With Blaise helping her, Hermione knew she couldn't return to her usual habit of attempting the 3rd floor corridor during Quidditch – it would be immediately apparent she was up to something that wasn't beating Ron in chess. She had to choose an evening when she didn't think the teachers would be paying much attention to her.
Hermione picked her day with care. Attempting the obstacle course had begun feeling like running the gauntlet somewhere along the way.
She chose a Tuesday night. First year Slytherins had Astronomy that night, so if the teachers saw her lurking around, they'd be more apt to excuse her, though she'd still have to avoid Filch. With a bit of help from Neville, she'd procured catnip and dropped it on the first floor, near the stairs to the kitchens. Hopefully, that would keep Mrs. Norris (and Filch) occupied for a while, but she'd need to be careful anyway.
She was lucky – no one was around, and she slipped once again into the forbidden 3rd floor corridor, immediately activating the music wand. Fluffy began to slump, and stark horror hit Hermione's mind.
He was directly over the trap door.
Options flew across her mind. She could try to levitate him off the trap door – she could try again later – she could stop the wand –
She didn't have much time. Holding her wand in her right hand, and taking the music wand in her left, she whispered a word.
Slowly, the music faded into silence, echoing about in the large chamber.
Hermione stood still at the far side of the chamber, watching.
Fluffy sniffed and shook all three heads, as if clearing them, before sniffing deeply, turning to face her, and beginning to growl.
Shivers raced up Hermione's spine, and she crouched low to the ground.
With a bark, Fluffy leapt at her, covering the distance of the room in one bound. Hermione screamed and threw herself to the left, narrowly dodging one of the heads. The end of her robes got caught in his mouth and tore, and Hermione frantically activated the music wand as she ran to the other side of the room.
Almost immediately, there was a soft whine, and Hermione turned, ready, to see the beast slowly slumping to the ground once again. When there was the soft 'thump' of his body hitting the floor, Hermione finally relaxed, before angrily stalking over and snatching the piece of fabric from her robes from his mouth.
"Stupid dog," she muttered, pocketing it as she opened the trap door.
Angry, Hermione looked down into the darkness. She really didn't feel like using her rope this time, though she'd brought it. It just took so long, and the Devil's Snare was enough to cushion her at the bottom, and so long as she kept her wand firmly in her hand, she'd be fine.
Unless they had changed the obstacle…
Hermione snorted. If they had started changing obstacles now, the entire challenge would be monumentally unfair.
Chalking it up to being around Harry and his cheerful impulsivity too much, she leapt into the darkness, unafraid.
The fall and landing on the Devil's Snare wasn't nearly as bad as she'd thought, and Hermione managed to burn her way through and fall to the ground with a satisfactory crash quickly, though she was wincing. She'd probably see a bruise on her leg the next day for that one.
Picking Flitwick's lock went quicker this time, now that she'd had a bit of experience with it, but it still took a while. Hermione mentally crossed her fingers, hoping Blaise would chalk up the delay to making necessary small talk with the Gryffindors before starting a chess game.
Finally, the last tumbler clicked, and Hermione stumbled into the next room.
The large chess board with tall, faceless pieces was just as intimidating as it was last time. There were sconces burning on the walls, throwing shadows into the corners of the room, and Hermione tried to take deep, calming breaths. She could feel her heart racing a mile a minute.
Biting her lip, Hermione stepped forward.
Figuring she'd try the obvious just to be sure, she tried to walk across the board, only to have the pawns block her way with large, intimidating spears. With a sigh, Hermione retreated to the black side of the board, considering, before tapping the black king. The faceless king turned toward her, and Hermione held out her hand expectantly.
"I want to play king," she informed the large block of stone.
After a long moment, the black king handed her a heavy obsidian crown that glinted in the torchlight and retreated to the side of the board.
Hermione settled the heavy crown onto her head, though it didn't fit well and kept slipping. With a groan, she pulled her hair up into a high ponytail to help stabilize it. If she had to do this again, she'd be sure to bring hair clips to attach the damn thing to her head – she didn't intend on dropping it and forfeiting the match by accident.
When she was done fussing with the crown, she realized that white had moved. One of its pawns had slid across the board. Hermione pulled the small chess board from her bag, grateful the pieces stuck to the board, and moved the same white pawn on her own set.
