Inheritance Trials Chapter 2: Gauntlet, a harry potter fanfic

Their eventual landing was soft, tumbling gently into a tangle of what felt like rubbery leaves.

"Lumos," they cast in near unison. Light flared up, and they both stiffened involuntarily.

They lay in the largest patch of Devil's Snare that Ron had ever seen. Reaching easily from wall to wall of the deep shaft, the plant was already beginning to come awake, its tendrils wriggling and reaching for the intruders.

Ron tried to bat away the vines creeping toward him, but that only agitated the leaves beneath him. Coils of greenery slid up around his stomach, his legs, twisting and tightening.

A leaf wound itself around his wand and he let go instinctively, drew his hand away, and only as the light vanished did he realize his mistake. Now he was helpless, weaponless. He reached around, hoping to find his wand, but felt only more twisting writhing vines and too-agile leaves that tried to twist around him even as he touched them. He jerked his hand away.

The feel of the plant slithering around him made it hard to think. He leaned forward, keeping his chest and hands clear, but that wouldn't last for long. It was dragging him down, slowly cocooning his lower body, tightening and pulling and reaching.

He shivered violently, fear overtaking him in a flood. He would be strangled, suffocated, slowly consumed until nothing remained. Devil's Snare was one of the most insidious and dangerous plants they'd studied during the first year, and that was a single vine of it in a careful enclosed pot.

This much would kill them both in minutes.

"Standard solution is fire," Hermione said, her voice trembling, and Ron saw she was terrified too. "How much farther down do you think the shaft is? If we break the hold, will we have time to recast wingardium without hitting bottom?"

"I don't care," Ron said. "Just get us out of this!" The urge to struggle and try to fight his way free was becoming overwhelming. He didn't have his wand. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

It was a supreme effort of will not to thrash wildly, but that would only entangle him quicker. When its prey was still, the Devil's Snare worked slowly and methodically. Only when it sensed movement would it lash out with its full deadly speed.

"Hermione?" he asked, fighting down the panic. He turned and looked around again, but his wand remained lost somewhere under the writhing mass of greenery. Hermione's glowing wand cast the scene in intense light and deep shadow.

Vines and leaves slithered over Ron's stomach and up his chest, reaching and pulling, steady and irresistible. Some of the vines were thicker than his arms, yet they moved with lithe and sinuous flexibility.

He wouldn't be able to break himself free if he tried. A smaller plant could be broken free of, but one this old and strong. . .

"Lumos Solem!" Hermione called out, and the white-blue light at the tip of her wand flared and shifted. Gold sunlight flooded out, so bright Ron had to squint against it. The vines around him loosened, but did not release, nor did they stop their slow advance across his body.

Then, finally, he caught sight of his wand. Beneath a leaf that recoiled from the light, lying with one thin vine wrapped loosely over it. He lunged, dove forward into the mass, reached out and grasped it even as his sudden movement agitated the plant into motion. A vine lashed out, coiling around his neck and shoulder, his wrist and his hand, wrapping him quickly and tightly.

"Lumos Solem!" Ron called, twitching his wand and hoping the minimal amount of movement he retained was sufficient. Sunlight burst from his wand as well, and this time he felt a definite slowing of the plants movements. Its smaller leaves and tendrils began slowly retracting, coiling themselves up.

It hybernates during the day, Ron realized, memory of a lecture coming back to him now his panic was subsiding. He nearly laughed with relief. Trust Hermione to recall such an obscure herbology fact and figure out how to exploit it.

All they had to do was keep still and wait, and the plant would fold itself up to rest. As long as they didn't draw its attention, they'd be able to slip down through it.

"Hermione, you're a genius," he said, with heartfelt relief.

She rotated her wand to point at him. "This could be rough," she said. "If one of us falls through first, we may not be able to aim through all this."

The coils around his legs were sliding free, the plant drawing back. Ron slid down a few feet, then was halted by the thick vine around his waist.

"We can't let up the sunlight spell until we're through," Ron said. "Otherwise, it'll wake back up and eat us."

