Nobody paid any attention to Sarah's sarcastic remark. They were still transfixed by the riddle on the wall.
"What do you think it means?" whispered Gabriel, still looking at the hastily engraved letters. Robert shook his head.
"I have no idea," he said flatly. To everybody's surprise, Hayley giggled a little bit.
"Come on, Robert," she said, walking up to the poem. "I thought logic was your specialty. All you have to do is break it down," she finished simply. Sarah looked at her.
"What do you mean?" she asked. Hayley wiped away a little more dust from the letters and squinted at them, yawning.
"You just have to take it stanza by stanza. 'They think that I am dead, but they know naught at all'. Well, 'naught' means nothing, right? I guess that that means that whoever thinks that this King Archibald is dead, knows nothing at all. He must still be alive somewhere," she said. Sarah wrinkled up her nose.
"But, I read some of the book where this castle takes place, and it says that the King is dead..." she trailed off, but then a light illuminated in her gray eyes, as if she had just thought of something.
"But the book was never finished! Zavier the Zany died in his cell before the book was completed, and nobody finished it. I guess that that means that there is a slim chance that the king may still be alive," she finished. Robert caught onto Hayley's lead and diced it a little more.
"Well, I don't know what this 'Up - as is' is, but he's calling for the four inside the hallowed walls, and since there are four of us in here, he might be meaning us," he said thoughtfully. Gabriel tried her hand at this poem.
"I guess the next stanza about 'Hope within the sorrow' means that there is still hope, and evil can still be vanquished, or along the lines of that. But then there's that 'Up - as is' again."
"'Four days ride from home?'" Sarah asked. "'The sun strikes true yonder?' Does that mean that there is a place that the sun shines here? No way. The entire place is that pinky-purple thing," she said. The other four shrugged.
"'Four of us have entered, but five of us will leave?'" Hayley said thoughtfully. "Well, four of us have entered this dimension, and I guess that that means that somebody else will be leaving it with us, and the person will help us defeat the evil. But what in the name of Hades is 'Up - as is'?" she asked, scowling at the etching in the wall.
"That 'Soul strengthens the heart' might just be comparisons, but 'I will return as well'? Does that mean that if we kill the evil here that the Good King will come back?" asked Robert hopefully. Sarah shrugged and sighed.
"I have the nastiest feeling that 'Up -as is' has something big to do with this, but I have no idea what. But we're not leaving until we find it out," she said stubbornly.
"Right," they all agreed.
# # #
A half-hour later, all four were nearly asleep, and they were no closer than ever before to figuring out what 'Up -as is' was. Robert actually had fallen asleep, and fell against a dusty wall. He hit the floor and woke up briefly, enough to hear a shriek from Gabriel. He shot awake at once.
"Look behind you!" Gabriel yelled, pointing behind him. Robert was afraid to turn around; for fear that he would see a gigantic monster or something of the like. But he did, and he found something quite odd.
It was a tiled wall, and each tile had a letter on it. Robert grabbed his black robe again and buffed away the dust. The tiles were about one inch by one inch, and each had a letter engraved in it. He nervously reached out and touched an 'R' that was above his head.
The tile crumbled, and a blast of fire sprang out, making them all scream and duck for cover. When they did so, there was a huge scorch mark on the other side of the room. Gabriel was sweating, and breathing heavily when she next spoke.
"I suppose that we won't be trying that again, hmm?" she asked. But Hayley put a finger to her lips and studied it intently.
"I bet that it does something important, though. It's another riddle," she said thoughtfully. Sarah snorted.
"I'm in no mood for more riddles!" she cried. Robert rubbed his head. He was in no mood for riddles either, but they had to figure it out, lest they never go home.
He was drifting off into sleep, when a vision flashed in front of Robert's eyes. It was one of when he was younger, doing anagrams with his kindergarten teacher. Now, granted, they were easy anagrams, like 'rearrange the word 'ta' to find a word', but they were anagrams nevertheless. He was about to go to sleep again, when he jolted awake.
"That's it!" he cried, springing to his feet and walking over to the etching in the wall. The three girls looked at him as if he had gone bonkers.
"What's it?" Sarah asked sleepily. Robert sighed impatiently.
"It's so obvious! 'Up - as is' has to be an anagram! It has to be!" he cried, sounding quite insane. Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
"An ana-what?" she asked. Robert groaned.
"Don't you guys know anything?! An anagram is when you take words and rearrange them to make other words. If you take the letters in Up - as is, and rearrange them, we should get other words, that we punch into the wall over there, and well, one less riddle!" he cried, sounding rather deranged. Hayley raised an eyebrow.
"You know, that sounds so stupid that it just might work. But what does 'Up - as is' make?" she asked. Even Robert couldn't answer that one.
Another half an hour passed. They were about to fall asleep again, when Gabriel screamed in delight.
"I've got it! I've got it!" she squealed. "'Up - as is' has two s's, an a, a 'u', and a 'p' in it right?! Well, so does Sapius! It's Sapius!" she said ecstatically. The other three looked at each other for another moment, and then there was a mad dash for the tile/keyboard.
Sarah steeled herself and pressed in an 's'. After she did so, she ducked quickly, in case Gabriel had been wrong. But Gabriel's prediction had been correct. Instead of crumbling, the letter started to glow a vibrant gold, and shimmered against the overall gloom of the room.
Quickly, the other letters were punched in. Suddenly, all of the false letters dissipated into the wall, and all that was left was the glowing outline of 'Sapius'. Then the wall started to crumble. Cracks appeared in the wall, and the entire thing fell to the ground. There was another room in here, this one even smaller then the one before it. In it was another plaque, but this one was intricately carved into a frame, not hastily scribbled into a wall. It read:
That was only puzzle number one, proud as you may be,
but to leave this place, you must brave these trials three.
