Marik
"Bloody hell this is chaos!" Harry shouted as they entered the third room of the second task. Marik completely agreed with Harry. This room, while somewhat still resembling a dungeon classroom looked nothing like the other two rooms they had been in so far. There was still one wall that had a door at its center, but the other walls were not barren and plain like the other two rooms' walls had been.
The room was filled with an assortment of overgrown plants of all varieties and colors. The large number of plants had grown wildly throughout the room and were covering all of the walls and had even grown to cover the majority of the door on the far side of the room. Outside of the large number of wild and crazy looking plants were even more wild and crazy looking creatures ofa variety of different shapes and sizes running around the room. Just when Marik had started to think during the last clue that there was no way his head could hurt any more of course he was proven wrong.
"What the hell is this? I don't even know where to start!" he groaned, rubbing his temples in pain.
"A room with nothing but flowers inside," Harry mumbled out the part of the children's story.
"Well there are certainly flowers in here, but nothing in the clue or story mentions all of these creatures or the giant statue," Hermione added as they all three continued to stare around in awe at the chaos in the room. Marik had been so concerned with the plants and creatures that he had never even noticed the large statue that Hermione mentioned at the room's center.
The statue appeared to be of a witch, although if it was a famous one or an actual real life person he was unsure. The statue stood tall and at its peak almost reached the height of the room. The witch's hair was flowing behind it, as if it was being blown in the wind, and one of the witch's hand was held out as if it was casting a spell or something of the sort.
"So where should we start?" he asked the two of them, hoping they had some sort of an idea.
"Marik you look at the plants and try and decipher what some of them are. Start with the ones on the door. Hermione you look around and try and find some things with letters on them, if the past two rooms have taught us anything it is that there will be letters somewhere in this room and they will be important. I will start trying to identify some of these creatures," Harry ordered and at once they all set out trying to make some sense of the chaos.
Marik made his way over to the door, trying to carefully avoid each of the plants and creatures in his path along the way, not sure if any of them were dangerous or not. When he arrived at the vine-covered door he could make out that there seemed to be three distinct vines covering the door. All of the vines had a plethora flowers sprouting along their path but were so intertwined among one other it was hard to tell one from the other.
From the appearance of the flowers, none of the plants looked to be anything commonly found or even anything that he had seen before. One was a dark black flower with thorns poking out all sides of it. Another flower was a deep shade of purple and at the its center appeared to have what looked teeth. The next flower had four long yellow petals that had a combination of the other two flowers properties, some thorns on its edges like the first and a few jagged teeth-like things at its center just like the second.
Neville and Sprout would be in heaven here. Was the first thing that came to mind at the sight before him.
After a few more minutes of examining the flowers he made his way back to his friends to see if they had discovered anything important, or had better luck than him.
"Able to tell what the plants and vines were?" Harry asked him as he arrived.
"No clue man. I've never seen any of them before. Hermione you should go check them out too," he replied.
"Before you do that Hermione tell us what you saw around the room and on the statue, anything stand out?" Harry turned to ask Hermione.
"Around the room not so much, on the statue yeah. I found four more letters on the statue's base. A, j, s, and e. They were written at the base of the statute and in that order," Hermione replied.
"Okay, so we can assume based off the other two puzzles that whatever we do will start with those letters, so keep that in mind. From looking at the creatures I was able to determine that there are three different types here. They are jobberknolls, fwoopers, and bowtruckles. The jobberknolls are the blue speckled smaller birds, the fwoopers are the greenish two-legged larger birds that are walking around, and the bowtruckles are the small stick looking bug-things that are climbing all over the walls," Harry explained as he pointed around the room to show them the creatures.
"Well the names of the creatures, besides the jobberknolls, don't match the letters on the statue. So it either has to be the flowers or something else," he replied thinking over what they knew so far.
"I don't recognize these flowers either," Hermione shouted from the door. "They look like hybrids of different flowers or something," Hermione added as she made her way back over.
"Is there anything you guys can think of from the other rooms that might help us here?" Harry asked, scratching his chin.
