~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Great Halls of Hogwarts were grand and comforting during the day and usually echoed with screams of horror or childish laughter, but at night however, all that changed. Now they appeared to have narrowed sharply, the stone much colder and unwelcoming, as if the gloomy walls themselves sensed the unlawful presence of the three intruders.
Muffled footsteps moved along the corridors, pulling close to the walls at every unknown sound. The only light illuminating their path came from the lantern hidden well beneath their cloak. No moonlight revealed their way tonight. The grand windows were coated in a fine film of silver mist. Droplets of water seeped through cracks in the joinery as a powerful storm began to manifest itself outside. Wind whistled down the halls, causing the three figures to halt in their guilty tracks.
"Wait!" a young female voice whispered.
"What now?!" a harsh, broken male one replied.
"I see something!"
"Not again!"
"No, really... Quick! Over there!" The three figures grouped under one cloak shuffled over to a nearby statue beside a trophy cabinet and stood behind it, waiting for the other creature to pass over them.
At the far end of the corridor appeared the twinkling glimmer of another lantern. The three held their breath tight. A long shadow hovered momentarily on the wall before them then glided almost instinctively towards their statue. Soft, calculated footsteps padded ever closer, almost inaudible on the stone floor. The children strained their senses to identify the sinister creature approaching them, but before they could move, a long, black sleeve was suddenly draped across the shoulders of the statue – inches from Hermione's nose. In her surprise she almost let out a yelp, but her next breath was immediately removed by one savage word, uttered from the mouth of a dreadfully familiar character.
"Potter." Snape's eyes were gazing directly at the spot where her friend's head just happened to be. She felt Harry stiffen beside her; his face was ashen. Had they been discovered already? How? They hadn't even done anything yet. He was beginning to sense that someone out there was against him going down to the dungeons tonight.
"You must think you're really something. Best Seeker Hogwarts has seen in over a hundred years, and with talents in areas that I myself am not entirely proficient. Damn you, Potter. Defied the Dark Lord countless times and yet can't even achieve 'Acceptable' in a simple Potions test. Poor child, I suppose," his eyes shifted to the trophy cabinet, "thankfully no parents, but seriously lacks proper guidance and discipline; pity he wasn't in Slytherin, we could easily have sorted out that little problem ... pity." The Professor's black eyes gleamed at the thought. Slowly he removed his arm and let his gaze slide back to Harry's face before sweeping off down the corridor in a fury of billowing black robes.
The gasps of the children's relief when the nightmare had passed were rather louder than intended.
"Did he know you were there, Harry?" Hermione whispered uncertainly.
"I... I don't know for sure either way." His voice was feeble and nervous.
"Oh just forget it Harry, he couldn't have known you were here." Ron's reassuring voice cut above Hermione's next question. "He was just talking to himself, that's all. Probably saw your name on the shield in the cabinet and had to pull a thorn out of his arse for a while. You know, vent some steam?"
"Ron!" The girl shot him a look of severe disapproval at his use of language.
"C'mon. We've some exploring to do! Or else I've a bed to go to."
**********************
'Click' the door was open at last. Their eyes quickly scanned the darkness for any sign of life. When they were sure it was safe to enter, Harry ran over to the large desk covered in sheets of parchment and searched for clues, Hermione attempted to unlock the smaller door at the back of the room and Ron looked around for anything else suspicious. Harry took the lantern and Ron used his wand for light. After a minute of action, Hermione succeeded in opening the door and called for Harry to bring her the lantern, but at that moment, he stopped.
"Hey I've found something here... look!" He held up a small piece of tattered parchment to the light. It had several words scrawled over it in purple ink.
"What is it?" Hermione appeared at his side first.
"I'm not sure, I can't make out all the words. Can you?" She took the piece from him and scanned the information quickly until a look of anxious understanding spread across her face.
