Hogwarts a History – Mazes and Monsters year 2 remix
Chapter 08 – Sea of gold
…
Professional enchanters, the ones that live long enough to be considered professional, know how dangerous magical spaces can be. Preteen schoolboys do not.
A professional would never try to unravel a magical space without at least three dozen precautions, and backup plans for every letter of the alphabet, and even then, they'd never try to do it from the inside. Harry smashed the crystal with no more hesitation than the weight of his tool dictated.
Time and space, in a localized paradigm, ceased to mean—well, much of anything really.
Time bent, space twisted, flan jiggled, which was probably the most worrying of all.
The perceivable existence of those stuck within the anomaly spun, wove, knotted into a pretzel, then things decided to get ludicrous, and they went straight on into plaid.
"Madness. MADNESS!" someone screamed.
"I like it," said… someone else.
Were it a natural phenomenon, the collapse of space could have gone on indefinitely like a small black hole. As it was magical it was only a matter of time before the elastic waistband went snap and both legs fell through the right holes.
In the beginning there was darkness, then the light, then the groaning, and complaining. Can't forget the complaining.
"What idiot is responsible for that?"
"I think I can taste my feet."
"You are I and me is us."
"No, no, I is us and me is ewe."
"Purple."
They were a mess, and no mistake, but they were all there, every last one. Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean; Parvati, Padma, Lavender, Filene. Su Li and Luna for better or worse, of course there was Harry, and Sally-Anne Perks.
"Is everyone alright?" said Luna.
"Yeah."
"No."
"Am I you?"
"Purple."
"Wonderful. How bout you Sally-Anne, how do you feel?"
The girl in question blinked, then stared, then stared, then blinked, "I feel like I shouldn't be here."
"Join the club," Ron complained, proving coherency was at last returning.
"Purple."
Mostly.
"I shouldn't worry about it too much," said Luna, offering the girl with two names her hand. "People tell me I shouldn't be here all the time. Usually I just ignore them till they go away."
"True story," said Su Li.
"So, we can all agree now, this was a bad idea?" said Neville.
"Yes."
"Uh huh!"
"Yep."
"Definitely."
"Absolutely."
"Purple."
"Look, the door's opened."
A weak light crept in from the end of the tunnel where the centaur indicated.
"But, is that the same door we came in, or a different one?" Dean wondered cautiously.
"Only one way to find out," said Ron with equal caution.
"Well than, shall we go?" said Luna. "Harry?"
"Purple."
"Oh dear. I think he's broken."
"Never should have given him that wrench," said Sally-Anne.
"Well, hindsight is twenty thirty. Just a second."
Making a quick examination of the last Potter, wiggling the ears, flicking the nose, patting the head, "Purple."
"Oh dear." This would require drastic measures. Five whole fingers worth across the face.
*Whack*
"Pink."
"Nope."
*Whack*
"Chartreuse."
"No."
*WHACK*
"Burbleberry!"
"Hmm, almost."
*whack?*
Silence.
"Harry? Harry, can you hear me."
"…Luna?"
The girl in question sagged, "Oh drat, I've gone too far. We've completely lost him."
The one who was 'lost' quirked a sardonic brow, "Something's lost here Lulu, but it isn't me."
Mind restored, he picked up the slappy girl and put her back on the horse before turning to the others, "Well, let's get a move on people. Done all the damage we can here."
Clustering up nice and tight, just in case, the group shuffled the short distance to the door and out into the dim light of the next room, and that was as far as they got.
"Blimey!"
The sight of their discovery rooted them all in place like only great heaps of gold can. And that wasn't all, not by a long shot, a long, long shot. The room stretched on out of sight, with a ceiling so high, in the poor illumination you couldn't even see it.
Couldn't see the floor either. Every square inch was covered with gold, rolling like hills as far as the eye could see. And every hill was speckled in a rainbow of color by gems of every size and description.
Throw in a few weapons of dubious usefulness here and there and you just about got it. Quite a sight, no?
"Harry, are you seeing this?" Ron marveled.
"Yeah, I'm seeing it," just failing to be so impressed. "We knew he was a hoarder. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise."
Yet at the same time, when is fields of gold not a surprise. The only thing missing was a dragon.
