Chapter 24 –Into the Lion's Den
"Part of the magic of heroes and heroines has always been their ability to embody a vision of life that at the moment is not yet developed enough…Heroes are not always just reflection of what has already happened but are also harbingers of what is to come."
-Todd Brennan-
"Harry? Harry!"
Harry jerked out of sleep to find Parvati pulling at his arm and hissing in his ear. "Whz't?" he asked, not particularly intelligibly.
"It's happening," Parvati hissed. "It's happening right now."
"What's happening?" he asked.
"Quiet, do you want to wake everyone?" she demanded
He was going to wake Justin and Ernie anyway so waking them would be no loss. Zacharias Smith, however, was a different story.
"Okay, I'm awake," he whispered back. "What is it?"
"Cedric saw Snape, or someone who dressed like him, going into the Forbidden Corridor," Parvati whispered in a rush. "Tonks is going after and sent us to raise the alarm."
"Why are you here?" Harry hissed. "You should be getting Flitwick. That was the plan."
"We did, or Padma did. He said that there was a spell on the door to alert him if it was opened and it hadn't gone off. She thinks different Professors are watching different alarm spells in case one of them is compromised. I wasn't with her when she told him. She told me he was really mad about her being out, though. I know he sent her back to Ravenclaw Tower and told her he'd come up with an appropriate punishment in the morning."
"Which will be about six hours too late," Harry said, looking at the brass alarm clock on his bedside cupboard.
"What are we going to do?" Parvati asked.
"Did Padma actually go to the Tower?"
"No, she's waiting downstairs."
"'Okay, we're going to wake Justin and Ernie," Harry said. "I'll explain when we're downstairs."
Parvati nodded. Together they woke the other two Hufflepuff first years, and the boys pulled on robes over their pajamas as well as shoes for the stone floors of Hogwarts were quite cold.
"Padma, Parvati, and I are going after Tonks," Harry said when they were all in the common room. He had known he was going to go from the time Padma had woken him. It might not be the smartest or most cunning of moves, and no doubt Ron would take it as further proof that Harry should have been Sorted into Gryffindor, but his decision wasn't about courage either, not really. When it came down to it, Tonks and Cedric were his friends and he had something that could help.
And if he could help, well, he couldn't not help. It wouldn't be loyal.
"Are you crazy?" Ernie asked. "You may have bested You-Know-Who as a baby, but you don't know how you did it. You may have power, Harry, but you don't have any idea how to use it or even if you can still use it."
"No," Harry agreed. He reached into his pajama shirt and came up with the phoenix amulet on its leather cord. "But I have this. Judging from the way Voldemort acted in the Forest, and it was probably him back in that blizzard too, it has some power. If nothing else he really didn't like it, which I figure means it can hurt him, or make it harder for him to…be around, I suppose. That could go a long way in evening the odds between him and Tonks.
"I may need help getting through whatever the Professors put up to guard the Stone, assuming any of them are left and he hasn't simply blasted his way past them. And if nothing else, they can run back to the Professors with more information. Maybe if we know what they did to protect the Stone they'll be more inclined to believe us."
"What do you want us to do, Harry?" Justin asked.
"Padma already told Flitwick, so I suppose you two have to warn Professor Sprout," Harry said.
Justin hesitated. "I know she said that she was sitting this out, Harry, but have you thought about telling Allie?"
Harry shook his head. "I think of the four of you, Padma will be the most help to me in getting past any traps. If she comes with me, so will Parvati, and neither of you can get into the girl's dorms." Hermione easily had the top marks in their years locked in, but Padma's were nearly as good. He didn't want to take time getting Hermione, and Allie had made her feelings clear.
"We could send the Fat Friar."
"Only the House Ghosts can go into the common rooms and I've never heard of one going into the dorms," Padma said. "Besides, have you seen any of the ghosts tonight? I haven't."
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The invisibility cloak had made him spoiled.
It was the only conclusion Harry could come to as, for the first time in months, he felt nervous about sneaking around the corridors after curfew. He was constantly watching the pictures and portraits, waiting for one of the portraits to crack open an eye and sound the alarm of students out in the halls. He stared at the suits of armor whenever he past one, certain that they saw him and were just waiting for the proper moment to strike. A drought made him shiver, and he scanned up and down the hall, expecting a ghost to suddenly make itself visible. A sound would make him freeze, certain that Mrs. Norris was just around the corner.
But none of the paintings woke, nor did any of the suits of armor or statues suddenly start moving on their own. No ghosts appeared—even Peeves was nowhere to be found—and Mrs. Norris was never to be found lurking around a corner, or watching maliciously from a perch.
The way to the Forbidden Corridor lay strangely wide open. The staircases did not suddenly twist or veer in some unexpected direction—to be fair, no one Harry had asked could ever recall seeing the staircases change positions, but he was sure that sooner or later there would be a first time. There were no mysterious walls in his way requiring detours. No doors were locked or grates pulled across the way, requiring them to cast what unlocking spells they knew or to find a way around via secret passages.
It was almost as though someone or something, perhaps even Hogwarts itself, wanted Harry to make his way to the Forbidden Corridor unmolested.