Firstly, learn the Dark, and learn it well,
for the magic may spare your soul from a variable hell.
So learn the Darkness, though you might,
but in the dark, study the Light.
Obey your Master's every will,
but keep your studies success secret still.
Second, strong as you are in number four,
to defeat the Dark, you need one more.
This ally is strong, faithful and tough,
the beacon in the night; the diamond in the rough.
Look for this ally in unexpected places,
you may be surprised by familiar faces.
Lastly, travel by night through the desolate moor,
for it is there you will find the dimension's door.
The map was found by the Innocent,
hours on its completion have already been spent.
For in the dark and the gloom,
the sun always has its room.
This embroidered map will lead you there,
pick your path and lead it, but take care.
Your blood will not only activate the spell,
but will give you added strength as well.
Innocent, teach them the simplicity of being a group, not a part
show them that true learning comes not from the brain, but the heart.
Sage, the wise man that you are,
spread your acquired knowledge near and far.
Wild Woman, you hold with your sword and shield a key,
use them wisely, don't let them be.
Queen of Not Doing, your tongue burns like hot coal,
but if we look past this, we see a human being with a heart and soul.
Through all of your troubles, stay brave and strong,
choose the path of Light and you can never go wrong.
Just one more thing that I know is true;
watch out, my friends, for They are watching you.
The four stared, flabbergasted at the very long rhyme, until Sarah stomped her foot on the ground angrily.
"Why can't they just tell us what to do instead of confusing it all up with these rhymes?!" she remarked irately. "It would be so much easier!" Gabriel looked at her shrewdly.
"Because if life was easy, it would be boring," she said. Sarah glared at her. Robert paid them no heed and was still staring at the engraving.
"I wonder how they knew our Tarot spread," he mused. Hayley sighed.
"Well, obviously, since this 'story' hasn't been completed, I guess the characters are still running rampant, and now we're caught in the middle of it. Lucky us," she said irritably, sounding not unlike Sarah. Sarah sighed.
"I guess that that's not such a bad thing. We have to write our own ending, in a way," she said, eyes lighting up in her head. She had always wanted to be a writer, and being a character in a story was actually better than writing her own one, because she got to be a part of it. Gabriel squinted, forcing her drooping eyelids to stay up.
"Hayley, you're the Innocent, right? What did you find? It says that you've already found something, and it's a map," she said, looking at Hayley. Hayley looked at the poem again. She had found a map? The only thing that she had found was a tapestry, and that wasn't a map.
"Err, well, I found a half-done tapestry earlier today, but I don't think it is a map.." she started, but Robert cut her off..
"We didn't think that 'Up - as is' was anything, either, but it was. Are you sure that there is nothing hidden in it that you may have missed?" he asked.
"Well, no," she admitted ruefully. "I never really looked at it that closely. I found it up in an attic, in a locked trunk. I spent the rest of today trying to finish it," she said, showing the other three her pricked hands.
A ray of light streaked across the dusty floor from a small hole in the rotted wall. Sarah ran up to the hole and pressed her eye to it. Dawn was breaking, or at least the pink-purple sky was slowly lightning, dusting the bare wasteland outside with cobwebby patterns of pale light. Sarah blanched.
"Holy Park rangers, man! It's daybreak, and we'd better skedaddle before Tommy wakes up!" she cried.
There was much a scattering of dust and muck as the four made for the exit of the small room like mice scurrying from a great wildcat.
When the foursome made for their beds, the tiny room gave something of a stony sigh as the entrance to it shuddered closed.
# # #
The demeanor of Hogwarts, though humming with gossip and running smoothly as normal, was rather downcast. The four 'mascot' students were gone, and the school was missing their presence dearly. Nobody seemed much in the mood for anything any more, and everything seemed to be going on lethargically. Quidditch didn't seem as competitive, and the Slytherin and Gryffindor houses were holding tryouts again, to find replacements for Gabriel and Sarah.
The closest friends of the missing four were the ones that were hit the hardest. Alanya, Essex, Alex and Rosemary slunk about the place as if their mothers had died three times over.
"Tryouts are today," Alanya muttered to Lavender Brown, watching a hopeful-faced Seamus trot down the hall with a broom. He was hoping that since Gabriel was gone, he might have a shot at being replacement Keeper until she came back. That is, if she came back. Lavender nodded.
"You gonna try out?" asked Lavender. "Seamus needs some competition, and I hear that Dean Thomas is trying out too, and he's a soccer wizard, but can't fly for beans. I've heard that you're pretty good on a broom yourself, Alanya."
"I don't feel like it."
"You're still moping on about Gabriel, aren't you? Well, I don't think that holding a vigil over her absence is going to help her much."
"I'm not moping! And besides the fact, I don't have a broom with me."
"Borrow Gabriel's."
"WHAT?! Are you nuts? It's not mine! And anyway, I'm not stealing from my best friend!"
"You won't be stealing. She's not gonna be usin' it any time soon. Go on, Gabriel would rather you take her place than Seamus," Lavender argued back, steering Alanya in the direction of the broom shack, where Gabriel's broom was kept.
The broom was actually property of the school's, but Gabriel had borrowed Harry Potter's broom kit, and polished, clipped loose tail-straws, preformed numerous charms to keep it from going haywire on her. She filled in all of the chips and cracks, until she came out with a broom that was nearly good as new. Alanya hefted in her right hand, turning it over. It was a beautiful broom, once it had been cleaned up a bit, Alanya thought idly. She sighed.
"Gabriel? Wherever you are, I hope you won't mutilate me for this when you come back home," Alanya whispered, eyes beginning to tear in spite of herself. But she shook it off.
Swinging the broom over one shoulder, Alanya headed towards the Quidditch field. She heard a voice behind her that nearly made her fall over.
