Harry didn't know where Blacke was taking them. He followed the old professor through a corridor lined with paintings (all very plain yet gory). Ron looked at Harry nervously. Harry, however, was too preoccupied to pay attention to him. Harry wanted to know exactly how Blacke was related to all of this.
Blacke wore a set of rather shabby dark green robes, which swished around his short frame as he walked. His legs, though short, walked with power and authority through the Durmstrang halls.
"Students, I hope you understand," Blacke said plaintively, "that you really shouldn't go places in Durmstrang without the permission of an administrator; it can be quite dangerous, or -"
"It is quite all right, Professor. I have given them permission."
"McGonagall?!" Neville was the first to say, spinning around to behold the welcome sight of the intimidating witch. McGonagall strode towards them briskly, heels clicking against the stone floor. Her hair was drawn back into her usual tight bun, but her eyes were twinkling beneath her glasses. "I can take them from here, Blacke."
"Very well, McGonagall." Blacke said reluctantly, made a slight bow and walked away. He looked back at them suspiciously, then turned the corner and was gone.
Harry's exhale of relief deflated the tension that had wound tightly around his torso.
"Thank you, Professor," Hermione said. "We didn't mean to...I mean, I don't think we were doing anything wrong..."
"Now, listen here, students. I know that Durmstrang can be quite distracting, and, ah, intriguing. I would advise you very strongly not to go messing with dangerous things. I apologize for my infrequent appearances. Dumbledore and I have been preoccupied with...pressing matters."
"Yes, of course, Professor. We've been faring fine by ourselves." Hermione said quickly.
"I trust that if I leave you here myself you will try not to cause more trouble?"
Harry nodded along with the rest of them and resolved to bring his Invisibility Cloak next time.
And there would be a next time.
Night fell across Durmstrang like a suffocating blanket. All sorts of shapes and noises emerged from the shadows. The hoots of an owl outside were transformed into something more sinister and unnatural. Stars glimmered faintly from the black sky, and the moon was just a sliver, casting a ghostly light on the castle.
Harry sat up, put on his glasses, and crossed the room to the pitcher of water, where he poured himself a drink and stood at the open window. The trees waved gently in the wind, the landscape outside his window painted in a palette of midnight blues, blacks, dark grays, and silver-greens.
It was late; too late for anyone to be awake, yet the castle felt alert and crawling with an uncomfortable feeling. Harry closed the windows and turned to face his room, contemplating. His bed sat rumpled, comfy and warm, but the cloak pooled on the floor called to him more.
Harry's striped pajamas disappeared under silvery folds of cloth, and he was off.
The door to his chamber squeaked. Enough to make him freeze but not enough to be heard by the rest of the fortress. He carefully pushed the door open the rest of the way and closed it. Hopefully to passerby, it would look like the door had swung open and shut by itself in the wind. Harry took a moment to get his bearings in the dark then started walking down the corridor.
Unlike his night excursions at Hogwarts, Durmstrang had no moving portraits, no suits of armor, no floating ghosts. Harry felt very much alone inside the fortress. This didn't help his case of jitters.
The stone floor was cold against his bare feet. He walked slowly and carefully. If someone looked too closely, they could see a shimmering patch in the air as he moved. When Harry reached the end of a corridor, he looked both ways before continuing swiftly down it. The cloak flapped behind him as he hurried, down a flight of stairs, and-
WHAM. Harry smacked right into an illusion and fell backwards, landing hard and muttering a stream of curses. No sirens blared, no footsteps came rushing towards the disturbance. Harry got to his feet, wincing, and looked around.
The darkness made every hallway look the same. Harry wondered where the Potions classroom was. He needed to get inside of it. Tonight.
Harry retraced his steps back to where the hallways split and took another route. Passing by a row of windows on the second floor, he looked out over the silent grounds. And then he froze, making sure the hood of the Cloak was drawn tightly around his head.
A figure dressed in flowing robes streaked towards the fortress like a wraith, moving quickly over the dark lawn. Harry couldn't make out any features, human or not. There was something inhuman about its prowling walk, something predatory and not belonging at Durmstrang. Cold panic flooded his veins like ice, and he backed away slowly.
The thing stopped. It turned its head and looked up to the window where Harry stood hidden. Harry couldn't see anything under its hood; the night was too dark. Had it seen him? But no, that was impossible; he was wearing his Cloak, a foolproof way of hiding himself, at least he thought...
Harry held his breath. His heart beat out of his chest, so loudly he was sure the whole castle would hear the thundering and wake up. It seemed to gaze upward for an eternity, locking eyes with the terrified boy hiding above. With a start, Harry realized he could see its eyes; faint shapeless gleams reflecting moonlight.
And then it moved on. Harry exhaled, then a terrifying thought hit him. What if it was Voldemort? Coming to murder Harry at Durmstrang? What if he had led all of his friends into danger?