"But if we fall separately, we won't be able to slow each other."

Ron's attention trailed along the thick vine that had twisted around him, then off deeper into the tangle.

"We could tie ourselves together," he suggested. "If we move really slow, we could get close enough together. Cut this vine free and lash ourselves to either end. Devil's Snare is strong enough to handle our weight, clearly."

He moved as he spoke, slowly, as though swimming in extreme slow motion. Leaves and vines twitched at his touch, wrapped lazily around him only to slide away a moment later.

Hermione copied him, drawing herself toward him through the plant's tangled mass.

About a third of what he could see was tucked up against itself now, and he could see they'd descended another several feet through the thick tangle of plant. It seemed to grow right out of the walls.

"I wonder how long this has been here?" he mused.

"Long enough," Hermione said. She reached out her free hand, and he clasped it in his own. "Alright. Hold very still."

She twisted her wand around. "Diffindo!"

The vine circling his middle screamed, a high hissing screech that cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Ron tugged it free, tied its thick section more securely around his waist, and tossed the middle section to Hermione as she recast her Lumos solem.

Before she'd even finished tying it, she slid through the last layer of vines with a faint squeak. Ron felt her weight pull against his end, and he readied himself, if they fell free, he had to be able to cast at a moment's notice—

"It's alright, the floor is right here," Hermione called up. Her weight lessened, and a moment later Ron slid through the last of the snare himself, dropping a short way to the stone floor.

For a moment he lay there, breathless, laughing with relief. Hermione helped untie the vine and he tossed it away. Once he'd regained his composure, he turned to survey their new surroundings.

They stood in a round rough-hewn stone shaft, a single doorway leading onward. Ron stared at it.

"I think Harry was right," he said slowly. "I may have taken this too far."

"Too late to back out now," Hermione said. She shut off her sunlight and replaced it with the normal wandlight. Ron wanted to keep his, but the brighter light required more focus to maintain and he didn't know what else they may have to face down here. He followed her example.

The second room was full of flying keys.

They seemed territorial, pecking at each other and swarming in small flocks to down individuals. Eight keys lay scattered on the floor, their wings bent and fluttering weakly. Another dozen flew warily at low altitude, occasionally falling before catching themselves.

As they watched, one on the floor regained its flight and swooped up to join a small pack attacking a big silvery key. The bigger key thrashed about, clipped the wings of two of its assailants, then succumbed to their combined assault and clattered to the floor.

At first, the keys seemed content to fight among themselves, but as Ron and Hermione reached the center of the room, their attention began to shift. Singly or in pairs, keys swooped down to harass them, chirping and bumping against them aggressively.

The closer they got to the door, the more agitated the swarm became. They stopped infighting at once, swooping in with increasingly painful force, trying to drive the intruders back toward the first room.

Ron retreated a few steps, and the keys lost interest in him, redoubling their attacks on Hermione until she too retreated. So long as he and Hermione remained well away from the door, the flying keys paid the humans no heed.

"This will be tricky," Ron muttered. He directed his wandlight toward the door, leaning forward to examine it. Ten locks, each with its own keyhole, secured the exit. "Assuming all the keys we need are in here, we'll have to catch the correct ones, withstand their fellows' attacks, and unlock the door. I don't suppose you know a shield charm?"

He'd read about the shield charm. A very powerful and versatile spell, but not a simple one.

Hermione grimaced and shook her head. "I wasn't planning to start on those until third year."

Ron nodded. "Same. Maybe we should make that a priority next year."

"I'm sure we'll know better than to go down corridors whose sole advertisement is 'a very painful death' next year," Hermione said. She hesitated, then added, "But, you're right. We need to know the shield charm as soon as possible."

They fell silent, contemplating their current challenge.

"We could levitate them to unlock the door at a distance," Hermione suggested. "It would take more time, but be safer."

Ron shrugged. "Worth a try. Wingardium leviosa."

But this time their plan didn't go very smoothly. The key he'd targeted slipped free almost at once, before he'd moved it more than a few inches. Repeated attempts were more or less equally ineffective.