The three minutes she waited before a black pawn moved in response had her worriedly scanning the room for a chess clock. She breathed a sigh of relief, before ordering the same black pawn forward on the giant game.
Chess took a while like this, but Hermione was happily in no hurry. The beginning moves claimed territory on the board, and when a white knight took a black pawn, smashing it into large chunks of stone and a cloud of rock dust, Hermione was glad she'd had the foresight to play as the king. The king was never captured – only knocked over by its own color player at the end, if it lost.
As the game went on, Hermione got more nervous. As far she could tell, the game was close. Each color had lost a similar number of pieces, and the white queen was moving around with nearly terrifying speed as it demolished black's pawns.
Black moved on her small chessboard, and there was a commotion, and Hermione saw that a pawn had grown into another black queen, giving her two.
Hermione grinned, and made the same order.
The promotion of the pawn made a spectacle. The black statue grew and warped before her eyes, like the fast-forwarded growth of a flower, and the queen the pawn made looked different than the other queen, somehow. Almost… younger?
Hermione shook her head at her silliness at thinking one faceless statue looked younger than the other, and she returned her attention to the white queen demolishing her rook in retaliation instead.
It was only a few moves later that Blaise (and Hermione, by association) had managed to checkmate white with two queens and a knight, and the white king threw its crown at Hermione's feet.
With a squee, Hermione picked it up (another heavy stone piece). She looked back at her own pieces, but there was no indication of anything one way or another. Taking a deep breath, Hermione strode across the room – but this time, nothing tried to stop her. At the far end, she stepped confidently off the chessboard, grinning.
She'd made it.
She took the black crown off her head, carefully disentangling it from her curls. She looked at the white crown too, thoughtfully, before stashing them both in her bag. She might need them on her way back through to prove her victory.
Standing back up and hefting her bag onto her back, she paused at the door, sniffing.
Something…
Something smelled awful.
In fact…
Very, very slowly, Hermione pulled open the door to the other room, opening it just the slightest crack.
It was a troll.
Carefully, Hermione closed the door again, eyes wide, and began to consider her options.
The troll she'd faced at Halloween had nearly killed her, and she had had help, then. This was a challenge that she didn't know how to handle – was this really possible for a first year to beat?
Hermione sat there, thinking.
What did she know about trolls?
Trolls were slow and stupid, she knew. Trolls were also flammable, and often carried big sticks. In myth, exposing them to sunlight would turn them to stone. And…
And nothing. That was it.
Hermione found herself wishing she had learned how to fly by now. She'd give anything to be able to soar across the room, safely out of reach.
Hermione carefully peeked into the room again. The troll seemed bored, sitting against one side of the room on the ground, picking at its navel. It removed something from it, considered it, and ate it, and Hermione suppressed her resulting wave of nausea.
It… didn't seem like it was angry, or like it was actively guarding anything. Was there a chance she could sneak by it? Or would it sniff her out, and subsequently murder her?
There had to be a way a first-year could beat this obstacle, Hermione thought furiously. She'd come this far – she wasn't about to back down now!
From the ruddy green skin and scraggly brownish-green hair of the troll, it had to be a forest troll, which provided some comfort. Mountain trolls, the kind that Hermione had faced in the bathroom, were the most aggressive of all trolls, so this troll would at least be less hell-bent on murdering her. Though, it would still want to murder her.
"First year spells, first year spells," Hermione muttered to herself, rapidly running backwards through their coursework. "Incendio, but then everyone would know someone was here. What else, what else, what else… got it!"
Before she could talk herself out of it, she aimed a quick Alohomora at the far door just in case, then ran into the troll room with a loud cry, pushing all the power she could through her wand.
"Lumos!"
Immediately, her wand lit up like a spotlight, and the troll cried out, blinded, and tried to cover its eyes. Hermione sprinted across the room, threw open the door and ran through it, slamming it shut behind her as fast as she could.
There was a sudden whoosh behind her, but Hermione sat down hard on the ground, panting, as soon as she saw there wasn't any immediate threat. Black flames shot up in the doorway leading forward. Uneasily, Hermione looked behind her, only to see purple flames in the threshold. She looked around the room, but it was obvious there were only two doorways. She was trapped.
Steeling herself, Hermione stood up. All that was in the room was a long, thin table, with seven differently-shaped bottles lined up on it. There was a scroll on the table, next to the bottles. With anxiety slowly filtering into her mind, Hermione picked the scroll up and began to read.