But Harry dismissed this idea because surely he would have had a dream, or pain in his scar, anything… He thought about running back and waking everyone up, but what if it wasn't anyone to worry about? What if it was just someone out for a night stroll? People would think he was crazy, and he would be watched more closely than ever. He couldn't risk losing his freedom to roam around unbothered.
Harry decided that if Voldemort was actually to show up and start killing people, he would've at least brought a team of Death Eaters.
Putting the creature, or whatever it was, out of his mind, Harry continued down to the Potions classroom. At this time of night, it was so cold that Harry could see his breath puffing out in front of him. He hoped that the Cloak covered it. There were no windows this far down, and Harry had to rely on touch and the tiny bit of light from his wand that he allowed to show through the crack in the folds of the Cloak.
The large door was freezing to the touch. Harry looked for a lever or latch or something to get it open. There was a rough-looking handle, smooth in some places and pockmarked in others. It was slippery, yet had jagged edges that cut into his skin, enough to leave a mark but not enough to draw blood. The handle was uneven and multi-faceted, like it had been fashioned by someone in a hurry. Then he remembered the stone brick with Grindelwald's mark on it. They hadn't had a chance to see what lay underneath it…
He had to choose between the brick and the door. Someone was bound to know he was missing, and if he slept too little it would definitely show the next day. He decided he'd come back for the brick later and got to work attempting to open the door. Thicker than it looked, and Harry being on the slim side, the door was creating quite a struggle for Harry. He stretched his hands outside of his Cloak, feeling for the edges of the door, his wand clutched tightly in one hand, the light illuminating his work. The hood of the Cloak slid off, his head and arms now exposed. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck as he strained to pry the door open.
A noise came from his left. Harry immediately flipped up the hood and hid his wandlight inside of the Cloak, not wanting to put it out with Nox for fear that the thing would hear his voice. There were faint tapping noises, as if heels were clicking against the ground. Harry pressed against the stony wall, trying not to breathe too loudly, his eyes wide with fear.
The soft sound of robes trailing over the ground was heard, and Vulchanova's shrunken face suddenly appeared out of the darkness, lit by a lamp that she was holding.
Her face was gaunt and had a grayish pallor, looking drawn and more than a little ghostly, hovering in the air.
Harry almost screamed, but clamped his mouth shut. Only her face and hand were seen as she swung her lantern back and forth, casting a yellowish glow to sweep across the corridor. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated. She was nothing like the cool, intimidating witch Harry had met on his first day. What had happened to her?
Vulchanova's bulging, bloodshot eyes swept back and forth, looking for something that Harry couldn't see. Her slightly skeletal hand stretched out, tendons and veins standing out. She groped in the air like a madwoman, breathing heavily and glancing furtively from side to side. A strange, unpleasant odor seeped from her body as she took a creaking step. It smelled like sickeningly sweet perfume and the rusty taste of blood.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut, pressing against the wall as hard as he could as if he could make himself smaller. Cold seeped into his very bones from the wall behind him, and he could feel his heart pounding through his body.
Harry had just caught the scent of her putrid breath before she whisked around and disappeared.
He stayed there a while longer, not moving a muscle even as they cramped from being in the same position for so long. His mind whirred tirelessly.
Vulchanova had come down here, in the middle of the night, to look for something, and although Harry knew that there was no reasonable way that she could've seen him, he shivered thinking of the possibilities and the punishments he'd face if any of the faculty ever found out.
After straining his ears to make sure she wasn't coming back, Harry extinguished his wand and got to work on the door, twisting and turning the icy handle and pulling as hard as he could.
"Alohomora!" Harry whispered, tapping it frantically with his wand. Nothing happened. He was working in darkness now, struggling with the handle as sweat slipped down his face. The door budged the tiniest bit; Harry could see a peek of the side of the door, which was pressed so tightly against the stone wall that it seemed impossible to get it closed again. Harry felt certain that it shaved off a little bit of the wall every time someone opened or closed it, since it was such a tight fit, but right now there was no gap. Which only made his job a lot harder.
The door scooted open an inch with a deafening screech. Harry froze, horrified, and abruptly stopped moving, making sure the cloak was covering every part of his body. A whiff of slightly stale air wafted out of the classroom through the small gap that Harry had managed to create.
No one came running. There was only silence and the faint sound of wind outside the castle. Harry pried the door open further, gritting his teeth as his muscles strained under the weight.
He stopped, panting and disheveled, when he had opened the door enough to squeeze through.
Then he stilled, ears straining.
Voices. Coming from above and rapidly getting louder, accompanied by footsteps.
Harry dove inside the dark classroom, unable to see where he was going. He stumbled into a desk, painfully banging his hip, and shoved the door closed as much as he could.
