Look, I'm really sorry about the long wait. My muse (a gnome named Fred) left for a while. He came back, but he's not being very inspirational yet, so God knows where this chapter will go. Ah well.

I own Harry Potter.

Ha. Yeah right. If I were JKR, would I really be writing a freaking fanfiction? No. I think not. I would be too busy… being a billionaire.

Oh, just so you know, the chapter title has nothing to do with the chapter. I just couldn't think of anything else.

Moving on…

At first there was silence.

… And then there was Sirius.

"It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really —"

"Sirius! Shut up!"

"— really dark in here," he finished.

"No kidding," came the very sarcastic, very ticked off voice of Allie. She was very ticked off because Sirius had just stepped on her foot.

"Okay, first things first," said Remus. "Wand check!"

"Um, problem," said Sirius. "I don't have mine."

"Neither do I," said James.

As the others all responded in turn, something quite unfortunate was discovered. It seemed that everyone had lost his or her wand in the chaos ensuing from the attack. Not one person there still had a wand.

"How are we going to get light?" James asked. Liz could see, of course, as that was one of her powers, but no one else could.

The sound of eight people attempting to hit James over the head suddenly filled the area. James took this as a sign that he was missing something important.

"Prongs, you prat!" came Remus' voice.

"Hey, that was alliteration!" said Christian to no one in particular.

"Christian can create fire, you dimwit!" Remus continued.

Pause.

"This is awkward," said Mary in a loud whisper.

Suddenly, Christian felt a sharp nudge in her side. "Christian!" Liz whispered.

Christian realized that everyone had been waiting for her to create some light, and immediately created a small flame in her palm. The other students all instinctively moved closer to the flickering light. It cast an orange glow over the dirty and overwhelmed faces of the nine.

"Can you make the flame any bigger?" Remus asked. Christian shook her head. "I don't think so."

"How're we gonna get more light?" Sirius inquired… inquisitively. "We need to see where we are for at least a couple of seconds, but we can't really see anything…"

There was a silence as the students contemplated this.

Peter took this opportunity to cough nervously, indicating that he had a notion.

"Do you have an idea, Wormtail?" Remus asked in a bored sort of voice.

"Sort… sort of…" Peter answered.

After a short pause during which everyone waited expectantly for Peter to continue, Remus asked, "Well, what is it?"

"Well… remember before when… when Christian was setting me on fire?"

"Yes."

"Well, then I… you know… I used my power, and…"

"Yes?"

"And there was more fire," Peter said. "You know… when she… um… lit my… power… on fire…"

"That's right!" Sirius exclaimed. "Christian lit Peter's cat fart on fire, and it lit up the entire room, remember?"

Everyone laughed a little bit; well, everyone except Aidan, of course, as he was still sulking… somewhere else.

"So, how are we going to go about this?" Remus asked.

"In my opinion," James began ("No one asked you," Aidan muttered under his breath), "Peter should … you know, let one, and then Christian can make some fire. In the meantime, the rest of us can run away and try to avoid the smell."

Peter turned red, but no one noticed thanks to the very low level of light.

Everyone involved in the discussion murmured some rendition of "Yeah, sounds good," resulting in a unanimous approval.

"All right," Remus said. "You guys ready?"

Peter and Christian both nodded, though Christian looked nauseous. "I think I'm gonna try to… try to kind of throw fire at it or something. I have the burning desire to be as far away from Peter's bodily functions as possible."

"As do we all," Remus said. "So everyone else… keep away, but stay together."

"Will do." The students, including Remus, moved away, taking care to hold on to one another as to not get separated.

Peter decided that the easiest way for him to begin was by a countdown. "Three… two… one…—"

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!

Christian raised her arm as if throwing a football. A second later, a bright orange fireball was flying towards the air, illuminating Peter as he ran away. The fire hit the fart and…

FOOSH!

…exploded. The resulting KABOOM was very loud, and sent a violent tremor through the whole area, sending the students to the floor.

However, they did manage to catch a glimpse of their surroundings. It seemed to be a room, that was certain, made of the same dried mud as the whole city they had just been in. It was fairly narrow — only about twelve feet across. But on the other hand, the room seemed to go one forever in both directions. The students could see only the two walls that formed the passageway, plus the ceiling and the floor. Additionally, there was no sign of the 'door' through which they had come — not even a crack in the wall. It was if the block of stone had never moved.