"I can't. I'm stumped," he admitted, these tasks were taking their toll mentally on him.
"Well in both the other rooms the goal was to open the door. In the first room there was the magic blocking us from opening the door and in the second room there was the lack of magic keeping us from opening the door until we powered the monolith. So I guess it would be obvious to think that we need to unblock the door in this room, meaning get rid of the plants on the door," Hermione said.
"What do the creatures have to do with the plants though? Harry do these thing eat the plants or something?" he asked, hopeful.
"They are all herbivores yeah, but I don't think it would be that simple. They aren't eating the plants right now either, they actually seem to be ignoring them," Harry replied, looking around at the creatures on the floor again.
"Well I got nothing then. The clue and the story doesn't really say much about anything in here," Marik added, throwing his hands up in defeat.
"The statue has to be a part of this too puzzle too. There is no way it being here is just a coincidence. So far we have used whatever the letters have been written on in every puzzle so far, so we are going to have to use the statue for something in this," Hermione said to the both of them.
"Yeah, I agree. So maybe we need to find a way to use the statue and the animals to get rid of the plants on the door," Harry replied, thinking out loud.
"What do we know gets rid of plants though? I mean I'm assuming we can't just cut through them," Hermione asked.
"Confringo!" he shouted the powerful flame spell at the door. Nothing happened though and it seemed as if his spell was just absorbed. "Seems not."
"Can you guys think of anything we learned in herbology that would kill plants like these?" Harry asked them both.
"Well the only thing I can think of that seems even close to this is devil's snare and star grass," Hermione replied.
"How do you get rid of those?" Harry asked her.
"Well devil's snare hates light and star grass burns when a sunstone is placed near it," Hermione answered Harry, who was now scratching his chin as he thought things over.
"Nightshade is the same now that I think about it. If you put a ruby next to a patch of it the plant dies," Marik added.
"So we need to find something similar to all of that then. I would assume that the items needed to get rid of the plants start with the letters we were given," Harry replied.
"So we need to think of things that start with the letters that can kill these plants. . ." Harry began, trailing off as he started to think of something. The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, the only thing making sound in the room was the creatures as they pranced around.
"This is hopeless," he said, admitting defeat.
"I agree, there are too many possibilities just shooting in the dark like this." Harry added.
"There has to be something else in the room that will help us narrow things down," Hermione said, looking around the room for something to help. "Let's focus more on the statue," Hermione announced and made her way over to the statue at the room's center. He and Harry followed her over there.
"Okay, so do either of you see anything on the statue besides the letters that stands out?" Hermione asked them.
"Hmm. . . Well it's facing the door," Harry said, thinking out loud.
"And it has its hand out like it is casting a spell or something," Marik added, continuing the thought.
"Anything else?" Hermione asked, walking around the statue. "Wait, look at this," Hermione said pointing at the statue's outstretched hand.
"What?" Harry asked.
"There is a hole in the hand, like someone plucked out whatever she was holding," Hermione replied, examining the statue's hand more closely.
"Well, like I said it does look like she is casting a spell, so maybe she used to be holding a wand or a staff or something."
"Maybe not a wand, but a staff would make sense. S is one of our letters too. Maybe she was keeping the plants off of the door, and we have to give her back the ability to do that," Hermione added, sounding like she was still deep in thought.
"I'm not following," Marik replied, feeling lost.
"Me either," Harry added, looking much the same.
"Remember in our first year Neville made that staff that helped with the growth of plants for his end of year project. Well herbalist staffs are a common tool used by herbalists in their gardens. The staffs allow for a lot more enchantments to be placed into them than wands do, so herbalists use them to help keep their gardens in the best shape. They also often enchant and equip their staffs to repel parasites, disease, and bad plants," Hermione started to explain.
"So maybe we have to build her staff back, and enchant it with the right things to kill the plants?" Harry asked, trying to finish Hermione's trail of thought.
"That's what I was thinking yeah," Hermione replied, looking at them to see what they thought of her explanation.
