Standing on the stone precipice overlooking the now-crumbled remains of half of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Professor McGonagall stares with glassy eyes over the broken battlements and scattered pieces of rubble still sinking into the lake. Silent tears creep down her cheeks. To her right, Professor Sprout weeps quietly into her old tattered witch's hat. To her left, Professor Flitwick looks down at the ground, not bearing to look at the destruction directly, as if afraid he'll be struck petrified. At the end of the line, is Snape, who stands tall and solemnly, his hands crossed over his waist, his head bowed as if respectfully mourning the loss of a beloved public servant.
"A thousand years," he says quietly. "A thousand years this castle has stood. And now, at the roll of a pair of dice, it has fallen."
"Not completely," Professor Sprout says, her eyes red and watery. "Not while one half of this castle stands, nor while there are students still in its walls to be protected."
"Here here," Professor Flitwick pipes up.
"This is certainly not the way I would have liked," Professor McGonagall begins, "but this… this has opened up a possible way of escape out of the castle."
"We'd better hurry, then" Professor Sprout says briskly. "I have a sneaking suspicion these plants will regrow soon enough, blocking our path once more."
"There's no time to lose then," Professor McGonagall says. "We can levitate students to ground level and have them gather on the grounds. Filius, Pamona, " she says, addressing Professors Flitwick and Sprout respectively, "you two will stand below and organize the students once they make it down. Severus and I will stay up here to lower the students ourselves." She looks at Snape, who nods to her.
Pulling out their wands, Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout twirl their wands over their heads, and they soon begin drifting weightlessly off the ground. But instead of floating upwards like a pair of balloons, the begin to sink through the air, as if floating down to the bottom of the ocean. While they descend Professor McGonagall and Snape make their way back to the middle courtyard to fetch the rest of the students.
As they move, Snape asks Professor McGonagall, "And once we've successfully evacuated the students, where then should we take them?"
"Hogsmeade, for now" Professor McGonagall. "If the situation continues to devolve, we may have to summon the Hogwarts Express."
"And what do you plan to tell the dementors once we reach the edge of the grounds?" Snape asks.
The question catches Professor McGonagall so off guard that she actually pauses for a moment, standing in place before taking the next step forward. "Blasted creatures. I had forgotten they were stationed at the entrances to the grounds. I doubt they'll understand the situation properly. If they believe that something is threatening the school, they will almost certainly use that as an excuse to get closer to the students."
"They will demand to know what's happening," Snape says knowingly. "Which will lead to the Ministry of Magic becoming involved, among other things."
"That is the last thing that needs to happen," Professor McGonagall says firmly. "If Fudge and his lot get ahold of this, I dread to think what might happen."
"I must confess," Snape say cooly. "I find it hard to imagine how much worse the situation can-"
But he is interrupted by a terrible shriek from up above them. A tall figure flies down from a hole in the wall overhead, brandishing a fierce-looking spear tipped with razor-sharp spikes. There is no visible face, save the expression of eternal horror painted on his wooden mask. His arms are raised in preparation to bring the tip of the spear down on Snape's greasy-hair-covered head, only for Snape to raise his wand and cast a wordless impediment jinx, causing the seven foot man to slow down in mid fall before collapsing face first to the ground.
"Severus!" Professor McGonagall says as several more of the tall figures, some black, some white, come leaping up from the hole in the wall, landing on one knee before standing at full eight, their spears held menacingly in their hands. The tallest of all has his mouth exposed, showing off his black teeth, dark red blood trickling from the corners of his mouth.
Both Snape and Professor McGonagall assume their best dueling stance, bearing their wands in the same way the hunters hold their spears. "You know the Headmaster's orders," Professor McGonagall says quietly. "Stun only." Keeping her eyes on the hunters, Professor McGonagall can still feel Snape's mouth thin in irritation at her words.
Dean doesn't wait for the two invisible warthogs to disappear completely before going over to the fallen Hagrid. Looking into Hagrid's eyes, he sees they're drooping heavily, as if Hagrid is doing his best to keep from falling asleep. His chest heaves unevenly up and down, as if each individual breath is a labor in and of itself. All along his waist, dark blood stains mark the points where the warthogs' tusks gored him, the blood still pouring out in a warm, oozing trickle. Hagrid holds his right hand up lazily, as if trying to swat through a cloud of flies that isn't there.
"Hagrid?" Dean says in a cracking voice, his hand on Hagrid's shoulder.
Hagrid opens his mouth to say something, only for a small spurt of blood to come up and onto his beard. After a few more seconds of wheezy, bloody grasping, Hagrid lets out a single raspy breath, and his hand falls to the grass.
"Hagrid?" Dean asks frantically, trying to shake Hagrid by his shoulder. When he gives no sign of a response, Dean feels the hot tears welling up in his eyes. He shuts them to try to keep the dam from bursting, only for them to look out over his cheeks and down his chin. He hears Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati approach him from behind, none of them saying a word. He hears a few sniffles from Lavender and Parvati, while Seamus remains stoic and silent.