Then it was dark again, as the fireball traveled down the passage and died out.

"Well, this blows," came Sirius' voice.

Eight concurring murmurs came from the other eight students.

"I think we should —" Remus began, but immediately stopped because of what happened next.

On the floor, two small flames suddenly sprang up. They were about four feet apart and as big as the palm of a hand.

About a foot behind those two flames, two more sprang up. They were identical to the first ones. Two more sprang up behind those ones.

As this event progressed and more and more flames sprang up, the students suddenly realized something. It seemed as if the flames were creating a path. Two rows of flames led down the hallway, dimly illuminating the area.

"… follow that path," Remus finished slowly, staring at the flames.

"Yeah," said Mary.

"Let's go," said Sirius. He started towards the path, but was stopped short when Peter began protesting.

"What?" Peter asked, stuttering slightly. "We're not going on that — that path, are we? Who knows where — who knows where it goes?"

"We don't even know where we are right now, Wormtail, and 'that path' is our only possible means of finding out!" Remus said, sounding very impatient.

Peter swallowed. "Well — all right —."

Sirius stepped onto the path with an insouciant "Right-o!" As he did so, the flames flared up for a few seconds, then returned to normal. He looked interestedly at the flames when this happened and remarked, "I think they like me…" When no one else moved, he said matter-of-factly, "Well, come on, then!"

The other students filed slowly onto the path. As each one stepped on it, the flames flared up exactly as they had for Sirius.

Sirius, being in the front, took it upon himself to lead the way. "Let's go," he said as he began walking down the path. The others followed.

After about twenty minutes of scattered "I'm bored!" and "In the name of Merlin, this is taking forever!" and "This was stupid," the students were finally able to see what appeared to be the end of the path. As they approached it, the flames of the path flickered, became very dim, and finally died. Christian immediately created a flame so that they could see, albeit dimly.

It was a dead end.

A wall. Completely blank, with no distinguishing characteristics from the floor or other walls.

The group stood silently for a minute, only half-believing what they saw.

The first to approach the wall was Mary. She examined the mud, her nose a mere half-inch away from the wall, if that. After a tense minute, she proclaimed, "There's something written here!"

There was a small stampede as the other eight students gathered around her.

"But it's in Latin, I think," Mary continued. Indeed, it read, "Per is ianua, vos reperio quis vos capto vacuus gnarus, quis vos erant accersitus hic pro. Vestri fortuna specto vos. Vos mos genero alio ut fabula. Instruo."

"Allison!" called Liz. "Can you read this?"

Allie made her way to the front of the throng. "Yeah, sure," she said nonchalantly. She then recited, " 'Through this door, you find what you sought without knowing, what you were called here for. Your fate awaits you. You will write the ending to the story. Prepare.' "

There was a short silence, then Peter began muttering, "I knew we shouldn't have come this way, what were they thinking, I hate the dark —"

Sirius interrupted with, "Well, that's good…"

"Wait, I'm confused," said James. ("What else is new?" Liz whispered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.) "What's it mean, exactly?" James continued, gesturing to the wall.

"Apparently, if we go through this alleged door —" Allison began.

"— We'll find something we hadn't been looking for —" interjected Christian.

"— And whatever it is, that's why we're here —" Liz broke in.

"— And how we react is going to determine the future, including what happens to us," Mary finished.

The five guys stared at the four girls.

"That was really creepy," Sirius said after a moment.

"What?" the girls all asked at the same time, smiling.

"That."

"Whatever," said Mary.

"Never mind," Sirius, shaking his head.

"Anyway," said Liz. "All right. It talks about a door, but it would help if there actually was a door. What are we gonna do?"

"I think we —" began Remus, but he was cut off by Mary, who exclaimed, "Wait! There's something else — something's being written on the wall!"

And just as she had claimed, spidery writing was forming in lines from left to right on the wall. It read: "Ianua canu exsisto sene tantum per Novem, quod patefacio tantum per Eximo."

Allison immediately translated, "The door can be seen only by the Nine, and opened only by the Key."

"Well, this blows," said Sirius.

"Not really," Liz replied.

"Yeah, it does," Sirius challenged, but Liz ignored him.

"Well, if we're the Nine, we should be able to see it," she said.

"But we can't," said James, trying to be helpful.

"NO, really?" Christian said sarcastically.