--Yes, you can use the broom, but if anything happens to it, I'll kill you!-- it said.
Alanya whipped around, breathing increasing and heartrate flying at the speed of sound. She had just heard Gabriel! But that wasn't possible. Gabriel was - well, somewhere else. Peeking back into the broomshed, she made sure that nobody was playing a trick on her, and trying to scare her.
But nobody was in there but the brooms, and brooms tell no tales.
# # #
"Yes, you can use the broom, but it anything happens, I'll kill you!" mumbled Gabriel in a half-asleep daze. Upon the returning to their rooms, the foursome had bid each other in hasty good nights. They also quick promises to keep all discoveries about the secret room to Tom Riddle or Chenelle, they stole into their rooms to hopefully catch a few winks of sleep before 'Mr. Riddle' came in to wake them all up for breakfast. But Gabriel Gryffindor was already up.
Kicking off the navy blue bedspread, she staggered to her closet, and selected one of the identical black frocks that were neatly hung in the dark space. Pulling it over her head, she noticed with dissatisfaction that the dress had terrible static cling to it. A petticoat from a dresser drawer quickly solved the problem. Feeling overdressed and overly girlish, Gabriel sat back down on the bedspread, trying to think. Something had happened last night, something important, but Gabriel couldn't think of it.
"Oh yes," she said aloud, while fiddling with her silver binding-pendant. "The rhymes, the riddles, and the secrets. I'm so enthralled," she snarled to nobody. Groaning, she put a hand to her head. She had a terrible migraine, and wanted to be home more than anything now.
"Whining about it isn't helping anything," she reprimanded herself angrily. "Come on now, Gabriel, you've got a riddle to unravel."
And with that, Gabriel went out to find the others.
# # #
Tom Riddle regarded his Hufflepuff student with suspicion. For three hours, he had worked specifically with her on a moving spell, but she hadn't been able to do anything with it. When he had started with the Dark Arts, he knew half the spells there were by heart in his first week. Granted, it had only been about a month, but his pupils hadn't been able to master even the simplest spells that there were.
In reality, Hayley was using some of the Dark magic that she had learned to bring sweat up around her face, and to make the apples of her cheeks red. Hayley and her friends had decided to take the verse in the rhyme to heart:
'Obey your Master's every will
but keep your studies secret still'
Tom Riddle had been right about getting used to the side effects of taming the Darkness. Now when Hayley called upon it, she only felt slightly nauseated for a couple of seconds before returning back to normal. But they never let Tom Riddle upon this, fearing for some strange reason that something bad would happen if he knew that they were apt at the Dark Arts.
The former Voldemort studied the blank faces of his students intently. They showed no emotion towards anything whatsoever, just totally stupefied looks. He tried once again to reach into their minds with Dark Divination, only to find that the White barrier again repelled him. Tom scowled. Something was up, but it enraged him totally that he couldn't find out what it was.
Robert just stood there placidly, trying to keep the look of amusement off of his face. Tom was angry at something that he knew, and it was probably because he had been teaching him and the girls for about a month now, and they had shown no signs of improvement. Robert looked around at the girls, and Sarah gave him the tiniest half-wink before resuming her dumb expression. He then sighed. He hoped that it wouldn't be too much longer before Tom Riddle lost all of his patience and let them off the hook for the day, as he was getting tired of standing here.
"All right, that's it, Miss Hufflepuff, I've seen enough of your incompetence today. You may go," he said, fighting to hold his stupefied rage at the foursome's inability to learn the Arts. There was a flash of purple, and he was gone.
They all stood there for a moment, silent, waiting to see if he would come back. He didn't, and there was only thin air where Tom just stood.
"The Nest?" muttered Gabriel out of the corner of her mouth. Sarah gave a stout nod, running her fingers through her coarse hair.
"The Nest," she repeated in agreement. Robert and Hayley mumbled their agreement. Abruptly, the foursome turned and ran helter-skelter down the hall.
'The Nest' was the attic where Hayley had found the tapestry at two weeks before. In the corner of the room, the floor had a slightly collapsed dent in it, resembling a bowl. When the foursome noticed this, they smuggled up pillows, blankets and the like, to make it padded. It was now indeed, a very squashy, comfortable nest, where they freshened up on their Dark Arts skills, and learned Light Magic. Sarah produced a clear globe that she had smuggled away from her room out of the folds of her dress.
"Elestrapa," she muttered to it. A bright purple flame started in the middle of it, and Sarah shook it a bit to coax the flame on. It did, and soon there was a nice roaring fire going inside the ball. She set it in the middle of the 'Nest' and it illuminated the attic eerily.
Robert took out a thick book on Light Magic, while Gabriel skimmed a volume on the Dark Arts. Hayley worked on her needlepoint, which the foursome still hadn't figured out the 'map' part of it yet, and Sarah leafed through a glossary on magic in general. There was silence, until Gabriel looked up and saw what Sarah was reading.
"What'cha doing, Sarah?" she asked, reclining comfortably in her spot. Sarah looked up briefly before turning back to her book.
"I'm trying to look up Yongher Meridian, you know, the words that were written onto that scrap of paper I found in that dusty room? Well, I can't find it anywhere!" she cried, shutting her book with a slight thump. Hayley looked up, uncharacteristically angry and red-faced. She slammed the tapestry onto the ground, tears of frustration starting in her eyes.
"I can't finish it! Every time I make a stitch, it seems to sink into the material!" They all looked at her. It was very unlike Hayley to lose her temper like that, they were for a moment, quite startled. Robert snapped his brows together.
"Let me have a look at it, Hayley," he said, beckoning with his hand. Hayley handed the wad of material over, with the golden thread on top of it. For a moment, he studied the large blank space intently, and then he picked up the needle.
