Chapter 17: Saving the School
The peace of having completed all of our exams was short lived when we realized that tonight was the night Professor Snape made his attempt to steal the stone. When we tried to tell Professor McGonagall about it, she shut us right down. And with Professor Dumbledore gone for the evening – there was only one thing for it. We had to stop him ourselves.
We made a plan. I went to wait outside the staff room, where Snape was, to try to keep an eye on him and Harry and Ron stood guard outside the third-floor corridor.
I arrived at the door to the staff room and nervously hovered outside the door, praying that Professor Snape stayed inside. To my dismay, almost as soon as I'd arrived, he emerged from the room.
"Granger. What do you want?" he demanded.
"Oh – I – I was just waiting for… Professor Flitwick!" I lied. "I had a question for him about my exam."
Professor Snape glared at me for a moment, and then disappeared into the staff room again. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short lived, as moments later he emerged with my charms Professor.
"Here," Professor Snape said. "Ask your question and then move along."
I watched as Professor Snape disappeared down the corridor. I wished I could follow him, but Professor Flitwick was waiting expectantly.
"Miss Granger?" he prompted when I didn't say anything.
"Oh, right," I said, remembering that I was supposed to be worried about my charms exam. "I'm really sorry to bother you, but I was just worried about question seventeen B, where if asked about alohomora. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to include the entire history of how the spell was invented, or if I was just supposed to explain what the spell does," I said. I made sure to fidget and play with my hair during my speech to make it seem like I was nervous. Which I was. Just not about my exam.
"Well actually, Miss Granger, you included much more than I had meant to be included. All that was needed was a simple explanation, a sentence at most, and you provided me with an entire paragraph. I must say I was quite impressed at the expanse of your knowledge on the subject," Professor Flitwick replied. I continued to act nervous, and Flitwick looked around to see if there was anyone within earshot. "Just between you and me, Miss Granger, your exam score was one hundred and twelve percent. I assure you; you have nothing to worry about."
At this I smiled a genuine smile. I had scored a hundred and twelve percent. This was amazing! Professor Flitwick patted me on the back then and returned to the staff room, and I reluctantly returned to the common room now that we had no idea where Professor Snape had gone to.
Harry and Ron were both in the common room when I returned. Apparently, Professor McGonagall found them guarding the door and made them leave as well. Harry decided there was nothing else to do but to go down the trapdoor tonight and try to stop Snape. Ron and I decided we would go with him. It seemed that none of the teachers were going to help us, or even believe that the stone was in danger of being stolen, and Dumbledore was away, so He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would be able to do whatever he pleased once he came back to power.
I knew we would be breaking many school rules, I realized that I was alright with that. I decided that if you're doing it for a good and noble reason, breaking the rules can be okay.
Even though we could get in trouble tonight, and I might even end up with another detention, if we saved the stone and stopped You-Know-Who from returning to power, I would take as many detentions as they gave me and I would take them without complaint. Because sometimes you have to break a few rules in order to do what's right.
Getting out of the common room was a bigger challenge than expected. I felt bad for casting the full-body-bind on Neville, but we didn't have time to dawdle.
It was clear when we arrived at the room Fluffy was kept in that Professor Snape had beaten us to it. The door was already open, and a harp stood off to the side, silent now, but probably previously charmed to lull the three-headed dog to sleep.
Harry started to play the flute and the effect was instantaneous. We got the trapdoor open, and then Harry handed the flute to me so that he could be the first to jump.
I didn't know how to play the flute, and what came out was more shrill whistling than music, but Fluffy either didn't notice or didn't care, because he continued to snore away.
Once Harry gave us the all clear, Ron jumped next, and I followed after him, going last as I had the flute. We landed on a soft bed of something, for which I was grateful. I didn't have time to be mending broken bones right now.
When the plant we'd landed on started moving, I realized it was Devil's Snare. Harry and Ron looked to me for ways to defeat it, but my mind was blanking. I could remember bits and pieces of Professor Sprout's lecture on the plant, but I couldn't seem to remember anything important. I suddenly understood what it was like for regular people to take exams. Stress really could make a person forget everything they'd studied and knew inside and out.
Luckily, Harry and Ron kickstarted my brain and I cast a spell to start a small fire, allowing Harry and Ron to get free of the vines.
When we got to the next obstacle, I was relieved that the pressure would fall on Harry this time. Flying was his specialty. He managed to catch the appropriate winged key, and we advanced to the next room.
The third obstacle was a game of chess. I honestly couldn't believe it. Of all the obstacles we could have run into, we found ourselves faced with the game that was arguably the only thing Ron was actually good at.
He immediately took charge, and I let him. He was better at the game than me and we didn't have time right now for me to be practicing. We needed to win if we were going to stop Professor Snape before he did something irreversible like bring back the darkest wizard in recent history.
Everything was progressing rather smoothly right up until the end. When Ron announced that he was going to sacrifice himself so that we could win the game.