"A disturbance...You heard it too, Vulchanova? Sounds like it was near the Potions classroom."
Professor Blacke.
Harry looked around, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.
There. A cabinet large enough to hide him securely. Harry pulled the doors shut just as the handle of the Potions classroom door began to turn.
Light fell across the floor. Harry, who'd left a tiny crack in the cabinet doors to look through, readjusted his Cloak.
Blacke and Vulchanova, still looking sickly and less human than usual, entered the room. Despite the hour, the wizened old professor looked alert and suspicious.
"...sounded like the door was opening, Blacke, and I was just down here and didn't see anything…"
"Are you quite sure? You came down here, left, and then heard a noise?"
"Yes, you imcompetent old man," Vulchanova snapped, gaining a bit of her old composure and irritation back. Her hands, curved like claws, gripped the empty air. "There's a change in the air…" she murmured, seemingly to herself. "We're going to do it soon, Blacke."
Do what soon? Harry wondered from his hiding space inside the cabinet. He didn't have any idea what time it was. Hopefully, they would both leave soon and Harry could sneak back up to his room. Although he had really hoped to get something out of this night. Solid proof of...he didn't know. Best to listen to their conversation and hope that they'd drop a clue.
"Alright, Headmistress," Blacke said, bowing slightly to show who was in charge. Harry wouldn't want to be trapped with Vulchanova either, even in her diminished state. Blacke mopped his brow with a handkerchief, his balding head apparent in the dim light.
"Don't fail me, Blacke. You know my expectations."
"Yes, of course, of course, Vulchanova," Blacke said, slightly annoyed.
Vulchanova's eyes gleamed purple, but they quickly returned to normal. Harry caught his breath. But apparently their conversation ended, the disturbance forgotten, and Blacke walked away, inspecting his classroom.
Vulchanova left an anxious Harry and an up-to-nothing-good Blacke inside of the Potions classroom. From what Harry could see, Blacke was moving around the space, muttering to himself and lighting candles.
Harry's legs were cramping, not to mention cold. He shifted slightly, trying to get the blood flowing through his limbs again. The action caused some glass beakers (the original inhabitants of the cabinet) to clink against each other.
Outside the cabinet, Blacke paused in his pacing.
Harry mentally swore, preparing to get discovered. But Blacke merely walked on, dusting off a textbook here, and collecting some ingredients there.
Nothing good was coming out of this midnight trip, Harry thought. There was Vulchanova, who had made an unexpected appearance at the Potions classroom, Blacke and Vulchanova going into the Potions classroom together, and… that was about it. Nothing noteworthy or suspicious. Except that figure, running across the grounds. He really needed to get back to bed, there were definitely going to be circles under his eyes the next morning. And he didn't want to endure Hermione's questioning.
Harry sighed, and looked about the Potions classroom. From what he could see, the walls were bare, grimy in some places but scrubbed in others. This patchy cleaning job appeared to be done by Blacke, who was scrubbing a rusty-looking water faucet vigorously. The shelves and various cabinets lining the walls were made with a medley of wood and stone, uneven and possibly handmade. The tables and desks themselves were creaky from use and the floor was scuffed from decades of students stomping through, streaked with dirt and other stains, which Blacke did a poor job of mopping. Glass jars and drawers carried all the ingredients you'd ever need, including dangerous and banned items that were forbidden at Hogwarts and could only be found in Snape's private stores.
But why wouldn't Blacke let in a janitor or someone to help him clean? Harry thought. Unless...he has something to hide.
Blacke stood with his back to Harry, across the room from the cabinet. Harry had a perfect view of his tufty white hair as the old wizard moved back and forth.
Then Blacke took something out from the folds of his cloak. A bottle, filled with dark liquid. The vial that Blacke had snatched from Neville their touring day. Harry inhaled. He needed to get it somehow.
There was some kind of setup going on. Blacke selected beakers and boilers, bundles of potions ingredients, and consulted a spotted page, covered with handwriting. Harry strained his eyes, but he couldn't fathom what Blacke was doing. A ritual, perhaps? Finally, something of interest that he could tell his friends.
But as quickly as the interesting part of Harry's night started, it ended. Blacke, apparently satisfied with whatever he had done, left, shutting the door quietly behind him after extinguishing all the lamps.
Harry was left in the pitch black darkness, frustrated. But there was one thing he could do.
After waiting what felt like an eternity to make sure that Blacke wasn't coming back, he let his eyes adjust and crept from his hiding place. The vial was right there…
Harry deliberated. Blacke would definitely notice its disappearance. On the other hand, this was a big step towards solving the mystery. He couldn't pass up this oppurtunity.
His fingers closed around the bottle. The glass was cool and smooth, but the potion held an unnerving weight, as though its contents were better left undisturbed. Choosing to ignore this feeling, Harry stuffed it inside of his Cloak.