In a fit of emotional whiplash, Dean gets up from the spot where Hagrid lays, his cooling blood still wetting the grass around him. He storms up the steps to Hagrid's hut, kicks open the door, and goes over to the table where the game board sits open. In a fit of blind fury, Dean picks up the board and throws it with all his might at the wall. It lands with a hard thud, the pieces all remaining fixed in place. He goes over to where it lands, and hurls it once again at the wall, hitting it with a loud crash. He does this several more times, without a single scratch appearing on the surface, the tokens remaining fixed in place.
Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati watch him from the doorway, unsure of how best to proceed. After about 10 minutes, Dean fully tires himself out, beads of hot sweat mixing with his tears, and the feeling of red hot blades clawing at his lungs. When he finally regains his breath, he turns to the three others and says, "Lavender. You're up." She looks at him with sparkling eyes, and a trepidation over whether to be more afraid of Dean or the game. When she doesn't move, Dean goes over to her and says in a loud voice, "Do you want to save Hagrid?!"
She winces at his anger. "I do," she says simply.
"Then take your damn turn!" he shouts. "Our only chance now is if we finish the game!"
"Oi, back off!" Seamus says, getting up in Dean's face. But Dean shoves him away forcefully. "What the hell was that for?"
"Playing the game was your idea!" Dean says, pointing an accusing finger at him. "Hagrid is dead because of you!"
"Don't you start that now!" Seamus says, stepping toward him again. "There's no goddamn point in blaming each other! Now do you want to keep playing, or do you want to stand around here, shouting at each other?"
"I want to keep playing," Dean says, "But Lavender is too much of a coward to take her turn!"
"Dean!" Parvati snaps at him, "How dare you! She's taken her turns just like everyone else, she wants to be done with this as much as anyone. We're all doing our best, so why don't you shut up and lay off Lavender!?"
As Dean's rage begins to quell, it becomes replaced quickly with a feeling of guilt, not only for Hagrid, but for blowing up at his friends as well. "I'm sorry," he says, not able to look at any of them. "I just want this to be over. I want everything to go back to normal."
"We all do," Seamus says, still hurt. Lavender and Parvati nod. "But we're never gonna get to the end if we start screaming at each other. We have to stick together if we have any hope of beating this thing." Dean nods his agreement, unable to speak due to the dryness in his throat.
"So, I suppose I should take my turn then?" Lavender asks.
"No, wait," Parvati says.
At first Dean is unsure of what her apprehension is until an odd sound fills the inside of Hagrid's hut. It sounds like the clanging and jingling of ceramic tea cups and teapots, and as they look around, they see that all of Hagrid's table ware is shaking very slightly. Looking around the room, they see that the same is true of his books, which are jiggling on their shelves. A light tingling sensation fells the bottoms of their feet, like the tickling of pins and needles.
With no clear signs as to where the shaking is coming from inside Hagrid's hut, Dean sticks his head out of Hagrid's door. Staring across the grounds, he sees something across the lake, over a section that would normally have been obscured by the walls of the castle if not for the mudslide. On the opposite shore of the Great Lake, a procession of huge wild beasts stampedes over the grounds, composed entirely of horned rhinoceros, gigantic elephants, and brilliantly striped zebras. They speed along at a furious pace, a cloud of dirt obscuring the motions of their legs. For the moment, the stampede is a good distance away from them, but as Dean watches their progress over the grounds, he comes to a startling conclusion.
"Quick!" Dean says. "We need to get out of here, now!"
The others have clearly reached the same conclusion that he has, knowing that, at the speed they're going, the stampede will be bearing down on Hagrid's hut within minutes. Dean turns back to grab the game before they abandon Hagrid's hut and begin heading toward the remaining battlements of the Hogwarts castle.
"Wait!" Lavender says. "What should we do about…about…." And she looks down at Hagrid's body, lying limp and lifeless on the grass by the pumpkin patch.
Though Dean cannot stand the thought of Hagrid's body still laying here when the stampede goes by, he also knows that, even if all four of them worked together, they'd never be able to move him out of harm's way in time. "Nothing we can do," he says, "come on!"
They all keep their heads down, doing their best to keep the sight of a trampled Hagrid out of their minds. This proves easier has more time passes; the shaking of the ground beneath their feet grows more rigorous and violent, and the sound of booming footsteps galloping over the grass grows ever louder. They do not look back to see if the herd has rounded the corner of the lake shore, heading straight toward them. It's bad enough for them to imagine the horns, tusks, and hooves of the oncoming mass of animal tonnage.
Lavender looks back, and sees the lead rhinoceros charging at full speed toward them, its eyes hidden on the sides of its head. Parvati looks back, and sees the nearest elephant raise and curl its trunk with its ears flared forwards. The herd is now close enough to the point where they can hear the low grunts and snorts of the rhinoceros, in addition to the blood-chilling trumpets of the elephants. The stampede moves with horrific speed, and if not for their head start, all four of them know that they'd have been flattened long ago.
Finally, Dean reaches the shadow of the stone ruins, ducking behind the nearest wall still standing. "In here!" The other three join him, but as he take his place beside the stone wall, out of the path of the stampede, he sees Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick standing among the debris, looking over at them with befuddled expressions.
