Chapter 14: Forbidden Corridor
The horrendous attack of the werewolves was actively discussed all over Hogwarts, especially among teachers. To everyone's delight, Hermione knew to tell that McGonagall hadn't canceled the visit to Hogsmeade, which was scheduled after two weeks, but it was possible that the students will be guarded by a couple of Aurors, and also Dawlish will help with the security during their visiting of the village. Besides, as there was approaching the weekend, the phrase "Quidditch" was increasingly being heard – and it was no surprise – everyone was anticipating the opening game of the Hogwarts Quidditch season: Hufflepuff versus Slytherin. To Ginny's delight their game was scheduled a whole month later, so there was still plenty of time for several muddy but exciting practices.
However, Harry felt like having a little dilemma this weekend. On the one hand, he wanted to go with the rest of the Hogwarts students on Saturday and cheer or feel upset along with them about the outcome of the game, but on the other hand it was more important and proper to spend a whole day searching throughout the castle. Unfortunately, the he had lost his enthusiasm to just search over some random places because it he didn't find it likely anymore that the Diadem could be found this way. They had examined the Trophy Room countless times; they had knocked over the walls in the hallways and a lot of classrooms that were more or less on its way to the Headmaster's Office. Harry had inspected the bathroom together with Ginny. And they had also gone down to the kitchen. Harry had asked Kreacher cautiously whether he hadn't seen anything unusual in the kitchen, but he had answered that Hagrid was only supplying them with unusually extra-large carrots.
"Well, what else do you suggest we should search over tomorrow?" Harry asked grumpily. "We are always sitting in the library all day long."
"Oh, but we haven't looked through the very library," Ron said hopefully.
"There are plenty of places we haven't checked yet. Maybe we should go to the Astronomy Tower?" Hermione said, trying to sound cheerful.
"And why should that Diadem be there?" Harry said annoyingly. "It's not on the way to the Headmaster's Office at all."
"But who says the Diadem had to be on the way to the Headmaster's Office?" Hermione replied. "Who knows where exactly did he put it."
"In addition, we have left out the Dungeons. Maybe that's where Voldemort wanted to hide the Diadem?" Ginny said.
"So, I think we should once again go through all the information Dumbledore once told us. Voldemort had no friends, but he regarded Hogwarts as his home. He also thought that being the heir of Slytherin makes him extremely special, so he always kept his Horcruxes in places he found very important to him somehow related to his memories," Harry summed up.
"Or maybe he did have some important people, though. Because he actually kept the Hufflepuff's Cup in the Lestrange family vault," Ron said. "Perhaps he had someone important in Hogwarts, too."
"Perhaps it was some girl," Ginny said.
"But about such a girl we know nothing," Harry stated bitterly. "Besides, when we hurried to search for that Diadem in the spring, then we had forgotten that, apart from being evil and completely mad, he was still smart and cunning."
"Well, but maybe his important person was Dumbledore?" Hermione said thoughtfully.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, not really understanding her.
"I mean that Dumbledore was his arch enemy. What if he wanted to turn the Diadem into a true symbol of wisdom? That is, if he would have put it in the very front of Dumbledore's nose without him noticing it, Voldemort would surely have seen it as some kind of victory over Dumbledore," Hermione explained.
"We can't break into McGonagall's Office," Ron objected.
"But McGonagall is likely going to watch the game tomorrow," Ginny said. "She has never missed a single Quidditch game."
"I don't think we should rush with this. If we get caught, how are we going to explain it?" Ron added.
"That's right, besides there're portraits of the headmasters everywhere. What should we tell them?" Harry asked.
"What are you suggesting us to do then, Harry?" Hermione asked him with a little grumpiness in her voice.
"I think we should work on how to cast properly that Locator Spell. Then at least we won't have to wander around all over the castle, but if we could know the direction or approximate location, we would at least have a hope that we could actually be able to find that needle in the haystack," stated Harry.
"But Flitwick already told us, Harry, that Hogwarts is too full with magic, so the Locator Spell won't work here without amplifying the energy of the located item," Hermione objected, telling him for the numerous time why this method had failed. Suddenly Harry noticed that Ron seemed somehow frozen as he stared at a bookshelf or something of the library with a fixed gaze and his mouth slightly open.
