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Chapter 14"If you dare say one word," Hermione rubbed her hip and glared at the two males who did their best to appear innocent as lambs, "I will hex you both into the next millennium."
Voice smooth as oiled silk, Severus Snape replied, "What can one say to such a . . . graceful display of coordination and acrobatics?"
"Brilliantly executed moves," Neville Longbottom added. "And all of them quite original."
"Worthy of a perfect score, wouldn't you say, Mr. Longbottom?"
"Definitely." The boy's head bobbed enthusiastically. "Oh, yes, Professor Snape. Definitely."
Black eyes gleamed with an unholy humor. "Hmmm."
"Next millennium isn't far enough," she muttered. "I'm leaning more toward the year three thousand and one!"
Still rubbing her aching hindquarters, Hermione Granger glared back at the cause of her embarrassment. The ice river appeared beneath one wall and vanished under the opposite side. The stretch in between spanned almost two-dozen yards across and shone every shade of blue, from palest ice to indigo. In places, the frigid surface resembled spun crystals that, when struck by light, cast ethereal rainbows onto the walls and ceiling. The river creaked, groaned, and popped as it flowed, glacially slow, from one wall to the other.
Neville's original solution of transfiguring an item into skates proved equally as feasible the second time around, with one slight exception: Hermione Granger did not know the first thing about ice skating. Severus Snape and Neville Longbottom were almost to the far side of the ice river before they realized they'd left her behind.
Stubborn pride kept her from accepting help even after it was offered. It likewise resulted in a dozen painful falls onto the hard, rough ice. Her muscles ached from the unfamiliar strain of dealing with constantly shifting balance and an untrustworthy floor. No sooner would she find her footing than the river would shift or she would hit a raised, rough patch of ice. She spent more time sliding along on her hip than she did on the transfigured skates.
With a sob of relief, she reached the stone "beach," its blocks scoured and scored by untold years of friction with the ice river, and pulled herself onto solid floor. Her robe looked as though she had been pulled backwards through a thicket of scissors, with tears, rips, and pulled threads along its entire length.
Mortified with embarrassment, Hermione hid her reddened palms in the folds of her tattered robe and refused further rubs to her sore parts. She stalked on down the corridor, head high, doing her best to hide a pronounced limp and ignore the snickers behind her.
From the distant bend, she called back, "Well? Are you laughing hyenas coming or not?"
Her voice echoed down the long passage. The vibration dislodged spiders from their webs. Crawlers landed on the floor with crisp splats.
After another five minutes of silent walking, Neville blocked his companions from moving any further and pointed to a section of black corridor. The ebony stone walls absorbed all light, giving the illusion that to move any further meant stepping into nothingness. Even without Longbottom's warning, the transition from common stone to inky darkness would have raised adequate warning.
Snape wrinkled his nose. A faint stench of sulfur clung to the enclosed space. Beneath their feet, dust mixed with fine gray ash. A thin dust fog covered the tops of their boots. Severus studied the marks in the dust further along the corridor. A wide, dragged line of some sort took the place of the expected footprints.
"This is the fire trap, I take it?" Snape said.
"Yes, sir. Jets on both sides shoot across the corridor from right about here," Longbottom pointed to the nearer edge of black stone, "all the way to where the common stone starts again."
"So, basically, where there is black stone, there will be fire. How did you slip past this the first time?"
Neville jerked a thumb back in the direction from which they came.
"I cut a sheet of ice from the river, polished it smooth on the bottom, and made an ice sled. It lasted long enough for me to get to the other side."
This explained the line in the dust. Eying its meandering path, Snape couldn't resist adding, "You were fortunate that you didn't slam yourself head-first into a wall. Still, it was an inventive idea. It might yet work for both you and Ms. Granger. However, I fear my size and weight makes it unfeasible for me."
"The space beneath is high enough for us to crawl under. We'll definitely have to keep our heads down, though."
"That will have to do." Snape judged the distance they would have to cover. "About twenty feet, I'd wager. Doable. What about you two? Think you can crawl that far on your belly?"
"For Harry, I would crawl ten times that far," Hermione vowed.
Neville said nothing but nodded his agreement.
"Very well. Let us see precisely what we face."
Snape pulled an empty potions vial from the smaller pack and threw it along the corridor. Jets of blue-white flame melted the bottle in midair. Before the goo could strike the ground, additional flame-jets activated. Nothing remained of the vial except a puff of black smoke and a few flakes of dust.
A solid curtain of fire stretched across the corridor from a height taller than Snape's head to a point about 18 inches from the floor. The trio stumbled back, their hands before their faces to block the blast furnace heat. The sound reminded Hermione of a dragon's flaming roar, like the one she'd heard during the Tri-Wizard Tournament in her fourth year. The stench of sulfur made her gag.
