April 24, 1992

"Say, Hagrid, what is that exactly?"

George looked at where his brother was pointing. That had to be the largest egg he had ever seen.

"Oh that? Er… nothing. It's nothing." Hagrid chuckled and was not all convincing in his reassurance that it wasn't anything of interest.

"Mmhmm. That's a really big egg. Where'd you get it?"

Hagrid opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. "Well, you see, there was this fella…"

"I never thought I'd see a dragon hatch before."

"You know we're going to have to tell her about this."

"You do realize that's a terrible idea, right?"

"Of course it is, but it'd be worse if she found out and knew we didn't tell her."

George grimaced. Fred was right. If Ivy found out they had seen a baby dragon, said baby dragon was still available to see, and they hadn't told her about it, they would be dead. Dead and gone.

"Fiiiiine. We'll go tell Ivy Hagrid has a dragon."

"This is all your fault," Draco snarled at Fred, who didn't look the slightest bit bothered, much to his annoyance.

"How do you figure that?"

"You're the one who told her while I was still standing there! Couldn't you have at least waited for me to leave?"

Fred assumed a face of complete innocence. "How was I supposed to know you weren't interested in seeing one of your kind? Your kinsfolk, if you will."

Draco went to chase after Fred but the older boy was too fast. "Come on, Dragon, time to go meet your little brother."

"Come on, Neville. Let's go see the dragon!"

Neville had the distinct impression that things like this would have been a lot less common if he had sorted into another house like Hufflepuff or something. Still, he had to admit that he was mildly curious, so… He gave in and followed Ron.

"Oh, well I've never seen a baby dragon before."

Draco wanted to point out that none of them had, and that was the reason they were all being dragged along in the first place. Technically he was the only one being physically dragged at the moment. Everyone else seemed to be going of their own accord. Crazy Gryffindors.

"Wait, where are you all going?"

Draco's hopes soared at the sight of Pansy. Yes! This was his ticket out of this little misadventure.

"We're going to go see a dragon," Granger said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, I'm coming too then."

And just like that Draco's hopes were dashed and he resigned himself to be forever in the company of people with death wishes. A baby death wish, in this case, but a death wish nonetheless.

"Wait, when did you three get here?"

Susan, Terry, and Theo all just shrugged, and Draco decided then and there that no Hogwarts House was safe from insanity. It was everywhere, and it was inescapable.

Hagrid opened the door and cast a bemused gaze on the nine little first years beaming up at him. Well, eight were beaming. The little Malfoy kid did not look nearly as pleased to be there. Of course that just might be the kid's natural expression, and he really couldn't fault the poor kid for something so out of his control.

"We're here to see the dragon," Ivy said with a huge grin, which Hagrid quickly matched.

"Well come in, come in. Let me get 'im for ya."

The thought that maybe a baby dragon wasn't the best thing to show a bunch of first years, especially a group that contained 'where-do-you-find-a-Cerberus' Ivy Potter, didn't cross Hagrid's mind, so excited was he to share his enthusiasm for the small creature with all the eager looking students.

After they had all oohed and awed for several minutes, one of the little Gryffindors raised her hand, and after a moment he remembered the girl's name. "Um, yes Miss Granger?"

"How are you supposed to keep a dragon in your house? Won't he get too large? And also, your house is made of wood. The dragon will burn it down for sure."

That could be a problem…

"Ooh! I can write Uncle Henry and see if we can adopt it!"

April 25, 1992

Sirius watched as Harry finished reading Ivy's most recent letter. He was excited to hear all about the week's events, especially about the snitch catching contest, which he was confident his goddaughter had excelled in.

Harry put the letter down a proceeded to say the longest drawn-out expletive that Sirius had ever heard. He was quite impressed by how long Harry managed to hold that out.

"That bad?"

Harry leaned forward and let his head bang on the table, then let it thump a few more times for good measure.

"Okay… Well, what'd she have to say?"

