Beth had never actually been nervous before a meal, but she found her hands shaking as she brushed out her hair on the eve of the Halloween feast.
Of course, she had never actually skipped a meal to go sneaking around in forbidden areas of the castle either.
The powder room which served the third and fourth year Slytherin girls rang with giggles and excited chatter about hair, makeup, and the boys that might be willing to dance after the music began. Antigone kept flipping her silky, golden hair over one shoulder or the other, and making insinuations about who she would be seen with that night.
"That Davies boy, the Ravenclaw. He's nice-looking," she yawned to her friends. "Although you know, I saw Cedric Diggory giving me quite a naughty glance in the library the other day."
"Ugh, I can't believe you would want to date a Hufflepuff!" one of them squealed in disgust.
"Don't let her fool you, she's in love with Neville Longbottom," another giggled snidely. By now, Longbottom's reputation as a klutz had penetrated even the upper classes in different houses.
"You know, some of the first-year boys are rather charming," Antigone said, with a little wink.
That caused an uproar. Beth took the opportunity to sneak in a glance at the long vanity mirror that was usually commandeered by Antigone's crowd. Bushy blonde hair and a jutting chin, and still too tall, she noted dourly. That made her the ugliest girl in the class. She tore herself away from her reflection. Good thing she wasn't going to the feast; no one would ask her to dance anyway.
Melissa, who had been ready for an hour, danced around nervously in the bedroom until Beth came back; together, they went down the long staircase to the common room. "You look good," Melissa commented offhandedly. Beth snorted.
Vivian was waiting near the fireplace. She looked as if she'd spent time on her hair and face, just like the others, and her eyes sparkled in anticipation -- although for a totally different reason, Beth acknowledged with a grin.
"Follow me."
Beth and Melissa joined the clamoring group on the way to the feast, keeping close sight on Vivian. Beth noticed that there were a few Slytherins together; she recognized them without knowing them. They could say that they'd seen the group going to the feast, she realized, without paying attention to whether they made it or not.
On the way down a wide hallway, just a few corridors before the Great Hall, Vivian (very discreetly, Beth thought) made a turn into one of the girls' restrooms. Beth and Melissa followed, leaving the throng to continue on to the feast.
"Not bad," said Melissa, impressed, but Vivian put a finger to her lips. Melissa closed her mouth and they listened closely. An anxious sort of sniffling was coming from one of the stalls, coupled with intermittent sobs.
Melissa scowled at the stall where the crying girl presumably sat. What now? she mouthed.
Wait, Vivian replied silently.
For nearly ten minutes they stood around awkwardly in the bathroom, listening to the hidden girl sob. At one point a harried Ravenclaw dashed in to fix her hair; Beth ducked into a stall, while Vivian and Melissa gazed into the mirrors over the row of sinks and pretended to be checking their lipstick. Soon, the halls (if not the crying girl) grew silent, and Vivian determined with a nod that it was safe to start their mission.
One by one they filed out of the bathroom and started toward the third-floor corridor. Vivian led them on an intricate path of little-used hallways and skinny staircases that wouldn't creak under their weight. The classrooms were shut and locked; the suits of armor, seeming bored, watched them with great interest and much comment until Vivian hushed them sharply and mentioned the Bloody Baron. His name had power over more than Peeves, it seemed.
The halls were eerily silent; Beth had rarely been in them without the rush of students, especially this late. The stonework echoed every careful footfall, and their shadows stretched along the wall in the sparse lighting.
Vivian peered around a corner and motioned for the others to follow her when she saw that it was clear. "Remember," she said in a low voice, "Peeves isn't allowed to go to the Halloween feast. That means he's somewhere around here, and he'll probably be in a bad mood."
"How out of character that would be," Melissa remarked snidely.
Vivian put on a look that made her resemble McGonagall. "He also knows that the Baron will be at the feast. If we run into Peeves, there's no scaring him away."
"And we'd be caught in a minute," Beth agreed under her breath.
Melissa gave her a dirty look.