But before anyone can say anything, the head of the stampede thunders past the broken battlements of Hogwarts castle, not stopping or slowing, paying the bystanders no heed as they continue on their way. The seismic shocks coursing through the shaking ground nearly paralyze the six of them in place, shutting their eyes to try and block out the discomfort. Each footstep of the stampede kicks up a cloud of dust that rises high into the air before drifting lazily back down, and settling on everything around them. The catastrophic parade of mega-fauna continues to rumble past them all for another few minutes, until the tail end of the stampede finally passes them by, a lone rhinoceros snorting and panting as it struggles to keep up with the rest of the herd.
As the tremulous motion of the ground and the roar of the stampede's movement begins to fade away, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, the four students finally having the freedom to recover their lost breath from their sprint from the grounds.
When the silence between them all becomes too awkward, Professor Sprout calls out to them, "Thomas, Finnegan, Brown, Patil, are you alright?"
"We're fine," Dean says automatically, though he forces himself to consider how true his answer is or isn't.
"Do you need any assistance?" Professor Flitwick asks, climbing on top of a large piece of rubble so they can see and hear him better.
"No!" Dean, Seamus, and Parvati all say at once. Lavender hesitates for a moment before shaking her head as well.
"Are you sure?" Professor Sprout asks with an air of confused irritation. "Professor McGonagall told us about… what happened. Are you sure you can't use our help in some way?"
"We're positive," Dean says. "In fact, the farther away we are from anyone else, the better," Dean says with firm conviction.
"But-" Professor Flitwick begins, only for Dean to cut him off.
"The last person to try and help us was gored to death," Dean says darkly.
His words cause both Professors to freeze in place, their faces going pale as expressions of horror come over their eyes. After a while, Professor Flitwick asks in a quiet voice, "Who…who was it?"
"Hagrid," Seamus says in an equally quiet voice.
"We have to do this on our own," Dean says, almost pleadingly. "The more people get in the way, the more people will die."
"I see," Professor Sprout says, her eyes growing sad. "I take it you'll want to get going then?" Professor Sprout asks. They nod. "Well, off you go then. Head up to what's left of the fifth floor, those corridors seem to be the strongest still standing. We'll be evacuating the rest of the students to Hogsmeade."
"Good," Dean says to her before turning back to others. "Come on, we're nearly there. Just a few more turns and this will all be over, and everything will turn back to normal."
"What about Hagrid?" Lavender asks.
"What about him?" Dean asks.
"Well… if we finish the game, will he come back, or…" and she leaves it on him to finish the question in his mind.
Dean has not yet considered this conundrum. The game's rules, he realizes, are frustratingly vague. The exciting consequences of the game will vanish only once a player has reached Jumanji and called out its name. Hagrid's death was of course a direct consequence of the game, as was the collapse of Hogwarts. But he also knows full well that the rules may simply be referring to those things which the game itself conjures.
"No magic can bring back the dead," Seamus says, looking down. "That's what my mum told me once, when my Papa died."
"Maybe this game is different," Dean says. "I mean, it's obviously very powerful. Maybe…" but he knows he is only thinking wishfully. Seamus' look tells him as much, with his pitying gaze. Dean goes quiet for a moment. "I guess we'll just have to find out."
Following Professor Sprout's instructions, they take the stairs up to the fifth floor, which – like the rest of the remaining castle – is still swallowed by jungle foliage, including the carnivorous yellow pods, and the venomous purple flowers. They move past a door to the hospital wing tower, completely abandoned even by Madam Pomfrey, and down to the Muggle Studies showroom. Setting the board down on the table, Dean opens it back up and hands the dice to Lavender. "Good luck," he says to her.
She gulps, nods, and takes the dice from him. She tosses them onto the board, flinching slightly when the make contact. To everyone's excitement, she gets two sixes, and her rhinoceros token slides forward twelve spaces, for a total of 25. She will get to roll again, and if she gets a seven, she will win.
"Nearly there!" Seamus whispers.
As the misty green letters begin to form in the pitch black center, Lavender reads the rhyme aloud to them.
Beware this monster's
horrid breath.
One whiff ensures
a painful death.
A silent dread fills the room. Not one of them makes a sound, not even daring to breathe. They look with their eyes from one corner of the classroom to the other, wondering what this might mean. The silence does nothing to ease their fears; it only amplifies them.
CRASH
The wall behind Seamus crumbles to pieces as something truly gigantic burst forward into the classroom. At first, they are worried that it's the stampede, until logic and reason remind them that they are five floors up. When the dust finally clears, they get their first true look at the game's latest challenge.
It appears superficially like a leopard, save for the fact that it stands over 30 feet tall at its eye line. It stares down at them with a pair of deep, sickly green eyes, each dotted with a small black pupil. The short, cropped fur covering its pelt is colored sandy yellow, with a pale grey hue running down its hide. Dark spots dot the surface of its fur, most prominent on its back, sides, and face. There's no mistaking its furious intentions, with its rounded ears flared backwards, and its fleshy muzzle curled back to reveal its fearsome set of teeth.