"Lie flat on the floor," Snape called over the noise. "Unless you want them burned off, you will keep your heads and your rumps down."
Despite her brave words to Professor Snape, Hermione had to force herself to slide beneath the blue-white jets. A primal fear, rooted in deepest racial memory, dreaded fire before all other dangers. At this point, no amount of mental smarts, book learning, or spell casting would save her from critical burns. An instant's inattention might prove fatal.
Dust tickled her nose. The urge to sneeze was an additional irritation that Hermione would gladly have done without. Between the particles and the heat, her eyes watered constantly, forcing her to blink away tears or be blinded. She tasted ash and felt the grind of dirt between her teeth. Within moments, a gummy layer of soot coated her tongue. The air around them shimmered, like waves rising from a sun-heated sidewalk.
The ends of her unrestrained hair levitated in the currents of overheated air, floating as though they had no weight. Every instinct screamed for her to stop, cover her head, and wait for the conflagration to stop. She pulled herself another finger's length forward.
Blistering warmth swirled around the three crawlers and leached away every iota of breathable oxygen. Hot tendrils lashed across their backs, horribly close to unprotected flesh.
"'Mione, your hair!"
Tongues of bright orange flame, hungry and eager, danced along the bushy strands. Hermione struggled to put out the flames but could not reach them without thrusting her hands directly into the path of the fire jets. She screamed.
Snape worked his wand free of his cloak. His skin reddened in the closeness of the flame. Ignoring the pain, the Potions Master wove the obsidian tip of his wand in the small space of non-inflamed air and said, "Exstingute flammam!"
A blue mist cocooned Hermione's head. The flamelets flickered and died, leaving behind scorched ends and untouched flesh.
"Hold your hair down, stupid girl, and keep moving!"
Hermione did her best to gather her hair and stuff it into the neck of her robe. Even so, Snape had to twice more douse flamelets that managed to catch hold of a floating strand. She crawled forward at a faster pace, driven by fear and an almost mindless desire to be away from the flames.
A swirl of superheated air struck Neville in the face, throwing ash, trash, and grit into his eyes. He yelped and struggled to clear his vision. Tears flowed, transforming the cinders into sticky soot that sealed his lids closed.
"Ow! My eyes! Can't see!"
"Hold on, boy," the Potions Master called. "Don't move."
Neville tried to move toward the voice, calling, "Professor?"
"You heard me, Mr. Longbottom. Keep your head down and do not move!"
Severus Snape reached the safe zone first. Once clear of the flames, he uncoiled the rope and made a hard, fast loop at the end. He paused to reach under the fire and pull Hermione the final distance to safety then lay flat on his stomach and slid the looped rope toward Longbottom. Three tries carried the line within the boy's reach.
"The rope is less than a foot in front of your left hand. There's a loop on the end. Reach out and wrap the loop around your wrist."
Neville groped around until he found the hemp coil. Once he'd secured his wrist as instructed, the Head of Slytherin House pulled up the slack and slowly hauled the boy to rest of the way under the fire trap.
Before Longbottom had time to mutter a pain-filled, "Ash in my eyes," a steady flow of water poured from the tip of Snape's wand. Within minutes, the blinding obstruction was flushed away.
"Better?"
Neville blinked reddened, swollen eyes. "Yes, sir."
Hermione hugged her yearmate and asked, "Neville, are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine." Neville reached out to pinch a crisped lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. "What about you?"
"I'm a little singed around the edges, that's all."
Hermione pulled her hair over her shoulder to examine the damage. She tried to make light of the near-disaster even as she shivered from head to foot. A slight tremor moved beneath the Gryffindor's otherwise optimistic voice.
"I suppose that's one way to get rid of the split ends, but it isn't one I intend to recommend to my stylist." She looked at Severus Snape and said, uncommonly solemn, "Thank you, Professor."
Snape responded to her heartfelt gratitude in typical Slytherin fashion. He glared at Neville and asked, "Well, Mr. Longbottom? Where now?"
"Nowhere." Neville pointed to a grand door at the end of the corridor. "We're here."
TBC
A/N #1: A special thank you to my good friend Iroshi, who helped me find just the right spell for Snape to use! FYI: The Latin term "Exstingute flammam" is pronounced "EX-steen-GOO-tay flahm-MAHM" and means "extinguish the flame."
A/N #2: A second thank you to Sharon, for giving me the idea of "blinding" someone. I think it worked perfectly--certainly better than having Neville panic. THANKS!