Harry and I protested. There must be some other way we could win, but Ron was adamant, and he had set his mind to it. He stepped forward and the white queen struck him on the head, causing him to fall to the floor, unconscious.
I heard myself cry out, and my legs tried to move. They screamed to my head to allow them to run to Ron and make sure he was alright, but the logical part of my mind protested. I had to stay still until the game was over. So, as Harry moved forward to finish the game, I watched Ron and tried to determine how he was doing.
Once the game was over, and we had won, I went to Ron, but there was nothing I could do for him. He looked mostly unharmed, apart from the fact that he was unconscious, and the only way to heal him from that was either time, or to bring him to the hospital wing.
He had done all this so that Harry and I could continue, so even though I felt horrible leaving him lying there, I followed Harry through the doorway into the next chamber. Of the five teachers that had provided obstacles, we had already passed through three, not to mention Fluffy. That meant there should be two more rooms before we came to the Stone.
The next room smelled horrible. Lying in the middle of the chamber, there was a troll, similar to the one Harry and Ron had saved me from on Halloween. Thankfully, it seemed that Professor Snape had taken care of it, as it was out cold. We stepped around it carefully and proceeded to the next room – the last obstacle.
As soon as we had passed through the doorway, purple flames sprang up, preventing us from turning back. Simultaneously, black flames sprang up in the doorway on the other end of the room, preventing us from continuing as well. In the middle of the room, there was a table lined with potion bottles. Next to them, there was a scroll. I picked up the scroll and read it, my smile growing wider as I did.
I was in my element now. It was a logic puzzle. It wasn't even magic. All I had to do was reason out the clues.
I looked back at the paper. The tallest and the smallest weren't poison. The puzzle told me that much. And the tallest one was also the second from the right, so it was the same as the second from the left. That meant it couldn't be the one to go forward or backwards, since there was only one each of those. That meant the tallest bottle was nettle wine, and that the second from the left also had to be nettle wine due to clue number four. And then that meant the bottles to the left of those had to be poison because of clue number one. And the one in the middle had to be poison too, because it had to be to the left of the wine and the other one was the smallest, which couldn't be poison because of clue number three. That left the one on the far right and the third one from the left. But clue number two said that the ones on the ends wouldn't help us go forward, so the one on the right had to go back. That meant that the third one from the left, the smallest bottle, was the one to go forward, through the black flames.
I'd solved the puzzle, but there was still one problem. The potion we needed to advance only had enough liquid inside for one sip. Only one of us could go forward.
Harry volunteered. And while I protested at first, his logic was sound. If he went forward, he could stall Professor Snape while I got out of here and send a message to Professor Dumbledore. With any luck, the Headmaster would be able to go down and help Harry stop Professor Snape before he was able to do anything.
He insisted I drink first. I raised the bottle to my lips and felt a cold chill run down my spine, filling me up with ice. I shivered. I said goodbye, and then I turned around to face the purple flames and I stepped through them. Once I had gotten through, I turned around, but I couldn't see Harry anymore, so instead, I stepped carefully around the troll and ran back into the chess room to find Ron.
Ron was lying exactly where we had left him, the broken pieces of the chessmen remained scattered all around. I ran over to him and bent down to see how he was doing. He was breathing, which was good, but he was still unconscious. I began to shake him, trying to get him to wake up, but it was no use. I called out his name, but he still didn't wake. I tried dragging him, but I've never been particularly strong, and he was too heavy for me to get very far with. Finally, I collapsed beside him and tried to decide how to proceed. I could continue on my own, I supposed, but I hated leaving Ron here all alone.
Then, suddenly, I had an idea. I pulled out my wand, and hoped it would work. I hadn't tried it yet on anything heavier than a book, and it was supposed to be more difficult the heavier the object was. I pointed my wand at Ron, and focusing as hard as I could, I said, "Wingardium Leviosa."
After a moment of twitching on the ground, Ron's body slowly rose into the air next to me. I tried making him move back and forth, and it worked. Smiling, I pointed my wand towards the exit and levitated Ron's body ahead of me and down the short corridor. When I reached the room with the keys, though, I realized I had a problem.
In order to get out of here, I was going to have to fly. That was the only way to get all the way up to the trapdoor and past Fluffy. But I couldn't continue to levitate Ron while I was on a broomstick. I could barely fly at all, and I would need both of my hands to hold onto the broomstick.
I supposed I could try to get Ron onto the broomstick with me, but the chances of one of us sliding off the broom was too high for me to risk it. As I continued to look up at the keys, hoping to get some inspiration, I heard a loud thud.
"Ouch," a voice said from behind me. I spun around to find Ron sitting up on the floor, rubbing his right arm. While I had been trying to figure out how to get out of here, I had forgotten that I was levitating Ron and I had lowered my wand, causing him to crash to the floor.