After sticking light to the walls so they didn't need to maintain a Lumos the whole time, they tried combining their effords. But even with them both focusing together on the same target, the keys were able to slip away just as easily.

"Petrificus!" Hermione called, and one key stopped flapping its wings and fell to the ground.

Ron grinned and joined in.

The grounded keys started to revive before they'd cleared half the swarm, whatever magic repaired them after their own in-fights also serving to break them free of the binding jinx.

Ron began to feel the strain of so much rapid spellcasting. He sat down, looked over the downed keys and the door to see if there were any obvious matches. He chose five that seemed promising, rested another minute, then started for the door.

The keys swarmed him, trying to push him back, but Hermione ran forward to join him and that forced the attacking swarm, already reduced in size by their petrificus spells, to divide itself still further. Ron handed Hermione three of the keys he'd chosen, snatched another promising-looking one out of the air as it swooped to attack him, and rushed for the door.

Two of his guesses were right, the locks clicking and vanishing as he turned the keys. Hermione got one. Once their locks were open, the keys rose unsteadily to resume their attack.

The duo retreated. Ron set about gathering up the fallen keys that hadn't recovered yet, checking them against the locks in case any of them were a better match he'd overlooked. Then he frowned down at the pile of limp or fluttering keys before him.

"Is there any way we could keep these out of commission longer?" he asked. There wasn't a door on the entrance, or he'd have thrown them out into the first room.

Hermione looked at them a long moment, then grimaced. "It feels cruel, but I could make a fire. Try to burn off the wings so they can't move."

Ron hesitated, then nodded. "I don't have a better idea."

She whispered an incantation, then knelt down and deposited a ball of bright blue flame on the ground. Adding several more, she soon had a sizeable blaze going. It burned on nothing, neither growing nor shrinking, and never varied from its gelatinous form or vibrant blue colour.

Ron hadn't seen that spell before. He'd never heard of a spell that made solid blue flame. His already high estimation of his friend and rival rose.

A clattering from the pile of keys alerted him to an escape attempt, and he grabbed the weakly fluttering key and tossed it toward Hermione's flames. It chirped wildly, but the more it tried to fly away the faster the flames licked up its delicate wings. With a final effort, it flopped to the ground with a dull clink and lay there, still chirping weakly.

Ron felt momentarily overcome by guilt, but only until he remembered how aggressively the keys had assaulted them. He gathered up the remaining pile of petrified keys and tossed them onto the flames, then set about petrifying each remaining flying key.

Hermione joined in a few minutes later, though Ron could see tears in her eyes. The feeble, desperate chirping from the growing pile of wingless keys was clearly affecting her.

They systematically demolished the aggressive swarm, located the necessary keys to progress, and unlocked the remaining seven locks.

Albus Dumbledore looked up in alarm. He checked a few of his instruments with a quiet frown. Severus, tasked with watching Quirinus, remained at the Quidditch match. Harry Potter was also in attendance, along with Neville Longbottom.

So who had just passed the First Door?

Albus strode swiftly from the room, beckoning for Fawkes to follow. If he'd been mistaken, if for once it was not the Defence professor who was the threat, he had no time to waste.

Not for the first time, he wondered at the coincidental timing of it all. The Gauntlet had appeared, ready to protect the Stone, the same year that both potential Prophecied children would be attending the school, the same year Nicholas Flamel suddenly decided his Stone needed guarding, the same year that Quirinus returned so very different to take the cursed position.

Whatever Hogwarts was up to, Albus Dumbledore would figure it out. And he sincerely hoped to do so before anyone was hurt.

The third room was a chess set, in a losing position.

Ron climbed the steps to a balcony overlooking the board and clearly saw that his side, black, was on the edge of defeat. If it was white's move, the game was as good as over. If it was his move. . .

He considered, trying to find a way to win, but the absolute best he could come up with was a draw. If his opponent made mistakes.

His three remaining pawns were blocked, he was down to a knight and rook against the enemy's queen, and his king sat in the middle of his back row like a sitting target while the enemy king was coming dangerously close to the most defenceless of his trio of pawns.