"I think it's a list of ingredients, probably for some very strange potion. Some of these things I have never heard of before, besides the fact it isn't written in modern English. Here it says '1. One Diamantezkrystal or Plumsappe; 2. Olde Vampyre fangs circa millennium / drop of Sanguis-Animagum; 3. Powder'd Werewolffe clawes. 4. the Usual Elementary's – wormwood, water, brimstone & dragon's breathe.' How strange... Harry, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm beginning to wish I hadn't seen this. I have a horrible feeling that this is only some of the ingredients of a seriously Dark Potion. I've never even heard of 'Diamantezkrystal' before, but the only time I've come across the words 'The Usual Elementary's', was by accident in the restricted section of the library when we were looking for Nicholas Flammell. This has got to be some very nasty medieval Alchemy."
"Not good then?" came a half-hearted sarcastic comment from behind. Ron was waving his wand about in the darkness of the newly opened room, paying only minimal attention to what they were saying.
"Ron, what are you doing?! You'll knock something over! Here's the lantern." Hermione abandoned the parchment and entered the even gloomier storeroom. It was fairly small and the four walls were lined with shelves, only some of which actually contained anything. However, in the centre was a solid wooden table on top of which was something that frightened Hermione much more than the Potion ingredients she had just read. It was a great, dirty-big spider. In a flimsy cage. And its eight bulging eyes were aimed directly at her. Not to mention those black, venomous fangs that began to ooze some watery substance as it gazed at Hermione.
"Ah R-Ron, RON!" Now was the time to reveal that 'lion-like, Gryffindor courage'.
"What?" He answered from the other side of the room, squinting into a dark corner, obviously oblivious of the room's occupant.
"Eh, emm, there's nothing really in here; we should go check somewhere else... now." She slowly edged her way around the periphery of the room, never taking her eyes off the massive spider metres in front of her. Eventually her hands came across someone's jumper in the corner; it was Ron. She decided the only way they stood a chance of survival here, was if Ron didn't see the tarantula waiting to burst out of its cage at them. She gripped the back of his jumper like it kept her alive.
"Ron, let's go. Harry needs us in the other room. NOW." Her voice got weaker and weaker. She couldn't believe that Ron still hadn't noticed that there was something wrong.
"Has he found something?" The red headed boy stood up excitedly. Hermione tugged him hard in the direction of the door, her eyes flickering like lightning between Ron's face and the cage.
"Something like that." The spider moved. She tugged harder. A few seconds later they were almost at the door, when it moved again. What was it doing? She wondered. Then she realized. It was opening the cage and about to crawl out. Without warning, she trailed Ron over to the door and thrust him out so hard, he crashed into Harry at the other side, leaving her two seconds to throw herself out of the room before the spider leapt off the table, scuttled across the floor and sunk its gory pincers into her leg. And that's almost exactly what it did do. All it didn't achieve was the last part. Hermione ran too fast for that to happen. She slammed the door so hard in its face, she reckoned that 'thud' was now a pile of blood and black hair. Hopefully. The down-side was that the sound of her banging the heavy door shut could probably be heard at the top of the astronomy tower.
Hermione leaned back on the door and took a few desperately needed deep breaths. But before relief could wash over her, she heard a gentle scraping noise on the other side of the door. Then, there was another thud as a long, slippery, black spike pierced through the door, inches from Hermione's frozen leg.
"Seal the door! Quick!"
Harry whipped out his wand and uttered the spell to seal the door. Ron snapped out of his trance and rushed over to Hermione and tore her away from the door. She lay momentarily in his arms with her head buried in his chest.
"We must go NOW! I wouldn't bet 2 galleons that Snape or Filch didn't hear that. Here, under the cloak!" Harry whispered feverishly. Within seconds all three of them were under the cloak and scrambling out of the door into the deserted corridor, leaving behind a furious tarantula desperate to wrench its venomous spike from the door.
The three of them rushed into a nearby corridor and huddled in a niche until they heard the moans and groans of Filch pass by. Several minutes later, Harry and Ron were pestering Hermione as to why she acted so rashly. How could she turn round to Ron and say, 'Well if you had opened your eyes a bit wider, you would have seen a great, dirty-big spider with blue stripes and a green squiggle on its head, waiting to pounce on you and sink that icky spike into the back of your neck!' Well, that actually is what she said to him, and she got the reaction she expected.