With a slight swish of the sharp needle, he made a huge stitch, that reached from one side of the tapestry's blank spot to the other. Hayley squealed slightly.
"What did you do?" she asked indignantly. She was about to lunge for it back, but Robert gave her a very serious stare and kept on looking at the large stitch he just made. Slowly, but surely, the thread began to sink into the tapestry until it was gone. They all stared at it for a moment, before Hayley cleared her throat and spoke.
"Well. I guess that would explain why I wasn't able to finish the confounded thing, hm?" she asked faintly. Robert grinned at her.
"I guess it would." Gabriel bit the inside of her lip and touched the smooth surface of the unstitched fabric. The part where the stitches started looped and curved about.
"You know," she mused, running her hand over the fine stitches, "these kind of look like the turrets to a castle...." she began, and then she gasped.
"They are turrets! Look! And the flags that the light beings are carrying are the flags on the turrets!" Gabriel cried. The other three scampered to her side of the Nest, trying to get a good look at it.
It was a castle. A white silhouette of one, that was shaped from where the border jutted in, and the places where the stitched stopped and the white void started. The beings that were stitched in silver held small battle flags that represented the flags on the top of the turrets. But apart from the castle, the rest seemed just to be a clash of black and silver thread, and they couldn't make any sense of it.
Robert sighed and ran his finger along one of the smooth ribbons that was wound within the border. He started when he realized that the ribbon wasn't smooth, but had odd little bumps running along it. He squinted at it, and nearly squealed with surprise.
Embroidered into the pink ribbon was letters of the same color. Robert cocked his head to the side, and ran his finger along the satin again, more purposefully this time. While the girls stared at each other in wondering bewilderment, Robert started to mumble words.
To find the spot where the sun shines true,
look for the raging river of blue.
Robert looked onto the tapestry again. "What raging river of blue?" he asked. Sarah looked at the others nonchalantly.
"You think this is it? I found this earlier," she said pointing to a blue thread that started from the castle.
It was indeed a river, or in what the tapestry depicted, it looked like a river. The great azure snake weaved in and around the beings, twined through the sparse trees that were sewn in, and came to an abrupt halt at a dead Light being. It was a sight that was depicted as horribly beautiful, the silver being had a black sword impaled into its stomach, and it was drenched in a pool of silvery-yellowish blood. Hayley squinted at the figure. Was that more writing in the threads?
Where the Being of Light's blood hits the ground,
the sun is always there to be found.
Gabriel swallowed hard. "I think....I think we've found our sunny spot, mates," she said quietly.
# # #
"Roots, Potter."
"Get them yourself, Malfoy!"
"Hey! It's not my fault that Snape put us as potion partners, Scarface! You think that I wanted this to happen?! Roots, Potter!"
Harry grudgingly picked up a Worthag root and started hacking at it was such ferocity that he got it lodged in the table several times. When he had minced them to his liking, he pushed the chopping board over to Malfoy, who flung them into the sizzling potion.
The potion blurbled and bubbled more furiously as it turned a disgusting sort of booger green. Draco put a stick of wood on the fire under the cauldron and checked on the potion again, making sure it was simmering at the right rate. He then slammed the top on the pewter-
Stained-black cauldron with such a clatter that many people looked up to see what had caused the disturbance. Malfoy sneered at the people who looked up, and they quickly returned to their own potions.
Draco sat down with a plop next to Harry on the bench. They glared hatefully at each other for a moment before Harry broke the gaze and looked off into space. Draco turned away from Harry and slumped his hand against a white fist. At first he seethed at the fact that Snape actually made him sit with Potter, but then his thoughts turned to the events of the last couple of weeks.
His sallow cheeks burned red at the very thought of it. He hated being in the debt of other people, much less in debt to a girl. Not that he was incredibly biased against the thought of girls saving him...but it was degrading nevertheless. Plus, not only were he in debt to one girl, but to three of them, and a goody-two shoe boy. Draco groaned and let his head fall onto the table. What was worse, was the fact that....Well, he'd prefer not to think of the other fact, save him from going total tomato-face in front of Potter. Never in front of Potter.
Harry, on the other hand, who was twirling his finger in a small pile of dust idly, was thinking about Quidditch. They had had Quidditch tryouts for the position of Goalkeeper, and although that Harry wouldn't admit it aloud in front of anybody, he thought that the attempts at the position were pretty pitiful. Seamus was good on a broom, but he couldn't catch a ball to save his hide, Dean could catch pretty well from his years of being a soccer goalkeeper, but he couldn't maneuver around on a broom very well. Alanya was average at about everything, but she was a Chaser on her Quidditch team at home...and it showed, as her Goalkeeping skills were not exactly up to par. Harry sighed and shot a side look at Malfoy, and was rewarded by seeing the back of his silver-blonde head. He sighed. If they didn't come up with a good Quidditch Keeper, then the Gryffindors, and himself included, would make total fools of themselves in front of the Slytherins and Malfoy. He couldn't let that happen. Never in front of Malfoy.
The smell of burning substance reached Harry's nostrils. He came crashing back down to Earth, and shot a glance in the direction of the potion. The top of it was dancing with heat pressure, and the potion was bubbling ferociously, sending little flecks of green liquid all over the place, to spatter on the walls and floor. Harry was on his feet at once, and he ran over to the cauldron and flung off the top, looking frantically for the stirrer. Malfoy was twirling it between his long fingers.
"Ladle, Malfoy," Harry ordered. Draco looked up at him, a malicious glint in his eyes.
"Get it yourself, Potter," he said in a high-pitched, imitating voice.
"Malfoy.....!" Harry growled as Draco chortled wickedly.
