DISCLAIMER: I own the copyright to all Harry Potter characters, yes I do, I put Ms Rowling under the Imperius curse to get the rights. And since I can now write the real books, I will get anyone who dares to complain about me using an Unforgivable curse killed by Voldemort!
-Chapter Nineteen-
Here, beneath the forlorn earth
Where once ruled joy and mirth;
Now rules death and darkness
And a black soul torn apart.
Down the Stairs
Silently they started climbing down the stone-stairs into the foreboding darkness. The song of the birds faded away, but Harry could still hear, or rather feel a faint strain of music somewhere around them. It gave him hope, and courage. After descending for what seemed like an eternity, they finally reached level ground. The place might have been a meeting-hall once, Harry thought. It was almost as big as the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The thought of Hogwarts immediately brought memories of Dumbledore, and with a chill he realized how inexperienced they were in this quest without him. Forcing his mind of Dumbledore, he lit his wand and surveyed the place. Layers of grime had grown over the torch-brackets on the stonewalls, beneath the long wooden table and the chairs on both sides of it; they seemed to make the room even darker. There was also a smell of long neglect and inhabitation about the place.
"This place doesn't seem to be very ancient." Hermione spoke.
"Are you kidding?" Ron asked incredulously, "Just take in the stench, I doubt even Kreacher will equal this…"
"RON!"
"I see what you mean, Hermione." Harry interrupted, "this place doesn't have the look of Cliodna's time. I believe the druids were still here when Voldemort came looking for the coat of mail."
"Then there must have been a fight." She observed the floor and the walls in her wand light. " If muggles had died above, the druids and druidesses also got murdered."
"But I don't understand this," Ron said, " The Daily Prophet report said only muggles had been identified, all local villagers. If druids were killed where did the bodies…you know, what happened to them?"
"He must have left them here to guard his horcrux." Harry said quietly.
"What…I …" Ron was looking confused, then suddenly he understood, and was looking horrified, "You mean there could be infe…"
"Fire keeps the inferi away." Harry told them. "Dumbledore told me, when we went to find the…fake one."
"Is that why You-Know-Who kept it here? So he could have a ready army of inferi at hand?" Ron asked. He was looking slightly green.
It was strange, Harry thought, to get your treasure robbed, and then being forced to guard it for your murderer after death. Ironic too.
"Maybe." It was Hermione who answered. Harry noticed she wasn't looking too good herself. "But I think he chose this place also because a druid-school would naturally have some powerful enchantments, and because when he killed all the druids, because of their secretive nature, nobody else would know of this place except him. Anyway, I reckon we should start looking for it, Harry."
"But how, Hermione?" Harry asked, expressing for the first time some of the helplessness that he had been feeling for some time now. "There are about a dozen passages leading from this hall, and I will be surprised if these don't branch of farther inside. Where are we supposed to look? Dumbledore could just feel magic in the air but we…"
"We will feel it too, or at least find it." She reassured him. Reaching into her bag, she brought out a complicated-looking golden instrument.
"Wait a minute," Ron said, " you got that thing from Godric's Hollow, didn't you?"
Harry could remember seeing it lying inside the safe in the little room behind the mirror in his parent's bedroom.
"I've been reading that Veroudostouffy Guide Book Jane Durham gave me that day. This is a potentiamodus. It will locate any source of powerful magic here."
"And you know how to use?" Harry asked. When did she have time to read up on Verodoustoffy as well? With everything else they had been reading on Ravenclaw and Cliodna? Before he had time to marvel about the bushy-haired girl though, Hermione got to work with the potentiamodus. She muttered a few indistinct incantations and tapped the small prism like thing attached at one end of the instrument. It glowed white for a moment and then a little arrow just beneath the prism moved. Hermione bent her head over it, muttered few more incantations, and then straightened up.
"It's got to be one of the last three passages to the right. Let's get closer and check again." She said.