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:
First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;
Second, different are those who stand at either end,
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;
Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.
Incredibly, Hermione found herself smiling.
It was a logic puzzle.
A logic puzzle. Most wizards didn't seem to have an ounce of logical reasoning skills, and they'd be stuck here forever. But a smart wizard could progress without difficulty.
It was brilliant.
How very Snape-like of Snape.
Hermione had brought along her entire potions kit in preparation for Snape's challenge. She'd even taken a collapsible cauldron from an old Potions classroom she'd found in the dungeons. She had been fully prepared to brew whatever impossibly challenging thing Snape had set forth for her, only to see this.
Amusedly, Hermione set about solving the puzzle.
It didn't take long. The smallest bottle would get her through the black flame. She took note – the round bottle on the end would get her back through the purple, if she had to come back the same way she came.
As she picked up the small bottle, she hesitated. She did have her testing strips with her. Would Snape be so devious as to claim the bottles were one thing, but put something else in them?
…yes. Yes, he would.
The small bottle had very little liquid in it, and Hermione was uneasy about testing it. Instead, she set about testing for poison and nettle wine, to make sure she was correct. To her pleasure, each strip turned the color she was hoping for – meaning she'd located the poisons correctly, and there was no danger in drinking the small bottle.
With five of the seven correlating to what the puzzle claimed they were, Hermione felt confident enough to try. She drained the bottle, shuddering as a feeling of ice flooded her body. Putting the bottle down, she stepped forward into the black fire, and it was with relief realized she couldn't feel the flames licking her body, and then she was through.
What an interesting potion, Hermione mused. She wondered how Snape had made it, and what kind of flames burned black.
This chamber was very large, but it seemed empty. There weren't any other doors on the wall, and there were just stairs leading down toward the middle. As Hermione descended, she realized there was something there – a mirror.
Hermione carefully approached the mirror from the side. She'd read Alice Goes Through the Looking-Glass as a child, and she had no intentions of getting trapped anywhere.
The mirror was tall and gilded, with a golden frame and two clawed feet. There were words engraved along the top, that Hermione carefully leaned over to make out. After a moment, with a frown, she dug out parchment and a self-inking quill from her bag, marking down the words.
Erised stra ehru oy tube cafru oyt on wohsi
Hermione put her quill away and frowned at the paper. She didn't recognize this language at all, and she could at least recognize most European languages, though not read or speak them. She stared at the words, slowly growing more and more frustrated.
She had been trying to beat this obstacle course for months. She'd faced down Fluffy, escaped the Devil's Snare, beaten the flying keys, played the chess game, evaded the troll, and walked through fire. She'd obsessed over this for months. And now this stupid mirror was standing in her way?
"Why not?" Hermione said to herself. She stood up, her head held high. "It will all end here anyway."
Determined, Hermione moved and stood directly in front of the mirror, glaring defiantly.
She saw herself, glaring defiantly back, and Hermione relaxed, realizing that she wasn't going to be sucked in. The girl in the mirror relaxed too, then smiled, and Hermione tensed – she hadn't smiled.
The Hermione in the mirror looked amused and was smiling at her. Hermione watched as her reflection put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. She watched as the mirror-Hermione winked, and put its hand back into its pocket – and as it did, Hermione felt something heavy drop into her real pocket.
"What on earth…?"
Hermione stepped to the side of the mirror to investigate. She pulled out the same blood-red stone her reflection had held in the mirror. It seemed made of an opaque glass, mostly smooth with oddly jagged edges. It fit comfortably in her palm. Hermione stared at it.
"What…?"
This was the last room. This was absolutely the last room – there were no doorways to anywhere else. So this rock was her prize? Or had someone else beaten her here, a Gryffindor, perhaps, and left this red rock for her to find as a symbol of victory?
Hermione made a face. If so, what a rude thing to do.
It would be just like a Gryffindor to do it, though.
Hermione weighed her options carefully. If this was the prize, presumably it was valuable (somehow) and a good prize, even if she didn't understand it. Or, if this was the prize, Dumbledore would ask who held it on the last day, and she would present it at the feast, and she'd win something in front of her peers there. Or, lastly, someone had beaten her here, and she'd found someone's calling card.
