academic curiosity

*

The stones danced around whimsically and tiny spurts of pink sprinkles shot out here and there.

"Tres Magical!" Dale commented, approvingly. They other three agreed and watched as the blocks settled and a narrow outline of a port hole or a very small doorway was made. However there was no handle or means of opening it.

Dale was crouched closest to it and was about to knock when voices came tumbling down one of the sets of stairs towards them.

"Oh, snap!" Ada hissed pointing up at the long shadows that were preceding Professor Slughorn´s ambitious assistant, Glint and Professor McGonagall.

"Let's get outta here!" Lily shot up and dragged Ada behind her. "This door is only about two feet tall so no one is likely to see it for now!"

Dale looked back at it reluctantly. "What if it´s the Chamber of Secrets?"

"Oh! Not that old hogwash story again!" Lily snapped, feeling as if he should know better as he had nearly bit Ada's head off for telling the silly ghost to them in the first place.

"We should at least put up a blockade!" Dale continued unfazed, he was pulling out a roll of Spell-O Tape.

Lily was saved from having to stop him, because the two professors came into view on the stair.

"That isn't the POINT Erik!" McGonagall was storming angrily at the tall skeletal figure of the Potions assistant. "You tested the class work on a first year! What if it was infused with the incorrect amount of wormwood for Morgaine's sake?"

The two adult figures walked around them impatiently without a second glance.

"What do you suppose..." Ada began.

"Leary, I bet. I saw him run into a wall today... Really rather upsetting," Alia answered her.

The student-made drought that Glint had fed Joe was apparently having bad side effects.

"Ooh, now Glint is going to get it!" Dale sighed gleefully, "That mean old harpie is going to get what's coming to him all right!"

"Well, one thing's certain. I bet that was a negative on that Potions advancement!" Ada replied.

Lily spent the following couple of days either avoiding James Potter and lying prettily to him about the granite gargoyle eye ball. She didn't know what was behind that secret door but she knew that Potter and his friends would never fully appreciate whatever it was. Whether it be harmless, or dangerous.

Of course he had noticed that the gargoyle had it's eye back in it's creepy old head, but Lily had no intention of sharing any information that came her way and this decision was accepted well by both Ada and Dale. Alia had lost interest in the matter entirely as the dungeon humidity had a bad effect on her hair and wrinkled her robes. "Plus it stinks," she explained to Lily, crinkling her nose.

"This is going to be very, very bad," Dale predicted as they passed the gargoyle on their way to Potions. They had not had Glint instruct them since they had overheard McGonagall tell him off for giving the drought of living death to poor Joe. Since then it had been confirmed that Dumbledore had denied his request for advancement in first year Potions studies. Professor Slughorn, their primary instructor on the subject had not given his backing to the plan either, no doubt because he had no warm feelings to his assistant taking over first year Potions.

"What if he blames all Gryffindors because McGonagall is the head of our house?!" Ada moaned.

"To be sure he will!" Lily muttered as they approached the door of the dungeon and heard the evil cackling of Glint bellowing on the other side of the door.

" ...And so, that's what happened when the hippogriff walked into the bar!" Glint finished his joke and most the class was chuckling merrily. Lily, Dale, Joe and Severus were markedly not amused with this turn in events. To Severus' disdain and Dale's horror Glint had taken the first year class in a new direction. This direction involved him sitting cross-legged on top of his desk and `rapping´ with his class. He had turned the first forty minutes into standup comedy. Apparently he had taken McGonagall's lecture to heart, in the most terrible way imaginable.

Joe blinked wearily at the stone walls, paying even less attention than usual.

Severus was beating his head against the table where he sat by himself.

Lily scooted over next to him.

"Snape... We have to do something!" she hissed.

He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. He studied her with narrowed eyes for a moment then turned to face Glint's desk.

"He's drinking that coffee there. If someone were to temporarily switch the contents of the mug and that jar of essence of Shrivelfig behind him we would be out of here before he can get to the next punch line!" Severus said this quickly as if he had already been conspiring a plan to end this torture.

