Neville turned his head and listened for something, turning back to the two and speaking in a hurried whisper, "Whatever we're doing, we should do it now. I think I heard someone down the hall. We'll get nicked for curfew at this rate." His eyes had that old watery look of a troubled, clumsy child at the mention of breaking the rules again.
The Hammer made an executive decision and started walking toward the third floor corridor, whatever was coming be damned. He was out to get the man so he could figure out the reason behind his actions. Neville followed immediately in his wake, leaving Hermione to take one last look back towards what seemed like an obvious solution to her before chasing after the two.
The evidence hadn't lied - they found the door to the third floor corridor ajar and Fluffy fast asleep in the room. An enchanted harp sat in the corner next to the door still playing a rendition of Bach's Air on G String. Noting the trapdoor had closed behind the intruder, the Hammer pointed to Neville and Hermione to get their attention, pointing to the dog's front paw after to draw their gaze to the fact that it was being held shut.
Harry moved over to the far side of the paw and motioned for his friends to help him move it, sliding the gigantic furry mass aside and opening up the trap door. Below them, the darkness of an uncharted void gaped at them as the open maw of an abyss. Looking up between them, they shared a moment of hesitation. In the corner, the Hammer noticed the harp had gone quiet and the only sound in the room was that of Fluffy's deep, slow breathing becoming shallower by the second.
The Hammer reached out and grabbed Hermione by the collar first, dragging her into the hole before using his other hand to push Neville in after her. Both screamed as he threw them, but within a heartbeat he had jumped in after them. There was no point to solving the mystery if they were going to be mauled by a dog before they could solve the crime. Up above a trio of barks chased him down into the darkness.
He fell for long enough to take notice of the cold, damp air rushing by him - and for a moment the Hammer wondered if this was another place in the castle or if it was an enchanted, magical space that had been created to exist between the darkness of the stones. A moment later his fall was broken by something soft and springy. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Harry's vision came down to Hermione standing with her back against a far wall, eyes wide and staring at the two of them on their padded landing.
"Harry! Neville! Get out of there!" She yelled at them, but they were already caught. The Hammer's arm was pinned to the nest of vines while reaching for his hat, another set of vines wrapping around his chest.
"It's Devil's Snare, Hammer!" Neville called to him from a similar position, vines wrapped over most of his body.
"Hermione, a little help?" The Hammer yelled at her. She murmured a little ditty about the plant that Professor Sprout had taught them.
"It hates-" Neville groaned in pain, "Light and heat" He struggled in the writhing mass of vines encircling him.
"Make it quick with that fire!" Harry said as he disappeared under the grip of vines. Hermione produced her wand and spoke a conjuration for bluebell flames, the glowing orbs coming to rest over where she had seen her friends buried. A few breaths later they had reemerged from inside the plant as it cringed away from the light and heat. The Hammer scrabbled over to the stone platform Hermione was standing on and put on his hat, Neville joining them a moment later.
"I guess that's Professor Sprout's part of the traps. Leave it to her to use this stuff." Harry commented.
"I'm just glad she didn't pick something carnivorous." Neville added with a grimace.
They followed the stairs down against the wall, continuing into the damp darkness of a torchlit corridor that proved to be the only way forward. The passage sloped downward, the chill in the air growing colder as they began to see their breaths condense into small clouds as they made progress. Eventually the floor leveled out and the light of an upcoming chamber called out to them like a beacon in the night.
The Hammer held up his hand and they stopped, frozen as he strained to hear what was down the hall. There was an odd buzzing that droned as a baseline, interspersed in it a metallic clinking like small bits of metal running into stone or metal ringing on metal.
"What do you think it is?" Hermione whispered.
"With all this magic? Y'got me, toots." She poked him in the back of the neck with the tip of her wand. He cringed and shrugged, giving her a look before continuing on.
The chamber at the end seemed to be as large as a cathedral, high vaulted ceilings lit by glowing magical orbs of light and filled with birds or insects that shimmered in their glow. Other than the door at the far end, the room was unadorned.
