"Harry?"

Someone had grasped his shoulder and jiggled it.

"Wha—?" His head snapped up and he wiped a trail of spittle off his chin.

"Harry, are you okay?" Besel asked.

"Uh, yeah. Must have fallen asleep, is all."

"Do you know where your little snake is?"

"Er, yes, he's right here." Harry touched the bundle of snake nestled against his belly under his jumper. Little Friend squirmed and Harry let out an involuntary giggle, bouncing the snake.

"Where is the exit of this warm cave?" Little Friend asked through the layers of clothing.

Harry shifted and pulled part of his T-shirt out of his trousers and stuck his hand inside so that Nio could emerge. The snake coiled around his hand and wrist.

"Auror Robards has been stabilized and we're ready to investigate the tunnels. Are you feeling up to going down into the tunnels?"

"Sure," Harry said, sitting up straighter and shaking his head to rid himself of his sleepiness.

"Are you ready to show us the tunnels?" Harry asked Nio.

"Yes, though are there any more tasty worms? I could use a little snack first."

"Of course," Harry laughed and stood up, reaching for his busted staff that he had leaned against the chair. He waved his hand through the space, only encountering empty air and the wall. He couldn't find it. He bent down, thinking that maybe it had fallen.

"Where's my staff?" he asked Besel.

"Oh, Figora took it to start rebuilding it. I think Healer Jordan has a couple of muggle canes here in her office. Let me find one for you."

"There aren't any magical staves?"

"No, they take some time to make and they are tailor-made for each wixen that needs it."

"But, when I went to St. Mungo's they had mine ready," Harry said.

"I imagine Hogwarts told them ahead of time?" Besel said as she was opening cupboard doors across the room. She muttered the summoning charm and something smacked against her hand.

"Oh."

"Here you go. Good thing you were practicing with one yesterday," she said as she neared him.

"Right." Harry held out his hand for the folded cane. "Figora tried to summon one of these for me yesterday, but it didn't come."

"Oh, well, the cabinet it was in has a magical seal. She probably forgot with everything else that was going on."

"Is there anyone else who was out of the classrooms when it happened?"

"No, they are still sealed in. We've sent them messages to let them know what is going on. They are all okay. Healer Jordan is working on making sure everyone is accounted for. There are a handful of students that we're still trying to track down, though."

"Who is missing?" Harry's heart lurched up toward his throat at the news.

"We think that some of your roommates are together, but maybe in a null zone as they haven't been able to answer us with magic. We're working on it."

"Who is it?" His fluttering breath made his words wobbly.

"Gemma, Peter, and Aminah. Aminah's mother had just left. We think the three of them were on their way to Ms. Midgeon's class together."

"And we don't know where they are?"

"That's what we're working on. There is a room that is sealed off on the same corridor, and there are three people in it, but they aren't responding to our messages. We think they are safe, though."

"Then we need to figure this out so that we can open up the sealed rooms."

"Exactly."

"How's Dobby doing?" Harry asked.

"He's going to be just fine. He's sleeping. It would be great if you and Little Friend can help us find the breach underneath the Center. The Ministry of Magic is still not able to join us and since Auror Robards is out of commission, it is up to us to sort it out."

"Are we going back through the tunnels we traveled in yesterday?"

"Yes, that's the plan. You, Healer Jordan, and Septima. Figora and I are going to stay here and take care of the Auror and Dobby as well as trying to get ahold of the missing students."

"Everyone else is stuck in classrooms?"

"Yes, or dining hall, the library, the owlery, their dormitories, or the loos. They are eager for us to get this fixed. Healer Jordan and Septima are waiting for you in the herb garden."

"Okay, perfect. I'm going out there anyway to get some worms for Little Friend," Harry explained as he shook out the cane and waited as the elastic cords and aluminum tubing snapped into place.

The tip on his cane made a dull sound unlike the clear ring of the silver tip on his staff as Harry found the door to the herb garden and walked across the gravel-strewn stones to the raised beds in the center of the courtyard. He could hear Healer Jordan and Septima talking quietly in an area of the herb garden that he hadn't explored yet—he vaguely remembered that there was a door on that wall, but he hadn't gone through it and wasn't exactly sure where it led.

"We're over here, Harry," Healer Jordan called to him.

"Yes, just a minute. I'm getting some worms," Harry raised the wrist that Little Friend was coiled around.