"What! Why didn't you say?!" The poor boy was hyperventilating at Hermione's surprisingly graphic description of his worst nightmare.
"Because I knew you'd react like this." She replied simply.
"I could have died in there!"
"No, really? No thanks for the one who saved your life, I see." She only used sarcasm when she was annoyed.
"I'm sorry; it's just a lot to take in." Ron hung his head in shame under the cloak.
"Hermione, all I'm saying is, you didn't see Aragog. Now, I think we've all had enough adventure for one night. Let's go to back to our dorms." Harry suggested and stood up to leave.
"But the night has only just begun." A strange female voice drifted from the shadows of the dark, unfamiliar corridor.
"Who is that?" Harry replied nervously. Ron and Hermione stood up as well. There was no reply. Then as Harry peered further into the encroaching darkness, a small emerald-green light appeared and wafted lazily along the corridor towards them, accompanied by the cool mysterious voice.
"What brings three Gryffindors along this corridor tonight? Is it desperation? Guilt? Or perhaps, Fate?"
"We didn't do anything, we just came down here to see what that noise was about, that's all." Harry dug his elbow into Ron's ribs for opening his mouth and warned him not to say something stupid like that again. Who knows what strange creature this was, lurking in the shadows. At least they had been warned not to go into the 3rd floor because Fluffy was there, but they'd never even realized this corridor existed until tonight. They could see not reason for wanting to go down it at any rate; it was cold, dark and it seemed like the walls would swallow up anyone who dared descend into the darkness.
"Really? And they say 'Never trust a Slytherin', but I say never trust three Gryffindors, especially ones with lies written across their foreheads. " The cool, silky voice was beginning to irritate Harry; it was too smooth and had a dangerous undertone to it.
"You can't see us, whoever you are. Don't worry Ron; she can't hurt us inside Hogwarts."
"Au contraire, my boy, au contraire. You really don't know who you're dealing with. Neither does Dumbledore. But you will soon see." The voice trailed off, echoing down the corridor, leaving behind the faint, eerie light which danced about in the air, back and forth.
"Harry let's go please. I'm getting the feeling it's not safe to be here. I want to get out of these dungeons; they've been really creepy tonight." Hermione whispered into her friend's ear and held his arm. He agreed and they moved immediately out of the corridor, not looking back into the darkness with the eerie light that wafted just over Ron's face, luring him further into the void.
A minute later, hovering at the entrance of another corridor looking out for Snape and Filch, Hermione turned around to check if Ron was behind her – he wasn't.
"Harry! Ron's gone!"
"What?!"
"He's not behind us! He must be back there! Oh no! I could have sworn he was behind me."
Swiftly, they reversed back to the entrance of the mysterious corridor where they had last seen Ron. He wasn't there. They couldn't shout out for him or someone else would hear them. They had no choice but to go in, watched closely by the ophidian eyes of Vashti, Queen of darkness.
********************
The corridor seemed to extend forever. Eternal darkness. The lantern burned dry ages ago, and the light from their wands was hardly powerful enough to fight back the shadows. The air was still. Silence abounded. After minutes of feeling their way through the stone corridor, not knowing what they would find, or where it was taking them, they met a third wall. It was a dead end.
"No! This cannot be! He can't just have disappeared like this! There must be a trap door or a secret passage! Feel around the wall for something, anything." Hermione was clearly distraught. The musty air, the tense silence and the cold was getting to her. Yet as soon as Harry laid his hand on the stone surface, a sconce appeared, then another one a metre away.
"Hermione did you not feel that? You were standing right there a minute ago." Harry questioned.
"No, but I couldn't have missed it, a big metal thing like that." She raised her hand to touch the sconce. It went straight through. "Harry! This is weird. How can you feel it and I can't?"
"I have no idea. But look, there's a snake coiling round it; the snake emblem of Slytherin. Perhaps if I talk in Parseltongue again it will open." Harry wondered. Hermione agreed it was worth a try. Despite the dangers of what could lie on the other side, they had to get their friend back.