At last they reached the small antechamber that led to the Forbidden Corridor, the same room in which Padma had been severely injured. The cloak, which Tonks and Cedric had been using while keeping watch, lay in a silvery pool on the ground.
"Well," the Ravenclaw said, "now we know why Professor Flitwick didn't hear an alarm."
Harry nodded mutely as he folded the cloak up and tucked it into his robes. The center of the iron-bound oak door had been blasted into the Forbidden Corridor. A thin frame of wood and metal, all that was left of the door itself, was still secured inside the frame itself by the great iron hinges and locks. The door itself had neither been opened nor even unlocked.
"Lumos." He winced at the whispered spell caused his wand to blaze forth into light. Holding it up out of the way he fished out the phoenix amulet. It glowed softly in the darkness, but it was quite cool to the touch.
"Well?" Parvati asked.
"It's cool," Harry said.
"That's good, right?"
"If it wasn't magically cooled it could mean that Snape already as the Stone and has left," Padma said. "How are you planning on getting past Fluffy?"
"I brought that bird-song flute Hagrid gave me for Christmas," Harry said. "You might want to light your wands."
Without waiting for a response he stepped through the shattered door.
His wand went out the moment he crossed the threshold, as did the amulet.
"Harry?" Parvati called.
"I'm alright," Harry called back. He couldn't hear Fluffy. Last time the giant three-headed dog had immediately started barking. What had changed?
"My wand and the amulet cut out," he said, trying to get his wand to glow again to no avail. "I think it might be a no-magic area like Allie uses."
"Let me shine my wand in," Padma said.
"Won't it stop working too?" Harry asked.
"The light source is magical, Harry. Not the light itself," Padma said, shining her wand through the door, taking care not to accidentally let the wand cross the threshold.
Harry immediately wished she hadn't.
Fluffy was dead.
Thick bloody froth was mounded around his muzzles like a vile meringue. Open eyes were glazed-over and cloudy.
Harry turned away before he could see anymore, and spotted an unlit torch lying on the floor. He picked it back up and stepped back out of the room.
"What is it?" Parvati asked. "What did you see?"'
"Fluffy," Harry said. "He's dead."
"Hagrid will be crushed," Padma said, not sounding particularly sympathetic. "What are you going to do with that torch, Harry?"
"We have no way of knowing for how far magic will be useless," Harry said, focusing on the torch. He had been practicing on an off with candles for most of the year, and had even lit a few fireplaces, though only by lighting a few twigs and using them to get the fire going. This was the largest thing he'd tried yet. A wisp of smoke rose from its wick. Then a tiny flicker of flame that quickly grew into a good solid blaze. He left the phoenix amulet hanging down against his robes, but put away his wand so that he could use both hands to carry the torch.
Padma and Parvati followed him back into the room, the Gryffindor moaning slightly at the sight of the dead Fluffy. Parvati held a hand over her mouth and looked faintly green in the light of the torch, while Padma's grim expression was half cast in disturbing shadows. "Well," she said, "now we know."
Harry nodded and tried to pull the door open. It refused to budge.
"We tried unlocking spells, but it's been charmed against them," Padma said. "I don't suppose you know how to unlock it without magic."
Harry shook his head. Picking locks was one skill that Allie hadn't passed on. He set the burning end of the torch to the wooden remains of the door. Surprisingly the wood quickly caught fire. Whether or not it would burn quickly enough to bring Professor Flitwick he didn't know.
The trapdoor that Fluffy had been guarding was open and lay half askew. One set of hinges had been ripped apart, and the last set was twisted out of alignment, making it impossible to shut without magic.
"There's nothing for it," Padma said. "We have to jump."
Harry stared down the hole in the floor. It was very dark and impossible to determine how far down it went.
"If you two stand around like that we'll be here forever," Parvati said.
"Wait, 'Vati—" Padma called.
But Parvati did not wait. She stepped past Harry, slipped her sister's grasp, and jumped down the hole.
Harry and Padma traded troubled looks.
"Come on down," Parvati's voice echoed up. "The landing's soft enough."
"I'm going first," Padma said grimly. "I have a few things I need to discuss with my sister. Throw down the torch before you jump so you don't accidentally bean yourself with it."
Harry nodded in agreement and watched Padma disappear into the hole. After a moment Padma's voice echoed up at him and he tossed down the torch, counted to ten to give them a chance to pull it out of the way, then jumped himself.
He was aware of stone walls flashing past very close to his face and was beginning to wonder if the drop had shifted somehow, like the staircases did, and if his landing was going to be much more sudden and painful than Parvati's apparently was. Then he landed in something thick and sort of cushiony, if not particularly soft. For a moment it felt like he'd fallen into a giant net made of a bunch of ropes slung chaotically across the chute.
Padma appeared with the torch and Parvati began to help him down. By the light of the torch Harry could see that what he thought were ropes were vines. Dead vines from the looks of things.
"Devil's Snare," Padma said. "One of the upper years said that Professor Sprout had a prized specimen that was the largest in Europe, but I didn't believe him. Looks like I owe Davis an apology."
"I thought Devil's Snare was dangerous," Harry said.
"It is," Padma said. "See how dark these vines are? This one's been poisoned."