He shouted a command to his pieces, but no one moved. It must be white's move. Game over.

But to his surprise, the king turned and bowed to him, stepping off the board and holding out his crown. Ron frowned, then understood.

"Hermione, take that space," he called. She collected the crown, which looked quite strange on her, and took the place of the former king. Ron repeated his command to the bishop, who didn't move.

Hermione echoed his command, and the bishop strode along its diagonal as ordered.

Ron had to fight down the anxiety of having Hermione in the game. It had been an instinctive decision, but with her as the king he couldn't risk losing. He had to measure every move, even though he sent her aggressively across the board to help dance around the enemy queen and try to pick off the white pawns.

The white queen tried again and again to corner Hermione, glowering as though it were a personal affront to have her lasting so long, but Ron was quite good at chess. Though he'd started at a disadvantage, they were able to survive long enough.

"Fifty moves," he declared, relieved. "No captures, that's a stalemate."

The pieces moved around, setting a new position. This was more evenly matched in material, but his position was disadvantageous. Ron groaned. So he had to actually win a match to move forward. He'd hoped surviving it would be good enough.

It took three more long, careful matches - three more draws - before he finally got lucky and seized the advantage. From there, it was a simple matter of trading material and maneuvering his opponent into a trap.

Finally, the white king tossed down his own crown and stood aside. The door beyond him opened at a touch.

Ron recognized the troll at once. It had a flattened sort of head from where he'd smacked it into the ceiling the first time, and it whimpered a bit when it saw them.

Ron kept his glowing wand trained on the creature, but it crouched and growled and sidled away from them. He started across the room, and the troll made no move to stop him.

"Ron, look at this," Hermione said from behind him.

"Just tell me," Ron said, keeping his eyes and wand on the troll.

"There are runes laid out in the floor. Spirals and patterns, I don't recognize them."

"Alright, come up here beside me."

Hermione was trembling, and Ron remembered that the last time she'd encountered this troll she'd been terrified enough to forget her magic entirely.

"It's alright," he said firmly. "Keep your wand pointed straight at it. Don't be afraid. It's just a troll, and obviously not very well trained either. As far as it knows, we're its handlers and we have every right to be here. If it comes toward you or makes an aggressive move, throw some of that blue fire at it and shout 'bad' or 'no' like you would a misbehaving ghoul. As long as you convince it that you're in charge, it won't attack."

Hermione raised her wand, but Ron could see she was still nervous.

"I'll be quick," he promised. He gave the troll one last glare, as though to instruct it to be good, then turned to examine the floor.

As Hermione had said, it was inlaid with faint impressions of runes. He recognized only a few - that one meant change, that one repeated several times was for fire, this one represented healing, that one change.

He noticed that they were linked by thin lines, leading one to the next, branching out until the whole pattern was connected into overlaid spirals, but not every connection was part of the main one.

"It's a spell circuit," he realized, then stepped back to the beginning and touched his wand to the first symbol in line. It began to glow faintly, illuminating the three lines branching out from it.

"But what does it do?" Hermione asked, turning to him.

Ron shrugged. "I was planning to start studying Runes in third year."

Hermione grimaced. "Me too."

The troll snorted and took a few steps toward them. Hermione squeaked and jumped, but Ron straightened and leveled his wand at it.

"Back," he ordered sternly. "Stay."

The troll retreated and crouched down again, waggling its ugly head from side to side. It grunted irritably, but didn't advance.

"They're really no big deal, trolls," Ron explained to her. "Bloody hard to train, but live a long time for all that. Expensive to hire out, but this one seems to be more or less wild. I wonder where it came from and how it managed to slip into the castle."

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know these," she admitted, her attention back on the floor. "I haven't even bought a book on runes. I'll have to study that next year."

"I know a few, but not enough." Ron frowned, glanced back at the three options. "That one means light or illumination, I think. Can you watch the troll? I need to examine these."

Hermione stepped up beside him bravely, and Ron smiled encouragingly at her.