"Are you all right, Ron?" Harry asked, frowning.
"No way," Ron whispered, still staring into the distance.
"What's wrong, Ron?" Hermione said, getting worried, and Ginny was looking at her brother confused.
"Hermione, I was thinking of what you just said that You-Know-Who would have wanted to hide it in the very front of Dumbledore's nose, but what if it wasn't the Headmaster's Office at all, because there really are too many eyes, but what if You-Know-Who hid his Diadem when also Dumbledore had something to hide?" Ron slowly explained his thought.
"Ron, what are you talking about? Had Dumbledore ever hidden something at Hogwarts?" Ginny asked incredulously, but Harry had begun to understand the greatness of his friend's idea.
"Voldemort had actually possessed Quirrell! Ron, you don't actually think that he had hidden the Diadem while Dumbledore was hiding Flamel's…" Harry's voice fell silent as he sat stunned from the revelation.
"Well, maybe you could explain it to me, too?" Ginny asked, feeling a little bit annoyed and anxious.
"Ginny, it was a year before you began your studies at Hogwarts when Dumbledore had made here a real obstacle course," Hermione explained.
"In order to hide the Philosopher's Stone," Harry and Ron finished her sentence practically in unison.
As he was lying in his bed before falling asleep and feeling excited over Ron's outstanding idea, Harry imagined a dream of how they were returning to the third-floor corridor, then they were heading down right into the Underground with their brooms flying over feisty vines of the Devil's Snare until they easily flew into the domed room and with no effort caught the silver key which lead further to the room with human-sized chess pieces, and then there was the troll room. Back then, in his first-year, this room had seemed so insignificant and unimportant to them, but it had actually been set up by Quirrell, and hadn't he carried Voldemort everywhere in his skull for a year? So he had a time of whole year to put the Diadem wherever he wished. How they could have missed this – the Diadem could really be located anywhere in the Hogwarts, not just in the potential way from the Entrance Hall to the Headmaster's Office on the sixth floor.
So their action plan for Saturday was ready – while the Hufflepuffs are going to compete with the Slytherins, their four will go down through the trap door to see what they could find in the deep underground of Hogwarts now.
The next day after breakfast, the young people got their plan rolling – Harry, Ron, and Ginny went back upstairs to the Common Room where, after waiting for about an hour while the rest of the students were taking their seats at spectator seating, they met Hermione who was back from her every Saturday patrolling duty. Before, when Ron had asked her a question out of his surprise why she still had to go to her duty today, Hermione had then answered that because of something as minor as Quidditch she wasn't going to risk the safety of the youngest students. "And look," she said as soon as she had returned, entering the Common Room, "near the kitchen door Malfoy was attacked by a Boggart in a form of Voldemort. Later it definitely would have scared the Hufflepuffs." Then Harry, Ron, and Ginny each took their broomsticks, and they all, along with Hermione, stepped four floors lower, being cautious.
Hermione walked to the door and whispered, "Alohomora!" The door opened with a clicking sound and the girl grinned for a brief moment. They hurriedly slipped through the door – the least they needed to be caught by either Filch or Mrs. Norris, who were unlikely gone to enjoy the excitement of the Quidditch, but instead were roaming around the castle as they relentlessly watched for any sources of disorder.
Ron sighed softly next to Harry of relief, but Ginny looked around carefully.
"What is it, Ron?" Harry asked.
"At least there's not that Cerberus anymore. Hagrid's pet wasn't very pleased to see us here the last time," his friend explained. Harry agreed with him with a chuckle.
"I wonder where is it now?" Hermione thought out loud as she went closer to the trap door.
"I couldn't care less about that, only if it's not released into the Forbidden Forest," Ron joked.
"Rather, I suppose Dumbledore settled the matter with it right after the Stone was destroyed," Harry suggested.
"You must be right. I wonder, what's still there after seven years?" Hermione said, staring down at the trap door as she touched it with the toecap of her shoe. "The trap door looks heavily rusted. But I suppose we'll be able to move it."
Harry and Ron both crouched down to the trap door on each side of the door. It felt weird – now it looked so small and tiny. Back then, it had seemed to be about the length of half a room.