Harry turned away from the dead plant. The chamber they were in was much smaller than Fluffy's room and the light of the torch was bright enough to illuminate the walls, which were covered with carved runes.
"We need to be careful," Padma said. "I think those are wards."
"No," Harry said. "They're what make this area magic-free. I've seen them before. Allie used them."
"The same patterns exactly?" Parvati asked excitedly. "If that's the case, maybe we should go back and get Allie. She might know the way there after all."
"Why would she know that?"
"Rune-work isn't exact, Harry," Padma explained. "I know enough to know that there are slight variations from one person to the next. If these are exactly the same it means the same person carved them."
"Oh," Harry said. He held the torch closer to a section of wall and examined the runes. "They're similar," he said finally. "I only saw Allie's briefly so I'm not really sure. Besides, she said she didn't want to get involved, remember? Why would she say that if she had already agreed to help guard the Stone?"
"Because maybe she thinks staying away is guarding the Stone?" Parvati asked.
"Besides which, she was concerned for our safety, remember?" Padma asked.
"So?" Harry asked.
"So, can you think of a better way of convincing you not to involve her than her telling you that she didn't want to be involved?" Padma asked.
Harry didn't reply as he stepped into the tunnel leading from the small room.
They hurried down the tunnel, the flickering torch creating odd shadows in the runes etched deeply into the rock walls. Abruptly the runes stopped.
Two steps later the torch snuffed out, plunging them into ebon blackness.
Parvati cried out as something clanked and slammed shut behind them.
Gentle wand-light filled the tunnel as Padma lit her wand. It was a wan, feeble this close to the magic-nullification wards, but it was better than nothing. She shone it behind them. A great iron gate was barring the way back.
"'There is no retreat from here men,'" Padma said.
"Oh that is a cheery thought," her sister said.
Padma shrugged. "It was something I heard once, a mundane saying, I think."
Harry turned away from the gate that blocked the way back and had to stop and stare.
They were in a giant room. Large stone basins that were filled with fire lined the walls, and the ceiling curved up into darkness overhead.
"What is this?" Parvati asked, stepping out into the room.
Harry shook his head. He could no more begin to divine the purpose of the room than he could fly without a broomstick.
"Some kind of arena, maybe?" Padma asked uncertainly as she followed her sister and Harry as they started across the room.
"For what purpose?" Parvati returned.
"I don't know, it's like…an indoor Quidditch pitch or something, if they used stone instead of grass," Padma said.
Harry had to concede that Padma had a point, at least where the sheer size of the room was concerned. It had to be at least as far across as the Great Hall was long, and the ceiling had to be pretty high up to be cast into such deep shadow.
"It's circular, though," he said. "Quidditch pitches are oval, and I didn't see any scoring hoops or markers for the scoring zone. Look at how high the ceiling is. I didn't think we came down so far."
"Hogwarts must be moving itself around again," Parvati said. "Maybe that was part of the defenses."
Harry wasn't so certain. Oh, it made sense that there was something magical about how far they had travelled and the size of the room. But if Hogwarts had moved things around to help defend the Stone, it would have made more sense to put the Stone in a sealed room. A room with no doors or windows that no one knew where it was, much less how to get there or get in.
His foot struck something and there was the sound of metal skittering across the stone floor.
Padma and Parvati shone their wand-lights around and something metal glinted from ahead of them.
Harry walked over. Lying on the ground was a bronze key. Tiny stubs near the handle gave mute testimony to something haven been broken off. He picked up the key. In the light of the torch and Parvati's wand he could see tiny bronze feathers attached to the stubs,
"Feathers?" Parvati asked.
"Wings, maybe?" Harry asked, twisting the key around for a closer look.
The key glinted, and then suddenly it wasn't a key anymore. As Harry watched, the end that was meant to go into a lock melted and reformed into a plain steel blade. But it looked…wrong
It was a transfiguration. An object-to-object that didn't involve any living tissue wasn't a particularly complex task, though Harry wasn't certain how difficult it was if one or both objects were enchanted. Most transfigurations were not instantaneous, though speed, McGonagall had said, was often indicative of the complexity of the spell and the caster's relative strength and familiarity with the spell. She had even magically slowed down several transfigurations so that they could observe changes.
This was sort of like that. In those examples that McGonagall had shown them the changes were…smooth, these ones were not. The metal should have rippled and then slowly reformed, sort of like it would look like for water to rush out of one container and into a second with a different shape. Instead the transfiguration kept stopping and starting. One section of metal would 'freeze' in a new shape while others would continue, then it would unfreeze and continue.
Harry was so caught up in watching it he didn't consider what the purpose of such a transfiguration could be.
Red-orange firelight gave the almost-knife Harry held the color of blood.
Then it twisted in his hand and tried to plunge itself into his side.
Harry dropped the knife as soon as it jerked in his grip, and only a stub of a broken wing getting caught in his sleeve saved him.
Parvati batted it away, the jagged metal ripping his sleeve, as the knife was sent clattering to the floor once more.