He followed the lines of each branching, but quickly got lost as each branch split again, then again, then looped back to rejoin one or another line of runes somewhere farther down the pattern. A few led to dead ends, but almost all of them ended up twisting back together in the end. Three routes, then one final rune just beneath the blank wall where the door should be.

Ron didn't know the first thing about spell circuitry. He didn't know what kind of unpleasant effects could be hiding down the 'wrong' branches. Probably nothing deadly, but both the first two rooms had potential for injury so he couldn't assume anything.

He'd have bruises from those keys for days and doubted he'd ever be able to look at Devil's Snare without trepidation again.

"Hermione, trade places with me. Look at each line carefully, see if you can figure out anything at all about them. I'm stumped. What we need to do is choose a path to connect this door to the endpoint across the room, but I don't know enough runes to choose a safe one."

He stood and glowered at the troll, who had taken to snorting disconsolately and staring about at the walls and ceiling as though perfectly content to crouch in the corner.

"The first rune is that circle thing," Hermione said.

"That means. . . Action? I don't remember, but it's used at the start of most spell circuits I've seen. The one next to it with the three branches means Illumination," Ron said. "I don't know the other two."

"And the one at the end?"

"I don't know."

Hermione paced back and forth across the sprawling design.

"The beginning one shows up on six other branches," she said. "Here, here, here, and those two next to each other, and that one there. The ending one is paired with them on this branch and this one, but not on the others."

Ron blinked. "So if we use any of those other four routes, it'll start a new chain without ending the last one?"

Hermione shrugged. "If that's what the final symbol means."

Ron didn't know, but guessed it might be. "So that eliminates four out of. . . two dozen branches?"

"We could make a path that includes both these stop and start again ones." Hermione pointed out. "Or either, or neither."

"Doesn't narrow it down too much," Ron grumbled.

"Illumination shows up again only twice more," Hermione said. "It follows right after stopping and beginning on this route, and comes fourth-to-last on this path."

Ron straightened, looked back and forth between the troll and the blank wall.

"Switch with me," he said, excitedly. "I have an idea."

He looked over the runes, until he found the one that he thought meant fire. It showed up on several paths, but on all but three of the instances it was followed by a large squarish rune whose meaning he didn't know. One, halfway across the room, led to three separate branches. Two of them identical, and stretching out to either side.

"This one is a barrier, I'd bet anything on it!" Ron said, pointing. "It splits the room in half with a veil of fire, I think. That will keep the troll contained, so it won't follow us out."

"Brilliant." Hermione sounded very relieved. "I was afraid we'd have to keep intimidating it all night."

"There are only two routes that connect to this," Ron said, his excitement growing, "and one of them uses the stop and start you found."

He touched his wand to each branch, guiding the light along the track he'd chosen, twisting and circling across the floor. He had to get quite near the troll for one of the sections, but it just sidled away uneasily. He reached the triple branch that represented the flame wall and stepped back across, then activated the two side runes.

Light flared across the lines, twisting into a curving, undulating barrier of solid gold light, flickering with flame. The troll moaned, but it was no longer clearly visible through the barrier.

"Brilliant!" Hermione repeated. She grinned, then pocketed her wand and joined Ron next to their barrier. "So, where next?"

"If we wanted to hit your second stop-start pair, there are two ways toward it," Ron said. "Or if we wanted to avoid it, there are three safe routes yet."

"Let's rule out anything with fire," Hermione said. "I doubt they'd use it for multiple purposes in the same room. If we choose the wrong one, it may trap us."

"Good thinking," Ron said, and they each set about following the twining paths of runes. Two more were eliminated for use of the fire rune, but that still left them with three to decide between.

"Only one stops and starts again," Hermione said, hesitantly. "Do you think that's a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"It was used to indicate that everything prior goes into these barriers," Ron said, waving at the wall of flame, "and that a new section of spell begins after. The question is whether we need one more spell or two to get out of here."

Hermione nibbled at her lip, frowning. "I don't know! It's so frustrating. I ought to be able to solve this easily. If only I'd studied farther ahead."