The cane struck the stone base of the raised bed and Harry leaned it against the lip of the bed, but when he moved away, it rolled off and onto the ground with an echoing clatter. He muttered under his breath, but left it there while he dug around in the cool earth until he'd uncovered enough insects to delight Little Friend.

While the snake gobbled them up, he knelt by the raised bed and felt over the damp moss-covered stones for the cane. In the process of locating his cane, he found a little piece of folded paper and realized that it was one of Mrs. Longbottom's folded candy wrappers. He stuck it in his pocket as he straightened up thinking of Neville.

"Hey, Little Friend. Are you ready to go?"

The little snake belched in reply and slid up Harry's offered hand. Harry walked over to Healer Jordan and Septima.

"Harry, do you still have your invisibility cloak?" Healer Jordan asked.

"Yes," Harry said, tapping the bulge in his pocket.

"Good, how does Little Friend suggest we get to the tunnels?"

Harry consulted with the snake. "I think he's describing the door in the reception area we came out of yesterday when we arrived at the Center, but continuing north along the tunnel?" Harry wasn't sure if there was a northern passage, but Healer Jordan didn't question it, so he assumed that there must be.

Healer Jordan and Septima were continuing their conversation about their differing perspectives of what had happened in the null zone as they walked over to the door so Harry followed them. As he stepped over the threshold, he recognized the soothing atmosphere of the reception area. It seemed that the herb garden was a passage to several parts of the Center.

The aluminum tip on his cane sounded strange on the tile floor of the reception area and the cane felt flimsy in his hand. He yearned for the comforting texture of the wood of his staff, not to mention the ability to get a reading on the room when he entered it, even if he didn't always use that feature. Somehow knowing that he could use it if he wanted to was comforting.

Healer Jordan's heels echoed off the walls as she marched across the space. She stopped and then Harry put his hands to his ears as the door made a piercing squeal as metal scraped across the stone floor. Little friend tightened on his wrist and Harry muttered an apology to the snake.

Healer Jordan's steps descending the stairs grew fainter as she traveled down. The echo of the tunnel threw up the lonely sounds of pebbles ricocheting down the steps in contrast to her steady steps. The musty odor enveloped Harry as he neared the entryway. Septima's softer footsteps followed Healer Jordan's.

"Oh, it smells good down there," Little Friend confided.

Harry felt for the first step with his cane and reached with his toe to find the overhang. He steadied himself with his hand on the cool dirt wall of the tunnel and Nio snaked up his arm, under his sleeve, to coil around his neck. Little Friend warned him when the tunnel ceiling had jutting rocks that threatened his head, guiding him around them. Healer Jordan had lit her wand with a gentle glow that didn't hurt Harry's eyes. Septima seemed to have a muggle torch, too.

"Oi, ow!" Harry said when she shone it in his face. Little Friend flinched as well.

"You can see the light?" she asked. "Sorry, I didn't think you'd be able to see it."

"Yes, it's rather bright. Do you mind putting it down?" he said, shielding his face with his hand.

"Harry has some light perception, Septima," Healer Jordan's voice echoed up the stairwell.

"Oh, I didn't know. Sorry, Harry." Septima turned around and continued down the stairs in front of him.

"No worries," Harry sighed as he followed her down into the cool depths of the tunnels. The city rumbled around them, muted by the layers of dirt and rock, but more present than when they were in the Center.

"Harry, can you ask Little Friend if this is the right way?" Healer Jordan asked from the bottom of the stairs. Her voice seemed far away.

Harry asked Nio and then directed Healer Jordan to turn to her right. Septima's footsteps were slipping down the stairs faster than Harry could keep up, the uneven stairs made it hard for him to follow without testing each step with his cane as he descended.

The lights cast by Healer Jordan and Septima disappeared and Harry found that he was alone in the tunnel. He called out to them, but no one answered.

"Nio, I can't hear them anymore. Did something happen? Did they go through a door?"

"What is a door?" Nio asked.

"Uh," Harry paused at the bottom of the stairs as he tried to think of how to explain the concept of a door to the snake.

He swept the cane in front of him trying to find the area to the right that he thought Healer Jordan and Septima had disappeared through.

"A door is a plank of wood or metal that closes over an entryway, I guess."

"Oh, yes. Your burrow has them. Door. Hmmm. No, I don't think there is a door down here," Little Friend said thoughtfully swaying under Harry's chin.