"How much you think we can carry out of here?" said Seamus with a green glint in his eyes.
"I wouldn't," said Su Li.
"Fine, more for us," the Irishman swiftly dismissed.
"You really shouldn't either," Luna added. "Dead men rarely spend gold."
"You think it's cursed," said Harry who'd come to that conclusion the moment he saw it.
"It is Slytherin's gold," said Luna, ignoring the hateful Irish glare with practiced English indifference.
"We don't know that," Seamus argued.
"And I'd rather not find out," said Harry, "least not till we know how to get out of here. So, no one touch anything."
"Huh!" said Ron, blushing all the way from the tips of his ears to the gold pieces in his hands. "Were you, uh, saying something Harry? Eh he,he,he, ehh…"
Seamus smirked, a self-satisfied smirk, the sort of self-satisfied smirk only smirked when the smirker is viciously vindicated. It was also a short-lived smirk since, while he'd been smirking it, the gold coins in Ron's hand begun to vibrate.
The shivering vibration quickly became so strong it ran up his whole arm. Three coins flailed into the air and landed as six coins.
"The bloody hell!" Ron screamed, gripping his aching arm.
But it was too late for exclamations. The three that was now six continued shaking and became twelve, then twenty-four, forty-eight, and so on.
More worrying than this however was the shivering shake appeared to be contagious, severely contagious, like a case of the flu. It spread like a wave across the golden hills. Hills that shook like waking giants and began to roll and swell like a rising tide.
"What's happening!" shouted Seamus.
"Cursed gold," said Luna nonchalantly, "I thought it was obvious."
"It's obvious it's going to bury us if we don't get out of here," said Harry.
Turning back the way they'd come proved demoralizing. The entrance was already half covered in jumping, shaking gold, and even as they watched, helpless to stop it, half became whole cutting off their only escape.
"Great! That's just great. Now what do we do," Lavender ranted. "We never should have come down here. This was a terrible idea."
The irony of those words coming out of that mouth was lost on no one, save perhaps Lavender, but irony was not going to save them.
"What do we do Harry?" said Sally-Anne. "Could we get on top of it all?"
"Not unless you're a really strong 'swimmer'," said Dean, correctly noting the unstable, almost liquid nature of the rolling mass.
And that observation gave Harry an idea.
He'd never done transfiguration under pressure before, but if there was one thing he was consistently good at, it was coming through in the clinch.
Everyone was already packed together which made it easier to bring a lip up around them, forming a sort of bowl. Harder was disconnecting that bowl from the rest of the floor since it was beneath them and he couldn't see it. He was left hoping he'd done it right as the waves rolled forward and prepared to drown them.
"Everyone, together now. Swish and flick!"
As a group the young witches and wizards swished and flicked like they'd never swished, and only occasionally flicked, before.
There was a moment of pause, a hesitation under the chorus of "Wingardium Leviosa" before the stone bowl rocked, then rose over the falling wave, collecting a handful of shaking gold that was swiftly kicked out before it filled the bowl.
"Whoa, we're up, now what?" said Ron.
"Hold it," said Harry, "while I make a couple quick additions."
Leaning over the edge he hit the bottom with the no friction spell, and with that, an inspiration. He hadn't practiced the gravity spell Millicent Bulstrode had taught them since the duel club, but It was similar enough to the friction spell it didn't take much to quarter the gravity on the bowl before they set it down on the rolling sea of gold, a crude but serviceable boat.
"Well, that worked," said Ron, hardly able to believe it but too good a friend to admit it… no really.
"I never doubted," said Luna.
"You saved us Harry," said Sally Anne, looking like she might cry.
"Let's not jump to conclusions just yet," said Harry. "We still don't know how to get out of here."
"Maybe they know."
The group milled about in their bowl to look at Luna.
"Who?"
All eyes followed her outstretched hand, and lo, there on the horizon, dancing among the golden swells, a fine hull with a very fine figurehead attached, bobbing a course in the direction of the young castaways.
Its sails were fat with some unfelt wind and a flag, lacking either skull or crossed bones flew proud atop her mast.
And yet, despite the lack of familiar piratical symbology, the young magic users could not resist a shiver of a buccaneer origin.
"A pirate ship," Harry groaned. "Of course. Because that was the only thing this evening was missing."