She stood there for a minute, just looking at the door. She had no idea
what she was going to do as she debated in her mind. Finally, she walked
toward the door; she was sentenced to twenty years in Azkaban, if she got
in trouble at school it couldn't be much worse. Just as her hand was about
to grasp the doorknob, she heard a banging noise and jumped. Spinning
around, she peered into the darkness ahead of her.
"Who's there?" She called out nervously, and then realized that doing this would definitely get her caught. She slapped herself on the forehead, completely forgetting her wand, and pulled it out. "Lumos."
Ron raised his hand to shield the light from his eyes. "Fae, what are you doing?" He asked suddenly: accusingly. She realized he still thought that she was the one who did all of this, and perhaps assumed that she was out to take more students for victim before she was expelled. Did he even know about it?
She blinked. "I was about to ask you the same."
"Yeah, well I asked you first," He paused, "You look like you're about to go to a funeral."
Fae realized that she was still in the black dress she had worn to go to the Ministry. For a while there was silence and she whispered "Nox" to put out her light, and they just stood before each other, shrouded in the darkness. Finally, she answered his question. "I'm going to save the day, wanna come with?" She said sarcastically.
"Save the day?" He exclaimed. "*You're* the one who did all of this-"
A loud meowing noise cut them off. They looked down and Fae pointed her wand again. "Lumos." She repeated uneasily. She prayed that it was Pluto, but instead they saw Filch's cat before them. It meowed again, and his voice echoed from somewhere down the hall.
"Is that you, my sweet? Did you find us some nasty students to take care of?"
Ron turned to her quickly. "Put it out! Put it out!" he exclaimed, and in a mad attempt to grab it from her, knocked it onto the floor. It shone in the cat's eyes and onto Filch's shadow on the wall farthest away.
"Ah, yes, we do have us some game to catch." Fae could have sworn he cackled.
She bent over to pick up her wand, but Ron grabbed her arm. "No time!" He hissed in her ear, and pulled her into the door they had been standing by. She started to protest and say that she had seen someone's shadow on the other side, but it was too late. They were inside and the door was swiftly and soundlessly shut.
+ + +
Fae started looking around the room nervously for the shadow she had seen earlier, but found no moving objects. In fact, it was completely dark again.strange. They pressed their ears up against the door and listened for Filch to leave. They saw the light on the outside of the door being lifted up and heard him mumble the extinguishing spell. He turned to his cat and eventually meandered back down the hall. Ron and Fae turned their backs against the wall and heaved a sigh of relief. For a long time they didn't say anything, until she finally asked a question.
"Why did you come here?"
He shrugged. "Why did you?"
Instead of going along with the whole who-asked-who-first ordeal again, she answered his question. "I'm not really sure. I just woke up and figured I had to do something. I'm not going to get expelled for something that I didn't do."
Suddenly, the heavens opened, and for one time since the entire period that she had known him, Ron kept his mouth shut. He just nodded, and they continued to look ahead into the darkness.
"I suppose we get a move-on, then." He said, breaking the silence.
She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, though she doubted he could see in the vast darkness. "You're going to help me?" she asked, as he preformed the Lumos spell on his own wand. She saw his ears go pink and he looked flustered.
"I'm not *helping* you, Fae. I came here before I even knew that you were going to." He stepped off into the darkness.
"Sure, Ron, sure." She mumbled under her breath, and followed after his wand light.
Neither of them had seen the room in the light before, and they realized just why. As they stepped forward, they were constantly stopping and screeching at the spiders crawling out of their paths. Both of them being extremely scared of spiders, this didn't make anything better. As their shoes padded on the cold stone floors, they were constantly spinning around nervously searching the room at any sound. Especially those that seemed even relatively close to spider legs running.
"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Fae finally asked stepping over a large crumbled stone. She grabbed his wand from him and shone it to the ceiling. They were definitely not in a well-kept part of the school; the walls were crumbling and there was what appeared to be dead ivy leaves crawling up the sides. A spider scrambled into a hole in the wall when the light hit it, and they both shuddered.
"No," he said curtly and snatched the wand back. "Do you?"
"Just following the leader," she said sarcastically.
+ + +
They walked for who knows how long, until Ron stopped before her. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" she asked, but only received a "Shh!" to silence her. She listened intently, leaning over his outstretched arm. Finally, she heard the distant sound of running water; it sounded like a small stream. They exchanged glances and then kept walking for some ways before they reached a long flight of stairs that spiraled downward into darkness.