For a moment, the entire scene seems frozen in time. There is no visible motion anywhere in the room, save the sides of the giant cat pushing in and out with each of its breaths, and the dust slowly coming to rest in the classroom. Dean and Parvati's eyes are practically bulging from their eyes. Lavender's hands are covering her mouth. Seamus' face is fixed in a dull expression, as if he's unable to contemplate fully what has just happened.
The tension is broken when the cat opens its mouth even further, curling back its lips to reveal more of it yellow teeth and black-red gums, and lets out a long low hiss. As it exhales, a wave of foul-smelling air wafts over the four students, whose eyes water from just how pungent the odor is. It causes them to gag, their eyes watering slightly.
Dean tries to give the order to run, but it comes out as a series of violent coughs. However, the command is hardly needed, and the four students make a bee line for the door, even as the leopard takes a step into the room.
Once they are through the doorway to the classroom, standing just outside the threshold, they turn around, hoping that the monster will be stopped by tiny door frame. But just as before, it crashes through the stone wall with ease, snarling ferociously at them, prompting them to run further down the corridor. The massive cat is too big to move comfortably or swiftly through the corridor, but it still manages to crouch low and prowl through the wide, open halls, like a house cat slinking off to hunt a group of mice. They don't stop
As they pass by the doorway to the hospital wing tower, Dean stops them and directs them to head up the stairs. With little in the way of options, they follow him up the spiraling stairs. Just as Parvati clears the threshold, a paw as wide as a child's kiddy pool slams down on the stone floor, its four scythe-like claws scraping the ground, leaving deep gashes in the rock. As they ascend the stairs, the cat tries to reach in further with its paw and snatch at them, letting out nasally roars with each failed swipe.
They don't stop until they finally reach the top of the tower, which looks mostly like a disused attic. A few boxes covered in grime and cobwebs sit in a corner alongside an ancient-looking chest. When they shut the door behind them, the strain their ears for any signs of the monster. Knowing that they must now be several stories up the tower, they breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Boom
Dean feels it. He thinks the others did too judging by the looks on their faces. At first they hope that was a fluke, a one off not worth worrying over.
Boom
Two makes a pattern. They are all dead certain that they felt it this time – the tower shaking slightly as if being pounded from the outside.
Boom
Boom
Boom
Before they can think of what to do, the cone-shaped tower roof collapses inside, huge chunks of stone raining down upon them. They cover their heads, shielding themselves against any of the larger boulders. Thankfully none of them end up with a concussion, but that is of little comfort to them when they look back up and see the immense paw of the giant leopard dipping into the room from a hole in the tower ceiling. Dean's mind conjures an image of the cat on the outside of the tower, clawing its way up the surface, its claws digging into the spaces between stones. Judging by the erratic nature in which it slashes at them, Dean can guess that its footing isn't the best, and that it's most likely struggling to remain against the tower. However, this makes it no less dangerous as it continues to swat at them, breathing out more noxious-smelling fumes that burn their lungs with each inhalation.
The leopard tries to enlarge the hole in the ceiling, hoping to make it easier to get at them. But as it smashes its paw into the tower roof, the shock from the impact travels all the way down the stone walls, shattering the integrity of the entire hospital wing tower. Dean, Seamus, Parvati, and Lavender all feel the ground give out from underneath them. The sensation is similar to that of the mud slide that overtook the ruined half of the castle, only this time it is much more sudden and severe. The walls come apart, stone by stone, and bright rays of light shine through from outside.
Knowing what needs to be done, Dean points his wand at Lavender and cries out, "Wingardium leviosa!"
Even as everything around Lavender continues to fall, she remains stationary in the air. Dean turns to use the levitating charm on Parvati and Seamus, who is considerate enough to use it on Dean himself. Working together, the four students keep themselves levitated while the entire hospital wings tower falls in a rising cloud of dust. The giant leopard falls to the ground as well, twisting in mid –fall so that it lands on its feet, albeit with a hard thud.
Circling below, the leopard snarls and spits in frustration as it stares up at its unreachable quarry. Finally, deciding that it has better things to do, it throws its head back with a bone-chilling roar, and sulks away toward the grounds. Once the beast is no more than a black dot prowling along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they feel comfortable enough to allow themselves to descend to the ground.
As the sheer terror of being pursued by a leopard larger than a Tyrannosaurus rex begins to finally wear off, Dean notices the painful, burning feeling in his chest. He had hoped that this feeling would dissipate once the cat was away. Instead, the exact opposite seems to be happening. Once back on the ground, it becomes clear just how strained and painful every breath is, as if each exhalation is accompanied by hot knives slicing through his lungs. Looking around at the others, he notices that they are also in a bad way. Seamus gives a few harsh, raspy coughs, which he guards with his left arm. Lavender's eyes look bloodshot, and Parvati's nose is bleeding profusely.
"I… I think that might have been a nundu," Seamus says, taking another moment to cough like man who'd spent the last 40 years smoking.
"What's a nundu?" Lavender asks.