"D'you suppose they'll attack us?" Neville asked.
"Guess we'll see." Harry replied, taking a few tentative steps into the room. If anything it seemed like the flying creatures shied away from him, giving him a wide berth. They walked to the door on the other side and began examining it - it was a standard skeleton key door, but seemingly with a twist. Hermione tried out the Alohamora spell on it to no effect and the Hammer patted himself down, cursing the fact that he hadn't packed his toolset with him.
"What now?" Hermione asked while the Hammer continued examining the door, trying to see if it would be easier to try and blow it off its hinges. Neville tugged on his sleeve.
"What is it, Nev?"
"Look at that, Hammer. They're all keys." He pointed up at the flying, glimmering creatures. On a second look, Neville was right - they weren't birds or insects, but instead enchanted keys with glistening rainbow wings like large dragonflies.
"Huh. So they are. There's probably one that matches the door here." He looked at the fittings, taking a guess that it would be the same burnished silver colour, "Probably matches this." He gestured with his thumb.
"There's a few broomsticks over here," Hermione called their attention, picking up three of the best looking ones from the small pile.
"So we're meant to fly up and grab the right one?" Neville asked, "like Quidditch then."
The Hammer called out his wrist rocket from his pouch, "I'm not a big fan of Quidditch." He said as he took aim with a pebble from the floor. He spotted a glimmer of one with a broken wing hobbling in slow circles near the middle of the flock, loosing the stone at it but striking one that zipped into his line of fire. The errant key tumbled out of the air and landed with a clatter, its iridescent wings flapping once before going still. It looked more like the key of a Cadillac Deville.
"I feel a little bad about that." The Hammer said, reaching down and grabbing another pebble from the edge of the room. He fired again and this time the stone found its mark, hitting the cripple-winged key and seeing it fall to the ground underneath the swarming flock. Neville ran over and grabbed it, bringing it back over to Harry.
"Looks about right. Hermione, grab us some brooms, would you? Never know when we'll need to fly." He said, taking the key from Neville and opening the door.
The next room remained so dark that they couldn't see anything until the door closed behind them. Once they took a step forward, the chamber lit up, light flooding the room to reveal a gigantic life-sized chess board. The floor between one side to the other was decked out as a regulation chess board, adult-sized pieces setup for a game between them and the exit.
"I suppose we're supposed to play and win a game of chess." Hermione said, looking at the empty squares on the board on their side of the pieces.
"We don't have time for this." Harry said, mounting the broom in his hand and flying up and over the chessmen. The pieces didn't take kindly to his avoidance, the enemy colours reaching up to try and swipe him out of the sky as he passed over their heads. Neville and Hermione followed his example, dodging the swipes of the pieces on the board as the graven faces glowered at their cheating.
Opening up the door to the exit, the trio was slammed with the foetid odour of rot. Eyes watering and holding their shirts up over their noses, they went inside to find a troll even larger than the one they had fought. It was stone dead on the floor in a dark pool of its own blood.
"Once a troll wrangler, always a troll wrangler." The Hammer spoke lightly, stepping around it to open the door on the far side. As soon as the three of them had stepped over the threshold into the next room a curtain of violet flame barred their exit and a curtain of black flames came up to bar the door leading onward. The only other thing in the room was a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing in line. Harry grumbled at their new predicament.
Going over to the table, Hermione picked up a small rolled scroll and read it aloud to herself, pointing at the bottles on the table as she went along.
"It's a logic puzzle. One of the potions gets you through the black fire, one through the purple stuff, two of them are wine and three of them are poison. Leave it to Snape to go last. Figures that this would be the last one since most wizards couldn't deduce their way out of a paper bag ." She summarized.
"How are we supposed to know?" Neville asked, panic rising in his voice.
"I already figured it out," Hermione reassured him, "The little one there lets us move forward, that one," She pointed at the round bottle at the end, "lets us go back."
Harry picked up the small bottle and swirled it up near the light, "Sure isn't very much in here. Think we can ration this for all three of us?"