So they walked towards the passages. While Hermione was taking her second reading, Harry decided to take a peep at all three passages. The first one led to a stone staircase going up. The second one branched into two directions, so he couldn't see where it led. But as soon as he stepped into the third passage, he knew something was not right. For one thing, he could no more feel the song of the three hidden birds. It seemed there was some invisible glass wall at the entrance to the passage, the air inside felt so dead. He could also feel a familiar tingling sensation that he had felt near the cave with Dumbledore. At that time he had thought it was the cold, but now he knew. He walked out and called out to his friends, "Hermione, Ron, I think it's this one."
"Yes, that's what my readings are saying." Hermione replied, sounding slightly surprised, "Did you find something?"
"No, not yet." Harry replied.
"I hate this passage." Ron complained as soon as they had entered, "Couldn't it be one of the other two? It's so creepy here."
"Did you expect it to be red-carpeted?" Hermione asked acidly.
Ron didn't retort back like he normally would have. "I'm beginning to feel claustrophobic." He mumbled but walked on.
The passage stopped abruptly as they stood facing a wall.
"It can't be." Hermione sounded dismayed.
"Maybe there's a hidden door somewhere?" Harry suggested. He was sure they had come in the right direction.
Ron walked forward and ran his hand over the wall. "I think there's a crack here.' He told them.
"Wait." Hermione said, taking out another instrument. To Harry, it looked a lot like Luna's spectrespecs, and it had an adjustment knob like a binocular. " This is an iscrizionescope. It's used to read hidden rune-inscriptions."
She adjusted the instrument and looked into the lenses and then ran her wand across the wall, muttering under her breath all the while. Finally, a part of the wall slid upwards and a chamber was revealed. Harry walked in, followed by Ron and Hermione. The wall immediately closed behind them.
"Lumos." Harry muttered, and his friends did the same.
"Whoa! This place looks like a mini-museum, mate." Ron exclaimed with an expression of awe.
"Maybe the druids kept their treasures here." Hermione replied.
The druids must have been rich, Harry thought, as he took in the amount of gold and silver artifacts that lay before them. He scanned the objects that were there. There were swords, shields, plates, goblets, jewels, exquisite tea sets, but there was no sign of a coat of mail anywhere.
"Harry, look." Harry turned to see where Hermione was pointing. At the very end of the room, a large number of trunks were cluttered together, and very unusual looking trunks they were too. They also seemed larger than the usual size.
"I think it's there in one of them." She said quietly.
"There are too many of them, Hermione," said Ron, "Use that 'potential' thing again."
"It's potentia-modus, Ron."
The instrument indicated a trunk right in the middle of the lot. There was enough space for only one person to reach it and Harry went on. The trunk had a very ordinary looking knob and no other lock. Harry tried to open it. 'Alohomora' didn't work, nor did the verodoustoffic key that Hermione threw at him.
"Do you think I should go and see if there's a hidden rune again?" Hermione asked nervously.
Harry nodded and was about to make way for her when he remembered what Dumbledore had said about trying the simplest things first. Feeling almost hopeless, he extended his right hand and turned the knob. Immediately, he felt searing pain. It was as if someone had pricked a thousand needles of fire in his arm. His vision was foggy and his arm was bleeding.
"Harry, what happened?" he heard Hermione shouting. They hadn't seen the blood in the little light, but they had heard his scream and could make out that he was swaying alarmingly.
"The horcrux, get the horcrux." He told himself and lunged blindly, tripping and falling sprawled over three other trunks. He was thrown back immediately on another set of trunks as those trunks opened and figures rose out of them. He could hear his friends screaming. As he tried getting away, he tripped again and again and more figures rose out.
"Incendio." He muttered feebly. Nothing happened. Dried, shriveled, dead arms were pulling him back, strangling him. And then it was all dark.
P.S: Sorry it took this long, but I could not get into the mood or energy right after the exams, call it a fanfiction-writer's block if you like, and I did not want to put something just for the sake of it! When you review please remember it was hard writing this chapter. Meanwhile, I have activated my fictionpress account. I will update Old Ways as soon as I can.