"Then let's open it?" Harry asked, looking at his friends.
"What should be there under that door now?" Ginny asked suddenly.
"The Devil's Snare, put there by Sprout," Ron replied.
"And there's a damp and dark underground underneath?" Ginny asked again.
"That's right," Harry confirmed. Ginny nodded and grabbed tighter her wand in her pocket, and Ron and Harry threw open the rusty door. Instantly, several long vines shot out of it, and Ginny hurriedly pulled out her wand and exclaimed, "Incendio!" Out of her wand, there shot a bright blue flame and a moment later Hermione joined her, and soon the girls managed to drive away the vines of the Devil's Snare who had crept out of the underground. They cowered back into the darkness behind the trap door.
"Just look at them, those freaks really like the dark and the damp," Ron confirmed that the knowledge discussed before was true. "But how they got so high up, there's an enormous amount of distance."
"Seven years was a very long time – there could have grown a lot of things over such a long time," Hermione concluded.
"You want to say that this monstrosity has overgrown all over of all possible space there?" Ron asked shocked.
"Perhaps we should burn out that room a little bit, because if that Snare could creep out, then the brooms might not do much good for us," Hermione said wisely.
Harry leaned carefully over the edge of the trap door and shone a light into it. Some other vines of the Snare were heading upwards already, but, now due to the dim light, they stopped frozen for a second. Deep down it was hard to see clearly, but his senses were telling him that everything there was crawling with the vines of the unfriendly plant. Harry thrust his wand forward and cast the same blue fire on the vines attacking him, and they crouched and retreated as they got burnt. But instead of them there were a lot of other vines shooting upwards in the direction of a fresh air. Harry sneered in his thoughts as soon as he remembered that in their first-year he and Ron had been glad at first that this plant was there. Then, apparently it was just recently planted.
"Harry, did you see anything?" Ginny asked anxiously as she approached him and stopped behind his back.
Harry just sneered. "I see only vines of the Devil's Snare. What are we going to do?"
"We have to burn out that weed, and then let's fly down with our brooms," Ron said simply.
"Look, I'm afraid we'll be dealing with the burning of those vines even until Christmas. There's a whole overgrown jungle with those vines under there," Harry objected.
"But let's make that steady fire so it can sweep out all the vines while burning for some time," Ron suggested.
"I have a better idea," Hermione said. "When Slughorn gave us homework at the beginning of this term to search for information how to make the Fire Essence, I found an interesting spell that used to be called the Fireball."
"And what does it do?" Ron asked curiously.
"Just watch it," Hermione said with a grin and began to make circular motions with her wand, quietly reciting the spell. Initially, a tiny flame appeared within the circle drawn with the tip of her wand and it grew bigger and bigger, until it became like a large ball of fire in the size of a huge Bludger, an electric blue spark shooting through it. Then she pushed her wand forward, and the ball fell into the deep void. After counting in her mind a few seconds, Hermione exclaimed, "Magnum explosium!" A boom roared below them, and a powerful wave of heat shot out of the trap door, almost burning Harry's eyebrows.
"The Fireball?" Ron asked anxiously. "Weren't they used as a war weapon a few hundred years ago, but nowadays they are forbidden or something?"
"Yeah, that's true, but here was a closed room where no one was in danger," Hermione confirmed with a smile. "I also read a little bit further in our Charms textbook about the amplifying of the spells. Fire is the only one of the four elements that has a tendency to self-intensify. That is, if such a bonehead like Crabbe was able to destroy the whole Room of Requirement, then how difficult could it be making a fire explosion?" The last remark she added in a rather grim voice, but Ron was staring at her like she was some kind of a goddess.
Harry turned his gaze away from his friend and cleared his throat. "Oh, yes, Hermione, it was really impressive, but I suppose we should take a look now at what happened to those vines." Then he shone the light again into the darkness behind the trap door and carefully put his head through the door to make it easier to see. For now, there was only darkness, but it seemed that there was something like moving or quivering. Harry copied Hermione and cast his own ball of fire, though in a much smaller size and without additional amplification, and then he lowered it down to illuminate the dark chamber.
