Chapter 29 – The Lost Boy

They all looked on in utter amazement at the vastness of the treasure. When the door had initially opened all they could see was one huge pile of gold directly in front of them. But as they stepped into the next chamber they could see piles and piles of the stuff that disappeared into the distance. But there wasn't only gold, there were jewels of every colour imaginable that twinkled in the light and some that were as big as a fist. There were wooden chests that no doubt contained more treasures, silver plates and goblets incrusted with precious stones, statues of witches, wizards and various magical creatures, jewellery that sparkled and gleamed and much, much more. They were all speechless as they took in the stunning sight.

Once again the door they had just come through closed behind them but none of them even noticed as they began to walk trance like towards the treasure.

Kyle was the first to pick some up and let a handful of gold coins trickle through his fingers. Phia grabbed a wand that had a handle made of gold and the wood was of the purest white material she had ever seen and she swished it in front of her as everyone began to explore.

"Look at this," Charlie called over to Phenix as he opened a stone chest and found a collection of leather bound books.

Each book had intricate gold writing on the front and the pages were rather discoloured and the ink was faded from age.

"These must be hundreds of years old," Charlie noted in amazement as he carefully turned the pages of one of the books and saw various recipes for potions and incantations for spells. "I bet these are some of the oldest magic books in the world."

Phia had continued to look through the chamber, passing mounds of treasure but there was so much that she didn't know what to look at next until something caught her eye. Red glowing rubies as big as a gobstone shone at her. She moved closer and saw they were mounted on an exquisitely designed golden tiara. Phia couldn't help herself and picked the tiara up and placed it on her head. She then found a huge silver plate and held it up to look at herself in the reflection of the shiny metal.

"Very nice, "Jack said and Phia turned to see him standing nearby looking at her.

"You think?" she said as she adjusted the tiara on her head and admired her reflection again.

"You look like a princess," Jack beamed.

Phia noticed something else on the pile of treasure in front of her and placed the silver plate down and picked up a golden crown that had blue sapphires and green emeralds affixed to it.

"Here try this on," she said as she passed it towards Jack who dutifully obliged and placed it on his head.

Phia picked up the silver plate again and passed it to Jack so he could look at himself.

"What do you think?" he asked as he gazed at his reflection.

"Like a prince," she replied with a smile and Jack suddenly started to go very red.

Charlie was now looking through another books which had diagrams of plants and a list of their magical properties but Phenix had taken a seat on a nearby stone chest and was rolling up his trouser leg to see how badly it was hurt from the glass of the Sneakoscope.

"Here let me," Charlie said as he put down the book, seeing that Phenix was in pain and struggling as the blood had made his trousers stick to his skin.

Charlie crouched in front of Phenix and carefully rolled the fabric of his trousers up, revealing a deep gash in Phenix's leg about an inch long.

"Well what's the verdict?" Phenix asked feeling awkward as Charlie examined the wound, his fingers gently touching his leg.

"You'll live," Charlie responded jokingly. "So is there something going on between you and Kyle I should know about?" he said as he spotted Kyle disappearing behind a mound of gold in the distance and remembered the exchange that had happened when they had been answering riddles.

"No of course not," Phenix replied defensively before he noticed Charlie looking embarrassed. "Why are you jealous?" he said mockingly as he nudged Charlie playfully.

"Maybe," Charlie said half in jest before he pointed his wand at the cut on Phenix's leg. "Episkey."

Suddenly Phenix felt a burning sensation in his leg and grimaced but quickly the pain receded and when he looked down he could see the wound had healed over.

"Don't worry it's all in the past and now there's only one guy I want to be kissing," Phenix said with a smirk.

"Good," Charlie retorted as he lifted his head up and leaned in towards Phenix with his lips poised.

"Hey what do you think this is?" Kyle called out and his voiced echoed around the chamber and immediately Charlie pulled back from the attempted kiss, much to Phenix's disappointment.

Charlie helped Phenix roll his trouser leg back down and then gave him a hand up before they went to find Kyle but Jack and Phia continued to play around, putting on various pieces of jewellery they found and started doing mock posh accents and pretending to be royalty.

They found Kyle stood in front of an elaborate, gild framed mirror that was at least eight foot high. As they stepped beside him they could see their own reflections in the mirror as well as Kyle's but there was a forth person standing there. Both Charlie and Phenix turned around, expecting to see the forth person with them but there was no one else there, they were only in the mirror.

The person was dressed in black robes that looked like a school uniform but were very shabby. He looked old with grey hair, a creased face and an unkempt beard that was rather patchy. He stared back at them with a blank expression and a sadness in his eyes.

"Who do you think he is and why can we see his reflection?" Kyle asked as he continued to stare at the mirror.

Charlie went and walked around to the back of the mirror and inspected it but found nothing unusual there.

