Chapter 7
Hermione walked over to Harry's sleeping body. He was so stiff, rigid and very dead looking. It chilled her, seeing him so pale and still. She gently bent over his body and kissed him on the forehead. Two green eyes fluttered, and the lids snapped open. As Hermione moved her head up, she made eye contact and leapt backwards, her heart racing.
"Ron, he's awake!" yelled Hermione.
"It's about bloody time."
His forehead was still black and blue. Harry had been unconscious for two days now, and his dreams were getting worse. They were so intense, and details so were crisp and exact. It was as if those events really happened. Little did Harry know they did nearly six hundred years ago.
The room spun around him. Harry was seeing double of everything, and it was all quite blurry. After a few seconds, everything became more focused. The first face he saw was Hermione, her mouth grinning.
"Are you with us, Harry?" she asked sweetly.
He rubbed his head, remembering the singeing pain. Something was causing his scar to hurt once again, and only one person he knew about did that.
"Do you think He's here?" asked Harry.
"Who?"
"You Know Who."
"Oh, Him," said Ron. "I dunno. Why?"
Harry shrugged. "No reason, really."
If he told them his scar was hurting again, he knew they'd immediately think He was around and out to get Harry. But it wasn't necessarily true. Old scars sometimes hurt. Maybe it was trying to heal itself. Harry didn't know the answer, but he didn't want his friends worrying about, especially in a place like this.
Harry took a few seconds to assess his surroundings. It was a very small room, dark, fairly cold and no real furniture. He was lying on an elevated bed made of gray stone that was incredibly smooth. Three empty soup bowls were lined up nearby in front of a shut door.
"At least we get fed here," Harry said.
"If you can call it that," said Ron. "We each get one bowl a day."
"So it's like living with the Dursleys. I can survive on that easily." Harry tried to smirk but instead yawned.
"You can't possibly be tired," said Hermione. "You've been sleeping for 48 hours!"
"I don't feel like it."
"What do you feel like then?"
"Like… Like I just closed my eyes and was ready to dream, but was suddenly woken up. Forty-eight hours? Are you sure?"
"We've been here next to you the whole time."
Harry sighed and then stared at the dirty floor. There was about an inch of soil covering some sort of stone. As Harry continued to stare at it in a daze, he thought he saw a very small spark of light coming through a crack in the floor.
He got down onto his knees and crawled over to the space. Hermione arched her eyebrows and gave him a strange look.
"Are you okay, Harry?"
"Shh," he said back.
Using both of his hands, Harry brushed aside the dirt and blew away the remaining soil with his hot breath. A slate floor and one very small crack in between two pieces of rock were revealed.
"What are you doin'?" asked Ron.
"Help me move this," said Harry.
Ron shrugged his shoulders and bent down. He reached forward with right forearm still hurting from that staff-like wand that nearly knocked him unconscious only two and half days ago. At least it wasn't broken.
"I can't get my fingers under it," muttered Harry.
"Maybe it doesn't move," said Ron. "Why do you want to remove it?"
""Cause I thought I saw something."
"Oh, Harry. The mind starts to play tricks on you when you've been locked up in a place like this… It was probably the candle light's reflection."
"Reflection off of what, Hermione? There's nothing to reflect it, and I'm not imagining things! I saw something."
"If you say so, mate," said Ron. "If I had my wand still, I could use it. I think lost it out in the sea."
Harry reached down into his own robe and found a stick-like object. When he pulled it out, he discovered a perfectly fine wand, with no damage to it whatsoever.
"I wonder why they didn't take it from you," Hermione said. The boys looked at her funny, and she rolled her eyes. "It's a weapon. They don't allow prisoners to have weapons."
"Maybe they forgot mine?"
"I don't know. Something doesn't seem right about this."
"You're being overprotective," remarked Ron. "Go on, Harry. Give it a shot."
He raised his wand high above his head and then slowly focused it on the rectangular piece of slate. After a few seconds of thinking about what spell to use, Harry snapped his wrist and said,
"Evanesco."
But the slate did not vanish like Harry expected it would. Instead, something truly awful happened.
"Your wand! It split it half!" Ron yelled. His voice echoed throughout the cell.
Harry's single phoenix feather wand was now in two pieces, one in Harry's hand and the other was completely missing. Horrified, Harry looked about, trying to find the other half but it wasn't in the room.
"I knew that was too simple," said Hermione. "We can't use magic here. Why would they let prisoners do that?"
"Since you know so much, tell us how to get out of here," snapped Ron.
"You know that isn't fair," she started, but paused when she caught sight of Harry from the corner of her eye. He was on the ground attempting to pry open the piece of slate using half of his wand as a type of levy.
"Harry, you're going to break it even more. Just—"
"I almost got it," he muttered.
Surprisingly, he was right. The stone slate started to loosen slightly, and as it did, Harry quickly grabbed onto its edges and threw it off. Underneath the piece of slate was a very wrinkled and torn scroll.
"Well, whatta you know," said Ron in amazement. "Go on, pick it up."
The scroll was rolled up tightly, was very thick and muddy yellow. When Harry grabbed it, the paper was very rough and wrinkly against his sweaty skin. Slowly, he tried to unravel it, but it kept rolling up on itself.