"Hermione, you're definitely blasting," Harry said with a chuckle as soon as he saw the smoldering walls and the charred pieces of the Devil's Snare after the explosion of the Fireball, and then there were just several other scared living vines trying to avoid the ball of the light.
"Now, can we go down there?" Ginny asked, still holding her wand in her hand. Harry said yes, and the friends sat on their broomsticks as they took them, Hermione taking her seat behind Ron, and they flew down into the darkness where the light Harry had cast was already gone. As they lit the tiny lights on the tips of their wands, the others saw the devastation of Hermione's explosion, too, and Ron agreed with Harry, "Hermione, really, you're definitely blasting."
Shooting past the last surviving sprouts, they flew farther until they entered the enchanted room with winged keys. Fortunately, the Devil's Snare hasn't grown any further – as Hermione stated just a moment ago – there was shining some light out of the keys.
Harry needed just a second when he saw the key and already started to chase after it, but Ginny pulled out her wand and exclaimed, "Accio Key!" The key seemed to jerk and at first it slowly began moving closer to Ginny, but then it fluttered its wings and shot upwards with a swift motion. Meanwhile, Harry had already managed to get close to the silver key and caught it effortlessly.
"Hmm, of course, Flitwick had taken care that it can't be summoned with the Summoning Charm, but what if we simply freeze it, then we wouldn't have to catch it at all," Harry thought out loud as he got to the ground, holding the key in his hand.
"You know, I later kept wondering how Quirrell could have been able to catch that key so quickly," Ron agreed as he came to stop by the door that led forward.
"What's going to be next?" Ginny asked.
"If I recall it correctly, there have to be the giant chess pieces made by McGonagall," Hermione said as she sat on the back of Ron's broomstick. Harry and Ginny swooped on their brooms as soon as the door opened. Shooting forward after a second, they noticed the huge oversized chess pieces standing in the starting position of a chess game. However, as they approached them and stopped a little distance before the chessboard, they actually didn't look so huge for them anymore – only the queen and the king were as tall as them, but the pawns reached only to their belly buttons.
"Is it just me or have those pieces shrunk a great deal after all those years?" Ron asked.
"No, you've just grown extremely tall, Ron," Ginny teased her brother with a grin.
"We had to get to that door on the other side," Hermione reminded them.
Ron opened his mouth as he wanted to say something, but Ginny was faster. "Well, then let's go," she said and as she took off from the ground, she leaned forward making her broom go faster to the other side.
"No, Ginny, we have to win a chess game in order to get to the other side," Ron objected to his sister's foolish idea that it could be possible to simply fly over the chessboard with a broomstick.
"Be careful, Ginny, Ron might be right," Harry warned with a concern in his voice, because the white faceless pieces, especially the queen in the height of a grown up human, still looked pretty scary. It won't take a lot of effort for her to quickly turn around and punch the girl with her heavy stone fist.
Ginny stepped on the ground near the door on the other side of the chessboard about a few feet away from the white king and queen, but the pieces did not move. She kept her eyes on them as she approached the door carefully, though, when she pressed the door handle, the door didn't open. Then she pulled out her wand and whispered Alohomora, and the door immediately succumbed to her magic. She turned to them and waved with her hand, urging them to follow her. "Come on, let's fly further."
Harry stared at his girlfriend with admiration – seven years ago, they hadn't thought of such an option, and they hadn't thought of it also now.
"Blimey! Why on the earth I sacrificed myself back then and let that queen hit me in the face?" Ron said with a sarcastic laugh. "It turns out we could've just flown over the chessboard with the broomsticks placed in the previous room with the keys."
Finally, they landed in the room they wanted to search. Though, Harry could see easily that the troll was gone and probably for a very long time, but the smell was still lingering there in some corners.
"Seriously – Quirrell really did put a troll here?" Ginny said incredulously as she touched the walls.
"Yeah, and what about it?" Ron asked.
"Well, I don't know, but it's just that I haven't seen anything much that could actually protect that Stone. Okay, the Devil's Snare was a bit nasty, but these things – you see, when I first heard that you had entered here and had dealt with the most challenging tasks ever set by our professors, I had imagined that these tasks were really serious and were very hard to pass by, where you actually had to struggle for your life. But instead there's just – just, for example, a troll. It's not a big deal – you simply cast in its eyes some sleep and easily pass it. That's actually not very hard."