Ron grinned ruefully. "Yeah."

Hermione sighed. "Let's just try the stop-start one. If it's wrong, we'll deal with the consequences."

Ron set about activating that line of runes, twisting around toward the door. The moment he hit the stop-start, a grinding crunching sound came from the wall at the end, so loud and sudden that he jumped and nearly dropped his wand.

"What was that?" Hermione asked.

Ron shrugged, his heart racing. "It didn't sound good," he said. Frowning, he continued the route until it reached the end. A gateway appeared in the solid rock, barred by metal spikes reaching up through the ground and into the top, solid and looking quite impenetrable.

"I guess that's what it was," he said, disgruntled. "I don't suppose you know how to transfigure iron spikes to something less solid?"

Hermione shook her head. "I can do steel or silver, but I don't know the equations for iron."

"Transfiguration is so finicky," Ron agreed, frowning at the bars. "If this even is iron. I wouldn't put it past them doing something tricky with them."

"Can we turn it off?" Hermione asked.

Ron shook his head. "I don't know how to deactivate magic circuits, we'll just have to wait until it runs down. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

Hermione looked at him fearfully. "They run down? If the door only exists because of the circuit, then how will we get back out?" she whispered.

Ron shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But it's not like we could get out with the Devil's Snare or that giant drop. Nothing particularly important is in these first rooms. Either there's another way out farther on, or. . ."

"Or we're already trapped down here," Hermione finished.

Ron swallowed and nodded. He stood by the beginning rune, waiting for the circuit to run out of power. Hermione inspected the final section.

"This one matches the last part of the one we used," she called. "I bet it's the doorway-making but without the spikes."

"Good," Ron said. "Keep track of where that goes. We'll need to get this re-active in a hurry."

"Why?"

"That troll will be very unhappy at being locked in a small space along with fire," Ron said, grimacing. "I doubt any amount of fear of us will keep it from rampaging around wildly."

"Oh," Hermione said weakly. She glanced at the flame wall with trepidation. "And we can't just let the second set run down without the first?"

Ron shook his head. "They're all linked together. If I knew how to selectively deactivate runes, we wouldn't have to wait for it to run out in the first place."

"Oh! It's starting to fall," Hermione said. The last few runes were losing their light, the gateway slowly dripping back into a solid stone wall. Then the wall rattled and vibrated again, the spikes presumably retracting, and the fire barrier flickered and faded.

With a roar, the troll charged out, banging off walls and jumping up and down, smacking its big hands off anything in reach.

"Wingardium leviosa!" Ron and Hermione shouted, but the troll was moving too fast. They missed.

Hermione shrieked and fled back to the key room. Ron managed to start the first two runes, but then the troll was charging and swinging its club and Ron knew he couldn't get his wand up in time, he had only seconds to live—

"Wingardium leviosa!" Hermione screamed, and the club wrenched out of the troll's grasp.

"Bad, bad bad!" Hermione shouted shrilly, the club whacking the troll around the face and chest. She advanced, wand conducting the club as she continued to scream at the troll. "Back, and don't do that again! Bad!"

The troll growled and swatted at the club, but its motions were slowing, the combination of Hermione's sharp words and the club breaking its momentum and dulling its rage. It fell back before the onslaught, shrinking away, returning to its submissive crouch in the corner.

"That's right," Ron snapped at it, his heartbeat beginning to approach normalcy again. "Stay."

He quickly activated the runes, guiding the path through to the fire barrier, skipped past the spikes, and onto the section Hermione pointed out. The doorway formed, unobstructed this time.

"Remind me never to go off on a dangerous and foolhardy trip without you," Ron said to Hermione. "You've saved me more times today."

Hermione blushed. "Someone has to look out for you."

Ron grinned at her. They were both breathing heavily, calm slower in returning than their good spirits. Together, they crossed into the next room.

Ron groaned. "Potions?"

Two dozen bottles stood on an ornate stone bench. Eight were medium size, eight large, and eight small, though the shapes were varied. Half were brown glass, half green, but all opaque enough that the contents could barely be seen.