Harry reached up, held the sconce tightly and tried every word he could think of in Parseltongue, concentrating unusually hard. Finally Hermione suggested he try words to do with snakes, death or Slytherin himself instead of 'Open Sesame.' After two tries and an unexpected twist of the sconce, the stones melted away, revealing a dark, rectangular room with lots of tunnels and doors leaving it.
"What did you say?"
"I was just listing random words... I think it was something like 'Tunnel of the Secret Snake'. Where are we?" Harry said when they entered the room.
"If I remember correctly this was Slytherin's way of sneaking about in the castle. Or so says 'Hogwarts, A History'. It's a secret web of tunnels and doors that lead to different corridors. Look," she pointed to a door on the wall labeled 'Prefects' toilets – girls'. "let's try one." Harry walked up to that door and opened it slightly. Sure enough, inside was a line of cubicles, wash hand basins, and a Jacuzzi. 'The injustice' he muttered.
"This is amazing." She whispered in awe. "Do you realize what we've found? Like the Chamber of Secrets this place was only mentioned in legends. Its existence was never truly proven. Those that found it, um, well, I'll tell you later. Anyway, we must find which one Ron's gone down. I suspect it would've been one near where we entered. There's one there that comes out on the second floor. Near the Room of Requirement I think." Both moved over to the door.
Hermione placed her hand on the brass handle. She had a strange feeling about this one. Suddenly she didn't want to open this door. Her instincts told her that she wouldn't like what she would find on the other side. A sensation of fearful foreboding swept through her. This was the door.
"Go on, Hermione. We must find Ron before it's too late."
Hermione turned the handle. The door swung open. A rush of cold air swept past her. Dim light filtered through the darkness. Dim, Green light.
Hermione screamed. A cascade of tears broke over her smooth face. She fell to her knees at the sight before her.
"Ron!!!"
A/N I've decided: Im gonna be busy with exams and other stories for a while, and I also feel slightly discouraged by the lack of reviews here. PLAESE R&R!!PLEASE! its lets me know ppl r reading this shit. It means a lot to me. Seriously ;) boohoo. Neway. Ill stop being random. I'm not continuing and breaking the killer suspense until I get another review. There. Done.
The Great Halls of Hogwarts were grand and comforting during the day and usually echoed with screams of horror or childish laughter, but at night however, all that changed. Now they appeared to have narrowed sharply, the stone much colder and unwelcoming, as if the gloomy walls themselves sensed the unlawful presence of the three intruders.
Muffled footsteps moved along the corridors, pulling close to the walls at every unknown sound. The only light illuminating their path came from the lantern hidden well beneath their cloak. No moonlight revealed their way tonight. The grand windows were coated in a fine film of silver mist. Droplets of water seeped through cracks in the joinery as a powerful storm began to manifest itself outside. Wind whistled down the halls, causing the three figures to halt in their guilty tracks.
"Wait!" a young female voice whispered.
"What now?!" a harsh, broken male one replied.
"I see something!"
"Not again!"
"No, really... Quick! Over there!" The three figures grouped under one cloak shuffled over to a nearby statue beside a trophy cabinet and stood behind it, waiting for the other creature to pass over them.
At the far end of the corridor appeared the twinkling glimmer of another lantern. The three held their breath tight. A long shadow hovered momentarily on the wall before them then glided almost instinctively towards their statue. Soft, calculated footsteps padded ever closer, almost inaudible on the stone floor. The children strained their senses to identify the sinister creature approaching them, but before they could move, a long, black sleeve was suddenly draped across the shoulders of the statue – inches from Hermione's nose. In her surprise she almost let out a yelp, but her next breath was immediately removed by one savage word, uttered from the mouth of a dreadfully familiar character.
"Potter." Snape's eyes were gazing directly at the spot where her friend's head just happened to be. She felt Harry stiffen beside her; his face was ashen. Had they been discovered already? How? They hadn't even done anything yet. He was beginning to sense that someone out there was against him going down to the dungeons tonight.