"That was, I guess," Seamus says. "There was an entry on them in Fantastic Beasts, and Where to Find Them. They're giant leopards, basically, and they live in Africa. They're supposed to be the most dangerous beasts in the whole wizarding world."
"Even more dangerous than a dragon?" Lavender asks, resting herself against a stone column. "Or a basilisk?"
"Ron told that his brother works at a dragon reserve in Romania," Seamus says. "It takes about ten wizards to stun a dragon, according to him. But a nundu's never been taken down by less than 100 wizards all working together."
Parvati gives a small gasp. "What makes them so dangerous?"
"Is it their breath?" Dean says in jest as a tear rolls down his face.
But Seamus doesn't laugh. "Actually, yes it is. Their breath causes sickness and disease. It can wipe out whole villages." Only now does the game's rhyme come into focus again for Dean.
Beware this monster's
horrid breath.
One whiff ensures
your painful death.
His heart suddenly races as he realizes what's happening to them. He tries to speak, only to break out in a fit of coughs. When he finally manages to finish, he says, "The nundu's breath. It's going to kill us."
"It can't!" Lavender says pointlessly as her eyes grow even redder.
"Oh please," Dean says, his patience long sine dead. "Not only can it, it's already started. Seamus look at your sleeve!" When Seamus looks at the spot on his sleeve where he had coughed, he notices dark patches of blood on the black fabric.
"We have to get to Madam Pomfrey!" Lavender says.
"No," Dean says defiantly. "Our only hope now is to finish the game. Lavender, you're one roll away from winning. And if you don't, I'm only four spaces away. We can end this thing in just two turns!"
Parvati gives a strong sniff as more blood creeps down her nose. "How…how long do we have left before the disease…" she doesn't bother to finish.
"Not a clue," Seamus says, looking down.
"Then there's no time to waste," Dean says. "Come on, let get back to the game! Let's end this."
They hobble over back to the remnants of the Muggle Studies Showroom, where the game lies sideways on the floor, the pieces still place as ever, but with the dice sitting on the floor beside it. Dean wipes away the tears gathering in the corners of his eye – noticing very briefly that said tears are pink – and sets the game back on the table, handing the dice to Lavender. "Fingers crossed," he says to her.
With a determined look on her face, Lavender take in a quick breath through the nose and rolls the dice. Their hopes are dashed when the dice land on a one and a five, and a unique kind of pain grips their hearts as they watch the rhinoceros token slide all the way toward the center, only to stop right at its edge.
Now the ground
begins to rift.
And up will flow
a scarlet gift.
For what feels like the hundredth time today, they all feel the sudden quaking of the earth under their feet. But this is different. This is instant. Powerful. As if the earth is seized by a pair of god-like hands and shaken with all of its unearthly might. They all fall to the floor, Parvati hitting her head on a piece of the nearby wall, giving her a deep gash on her forehead. Dean does his best to steady himself, but it's no use. There is a moment of relief as a deafening crack splits the air, and single, enormous crack appears in the ground between them. As if those same divine hands were now pulling the earth apart, Lavender, Parvati, and Seamus are on one side of the crack, while Dean and the game are on the other side. The gap between them grows wider by the second as a rift begins to open up. It not only tears the castle in twain, but the seismic forces travel all the way underground.
Seeing the game board teetering over the edge, Dean leans forward to close it and pull it to safely. As he does, he looks down into the cavern opening up between his friends and him. At the very bottom, a brilliant red light shines from deep below, a wave of intense heat hitting Deans face, making his eyes water even more. The churning magma from underground rises higher and higher up toward Dean, causing him to grab the game and hurl himself backwards away from it.
"Dean!" Seamus cries out.
But he is interrupted as a wall of red lava rises up from the rift in the earth, falling back down in fiery splashes. What was left of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy begins to fall into feeble pieces as the incredible natural force of two tectonic plates tearing apart from one another breaks every single enchantment protecting the castle from ruin.
Dean crawls along the edge of the rift, desperately trying to think of some way of making it back to the others. But each second he spends fruitlessly thinking is another ten feet of space in between the growing cavern walls. Before he can think of anything even remotely resembling a plan, the floor caves out from underneath. Adrenaline overrides the disease crippling his body, and he braces for impact as the fifth floor collides with the fourth, which collides with the third, the second, until finally he can feel through the stunning shocks coursing through his buttocks, that they've reached the ground floor.
As more lava continues to erupt from the mantle below, it pools on the surface. The thick, viscous mixture of bright red, partially-melted rocks slithers over the ground. Dean has to scurry away quickly to avoid being burned by the searing fluid. He also just barely manages to grab the game board before it can be engulfed in lava. He tries his best to stand on his own two feet, even as the ground continues to tremble beneath him.