"Should we go?" she asked nervously.
He looked over at her and flicked a small smile. "That's why we came here, miss brilliance." He said sarcastically and walked down the stairs with ease. She sighed and followed after him, silently wishing that she were as half as brave as he was. Ron wouldn't admit to it, but he was shaking as they clambered down the stone steps.
+ + +
They reached the bottom and the sound of the water was amplified, and the air was suddenly very damp. They couldn't see much, and Fae wished that she hadn't of dropped her wand. As soon as Ron's foot touched the last step of the staircase, it crumbled and he lost his poise. He teetered forward for a bit, grabbed Fae for balance, but ended up falling any way. The two tumbled down into the darkness and soon felt their bodies meet with the harsh slap of freezing cold water. They were swept away, Ron clutching onto his wand as if it were some kind of floatation device. Fae would surface and then go under, then come back up again coughing and gasping for breath.
Eventually, she surfaced and barely caught a glimpse of an abrupt drop off a few feet ahead. She tried to claw her way over to the side, but it was too late and she was thrown down the small waterfall. She was lucky that it wasn't any bigger, because the water at the bottom was only a thin layer and she landed hard on the ground. Fae gasped at the sharp pain shooting through her arm and rolled out of the way of the waterfall incase Ron came tumbling down. She staggered to her feet and looked around.
She couldn't see a thing. It was completely dark. Eventually, she saw the soft flickering of a light in the distance: Ron's wand. She ran over in the direction of the glow, clutching her left arm tightly; she figured it was either sprained or broken.
"Ron!" she called. She finally reached the flickering light and saw him a few feet away from his wand, lying on his back. "Ron!" she exclaimed in a harsh whisper, and kneeled by his side. Reaching out a hand, she grasped his shoulder and shook. She said his name again and kept shaking, and after a while his eyes fluttered open.
Ron sat up abruptly and started coughing up water. He went on for a few minutes heaving water and then grabbed his forehead. He put his hand in front of his face and saw red stains on his fingertips. "Bloody hell.." he murmured.
Fae noticed and shone his wand up to his face, as his pupils contracted. "You're bleeding," she stated the obvious.
"Well gee Fae, thanks for telling me! Cause I sure hadn't noticed!" he exclaimed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. She clenched her teeth, wondering how he could be sarcastic at a time like this. She just hung her head, fighting to not say something back.
He looked at her and sighed. "Sorry," he said, and then aimed his wand toward the cut. "Consutum," he said and the blood seemed to evaporate and all that was left was a small, temporary scar. He felt it with his fingertips and then looked at her arm. "Bloody hell, what happened to you?"
Her arm was turning a nice shade of fuchsia and something beneath her skin looked out of place. Ron winced. "It looks broken."
"It feels broken," she retorted. He looked at his wand and back to her arm.
"Give it here."
"Oh sure Ron, I'll just hand it right over to you. Right, so you can make things worse for me." Her sarcasm was completely ignored as he pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Ferula."
A sling appeared on her arm out of nowhere. She blinked and stared at him in disbelief. "Oh.." was all she could manage to say. He just looked back with a goofy-looking smile of satisfaction and got to his feet.
"C'mon," he said, offering her his hand. She took it with her good hand-her left-and he raised her to her feet. He preformed the Lumos spell again, and they continued walking. The sound of the water was behind their backs now, and Fae was trembling to know what was coming up ahead of them.
+ + +
As they kept walking, they realized that they didn't seem to be in a hall any more; it was more like a cave. The walls were declining as they went on, and they eventually were forced to lean forward to an uncomfortable position. Eventually they reached a bigger room, with the same river deviously flowing to their right. There was a dead end a short way ahead, and another drop off to the side of the wall. On the wall across from them was a large door.
"Great. Now what?" Ron asked, seeming to lose all hope.
Fae took his wand and shone it around the wall, searching for another way out. Finally, the light spilled over a very small tunnel. She got down on her knees and looked in. There was a small amount of light coming from the other side, like the sun behind the clouds. "Look!" she called.
Ron came to her side and kneeled down before her. "That's probably where we need to go," he said, more to himself than to her.
She flipped a piece of her still soaking-wet hair behind her ear. "I'll go through here, and you go through the door," she said.
"What? Are you mad?"