"Right!" Lily whispered and slid forward a few rows. Glint was playfully teasing Potter's cowlick with the rest of the class when he picked up his mug, tasted it and then frowned.

*

Lily and her friends took it upon themselves to offer to retrieve Madam Pomfrey as the rest of the class hovered around their teacher with troubled faces.

He was still on top of the desk, but the size of a garden gnome, and twice as surly. He was already issuing detentions in a tiny voice,waving his weenie little fists in fury.

"That was classic!" Dale sighed as they entered the damp corridor outside class.

Lily nodded but felt a little queasy. She had just poisoned a Hogwarts teacher! Would she be expelled? Only if she was caught...

"Hey, now would be a right perfect time to investigate our rabbit hole!" Dale continued speaking gaily. They stood around the small archway and the cut shape of the door.

"What are you lot looking at?" A voice came up from behind them. To their dismay three Slytherin classmates were joining their queue around the secret door.

Osman Shodwick leaned down and when he saw it smiled wickedly.

"We've found ourselves a secret passage boys!" He rudely shoved past Lily and Dale. Ada was like a rock and didn't budge under his swipe so he stood awkwardly next to her.

"What's it go to, then?" he asked leering at Ada.

"Probably the kitchens, Evans here eats like a infernal pig," Eddie Carmichael remarked lazily.

"I beg your pardon?!" Lily shouted at him, hands on hips.

"Why don't you three carry on and go inform the Headmaster that Glint has been shrunk?" the third Slytherin, Abraham Canard slipped his arm around Lily's shoulders.

"YUCK!" She, Ada and Dale screamed at the same time as she pushed him away.

"And FURTHER MORE!" Lily screamed at him whipping out her wand angrily, "We'll have to report a few more knockouts if you don't ooze your way back to class this instant!!!"

The three Slytherin boys paused, looking at the secret door then at her wand and back again.

"HEY! Evans? Mac Fusty?" James Potter suddenly called.

He was followed into the room by his friends Sirius, Peter and Remus.

Potter eyed the Slytherins with disdain.

"Oh, good! Potter, why don't you show these snakes back to class? They seem to have forgotten the way!" Ada rolled her eyes and crossed her arms impatiently.

Potter took a step toward Osman but just then Eddie blurted, "They've got a secret door!"

James looked from him to Lily and then the sculpture with it's two eyes. "I thought you said nothing happened!" he cried.

"Nothing did happen!" Lily lied.

"Then what's this were all standing around?" he asked.

Everyone stared at the small outline of a door for a few moments.

"How does it open?" Eddie asked Lily. With this question he promoted her to Gatekeeper and everyone in turn began asking questions. Lily gave a slightly panicked look to Dale and Ada and began her web of lies.

"You uh... Knock, uh, first. Then it'll uh... Well, actually..."

James obediently leaned forward and rapped politely on the stones. It made a surprisingly hollow sound and everyone except Ada, Dale and Lily smiled expectantly.

Dale raised his eyebrows at Lily and she shrugged, completely bewildered. The Slytherins rubbed their hands greedily and the Gryffindors all extended one foot forward to get inside before their opponents. After a few moments of abortive silence, Lily was about to speak to make up some new lie when someone interrupted her. A bellowing but eerily low and demonic voice spoke from above their heads:

"ENTER... IF YOU MAY..."

Lily turned and looked over her shoulder at the gargoyle. She swore it hadn't been grinning like that before....

"Right-o!" Sirius skipped ahead of them all and approached the door. Lily and Dale exchanged long sideways glances. What sort of fool jumped for such a sinister and omniscient voice?

"WHAT IS YOUR NAME?" was the voice´s demonic inquiry for Sirius.

He looked back at the others and grinned foppishly. "Sirius Black, at your service my dear talking door!"

"YOU MAY... NOT ENTER. NEXT!" The gargoyle called. There was more than a few laughs at Sirius' expense as he sportingly moved aside for James to approach.

"WHAT IS YOUR TITLE?" The gargoyle asked James.

He shrugged and said, "Hogwarts student and Citizen of the British Magical Realm?"

