In short order, Donna had collected three plates full of meat, courtesy of Niffy the house-elf, one of the kitchen elves. Harry had his Invisibility cloak, and six faces were looking at the door with trepidation.
"Fred, George, I think it's best if you wait a moment. I'll call you when it's safe to enter."
They raised their eyebrows, but didn't comment.
When she entered, she could see a harp standing silently in one corner. Fluffy himself was sniffing around the open trapdoor with a distressed look on his three faces.
"Hey buddy!" she said, advancing with her offering. "What have you got there?"
Vaguely, she could hear either Fred or George ask "what is she doing?" incredulously, but she kept her focus on the cerberus. All three heads looked up at the sound of her voice. One head's tongue lolled out, and his heavy tail thumped against the floor.
"Yes, I'm happy to see you too. Here, I brought you something."
She put the three steaks on the floor, spaced far enough apart that all three heads could eat peacefully. However, Fluffy ignored them to return to his investigation of the trapdoor. Donna approached it too, and looked down, but all she could see was darkness.
"Did someone go down there, Fluffy?"
One head let out a small whoof in confirmation. Really, she thought, not for the first time, who in their right mind locked up an intelligent animal like Fluffy for months on end? Well, one way or another his captivity was reaching an end.
"I brought some friends along. We want to go after the intruder and stop him. Will you let us pass?"
A second head whoofed, and then Fluffy picked up all three steaks from their plates and dragged them to a corner, leaving the trapdoor wide open.
"You can come in now, guys," she yelled at the door.
Five nervous children filed in. Fluffy growled a little, but didn't move from his corner. Donna ignored the wide eyes Fred and George were showing. Harry, Hermione and Neville were used to the way she treated the enormous dog, but of course the twins had never witnessed that before.
"I think we have to jump down there," she said. The others looked down and agreed there didn't seem to be another way. Harry was the first to jump, followed by Fred and George. Once Neville and Hermione had jumped, she was the only one left. She scratched Fluffy behind one ear and smiled.
"Thanks, Fluffster. I'll let you know if we caught him."
And then she jumped into the darkness after her friends.
She landed on some kind of soft plant just in time to hear Harry yell, "It's got my leg!"
Without waiting to hear what, exactly, had a hold of Harry, Donna was already moving, aiming for the wall where she could see a bit of floor not covered by vines. Along the way she met Neville, who was trying to tug his wand-hand free of the plant's moving tendrils. A neat cutting curse later, and she was dragging him with her to the relative safety of the wall.
Once there, they turned around, but it was too dark to see what was happening, they could only hear the sounds of a struggle in the darkness.
"I'll make a light, you see what you can do about that plant," she told Neville.
With a flick of her wand, she sent up a modified lumos – one that didn't light up the tip of her wand, but instead created a ball of light that hovered over their heads, leaving her wand free for more spells if necessary. It was something she'd looked up after the detention, because she'd thought there must be a magical equivalent to a lamp that could leave your hands free.
By the light of her charm, they could see that Harry, Fred and George had been trapped in the middle of the plant, more or less where they'd fallen. The plant must have caught them unawares. Hermione was much closer to their location, but a vine had snagged her ankle, and she'd tripped.
Neville was muttering something beside her, until he finally looked up. "It's Devil's Snare! We need to light a fire!"
"Does anybody know a fire charm?" she yelled at her trapped friends.
"Incendio!" George yelled back. "Just point!"
Donna nodded and looked at Neville. "Together."
Neville nodded too, and together they started fires in different spots, first around Hermione, and then when she was loose and able to help them they concentrated on Harry and the twins. Wherever they pointed, tendrils writhed and withdrew from the flames, leaving the boys able to pull themselves free.
Soon everyone was standing to one side of the Devil's Snare, panting a little. Neville exhaled noisily. "I like plants," he said shakily, "but not when they're trying to kill me."
They looked around and saw there was really only one way forward, along a stone passageway.
"Come on," Harry said, and started walking. Donna followed, her little light still bobbing above her head. She was glad of it, the passageway was dark enough that the light was welcome, even if up ahead they could see another light shining, and they could hear a rustling as of wings.