"I just might be," she said, and got down on her free hand and knees, ready to crawl in. He grabbed her shoulder and brought her back up to her feet. She sighed irritably and looked up at him. "Ron. No offense, but you're not small enough to fit through there. It's our best bet to split up and then meet up wherever these things join."
"What if they don't meet up?"
She put her hands on her hips impatiently. "Well we're not going to figure it out if we just stand here, now are we?"
After a moment of him flicking her eyes nervously from her to the hole, he sighed. "Fine. But take this." He shoved his wand into her hands. "It's not the best in the world. It's broken a few times, but I think you'll need it."
She looked back up to him in disbelief at the courtesy he was showing. "Well what are you going to use?"
"I have both arms incase I need to fight something. Do you know many attack spells?"
"One or two." She turned to the hole, crossed herself-it had grown into a habit, she being from a Catholic family-and muttered "Taim i' ngra leat, Mum, Da."
He looked at her with a confused look, and she smiled softly. "It's Irish- Gaelic for 'I love you', and I just added Mum and Da. Incase I die somehow. Which I won't, so don't worry."
He gave her the look that suggested he was going to protest, but she cut him off. "I'll be fine," she said, and turned her back to him before he could stop her again. She heard him moving towards her, and she heaved a sigh, ready to defend that she was strong enough to handle this and she wasn't a little girl. But the next thing she felt were strong arms wrapping around her shoulders, and she almost gasped.
"Be careful, Stormy," he mumbled in her ear and let her go. She only nodded and didn't look back as she put his wand in between her teeth, and began to edge into the small tunnel on her hand and knees.
She crawled and crawled for what seemed like an eternity. A few times she had to use Stupefy on some rather huge spiders that sped after and toward her. She was covered in cobwebs and other icky substances, but she eventually made her way out of the tunnel. After she stood up, she bent over and peered out through the hollow. Ron was standing on the other side. He had a weak smile on and she frailly waved at him before they both went their separate ways.
It was still very dimly lit, and she preformed the Lumos spell again. As soon as she preformed it though, torches suddenly ignited, lighting the entire room. She jumped and spun around, searching for whoever had lit them. However, she found no one. Nervously, she looked around and saw that she was still alone, and that she was in a very large room. The walls were stone, but they weren't as crumbled and destroyed as the other ones she had seen. There was a gigantic square pit ahead of her covering up most of the room. Far, far above it was a ledge leading up to a huge wooden doorway with two U-shaped door handles.
She assumed that somehow she would need to get up there, but she had no idea how. The pit seemed to be endless, and she figured that she would need to figure out its depth somehow. She kneeled down and picked up a small rock off of the ground, and slowly edged her way toward the pit. Cautiously, she raised her hand over the pit and dropped the pebble. She waited a long, long time, and heard nothing.
Cursing under her breath, she stood there for a long time, wondering just how she was supposed to get up to that ledge. She was pacing and pacing, when suddenly she heard a low growl from behind her.
She spun around and saw eight eyes peering at her from somewhere in the shadows of a back wall. Fae let out a small gasp and took a step back, and the growl sounded again.
"Ron?" she squeaked, although she knew it was impossible for him to be that high up, let alone have eight eyes.
A long, hairy leg poked out from the shadows-a spider's leg. She let out a whimper. Why did it have to be a spider? She would have had Lions, three- headed dogs, and dragons... anything but a spider. Clutching Ron's wand with a death grip, she took another involuntary step back, and nearly lost her balance and fell backwards into the pit. She let out a yelp and fell forward onto her knees as the spider crawled out into plain view.
And it was huge.
She quickly stood to her feet and took a few steps forward just enough to not be on the edge of the pit. The spider stood up and stretched to its full height, and Fae finally decided that she was going to have to do something if she didn't want to be eaten.
Pointing her wand at it, she shouted "Deletrius!"
The spider leaped up into the air and her spell missed completely. Before she could run out of the way, it came crashing down on top of her, knocking her onto her back. She let out a scream as it started spitting some sort of web at her. She rolled out of the way, but it still wrapped around her legs, binding them together. Rolling over onto her back again, she aimed the wand at its face. She used the stupefy spell again, but it moved out of the way and she barely hit it.
Cursing under her breath at her bad aim, she started army crawling out from underneath it. The stun would probably only blind it for a few moments, and she didn't have much time. She aimed the wand at the web binding her legs together and used the fire spell. It burned off of her quickly, but also slightly scorched her skin.