They seemed to be aligned haphazardly, with no clear pattern. Large, small, medium medium medium large. . . Green green brown green brown brown green brown green. . .

The opposite door was an empty archway, but Ron didn't trust it. "I bet the moment we get close, something bad happens," he muttered.

"Like with the keys," Hermione agreed. "But I don't know what we're supposed to be doing."

Ron frowned. The room was much smaller than the others they'd passed through, and its architecture was distinct. While it followed the same general trend, the patterns were neither the thick round ones of the golden hall nor the intricately circular patterns of the previous three rooms, instead feathered with patterns of lines and angles.

It contained only the table with the potions, a wide gateway at either end. He crossed to the table and examined it closely.

"Something's missing," he said, pointing. The potion bottles were arrayed in four rows, staggered, but the front row had a conspicuous empty space, the bottles spaced around it.

"I feel like we should try leaving anyway," Hermione said. "It would be hilarious if there was this complicated-looking puzzle, when the real answer is just to walk out."

Ron hesitated. "That doesn't sound right," he mused. "I think this whole place is a test. They wouldn't have made it so one whole puzzle was 'just ignore the obvious and walk past'."

He frowned at the rows of potions. None seemed out of place since they were in a seemingly random jumble. There was no system to it, no pattern he could simply complete. Round bottle, square bottle, round, hourglass square hourglass triangle oval square. . .

No pattern.

"I'm going to try," Hermione declared, and before Ron could stop her she marched toward the exit.

A barrier of black flame rose up before her, hissing and snarling. She jumped back with a small squeak.

At the same moment, purple flames ran along the wall, blocking the way back, and bright gold flames wrote out a long section of words on the wall behind the bench.

One in two will aid you
One in three distract
One in four for turning back
One in six will bring you harm
One in eight shall guide you on
One in twelve to end your quest.

Beginnings to move onward, unless you choose to guess.
39 to carry on, 18 more to return. The key is writ disguised, unclear, the path beginneth here:

Those words were written in smaller letters, like a preface. The remaining words covered all the rest of the wall.

A hero bears power, justice, and death; all kept in these potions midst water and earth.

Darkness hides the future, whether good or ill. Life conceals much hardship, but offers a way out.

You're safer far with angles than ovals, rounds, or curves, but not of questing onward - chances there are small.

Zealously ignored extremes could kill, or render aid. Living seems certain when your receptacle is larger, equal risk brings surer advancement.

Keep diligently learning everything if you just seek to know. Refuse the quest and your knowledge doesn't fade. Just proceed without hesitation and quest another day.

If you would choose a potion by height, none is greater than the others. Unsafe waits near harmless.

If by line you would decide, your best choice is home or very far away. Picking from isolated corners would often be just fine, but there also quietly waits the potion to end your chances here.

Three and three are safe to drink, three and three again will stall your journey back.

"There's not enough information," Hermione declared with a frown. "There's no clear data points to begin from, there's nothing substantial here. It's just comparing arbitrary things to other arbitrary things, where it isn't just pure incomprehensible rubbish! This isn't a solvable riddle."

"Calm down, Hermione," Ron said, though he couldn't see a solution either.

"All it does is narrow it down. Some medium-sized bottles will help, while one will kill. Even using every bit of information they give, there's not enough here to make a decision. And what does it mean, that a potion bears 'justice'? Power and Death are at least reasonable, but there's no such thing as a potion of justice!"

"Relax. We'll figure it out. Let's start at the beginning."

"The first line is dumb," Hermione insisted.

"Then skip it for now. Darkness hides the future, whether good or ill," Ron read aloud.

"Darkness are the brown 'darker' bottles, life are the green," Hermione said promptly. "The most useful and most dangerous ones will be brown, while the green ones are distracting or annoying, though one or more could help us retreat past the first trials. Maybe."

"Safer far with angles—"

"But not of moving onward," Hermione said. "It narrows down the odds, but doesn't help distinguish. I'm telling you, it's a vague useless riddle. Unsolvable."