"You must think you're really something. Best Seeker Hogwarts has seen in over a hundred years, and with talents in areas that I myself am not entirely proficient. Damn you, Potter. Defied the Dark Lord countless times and yet can't even achieve 'Acceptable' in a simple Potions test. Poor child, I suppose," his eyes shifted to the trophy cabinet, "thankfully no parents, but seriously lacks proper guidance and discipline; pity he wasn't in Slytherin, we could easily have sorted out that little problem ... pity." The Professor's black eyes gleamed at the thought. Slowly he removed his arm and let his gaze slide back to Harry's face before sweeping off down the corridor in a fury of billowing black robes.
The gasps of the children's relief when the nightmare had passed were rather louder than intended.
"Did he know you were there, Harry?" Hermione whispered uncertainly.
"I... I don't know for sure either way." His voice was feeble and nervous.
"Oh just forget it Harry, he couldn't have known you were here." Ron's reassuring voice cut above Hermione's next question. "He was just talking to himself, that's all. Probably saw your name on the shield in the cabinet and had to pull a thorn out of his arse for a while. You know, vent some steam?"
"Ron!" The girl shot him a look of severe disapproval at his use of language.
"C'mon. We've some exploring to do! Or else I've a bed to go to."
**********************
'Click' the door was open at last. Their eyes quickly scanned the darkness for any sign of life. When they were sure it was safe to enter, Harry ran over to the large desk covered in sheets of parchment and searched for clues, Hermione attempted to unlock the smaller door at the back of the room and Ron looked around for anything else suspicious. Harry took the lantern and Ron used his wand for light. After a minute of action, Hermione succeeded in opening the door and called for Harry to bring her the lantern, but at that moment, he stopped.
"Hey I've found something here... look!" He held up a small piece of tattered parchment to the light. It had several words scrawled over it in purple ink.
"What is it?" Hermione appeared at his side first.
"I'm not sure, I can't make out all the words. Can you?" She took the piece from him and scanned the information quickly until a look of anxious understanding spread across her face.
"I think it's a list of ingredients, probably for some very strange potion. Some of these things I have never heard of before, besides the fact it isn't written in modern English. Here it says '1. One Diamantezkrystal or Plumsappe; 2. Olde Vampyre fangs circa millennium / drop of Sanguis-Animagum; 3. Powder'd Werewolffe clawes. 4. the Usual Elementary's – wormwood, water, brimstone & dragon's breathe.' How strange... Harry, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm beginning to wish I hadn't seen this. I have a horrible feeling that this is only some of the ingredients of a seriously Dark Potion. I've never even heard of 'Diamantezkrystal' before, but the only time I've come across the words 'The Usual Elementary's', was by accident in the restricted section of the library when we were looking for Nicholas Flammell. This has got to be some very nasty medieval Alchemy."
"Not good then?" came a half-hearted sarcastic comment from behind. Ron was waving his wand about in the darkness of the newly opened room, paying only minimal attention to what they were saying.
"Ron, what are you doing?! You'll knock something over! Here's the lantern." Hermione abandoned the parchment and entered the even gloomier storeroom. It was fairly small and the four walls were lined with shelves, only some of which actually contained anything. However, in the centre was a solid wooden table on top of which was something that frightened Hermione much more than the Potion ingredients she had just read. It was a great, dirty-big spider. In a flimsy cage. And its eight bulging eyes were aimed directly at her. Not to mention those black, venomous fangs that began to ooze some watery substance as it gazed at Hermione.
"Ah R-Ron, RON!" Now was the time to reveal that 'lion-like, Gryffindor courage'.
"What?" He answered from the other side of the room, squinting into a dark corner, obviously oblivious of the room's occupant.
"Eh, emm, there's nothing really in here; we should go check somewhere else... now." She slowly edged her way around the periphery of the room, never taking her eyes off the massive spider metres in front of her. Eventually her hands came across someone's jumper in the corner; it was Ron. She decided the only way they stood a chance of survival here, was if Ron didn't see the tarantula waiting to burst out of its cage at them. She gripped the back of his jumper like it kept her alive.
"Ron, let's go. Harry needs us in the other room. NOW." Her voice got weaker and weaker. She couldn't believe that Ron still hadn't noticed that there was something wrong.
"Has he found something?" The red headed boy stood up excitedly. Hermione tugged him hard in the direction of the door, her eyes flickering like lightning between Ron's face and the cage.