She got to her slightly maimed feet just as the spider turned to her and lunged one of its front legs at her. It pierced her up against the wall by her arm that was already broken. She choked on the scream in her throat as the spider leg impaled her skin.
The spider let out some sort of roar and opened its ugly mouth to spit more webs at her, but she aimed the wand directly into its throat and shouted as loud as she could, "Incendio!"
The web that had already left its mouth caught on fire, and as if a lit fuse, traveled up to its head and it ignited. It reared up somehow onto its hind legs and screeched, giving her time to run out of the way before it collapsed back onto the ground and burned slowly. She stood there for a brief moment before turning to her arm. The entire arm of her black, lacy dress was cut to shreds and a dark red liquid was covering its expanse and rolling down off of her fingertips onto the floor. She bit her lip, trying to remember the spell Ron had used to get rid of his cut, but she couldn't recall it. She needed to find him so he could help her.
+ + +
She looked up to where she had seen the ledge, and now that the room was brighter-the spider's corpse was still burning behind her-she could see something glinting in the firelight, leading up to the ledge. She squinted, trying to get a better look, and then picked up another pebble off of the ground. Throwing as best as she could since she wasn't very ambidextrous, she missed completely. After a few tries, she hit right where she had seen the glint and the rock made a panging noise and bounced off of what appeared to be thin air.
She pointed her wand and shouted "Solaris!" A huge ray of light escaped from the wand and revealed a long, winding glass staircase. They created a prism and formed colorful writing on the far wall: She who you trusted most will prove to be opposite.
She moved the direction of the light farther down the staircase, and another message appeared: Enemies of the heir, beware.
"That's not too welcoming," she said out loud. "But who is 'she' that they're talking about?"
She stood for a minute with her wand pointed at the stairs, reading the message over and over, and eventually decided that she would just have to walk up there if she wanted to find out. Glancing over her shoulder to see if the spider had somehow come back to life, she saw that it was still aflame. She kept her wand pointed ahead and took a deep breath, then uneasily put her foot down on the first step.
She pressed all of her weight down on it, and nothing happened. She heaved a sigh of relief and put her other foot on the second step, and then kept going. She was up to about the fourth step when she heard a noise that sounded like ice cracking. She slowly turned around and saw that the first two steps had spider web cracks in them, and then they suddenly burst into shards of glass and fell down into the pit.
"Cripes!" she exclaimed, and turned and started running as fast as she could up the stairs. The steps behind her were bursting and falling into darkness faster and faster, and she wasn't even halfway up yet. But she had to keep running. She wasn't going to fall and let this be the end of it. A look of determination crossed over her face, and keeping her eyes fixated on the ledge before her, she ran faster.
She was at the third to last step when she felt the step she was standing on break under her, and shards of glass press into her back and legs. She gave a disgruntled cry and threw herself up onto the ledge, just as the last two stairs disappeared. Everything below her waist was hanging over the side of the ledge as she grabbed onto the stone floors and tried to pull herself up with her good arm.
Finally, she swung her legs over the side and rolled over onto the ledge, breathing as if she had just run the mile. And it felt like she had. After a few moments of regaining her breath, she finally crawled back to her feet and tucked her wand into her stocking. She made her way to the door and with great effort, pulled it open.
+ + +
Fae groaned: another staircase. Performing the Lumos spell, she painfully made her way down the stairs, counting everything on her body that was even the least bit sore. Her legs were burnt slightly, her arm was broken and nearly impaled; she'd probably carry the scar for the rest of her life, she had minor cuts all over her legs and a rather large piece of glass was sticking into her back. Not to mention every muscle felt like it was jell-o and her feet were tired from walking in her dress shoes.
She stumbled down off of the last step, after what seemed like an eternity, and found her self to be in a fairly large room. It was much smaller than the last one, and it actually had windows. They were circular stained glass, but they did let light in. There was also a tall mirror at the far wall opposing her with a sword hanging from the wall, and another doorway down towards the end also.
Walking down a ways, she stopped in front of one of the mirrors. She looked an absolute fright. Her dress was completely tattered, and she was bloody all over, it seemed. The only thing that symbolized that it was, in fact she, and not some horrible zombie, was that her gray eyes were still very much alive.
"Fae!"
She turned around and saw Ron standing at the door opposite to the one she had come in. He appeared to be in little less a bad condition than she was. He had a black eye and his cut on his fore head appeared to be re-opened. His white uniform shirt was also just as tattered and some of its left sleeve was red with blood, and he had holes in the knees of his black pants. But he looked nothing less than happy to see her.