"Well I agree it makes sense, but we still don't know what enchantments to do," Marik said, not trying be a negative nancy on purpose.
"Let's start with making a staff and go from there. Harry can you get on that?" Hermione asked, but Harry was deep in thought.
"Wait a second. . . Bowtruckles are commonly used in staff making. I remember a lesson with Hagrid last year where he mentioned that, and that's what Neville used as the base for his staff too," Harry started to say.
"So it isn't a coincidence that they are randomly in the room then," Hermione finished his thought.
"No, and I guarantee the other two creatures aren't in here by coincidence either. I guarantee that both of them are used in making a herbalist's staff somehow, and that whatever they are used for will fit two more of our letters," Harry continued.
"What else is commonly used in herbalist's staffs?" Marik asked.
"I can't really remember anything to be honest," Hermione replied, looking disappointed that she didn't know or remember something they had learned in class.
"Me either. What did Neville use in his staff? We have seen him present his end of year project on it for years now. Maybe that will help spark our memories," Harry asked them.
"If I remember I think he infused rubies, amethyst, jade or something like that, and an enchanted onyx core, as well as all sort of enchantments," Marik answered. He wasn't surprised he remembered that at all. He had worked his ass off last year in herbology to improve his grade and had taken close notes on Neville and his work in an attempt to help improve his work, not that he would ever admit that to Neville.
"That's it!" Hermione shouted. "Stones are commonly used items to store magical energy in herbalist's staffs! I bet we have to transfigure or use the creatures in the room to create the proper stones."
"Well the bowtruckles I know for a fact are commonly transfigured into staffs. So if we are going off of letters that gives us our s," Harry replied.
"Can either of the creatures be used to create an amethyst or jade? That would give us our j and a. We would still need an e though," he asked the two of them, thinking of items Neville used that matched the letters they had been given.
"I'm not sure, but I could try. You both try to figure out what the e could be while I try to transfigure these things," Harry said, turning from them to a group of creatures in the other side of the room.
"So we are clearly missing something here," he said to Hermione as Harry left.
"Why do you say that?"
"There are three vines covering the door and three types of creatures around the room, but four letters. Even if Harry can transfigure a staff, amethyst, and jade from the creatures that is still leaving a letter. And even if the jade and amethyst work there will still be one vine left covering the door."
"Yeah. . . what else do we know about Neville's staff?" Hermione asked.
"I mean everything I said before is all I really know. He used a bunch of different gemstones and a bunch of different enchantments. That's all I got," he said, his tone admitting defeat. This room was a little too much for him.
"Enchantments, that's it!" Hermione said, her face looking like it had come across their answer.
"Huh?"
"Enchantments starts with e. Plants are receptive to magic of all kinds. So maybe two of the plants will react to the jade and amethyst in the staff and maybe the remaining plant is reactive to enchantment magic," Hermione explained.
"Is that a real possibility? I've never heard of a plant not liking enchantment magic before," Harry chimed in. He was now carrying a four foot staff in his hands along with two gems as he made his way over.
"Might as well try it. I have no idea to be honest, but it's the best I got right now," Hermione admitted.
"Okay, so I'm going to fuse the amethyst and jade into the staff then place it back into the statue. If that works I'll just add a simple enchantment to it and we will see what happens. Marik hold the staff for me," Harry said, handing Marik the staff he had just transfigured. Harry placed both of the gems onto the top of the staff and began sending magic out from his wand into them. Slowly Harry's magic weaved and welded the two gemstones into place atop the staff.
Harry took the staff back from Marik and cast a simple enchantment onto it. From there Harry levitated the staff into the clutch of the open hand of the statue and they all waited with baited breath.
"Holy shit!" He shouted out as the staff suddenly became animated. Like something out of a movie the statue twirled the staff in its hand and sent a beam of rainbow colored lights towards the door. A loud screech filled the room as the creatures of the room began to run around in a panic and the plants covering the walls burst into flames. When the flames died down and the light from the staff vanished the silence in the room returned. Thankfully, the door to the next room was now open too.
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