Hermione took it from him and looked at it for herself, "I think so, but what are we going to do when we confront Quirrell?"
"I want you two to hide. I'll be bait. He's going to be most interested in me. He probably won't even expect the two of you to even exist."
"But, Harry! That's the most dangerous-"
"Hermione, that's why you're hiding. If something happens come and rescue me." Harry gave her a wry smile, "You on board, Nev?"
"You can count on me, Hammer."
Harry dragged out his invisibility cloak from his pouch - getting it out took a lot more effort than getting it in. When he summoned it, a corner had come to his hand and he felt a little bit like a stage magician pulling out a series of linked handkerchiefs from his sleeve.
They shared the tiny bottle of what remained of the potion - barely enough liquid to coat their tongues. The Hammer shuddered as the feeling of ice flowed through his veins and he reached his hand through the fire and opened their final door. Stepping through, he found himself unharmed, the two stepping through after him before throwing the cloak over themselves and following as quietly as they could in his wake.
The next chamber took after an Egyptian revival set piece, the room itself made of what looked like sandstone etched with hieroglyphs that served only to house the single man-sized mirror in the depression at the center of the room. As they had expected, Quirrell was there, staring into the grungy reflective surface. Harry didn't bother saying anything to get his attention, instead pulling out his wrist rocket and aiming a bronze knut at the back of Quirrell's head. He loosed the spare change at deadly speed as he strode forward into the room.
The Knut came to a halt a foot behind Quirrell's head, hanging in mid air, stopped by an unseen force. It clattered to the floor a moment later.
"I had been wondering if I would meet you here, Potter." Quirrell spoke up, making eye contact with Harry using the cloudy surface of the mirror.
"Sorry I'm late." The Hammer addressed him, "Glad to know I was right about your stupid stutter being a put on."
Quirrell turned to him, his eyes narrowed as he looked down at the little detective, "So you've seen right through me. I'll kill you this night in my own due time."
"Good luck, but you overplayed your hand, Quirrell. Letting that troll in as a distraction on Halloween. You brought too much heat on yourself, thinking you could pass out in the middle of the Great Hall with the mud from down here still on your boots. Running out into the woods and drinking unicorn blood really put the spotlight on you. But I've got a question for you if you care to answer: are you tied to Voldemort or are you in this for yourself? How'd you even get involved with him?"
Quirrell gave him a withering look when he used the Dark Lord's name, but the Hammer ignored it.
"I serve him, yes. He is my master and with me always."
"Well that answers one thing, but still doesn't answer if you're just crazy. That or if you and Snape are in this together."
A dry, derisive laughter began echoing from behind Quirrell. A voice spoke, muffled from somewhere behind him, "Let me see this boy, Quirinus, he may prove useful in finding the stone."
"But master, you aren't strong enough yet!" Quirrell replied to the voice, his eyes looking up over his shoulder without turning his head.
"I have enough strength… for this…" Quirrell went limp standing up, that marionette look coming back as he unwrapped his purple turban, letting the cloth fall to the ground unceremoniously. He was bald underneath, his head looking oddly small without the covering. He turned around slowly, revealing a face on the back of his head. The Hammer squinted at it, a look of disgust creeping onto his own face. The stowaway on the back of Quirrell's head looked barely human, pallid white mismatched with the tone of the Professor's skin with eyes the colour of fresh blood open in vertical slits that matched the two slits inset in the center of his face that passed for a nose - the whole arrangement reminded the Hammer of a snake. Harry felt a headache coming on - but it was nice to know that it wasn't the smell of garlic that caused it.
"Harry Potter…" it whispered, the Hammer didn't bother correcting him, "See what I have become? A roving spirit. Illusion and shadow. I can only take form when I share another's body, but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds… the promise of power is great. Unicorn blood has given me strength, but with the Elixir of Life I will be able to create a body of my own. Take him, Quirinus, have him solve the final puzzle."
The Hammer looked over his shoulder and winked with the eye further away from the man within a man, feigning like he was looking for an escape.