"Ron!" she shouted back, and limped over to him as fast as she could.
"Who's there?" She called out nervously, and then realized that doing this would definitely get her caught. She slapped herself on the forehead, completely forgetting her wand, and pulled it out. "Lumos."
Ron raised his hand to shield the light from his eyes. "Fae, what are you doing?" He asked suddenly: accusingly. She realized he still thought that she was the one who did all of this, and perhaps assumed that she was out to take more students for victim before she was expelled. Did he even know about it?
She blinked. "I was about to ask you the same."
"Yeah, well I asked you first," He paused, "You look like you're about to go to a funeral."
Fae realized that she was still in the black dress she had worn to go to the Ministry. For a while there was silence and she whispered "Nox" to put out her light, and they just stood before each other, shrouded in the darkness. Finally, she answered his question. "I'm going to save the day, wanna come with?" She said sarcastically.
"Save the day?" He exclaimed. "*You're* the one who did all of this-"
A loud meowing noise cut them off. They looked down and Fae pointed her wand again. "Lumos." She repeated uneasily. She prayed that it was Pluto, but instead they saw Filch's cat before them. It meowed again, and his voice echoed from somewhere down the hall.
"Is that you, my sweet? Did you find us some nasty students to take care of?"
Ron turned to her quickly. "Put it out! Put it out!" he exclaimed, and in a mad attempt to grab it from her, knocked it onto the floor. It shone in the cat's eyes and onto Filch's shadow on the wall farthest away.
"Ah, yes, we do have us some game to catch." Fae could have sworn he cackled.
She bent over to pick up her wand, but Ron grabbed her arm. "No time!" He hissed in her ear, and pulled her into the door they had been standing by. She started to protest and say that she had seen someone's shadow on the other side, but it was too late. They were inside and the door was swiftly and soundlessly shut.
+ + +
Fae started looking around the room nervously for the shadow she had seen earlier, but found no moving objects. In fact, it was completely dark again.strange. They pressed their ears up against the door and listened for Filch to leave. They saw the light on the outside of the door being lifted up and heard him mumble the extinguishing spell. He turned to his cat and eventually meandered back down the hall. Ron and Fae turned their backs against the wall and heaved a sigh of relief. For a long time they didn't say anything, until she finally asked a question.
"Why did you come here?"
He shrugged. "Why did you?"
Instead of going along with the whole who-asked-who-first ordeal again, she answered his question. "I'm not really sure. I just woke up and figured I had to do something. I'm not going to get expelled for something that I didn't do."
Suddenly, the heavens opened, and for one time since the entire period that she had known him, Ron kept his mouth shut. He just nodded, and they continued to look ahead into the darkness.
"I suppose we get a move-on, then." He said, breaking the silence.
She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, though she doubted he could see in the vast darkness. "You're going to help me?" she asked, as he preformed the Lumos spell on his own wand. She saw his ears go pink and he looked flustered.
"I'm not *helping* you, Fae. I came here before I even knew that you were going to." He stepped off into the darkness.
"Sure, Ron, sure." She mumbled under her breath, and followed after his wand light.
Neither of them had seen the room in the light before, and they realized just why. As they stepped forward, they were constantly stopping and screeching at the spiders crawling out of their paths. Both of them being extremely scared of spiders, this didn't make anything better. As their shoes padded on the cold stone floors, they were constantly spinning around nervously searching the room at any sound. Especially those that seemed even relatively close to spider legs running.
"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Fae finally asked stepping over a large crumbled stone. She grabbed his wand from him and shone it to the ceiling. They were definitely not in a well-kept part of the school; the walls were crumbling and there was what appeared to be dead ivy leaves crawling up the sides. A spider scrambled into a hole in the wall when the light hit it, and they both shuddered.
"No," he said curtly and snatched the wand back. "Do you?"
"Just following the leader," she said sarcastically.
+ + +
They walked for who knows how long, until Ron stopped before her. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" she asked, but only received a "Shh!" to silence her. She listened intently, leaning over his outstretched arm. Finally, she heard the distant sound of running water; it sounded like a small stream. They exchanged glances and then kept walking for some ways before they reached a long flight of stairs that spiraled downward into darkness.
"Should we go?" she asked nervously.