The corridor opened up into a brightly lit chamber, filled with tiny little birds. The six of them proceeded into the room, cautiously and with their wands raised and ready for a shield spell should the birds attack.
However, nothing happened, and they reached the door on the opposite side of the room without a hitch. While the others tried to open the door with either force or magic (neither of which worked), Donna looked at the birds. There was something off about them, and it took her a moment to realise what it was.
The room they were in had a ceiling high enough that she could hardly see it, and from about a foot above her head all the way up to the top, it was filled with wings – and yet out of all of these birds, not a single one was sitting down, resting its wings.
George came up beside her, to see what she was looking at. "I don't think they're really birds," she told him, squinting her eyes.
Then she gasped as her view shifted, like a low-level perception filter had suddenly lifted.
"They're keys!" she said excitedly. One by one the others looked up and realised what exactly they were seeing. Not birds, like their brain had convinced them when they first entered, but winged keys, hundreds of them, with wings in all kinds of colours.
"I think we have to catch the one that fits in that lock," Harry said.
"I'd say so," Fred answered. "Look, brooms!"
There were indeed three brooms standing neatly in a row against the wall. Donna narrowed her eyes at them suspiciously, which of course the brooms ignored.
"Three brooms," Hermione said. "I think we all know who's going up there."
"Of course!" George said with a wicked grin. "It'll be you, Neville and Donna, right?"
Even as they laughed, Neville shuddered and shook his head. "No thanks," he said, "not if I can help it."
Donna herself wouldn't have minded going up on a broom, if Fred and George hadn't been there. They were, though, and it made sense to let the Quidditch players use the brooms.
After some manoeuvring, Harry managed to snag an ornate silver key with a bent wing. They used it to open the door, after which it flew off, looking battered and decidedly sorry for itself.
"Should we bring the brooms?" Donna asked, but when they tried, all three jumped out of their hands and arranged themselves in the same neat row as they'd found them.
She shrugged and smiled. "Worth a shot."
They entered the next room, as brilliantly lit as the previous one. Donna dismissed her little light – she could always summon it again if she needed it.
A chessboard stretched across the room, with larger-than-life figures standing on it like silent sentinels. They gave the room an eerie feeling.
"I guess we have to... play our way across?" Hermione asked hesitantly.
"Only one way to find out," Donna answered. When she tried to walk along the side of the board, she walked headfirst into an invisible wall, and when she tried to walk over the board, wherever she tried to get past the pawns, they blocked her path. She returned to her friends.
"Yep," she said, popping the p. "Anyone good at chess?"
"We're not bad," Fred answered. "Not as good as our little brother, mind, but good enough."
He approached a knight and put a hand on the horse's neck. The knight came to life, turning its head to look down at the boy.
"Do we join you in order to play?" he asked. The knight inclined its head. "Is one player enough?" Again, the statue nodded.
"Makes sense," Donna said. "They wouldn't have expected a group of people to come down here. Although that does beg the question – why were there three brooms in the other room?"
George tried to send the black king away so that he could take its place, but the figure shook its head and refused to move.
"Maybe you have to take a piece that at least runs a risk," Hermione suggested.
After some conferring, they decided that Fred and George would take the place of the knights. From the vantage point of the horse, they had a better view of the playing field, and together they played better than alone.
The stakes considerably heightened the first time a pawn was captured. It was brutally attacked and then dragged to the side of the playing field, lying apparently unconscious. Donna didn't think she'd ever look at wizard chess – or normal chess for that matter – quite in the same manner.
Fred and George had to protect not only the king, but also their own pieces, if they didn't want to risk injury. It was a distinct disadvantage in the game.
And yet, despite the tension while they waited, something felt off to Donna.
"I don't like this," she told her friends. "It's too easy."
Neville looked at her incredulously. "Too easy? Donna, everything we've seen up to now is lethal!"
"Yes!" she agreed. "Lethal! With a handy solution nearby just waiting for the intrepid thief! Think about it. Fluffy? Easy, even if I hadn't gained his trust. Play him some music and hey presto! Instant access to the trapdoor. Flying keys? Here, have some helpful brooms. Deadly plant? Eh, just burn it, it'll go away. These aren't traps designed to stop a thief... this is a dungeon crawl. Look how relatively little trouble we've had getting here, and we first and third years. According to the list of professors Hagrid gave us, there are only a couple of traps left. Do you really think a grown-up wizard would have any trouble getting past all these, when it was already so easy for us?"