Ron reached for a square bottle, but it didn't budge. "And it's stuck to the table," he said.

Hermione tried lifting a large oval bottle, but that one didn't move either. "How peculiar," she mused, and Ron was pleased to see her curiosity overpower her frustration.

She tried each bottle in turn, and only two on the left and the two in the center front moved, sliding along the surface. "Is it a puzzle?" She slid one bottle forward, and as soon as it entered the central diamond it lifted free of the surface.

"Ah," she said. "Interesting."

Ron tried, but none of the bottles would move.

Hermione replaced the bottle as he was pushing, and the moment her bottle touched the space his slid free so abruptly he nearly toppled over.

"Alright," he said, recovering his balance and getting out a piece of parchment. "So it's a sliding puzzle, as well as a riddle. All the bottles have to be on the board for any of them to move. We can only move them into adjacent diamonds, and can only remove them from this front central spot."

Hermione tried a few things, sliding bottles back and forth, and nodded. "Looks accurate."

"Does the way they slide seem relevant to the clues at all?" Ron asked.

"No, but we should write down the order they're in now before we move them too far," Hermione said. "Several of the clues mention their location, but once we start mixing them up that won't be any help."

Ron noted down each bottle's description and location, sketched out a quick duplicate of the layout.

"There's still not enough information," he said, frowning up at the words hovering behind the potions puzzle. "None of that tells us how to determine anything."

Hermione grimaced. "Maybe we need to drink one at a guess, and then once we have that information the rest will make sense."

"We can't risk that!" Ron exclaimed. "Some are deadly!"

"One," Hermione said. "One of these specifically," she pointed them out. "So we choose from a different group. Like the ones that don't help or harm particularly much."

She began rearranging the potions, and Ron saw a flicker out of the corner of his eye.

"Wait!" The number had changed. The flaming 39 had shifted slightly, to a 38. "Put it back," he said, and the number incremented back up as Hermione returned the bottle to its initial location.

"Interesting," Hermione said. She began moving the bottles rapidly. The number flicked downward until it reached zero, then it stopped. She continued moving bottles, but the number remained zero. She inverted the motions she'd done, and once she'd reversed them completely the number once again showed 39. She moved a different bottle, and the number remained the same.

"It only counts down if we start from this particular bottle," she said, after several more sets of rapid movement. "The one in the upper left. I wonder if that's significant."

She performed several more series of rapid switching, but though the counter ran down again, nothing else happened differently.

"It is a puzzle," she said, frowning. "And I bet the solution is to bring the correct bottle to the center here where it can be removed."

"But there are hundreds of move combinations possible," Ron said. "What are we going to do, try all of them and see if it changes?"

"There must be a way to deduce it from the clues. It says it right there, the answer is written unclear."

Ron paced before the table, staring at the diamond array, then at the riddle, then back. This was not going to be easy.

Author's Notes:

Alright, everyone! This is your official disclaimer that I am bad at being clever. This riddle took me all week to devise, hours upon hours of crumpled pages and charts and graphs and notes, time when I should have been writing any one of my already ongoing projects, but I wanted this to be legitimate. So, now that I've gone to an excessive amount of effort, rather than just post the solution in-story, I'm going to post all the rules and puzzle layout. If anyone can solve it, I'll post the next chapter right away. If not, I'll probably post the next chapter sometime next month. It's a tricky one, I hope, but not too tricky (I hope).

To assist in this quest, I've made a .psd diagram with the bottles in their default layout: [sta . sh / 0165x4g174ty] I'll also post a link in my forum, with a dedicated thread for this if y'all want to collaborate to figure it out. I suspect I'm too 'young' an author to do something meta like this with any success, but what can I say? I'm ambitious. :-3

If it's just too obtuse to solve as-is, you can choose to drink a potion and I'll reply with what happens. (This has no effect on what happens in the story, just a way for you to get additional information. Ron and Hermione's solution is already written completely.) I honestly believe it can be solved as-is with no additional input, but like I said, it's obtuse, so the option is here if you get stumped.