Before they knew it, the three stood before the broad, thick door to the third-floor corridor. Vivian took out her wand and turned to the others.
"All right, whatever's back there, we either need to stupefy it, nullify it or get away from it, so have your wands ready. Stay behind the door in case it's a curse; then we'll come out and see what's there, and deal with it accordingly. Be ready to shut the door in a second if we have to! I'll go first."
They backed up behind the door, in a line, huddled against one another. Vivian reached out with her wand and tapped the heavy lock once. "Aholomora." The lock sprang open. Vivian stretched out her hand and grasped the heavy handle ... slowly she cracked open the door ... she peered around into the widening gap ...
"Stupefy! Close it!" In one motion, Vivian leapt around the door and thrust her wand inside the corridor. She leapt back in time for Beth and Melissa to heave the door shut. Vivian's eyes were wide, her hands trembling.
"Well?" Melissa demanded in a nervous hiss.
"Cerberus," Vivian panted. Her voice shook. "Three-headed dog. Enormous. I got one of his heads, though. We can shut him down with another round, everybody at once. Well -- ready?"
Beth didn't feel remotely ready to take on a three-headed giant dog, but she nodded, cotton-mouthed.
"All right." Vivian reached out and grasped the door handle.
"Stupefy!"
The door flew open and all three spell went ricocheting into the open corridor. For a moment, Beth couldn't make out what was going on; then she was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of an enormous brown creature stumbling, falling, thudding onto the ground.
Melissa's breathing was shallow. "Not so bad."
Vivian smiled grimly, reassuringly. "Not at all. Let's hurry up and check it out; we only have a few minutes." She stepped through the door and carefully circumvented the stunned creature.
"Not much here," Beth assessed nervously. The hall was deserted, except for the enormous sleeping cerberus, and there were no doors or windows. "D'you think he's guarding something, or he's the secret himself?"
"Guarding," Vivian said.
"Definitely," Melissa agreed. "He's guarding that trapdoor." She pointed toward the cerberus.
Hardly a yard from where the dog lay was a trapdoor in the floor. Wooden and small, it would be just wide enough for an adult to get through. Beth didn't think she wanted to see where it led.
Vivian had a different opinion. She marched up to the trapdoor and crouched over it; wand ready, she cracked it open, then flipped it the whole way and bent over the dark hole.
"Lumos."
Beth and Melissa crowded in behind her. Through the light from Vivian's wand, they could barely make out a tangle of green far below.
"That's it?" Melissa said, disappointed. "A plant?"
"Might be something rare," Vivian guessed in a whisper. "Or it's another guardian ... maybe the whole thing's full of guardians, Sphinxes and things ..."
"And killer plants," Beth added a little too loudly.
Vivian pursed her lips. "We can't go down there now, we haven't got time and there's no one backing us up. Besides, I'm not sure if the horrible death that Dumbledore mentioned referred to being eaten by the dog, or something else."
Beth shuddered.
Vivian extinguished her wand and rose to her feet. "We've got enough to work with. Let's get out!" Just then the cerberus gave a sleepy snort and opened four of its eyes. The three girls hurtled out the door and slammed it just as the three-headed creature staggered to its feet, baring its teeth.
"Close," Melissa gasped, leaning against the door.
"That's the name of the game," Vivian agreed. "We can head back as soon as I lock the place back up. Leave no trace, that's the motto."
Suddenly Melissa stood up straighter.
"I think I hear someone."
"Don't make jokes," Vivian said offhandedly, fiddling with the lock.
"No, I mean it!" Melissa's eyes widened. "They're coming this way!"
Now Beth could begin to make out a sound ... steady and pattering, and getting louder by the second.
Vivian cast about wildly. Then she reached out and grabbed Melissa and Beth by their hands. Linked like that, in a circle, Vivian closed her eyes as if summoning a deep thought, or a deep wellspring of power.
"Ceteris paribus."
Melissa gasped. The three rings started to glow red, a bloody light seeping from the center of the pewter crest. Vivian let go of their hands. She took out her wand and said quietly, "Disapparate."