The knife twisted on the ground and sort of half-hovered in the air as it tried to attack Harry once again, but Harry was no longer standing still. Like a Beater intent on sending a Bludger at a Seeker passing below him, Harry brought the torch down so quickly that it made a whirring sound and the flame guttered. The torch slamming it into the stone floor was too much for the transfigured weapon. Some combination of damage it had already suffered, the heat of the flame, or the impact of the torch striking it, caused the blade to snap off just in front of the hilt and shatter.
They resumed walking. Another key glittered in the light, then another, and another…
Pretty soon they had to pick their way with care lest they activate more of the key-knifes. Most clinked on the stone as they passed, turning over, or twisting about. Two of the key-knifes they hadn't managed to avoid took to the air, but were so slow and feeble that Harry had no trouble at all in batting them away.
"Interesting," Padma said, pausing briefly to examine two keys more closely but taking care not to touch them.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Hmm?"
"You said that the keys were interesting," Harry said, tiptoeing through a particularly dense patch of keys.
"Yes," Padma said. "Have you noticed that all of the keys are exactly the same?"
"They are?" Harry asked.
"Oh yes. Not the damage," Padma cautioned, "But if you look, both the handles and the bits—the part that actually goes inside the lock and opens it—are exactly the same from one key to the next."
"Which means what, exactly?" Parvati asked. Then, quickly, "besides that they can all be used to open the same lock, I mean." She paused, "or fillet us like a trout."
"I'm not certain," Padma said as they reached the center of the hall.
There was a rack with a half-dozen brooms on it, but all had been shattered and their tails burned.
Harry looked them over, but they were all quite unusable.
"You know, Padma, you might be right."
"About what, Harry?"
"When you called this place a Quidditch pitch," Harry said. "I bet there was one key in particular that didn't match the others. If they had wings, that meant they probably flew. The other keys were meant as decoys, and would turn into knifes and kill you if you picked the wrong one."
"I bet the broom rack was charmed too," Padma said. "People who were supposed to be here would know which broom to take, while the others activated the keys." She looked around the giant room and shivered.
"What is it?" Parvati instantly asked.
"Don't you get it?" Padma asked.
Harry and Parvati both shook her heads.
"This one isn't like Fluffy," Padma said with a grim expression. "This isn't a warning. If you got here and weren't supposed to be here, you weren't meant to ever get out. This place was meant to kill."
Harry and Parvati traded looks.
"Snape's already past here," Harry said.
"We should go back," Padma said. "The other traps aren't likely to be any safer, and we don't know if they've been disabled as badly as this one. Maybe if I tell Flitwick about…this, he'll believe me this time."
"And if he doesn't?" Parvati asked. "Or if he's too late?"
Harry cut them off. "Look. If it was just us, then I'd say go back in a heartbeat and do the same thing we did before, having a few people keep watch while the rest tried to get the teachers. But Tonks is still down here, she may need our help."
Padma stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. "Now I understand what they meant."
"Understood what who meant?" Harry asked.
"The upper years," Padma said as she started walking again, still taking care to avoid the trapped keys. "They said that Gryffindors and Slytherins are both predictable, but the Hufflepuffs will do the strangest things sometimes in the name of 'loyalty' and 'fair-play'."
"Fair-play isn't one of our qualities," Harry said, feeling rather disgruntled as he picked his way through the keys in her wake. "Loyalty and hard-work, those are our prized qualities. I don't remember 'fair-play' in the manual."
"You have a manual?
They passed into another tunnel with runes etched into the walls. Unlike the last connecting tunnel, Padma's and Parvati's wands didn't go out. It was possible that the runes and wards were meant for a different purpose, but it was equally likely that whatever magic had guarded this area had been disrupted. The air was cloudy with dust, and piles of shattered stone covered the floor. Great chunks were missing from the walls and the ceiling, likely blasted out by magic of some kind, and what was left looked pock-marked and unfinished.
Harry hurried down the tunnel, still with the torch held high just in case. He hadn't gone very far, however, before he arrived at an intersection. "So now what do we do?"
Padma gave a half-shrug as she shone her wand-light back and forth between the three passages. "I don't know…" she paused and abruptly flicked her wand back towards the center passage, then whirled around and shone it back down the tunnel they had come through. "We're turned around."
"What?" Harry asked.
"We came down this passage," Padma said, using her wand to indicate the center passage, "and somehow it turned us around. See that blown out chunk of wall, looks sort of like Australia? We passed right by it."
"So if the way back is the way forward, then forward is the way back," Parvati said, picking up a chunk of blasted rock from the floor.
"No, wait!" her sister cried, reaching out. But it was too late. Parvati tossed the piece of stone into the hall behind them. The hall that, while lacking runes inscribed in its ceiling and walls, was untouched by spell-damage.
A great gout of flame jetted out of a wall. The rock, rapidly heated until it was glowing, exploded a moment later pelting the three first-years with hot, sharp pieces of stone.
Harry winced as he cut a finger on a jagged shard. He turned at Padma's hiss in time to see her flick away a splinter of stone.
"That was a great idea," Padma said.
"We know not to go that way now," Parvati said.
"Great, what are you going to do next?" Padma asked sarcastically. "Flip a coin?"
"We go right," Parvati said.
"Why?"
"The truth is the right of the righteous."