# # #
It was dinnertime, and Tom Riddle rapped his fork against his plate incessantly. Being a spirit of his own creation, he didn't need to eat nor drink, he just did it so he would seem more 'normal' to his pupils. But the problem was that his pupils didn't seem to be normal at all. They were all eating in innocent silence, and it seemed to take all restraint for him to keep from yelling pent up wrath at them, though he didn't really get what he was so angry at.
Finally, Sarah broke the silence. "Pray tell us, Master Tom," she said, wiping her lips with a napkin, "would you happen to know what Yongher Meridian is?"
Tom dropped his fork onto the table. "And pray tell me," he said, voice shaking slightly, "how do you know of Yongher Meridian?"
Sarah shrugged. "I was reading and I came upon it in a book," she replied smoothly.
Hayley stared aghast at how Sarah could lie so seamlessly, without breaking a sweat. If it had been Hayley that was talking, she would have been stuttering all over the place by now, and trying to think of an excuse. Well, they didn't call Slytherins distrustful for no reason, she supposed mirthlessly.
"It's a Light transporting spell," Tom replied, choosing his words carefully. "I don't really know how to use it. Why do you want to know?"
"I was just interested in the theory, that's all. No need to get so testy with me," she said innocently. Tom eyed them suspiciously.
"In the theory, eh? Well, you should be more interested in the theory of tomorrow's lesson, then of complicated Light spells."
Gabriel perked up. "What will we be learning tomorrow, Sir?" she asked. Ton drummed his fingers on the table noisily.
"Lightning again. Since none of you dunderheads seem to be getting it," he snarled. Robert sighed, and pushed a wedge of fish around on his plate. He was so tired of these easy spells. His brain ached for a challenge, but he couldn't show Tom that he knew these simple spells by heart. He missed Hogwarts, he missed the normal spells, he missed his wand, and he missed everything that was home. And everything depended upon the charade of Robert Ravenclaw playing the idiot. He groaned and reached for his cup of water. If he could hold out for a little longer, he would be okay. Everything would be okay.
Tom Riddle saw the flash of monotony and impatience flash across Robert's face. Something fishy was going on, and by the Darkness, he was going to find it out. Tom stood up hastily, knocking his chair over backwards. His four students looked at him morosely, and he scanned their faces one last time.
"You have the evening to yourselves," he said quickly, and dissipated in the flash of purple light. Hayley sighed.
"I wish that I knew where he was going when he did that," she said ruefully.
# # #
When Tom Riddle went when he appearated like that was the one place where he could calm his frazzled nerves; his wing of the castle.
A very peculiar door shrouded the entrance to his wing of the castle. There was a stone slab in the wall, with a statue beside it. Lifting up the statue, under it was a black square. Placing his hand on the square, there was a flash of green light, and the stone disappeared into nothing.
If one could find the entrance to Tom Riddle's secret lair, they might be expecting regal marble halls, plush carpets and the lot, but it was actually just a big cavernous underground hall. Complete with dripping stalactites, and two purple torches, crackling eerily, sending purple shadows bouncing off the walls, that leaded into darkness. Tom plucked one of the tiles off the wall, and started to walk down that long hallway.
Tom really didn't think that much during the walk down the corridor, he always thought that silence in the area was best received by silence in the mind as well. Finally, the cave led to a little off room on one of the sides. Walking into the center of the domed hollow, he placed the torch in a holder. The feeble light did little to illuminate the huge room.
"Alablaster," Tom remarked offhandedly. The purple flame flickered and grew long and tall, until it touched the ceiling of the thirty-foot room, and lit it up completely.
The room had a rotting wooden counter running around it, and there were numerous things thrown haphazardly upon it. There were jars of beetle's eyes, unicorn hairs and horns, Flaxweed, and all of the normal wizarding things, but there were also more gruesome things stockpiled there as well. These included a large jar of human eyeballs, tongue of a dragon, a small vial of unicorn blood, and piles of Dark spells.
Tom righteously ignored this, and walked over to a shelf in the wall, which glowed behind a soiled piece of tapestry.
He pulled back the tapestry, and looked at what was inside. There were four tall, bell-shaped glasses, over the wands of the houses. Tom stared hungrily at the wands of Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. There was ancient power locked into these pieces of weather-hardened wood, he knew it. He could feel it radiating from the wands. These wands were made to be used for great purposes, like the Dark Arts, thought Tom Riddle. That much is clear.
The problem with this, though, was that the wands seemed only to cooperate with ones of direct blood relation to the founders. And although Tom Riddle was related to Slytherin in a distant way, his blood wasn't pure enough for the wand to listen to his commands. The one it would listen to, he thought venomously, was a little smart-mouthed, ill-mannered American, that seemed totally ignorant to her potential. The mere thought of it angered Tom to no extent.
The wand of Slytherin, as if possessed for a second, wildly jumped about in the bellglass and thrashed against the glass, making a loud, echoing clang. The other wands did the same. Tom Riddle's hair stood on end. These wands had minds of their own! He had seen nothing else like it before.
Uncharacteristically unnerved, Tom quickly let the tattered tapestry fall back over the captive wands, and walked out, shaking a bit in spite of himself.
The wand of Gryffindor thrust itself against the glass again, and the others followed, as if in agreement. The echoing bounced about the lonely walls of the cave, and then all was silent.
# # #
Meanwhile, the foursome of whom the wands belonged to was conversing up in the 'Nest'.
"Well, we've found the map" sighed Hayley. "Now all we have to find is this ally, and then we have to find the 'place where the sun always shines, or something to that extent."
Sarah sighed, and slumped down against the curved bowl of the Nest. "Didn't the poem say that it would be someone we knew? Well, who do we know?"
Gabriel shrugged. "Well, to tell you the absolute truth, I haven't seen anyone here, save you guys, Tom Riddle, and Chenelle. And I don't think that it would be Tom Riddle," she finished sensibly.