Harry groaned. "Mirror," he said, holding up one finger. "Dragon." He held up a second finger.

Sirius was a little confused. Didn't the dragons happen in his fourth year? And… seventh year? And something about a couple years later going to Romania… That was actually a lot of dragons. "Okay, sorry. Drawing a blank here. What dragon?"

"Hagrid's dragon," Harry said, not moving his head from off the table.

"Ah. That dragon."

Harry grunted but still didn't move.

"So that one's not too bad then, is it. Okay, so mirror? The one you saw your parents in?"

Harry's head came up and he groaned. "Yep. That's that one. I really thought we had avoided that particular incident." He then proceeded to let out an impressive string of curse words. James would be so proud.

"Alright. What do you want to do?"

Harry grimaced. "Take care of the dragon. We have to do something about the dragon. If we don't either it'll burn something down, get Hagrid in serious trouble, or it'll end up in my backyard."

Sirius agreed those were all likely outcomes to the situation.

"And the mirror… How'd she end up in front of it anyway? Last time I only found it because…" Harry's face darkened and Sirius felt the little cackle of power that emanated off of him. "How much you want to bet our dear esteemed headmaster had something to do with this?"

Sirius was most certainly not taking that bet. "Um, probably, but I have to admit I'm a little surprised that that's what you're going with right away. Anything happen I should know about?"

Harry was still scowling. "By this time the mirror was already long gone and the stone was placed inside. There is no reason for Ivy to have found it unless she was meant to go looking for it. Besides, why would she go wandering around? That's not like her. For all the chaos she causes she doesn't wander aimlessly, and by now I'm sure the twins have shown her everything in Hogwarts."

Sirius could understand his logic, even if he was somewhat surprised at its occurrence. "Okay, so say Dumbles did somehow get her in front of the mirror. How do you suppose he did that?"

Harry looked positively furious. "Same way he tried to in December."

Sirius sighed and rubbed his hand over his eyes. He had the sudden feeling that he was going to be the one holding Harry back in this particular instance. He wasn't sure he'd do a very good job at it. He wasn't sure if he even wanted to.

"So what do we do?"

Harry bounced his leg in agitation for a moment before replying. "We up the timetable. We already had it planned for the end of May, so we just bump it up a little. Go to the goblins, get the fake stone, kill Quirrell, switch them out, and voila, one dead dark lord and one perfectly safe Ivy."

"Alright. I'll go get Remus."

"I'll write Charlie and then go to the goblins in the morning."

Sirius sighed and nodded. Time to see if their plans would hold up.

April 28, 1992

Charlie Weasley reread the letter in his hands for the… well actually he had lost track but it had been a lot of times. Despite rereading it so many times, however, the existence of the letter was still a mystery to him. Sure, Lord Peverell had explained that he was a friend of Charlie's younger brothers and all that, and Charlie knew that's where they had gone for Christmas, but that still didn't explain the slightly cryptic request to come grab a baby dragon from Hogwarts. Oh, and bring friends because dragons are little… Charlie couldn't make out all the words there but he got the general idea.

Charlie had a few choices in front of him. One, he could ignore the letter and go about his life, two, he could write back and ask for more details, and three, he could just show up and do what Lord Peverell had asked. Well, baby dragons were pretty cute…

Now as far as friends went… Who would not question anything and just show up in Scotland unannounced to retrieve a most likely highly illegal baby dragon? He spotted Gaines and Warren walking a little ways off. Americans were up for that sort of thing usually, right? Perfect.

"Dude, you know I'm not actually a cowboy, right?"

Charlie did not see what that had to do with anything. "Uh, yeah?"

Chad Gaines clapped his hands. "Great! Then I'm in."

Charlie exhaled in relief and turned to Warren, who looked at the other two for a moment before sighing and throwing his hands up in the air. "Fine. I'm in too I guess."