"Is that a Gryffindor saying?" Padma asked as Parvati took a step down the other corridor.
"Actually I—" Parvati had turned back to face them, and now stood frozen.
"Parvati?" Padma asked.
"Pad?" Parvati asked in an unusually quiet voice. "Padma?" she asked, somewhat more loudly. She pressed her left hand to something before her, and the light from her wand seemed to sort of congeal in mid-air, not reaching to where Harry and Padma still stood in the middle of the intersecting corridors."
"Parvati?" Padma called again, reaching out for her sister.
Harry grabbed her by the back of her robes, and pulled her back.
"Let me go!" she cried, twisting in her robes.
"Padma!" Parvati shouted, banging against the air with one first
Harry was forced to drop the torch as Padma hit him. If living with Dudley had taught Harry how to run far and fast, it had also taught him how to take a hit. After all, the less Dudley managed to hurt him with the first punch often meant a greater chance for him to break away and escape. Padma, however, had never had cause or opportunity to learn Dudley's side of the respective skill-set.
Harry managed to get his hands up before the second blow, having abandoned his grip on the Ravenclaw's robes as well as the torch. He took the next two hits on his arms, then caught hers outside of his and pushed them out wide. "Padma," he called, wrapping the struggling girl up so that there was less of a chance of her slugging him. "Padma, listen to me. We don't know what's going on here. We have to think our way through this or it's going to get all of us killed."
"So are you saying we should just abandon her?" Padma snapped.
"Hey, guys!" Parvati said, hitting whatever was between them. It made a strangely dull and rather hollow echoing sound. "I can still hear you!" she continued. "I think this is the way we needed to go. I'll continue, but since you can't follow me—"
"Stay right there!" Harry shouted before she could finish.
Parvati paused. "Harry?"
"We can still see you," Harry said as Padma stopped struggling in his arms. "It's like the wall is…one way. Or maybe it's just invisible from this angle?"
"Then why could Parvati walk through it?" Padma asked.
"Padma?" Harry asked as she slowly pulling away from him.
"I'm okay, Harry," she said, sounding rather detached and not at all okay, but at least thinking about the problem rather than possibly making things worth.
"So you can come this way too," Parvati said. "What are you waiting for?"
"Harry's right," Padma said. "We don't know what's going on here, or if that's the way we should be going."
"Well…nothing has tried to kill me."
"Not yet, for all you know it dead ends around the next corner, or there's a pit-trap filled with sharp spikes or crocodiles or something."
"Rather cold for crocodiles, don't you think?" Harry asked.
"Fine, a trap filled with a water-monster with tentacles and sharp teeth and an appetite because no one has fallen into its trap since September. Happy?" Padma asked.
"Oh yes," Parvati said. "Because tentacle monsters make everything better."
"I'm glad you think so," Padma replied, apparently oblivious to the sarcastic edge in her sister's voice. "My point is, you don't know that you're not in danger," Padma said. "So tell me, what was wrong with the left-hand passage?"
"Well…" Parvati ducked her head and muttered something.
"Can you repeat that?"
"The left is for losers," Parvati said.
"Now that definitely sounds like a Gryffindorism," Padma said, rolling her eyes and turning her wand down the forsaken passage. "Harry, do you see…"
Harry frowned as Padma played the light of her wand over a section of wall that looked…slick. Sort of like the kind of wax that dripped down the side of a candlestick and hardened again. "More spell-damage, you think?"
Padma nodded. "Parvati, can you see anything that looks like spell-damage?"
"No," Parvati said, barely looking around. "Why?"
"Try again, and this time actually look," Padma instructed.
Parvati did as her sister said, but at last she turned back to the wall. "No. Nothing."
Padma said a word that made her sister do a double-take. After a moment she walked right up to the edge of the intersection. For a moment she stood there, and then, too quickly for Harry to intervene again, she reached into the corridor, latched onto the front of Parvati's robes, and as the Gryffindor's eyes suddenly widened, Padma jerked her sister towards the intersecting corridors.
The Ravenclaw twisted out of the way as Parvati made a very undignified squawk and landed on the floor.
"How'd you know that was going to work?" Harry asked as he helped Parvati up.
"I didn't," Padma said.
"What if it hadn't?" Parvati asked, rubbing an elbow from where she had landed funny.
"Then I figured that since you weren't in any immediate danger, you could sit there until Dumbledore came."
"I meant about the wall," Parvati said. "You would have pulled me right into it."
"No more than you would have deserved. Now, shall we?" Padma asked, gesturing to the other corridor. "And you still haven't said where you got that first line from."
"What makes you think it wasn't a Gryffindor saying?"
"Besides you asking that question?"
Parvati scowled, then turned down the left-hand corridor. "It was a paraphrase from the Vishnu Purana."
Harry watched as Padma's lips moved for a moment.
"Mercy is the might of the righteous?" she asked. "Really?"
"I like mine better, it alliterates."
"I'm surprised you know what the word means," Padma muttered.
"Granger has a word-a-day calendar."
"Really? That's so…mundane."
"She also has spell-a-day, charm-a-day, transfiguration-a-day, plant-a-day, and potion-a-day calendars."