"Something like that." The spider moved. She tugged harder. A few seconds later they were almost at the door, when it moved again. What was it doing? She wondered. Then she realized. It was opening the cage and about to crawl out. Without warning, she trailed Ron over to the door and thrust him out so hard, he crashed into Harry at the other side, leaving her two seconds to throw herself out of the room before the spider leapt off the table, scuttled across the floor and sunk its gory pincers into her leg. And that's almost exactly what it did do. All it didn't achieve was the last part. Hermione ran too fast for that to happen. She slammed the door so hard in its face, she reckoned that 'thud' was now a pile of blood and black hair. Hopefully. The down-side was that the sound of her banging the heavy door shut could probably be heard at the top of the astronomy tower.
Hermione leaned back on the door and took a few desperately needed deep breaths. But before relief could wash over her, she heard a gentle scraping noise on the other side of the door. Then, there was another thud as a long, slippery, black spike pierced through the door, inches from Hermione's frozen leg.
"Seal the door! Quick!"
Harry whipped out his wand and uttered the spell to seal the door. Ron snapped out of his trance and rushed over to Hermione and tore her away from the door. She lay momentarily in his arms with her head buried in his chest.
"We must go NOW! I wouldn't bet 2 galleons that Snape or Filch didn't hear that. Here, under the cloak!" Harry whispered feverishly. Within seconds all three of them were under the cloak and scrambling out of the door into the deserted corridor, leaving behind a furious tarantula desperate to wrench its venomous spike from the door.
The three of them rushed into a nearby corridor and huddled in a niche until they heard the moans and groans of Filch pass by. Several minutes later, Harry and Ron were pestering Hermione as to why she acted so rashly. How could she turn round to Ron and say, 'Well if you had opened your eyes a bit wider, you would have seen a great, dirty-big spider with blue stripes and a green squiggle on its head, waiting to pounce on you and sink that icky spike into the back of your neck!' Well, that actually is what she said to him, and she got the reaction she expected.
"What! Why didn't you say?!" The poor boy was hyperventilating at Hermione's surprisingly graphic description of his worst nightmare.
"Because I knew you'd react like this." She replied simply.
"I could have died in there!"
"No, really? No thanks for the one who saved your life, I see." She only used sarcasm when she was annoyed.
"I'm sorry; it's just a lot to take in." Ron hung his head in shame under the cloak.
"Hermione, all I'm saying is, you didn't see Aragog. Now, I think we've all had enough adventure for one night. Let's go to back to our dorms." Harry suggested and stood up to leave.
"But the night has only just begun." A strange female voice drifted from the shadows of the dark, unfamiliar corridor.
"Who is that?" Harry replied nervously. Ron and Hermione stood up as well. There was no reply. Then as Harry peered further into the encroaching darkness, a small emerald-green light appeared and wafted lazily along the corridor towards them, accompanied by the cool mysterious voice.
"What brings three Gryffindors along this corridor tonight? Is it desperation? Guilt? Or perhaps, Fate?"
"We didn't do anything, we just came down here to see what that noise was about, that's all." Harry dug his elbow into Ron's ribs for opening his mouth and warned him not to say something stupid like that again. Who knows what strange creature this was, lurking in the shadows. At least they had been warned not to go into the 3rd floor because Fluffy was there, but they'd never even realized this corridor existed until tonight. They could see not reason for wanting to go down it at any rate; it was cold, dark and it seemed like the walls would swallow up anyone who dared descend into the darkness.
"Really? And they say 'Never trust a Slytherin', but I say never trust three Gryffindors, especially ones with lies written across their foreheads. " The cool, silky voice was beginning to irritate Harry; it was too smooth and had a dangerous undertone to it.
"You can't see us, whoever you are. Don't worry Ron; she can't hurt us inside Hogwarts."
"Au contraire, my boy, au contraire. You really don't know who you're dealing with. Neither does Dumbledore. But you will soon see." The voice trailed off, echoing down the corridor, leaving behind the faint, eerie light which danced about in the air, back and forth.