"So you think that it's Chenelle?" asked Robert. "Well, I guess it would be the only logical answer, considering that I don't think that the God of all Darkness is going to be our ally," he finished, answering his own question.
"So, now that we have or map, supposedly our 'ally', now we need to figure out how to use Yonghar Meridian, and I think that we can go," Sarah sighed.
Hayley had been half-dozing through all of this, keeping one ear open, and nodding every once and awhile to make her comrades happy. She finally drifted off into sleep.
She was in a misty, white, nothing place. Normally, she would have been afraid, but calm and peace radiated around her, and she was quite content. There was no Tom Riddle, no Castle Sapius, no Darkness, no annoying riddles, and nothing that could bother was here. Hayley basked in the wonderment of it all, until she heard a voice, soft but grating on the human ear, speak.
"In the name of all joy and Light,
I call upon the spell of the Yongher Meridian,
Take me from this wretched place tonight,
and send my spirit home again," it said.
A distantly aloof part of Hayley noted lazily that the voice was female, friendly, and almost distantly familiar to her. There was a sudden touch of coldness of her head, and Hayley smiled faintly at it. The voice repeated the short rhyme again.
"In the name of all joy and Light,
I call upon the spell of the Yongher Meridian,
take me from this wretched place tonight,
and send my spirit home again."
A hand shook Hayley hard, and she saw the blissful misty place melt away from her eyes, and Hayley sighed with sorrowful disdain. Her soul probably would have tried to grapple onto the dream, but she didn't feel like it. It was like the feeling she got after she overate herself, and felt too full and good-natured to move an inch. So, reality (or could she count a made dimension as reality?) came crashing back to Earth, as she hazily opened one eye, to see Gabriel peering down at her.
"Are you 'right, Hayley?" she asked worriedly. "You were mumbling and turning over in your sleep! Was it a bad dream?"
Hayley was about to shake her head and say that it had been a wonderful dream, but then the meaning of the dream came back to her. Hayley turned the clammy white of a forest fungus when she remembered it.
"I need parchment and ink, quick!" she cried. Puzzled, the other three heeded her request. Hayley took the quill and parchment and quickly scribbled out the rhyme in her small, loopy writing, and handed it to Robert, who read it.
"What?" he whispered when he finished it. "You mean that you had a vision about Yongher Meridian? Do you think that this is true, Hayley?"
Hayley nodded. "I know so," she said affirmatively. Strange as it was, there was a firm belief planted into her soul that the verse, and the female voice, was telling the truth.
# # #
It had actually been a rather normal, peaceful day for Chenelle. She lived to work, and she worked to live, in short. Almost all of her fourteen years of her life she spent serving her 'Master Tom', and she didn't remember much else about her life before it. Most people her age would have pitched a huge fit if asked to do even a quarter of the work that Chenelle did, but Chenelle herself actually enjoyed the house chores that others might have labeled as tedious and boring. Chenelle found that they were relaxing, and the monotonous vigor of it all kept her from thinking too much.
Chenelle was polishing a coat of armor slowly, humming to herself a tune as she worked polish into the metal, buffing it to a slow sheen. That was when Robert came barreling up to her, shoes thumping loudly against the floor. Chenelle looked up with alarm.
"Robert? Is something wrong?" she asked him. Robert shook his head and held up a finger, signaling that he needed to catch his breath. Chenelle waited patiently until he could speak.
"Come with me for a moment, Chenelle. Leave your work where it is," he ordered her. Perplexed, she dropped the soft cloth and looked at him, about to speak. He breathlessly shook his head.
"No questions. No time for questions. Come on." Robert grabbed her hand, and hustled down some corridors. Chenelle's mouth worked, but she made no noise.
Finally, after twisting and twining about some hallways, they stopped in front of a knotted cord. Robert gave it a swift yank, and part of the ceiling gave way, and a silvery rope ladder appeared. Pushing Chenelle forwards, Robert motioned that she should climb the ladder. She scampered up it quickly, and Robert followed.
When she made it up into the attic, she could barely breathe, thanks to the thick coat of dust in the air, and her lack of breath from being marched down the hall like a prisoner. She looked around, and saw nothing at first, but then she noticed a faint purple glow in the far corner of the room. Robert started to walk over there, and Chenelle obediently followed.
She was surprised to find that Sarah, Gabriel and Hayley were there too, faces lit up by the ghostly light of a purple glow. Chenelle slid down into the sloped 'Nest', and looked about her in bewilderment.
"What-" she began, but was cut off by Sarah shaking her head.
"No time for your questions, Chenelle. We need to ask you something, and I can guarantee that it's more important to your fate than what your question could ever be," she said shortly. Chenelle closed her mouth and pushed all further thoughts out of her mind.
"We need to know. If you had the chance, would you leave Castle Sapius and your 'Master Tom', to go live in freedom?" Gabriel asked, choosing words carefully, so as not to frighten Chenelle.
Chenelle bit her lip. Many a night she had dreamed of someone taking her away from here, to have a chance to live like a normal witch, and not a bound slave to the Dark Arts. It would be wonderful.
"I would like to leave, but unfortunately, I'm bound here," she said with a sad clip to her voice. But she brushed it away immediately. "Why?" Chenelle asked suspiciously. Hayley grinned.
"We're getting outta here. We're running away. We've had omens that a fifth person was to come with us. We wanted to know if you were the one," she said.
Chenelle was stunned. "Have you flown off your rockers?" she cried. "I'm-we're all bound here! If we tried anything stupid, we'd all die!" Sarah shook her head.
"We're perfectly aware of that!" she snapped. "But we've had omens, and countless riddles that have told us to leave this place, so good can reign again. We have to trust them....I don't want to be stuck here forever, a slave to the Darkness! Do you?"