"Well, it sounds like you think this series of obstacles was meant just for the unruly first-years," Harry chuckled.
"Let's get on with the searching," Hermione pointed out the thing they needed to do now.
So they knocked, cast magic, searched, and spoke in the Parseltongue all over the room, but found nothing more than a stuffy pile of troll food hidden in a wall niche. Any other attempts to cast counter-spell of the Disillusion or search for the traces of the transfiguration were also futile.
"Perhaps Quirrell had secretly put that Diadem in another room?" Ron asked.
"I don't think so. Why would he risk putting it in such a place it could be easily found by another professor?" Harry objected. "If the Diadem must be somewhere, then it has to be here."
"Think about it, Harry. Voldemort wouldn't hide his soul next to a stinking troll," Hermione said.
"You're right, it's more likely to be hidden somewhere just right under Dumbledore's nose," Ginny said.
"Then we also have to visit the room with the Mirror," Harry agreed a little bit reluctantly.
As they stopped at the door, it was closed, but it immediately opened after Alohomora.
"You know, I think these doors are actually not locked, but they are just rusted," Ginny said, by the way.
"You may be right – they haven't been moved for so many years," Hermione agreed with her, and they entered the final test room, which had a table with seven bottles and a yellowed paper in the middle of it. As Hermione stepped inside it, she looked back nervously, and Harry remembered why – but, no, the strange fire hadn't showed up neither in front of them, nor behind their backs.
"And what's the thing we should do here now?" Ginny asked sarcastically.
"The last time, our path was blocked by the magic fire set by Snape, and I could get further only by drinking the correct potion," Harry explained, "but now when Snape is gone, the flames are not showing up."
"Oh, then at least this one looks like a proper test," she stated as she took the paper with the riddle. "Truly looks like Snape – if you have Flobberworm mucus in your head instead of a brain, then the best chance for you is to get yourself poisoned."
"Let it be – just let's go on," Ron murmured as he looked at the bottles with dislike. Apparently he didn't see anything exciting here.
The others followed him as they left the sheet in its place, and the young people stepped out in a spectacular stone room with the hollow in the middle, where was placed the most beautiful mirror they had ever seen. Harry noticed that both girls were gazing at it with astonishment with their mouths open – they had never seen it with their own eyes, but had only heard about it from both boys as some kind of miraculous fairy tale.
When they stepped closer to it, Harry saw that it hadn't changed even a tiny bit – it looked exactly the same as it had remained in his memories: it was standing on two luxurious clawed feet, towering its frame of gold and silver until it formed a curved top where it was beautifully extended by tiny side towers as it proudly displayed the engraved words "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi".
"The Mirror of Erised," Harry whispered, pointing out to the inscription. "It doesn't show your reflection, but your most desired wishes."
Hermione seemed to be getting thoughtful, but Harry stood in front of the mirror, being intrigued by what he would see in it. However, now he didn't see himself putting the Stone in his pocket. In fact, he even began to wonder if the Mirror hasn't broken, for he was standing there and Ginny was next to him. Only he couldn't see Ron in the reflection, though he was standing right behind him, and Hermione was also missing. Then Harry saw that he had gently put an arm around Ginny's shoulders and he saw himself and Ginny looking a bit older. Then he noticed a nice little house and a few children running on a front lawn in the background. Undoubtedly, he still longed for the thing he had never had – for having a family, but unlike at his first visit of the Mirror of Erised seven years ago, he no longer desired for the dead, but instead wanted a life loving his dearest people, his new family.
He felt a few tears welling up in his eyes, so he turned away from the Mirror, stepping back and suggested that Ginny should look at it.
"The Mirror of Erised… Erised that shows desires," Hermione muttered softly.
"Eureka! I got it! I got it!"
"What did you get?" Ron asked right away.
"Read the inscription from the right to left! I knew that language sounded too strange," Hermione said with a satisfaction.
Harry also immediately set his eyes on the top of the Mirror and tried to begin reading backwards, "Ishow no tyo urfac ebu tyou-. I don't understand, that doesn't make any sense."
