Chapter Twenty Six: Too Good to be True

Draco and Hermione took off and were ten feet ahead of Rackham before he knew what was going on. He cried out. "Get em, don't let em get away!"

Hermione pulled her hand out of Draco's and began digging through her bag for her wand. As soon as it was free she pointed it over her left shoulder and screamed, "Bombarda Maxima!" A large chunk of the roof collapsed on the group chasing them. The sounds of the angry party were silenced but neither Draco nor Hermione dared to stop running.

The light at the end of Draco's wand bobbed with his uneven steps. They didn't stop until they came to a dead end. "What the?" Draco was suddenly angry and tried to use the same spell as before to reveal an opening. Nothing happened.

"Draco, look!"

Near the corner was what looked to be a square carved into the wall. There were nine squares inside that and nine squares in each of those for a total of eighty one small squares in the large one. Some of the squares looked as though they were painted, but only one or two were the same colour. It was difficult to tell some of the colours apart in the light.

"It's just a dumb drawing, Granger," Malfoy snapped.

"It is not, Malfoy, it's a puzzle. I've only ever seen it with numbers though. You can't have the same colour in the same row or column, or in the same box, like this one here." She traced the around the upper left nine squares where the line in the wall was slightly thicker.

"That's impossible."

"No, it's logic." Hermione insisted. She found a few squares scattered on the ground and tried to push one in the place she thought it went. Surprisingly, the wall behind it gave way and the piece stayed put. Hermione tapped each of the pieces and used a duplicating charm so that she would have enough. "Just give me a moment."

Draco leaned against the wall and crossed his arms and ankles. Every once in a while she would huff and have to pry some of the pieces back out, but the ones that were there to begin with never budged. Draco looked back down the way they had come every now and then, but there wasn't a sound or sight to suggest that any of the pirates had cleared away the cave in Hermione had caused.

She finally pushed the last piece in with her thumb and all of the pieces she had stuck in so far popped back out. The vein in her temple began to pulse as she stared at the small squares like they had done her personal harm. Just as she was about to pick them all up and start over, Draco let out a shout; the wall he had been leaning against vanished and he barely kept his balance.

The next chamber was large and, oddly enough, very well lit. There seemed to be an orb emitting light from the very center of the room. It floated at almost eye level with Hermione. The pair approached it cautiously and Hermione's face lit up when she saw large rocks in a circle around the orb on the ground, like around a campfire. Familiar patterns were carved into the surface. She knelt down and opened her beaded bag again, reaching in and pulling out a small sketch book. She silently compared them, lightly tracing the designed she had written down in the book and the ones most similar to them on the rocks.

"These appear to be the same, only fractionally different, but I've never seen anything like this before." Hermione pointed to the ball of light only two feet away. It gave off no heat, and didn't even hurt to look at. Draco reached out a hand to touch it and Hermione grabbed at him. "Don't, we don't know what it does. It could be dark magic."

"Give me something from your bag then." Hermione handed over an empty steel potions flask, which Draco dropped on top of the orb. It seemed to be repelled by the sphere and bounced off, clattering to the ground. Hermione scooped it back up and picked up a loose pebble on the ground. Her fingers worked over the black rock before she tossed that at the light source and was amazed that it seemed to fuse with it. A second later, small granules, the same colour as the rock, were deposited below the orb.

"It makes… sand?" A glimmer behind Draco's shoulder caught her eye and made Hermione pause. He turned to see what she was looking at and saw it; on a pedestal of rock sat a large wooden chest. The lid was open, and dozens of gold coins and glittering gems sparkled in the soft light.

"That's all?" Draco asked in disbelief.

"You would say that a treasure is too small."

"What I mean," Draco replied, closing the space between him and the gold, "Is that this Blackbeard fellow seemed revered and was probably pirating for a long while. If he went through all this trouble to hide his treasure, don't you suppose there would be more?"

She hadn't thought of that. A quick glance around the cave showed her that there were in fact several pedestals along the curved wall, all supporting large chests, each spilling over with gold coins. "Was that more of what you were thinking?" Hermione asked. Draco only nodded in reply.

"Granger, is it really this easy?" Hermione gave Draco a confused look. "Do we really just need to put rocks into that," he pointed at the ball of light, "and refill the time turners?"

"It can't be," Hermione confessed. "Normal sand, made from rocks, that's what makes them go backwards. We would need a pure element." Draco cleared his throat and, when Hermione looked over, nodded to the chest. "Gold?... Gold! Quick, Draco, help me lift this."

Draco laughed and pointed his wand at the chest. With a flick of his wrist, it came off the rock and was floating toward the center of the room. As soon as the chest was lifted away, the small pillar of rock it had rested on began sinking. The top became level with the ground at the same time that the opening in the wall they had come through slid shut. The pillar then sank below and water shot up out of the new hole and began filling the cavern.