He looked over at her and flicked a small smile. "That's why we came here, miss brilliance." He said sarcastically and walked down the stairs with ease. She sighed and followed after him, silently wishing that she were as half as brave as he was. Ron wouldn't admit to it, but he was shaking as they clambered down the stone steps.
+ + +
They reached the bottom and the sound of the water was amplified, and the air was suddenly very damp. They couldn't see much, and Fae wished that she hadn't of dropped her wand. As soon as Ron's foot touched the last step of the staircase, it crumbled and he lost his poise. He teetered forward for a bit, grabbed Fae for balance, but ended up falling any way. The two tumbled down into the darkness and soon felt their bodies meet with the harsh slap of freezing cold water. They were swept away, Ron clutching onto his wand as if it were some kind of floatation device. Fae would surface and then go under, then come back up again coughing and gasping for breath.
Eventually, she surfaced and barely caught a glimpse of an abrupt drop off a few feet ahead. She tried to claw her way over to the side, but it was too late and she was thrown down the small waterfall. She was lucky that it wasn't any bigger, because the water at the bottom was only a thin layer and she landed hard on the ground. Fae gasped at the sharp pain shooting through her arm and rolled out of the way of the waterfall incase Ron came tumbling down. She staggered to her feet and looked around.
She couldn't see a thing. It was completely dark. Eventually, she saw the soft flickering of a light in the distance: Ron's wand. She ran over in the direction of the glow, clutching her left arm tightly; she figured it was either sprained or broken.
"Ron!" she called. She finally reached the flickering light and saw him a few feet away from his wand, lying on his back. "Ron!" she exclaimed in a harsh whisper, and kneeled by his side. Reaching out a hand, she grasped his shoulder and shook. She said his name again and kept shaking, and after a while his eyes fluttered open.
Ron sat up abruptly and started coughing up water. He went on for a few minutes heaving water and then grabbed his forehead. He put his hand in front of his face and saw red stains on his fingertips. "Bloody hell.." he murmured.
Fae noticed and shone his wand up to his face, as his pupils contracted. "You're bleeding," she stated the obvious.
"Well gee Fae, thanks for telling me! Cause I sure hadn't noticed!" he exclaimed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. She clenched her teeth, wondering how he could be sarcastic at a time like this. She just hung her head, fighting to not say something back.
He looked at her and sighed. "Sorry," he said, and then aimed his wand toward the cut. "Consutum," he said and the blood seemed to evaporate and all that was left was a small, temporary scar. He felt it with his fingertips and then looked at her arm. "Bloody hell, what happened to you?"
Her arm was turning a nice shade of fuchsia and something beneath her skin looked out of place. Ron winced. "It looks broken."
"It feels broken," she retorted. He looked at his wand and back to her arm.
"Give it here."
"Oh sure Ron, I'll just hand it right over to you. Right, so you can make things worse for me." Her sarcasm was completely ignored as he pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Ferula."
A sling appeared on her arm out of nowhere. She blinked and stared at him in disbelief. "Oh.." was all she could manage to say. He just looked back with a goofy-looking smile of satisfaction and got to his feet.
"C'mon," he said, offering her his hand. She took it with her good hand-her left-and he raised her to her feet. He preformed the Lumos spell again, and they continued walking. The sound of the water was behind their backs now, and Fae was trembling to know what was coming up ahead of them.
+ + +
As they kept walking, they realized that they didn't seem to be in a hall any more; it was more like a cave. The walls were declining as they went on, and they eventually were forced to lean forward to an uncomfortable position. Eventually they reached a bigger room, with the same river deviously flowing to their right. There was a dead end a short way ahead, and another drop off to the side of the wall. On the wall across from them was a large door.
"Great. Now what?" Ron asked, seeming to lose all hope.
Fae took his wand and shone it around the wall, searching for another way out. Finally, the light spilled over a very small tunnel. She got down on her knees and looked in. There was a small amount of light coming from the other side, like the sun behind the clouds. "Look!" she called.
Ron came to her side and kneeled down before her. "That's probably where we need to go," he said, more to himself than to her.
She flipped a piece of her still soaking-wet hair behind her ear. "I'll go through here, and you go through the door," she said.
"What? Are you mad?"
"I just might be," she said, and got down on her free hand and knees, ready to crawl in. He grabbed her shoulder and brought her back up to her feet. She sighed irritably and looked up at him. "Ron. No offense, but you're not small enough to fit through there. It's our best bet to split up and then meet up wherever these things join."