Looking all around the grounds, he sees more fissures opening up, with more lava exploding up from underground. Turning form one direction to the other, Dean tries to find some place to escape the lava, but finds no such sanctuary. The sickness finally starting to catch up with him, Deans over and throws up a little before hacking out a few bloody coughs. Under normal circumstances, he figures he'd be able to out run the lava. But in his current condition – lungs on fire, stomach churning, head spinning – he knows he'd never make. However, as he watches the lava spreading out around him, he notices that it spreads around the immense chunks of stone rubble scattered about the ruined keep. Looking for a particularly large piece, Dean settles on a fifteen foot high triangular chunk with a flat top. Clinging to the game under his arm, Dean sprints toward the chunk, and scrambles up one of its slanted edges with all of his remaining strength and energy. When he finally reaches the plateau at top, he falls to his, breathing rapidly like a sick dog. Having earned this moment to relax, Dean pays no attention to the lava passing around his little island, the rock resisting the heat.
Feeling completely drained, Dean closes his eyes, though he can still hear Hogwarts cracking apart and burning to the ground all around him. He can hear the exploding of lava up from the tears in the earth, and continuous cracking and breaking of the castle walls. Huge pieces of rock collide with the ground in loud crashes. He's not entirely sure – he's open to the poissibilty that he's just imagining it – but over the cacophony of destruction all around, he swears he can hear the screams of the other Hogwarts students trying to flee the devastation.
Lavender's words come to his mind, in an even more exhausted plea. I can't do this.
Even though the game is still sitting under his arm, even though his piece is only four spaces from the center, Dean can't bring himself to open it back up. What was he thinking? How could he and the others possibly have contended with something so powerful, it could create volcanoes where before there was peaceful, flat earth? How could they possibly have stood a chance against a force that could summon the most dangerous beast of the wizarding world, only to conjure something even more powerful just one turn later? He can feel the nundu's breath working its way deeper and deeper into his system. Each breath is now a weak cough, a light spray of blood coming up with each hack. As he feels his strength slowly ebbing away, Dean's weakened turns to other thoughts.
What's so wrong with being unremarkable anyway? He thinks. Seamus and I were happy. Things were going good for us. What did we need dangerous adventures for? So what if Harry Potter or whoever else was famous? Is this what Harry had to go through when finding the Philosopher's Stone? Or fighting Slytherin's basilisk? If it was, then I don't care how famous or rich or whatever else he is. I'll gladly take a quiet life in the background over something like this any day.
Dean feels something on his face, something cool and soft. He feels it on his forehead, before quickly feeling it again on his cheek. Rain begins to fall gently onto him. Opening his blood-shot eye, he sees the rain floating down from the thick clouds overhead, which had been hovering over the school forebodingly for the last few days. Finally, it seems, they release their watery relief.
The cool water falls onto the growing lake of lava. With each drop that strikes the burning flow, a high hissing escapes from the surface, followed by a small burst of steam. When it's just a few drops, this is barely noticeable. But as the rain grows heavier and faster, great billows of steam begin to drift over the lava, which cools, hardens into stark black rock, and cracks with the sudden mixture of hot and cold. The fissure where the lava erupts from remain ablaze with brilliant orange light, but all around Dean, the growing pools of lava stop where they are, releasing clouds of steam as they metamorphose into hard rock.
A strange sound rings through the misty air. It is a long, haunting song that somehow manages to feel somber and elegant, yet fills Dean with a new kind of strength. He opens his eyes just in time to see a magnificent scarlet and gold bird approach him from the air, flapping its wings quickly as it prepares to land. To his surprise, it lands right on top of his chest. Fawkes is surprisingly light weight considering his size. Leaning down close to Dean's face with his swan-like neck, Fawkes look almost as if he's about to kiss the boy. Instead, small drops of water begin to trickle down from his dark eyes right into Dean's mouth.
The effect is instantaneous. The water is refreshingly cool, and yet fills Dean with a comforting kind of warmth. A few more drops land on his tongue, and he manages to swallow them with his dry throat. Within moments, the burning pain begins to vanish from his lungs. Each inhalation and exhalation feels like a true breath of fresh air again, instead of a constant struggle to keep from hacking up more blood. Dean's head begins to clear, the dizziness leaving him gradually until he feels he can sit up, if not for the phoenix perched on his chest.
Of course! Dean thinks, remembering what Dumbledore said. Healing powers!
As if on cue, Fawkes spreads his wings and pushes off from Dean's chest, ascending into the misty air with a few powerful flaps. As he circles overhead, he lets out another bout of eerie phoenix song which fills Dean with the kind of warm encouragement that normally comes from the support of a close friend. It gives Dean the energy he needs to get to his knees and open up the game board. He stares at his own elephant token, standing just four spaces away from the circular center. Remembering the disappointment they'd all received when Lavender's piece failed to make it to the center on her second roll, Dean feels a sense of pressure.
But before Dean can pick up the dice, he sees something out in front of him. Hidden in the dense fog roving over the newly-formed black rock, Dean sees a pair of yellow lights shining through the mist and the dark. At first he thinks it might be a pair of head lights on a lorry, only to remember the faint chances that a lorry would find itself on the Hogwarts grounds. Besides – these lights are over twenty feet off the ground.