"Well, no," Chenelle admitted ruefully. "But I don't want to die, either."
Gabriel shrugged and wiped some fuzz off of her black gown. "That's the chance you're going to have to take. It's either come with us and try, or wimp out and stay here forever."
"Forever is a long time," Chenelle said softly. She remembered what her life had been so far, and what she could change it to if she went along with these four. Chenelle looked up, and four pleading faces met her own.
"Oh all right," she whispered. Sarah broke into a huge grin.
"So," she asked, gray eyes twinkling at Robert, "when does the Eagle fly the Nest?" she asked. Robert rolled his eyes back into his head.
"Whenever the Snake slithers out," he said mindlessly. Sarah turned and winked at Gabriel.
"The Snake slithers when the Lion pounces," she said mischievously. Gabriel sighed.
"The Lion pounces when the Badger digs itself out," she replied. Hayley sighed, fiddled with her binding pendant, and looked at Chenelle.
"The Badger digs when the Dark Dove deems it to be so," she said, looking at Chenelle. Chenelle raised her eyebrows. The Dark Dove?
"The Dark Dove deems so when the Snake, Lion, Eagle, and Badger stop making terrible puns," she said slyly. The other four giggled nervously.
"Well, Dark Dove?" asked Robert. "When do you deem right?"
Chenelle sighed.
"The Dark Dove deems right,
when the moon is full tonight."
# # #
Tom Riddle knew something was up that night. His students were not as chatty as normal and they seemed to be spending all of their time pouring over spellbooks, which to his knowledge were too complicated for them. Even Chenelle seemed meeker and more jumpy than usual. On further inquiry, he only got looks of innocence, and explanations that they were just curious.
"I see," he said on occasion of finding Gabriel with a book on sleeping potions and spells. "You're just curious, so you're looking over a page on the most potent sleeping spell on the book and trying to memorize it. That's a ways to go for curiosity."
Gabriel looked up and gave him an overly warm smile. "I know I won't be able to do it, but it looks interesting, and when I get deep enough into the Darkness, I will know how to put people to sleep with ease, Master Tom," she said mechanically. Tom raised an eyebrow and left.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Gabriel let loose a sigh of relief. That was too close for comfort. Shutting her book, she walked up to her closet door. Making sure to lock it behind her, she lit a candle.
"'Somul'," she said, pointing to a black candle that she had plastered on the wall. It flickered with the purple flame, and Gabriel pushed back her row of dresses.
Behind the dresses, there was a makeshift potion stand. A large earthenware bowl sat on top of a three-wicked candle, and Gabriel peered into the bowl. A clear, boiling mess met her eyes. Reaching into her pocket, she threw in some dried Kappa leaves, and watched as they disintegrated into the clear potion, and made it hiss and whistle. Gabriel smiled.
"Perfect," she whispered to herself. Putting out the candles, she gingerly grabbed the bowl with the tips of her fingers and walked into Robert's room.
Robert was pouring over a cloaking spell book, but looked up and motioned to the dresser when he saw her come in.
On the dresser were a teapot, kettle, a small-contained fire, and a teacup. Tom liked to end his day with a cup of tea, Chenelle told them. The potion that Gabriel had made in the bowl was the most potent Dark sleeping spell that there was, and she had to spend her day sneaking herbs and skins necessary for the potion itself. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard, since Tom thought that they were total dunces, and saw no need to keep his potion ingredients under lock and key.
Opening the teakettle, Gabriel poured the clear liquid in. It looked exactly like bubbling water. Gabriel smirked in pride at her work. Robert came up.
"Stand back," he warned her. Gabriel backed up, and Robert put a hand on the top of the teakettle, ignoring the burn that he was getting from the metal top.
"Prevaro Maliticar," he whispered, eyes beginning to tear from the hot metal. A short flash of white light, a fizzle from the clear potion, and Robert removed his hand.
"That's the most advanced Light concealing spell I can conjure," he said, rubbing his burnt hand. Gabriel nodded, when Sarah came in.
In her right hand she held a teacaddy, and in her left, she held a small bag of what looked like tealeaves. Opening the teacaddy, she took a handful of its contents and tossed it in the fire. Abruptly, the entire room was filled with the smoky scent of burning tea. Wordlessly, she poured some of the contents of the bag into the teacaddy.
"These are Tahria leaves. They supposedly put the victim in a sleep deeper than death itself," she explained, shrugging. "I don't know how old they are, but I found them in the potion chest."
"Won't Tom notice that his tea doesn't taste like tea?" asked Hayley, who had just walked in. Gabriel shook her head.
"He shouldn't. Sarah left half of the real tea in, and besides, with all of this sleeping stuff we're putting in it, he should be asleep before he notices anything," she pointed out. Sarah nodded, and Chenelle came in.
Chenelle had the hardest part of all. She had to serve Tom the tea without going to pieces in the process. She licked dry lips.
"All right, he's ready," she said in a croaky voice as she loaded all of the tea making items onto a tray. "And if I get caught, pray for my soul," she added shakily. The other four laughed as shakily as Chenelle herself had spoken.
"Good luck, Chenelle," Robert said softly. "Everything depends on how this is pulled off."
Sarah rolled her eyes, and gave Chenelle a corky, but very nervous smile. "So, no pressure."
Chenelle swallowed, and walked out the door, praying to whatever God or Goddess that had been watching over her for these last few years. If she ever needed luck, she needed it now.
# # #
The hairs on the back of Rosemary's neck prickled, and she clutched her books to her chest a little tighter. She didn't know why, but she felt more nervous than she ever did in her life. Something big was happening, but she couldn't figure out what. Looking up at the ceiling, she didn't notice that she was walking the same path as someone else, until she ran into that someone. In fact, into three other someones.