"Harry let's go please. I'm getting the feeling it's not safe to be here. I want to get out of these dungeons; they've been really creepy tonight." Hermione whispered into her friend's ear and held his arm. He agreed and they moved immediately out of the corridor, not looking back into the darkness with the eerie light that wafted just over Ron's face, luring him further into the void.
A minute later, hovering at the entrance of another corridor looking out for Snape and Filch, Hermione turned around to check if Ron was behind her – he wasn't.
"Harry! Ron's gone!"
"What?!"
"He's not behind us! He must be back there! Oh no! I could have sworn he was behind me."
Swiftly, they reversed back to the entrance of the mysterious corridor where they had last seen Ron. He wasn't there. They couldn't shout out for him or someone else would hear them. They had no choice but to go in, watched closely by the ophidian eyes of Vashti, Queen of darkness.
********************
The corridor seemed to extend forever. Eternal darkness. The lantern burned dry ages ago, and the light from their wands was hardly powerful enough to fight back the shadows. The air was still. Silence abounded. After minutes of feeling their way through the stone corridor, not knowing what they would find, or where it was taking them, they met a third wall. It was a dead end.
"No! This cannot be! He can't just have disappeared like this! There must be a trap door or a secret passage! Feel around the wall for something, anything." Hermione was clearly distraught. The musty air, the tense silence and the cold was getting to her. Yet as soon as Harry laid his hand on the stone surface, a sconce appeared, then another one a metre away.
"Hermione did you not feel that? You were standing right there a minute ago." Harry questioned.
"No, but I couldn't have missed it, a big metal thing like that." She raised her hand to touch the sconce. It went straight through. "Harry! This is weird. How can you feel it and I can't?"
"I have no idea. But look, there's a snake coiling round it; the snake emblem of Slytherin. Perhaps if I talk in Parseltongue again it will open." Harry wondered. Hermione agreed it was worth a try. Despite the dangers of what could lie on the other side, they had to get their friend back.
Harry reached up, held the sconce tightly and tried every word he could think of in Parseltongue, concentrating unusually hard. Finally Hermione suggested he try words to do with snakes, death or Slytherin himself instead of 'Open Sesame.' After two tries and an unexpected twist of the sconce, the stones melted away, revealing a dark, rectangular room with lots of tunnels and doors leaving it.
"What did you say?"
"I was just listing random words... I think it was something like 'Tunnel of the Secret Snake'. Where are we?" Harry said when they entered the room.
"If I remember correctly this was Slytherin's way of sneaking about in the castle. Or so says 'Hogwarts, A History'. It's a secret web of tunnels and doors that lead to different corridors. Look," she pointed to a door on the wall labeled 'Prefects' toilets – girls'. "let's try one." Harry walked up to that door and opened it slightly. Sure enough, inside was a line of cubicles, wash hand basins, and a Jacuzzi. 'The injustice' he muttered.
"This is amazing." She whispered in awe. "Do you realize what we've found? Like the Chamber of Secrets this place was only mentioned in legends. Its existence was never truly proven. Those that found it, um, well, I'll tell you later. Anyway, we must find which one Ron's gone down. I suspect it would've been one near where we entered. There's one there that comes out on the second floor. Near the Room of Requirement I think." Both moved over to the door.
Hermione placed her hand on the brass handle. She had a strange feeling about this one. Suddenly she didn't want to open this door. Her instincts told her that she wouldn't like what she would find on the other side. A sensation of fearful foreboding swept through her. This was the door.
"Go on, Hermione. We must find Ron before it's too late."
Hermione turned the handle. The door swung open. A rush of cold air swept past her. Dim light filtered through the darkness. Dim, Green light.
Hermione screamed. A cascade of tears broke over her smooth face. She fell to her knees at the sight before her.
"Ron!!!"
A/N I've decided: Im gonna be busy with exams and other stories for a while, and I also feel slightly discouraged by the lack of reviews here. PLAESE R&R!!PLEASE! its lets me know ppl r reading this shit. It means a lot to me. Seriously ;) boohoo. Neway. Ill stop being random. I'm not continuing and breaking the killer suspense until I get another review. There. Done.