Gaines slapped Warren on the back and said, "Of course you are, Matt. We have a reputation to uphold."

Warren glared at Gaines who returned his glare with a grin.

"Uh, sorry, what reputation?" Had they done this sort of thing before? That would be a big help.

"Hmm? Oh, just that everyone here has certain ideas about Americans, and we've done our very best to uphold each and every one of those," Gaines said.

Warren rolled his eyes. "What he means is he likes getting called 'cowboy' even though he probably couldn't tell you the difference between the cow and the horse."

Gaines grinned unapologetically. "Well, we can't all be farm boys, now, can we."

"I'm from Chicago."

"Yeah, Chicago, Kansas."

"Doesn't mean I know how to handle every kind of livestock out there."

"But you do."

"But that's not the point, is it."

This all meant absolutely nothing to Charlie. "So, you both still in?"

"Yes." "Yes."

May 4, 1992

"And you're sure this will work?"

At the silence that followed Harry brought his head up and realized his mistake. Oops. Don't offend the goblins. They don't like that. Muttering an apology, he gathered his things and the fake stone and rushed out, shivering as the offended look gave way to a grin. There was just no winning with them, was there?

May 9, 1992

Ivy's scream woke up the rest of her roommates.

"What happened?" "Are you okay?" "Who died?"

Everyone rolled their eyes at Tracey's question.

Pansy noticed the blood first and said, "that's it? You woke us up for that?"

"I screamed because I don't know how it got there," Ivy said indignantly. "That's not where the blood is supposed to be."

Realization hit Daphne first. "Oh, is this your first time?"

"First time what?" Ivy asked quizzically.

"Your first time… You know what? Maybe you should go see Madam Pomfrey. I think she could explain things better than me."

Now all the other girls were nodding solemnly, and Ivy began wondering what kind of secret ritual or rite of passage this was. Whatever it was, it was weird. And mildly uncomfortable, she thought, glaring at her traitorous midsection.

No one else seemed inclined to expound on this singular occurrence, but Pansy finally rolled her eyes and grabbed Ivy's hand. "Come on," she said. "I'll take you up there."

Ivy went to protest that despite the evidence that she had been engaged in some kind of nighttime battle she could in fact get to the hospital wing herself, but decided it was entirely possible Pansy just wanted to have an excuse to avoid Draco this morning. He was still kind of mad about the whole nearly-getting-his-hand-bit-by-a-dragon-because-Pansy-insisted-he-hold-it thing.

That poor dear. Poppy couldn't fault her guardian either. That poor man, trying to raise the girl all on his own. Of course, there would be some things that he might forget about, or simply not know he needed to do. Miss Potter had taken it all very well and had asked several questions, which Poppy always took as a good sign.

Unfortunately, the poor girl was experiencing some rather strong cramping and other less than pleasant effects of her present condition, so Poppy had given her a nice little remedy and a mild sleeping draught. Much better to sleep it off a bit, and it was Saturday after all, so it wasn't like she would miss anything too vital.

"Dude, shouldn't we have come at night or something?"

"Chad, this is really not the time…"

"No, it's fine. It's all fine. We'll just go see Hagrid, pick the dragon up, and be off. No problem." Hopefully, there won't be a problem anyway. It was sadly mid morning and if this went wrong there wasn't exactly anywhere to hide.

"Umm, just wondering out loud here, but is there a reason there's so many kids gathered there?"

There was indeed an impressive number of students gathered around Hagrid's house. That…might be a problem.

"I missed it?"

"It wasn't that great anyways," Draco muttered. No one payed attention to him.

"In our defence, we thought he would come at night or something, you know, illegal dragon and all."

Ivy glared at George, who shrugged apologetically.

"You could have come and gotten me."

"You were in the hospital wing!"

"I wasn't dying!"

"We didn't know that!"

Ivy gasped. "You thought I might be dying and you didn't come see me?"