"Can you see where they went?"

"No."

"You told them to head to the right, so I'm going to go that way, too. Isn't it kind of odd that they just disappeared?"

"Is it?"

"Yeah. It is." Harry took a deep breath trying to settle his rattling heart.

He wiped his hand holding his cane on his trousers to try to get a better grip, then continued through the tunnel. The tunnel was gradually becoming more and more narrow and the ceiling was drawing closer and closer to Harry's head. The air was danker and earthier if it was possible.

The walls were wet to the touch and now and again he'd stumble on slippery rock formations on the ground. It's a stalagmite, Harry identified as he ran his hands over the viscous surface. He realized that Nio had been doing a good job of warning him of low hanging stalactites throughout the passage.

Harry was in awe that parseltongue had words for the geological formations found in caves. Harry rolled the parseltongue word for stalactite over his tongue while he remembered zooming through the tunnels with Hagrid his first year. Just the memory of Hagrid's bulk made him feel a little safer in the echoey tunnels that seemed to be heading deeper and deeper into the earth. Harry had to fold down one section of his muggle cane to make it shorter and easier to use in the confined space.

Still, they had not caught up with Healer Jordan and Septima. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end at the thought that they had not doubled back for him and Nio. After all, Little Friend was the one who was guiding them through the tunnels, yet they had taken off without them.

Harry acknowledged to himself that Septima still seemed discomposed by Nio. He wondered if that was why they had left them behind. But it didn't seem like something that Healer Jordan would do and that was making a fine layer of sweat coat his palms.

As Harry shimmied his way around a stalactite and stalagmite formation that had grown together in the center of tunnel forming a pillar and leaving barely any room for him to pass, it dawned on him that both Healer Jordan and Septima were bigger than him and likely to have gotten stuck here.

"Nio, are you sure we're going the right way?" The space ahead was so tight that Harry folded his cane up completely and used the elastic band to secure it. He stuck it into the back of his trousers.

"Yes, Big Friend. Why do you question me?"

"It's just that I don't see how Healer Jordan and Septima could have come this way."

"I thought you didn't see…"

Harry was stunned for a second and then coughed up an odd little laugh, realizing that Little Friend has meant it as a joke.

"Right, but did they come this way? How did they fit through here when I can barely make it?"

Little Friend's tongue wisped in and out of his mouth as he snaked through the air around Harry's neck. "Ah. You are correct. I don't smell them. Their smell was stronger when we first started down this passage, but now it is faint. I'm sorry, Big Friend. I should have been paying closer attention. I'm afraid I was focused on guiding you through the rocks."

The snake sagged around Harry's neck. Harry, who had found a protruding rock and sat on it, reached up and ran his hand over the snake's smooth head. Nio nuzzled into Harry's hand.

"Shush. It's okay. We'll figure it out. Thank you for guiding me."

Harry wished fervently that he still had his magical staff. "My wand! I can use the Navigant spell on it!"

He had snapped it back into his holster in Healer Jordan's office earlier and was relieved to feel it still there. He knew for certain that they hadn't crossed into the magical null area because it was still magically contracted to fit on his forearm in the holster. That was something.

He flicked it out and said, "Navigant Healer Jordan." He silently thanked his past self for actually following Godric's advice to use the Memento charm with his wand as well as his staff.

"You can find your leg walkers, then?"

"I think so. Somehow, we've passed them," Harry said as he squeezed back around the narrow passage by the pillar. "My wand is telling me to turn around and go back the way we came."

Retracing their steps was easier because the passage got bigger and it was familiar. Also, his wand was giving him clues about the space and Harry was able to remember when to expect the low hanging stalactites and other obstacles. As the passage got roomier, Harry took his cane out again and restored it to full length, flicking his wand back into the holster. It was still giving him directions, but it was easier to manage without having to hold in his hand.

"Here. Their smell is strong here," Nio said.

Harry's wand was telling him to turn to the left, but when he reached out with his staff, it thudded dully against an earthen wall.

"Huh, my wand says we need to go through here, but it seems solid." Harry moved forward and ran his hands over the dirt wall, sending pebbles cascading down as he dislodged them. He pushed at the wall, but it didn't give.

"Set me on the ground, Sthei," Nio said as he slid under Harry's collar and down his arm.