"Must be some kind of magic mirror that shows like the future or a window to another place or something?" Charlie guessed though he had no idea and was just as amazed by it as the others were.

"I really hope that's not meant to be me when I'm older," Kyle groaned as he touched his own face, half expecting the man in the mirror to copy his movements but thankfully he didn't.

"Guys you better come and see this," Phia called out to them and Phenix noticed at once the note of worry in her voice and hastily turned to find his sister.

Charlie immediately followed and Kyle managed to pull himself away from the intriguing mirror, not wanting to be left alone with the strange reflection of the old man.

When they found the other two they were shocked to find they weren't alone. Stood in front of Jack and Phia was a tall boy with short, spikey brown hair, pale skin, dark brown eyes and he was wearing a Hogwarts uniform.

Everyone was stunned. Where had this boy come from? Had he followed them into the vault and past all the challenges without them even knowing?

Phenix moved to step in front of the others and nearer the boy who was looking at them just as quizzically as they were at him.

"Are you real?" the boy said nervously as he looked each of them up and down with wide, beaming eyes.

"Er yeah," Phenix replied feeling confused. "How did you get here?"

The boy stretched out his hand quizzically towards Phenix, who instinctively took a step back.

"Sorry I just wanted to check you are real," the boy said, withdrawing his hand and noticing how startled Phenix seemed. "I've been down here so long on my own I thought no one would ever come."

"Wait who are you?" Phenix asked. "What's your name?"

"I'm Caleb, Caleb Saxon," the boy answered. "And you are?"

"You've been down here sixty years?!" Jack blurted out in surprise.

"Has it been that long?" Caleb said in a dreamy way as if it meant nothing to him. "I stopped counting the days a long time ago."

"Well I'm Phenix, this is my sister Phia and my friends Jack, Charlie and Kyle," Phenix said, answering Caleb's previous question as he pointed to everyone in turn.

"It's nice to meet you all. Well it's nice to meet anyone. I've been down here on my own for so long. I'd forgotten what it's like to speak to another human being."

"Hang on if you've been in here for sixty years why do you look like you've only just come down here yesterday?" Phia interjected and Phenix had been starting to wonder the exact same thing but he was having trouble processing what was going on in his head.

"Well there's a lot of magical relics and instruments in here and I found this strange mirror over there," Caleb said pointing to where Phenix, Charlie and Kyle had just been and they knew he was talking about the mirror they had been looking at.

"So that's you in the mirror? The reflection?" Phenix asked.

"Yes. Well what I would have looked like now had the mirror not worked it's magic. Don't ask me how it works but it just sort of preserved me as I was back then while the reflection of me ages."

"That's pretty cool," Kyle noted, thinking how great it would be to never age.

"After a while I wondered if anyone would ever find the vault like me and my friends had. And I knew eventually it would change location so I thought I might die down here alone. I guess that mirror offered me some hope. That I didn't have to grow old in here. That maybe one day I could get out and pick up my life where I left off, as a student."

"So what happened to the others? The other students you entered the vault with?" Phenix asked. "Well I mean we saw the two who had been turned to stone by the Elves but wasn't there a fourth person with you?"

"Penny? Unfortunately the dragon got her," Caleb said as he looked to the ground briefly as if saying a silent prayer to remember her. "We had used the Incarcerous Charm to bind its legs and bring it down but as we were making our way past, it let out a burst of flame and got her. I was the only one who made it all the way to this chamber."

"I'm sorry about your friends," Phia interrupted. "But why have you stayed down her for so long? Why haven't you left already?"

"Well I couldn't. It wasn't until I got in here that I realised without the others I couldn't get out again. It was just like entering the vault, which I'm guessing you figured out required someone from every house?" Caleb said and Phenix nodded. "Well you can't leave again for the same reason. That's why I've been stuck here waiting for someone else to turn up."

"OK well we can take you back now," Phenix said.

"Now? We can't go yet," Caleb replied hastily.

"Why not? You said you needed someone from each house so we can help you get out," Phenix said.

"I know but there's a bit more to it than that. Which houses are you all from anyway?"

"I'm in Hufflepuff and so is Jack," Phenix explained. "Phia's in Ravenclaw, Charlie is in Gryffindor and Kyle is a Slytherin like you, right?"

"Yes I was in Slytherin. I don't suppose you know who won the Quidditch Cup in the nineteen twenty-nine school year do you?"

"Er no sorry. So how do we get out?" Phenix asked, feeling like Caleb was trying to avoid the question and had a bad feeling that they might not be able to get out at all.

"Don't worry, now you're all here we'll get out no problem. It's just the door can only be opened at certain times so we've got at least an hour before we can leave. You might as well look around some more till then," Caleb noted.

"Yeah come on we need to see how much of this we can load up. Has anyone got a bag or something?" Kyle asked before delving his hand into a nearby pile of gold and started stuffing coins into his pockets but the others looked a bit more hesitant.