George, deciding this was a most excellent moment to drag himself and Fred out of the hole they were digging before it grew any larger, said, "Well we would have, except Charlie came and…"

Oh. Maybe that wasn't the best direction to take this.

May 10, 1992

"I am a terrible parent," Harry said, putting down the letter from Madam Pomfrey.

"I make it a point not to argue until I have at least one or two facts, so what makes you say that?"

Harry handed him the letter. After skimming it over Sirius made a face. "Okay, agreed." Harry groaned. "But to be fair would any of us even know how to explain that?"

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and realized that no, he actually had no idea how to explain that particular set of life facts.

Sirius continued. "So, we failed, but we can still fix this, right? We'll just enlist some help. Someone who knows things and can explain them."

"Thanks, Sirius," Harry said dryly. "Your elocution, as always, astounds me."

Sirius stuck out his tongue. "Just watch. I'll find someone. Right now. I'll find someone right now." He stood, nodded, muttered something to himself, and marched out the door.

"Just be back by the morning," Harry called after him. "We have a murder to commit tomorrow."

Sabrina Zabini counted down in her head how long it would take Sirius to realize they were not alone. Twelve, eleven, ten… When he had shown up in her house absolutely frantic she was sure someone had died. Or possibly become undead. But no, it was just Sirius freaking out because Lord Peverell was freaking out because they didn't know something about how to raise an eleven year old girl. Two, one…

Right on cue, Sirius's face went beet red. "You didn't tell me you had company."

Sabrina laughed. "You have eyes, darling, I assumed you could see for yourself."

Sirius scowled but didn't say anything else.

"Well, ladies? Shall we help the poor man out?"

Narcissa looked amused and at her smirk Sirius went even redder, if that was possible.

Anthea laughed lightly. "Of course we'll help," she said. "I've had plenty of practice giving this talk, now is as good a time as any to give another one."

Sirius looked at her in mild shock. "Now?"

"Why not?"

Sirius fidgeted. It was cute when he was fifteen and it was endlessly amusing now. "Lady Greengrass, I'm sure there's no need…"

Anthea cut him off. "There is no time like that present. Shall we?"

Sirius couldn't come up with an excuse apparently, so he finally offered Anthea his arm and together they walked towards the floo, Sabrina and Narcissa close behind.

Sirius cleared his throat. "I just… I just need to let Harry know we're coming. The wards and…" He cleared his throat again and stuck his head in the fireplace, ignoring the three smirks still directed at him.

Harry looked at the there women with no small amount of trepidation. His experience with those types of looks being directed at him usually spelled something unpleasant. Like that one time that Fleur, Narcissa, Katie, and Luna had formed the oddest task force of all time and forced him shopping. He shuddered at the memory. That had not been a pleasant day. Luna had finally taken pity on him and helped him escape their clutches, but still. This look never meant anything good.

"Well, it seems there is only one thing to do."

When this was over Harry was going to learn absolutely everything there was to know about Lady Greengrass. He needed to be forewarned if she decided she was going to kill him or something. He honestly had no idea based on her expression alone and it was disconcerting.

"We'll just have to see that she learns all the relevant facts as soon as possible."

Oh, so not dead then. That was nice.

"Now let's see. I've given this talk plenty of times so I would be happy to speak with Ivy, if that is alright with you," she said, nodding to Harry, whose vigorous nod earned him two smirks from he other ladies present.

"I would be happy to give her the other talk," Narcissa offered.

Harry and Sirius both let out a sigh of relief. All three women laughed at them. They were truly heartless at the sight of Harry's plight. Sirius could fend for himself.

"Well, I suppose that just about covers it then, doesn't it," Sabrina added. "We'd best be off then."

"Would you like to stay for dinner?" Harry had no idea why he blurted that out, and was hoping no one had heard him.

"We would love to."

Damn it.

On the bright side, now that Malfoy and the other Greengrasses were here, the discussion on female anatomy had been brought to a blessed end.