"You cannot escape this, Potter." Quirrell said. The real Quirrell, not the snake-faced hitchhiker. Along the border of the room, a gout of flame sprang up from the floor, expanding into a blazing barricade. The Hammer tried to keep his poker face going despite his worry that his invisible friends might have been caught on the wrong side of it. "Come here and help us retrieve the stone from the mirror." Quirrell wrapped his hand around Harry's upper arm with surprising strength, dragging him in front of the mirror's reflective side. Harry was unsurprised to see that it was the one he had found in the spare room that claimed to show his desires.
"What do you see, boy?" Quirrell hissed at him.
Harry watched the magical clouding clear into the familiar scene in his P.I. Office.
"I see myself in an office, sitting at the desk waiting for a fickle dame by the name of destiny to call." The Hammer hammed it up, trying to buy time. Quirrell said a word that Hermione would have smacked Harry for.
"Get out of my way." the bald man pushed him aside. From inside the mirror his idealized self waved frantically before reaching into the desk drawer and pulling out something golden. Mirror-Hammer gave it a quick wave in Harry's direction before slipping it into his coat's inner breast pocket. The Hammer raised an eyebrow at it when he felt the warm, dense thing slip into his own pocket, but took it in stride. Harry took a few tentative steps backward toward the exit door, stopping on the steps shy of the wall of flames, looking over his shoulder and grimacing at the prospects.
"He lies! He lies!" The freeloading face of Voldemort yelled at Harry, who stood stock still with his hands in his pockets.
"Stop lying, child. I can see right through you. Save your own life and join me… or you'll meet the same end as your parents. They died begging me for mercy."
The Hammer spat at the ground between them. Quirrell was walking backwards at him, so that Voldemort could still see him, an evil smile on his pale snake face. The Hammer took a step to the right, putting himself in front of the reflective surface of the mirror again.
"How touching," The face hissed. "I always value bravery… Yes boy, your parents were brave… I killed your father first and he put up a courageous fight… but your mother needn't have died… she was trying to protect you… Now give me the stone, unless you want her to have died in vain."
Harry flashed back to dream-Lily, tears falling and telling him goodbye. His expression hardened.
"Fine. I'll give it to you." Harry said, reaching a hand into his coat, feeling the familiar lump his other self had given him. Behind Quirrell, he couldn't see himself in the mirror. There was something intangible between Quirrell and the mirror.
The bald man turned around and raised his hand toward Harry.
"Give it here!" He said with a mad light in his eyes.
"Sure!" Harry said with an exaggerated nod, not looking at him but at the emptiness behind the man. In the same instant, the emptiness fell away to reveal his friends with a cry in unison of "Stupefy!" and "Petrificus Totalus!"
The magic ricocheted off an invisible wall inches behind Quirrell, glancing off as Voldemort screamed. Harry took the moment to interlace his fingers into the fist sized object, pulling it from his pocket and driving it directly into Quirrell's groin with the conviction that he was dead set on making an omelette. "It was never here, idiot." He spat.
No one expects to be hit in the bollocks by an ill tempered 11 year old. Quirrell doubled over in pain, throwing up his latest meal from the Great Hall onto the sandstone floor whilst Voldemort sprayed out the blackened remains of unicorn blood. So they were connected.
Harry didn't let up, pushing Quirrell over onto his back and straddling him as his friends yelled in warning. His next blows came down on the Professor's face - the brass knuckles in his right hand impacting with a sickening crunch on his nose but when Harry's unadorned left hand came down into contact with his face, his knuckles went straight through. Harry recoiled in horror, feeling woozy and pulling his fist back as Quirrell's body began to dissolve into blackened ash. Scrambling backwards, Harry's left hand landed on Quirrell's right, smushing down into it as his skin flaked away in sudden decay, sapping Harry of yet more strength. The Hammer rolled off of Quirrell's body as his vision began to fade. The last thing he could remember before blacking out was his friends yelling his name, a pile of soot in purple clothing where Professor Quirrell used to be, and a dark shade screaming away into the night.