All around the yellow, circular lights a dark shape materializes, growing larger and more in focus as it prowls closer to Dean through the fog. Finally, Dean can make out the face of the nundu, crouched low as it moves silently toward him, its paws not making a single sound as they push against the still-warm volcanic stone. Between the dark of the coming evening, the rain, and the fog, it takes Dean a while to make out the distinct pattern of dark spots lining it short muzzle and wide, purposeful eyes. Its jaw hangs slightly slack, its pink tongue dangling slightly through its lips.
Dean can't bring himself to move as the nundu comes to a sudden halt, peering down at him, as if preparing to strike. If Dean can get the right roll, then it won't matter what the nundu does – by the game's own rules, it will all be over. But he also knows that the chances of getting the right roll are slim at best, and the nundu is in the perfect position to absolutely obliterate him. On the other hand, seeing as how Dean knows perfectly well that he is hardly a substitute for 100 full-grown, fully-trained wizards, the choice becomes very plain: either take his turn, or be cat food.
Just as he tries to take the dice, the nundu snarls ferociously, swinging its right paw forward at Dean, crouching over the game board. Dean feels the naked, leathery skin of its padded underside smack him in the cheek an instant before the entire world dissolves in a dark, blurry mass of shapes and colors. The scene doesn't get any clearer until Dean crashes back to the ground. His fall is broken slightly by a small pool formed as the pouring rain collects in one of the smaller fissures, but the impact is still enough to wind him. Recovering from the stunning force of the nundu's assault, Dean struggles just to get to his knees. The cold water helps to snap him back to his right mind, which is what causes him to begin looking around anxiously. "Game…" he mutters to himself under the din of the rain, "where's the game?"
But there is no sign of it anywhere nearby, a problem not helped by the fact that the sun is surely setting somewhere behind the clouds above. What Dan can see are the glowing yellow eyes of the nundu as it zeros in on his location, crouching down low before springing from its position, moving with startling speed and agility for an animal so massive.
Another note of phoenix song rises over the rain. Dean looks up to try and catch a glimpse of Fawkes, but instead feels something soft land on top of his head. Taking it in his hands, Dean feels that it is some kind of large piece of fabric, mostly bundled up. Unwrapping it, Dean finds a wide, circular brim below a tall point, like a witch or wizard's hat. But as he stares inside the brim, he makes out something sitting inside the hat; something long, thin, and shining red and silver. With the nundu bearing down on him in great bounds, Dean reaches inside the hat and grabs the mysterious item inside.
It is a sword; a sharp, thin ruby-encrusted silver sword, with a blade far too long to the dimensions of the hat. Though grateful to now have some kind of additional weaponry at his disposal, Dean is unsure of what to do. A sword is a far cry from a wand, and his knowledge of sword play consists of watching the Star Wars films. But with the nundu closing the distance between them, Dean grabs the hilt with both hands and hold is out in front him, pointing the tip straight at the oncoming giant.
The nundu pounces forward, launching an untold number of tons straight into the air before plummeting back to the earth, its paws outstretched to engulf Dean. In an act of desperation, Dean closes his eyes just as the nundu is about to land, and spins around in place, holding the sword aloft as he does. He feels the blade collide with something hard, though it continues pass through rather smoothly. This is accompanied by a painful yelp from the nundu, which leaps backwards slightly. Opening his eyes, Dean sees that the nundu is holding its right paw off the ground, a trail of dark blood gushing from a slash on its padded underside. Looking at the sword, Dean sees an accompanying stain of blood on the silver blade. Dean's heart suddenly fills with a mixture of great personal pride and complete, unrelenting terror.
The nundu turns to look at Dean once more, its fleshy muzzle curling back to show off its fearsome set of fangs. It sets its injured paw down on the ground, though Dean notices the traces of a limp. Rather than launch another frontal assault, the nundu circles Dean anxiously, pacing back and forth, turning in place every 200 feet or so. It keeps its ears flared back to remind him of its fury.
With a snarling roar, the nundu pounces into action. Rather than just strike Dean out right, it darts forward, only to recede back to its starting point. It does this several times, in several different directions. Dean feels the uncanny sensation that he is experiencing a rodent's-eye-vie-w of a game of cat and mouse. Dean tries to slash at the nundu as its paws land beside him, but it is much more careful this time.
In a flash, Dean feels one of the paws slam down on his leg, forcing him down to the ground. The other paw rises over him, attempting to pin down his right arm. Dean's brain plots his course of action in less time than it takes him to blink. He throws his right arm upward as the paw comes down. Dean's thrust is not particularly strong, but the nundu is, and the swords is extremely sharp. This combination is what allows the blade to be embedded deep within the nundu's fleshy paw, like a nail shoved into the paw of a very angry lion. The nundu lets out a howling roar, frozen in place for a few seconds before attempting to pull away from the sword. But the sword is stuck so deeply within that the nundu has to yank hard, and with Dean still anchored to the ground by its other paw, this makes dislodging the blade all the more painful. With one sudden motion, the nundu pulls its paw back, the red blade sliding out of the wound and clanging on the rock below. The nundu steps back to nurse its injured paw, licking the wound tenderly. Dean slowly gets to his feet with the bloody sword in hand, wondering what will happen next.