Harry had no idea what he was supposed to say to any of these people. Sirius and Sabrina were entertaining enough when they weren't making little lovesick eyes at each other, but they were occupied with said activity at the moment so were not at all helpful. He didn't know the Greengrasses well before so he wasn't sure what to say to them, and Astoria was currently like nine or some other age that meant she was small and not a Draco-was-annoying-today-so-let's-go-tease-him buddy. And Malfoy… Well, that wouldn't normally be as much of a problem, but there was the whole I'm-about-to-go-off-the-dark-lord-you-followed thing at the back of his mind and that made finding a topic to speak to Lucius about a little difficult. Thank Merlin for Narcissa. He was mentally singing her praises when Lord Greengrass asked a seemingly innocent question.

"So where are you from?"

Harry had gone three blissful years without having to actually answer that question to anyone in Britain. When he was outside the country he just answered "England" and that seemed to satisfy people. Here, however, he couldn't exactly get away with that response.

Forgetting his well-rehearsed set of responses that he had practiced for just such an occasion as this, Harry said, "London."

Well, all in all, that wasn't too bad of an answer. And he had lived in London. Once. Very briefly. The details weren't really worth getting into…

"Oh, I'm surprised I've never run into you then."

"Well I… I didn't spend a lot of time there, you see. A lot of time abroad."

Harry sent Sirius a small look that signaled his plea for help but Sirius just grinned lazily at him. No help whatsoever.

"Ah, of course. So I take it you did not grow up here?"

"Ah, no. I grew up…" One last glance at Sirius who was apparently going to leave him to suffer alone. "…in Canada."

He wished someone would cast a silencing charm on him. Canada? Perhaps the one country in the world he did not want to ever talk about. Ever.

"Oh, whereabouts? My mother's family was from Canada. We visited there a lot when I was younger."

Great. Just great.

"Oh, he's from Montréal." Sirius was an absolute traitor and Harry was never going to speak to him again until it was tomorrow and they went to murder Voldemort.

"Beautiful city," Lord Greengrass said.

"Yes. It is," Harry ground out, trying to discreetly shoot a glare at Sirius. Or a jinx. Whatever worked at this point.

"Do you visit often?"

Harry was going to kill Sirius. Slowly. Deliberately. With exhilaration. "No, no, not at all." Seeing the puzzled frowns around the table he hastily added, "it's just that my childhood was… less than ideal, and I prefer to make my home elsewhere now."

The topic changed thanks to Merlin, Morgana, and Harry's ability to BS his way through nearly any situation. There. Take that Sirius. Turn any answer into a somewhat ambiguous hint at a tragic past and everyone clams right up. Brilliant. Harry was rather pleased with himself now.

May 11, 1992

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Fred whispered to his twin.

"No. This is a terrible idea. We should really probably put a stop to this."

"How?"

"No idea."

"What are all of them doing here anyway?"

George glanced at the five first years making their way to the forbidden corridor with varying levels of enthusiasm. "Pretty sure Ivy dragged Draco along as per usual. Ron was bored and just kind of followed. Honestly didn't notice him there until a second ago. Someone pulled Neville along, but he hasn't left so he's fine, right? And I have no idea about Hermione. I thought we were going to tell her something so she wouldn't go tell on us?"

Fred winced. "Uh yeah, that might be my fault. I may have sort of implied that it was some kind of magical obstacle course. A practical of sorts. Maybe a little extra credit."

"That's probably the worst possible idea you could have come up with," George hissed.

"I know that now," Fred whispered back furtively. "It's not like you had anything better."

"I was trying to get Ivy away from Percy and that Slytherin he's always hanging around now."

"Who, Harrington?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"You don't think they'd get int he way, right?"

"Doubt it. I mentioned something about Ivy wanting a book on Hydra and they both rushed off. Looked a little panicky now that I think about it."

"Why Hydra?"