Hermione scowled and tried to think if there was any indication anyone else had been through the obstacle course.
Fluffy was unhurt, but that meant nothing – he was easy enough to avoid with music most of the time. Devil's Snare grew back quickly after being burned. None of Flitwick's keys had looked damaged, but there was no way to tell if someone else had picked the lock.
She presumed that McGonagall's chess pieces would reform themselves after the game, like any other wizard's chess set, and she was guessing Snape's bottles probably refilled themselves as well. The only other clue was the troll, which hadn't seemed to sustain any damage before she went through.
Hermione bit her lip, before realizing her biggest clue:
If a Gryffindor had gone through, there would be an obvious sign that they'd gone through, one way or another.
Gryffindors, in her experience, were not good at being subtle and leaving no trace of themselves.
With that thought, Hermione smiled. She'd leave no trace of herself, then, and leave a fake prize in the mirror. That way, if Dumbledore called for the real prize, and someone held up the fake one, she could cut them down by revealing the true one. Imagine if it was a 6th or 7th year, claiming victory, and she was able to triumph over them…? It would be incredible.
Hermione set about looking around the room, investigating, before she finally found a loose stone. Focusing carefully, looking at the blood red stone on the floor, she waved her wand in a deliberate pattern, before whispering an incantation.
To her satisfaction, the rock in her hand transfigured into… something of a duplicate of the real prize. It wasn't as mysterious and opaque looking, but it was blood red, about the right size, had a glassy quality to it, jagged edges, and looked cool. It would suffice, she figured. She hadn't learned what the prize was ahead of time, so hopefully anybody else who tried wouldn't know either.
Leaving the real stone in her bag on the side of the room, Hermione took her duplicate and stood in front of the mirror once more.
This time, she didn't see her reflection at all. She saw all her classmates, excited for her and showing obvious respect, as she held up the red stone. Draco was impressed and talking to her openly, Pansy looked shamed and regretful, and Blaise was calling for everyone to applaud her.
She blinked.
As she watched, her reflection slowly changed to include an upset redhead wearing a Gryffindor tie holding the duplicate stone – a mature Ron Weasley, almost? This mirror was odd.
Hermione tried putting her own duplicate into her pocket, but nothing happened. The mirror would not react. With a sigh, she pulled it back out.
How had the original rock gotten into the mirror?
"It needed hidden," Hermione muttered to herself. "It needed to be behind a puzzle."
As she watched her mirror-self enjoy the friendliness and open happiness of her Slytherin classmates, an idea slowly occurred to her.
"It didn't just need to be hidden," she murmured. "It needed to be safe."
Hermione closed her eyes, concentrating. As much as she craved the ability to feel safe and loved amongst her classmates, she knew she was a long way off, if it ever happened. But she was working on her power and could keep herself safe. What she couldn't keep safe was this rock.
This rock was too unusual, too special looking, she thought deliberately. And that was true – Pansy would want to know what it was, and it could be stolen from her bag easily. It needed to be kept safe – and she desperately wanted it to be kept safe, safe here, behind all these obstacles, difficult for someone else to find.
She opened her eyes, to see herself in the mirror – alone, once more, and holding out her hand.
Slowly, Hermione moved forward, the stone in her hand, watching as her reflection did the same with her empty outstretched hand. Hermione's hand touched the glass, and there was a cool, liquid-like sensation, and Hermione watched as her decoy stone went into the glass, as if it were water.
She stepped back and looked up. Her reflection held the stone now, offered her a smile, and dropped it into her pocket.
Hermione smiled and nodded at her mirror-self, before stepping away to gather up her things.
What an odd last puzzle. It seemed too easy – just stand in front of a mirror and get the prize?
Who knows, she decided. Maybe it was Dumbledore's puzzle. And he'd always seemed a bit off.
The black flames had died down by the time Hermione returned to the potion room. They erupted behind her once again as she stepped through the threshold, and Hermione was pleased to see her guess was correct – the little bottle was back in its place, and full once again. She took the round bottle and secured her bag on her back, before drinking deeply, shuddering, and waving her wand wildly as she took off running through the next room.
"Lumos!"
The troll cried out and hid its eyes once again, and Hermione sprinted through the door and slammed it behind her, glad she'd left it open on her way through. Before her, the chess pieces had reformed, including kings' crowns.
