutched the rope with one hand and drew her wand with the other. "Lumos," she whispered, and light burst from the tip.

The rope continued down to pool on the ground, which was less than ten feet away. Rose returned the wand to her pocket and wrapped a few loops of rope around her hands. Sucking in a nervous breath, she drew her legs in and began to descend.

The last feet were more controlled than the free fall, though the rope still cut into her hands. It was a relief when her feet finally touched the floor and she could release the abrasive rope.

"I'm down," she called up to the others. The trapdoor was just a tiny square of faint, flickering light above her. "Careful, the rope is tricky."

One by one, the boys made it down the rope. Rose had managed to sooth most of the pain in her hands with some cooling charms by the time Albus scurried down the hole, landing lightly on his feet.

"I'm telling you, take up Quidditch," he said, seeing her glare at his easy descent.

"You've been around Scorpius too much," she countered. Though he had quickly learned of Rose's distaste for Quidditch, Scorpius did not see her flying as an impossibility. Which it most certainly was.

The room they had descended into was completely empty. Water trickled down the bare walls, forming small puddles on the packed dirt floor. There was no far wall, as Rose had initially assumed; instead, the room narrowed and sloped into a thin corridor.

Wand lit and arm extended, Rose led the way down the mild hill. It opened into a large chamber that shot upward into an elegant dome. Directly across the curved chamber stood a large wooden door.

"That's it," said Lorcan with a grin. "That's my door."

There were small differences between the sketch and the actual door. The door that stood before them was covered in small holes where chunks of the wood were missing. The lock, heavy and dull, matched the metal of the key.

"This room is beautiful," remarked Albus, inspecting the walls. They were ornately decorated with faded murals of once-bright colours. Rose ran her hand over the painted wing of a fairy in flight, marveling at the artistry of it.

Lorcan tapped lightly on the door, his fingers resting on the wood. "Let's open this up," he said, waving Rose over.

They key fit smoothly in the lock. The door swung easily on its ancient hinges, revealing another dark corridor.

Rose and Lorcan exchanged a glance; they were about to pass through the door that they had been searching for since September. They stepped through and Albus and Dmitri followed.

There was no indicator of what had previously been contained in the next chamber. It was a plain square room with crumbling stone walls and a high, beamed ceinling. A lingering stench blew the four of them out into the next room.

"Chess," said Dmitri. It was his firt sign of true interest all day. "Vhere are the piece?"

"It's disenchanted," explained Rose, leaning down to examine the edge of the board. It was oversized, stretching from one side of the large room to the other. "There used to be a living game set here- to cross the room, you had to win the game."

"That vould be not easy for me." Dmitri looked around the room warily. "Vhat about that vun?"

There was a single chess piece standing in the far corner of the room. Nearly twice as tall as Rose and pearly white, the Queen did not move as she approached.

"Just left as a memory, I suppose," she said, not completely convinced of her own words. "C'mon, let's keep going."

The next room was also unmarked. A plain wooden table was magically adhered to the floor in the center of the room. Rose knew that it had once held an assortment of potions, and a riddle one had to solve in order to pass through the room safely. Her mother had once solved that riddle and recounted it to her in detail.

"There's only one more room," she told the others. There was no final door for them to pass through, only an arched doorway leading into the largest chamber yet.

Rose felt a certain amount of awe upon stepping into the room. This was where her uncle had faced off against Lord Voldemort when he was only eleven- she couldn't imagine doing the same thing now, though she was a few weeks older than he was where he had gotten the Philosopher's Stone..

The room seemed almost to buzz as she walked through it. "This is… amazing," she breathed, reaching a hand out to touch a large pillar. "It's like the room is alive or something."

Albus and Lorcan continued walking around the room as Rose went to sit next to Dmitri. He had sunk to the bottom of the pillar and was looking around the room with a faint smile.

"It is amazing," he said, "to be here. Ve study the Dark Vor, back at Durmstrang. All year vuns learn all ve know of heroes. Ve should have been at final battle."

"We weren't alive back then," said Rose, surprised.

"My school," he expauined. "Ve should haff helped. Ve did not. I vish ve had. This…" He looked around the room, still in quiet awe. "Ve learn of events to go before Dark Vor. I know this room. It is of the Philosopher's Stone."

Rose was used to people knowing who she was- her parents would be stopped on the street by witches and wizards who wanted just to shake their hand in thanks. But she was not used to this, sitting next to someone who had studied her parents' lives. She reckoned that Dmitri knew things about her parents that even she did not. It was… unnerving.

"Ve teach to be prepared." Dmitri did not look at Rose as he spoke. "Ve teach that it vill happen again. And vhen it does, ve vill be prepared."

Albus and Lorcan came to sit in the large open space of the chamber. Lorcan pulled a stick of charcoal from his bag and began lightly sketching on the ground. Leaning his head back against a pillar, Dmitri shut his eyes; he appeared to be catching up on nights of lost sleep.

Rose and Albus sat together a bit away from the other two. "I can't believe we're down here," Albus remarked, not for the first time. "I mean… Dad told me about this place. Only once, but I remember…."

"I don't think my parents ever made it down this far," said Rose. "Mum might want to, for research or something.…"

"I suppose all of the memories aren't too pleasant. Dad doesn't really talk about his third year."

Rose knew that it was true; out of everything she had learned about her parents' third year, none of the information had come from her uncle. It was a year most often skipped over, the almost blank space between year two and the Triwizard Tournament. Rose's mum had told her once that Harry didn't like to talk about Sirius, the man she had never known but heard spoken of with an almost religious reverence.

A loud thud from beyond the doorway caught all of their attention. Dmitri snapped his head up in a sleepy, unfocused stupor. Lorcan stowed the stick of charcoal in his bag and took out his wand almost absently. A half-finished drawing lay in front of him, at an angle so that Rose could make no sense of it.

Rose stood and moved to the arched doorway, wary, as the sound of footsteps drew near. It was Lysander, revealed as he crossed the chess board a room away. When he reached Rose, she was that his expression was tight and his eyes were rimmed with red. Wordlessly, he passed her and entered the room.

Dmitri jumped to his feet. "Ve are late for the task, are ve not?" he said, his tone already tight and nervous.

"You're not late," replied Lysander softly. "Sit down, Dmitri."

He sank to the floor and Lysander came to sit next to him. Lysander hesitated, then said, "The second task is over, Dmitri."

Dmitri's hands began to shake. "Ve go now," he said, a new element in his voice. Fear. "Rafael, he vonder vhere I am. Ve go."

Rose knew Lysander's next words before they left his mouth.

"There was an accident, Dmitri."

She sank down next to Albus and clasped his hands. His mouth was already set in a hard line.

"Then ve haff to go," Dmitri insisted, his thin voice cracking. Tears were already in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Dmitri." Tears began to stream down Lysander's face as he said, "Rafael is dead."