George shrugged. "First deadly thing I thought of."

"Fair."

Finally, they reached the door of imminent death, or, as Ivy put it, the only thing standing between us and the cutest little hellhound there ever was. That was reassuring for neither their safety nor their concerns over her sanity, but here they were anyway. Ten seconds. They could handle this for ten seconds.

"Alright," Fred announced with more cheer than he was actually feeling. "Who wants to see a Cerberus?"

"Need I remind you, again, that we've already seen this?" Draco hissed at Ivy.

"Yes, but we didn't know how to put it to sleep then, did we."

"And that makes it better?"

"Of course. Now we can see it up close."

"You're insane," Draco muttered.

"It's only for a minute," Ivy argued.

Draco just glared at her and she sighed. "Just a quick peek and then we'll be out. I promise."

Fred let out a string of words his mother didn't know he knew and then turned towards the shorter people. Oops. Except… None of them actually seemed surprised by what he had said. Well, except Ron, who was arguably the worst person to accidentally teach words to, what with them sharing the same parents and all.

George pushed up his sleeves. "Right then. No worries. We'll just put it to sleep while we figure this out."

Fred aided George in setting up some music for the Cerberus. Once it was finally asleep, Neville asked, "how did you know to do that?"

Fred couldn't think of a reply.

"I know more than I ever wanted to about that thing," George muttered.

"So, what do we do now?" Everyone's face seemed to mirror Ron's question. What did they do now? They were rather stuck at the moment. A door that wouldn't open, a Cerberus that was asleep, for now, and… huh. Was that a trapdoor?

Apparently he wasn't the only one that had noticed it.

"Is this what you meant by an obstacle course?" Hermione asked.

Fred winced. "Yeah, about that. See, the thing is…" He looked at his brother for help.

For a moment George looked as panicked as Fred felt, but composed himself and said to the rest of the group, "just a moment. We need to, uh, talk for a minute."

They huddled together and spoke softly so they wouldn't be overheard.

"We need to get out of here."

"No kidding. What do we do?"

"No idea. How'd we even get stuck anyway? Alohomora worked to get in and Ivy and Draco got out when they were in here before just fine."

Fred thought a terrible thought. "You don't think someone trapped us in here, do you?"

George shook his head. "I don't think so. No one knew we were here, right? Besides, who'd want to do that?"

Fred didn't have an answer for that. "Okay, well first things first we need to keep everyone calm. And whatever we do, we can't let anyone…"

"Hey, maybe we should just go through the trapdoor."

"…go further," he finished.

"We're all going to die, aren't we," George said.

"No way. We'll be fine. It's just a sleeping Cerberus. And it can't follow us through anyway, can it."

They exchanged a look saying that neither of them were the least bit optimistic about the situation, but they couldn't betray any sign of weakness or fear in front of the first years. Nope. Time to be Gryffindors.

"So, if this is an obstacle course of some kind, what's at the end?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, the Philosopher's Stone that Headmaster Dumbledore has been hiding here all year," Ivy said nonchalantly. Everyone else, Fred most definitely included, turned to stare at her.

"The what?"

"The Philosopher's Stone. Apparently, it was made by Nicholas Flamel, and he's like six hundred years old or something, and it was in Gringotts but someone tried to steal it so it was brought here and there are probably some obstacles between here and there in case anyone were to come try to steal it." Ivy apparently did not understand why they were all taken aback by that.

"How do you know all of that?" Draco demanded.

Ivy shrugged. "Just little bits here and there. Didn't really put it together until just now actually, but that might be why the door locked. Make it so anyone who tries to steal it can't get back out."

"But, we're not trying to steal it, are we?" Neville did not seem to be completely assured of their intentions.

"Of course not. But maybe someone else was. Anyway, should we go see what else there is? Maybe there's a way out on the other end."

As reluctant as Fred was to follow Ivy's suggestion on this particular matter, a glance at George showed that they were in agreement. There wasn't really another way to go.