But though he was hoping that the nundu would be driven away by this injury, the mean flash in its yellow eyes indicates that Dean has only managed to make it angrier. With one careless swipe of its left paw, it throws him to one side, only to catch him with the other. It begins battering him around like a kitten with a particularly fun toy. Each bat with the paw causes large, dark bruises to form all over Dean's body, and it's taking all of his strength just to keep a grip on the sword. The world around him is spinning so fast that Dean has no hope of actually using the word for anything.
After this happens for several more minutes, with Dean feeling the strong urge to vomit, he feels himself fall back onto the black stone with a hard thud. Still too dizzy to make anything out, he sees the front legs of the nundu towering over him like pillars of an ancient temple. As he makes out more and more detail, he looks up to see that the nundu is no longer looking at him. And with his brain no longer being tossed around like cricket ball, he can now feel the low rumbling coming up through the rocks.
Something huge barrels over the igneous rock and slams directly into the side of the nundu, forcing it back several feet. It is followed immediately by another, then another. One by one, the great stampeding herd slams head first into the nundu, and even though it dwarfs even the elephants of the herd in terms of size, the sheer number of beasts, and the speed at which they move, means that every collision is a great blow to the beast.
Not wanting to be trampled himself, Dean rolls himself into the pool of water he'd landed in earlier, hoping the stampede will keep to warm rock. His hope appears to be fulfilled as the rhinoceros, elephants, and zebras thunder past, without a single care as to the monstrous creature with they've just stormed through.
Finally, when the last of the rhinoceros shambles by, panting to keep up, Dean crawls out of the water. The nundu is crumpled up in a small pile before him, mostly obscured in shadow. Given the odd shapes and angles jutting out from its body, and the bizarre twitching of certain extremities, Dean decides he's much better off not knowing what the full extent of the damage is.
He uses the sword as a sort of makeshift cane to haul himself to his feet, surveying the dark, basalt covered grounds. Breathing heavily, Dean wonders how on earth he is supposed to find the game board hidden in the rain and the fog and the dark. But this problem solves itself when he makes out the brilliantly colored phoenix soaring toward him, something large and rectangular clutched in its talons. Fawkes drops the game in front of Dean before landing by his side, folding his wings.
"Thanks Fawkes," Dean says, sitting down beside the phoenix looking him in the eye. Fawkes gives no obvious sign of understanding, given his unmoving avian face. But with a short click of his beak, Dean knows that the message has been received.
Opening up the game board, he opens up the compartment and pulls out the dice. But as he peers at the two dice in his hand, Dean realizes that it's become too dark to see the markings. Given that the piece will move on its own, Dean doesn't consider this to be a problem, especially on the off chance that he'll win the next turn. Figuring that the game has almost certainly unleashed the worst of what it has to offer, Dean shrugs and drops the dice on the game board.
He strains his eyes as he looks over the center to see the words that form. But instead of a small rhyme, there is only one word that materializes from the green haze, shining in bright letters. It is partially obscured by Dean's elephant token, which slides onto the center and remains in place there. But Dean can still very clearly read the word in the center. Declaring in one loud voice, he calls out:
"JUMANJI!"
Something changes. He can't tell what it is, or how it happened, but something inside Dean tells him that a great shift is taking place all around him. As the seconds pass by, he can hear the rising howl of a great wind around him, and yet he doesn't feel anything on his skin. The air feels calm, even though it sounds furious. Looking back at the center of the game, Dean sees what look like dark clouds forming, highlighted by flashes of what look like tiny green bolts of lightning.
Something flies past Dean's head. It's too fast for him to see it, but several others follow in its wake. He catches just enough information to tell that they are the camel spiders that appeared in Hagrid's hut. The begin to rise into the air, as if caught in a powerful wind storm, though Dean still feels nothing. They are soon joined by the five hyenas from Dumbledore's office, their legs pounding against the air frantically, as if trying to run away from something.
One by one, each of the different things to come from the game begins to appear, caught up in the unseen winds swirling all around him. The monkeys fly past the two black warthogs. The cannibals, clawing the air as if trying to resist the force pulling them from the castle, get tangled up in the masses of green plants that are helplessly trapped by the winds. From behind him, the stampede – all of its members still pawing at the air, as if still running – are slowly pulled backward toward the swirling mass of bodies , spinning around as if in a cyclone. The smaller hazards, such as the ants and the leeches, can't be made out, but Dean is certain that they are in there as well.
After a while, they spin so furiously that Dean loses track of any of their shapes. Instead, they simply look like amorphous masses of color, blending into each other like streaks of wet paint blown across a blank canvas by a powerful gust.
The colorful twister begins to condense and thin as it touches down onto the center. It's as if the game board is actually sucking everything it had conjured previously back inside, depositing them all in a separate world contained entirely within the game board itself. Though the creatures themselves have lost all sense of form, Dean can still hear their distressed cries – the laughing of the hyenas, the hollering of the monkeys, the trumpeting of the elephants. As the final remnants of the cyclone disappear inside the game, a sound like the crack of thunder splits the night air, and a blinding flash of green lights up the night, forcing Dean to shield his eyes.