"Give me a hand," he said to Ron who now held one end of the scroll.
Harry pulled on the other end until the paper was completely flat. It was no bigger than piece of Muggle computer paper, but it was very thick, about one inch. However, it was completely blank.
"What do you s'pose it is?" asked Ron.
"It could be anything."
"It could be a trick," remarked Hermione. "I wouldn't do anything unless we found out more about it."
"Hermione, there aren't any libraries around here for you to do your little research in! There aren't any teachers to consult. We aren't in Hogwarts anymore."
"Please," she said. "Really, Ron, I'd think after five years you'd know a little better. That scroll could put a curse on us. It might kill us. We don't know."
"Exactly, we don't know! And would it really be bad if it killed us? I don't think we're getting out of here any time soon, and that soup might kill us anyhow," said Ron.
He continued to hold onto one end of the scroll, gripping it tightly. Hermione was ready to lunge forward to strangle Ron once again, but Harry flung out his arm to stop her and almost dropped the scroll. He immediately held onto it again and said,
"Both of you stop it! Ron, don't joke about dying here—it's not helping any of us. And Hermione, at least pretend that something good might happen… I'm going to try something."
Harry placed the scroll on the ground and kneeled upon it. He then grabbed the half of the wand he used to pry upon the slate and pointed it at the scroll.
"Harry—" Hermione started.
He ignored her. "There may be invisible ink. If I can—"
Before Harry could try anything, Hermione practically flew toward him and grabbed the broken wand from his hand. She then threw it across the room. It smacked a brick wall on the side and then shattered to the ground.
"You witch!" yelled Ron. "Are you mad?"
"I'm the only sane one here apparently," she said with a very proud voice. "Last time you tried to do magic, Harry, your wand was almost completely destroyed. Are you that foolish to try to use a spell and with a broken wand? You could have gotten yourself and us killed."
"I knew what I was doing," slowly Harry said in a very deep and angry voice. "Now we have no way of seeing what's on this scroll!" Harry picked up the paper and held it in his hand. "This could have been our way out! Now what? What are you looking at?"
Hermione and Ron's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. First Hermione's jaw dropped, then Ron followed just the same. Quickly, Harry turned his neck and caught sight of the same glimmer that he had seen before. It was coming from the center of the scroll.
"Don't-touch-it," mouthed Hermione.
But Harry took his left hand and tried to unroll the scroll anyway. The center of it glowed a golden yellow. Very carefully, Harry placed the paper on the ground, again using his knees to keep it from rolling up, and stared at the shimmering light.
Maybe something had to be said to see what was on the paper. Harry thought about several different phrases before saying,
"Show yourself."
Nothing happened.
"Reveal your words."
Again, nothing.
"Open sesame!"
"Harry, stop it. It's not working," said Hermione.
He sighed and placed his right palm onto the scroll's center where the glow came from. Just as he was going to admit defeat, something extraordinary happened.
The scroll levitated into the air. It floated high toward the pewter candle, and then, it slowly descended until it fell back to the floor.
Before anyone could say anything at all, black ink bled through the paper. Literally. A dark blood-like substance oozed out of it, staining the slate beneath it. Just as quickly as it appeared, the ink on the scroll was gone… But something had be written beneath it on the gray slate…
Harry lifted the scroll and threw to Hermione who instantly caught it. Tattooed into the stone itself was a triangular shape with rough edges and little arrows around it. On the top had the letter N. On the sides, W and E.
The three huddled around it, got to their knees and studied the strange drawing intently. It was a map. The ink had already dried permanently into the stone. As they stared at the symbols and lettering, the scroll started to disintegrate right inside Hermione's hand. Before she knew it, it had crumbled up into little yellow specs.
She didn't even realize the scroll was gone. Her eyes were fixated on the tattooed map.
On the bottom was a hill-like swipe of ink that could have been an archway. Straight lines made a perfect triangle around the island, perhaps the walls. Inside these walls were several towers. Two rectangular ones were drawn under the letter N on the top of the map.
On the sides were even more buildings. Harry quickly pointed at a rectangle next to the letter E. There were three black dots in a circular formation smack in the middle of the rectangle. Harry looked up and over to Hermione and Ron.
"Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"
"That's us," Ron said.
"At least we know where we are now," said Hermione.
"Question is, how do we get out?"
"I don't know… What I'd like to know is who made this map. It seems enchanted, but that's impossible. There's no magic here."
Harry shrugged. "Let's not worry about how it got here. Look, there are some docks right along the eastern shore. Perhaps there are ships there."
"Do you really think they'd allow boats to wash up along shore, Harry?" asked Hermione. "This is a prison. They wouldn't be stupid enough to do that."
"Then what are they used for?" pointed out Ron. "It's the only side that has a break in the wall. See."
He was right. The lines surrounding the island stopped briefly and started again right next to the Docks of the Moor. Unfortunately, Ron didn't know that that path was heavily guarded and used only to transport new prisoners to be hung.
"Okay. Now that we know where to go, for now, how do you s'pose we get there?" asked Harry.
"We'll still have to work on that part—Shh. I hear someone coming."