Chapter Five
Standing in the pitch darkness, Hermione could feel her hand still on Neville's shoulder, now shaking, and she could hear the rapid breaths from someone down the stairs. She could hear nothing from the toilet.
"Is everyone OK?" said a Weasley twin from in the dark hall.
"Of course we're fine Weasley, the lights went out is all." Draco sounded irritable. "Anyone know where the fuse box is?"
"Cellar?" suggested the other Weasley twin.
"Anyone fancy going down there in the pitch dark cellar to turn the power back on?" Ginny asked, somewhat rhetorically.
"Why don't we all go down?" Neville suggested. "Safely in numbers and all that."
"What about Minerva?" Hermione called, helping Neville up and feeling her way down the stairs.
"She'll be fine, she's locked in the toilet," Ginny said dismissively, but still called out that they were going to be back in a few minutes and to stay put.
The cellar was through a door to the left of the kitchen passage. Draco went first, feeling his way down the narrow rickety staircase and through the damp gloom. The rest of the group followed and found themselves in the damp gloom of a cellar that had not been opened for quite some time.
"Now what?"
Draco swore as he bumped into something hard and painful that upon inspection turned out to be a boiler. "I guess we''ll just have to feel around the walls, it has to be here somewhere right?"
There was a sudden scream. "If the killer turned it off, then he's still down here!" Ginny was almost hysterical at the thought that her safety was even more compromised in pitch darkness. "We have to-"
"-SHH!" Someone cut her off. Above them, they could hear very quiet footsteps in the kitchen. They heard a murmur of voices but they couldn't determine who it was. Then then were an ear splitting shriek and a crash of someone falling to the floor.
"THE COOK!" Everyone shouted and there was a lot of cursing and shoving as they all tried to find their way to the stairs and up in the impermeable darkness.
In the kitchen someone had lit a candle, casting very a small light towards the back of the room by the kitchen table, where Salome's corpse was still sitting. The group smashed into something fairly solid, which toppled to the ground, revealing it to be a someone: Minerva had flown out of the toilet at the sound of the scream had been standing open-mouthed in the doorway.
The reason became immediately apparent: the Cook, Mrs Green, who had prepared them such a wonderful meal, was lying on the kitchen tiles, the dagger embedded deep in her back.
"Another murder?" Fred had to sit down but missed the chair in the semi-darkness and crashed to the floor. Under normal circumstances he felt sure that Malfoy would have completely taken the Michael but he remained silent, staring at the body.
Neville made a kind of squeak at the back of his throat.
Suddenly the lights came back on. Turning round they spotted George coming back in. He looked sheepish. "The fuse box? It was next to the cellar door and it was open."
They looked back to the body. "We could have prevented this," said Hermione in a very small voice.
Fred scrambled upright as his sister began to cry, flinging an arm around her and hugging her tightly.
"Wait," Hermione said, turning to Minerva suspiciously, "wasn't she your cook? The one who informed on you? You have the motive!"
Minerva looked suddenly outraged at the possibility that her former best student was no insinuating that she murdered an innocent woman. She was indeed a conniving backstabber, no pun intended, but she was still innocent. Nobody apart from the scum of society deserved to be murdered. All she could do was swell up a little and cluck like an annoyed chicken.
"Look, we should split up again." George piped up from the doorway. "We need to find the killer, it's imperative. And plus, he's most likely on the ground floor – we haven't heard anyone go up the stairs have we?"
There was a general murmur of agreement and they split back up, Hermione seizing Fred's arm again and followed him down the passage. George and Draco decided to remain in the kitchen and drag the cook's body to the table with Salome.
"Where to start?" Draco muttered to himself as he grabbed a meat cleaver and peered around the corner into the pantry, which was blissfully empty.
Establishing the killer was no longer in the kitchen, the two boys headed out into the hall, where they noticed that another figure had been mutilated in the dining room: there was a small toy sword wrenched through the fabric of the little doll.
"This is getting sinister," Draco remarked and George agreed.
Meanwhile, Neville and Minerva was searching in the billiards room. He was still white and trembling and seeing Snape's corpse lying unceremoniously in the study hadn't made him feel better so Fred had suggested they move it. Hodgeson had also quietly suggested they lock the remaining weapons in the cupboard.
"Excellent idea!" Fred had said and they strode into the study, where Snape's body was still unceremoniously slumped on the floor. Whilst Fred heaved him onto the sofa, Hodgeson collected the revolver, the spanner and candlestick and shoved them into a small cupboard, which he then locked. It was clear that he was the first person to see his master's body, if his facial expression and lack of shock as they re-entered the room was anything to go by.
Now, despite the knowledge that the weapons were safely locked in a cupboard and butler had disposed of the key via the waste disposal in the kitchen – he had nearly screamed when he spotted the body of the cook – Neville still felt like he was in danger.
Minerva wandered into the hall. Hermione and Fred were in the ballroom and she crept inside to ask if they needed help, but caught a snippet of their conversation and held back, hidden in the darkened bar are of the room.
"-believe Draco thought you were my sister," Fred was saying. "I mean, I know he hates our family, but I never thought that he'd suspect me of incest." He scoffed.
Hermione laid a hand on his shoulder. "But at least he didn't recognise me. Draco may not be as foul as he used to be, but he's certainly still a piece of work and he'd waste no time in telling Ron that I cheated on him with you."
Minerva stopped herself gasping audibly. First Ginny and now Hermione? Two respectable girls, adulteresses? And after all Hermione had been through with Ron...
Deciding she'd had enough of eavesdropping, Minerva crept out into the hall to the conservatory where she discovered Draco having fallen against a wall, which had opened behind him.
"I said this house had to be full of secret passageways didn't I?" he announced triumphantly. Picking up a Muggle torch from the shelf, he beckoned the three of them inside. "I wonder where this goes."
Ginny looked as if she'd rather go anywhere but down a creepy hidden passage when there was a killer on the loose.
The passage was dark and narrow and the torch was on its last legs. The feeble beam barely illuminated the uneven flagstone floor, and it reminded Draco of Potions in the dungeon. His heart gave an odd kind of pang when he realised that he had been reminded of his late housemaster. It was still hard to believe he had been murdered so brutally.
"How long does this thing go on for?" Minerva said irritably.
Halfway through the passage, they heard an almighty smash and then faint running feet across the hall, and a gunshot.
"Not another killing!" Minerva screeched and the four of them hurtled along the passageway to find it was already open: the fireplace seemed to rotate and allow them through, which explained also to why they could hear everything so clearly.
Hermione and Fred sprinted in and Fred did a Draco: he stopped dead in his tracks, causing Hermione to smash face first into him.
They had emerged into the lounge. The revolver was lying underneath a chair and for a second they thought it had just gone off accidentally, but then everyone followed Fred's wide eyes and Ginny fainted, Draco catching her just before her head hit the stone hearth.
Behind an ornate writing desk, slumped against the wall, a bloody smear indicating he'd slid down and with his snapped wand still clutched in his right hand, was Neville, expertly shot through the heart.