Carefully, Hermione strode out onto the chessboard. To her relief, the black pawns didn't block her way, and she was relieved to not have to play her way across again – Blaise had probably long since put his own board away.
She shut the door firmly behind her, pleased to hear it magically lock behind her. She hadn't wanted to manually relock it with her picks.
The last door led out into the room with the ceiling of Devil's Snare, and Hermione couldn't help but grin. Above was Fluffy, and Hermione decided to just leave the music wand there, instead of trying to get it back. Let Fluffy have it as a toy – he'd destroy it soon enough, leaving no trace of her having been through.
Bracing herself, Hermione pulled open the last door and stepped through.
The world warped around her, tilting, and Hermione felt like she was spinning in space, lost, and her brain seemed to be rejecting the very idea of reality in an incredibly painful way, right before she was spat out directly in front of the forbidden corridor, landing hard on her rear.
"Ow…" She rubbed her rear, slowly getting up. She was definitely going to be bruised.
"You! What are you doing here?"
Hermione looked up to see Filch, looking at her furiously.
"I-I'm on my way to Astronomy class," Hermione said quickly. "I-It's Tuesday night – Slytherins have it at midnight."
Filch looked at her suspiciously.
"And the way to the Astronomy Tower is by the Forbidden Corridor, now, is it?" he sneered.
"I-I wasn't here a moment ago," she told him. "I was on the 7th floor a minute ago, making my way up. I think the Weasley Twins did something – all of a sudden, I was falling through the floor…"
Filch scowled.
"Those twins are the scourge of the castle," he muttered. He looked at her, sneering. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get to class, then, before I turn you in for lollygagging."
"Yes! Yes, sir!"
Hermione scampered, making her way up to the Astronomy tower with her Explorer's Pack on her back as if it were her bookbag. By the time she made it up, she was panting, and seriously regretting putting two heavy stone crowns in it before.
She slid into place just before Professor Sinistra arrived to begin telling them about Jupiter's orbit. Blaise slid over next to her, looking at her with one eyebrow raised.
"Got held up?"
"Weasley Twins," Hermione panted out, reusing the same excuse. Better to keep her lies consistent. "They took exception to me beating their brother in chess."
Blaise nodded, though he scowled.
"If they do it again, let me know," he told her. "We can declare for to all of House Weasley, if we need to, instead of just Ronald."
"I'll let you know," Hermione promised. "I don't think that's necessary just yet, though."
Blaise carefully looked her over, taking in her sweaty and dusty demeanor, before nodding and going back to his own spot.
Hermione tried her best to pay attention to her professor's lecture, but she just couldn't. She couldn't even pay attention to the gorgeous sight of Jupiter's moons through the telescope. Her thoughts kept wandering to the mysterious stone in her bag, and the odd mirror with the writing on top.
It was late in the night, long after her dorm mates had gone to sleep, after Hermione had taken a late-night shower to cleanse herself of all the rock and stone dust (and any lingering troll smell) from the obstacles and stashed her prize in her trunk, that Hermione sat up in her bed, braiding her damp hair and looking at the scrap of parchment, puzzled, when it came to her.
"It's mirror-writing!"
Hermione grabbed a quill off her night stand, and she was quick to put the answer beneath the original words.
Ishow no tyo urfac ebut yo urhe arts desire
I show not your face but your hearts desire
Hermione bit her lip, considering.
Her heart's desire?
The first thing the mirror had shown her made sense. She'd wanted to 'win' the obstacle course and claim the prize more than anything else. She didn't know why that earned her the prize, though. Maybe it was just testing a person's determination to win?
The second thing the mirror had shown her – that shook her. Hermione hadn't realized how desperately she wanted to feel safe, loved, and as if she had real friends in Slytherin. Instead, she had allies, acquaintances, and enemies, and she had to constantly be on her game.
With a sigh, Hermione settled herself back into bed, shoving the parchment into her bedside drawer. She carefully tried to levitate herself off of the bed for a few minutes with the help of her air elemental (but ended up mostly bouncing on the bed until her power ran out), before she closed her eyes.
Regardless of the esteem of her classmates, she'd done something great, that none of them had ever done.
She'd beaten the 3rd floor corridor.
None of them could lay claim to that.
And with that thought, she fell asleep, a small smile on her lips.
Nothing would tarnish her victory.