"Oh, Ron, I'm sorry!" I cried, running over to him. "Are you ok?" I asked, looking at the arm he was rubbing.
"M'fine," he replied. "Next time you want me to wake up though, I'd appreciate it if you didn't drop me from twenty feet in the air."
"Twenty feet?" I exclaimed. "It couldn't have been much more than four!" I could see that Ron was laughing, so I knew he was joking, but I was still worried about his injuries. He was cut up and bruised from the chess game, and now I had dropped him, which I'm sure had caused more bruising.
"Wait, Hermione, where's Harry?" Ron asked, finally remembering what was going on. "Why are we back here? What about Snape?"
I explained as quickly as I could about the potions and that Harry had gone on and that we had to owl Dumbledore before it was too late, and then Ron got up and we got on a pair of brooms and flew out to the room with the Devil's Snare.
I was fine until we got to where the trapdoor was, but I was flying too low to get through it. Ron was much higher than me, and he tried to coax me up, but I was having difficulty convincing my broom to rise. Finally, Ron flew down and pulled me onto his broom, which I'm sure wasn't easy, and he flew us up and all the way out of the room Fluffy was in, only stopping once we had reached the staircases.
Once we were back on the ground, we began to run towards the owlery. The corridors were very empty, and it wasn't until I remembered that it was after curfew that this made sense. As we got closer to the front of the school, we began to hear footsteps coming towards us. I panicked. If we got caught, we would surely be too late to save Harry. Before we had a chance to hide, Professor Dumbledore came rushing around the corner.
I don't know how he knew what was going on, or why he wasn't upset that we were in the corridors after curfew, but he asked if Harry had gone after Snape and then he hurried away towards the third floor corridor.
"I suggest you head to the hospital wing, Mr. Weasley," I heard him say just as he rounded the corner on the other end of the hall.
Without much further conversation, Ron and I headed to the hospital wing like Dumbledore suggested. When we walked in, Madam Pomfrey almost had a fit.
"Mr. Weasley, how on earth did you end up in this state?" she asked, horrified. We tried to explain, but she didn't really understand what we meant about a giant chess game, and it was clear she hadn't known that the Philosopher's Stone was being kept at Hogwarts.
She led Ron to a hospital bed and began to fix his wounds. She told us that they weren't deep, so he would be fine in about an hour, but since it was the middle of the night, she said we would have to remain in the hospital until morning, as it was against the rules to wander around after curfew.
Once she had finished dealing with Ron, she insisted on examining me too, though I assured her I was fine. Apparently, though, I was wrong. I had a few cuts on my arms that I hadn't even noticed, and Madam Pomfrey insisted on giving us both a Calming Draught.
After she was done with that, she told us to lie down on the beds and sleep, as she had done all that she could. I wanted to go and find Harry and make sure he was alright. I wanted to run around and scream in frustration that I was being absolutely no help by lying on this bed. Unfortunately, I could do neither of these things, and all I could do was lie there and worry and hope that everything would be okay. Ron fell asleep almost right away, but I wasn't surprised after what he had been through.
As I waited, I watched the door. Madam Pomfrey had gone back to her own bed, but I knew that Harry would be coming through that door sometime. I could only hope he would be alive when he did.
Finally, after what felt like ages, but was probably only about an hour or so, Professor Dumbledore barged in, carrying a limp Harry in his arms. When I saw him, my heart almost stopped. He couldn't be dead, he just couldn't. Not after everything that had happened. Dumbledore deposited him on a bed and woke Madam Pomfrey. She came rushing out and immediately began to tend to Harry. Dumbledore said something to her, and then he was gone again.
I rushed over to Harry's bed; Ron was still asleep. Madam Pomfrey was fixing some of Harry's minor cuts and bruises, but I could see a very significant gash in his shoulder, and he appeared to have lost a lot of blood. I sat in the chair opposite Madam Pomfrey and watched as she worked.
"Is he…?" I tried to ask, but I couldn't bring myself to ask the question.
"He'll be fine," was her response. When she said this, I felt a heavy weight I hadn't realized was there lift off of my shoulders. If Harry had died, I don't know what I would have done. He was one of my only friends. Not to mention the guilt I would have felt for letting him go on alone. The fact that he would be alright made my heart soar.
Madam Pomfrey moved onto his shoulder and performed some kind of spell. Then she bandaged it up and force-fed him a potion, though I don't know what it was. Finally, she was finished.
"Well, I've done all that I can do for now, it's just a matter of when he wakes up," she said. She returned to her office, and I noticed that she remained at her desk rather than going back to bed. I continued to sit by Harry's side, hoping he would wake up soon.
At some point, Dumbledore returned and had a long talk with Madam Pomfrey in her office. When they were finished, he came back out, smiled at me, and left yet again. Madam Pomfrey told me to go to bed, so I returned to the bed next to Ron, and she also went back to bed. Eventually, I was able to go to sleep.