Down the trapdoor, it would have to be.

"Just relax."

"I'm trying."

"Well try harder!"

"This would be a lot easier if this plant wasn't trying to kill me right now."

"You know, Professor Sprout did say that you can kill devil's snare with fire. Maybe we should…"

"Don't kill it. You can't hurt it." Draco was seriously questioning Longbottom's life priorities right now.

"Oh come on. Lumos," he said. The twins quickly followed his example, proving that they were good for something at least. A moment later they had all dropped down onto the ground below.

"Do you think Professor Sprout would give us any extra credit?"

Draco groaned. This was not how he wanted to spend a Monday afternoon.

Ivy watched all the keys flying around. They looked so funny like that. She wondered what else could be given little sings to fly around. Maybe she could see about giving Tiger…

"Well?" She looked to see everyone eyeing her expectantly.

"Um, yeah?"

"Are you going to…" Draco gestured to the keys.

"Oh, right. Which one do we need?"

Hermione pointed to an old looking key floating far above.

"Thanks." Ivy drew her wand and brought the key to her. Seeing everyone's looks she quirked her head and said, "What?"

"You have got to teach me that spell," Hermione said after a moment.

"What spell?"

"The one that you just… You know what? Never mind. Come on," Draco said, dragging her along with the key to the next door.

Neville needed to remember to say no. So much could be avoided if he just remembered to say something in time. Like this. First, a three headed hellhound that could have easily torn them apart, then a deadly plant that they had wanted to burn, then… Well, actually the keys weren't so bad. But this? He had dealt with this on an almost daily basis for over two months, and now he was dealing with it again, except this time the chess set was huge and possibly out to destroy them all.

He sighed, watching Ron and Draco continue their fight over who should play the chess game. A slight movement caught his eye.

"Um, guys? GUYS," he said a little louder. Or more like shouted. Either way it got everyone's attention.

"What is it," Fred asked.

Neville pointed to Ivy, who was now on the other side of the chessboard.

"Oh, well that looks easier," Fred said, before making his way in the same direction, only to be stopped by a massive chess piece carrying a very realistic looking sword. Realistic in the fact that yes that would probably kill you.

"Okay, maybe not. Hey Ivy," Fred soured across. "How'd you get over there?"

"Oh, I just made the pieces stop moving."

"She just…" George rubbed a hand over his face. "Little help here then?"

Ron was happy to be safe across the chessboard, even if he would have liked to test his skills on such a large set…

His musings were interrupted by a terrible smell that matched a terrible sight. On the ground lay a dead mountain troll. Or at least he really hoped it was dead.

Realizing that he was the only one in the group who had never encountered a mountain troll, he decided the best approach was to try to appear brave and not scared out of his mind like he was really feeling.

"Is it dead?" Hermione asked quietly.

Fred rushed to reassure her that it was indeed.

"That's good," Ivy said. "Because I didn't bring Tiger with me this time."

"That's it?"

Hermione tried to placate the irate blond to no avail.

"This is supposed to stop someone from stealing an object that Gringotts couldn't protect and this is it?"

"Well, to be fair, logic isn't really a strong point amongst wizards…"

Malfoy either didn't hear her or didn't care. He was mad at the apparent simplicity of the riddle and the overall "challenge" and he was not willing to be pacified.

"Well, maybe it's a really hard riddle…"

Malfoy gave her an exasperated look. "No. It's not. I bet you already have it all figured out, don't you."

Hermione shifted nervously. She did, but that hadn't exactly been the point she was trying to make…

Ivy took the potion and stepped towards the black flames. She wasn't sure why she had said she ought to be the one to go through, yet here she was. She had the feeling she was reaching the end. What awaited her at the end? And how was she supposed to get the others out?

She stepped through the flames, and then through yet another door. After taking a look around her eyes landed on a person she definitely did not expect to see.

"What are you doing here?"