Even as they spoke, more writing was forming. Allison read it to them as it formed. "The Key can be found where evils once were held. She who discovered that curiosity is an uncontrollable force was the one who set them upon the world, though she did so without meaning to. Fortunately, though, Hope also flew free on that fateful day. All that one must do to open the Box is command it to do so using his or her gift."

"Okay. Well, that was really helpful," Sirius said sarcastically. "Now what do we really have to do?"

"We have to open a box," Remus said thoughtfully.

"And how might we go about doing that?" Sirius asked.

"With our gift, it says," Remus continued.

"How does that work?" Sirius asked.

"And what box are we even talking about?" Aidan suddenly broke in. "We have to open a door with a key found in a box, yet we have no key, box or even door. This is pointless. This is folly!"

Suddenly Liz gasped. "No! I know what box they mean!" she burst out. "You guys — you remember when we first came out of the portal or whatever, when we landed in the desert. We found a box — that HAS to be the box they're talking about."

"It sounds a lot like Pandora's Box," Mary said idly. "I mean, the description that was written on the wall." She pointed to the spidery writing. "You know, evils were once held in the box, Hope flew free, curiosity is an uncontrollable force. All that."

The other eight stared at her for bringing up such a random comparison at such a tense moment. Then, suddenly, a simultaneous realization occurred to the other girls.

"Mary, you're right!" Liz exclaimed.

"It is Pandora's Box!" Allie added.

"I can't believe this!" Christian put in.

"Well, maybe we should give it back to him when we're done," Sirius said sardonically.

"No, you idiot, it's her, not him," Christian said. "Oh Merlin… duhwhy we didn't realize this before…"

"Wait a moment, I have two questions," Sirius began. "First: who's Pandora?"

"Pandora," Remus began before anyone else could speak, glad that he was finally being helpful, "was a mythological woman. She was given a special Box by the gods, but told not to open it. Her curiosity got the better of her, though, and she opened it. All the evils of the world were in it, so that sucked, but a fairy named Hope also came out of the box." He finished his long-winded explanation and took a deep breath.

Sirius considered this and said, "Ah." Then he said, "And my second question is: where's the box?"

Eight faces suddenly fell. In all the excitement of figuring it out, no one had stopped to think about whether or not the Box was actually in their possession.

"You're not telling me that we don't actually have it?" Sirius said, voice rising.

"Of course not!" Liz said indignantly. "I have it. Duh."

"WHAT?" Christian, Allie, Mary, and Remus all shouted at the same time. "HOW?"

"I picked it up right before those weird German guys took us away," Liz said. "I've had it this whole time, but I never really thought about it."

"WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GET IT OUT!" Sirius bellowed.

Liz, slightly taken aback at Sirius' display of… loudness, decided to drag it out.. just to make him mad.

"Say the magic word."

"WHAT?"

"The magic word. Say it."

"PLEASE!"

"Say it nicely."

Sirius rolled his eyes and quickly said, "Please."

Liz immediately took the Box out of her robes. It shone with the same unearthly light as it had before.

"Okay! Now hurry up and open it!" Sirius whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" Mary whispered loudly.

"I don't know," Sirius whispered thoughtfully.

"You're weird," Mary whispered back.

"You're one to talk," Sirius whispered his retort.

"Could you two psychos stop it?" Liz asked forcefully.

"Sorry."

"Open it!" Christian urged.

Liz tried, and was unsuccessful. "I can't," she said.

"Oh please," said James. "Let me try." He obviously thought that he would be able to open it, and Liz hadn't been able to because she was weak. Well, he was soon about to realize his sad (and kind of funny) mistake. Trying to look cool, James tried to open the box. He attempted to pry it apart for about five minutes, during which his muscles bulged and his face turned red. It was actually quite a comical sight.

Finally, gasping for breath, he handed the Box back, saying, "Can't… do it."

"Yes. We can see that."

"Didn't it say something about using your power to open the Box?" Remus asked.

"Yeah, 'All one must do to open the Box is command it to do so using his or her gift," Allie said.

"So we can't open it just by physical force," Remus said. "One of us has got to use our power to open it."

"Whose power'd work, though?" Christian asked.

"Maybe James could — persuade it to open or something," Sirius suggested. Although this suggestion was extraordinarily stupid, it was the only one available at that moment, so they tried.

"Er — I think you should open," James said uncertainly, addressing the Box as if it were alive. The Box gave a little sort of shudder and was still.