"What if they don't meet up?"
She put her hands on her hips impatiently. "Well we're not going to figure it out if we just stand here, now are we?"
After a moment of him flicking her eyes nervously from her to the hole, he sighed. "Fine. But take this." He shoved his wand into her hands. "It's not the best in the world. It's broken a few times, but I think you'll need it."
She looked back up to him in disbelief at the courtesy he was showing. "Well what are you going to use?"
"I have both arms incase I need to fight something. Do you know many attack spells?"
"One or two." She turned to the hole, crossed herself-it had grown into a habit, she being from a Catholic family-and muttered "Taim i' ngra leat, Mum, Da."
He looked at her with a confused look, and she smiled softly. "It's Irish- Gaelic for 'I love you', and I just added Mum and Da. Incase I die somehow. Which I won't, so don't worry."
He gave her the look that suggested he was going to protest, but she cut him off. "I'll be fine," she said, and turned her back to him before he could stop her again. She heard him moving towards her, and she heaved a sigh, ready to defend that she was strong enough to handle this and she wasn't a little girl. But the next thing she felt were strong arms wrapping around her shoulders, and she almost gasped.
"Be careful, Stormy," he mumbled in her ear and let her go. She only nodded and didn't look back as she put his wand in between her teeth, and began to edge into the small tunnel on her hand and knees.
She crawled and crawled for what seemed like an eternity. A few times she had to use Stupefy on some rather huge spiders that sped after and toward her. She was covered in cobwebs and other icky substances, but she eventually made her way out of the tunnel. After she stood up, she bent over and peered out through the hollow. Ron was standing on the other side. He had a weak smile on and she frailly waved at him before they both went their separate ways.
It was still very dimly lit, and she preformed the Lumos spell again. As soon as she preformed it though, torches suddenly ignited, lighting the entire room. She jumped and spun around, searching for whoever had lit them. However, she found no one. Nervously, she looked around and saw that she was still alone, and that she was in a very large room. The walls were stone, but they weren't as crumbled and destroyed as the other ones she had seen. There was a gigantic square pit ahead of her covering up most of the room. Far, far above it was a ledge leading up to a huge wooden doorway with two U-shaped door handles.
She assumed that somehow she would need to get up there, but she had no idea how. The pit seemed to be endless, and she figured that she would need to figure out its depth somehow. She kneeled down and picked up a small rock off of the ground, and slowly edged her way toward the pit. Cautiously, she raised her hand over the pit and dropped the pebble. She waited a long, long time, and heard nothing.
Cursing under her breath, she stood there for a long time, wondering just how she was supposed to get up to that ledge. She was pacing and pacing, when suddenly she heard a low growl from behind her.
She spun around and saw eight eyes peering at her from somewhere in the shadows of a back wall. Fae let out a small gasp and took a step back, and the growl sounded again.
"Ron?" she squeaked, although she knew it was impossible for him to be that high up, let alone have eight eyes.
A long, hairy leg poked out from the shadows-a spider's leg. She let out a whimper. Why did it have to be a spider? She would have had Lions, three- headed dogs, and dragons... anything but a spider. Clutching Ron's wand with a death grip, she took another involuntary step back, and nearly lost her balance and fell backwards into the pit. She let out a yelp and fell forward onto her knees as the spider crawled out into plain view.
And it was huge.
She quickly stood to her feet and took a few steps forward just enough to not be on the edge of the pit. The spider stood up and stretched to its full height, and Fae finally decided that she was going to have to do something if she didn't want to be eaten.
Pointing her wand at it, she shouted "Deletrius!"
The spider leaped up into the air and her spell missed completely. Before she could run out of the way, it came crashing down on top of her, knocking her onto her back. She let out a scream as it started spitting some sort of web at her. She rolled out of the way, but it still wrapped around her legs, binding them together. Rolling over onto her back again, she aimed the wand at its face. She used the stupefy spell again, but it moved out of the way and she barely hit it.
Cursing under her breath at her bad aim, she started army crawling out from underneath it. The stun would probably only blind it for a few moments, and she didn't have much time. She aimed the wand at the web binding her legs together and used the fire spell. It burned off of her quickly, but also slightly scorched her skin.
She got to her slightly maimed feet just as the spider turned to her and lunged one of its front legs at her. It pierced her up against the wall by her arm that was already broken. She choked on the scream in her throat as the spider leg impaled her skin.