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By staying to the spell-damaged paths they avoided most of the dead-ends and many other trick-walls. A few paths that went nowhere were damaged, and those often led them momentarily astray, but the various traps that they held all seemed to have been disarmed, deactivated, or (most commonly) destroyed.
Still, these were the simplest of the challenges and took of a great deal of time. The most basic variant of the trick intersection, like the one they had encountered first, merely flipped their direction of travel. Others would orient them to the left or right, or not do anything at all which would still take a few seconds to work out. After they came back from their third wrong-turn the rearrangement grew more confused. They actually started up the corridor they had originally come from (it was one spot to the left of where it should have been even accounting for the rearranging) before realizing their mistake and going back to the cross-corridor where they had to split up to tell the one they needed from the one they had already explores.
One low, broad hall that was filled with columns seemed to having nothing but these rotating plates—though every time the magic was so subtle that they could never tell if the floor was moving under them, or the rest of the room or halls were moving around them—for a floor. A second, much larger one with four doors later on required them to split up, one remaining at the door they had entered from, in order to navigate their way across.
And while the rotating floors where the biggest obstacles
A pit with oozing green stuff that none of them wanted to touch had been filled in with debris from the walls, though it raised the level of the green stuff very nearly to the edge of the pit. Later on a giant ceiling slab lay broken and shattered on the floor, likely some kind of falling-trap. They did manage to accidentally activate another trap, this one in the form of walls that abruptly tried to crush them. But someone else had already activated and dealt with the trap previously. All of the spikes at their level and a bit higher had all been blasted away or bent in on themselves, and the walls had stopped when the spikes that were still intact higher up on the walls, touched the opposite wall. The major traps, though, the gouts of magic that would freeze you solid or burn the person to you to ash, the clouds of poisonous gas and swarms of flesh-eating beetles, the magical runes that would explode when you passed them by, or entomb you in the walls, or released terrifying magic-powered constructs, had all been blasted away or neutralized.
In one of the final stretches they entered a broad gallery. Unlike other such galleries they had passed through, this one had walls that were unmarred by spell-damage. Harry could even see where trap- and guard-runes had been before their magic had been played out The reason for the lack of spell-damage and the played-out runes, lay on the floor before them. In depths reaching up past Harry's knees were the gory remains of a zoo of conjured and transfigured animals that had been sent ahead to trigger the traps, which had slaughtered them with all the apparent regard Snape would have for a cute furry woodland creature he was rendering into ingredients.
"Dear and Merciful Morgana," Parvati whispered. She had meant it for herself, but in the silent hall Harry and Padma heard it equally well.
A path had been blasted through the offal. The spell had ripped off a layer of stone, and must have cracked some kind of underlying support because the gallery formed two slight inclines with the path at the center. Stacks of broken bodies formed obscene valley walls, and a river of blood flowed down the center of it.
"Who would do such a thing?" Harry asked after a moment.
"You-Know-Who," Parvati said harshly.
"Or someone who didn't care," Padma said. "I mean, it wasn't like they were real after all."
Harry looked at her. "You don't call this real?" he asked, gesturing towards the gallery.
"They had to be transfigured," Padma said. "There's no way that many real animals could have been gotten down here."
She didn't look nearly as confident as she sounded, and Harry suspected that she didn't really believe what she said either. He turned back and stepped out into the gallery.
It was possible by staying close to the sides and not walking in the middle of the path that they were able to walk without splashing. The blood was still fresh and there was so much of it that it hadn't had time to congeal yet. But even though they didn't have to walk down the center of the path it was impossible to miss the blood underfoot. Higher on the sides of the cracked floor the pools were thinner and had taken on a tacky consistency and made a disturbing squelching sound as they walked. Here and there ragged limbs or bits of inners had fallen from the heaps. They tried to avoid stepping on these, the former likely to throw them off-balance and the latter nauseatingly squishy and inclined to spurt fluids that hadn't leaked out.
At the end of the gallery was a short hall that ended in a stone wall. Chunks of stone and debris gave grim testimony to how Snape and presumably Tonks and Cedric had gotten past, but none of the first years knew any kind of blasting spell.
Padma tapped the wall with her wand and uttered the basic unlocking spell.
To Harry's surprise, silvery-white letters in a familiar looping script began to write themselves across the wall.
"Whosoever places his hand uponeth this wall, if he be of worthy mind, then speak friend, and enter," Padma said.
"I've got this one," Harry said, pressing his hand into Dumbledore's glowing writing. Then, at a sudden loss for anything to say, said: "My name is Harry Potter."
There was a grinding sound, and before he could pull away a second stone door slammed shut. They were sliding doors, closing from the side to seal over the blocking wall. Harry would have had his hand crushed if they had not had an indentation carved out that fitted perfectly around his wrist, but nevertheless his hand was hopelessly trapped.
"'My name is Harry Potter,'" Padma mimicked. "Was that the best you could come up with?"
"You think there's a password?" Harry asked.
A giant stone block fell from the ceiling, blocking the path behind them. It began to grind forward.
"Of course there's a password," Padma said, then stuck her hand over his mouth before he could reply. Nothing seemed to happen so she added: "Don't talk, you probably only get three chances to get it right and I don't want to end up as paste because you decided to open your mouth."
