Fortunately, whatever I had with Mathilda was close enough for faerie enchantments. Or maybe the delighted, high-pitched noise that Ginny started making when she saw my girlfriend stir under my kiss was on precisely the right wavelength to destroy the spell. My dangerous wizard vibe was going to be completely destroyed once it got out how adorable the second-year found me.
"We can go get Oliver to wake up Alexis too…" Ginny mused.
"I… don't know if that's the best idea, right now," I frowned, breaking away from Mathilda, worried about how this whole night had started with trying to convince him to pay more attention to his girlfriend than to quidditch.
"Well good morning to you, too," Mathilda said as she woke, cutting off any reply from Ginny. "Did I fall asleep on the couch?"
"Everyone did!" Ginny explained. "You were under a faerie spell, but Harry kissed you awake!"
That got her up the rest of the way, her eyes clearing and flicking between us as she processed. "You're still dressed the same, so I didn't miss years, then?" she finally asked.
"Like half an hour," I answered. I gestured to the visibly-moving shadows in the room from the daylit window and corrected myself, "Time seems to be wonky, though. I think the whole castle is in the Nevernever."
"That's not good! Ask Bob?"
"Who's Bob?" Ginny inquired. Mathilda winced at the mistake in her waking state.
I sighed but shrugged. I was five months from being out on my own, and it would be harder for the adults to take him away if the secret got out, but I tried, "You have to keep this quiet. Even more than about your brothers' map?"
"What map?" Ginny asked, with a wink, miming buttoning her lips closed (wizards didn't know about zippers).
I regarded her for a second, then nodded, reaching into my bag of holding and withdrawing the skull where it had sat the entire time we'd been outside. Fortunately, the undetectable extension inside came with a lot of padding, so he'd never been in danger from me taking hits and rolling around on the ground.
Actually, if the school was currently in the Nevernever, how did that impact all the expanded spaces that normally pushed into the Nevernever? I made a mental note to solve that little arithmantic problem later.
Bob's eyeflames sprung to life, seemingly unaffected by the daylight as the mostly-nocturnal spirit would be in the real world, and he glanced around curiously. "What have you gotten me into now, Harry?" he complained.
Mathilda reached over and shut Ginny's mouth before she could ask the obvious questions, whispering that she'd explain later. So I quickly summed up what had happened since I got down to the quidditch pitch, for both Mathilda's and Bob's edification.
"Yeah, you're right. We're definitely more in the Nevernever than Earthside right now," Bob agreed with my assessment, as I finished. "Take me over to a window?" I obliged and he looked out across the grounds that we could see from Gryffindor tower, the sun already most of the way overhead, hours obviously passing in minutes. "Looks like a several-hundred yard radius centered on the castle. Got most of the forest and the town."
I hadn't noticed that Hogsmeade had been taken, but I winced out, "Hope they're handling the faerie invaders okay." From up here, it was pretty obvious that the normal landscape abruptly cut off not far outside the school grounds. Maybe you wouldn't immediately notice if you weren't looking for it, as I hadn't just walking into the room, but the distant landmarks were missing, and the whole thing looked almost like a painted background from an old Technicolor movie, not really intended for close scrutiny.
"That's a very specific radius," Bob continued. "I don't think you could get an inversion this big without several anchors around the perimeter…"
"If it's just past Hogsmeade, it might extend to the rath?" I mused, thinking of the faerie mound I'd used to apparate on two occasions.
The girls had joined me by the window, looking out. Below, movement on the grounds indicated that various fae creatures were continuing to explore, though they were more careful in the light, most skittering quickly across to lurk against walls or trees.
"That might be one," Bob allowed. "I'd need to get up on the astronomy tower to judge the exact radius, but it seems like it's pretty firmly centered on the castle. You'd either need several more anchors, each the same distance from the building, or some kind of powerful source inside the building."
I groaned. "Like a room that can be anything you want, and open doorways out to about the radius that's being affected?"
My geas specifically prevented me from explaining where the girls could hear that it was also under Maeve's control and deeply linked to the school's connection to the Nevernever, but I'd shared that fact with Bob privately after it happened. "That would probably do it," he admitted.
"I guess let's go see if we can fix the Room of Requirement," I said. Of course, I'd expected Mathilda to follow me. I hadn't quite expected Ginny to come along. I probably should have, due to her adventurous nature and irrepressibility. "Percy's going to kill me if you come along," I told the girl. It was weird, because the big brother in question was asleep on the couch five feet away when I said it.
"I'll tell him that I blackmailed you," the redhead shrugged.
"Big blackmail," Mathilda nodded, though I caught in her eyes that she, too, was a little worried about bringing a 12-year-old along. She was being hoist with her own petard by insisting that I accept help in dangerous situations, so couldn't exactly ban someone else who wanted to so without sounding like a hypocrite. "Implicates us both."
"Fine. But if you get hurt and don't die, he's also going to kill you, so be careful," I admonished.
I stowed Bob back in the bag, assuming I might need his input once we got to the room, and checked my foci. Mathilda and Ginny both got their wands out, and we exited the common room.
The Room of Requirement entrance was only a short walk from Gryffindor tower, and there was, as expected, a door manifested and ajar in the wall. What was not expected was two-dozen house elves in Hogwarts-crested towel-togas spread out around the hallway. In hindsight, I should probably have been more worried about Maeve co-opting the castle's large staff of fae creatures.