"NEXT!" The sculpture hissed impatiently.

Suddenly Remus was pushed forward.

"I don't think this is a good...." Remus began, but then the voice rasped:

"WHAT CREATURE ARE YOU?"

Remus stood stricken staring at the floor for a long time. Lily recognized a unpracticed liar when she saw one, but didn't understand why he felt the need to make up an answer to such an easy question. Maybe it's like a philosophical question? she thought, watching James, Sirius and Peter fidget nervously in sympathy.

"I'm a... Human," he sighed.

Suddenly the stones shook and with a flash of pink and blue sparks Remus was sucked into the wall.

Everyone exchanged mystified glances.

"What the devil?" Osman hissed, kicking the door. Suddenly he was pulled forward by an invisible force towards the door.

"ARE YOU PURE OF BLOOD?"

Osman laughed, "Of course I am!" Lily didn't miss the dismissive glance he gave her after he made this reply.

She laughed the loudest when the voice hissed back, "NEXT!"

He trudged off back to class as Sirius and Peter pointed and laughed at him heartily. "Stupid bloody prat!" Peter was near tears.

"Yeah, did he see the look he gave Evans?" Sirius drawled.

"Not all the pure blood in the world could help him out-hex you!" Dale added.

"Aw shucks," she replied.

"Any ways! My turn!" Abraham Canard pushed past the heartwarming scene and stepped up to the plate ambitiously. He seemed not to remember that his friend had been rudely discarded only a few seconds earlier.

"ARE YOU PURE OF HEART?" it asked him and Lily wasn't the only one who snorted. Abraham was Hogwarts most prodigious and infamous liar. Quite an accomplishment to achieve in only his first two months at school. Besides that and being Slytherin he was naturally inept at recognizing the feelings of others. Whatever the requirements for a pure heart, Canard likely didn't have one.

"Sure do!" he chuckled foolishly despite the mounting pile of evidence against him. He was gone in thirty seconds with pink and blue sparkles.

"Better hurry... We can't leave Lupin alone with that menace, pure-hearted or what have you!" Sirius nudged Dale forward.

Before Dale could protest the sculpture had it's question.

"DO YOU HAVE FAITH?"

"Gee, couldn't think up anything more broad?" Dale returned.

"NEXT!" The gargoyle called.

"Ask me your question, fiend!" Ada called jumping forward.

"DO YOU HAVE FEAR?"

"COURSE NOT, CERTAINLY NOT OF YOU! DUSTY OL HEAP OF BRICKS-" She disappeared with a slightly less pink and sparkly flash.

"There she goes!" Dale yelled, clapping as if at a dog show or golf tournament.

"Way to go, Mac Fusty! Show `em how it's done!"

"Would you like to go next, or shall I?" Eddie asked Lily. She looked with a troubled expression at the floor. She would be expelled by this evening for Glint, but first she would need to explain to McGonagall exactly how two of her house had vanished off the face of the planet.

"Guess it's me then." Eddie stepped up.

"DO YOU HAVE DOUBT?"

Eddie appeared to be thinking. Finally he supplied, " ...Yes. Lots of them."

"NEXT."

He shrugged and mouthed an, `Oh, well!´ to Lily and stood away.

The boys looked at her, but Peter cluelessly stepped ahead of her and awaited his question.

"DO YOU HAVE TRUST?"

His eyes bulged slightly at the effort to think what his question meant. His answer seemed to be an awkward plunge. "Yes!?"

He was gone with puff of dust and Lily found herself following him up.

Maybe if I disappear the sympathy will overwhelm my poisoning the Potions master? she wondered.

"DO YOU HAVE LOVE? the voice asked her.

She cracked up nervously but no one else thought it was very funny. What did it mean, `love'? Like a boyfriend? Wasn't that a little personal for a school gargoyle to be asking a student? Or maybe love for family members? She should tell the truth... But then something clicked in her brain.

"NO!" She lied. She shut her eyes and when she opened them again she was knee deep in warm water.

"Gross!"