"Don't worry I'll come get you when it's time to leave," Caleb reassured them. "You don't think I want to stay down here any longer than I have to? I can't wait to get out and see daylight," he said as Kyle headed off between the mounds of treasure and Jack and Phia warily made their way to look around some more.

"I've got so many years to catch up on. What's the world like now? Who's the headmaster at Hogwarts? Is Binns still boring everyone in History of Magic?"

"The world has changed a lot in the past sixty years and Professor Dumbledore is the current headmaster," Phenix answered and suddenly he began remembering the outside world and really hoped Dumbledore and the others had woken up now.

"Dumbledore? The Transfiguration professor?" Caleb said sounding surprised. "Anyway there's a few bits I want to take back with me so like I said I'll come get you when it's time to leave," he said before he turned and started walking off into the distance.

"Come on shall we go have a look around?" Charlie asked as he tapped Phenix on the shoulder but Phenix was still staring at Caleb as he walked away.

"Does he seem a bit strange to you?" Phenix asked.

"Well he has been stuck down here on his own for sixty years. It would make anyone go a bit weird," Charlie noted as he began gazing back around at all the treasure. "So do you think Dumbledore will let us keep anything we take back?"

Phenix turned and headed off with Charlie with the nagging feeling that there wasn't something quite right about Caleb, though as Charlie said it might just be due to the fact he'd only had himself for company for the past six decades.

Charlie had quickly found a finely detailed carved wand that he had picked up and was examining it before flicking it through the air and unintentionally made a pile of gold coins burst into the air and quickly started raining back down, clattering on the floor below. Charlie hastily put the wand back down where he had found it and turned to Phenix who looked positively uninterested in the gold that was currently trickling down.

"Is all this treasure not exciting enough for you?" Charlie asked, trying not to sound condescending.

"I guess I just never had any interesting in finding it. I only wanted to get into the vault to stop the curse. Now I just want to go back and see if everyone is back to normal," Phenix said, feeling downcast.

"Don't worry we will. You heard what Caleb said, we just have to wait for the right time to open the doors."

"And you believe that?" Phenix asked, not sounding convinced.

"You don't?"

"There's something not right here. I don't like it," Phenix said as he gazed around the chamber and wished the Sneakoscope hadn't been broken in his pocket.

"Look come here," Charlie said, holding his hand out to Phenix.

Phenix placed his hand in Charlie's and was swiftly pulled towards him and then Charlie took his other hand too.

"We are going to get out of here and when we do I am going to take you on a proper date. Just you and me and no one to bother us," he said and as if on cue Phia came by with an overly jewelled necklace glistening around her neck.

"Not interrupting anything am I?" she said suspiciously as she eyed the pair of them holding hands and was beginning to wonder if every boy in the school secretly had a crush on her brother.

"No it's fine," Phenix said as he let go of Charlie's hands. "Where are the others?"

"Caleb asked them to help him with something," she said as she noticed how red her brother had gone in the face.

"Maybe we should go find them. I think we should probably all keep together," Phenix said looking apprehensive.

"I'm sure they're fine," Charlie said trying to reassure him but Phenix had already turned to go and find them.

As he was leaving something caught his attention out the corner of his eye. A pile of gold coins to his left was shaking and the coins were trickling down to the ground. He looked around but the rest of the room was still, it was only that pile of gold that was moving.

Charlie had gone to follow Phenix and now stood behind him, his gaze drawn to where Phenix was looking and he too saw the gold trembling. Phenix stepped towards it but Charlie put his hand on his shoulder and held him back.

"Maybe you should be careful. We have no idea what's doing it," Charlie said but Phenix shook off Charlie's hand that was holding him and preceded anyway.

Phenix watched as more gold tumbled down the pile and after a brief hesitation he plunged his hand into the mound. He could feel the gold vibrating around his fingers as he moved his arm in further until the gold was nearly up to his shoulder. Suddenly his fingers touched something that was shaking wildly. His natural instinct was to pull his hand back but instead he reached in further and clasped his hand around the object. Slowly he pulled it out from the golden pile until it was free of the riches and now he could see what it was. There clutched in his hand was a small, black, ceramic pot with strange markings all around it and it was continuing to vibrate.

Phenix looked over to Charlie as if to say, 'what is this?' when abruptly the pot jolted like it had been struck by lightning and Phenix felt a sharp, piercing pain in his hand and the pot fell from his grip. He tried to catch it with his other hand as it fell towards the ground but he wasn't quick enough and it hit the stone floor and shattered. But as it did something that looked like a burst of misty light flew up from the shattered pot and whizzed through the air above their heads.

All three of them looked up in astonishment at the ethereal light as it continued to whirl around at speed. It was only as it started to slow down that they began to realise what it was, having seen many of them before around Hogwarts. It was a ghost.