Beth felt a wind pick up around her. It billowed out her cloak and sent her hair streaming to one side. A sort of dizziness started to cloud her vision, like stars in the rim of her sight ... it was almost like trying to stay upright in the Floo network ...
And then it stopped.
Beth felt herself lurch to her knees as nausea came crashing down. She heard Melissa let out a moan beside her. Then Vivian was on the floor beside her, apologizing through the waves of dizziness. Gradually Beth started to tune in what she was saying.
"We had to get out. I don't know any other way."
Beth sat back with a thud. "What?" she murmured. The clouds in her brain began to lift.
"I've never tried it like that before. I knew it would work, but you two are so young still, I'm sorry."
"What did you do?" Melissa groaned. She lay on her side on the ground, clutching her stomach.
"I Apparated us."
Beth opened her eyes. "So we're not ... in the corridor?" She sounded woozy and distant.
"No. We're in the common room. I Apparated back here, and brought you with me."
Melissa sat up groggily. "I thought you couldn't Apparate in the castle," she slurred, although she was beginning to sound coherent again.
"You can't Apparate into the castle or onto the grounds. From room to room, there's no restrictions."
"But only one person can Apparate, I mean it only works individually." Beth stood up and felt the blood rush to her head. Vivian caught her before she could stumble back down. They were in the common room, Beth realized. Fifteen minutes to get to the corridor, and ten seconds to get back.
"No wonder you have to have a license," Melissa said. She stood up more slowly, and headed toward one of the high-backed chairs.
Vivian followed her and the three of them sat in a circle. Beth couldn't remember ever feeling so wiped out. "We look awful," she blurted, and they started to laugh.
"How did you do that again?" Melissa persisted.
"I invoked Ceteris Paribus," Vivian replied, a little grimly. "I've never done that before. It's built into the rings -- another of Riddle's best ideas -- so that a spell on one of the wearers works on all of the wearers. Provided you can get close enough to touch them," she added. "Otherwise the whole SSA would be here too, and I mean all hundred twenty-two."
The thought of Bruce standing in the common room, looking bewildered, made Beth laugh again. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. What a crazy evening. She'd be happy just to get to bed.
"What did you do, run all the way back?"
Beth opened her eyes. In front of her stood Bruce, flanked by Aaron and Warrington. "Yeah," she said softly. "Couldn't wait to get to bed."
"Man, I wish I could see it," Aaron exclaimed enthusiastically, though he looked a little fearful at the same time.
"We could take it on." Warrington slapped a fist into his open palm.
What were they talking about? Melissa gave Vivian a confused look.
"Incredible," said Bruce. He raised his voice a very little bit and looked around at the three girls. "How could a troll get into the castle?"
Melissa's mouth fell open. "I don't know," she enunciated, managing to conceal most of her surprise.
"Maybe it broke in a window or something," Vivian suggested excitedly. "Who's going after it?" She was a good actress, Beth noted. She'd picked up just the right combination of fascination and surprise.
"Dumbledore, I guess," Warrington shrugged. "Snape too. He sent us back with Jerome."
By now the whole of Slytherin was crowded into the common room, babbling about the danger. In the middle of it all, Jerome Marx seemed to be simultaneously calling out instructions to the older students and reassuring the terrified first-year girls.
"We're safe in here! They'll have it out in no time! Just go to bed!" he shouted in a harried voice, turning in every direction at once. "The feast is over anyway! Let's just not have fifty people in the common room, all right?"
Some of the more obedient students began to filter upstairs. Beth and Melissa rose from their seats, yawning, and followed the herds back to their bedchambers. On the way, Beth leaned over to Melissa's ear.
"Those footsteps must have been the troll," she whispered, wide-eyed. "And we just missed getting crushed by it!"
Melissa gave a little nervous laugh. "Crushed by a troll, eaten by a monster dog, caught in the forbidden hallway ... what's it matter, in the name of Slytherin?"
"Gloria serpens," Beth replied.