Harry nodded to show he understood. Then nodded at the wall with his trapped hand.
"Of course we don't know what the password is," Parvati said crossly. "And you've already used up two of our guesses."
"Actually, 'Vati, we do know the password," Padma said so softly that Harry was only just able to hear her over the grinding of the stone block that was getting uncomfortably close.
"We do?" her sister asked.
Padma nodded. "It's a word-game. Just like in Lord of the Rings."
Parvati stared at her for a moment. "You're risking our lives on a hunch that the Headmaster has the same taste in mundane literature that you do?"
"Um…yes."
Harry looked back and forth between the two for a moment. Then he lowered the torch to one of the side walls, and awkwardly because of how large it was, used it to write 'mel' and 'fri' in soot.
"Mel?" Padma asked. "Oh, you mean do I think the password is 'mellon' like it is in the books, or simply 'friend'?"
Harry nodded.
"Um…"
"For Merlin's sake, it could be in Welsh for all you know," Parvati snapped.
Harry looked at the twins, then at the advancing block of stone. He turned back to the wall.
"Friend," he said as confidently as he could, which wasn't very.
The block of stone stopped moving.
The sliding stone doors retreated.
The stone wall stood before them for a moment, and then slowly faded away leaving the path open.
A dogleg kept them from seeing into the next chamber, but it was only a short one and they quickly found themselves in a large room that was reasonably well-lit and had a black-and-white tile floor.
Or at least he had had a black/white tiled floor at one point.
The damage to the room was at least as bad as the rest they had seen combined. There were craters that were longer than Hagrid and so deep Harry could not have seen out of them if he'd been standing in them. A great stone slab had splintered away from the ceiling and now covered the middle of the room. Off to the left, one of the large square tiles had been transfigured into a pit filled with sharp stakes. A man wearing black mail had fallen in and was now quite clearly dead. More bodies, all wearing either black or white armor, littered the ground. A great horse had been cut literally in half, and off to the left was a large blood smear that could only have come from another.
"Merlin," Parvati whispered. "What happened here?"
"I think it's a giant chessboard," Harry said slowly. The tiles were awfully large, and he couldn't recall seeing white or black suits of armor in the school.
"I think you may be right," Padma said after a moment. "We were probably meant to play across it. McGonagall, you think?"
"Probably," Harry said, picking his way across the ruined battlefield. The blood was starting to slowly pool, and as he watched, one hand dragged a disembodied arm across towards a pawn. The pieces were starting to put themselves back together. "We should hurry."
He needn't have spoken. Padma had seen it too and informed her sister with a shout.
Unlike the other challenges, a broad corridor led from the Chess Room. In the middle of the corridor was a troll that was even larger than the one Harry remembered facing on Halloween. It was also quite obviously dead. Harry wasn't certain if there was anything in the magical world that could survive its head being chopped off, but at least seemed trolls incapable of such a feat.
Sitting against the wall not far from the dead troll was Cedric Diggory.
"Cedric!" Harry shouted, breaking into a run with the twins right behind him.
"Harry," Cedric said, his face twisted in pain.
"What happened?" Harry asked.
"Bone-breaking hex, I think," Cedric gasped. "He's wearing some kind of cloak that deflects jelly-legs and petrificus and other low-level curses. He just threw spells back at us to slow us, but he turned and fought here. His spell caught me in the knee."
"Padma, you and Parvati help Cedric," Harry said, pulling out his cloak. "If he makes it past us, use this."
"You want us to hide?" Parvati asked in disgust.
"Do you have a better idea?" Harry asked. "Remember this is Snape we're talking about. Fully-qualified wizard, knows a lot about the Dark Arts… Do you think you can stop him?"
"Harry's right," Cedric said through clenched teeth. "We won't be able to get out of here fast, not with my leg."
"All right," Parvati said, crossing her arms. "What about you? Do you think you can stop him?"
"I have this," Harry said, indicating the Phoenix Amulet. "It's worked before, during that blizzard and again in the Forbidden Forest."
"And you have no idea how or why it did so, or even if it'll work again," Parvati said. "No offense, Harry, but we're First years. What are you going to do, use tickle charms on him?"
There wasn't really anything he could say to that, Harry reflected, but it didn't change things. He had to keep going. It wasn't about loyalty to a friend who was in danger; Tonks was far more capable of taking care of herself than anything he could add would be worth. It wasn't about keeping the Stone away from Snape or Voldemort. It wasn't about confronting the man, or at least his servant, who had killed his family when he was a baby and had tried to kill him and his friends this year on several different occasions. It wasn't even about the thrill of going somewhere few others were and doing something that most other people wouldn't—that feeling had died with Fluffy. It was all of these things and none of them and he didn't think he could explain it, but the set look on Parvati's face meant that he had to at least try.
"Allie tried to explain it to me once," he said. "There are…patterns, in magic. The way things flow and how they come together—I think she was hinting at that in the potions review. The way Voldemort and I have kept bumping into each other this year, when he attacked us in that blizzard, Cedric, and then again in the Forest."