The spider let out some sort of roar and opened its ugly mouth to spit more webs at her, but she aimed the wand directly into its throat and shouted as loud as she could, "Incendio!"
The web that had already left its mouth caught on fire, and as if a lit fuse, traveled up to its head and it ignited. It reared up somehow onto its hind legs and screeched, giving her time to run out of the way before it collapsed back onto the ground and burned slowly. She stood there for a brief moment before turning to her arm. The entire arm of her black, lacy dress was cut to shreds and a dark red liquid was covering its expanse and rolling down off of her fingertips onto the floor. She bit her lip, trying to remember the spell Ron had used to get rid of his cut, but she couldn't recall it. She needed to find him so he could help her.
+ + +
She looked up to where she had seen the ledge, and now that the room was brighter-the spider's corpse was still burning behind her-she could see something glinting in the firelight, leading up to the ledge. She squinted, trying to get a better look, and then picked up another pebble off of the ground. Throwing as best as she could since she wasn't very ambidextrous, she missed completely. After a few tries, she hit right where she had seen the glint and the rock made a panging noise and bounced off of what appeared to be thin air.
She pointed her wand and shouted "Solaris!" A huge ray of light escaped from the wand and revealed a long, winding glass staircase. They created a prism and formed colorful writing on the far wall: She who you trusted most will prove to be opposite.
She moved the direction of the light farther down the staircase, and another message appeared: Enemies of the heir, beware.
"That's not too welcoming," she said out loud. "But who is 'she' that they're talking about?"
She stood for a minute with her wand pointed at the stairs, reading the message over and over, and eventually decided that she would just have to walk up there if she wanted to find out. Glancing over her shoulder to see if the spider had somehow come back to life, she saw that it was still aflame. She kept her wand pointed ahead and took a deep breath, then uneasily put her foot down on the first step.
She pressed all of her weight down on it, and nothing happened. She heaved a sigh of relief and put her other foot on the second step, and then kept going. She was up to about the fourth step when she heard a noise that sounded like ice cracking. She slowly turned around and saw that the first two steps had spider web cracks in them, and then they suddenly burst into shards of glass and fell down into the pit.
"Cripes!" she exclaimed, and turned and started running as fast as she could up the stairs. The steps behind her were bursting and falling into darkness faster and faster, and she wasn't even halfway up yet. But she had to keep running. She wasn't going to fall and let this be the end of it. A look of determination crossed over her face, and keeping her eyes fixated on the ledge before her, she ran faster.
She was at the third to last step when she felt the step she was standing on break under her, and shards of glass press into her back and legs. She gave a disgruntled cry and threw herself up onto the ledge, just as the last two stairs disappeared. Everything below her waist was hanging over the side of the ledge as she grabbed onto the stone floors and tried to pull herself up with her good arm.
Finally, she swung her legs over the side and rolled over onto the ledge, breathing as if she had just run the mile. And it felt like she had. After a few moments of regaining her breath, she finally crawled back to her feet and tucked her wand into her stocking. She made her way to the door and with great effort, pulled it open.
+ + +
Fae groaned: another staircase. Performing the Lumos spell, she painfully made her way down the stairs, counting everything on her body that was even the least bit sore. Her legs were burnt slightly, her arm was broken and nearly impaled; she'd probably carry the scar for the rest of her life, she had minor cuts all over her legs and a rather large piece of glass was sticking into her back. Not to mention every muscle felt like it was jell-o and her feet were tired from walking in her dress shoes.
She stumbled down off of the last step, after what seemed like an eternity, and found her self to be in a fairly large room. It was much smaller than the last one, and it actually had windows. They were circular stained glass, but they did let light in. There was also a tall mirror at the far wall opposing her with a sword hanging from the wall, and another doorway down towards the end also.
Walking down a ways, she stopped in front of one of the mirrors. She looked an absolute fright. Her dress was completely tattered, and she was bloody all over, it seemed. The only thing that symbolized that it was, in fact she, and not some horrible zombie, was that her gray eyes were still very much alive.
"Fae!"
She turned around and saw Ron standing at the door opposite to the one she had come in. He appeared to be in little less a bad condition than she was. He had a black eye and his cut on his fore head appeared to be re-opened. His white uniform shirt was also just as tattered and some of its left sleeve was red with blood, and he had holes in the knees of his black pants. But he looked nothing less than happy to see her.
"Ron!" she shouted back, and limped over to him as fast as she could.