"Just keep reading," Hermione said with a half-smile on her face.
Harry listened to Hermione and took a look at the inscription on the Mirror again. "Urhe arts desire."
"No way, Hermione!" Harry said with a smile, as he gave an apprising look to her. "I show not your face but your heart's desire! It tells you everything you need to know right away!"
"It is, isn't it?" she said with a smile.
Meanwhile, Ginny asked, "Is it just for me, or you are also able to see this?"
"No, Ginny, we all see only our own desires," Harry replied kindly.
"That's good," the girl said with a chuckle, but then Ron did move her aside.
"So what did you see there?" Harry asked his girlfriend, smiling.
"Nothing much, just you," she simply said, but in the dim light, it seemed to him that her cheeks were painted with a blush.
"If it makes you feel better, then I can assure you that I saw you, too," Harry replied; then he looked at Ron and Hermione, who were busy with the Mirror now, so he leaned down and kissed his girlfriend, and she kissed him back instantly. As the butterflies fluttered their wings in his stomach, Harry inhaled a deep breath through his nose while pressing his lips tighter to her mouth for a second, and then he pulled back from her lips. An odd electric feeling was running through him – Ginny's most desired wish was to be with him, and he wanted her in the same way. He wanted not only to find out what comes next after the kisses, but he wanted her always by his side, he wanted her always to look at him like that, he wanted her to always feel like this when being with him, so they could live their happily ever after.
Harry was glad that Ron and Hermione was also here, otherwise, he thought they would just sink into feeling of each other, forgetting completely about the rest of the world, about the Diadem, about Voldemort, about everything else in the Universe.
Suddenly Harry heard Ron's voice and with a great struggle he turned his gaze away from Ginny's astonishing brown eyes. "Hermione, did you see me in the Mirror, too? I was rich and married to you."
"Um, yeah, it was kind of same for me," Hermione replied, but Harry thought that she made sounded somehow reluctant as she turned away from Ron and let her gaze wandering around the room for a second.
"Then let's start looking for the Diadem?" Harry finally said. Hermione was ready to fulfill the task suggested by Harry with haste.
However, more than an hour later, after examining all the walls, the floor, and all corners, they concluded that everything here was made only out of a pure solid rock.
"What else there's left to try?" Ron asked grimly.
"Perhaps, Hermione, you could try the Locator Spell here? Maybe the magic of the castle isn't that strong here?" Ginny suggested.
"I could try," she said as she put her wand on her palm, beginning to cite the Rite Chant. At first, it seemed that the wand was beginning to spin around aimlessly, but to everyone's excitement, after a few swinging motions, it stayed in one particular direction – it pointed somewhere behind Harry. Hermione gasped in excitement and slowly passed by Harry, but as soon as she had passed by her friend, her wand swung the other way round. Apparently, it was pointing at Harry, and Hermione right away understood her mistake.
"Oh, right, I forgot that some of those artifacts you keep in your Mokeskin pouch, Harry, are also relics of Hogwarts. I need to ask just for Ravenclaw," she stated. She tried the spell again, but now the wand was just fluctuating, as if trying to bend upwards now and then. "The signal is too weak, I can't detect anything."
"You tried to locate it as the Ravenclaw's Diadem, but maybe you could try to search for it using its Horcrux nature?" Ginny suggested.
"You won't know if you don't try," Hermione said grimly. Sighing determinedly, she took her wand again and began to recite the Locator Spell, and her wand began swaying again until it leaped out of her hand with her cry as it stopped on the stone floor, rotating vigorously around its axis like a spinning top, declined in a slope. Her wand did indeed point in one particular direction.
Meanwhile, Ron hugged Hermione, who was trembling as he rubbed her upper arms comfortingly. "That Voldemort's energy is scary as hell," she just whispered softly.
"Your wand points somewhere up in the castle," Harry concluded, staring at the still rapidly rotating wand.
"And what exactly does that mean? That that freaking Diadem is not here?" Ron asked angrily. "All this going down here and searching for hours was for nothing?"
"Yes and no, Ron," Hermione said, her voice calmer than his. "It means we have finally learned that the Diadem is indeed located somewhere up in the castle, and that's why our excursion down to here wasn't futile."