"You think you're fated to kill him or something?" Parvati asked blankly. "Harry, do you have any idea how insane that is? I mean, ten, twenty years from now I might believe that…maybe. But even heroes in the old sagas were allowed to grow up before trying to defeat their arch-nemesis."
"I don't have to defeat him," Harry whispered.
Parvati said something, but he didn't hear her.
For a moment he had seen things with a perfect clarity. It was as though he'd been working on a giant jigsaw puzzle without ever seeing what the finished picture would look like, and having put together large portions of the puzzle he had been allowed an ever-so-brief glimpse of how they went together.
Parvati snapped her fingers in front of his nose. "Harry?"
"Sorry," he said reflexively.
"You said that you didn't have to defeat him," Cedric said.
"I don't," Harry said. "Look, whatever it was that he's become the Amulet works against. I don't know if any fully-qualified wizard or witch could stop him as he is, but we do know that he can't hurt me as long as I have it."
"We think," Padma said.
"That means," Harry continued as though he hadn't heard her, "I only have to worry about Snape. By now Justin and Ernie have woken the Professors and they're on their way, but it'll take them time to get here, even with most of the puzzles disabled and knowing the way."
"So why don't we wait?" Parvati asked.
"Because Snape can still give the Stone to You-Know-Who," Padma said slowly as understanding reached her eyes. "If he does that, then he comes back. That's what you're thinking, isn't it, Harry?"
Harry nodded. "I can stop that from happening."
"How?" Parvati demanded. "I mean, Snape is—"
"Because Snape is trying to get the Stone," Harry said. "I just have to make sure that he doesn't, or that it isn't in a condition where it's useful to him. Remember what Allie's said about Alchemy? So above as is below, and before is behind. We both need to be there. I'm not sure why it's important, just that it is."
"She also said that only the worthy find the Stone," Parvati said.
Harry didn't reply.
"I'm coming with you," Padma announced.
"No you aren't," Harry and Parvati said at the same time.
"Yes I am," she insisted. "Unless you think Snape put the troll here or did that maze, his puzzle is still ahead. I'm better than you at potions, Harry, and you know it. Do you want to take the chance that you can't get by whatever he put in to stop others?"
Harry hesitated, then nodded. "Alright."
Padma turned. "Par—"
"Go!" Parvati snapped. "Help Harry and then get out. We'll be holed up in the second branch to the right."
"Second right," Padma repeated.
Harry quickly helped Parvati get Cedric up and half-resting on her/half-leaning on the torch which the older boy had extinguished with a word and then transfigured into a long walking stick. He turned and hurried down the passage with Padma behind him.
At the end of the corridor was a plain oak door. They opened it and entered a small chamber. There was a bench on the left wall with a number of crystal bottles, and a second door in the far wall. As soon as Harry and Padma were inside the chamber purple-colored flames spread across the door behind them. They quickly stepped away, but no sooner had they done so than black flames spread across the door before them.
"We're trapped," Harry said. "Any ideas?"
Padma gestured to the bench. "This must be Snape's challenge," she said, picking up a piece of parchment. Seven bottles...oh, I see, a logic puzzle." She plucked up the smallest bottle. "This one will get you through the black flames."
"Are you sure?" Harry asked.
"It's the smallest bottle," she said. "He wouldn't have supplied enough for two people to get through. It would have been pointless if there was just one person and he wouldn't want a whole army able to go through. He could always brew more if they needed multiple people to move the Stone. And I bet they all replenish as soon as the chamber is empty of living people...one way or the other. Go, Harry, it'll only take me a moment to work out which one will let me out."
"What if I need to get out?" Harry asked.
Padma blinked, then consulted the paper. "Dwarf and giant are safe. Second ones in are poison. That one—" she pointed at a giant flask "—must be wine…the potion on the right." She took up this bottle, unstoppered it, and drank.
Then shivered.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked. If she'd chosen wrong and accidentally poisoned herself there was very little he could do.
"Yes," she gasped. "It's like ice. Ooooh that's cold." She shivered again.
"Look," Harry said. "Parvati was right. We need Dumbledore. If it's Voldemort I have the Phoenix Amulet and it's protected me before. But if it's Snape in there I can delay him a little and maybe destroy the Stone, but I don't know enough to really stop him. Justin and Ernie should have woken the teachers by now and sent a letter off to Dumbledore if Hermione left any owls, but if they haven't—"
Padma nodded. "I'll—Harry, be careful." She wrapped him in a tight hug that took him so by surprise that he nearly fell. Before he could do anything other than feel very embarrassed, she let go, turned, and disappeared through the purple flames.
Harry grabbed the smallest bottle and pulled out the glass stopper. The fluid inside was clear and not the least bit runny or viscous. Unlike the other potions he had seen so far, this one could have been mistaken for water. He swallowed it down in one go. It had no taste. It didn't even taste like water. Some trick of the substance let him feel him swallowing something cool and wet, but it was utterly tasteless.
Almost immediately it felt as though someone had poured little chips of ice into his veins. He shivered despite himself, and had to clench his jaw lest his teeth begin to chatter. The effect began to wear off almost immediately. With no way to replenish the potion he didn't even have a moment to hesitate to gather his strength before stepping through the roaring black flames.
888
Padma quoted Sir Colin Campbell