Harry knelt down and placed his hand on the floor of the tunnel so that Little Friend could glide off. He listened to the snake as he slithered over the dirt floor and then he couldn't hear him anymore.

"Little Friend?" Harry called out, feeling suddenly alone. "Where'd you go?"

Harry felt along the path that he heard the little snake travel along, moving forward on his hands and knees, his cane placed on the dirt next to him. He found a hole and stuck his fingers in it, and realized that there was a coldness seeping out of it that reminded him of the null zone. He pulled back his wand hand, worrying that the null zone would make his wand pop out of the holster again.

"Little Friend? Are you down there?" Harry put his mouth near the hole and called down in Parseltongue.

He heard the snake hissing, and put his ear against the hole, but he couldn't make out the words. He was tempted to dig at the hole, make it bigger, but then he worried about the null zone seeping into the tunnel.

"Healer Jordan? Septima? Are you down there, too?" Harry called through the hole in English.

Distantly he heard their shouts, but couldn't make out their words, either.

"How on earth did they get down there?" Harry muttered to himself, sweat prickling his armpits as he lowered his head to his forearms. "And how do I get them out of there?"

He heard pebbles moving in the hole and lifted his head as Nio's tongue tickled his fingers.

"Little Friend! I hate it when you disappear like that! Next time tell me what you're doing."

"I'm sorry. Your friends are down there. But I don't know what they were trying to tell me and they don't understand me. We need you. But I don't want you to get trapped there with them. I don't think they are very happy. They smell scared."

"Oh, Merlin's pants," Harry muttered as he sat back on his heels and put his hands to his mouth. His fingers brushed the piece of paper that wrote out his words for Gemma and he grabbed it.

"I've got an idea. I'm going to say a message for them… and you can take it to them. Maybe Healer Jordan can write on it with braille? Huh. How, though? I don't have my slate and stylus and anyway they won't fit through this hole at any rate. And how would you carry it? Oi! Maybe she can use a rock. Oh! She can write it… no, shoot. I don't have my anagnóstis either!"

"What is write? What is braille? What is slate? What is stylus?" Nio seemed a bit put out by all the unfamiliar words that were sloshing out of Harry's mouth.

"Oh, I'll explain them later. What's important is that you take a piece of paper to them, okay?" Harry waved off Little Friend's questions impatiently.

"Okay, I'm going to say a message in English."

Does that mean that my papers have been writing out what I've been saying in Parseltongue all this time? I wonder what that looks like? The thought raced through his mind, but he pushed it away.

Harry shook his head to focus on the task at hand and then spoke his message in English to Healer Jordan, catching it as it fluttered by his mouth and handing it to the little snake to take down the tunnel. As he felt Nio's thin tail disappear down the hole, he frantically went through several scenarios of possible ways to get them out of there, dismissing each in turn as impossible.

It seemed like an eternity before Nio returned through the hole, the paper in his mouth making a strange sound as it was pulled through the tunnel walls.

Harry took the paper from Little Friend's mouth and ran his fingers over it. There were creases and indentations, but Harry couldn't make any sense of it, no matter which way he turned it. He smashed the parchment in his hand in frustration, grabbing the hair on his head and bending over as tears pricked at his eyes. Nio slithered up his thigh and poked at his stomach.

When he bent over, something in his pocket made a crinkling sound. He sat up again and pulled the folded candy wrapper that he'd found in the herb garden.

"What is that, Big Friend?" the snake asked.

"This might work better," Harry said as he unfolded it and smoothed it out on his thigh. The foil smoothed under his touch. He felt around on the ground and found a pointed rock. He smoothed the ground in front of him so that the larger pebbles were moved to the side and then gently pushed braille letters into the foil and felt them on the other side. The ground was too uneven. He tried it on his leg.

It worked.

He smoothed the foil out again and then folded it carefully and spoke another message to Healer Jordan instructing her on using the foil to respond to him in braille.

Little Friend eagerly took the papers and disappeared through the hole again. Harry tried to steady his breathing as he waited.

Little Friend came back, the sound of the foil sharper than the paper as it moved along the walls of the little tunnel.

Harry took the foil from Little Friend's mouth and unfolded it carefully. Nio nudged against his belly, and Harry absentmindedly lifted a corner of his shirt so the snake could nestle by his belly—his cool scales making Harry shiver.

Harry turned his attention back to the candy wrapper. In the center of the paper, two words were imprinted in braille… "send cloak."