"Ouch!" cried Hermione Granger as she hit the floor, papers scattering everywhere.
"Watch where you're walking!" Draco Malfoy snarled as he hoisted himself up onto his knees.
"Owie!" Cho Chang moaned as she rubbed her back.
Rosemary didn't say anything; she just pulled herself up onto her haunches, and started to sort through papers to find what was hers. Cho Chang came over to help her, but Draco and Hermione stayed in their same positions, glaring at each other.
"Where's your little friends at, Granger?" he sneered at Hermione. Hermione bristled and gave her own little sneer back at Draco.
"I could ask the same of you, Malfoy!" she snapped in retaliation. Cho just sighed and flapped a paper in front of Draco's face.
"Is this yours, Malfoy?" she sighed. The paper was folded, rumpled, crumpled, and had the name 'Draco Malfoy' scrawled in large cursive letters on the front. Draco snatched the paper from her fingers.
"What do you think, Chang? If it says my name on it, then it's probably mine!" he snapped. Cho held her hands up in surrender.
"Sorry! I was just making sure! Touchy touchy," she said. Meanwhile, Hermione had caught a glimpse of Draco's paper.
"How can people read that chicken scratch?" she inquired. "You can't tell if you've got the right answers or not, because the writing is so sloppy!"
Draco sneered. "And what are you? Teacher of Handwriting 101? Excuse me, Professor Granger!" Hermione was about to retort, but Rosemary, seeing the sparks beginning to fly, interrupted.
"Both of you, enough. Just get your papers so we can get out of here, and to class," she chided. Grumbling, but heeding her advice, Hermione and Draco dropped to all fours and started sorting through pieces of parchment.
"Granger, this is yours," Draco said, throwing a piece of parchment into Hermione's face. Hermione grabbed it and shoved it into her bookbag.
Rosemary had found a piece of Cho's paper, and was about to hand it to her, when an odd smell filled her nose, making her sneeze. To her surprise, the others did the same.
"It smells like tea!" Cho cried, sneezing again. Draco covered his nose and looked at her from a pair of watery eyes.
"Yeah, tea from a pepper plant!" he choked out.
"Wow, I feel sleepy....." Hermione said, yawning. Her head started to loll about uneasily, and then a vision flashed across her closed eyelids.
Nervous....Nervous.....Never been so nervous.....Escape tonight.....Tom's asleep....Not asleep yet?....When....
Along with these snippets of questions and statements that Hermione was hearing, she also was having some strange visions of tealeaves and tapestries. The tapestry showed the way to the sunny side, the Light over the Dark....
With a gasp, Hermione threw herself from the vision, and looked over at the other three. Three sets of terrified eyes met her own. Without another word, they snatched up their bookbags, and left the hall quickly.
# # #
"Chenelle, good to see you," Tom Riddle said, sounding overly good-natured to Chenelle. He was going to try to get information out of her, Chenelle thought bitterly. She set her jaw. But today, he wasn't going to push her around. Not today!
She began to fix the tea, trying to avoid Tom's eye. But she could feel his piercing gaze on her back as she maneuvered around, putting 'tealeaves' in the teaball, and dropping the ball into the 'water'. She turned around, trying to look cool and natural. It would be about five minutes before the tea finished steeping. Five minutes! It seemed like half an eternity.
"So, Chenelle," Tom said coolly. "How was you day, today?" Chenelle wiped sweat off of her upper lip.
"Just fine, Master. No different from any of the other ones, nor any after shall be," she recited, thinking very carefully about every word before letting her lips form it. Tom nodded, raising his eyebrows.
"I see! Well, then. I think that the tea is ready, my dear."
Chenelle nodded, and with shaking hands, poured tea into the teacup, watching as the amber liquid sloshed about. It looked like regular tea. Would Tom think it was?
She handed him the teacup, and he looked at it. "Honey, if you please," he ordered. Chenelle wordlessly handed him the honey bowl, and he poured some in, mixing it slowly.
All of this waiting was agony to Chenelle. It took all of her restraint to keep from yelling 'Just drink it!'. But she kept it bottled inside.
Finally, he took a small sip. "Hmm. This tastes slightly....different. Spicier, I guess. Ahh, I'll have to get some more tea, then. I like it fresh better." And with that, he downed the entire cup.
Chenelle stood there, watching him yawn. The first two yawns, he didn't seem to mind much. It was after the third yawn when he looked at her, accusingly.
"You.....!" he started, but he fell asleep before he could finish his sentence.
Chenelle looked at him for a couple of seconds. Then she took one slow step back, followed by another. Finally, she turned tail and fled to where her friends were waiting.
# # #
Hayley ran out the door with her friends, the tapestry clutched in her right hand. They were going to follow this river trail; to wherever it led, or come back dead, they promised each other as they fled the castle.
Gabriel had the sword and shield clutched in her hands, and sprinted after Sarah, who was carrying a chain, she had found in her hand like a whip. Robert was just running, while Chenelle had a burlap sack slung over one shoulder.
Hayley looked behind at Castle Sapius, slowly disappearing behind the cloud of dust that they were kicking up. She had no idea where she was going, or if she was even going to get there.
One thing was for sure, she wasn't going back.
Authors note: This part finished, one to go! (or, unless I get a severe case of what I like to call 'Writers Enlightenment', when you get an idea and can't stop typing about it.....That's happened to me several times before... -_-;;.) Well, tell me what you think! Questions, comments, oversized hunks of stone to chuck at my head? (well, I hope not....)
~Moxie ^_^ (you know the spiel. No flames!)
Disclaimer: All of these riddles belong to me! I didn't even get any inspiration from anything! They're mine! ::Dances around with pride:: If you look over the story, you should know what is mine and what is property of J.K Rowling.....Or so I hope.....