"You have a point," Hermione said, "but then what does that mean?"
"Hard to say. Either we get to the last room and Quirrell is long gone, or all this is only meant as bait, not as a way to stop him, and the last room will have him trapped somehow. In that case we'll have to be very careful. If he is trapped, he might do something desperate if he sees us."
Eventually the twins reached a point in the game where they could win, but only if they sacrificed one of the knights.
The queen moved – Fred was knocked off his horse – she dragged him to the side. George's voice sounded thick, but he managed to finish the game. The white king threw down his crown, and the four of them surged onto the board and around the remaining pieces. Donna veered aside to where Fred was lying. He had a nasty head wound, but he was breathing.
She looked up at George. "He'll be alright. I suggest you come with us to see how far Quirrell is, and then return here to bring him to Pomfrey. You can use one of the brooms in the other room. Tell her it's Quirrell and we'll need Dumbledore. She'll know what to do."
George nodded, and together they went after the others down the corridor.
The next room they came to contained one very large, very smelly and very unconscious troll. "I think we found Quirrell's room," Neville said. To his credit, he only had a very slight tremor in his voice. He'd come a long way from the timid little boy from the beginning of the year.
"So just Snape's left, then," Harry said. "Let's get out of this one, I can't breathe!"
The last room contained nothing that moved, but when George had stepped through the doorway, a fire sprang up on either side. Magical fire, obviously, since the way back was burning purple and the way forward was burning black. It made Donna queasy to watch the unnatural colours.
They saw a table with a row of differently sized bottles on top. There was also a parchment lying on the table. Hermione picked it up and read it aloud. It turned out to be a logic puzzle, to find out which bottle they had to drink from to proceed. Hermione smiled.
"Brilliant! A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck here forever."
Donna started laughing. "The greatest wizards? Try any average wizard. These are the people who play death games on wooden sticks up in the air. Logic takes one look at them and runs screaming the other way – no offense," she said aside to Neville and George, both pureblood wizards.
"You know," George said, "I'd be offended, except it's true."
Hermione read the puzzle again and pointed at several bottles while muttering to herself, before nodding decisively. "The smallest bottle goes forward," she said, "and the one at the end there goes back."
Harry picked up the small bottle and looked at it dubiously. "There's only enough here for one of us. I think I have to go on alone."
Donna snorted. "Leash the Gryffindor, Harry. You don't have to martyr yourself just yet. Someone's been through already, haven't they? And yet that bottle is full again. Looks like these rooms magically reset, otherwise we'd have passed a lot of sprung traps. So, either you go through and the bottle will fill itself up, or worst case scenario we have to leave the room to force the reset, and then enter again. Either way, you wear that lovely cloak of yours, young man, and you don't alert Quirrell you're there. If he's trapped, just keep an eye on him to make sure he can't escape, but don't show yourself if you can help it. You are not alone, so you're not going to solve this alone, ok?"
Harry nodded and took his cloak from the pocket he'd stuffed it into. He wrapped it around his shoulders, leaving his head to float eerily mid-air. Then a hand appeared from between the folds to grab the little bottle and drain it. He drew the cloak over his head and disappeared completely.
George let out a long, low whistle. "We were wondering what kind of cloak young Harrikins had gone to get. I wouldn't have guessed 'invisibility' in a million years. A new one, judging by how completely it works. Did he buy it, and why? And can we borrow it sometimes?"
Donna looked at the redhead. "It was his father's cloak. Take up the borrowing with Harry, but only for a very good reason. And no," she interrupted him when he opened his mouth, "pranking is not a good reason."
"Damn. His father's, though, you say? That is one hell of a cloak, if it still works like that after such a long time. Most invisibility cloaks deteriorate after a decade or so."
Neville was looking at the bottle Harry had drained. "It hasn't refilled," he reported.
"Ok, going out it is. George, you'll take care of your brother and give Pomfrey the message?"
George nodded and took a gulp from the bottle Hermione gave him. With one last look backward he disappeared through the purple flames and made his way back to the chess room and his brother.