"Hey, it moved!" Sirius said happily. "That's some progress, James, keep going."

"Er — um — yes," James said. He cleared his throat. "Open — eh — open sesame?"

The box didn't move.

"Well, yes, someone else's turn now," said James, looking crossly at the Box.

"The writing —" Remus pointed to the wall — "kind of implies that anyone's power will work to open it. So, unless you're an idiot like James, it should open."

"James wasn't subtle enough, so it didn't open," Allie said. "Remember, it said that in the poem, that he was supposed to be subtle?"

"Oh yeah," said James reminiscently. "But I still think someone else should try."

"I'll try," Christian said testily. She proceeded to hold a flame up to the tiny keyhole on the Box. There was a thick, tense silence, and for several seconds that seemed like minutes, nothing happened. Then, very suddenly, the Box sprang open. Christian shrieked and jumped back, startled by the abrupt opening of the Box. She grinned sheepishly when everybody looked at her. "Sorry."

Everyone's attention was immediately brought back to the Box when it began emitting a faint tinkling tune. The Evils and Hope had already been released a long, long time ago, but that didn't mean there wasn't something … ethereal about the Box. The tune was a bit eerie.

Lying on the bare wood bottom of the box was a key.

"That must be it!" Sirius said. He grabbed the Key out of the Box and held it up. Christian's flame was still duskily illuminating the area, so he could see that it was just a plain Key, except that it seemed to be made of wood.

"So now what do we do?" he asked, still examining the Key.

"Open the door, perhaps?" Aidan asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and Sirius was an idiot. Which may very well have been true, but that's not the point.

"If there was a door, I would do that," Sirius said angrily, "but there's —"

"Yes there is," Aidan said. "Look."

And there was.

It seemed to be just an outline, a line drawn of the same silver spidery writing that the words had been. But there was also a keyhole.

"Go unlock the door!" Allie said.

Sirius placed the key in the keyhole and turned it. There was an audible click and a real door materialized in the wall and opened.

This, however, did not appear to be a portal to another universe. The students could see what was beyond the door, and it seemed simple enough.

A forest.

Dark, dank, wet and cool were the first adjectives that came to mind. The forest itself gave an air of evil and hopelessness, of malevolent unseen eyes watching every move.

It did seem to have an aura of once being a beautiful place, free of corruption and not so windswept and forgotten as it was now.

"Oh, look at that bird!" Mary said, pointing to a huge bird that had just settled on a branch near the door. It was huge, and at first glance, simple black. Upon a closer look, however, one would discover that it was iridescently purple and green as well.

It gave one loud, raucous call and flew off. Mary immediately ran out the door after it, saying, "No! Wait!"

The three remaining girls exchanged looks and all ran after her, shouting "Mary, wait up!" Remus quickly followed.

Sirius looked at James and said, "Guess that means we're going, mate. Let's." He ran out, James close behind him. Aidan followed and finally Peter, afraid of being left alone, came as well.

What happened next was quite like what had happened in the doorway of the mud house thing when the students had first arrived in the city. After a few minutes of sprinting after the bird, Mary stopped, Liz ran into her, Christian ran into her and it continued like that all the way to Peter.

Mary laughed. Liz asked her why she was so hyper.

The students were in the middle of a tiny clearing. It had started to rain substantially, and the chill in the air had increased to an uncomfortable level. The door out of which they had come was nowhere in sight. Suddenly the realization hit.

They were lost.

"This kind of SUCKS REALLY BAD!" Sirius yelled.

"Sirius, shh, keep your voice down!" Liz said hastily. Merlin knew what was hiding in this forest, and he wasn't there right then to tell them.

Then, from a distance away, the sound of twigs snapping could be heard.

"We're gonna diii-iie. We're gonna diii-iie," Sirius began singing softly.

"No we're not!" Remus said. "No we're not." He said it as if he wasn't really sure himself.

"Remember, the door said that whatever we find in this forest is what we were called here for," Liz whispered.

"And what we do basically determines the future of everything," Allie added.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Sirius whispered.

"Like an actual premonition, or just pessimism?" Mary asked.

"Both."

"Ah."

Meanwhile, Christian was talking to Peter. "Peter, in case we die, I want you to know… I've always sort of liked you," she whispered.

Peter's face lit up. "Really?" he squeaked.

Christian snorted. "No."