"This hallway be off limits!" a particularly wizened elf announced in a high-pitched voice, wrinkled hand held up officiously to cause us to halt. The rest of the crowd of tiny, big-eared humanoids stood on guard as their leader hailed us. Most of them were barely taller than my knee, but I wasn't totally sure how dangerous their magic was when actually unleashed against humans.
Wait, could they even attack us? Everything I knew about house elves centered on their loyalty to their masters, and for school elves, that might include all the staff and students…
"Who has declared the hallway off limits?" I asked.
"The young queen," their spokes-elf admitted.
"But not the headmaster?" I asked. "Has the headmaster given you orders to prevent students from using these facilities?"
The old elf frowned, a hand reaching up to twist her own ear in concentration. "We must serve the queen. We must serve the castle," she grit out.
"Oh no!" Mathilda said. "Classic Cú Chulainn situation! Conflicting geasas."
I nodded. This wasn't exactly an evil witch with a bowl of dogmeat stew, but, actually, I vaguely remembered that Maeve was the name of the queen that the Celtic hero fought, so it kind of fit. Was she the original Maeve of the myth? No time to get sidetracked by interpreting mythology, I instead fell back on a more recent myth. Like Sarah to Sir Didymus in Labyrinth, I simply asked, "What, exactly, have you sworn?"
"We is to watch the hallway and keep any from entering the room," she explained, grudgingly.
"And if you had to be somewhere else, and couldn't watch the hallway?" I suggested.
"We… can't knows what we can't sees?" she allowed, after worrying her ear for another few seconds of thought.
"Aren't you all needed in the kitchens?" I nodded. "After all, we must have missed several meals so far."
"And you's not go in the room, while we sees to other duties?" she asked, with feigned suspicion.
"Nope, just right back to the common room," Ginny piped up, fingers crossed behind her back. I was glad she took the initiative on that lie, since I had enough geasas of my own that lying in this situation might roll back on me somehow.
The elf considered for a minute, looking at the others. They mostly seemed relieved that they weren't going to have to fight us. Unless I was really underestimating elf magic, we could take them. Even if they won, assaulting students would probably invoke some severe punishment from their oaths. Finally, the elf nodded and ordered, "Breakfast is passed, and lunch too! Lots of cookery to catch up on! To the kitchens, all."
They all scurried away. After they were out of earshot, Mathilda said, "Poor little guys. But we should warn Dumbledore! Next time she might tell them to do something that doesn't conflict."
"Like spying on the whole school," I nodded. I wondered if the castle could even work without a whole force of indentured enemy combatants.
I nudged open the door all the way and we walked into basically the same setup as Maeve had tricked me in when she claimed the room, stairways at all angles and orientations. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered…" Mathilda quoted, getting a good look at it.
"Why are the stairs on the ceiling?" Ginny asked, unfamiliar with either Escher or muggle fantasy films.
"More importantly, why is that column on the ceiling?" I'd finally spotted the column with the glyph Maeve had used to claim the room, but it was basically opposite where it had been originally, stuck to a landing a dozen yards above our heads. I pointed it out to the girls. "That's what we're after, but there's no way…" I began, stepping onto a stairway that peeled off at a gravity-defying angle.
There was. By pulling us into the Nevernever, she'd solved the issue with being limited to Earth's gravity. As soon as I set both feet on the stairs, my stomach pulled sideways and suddenly it looked like Mathilda and Ginny were standing on a wall.
"Right, do I try to find a path to the column, or do I take the leap of faith?" I mused out loud.
Mathilda just rolled her eyes at me and asked, "Are you a wizard or not? Wingardium leviosa!" With her swish and flick, she levitated me by my clothes until I floated near enough to the column for the local gravity to take over.
I flipped ungainly to the ground that used to be ceiling, now staring up at the girls inverted on what seemed to be the ceiling. "Right. Good point," I admitted. "Get ready to do that again once I cancel this."
She shot me a thumbs-up. "Got it. Ginny, keep an eye on the door?"
The littlest Weasley nodded, but only spared an average of one eye: there was no way she was going to miss whatever stupid magical thing I was doing, and kept glancing back and forth.
I pulled Bob back out of my pouch so he could see the rune and asked, "Like we discussed?"
He looked it over and hummed in agreement, "Yep. Just sever the central junction and renounce. But stow me safely first! You're going to smash your skull open in a second. No reason to risk mine!"
"Glad to know we're in this together," I grumbled at him, but returned him to the bag of holding and pulled out some carving tools from my belt. "Okay, about to do this!" I shouted down to Mathilda, placed the chisel across the most important section of the glyph, and defaced it while shouting, "This witness reclaims that which was taken under false pretense, and used to harm the wizards of Hogwarts!"
With a burst of cold air, the glyph flared and then disappeared from the column, only my gouged mark left to deface the column. There was a sudden pressure differential, like rising on an airplane or coming up too fast from underwater, making my ears pop. With a very brief sensation like I'd been turned inside out, gravity reasserted itself.
"Arresto momentum!" Mathilda managed, before I broke my head open on the space where she stood, which had won the argument about what got to be the floor.
As I floated like a feather down to the ground, I laughed like a madman and shouted in the vague direction of where Maeve was hiding in the Slytherin dorms, "You have no power over me!"
Mathilda joined in the laughter. Ginny just looked back and forth between us and finally asked, "Are you both… quoting something?"