"Yeah, tell us about it why don't you!" Abraham shouted at her. Everyone before her had found ancient, slimy school desks to perch on. Lily waded to what looked to be a giant glass display case covered in grime and a thick layer of moss.

She studied the artefacts around her and the room. Everything looked so old...

"I've never seen anything quite like this before." Lily sighed with pleasure despite the uncomfortable atmosphere of the room. It was flooded by some mishap of plumbing at least knee-deep and in other places much deeper as the room was built a bit like an amphitheater on one side.

She rubbed the glass of the display case and peered into the hole she had made. She was face to face with a human skeleton. It seemed to her to be frowning with disapproval.

"What now, Lily?" Ada asked woefully. She was clinging comically on top a drifting podium.

"Yes. Why don't you explain what exactly the benefits of coming down here were?" Abraham asked Lily pointedly.

She rolled and said, "Maybe this was a question you should have asked yourself before you tried to get in?"

"So basically, you have no clue what this room is?" Remus asked her.

"Of course not. Why would I?"

"If anything I would think you two would have something on this chamber here!" Ada replied dryly, looking from Peter to Remus whose desks were floating in a circle around her towards the deeper end of the room.

Lily waded closer to follow the conversation. Abraham used a chair to row his table closer as well.

"Why would you think that?" Peter asked innocently.

"You've been trying to get inside here way before we were!" Ada shouted.

"And it was a really stupid idea then, too," Remus remarked.

"Look, now. There must be some reason this old dungeon was hidden away." Abraham spoke surprisingly rational.

"Maybe that's the remains of the first Potions Master" Ada pointed to the glass case, "and someone, probably Salazar Slytherin killed him and hid the evidence away here and then-" She was cut off by Abraham.

"That would make a really nice novel. No really, my daffy sister would read it even. But I think that," he gestured to the glass case, "over there is for lessons. My great-great-Grams had her skull preserved for educational purposes and I inherited it-"

"Ew!" Ada screamed splashing black water at him in protest.

"Besides!" Remus added with a hint of the same grin Abraham was wearing at Ada's expense. "What was with the questions to get inside of here?"

Lily answered, "We lied. All of us lied our answers."

They all looked at each other and then away with sheepish grins.

"Yeah..." Ada smiled.

"So how old do you suppose this dungeon is?" Lily asked. A hour glass floated by.

"My guess? Ada isn't too far off really. Salazar could have actually taught in this room!" Remus suggested.

"Or maybe it was Helga Hufflepuff!" Abraham shouted at him. "Why is it always Slytherins who are associated with poisons and death!"

"Um, because your a bunch of stinkin´ lyin´ no good blood thirsty thieves?" Ada offered and Peter laughed appreciatively.

"Oh... I see, as opposed to you?" Canard drawled angrily. Lily saw where this was going. "Your the only one in this room who has Voldemort's autograph!" He continued.

Ada clenched her fists. "And your point being?!"

"Doesn't he have a movement against the giants and goblins... And werewolves?" Remus asked curiously.

"And vampires!" Peter squeaked suddenly and everyone gave him a funny look.

"Well!" Ada spoke defensively, "All those things aren't human are they? Not to be trusted! I mean is it really okay that the goblins have complete control over all magical money?" She toyed with this idea and Lily sighed.

"We've talked about this before, Ada! The Ministry mints the money... And we put it in trust with the goblins who have never failed to keep it safe."

Abraham sniffed, "Actually, I always have disliked the goblins. Awfully disrespectful to us wizards, my dad always said."

"Well, your dad can shove off," Lily replied. "I never could trust a person or thing that was too friendly."

"Here, here!" Peter exclaimed.

Remus spoke up testily, "So let me get this straight, Canard. Mac Fusty. You two think it's okay to deny civil rights to all magical creatures?"

"Only the ugly ones!" Ada replied.

Abraham coughed and rolled the wet arms of his robes up to his elbows. "Only the ones who don't know their natural place!"

"That's what I meant!" Ada added.

"Well, let's say someone, a child, got bit by a vampire..." Remus spoke slowly and deliberately, setting up a scenario. "Would it be their fault? And would they be less human? What is the natural place for one who is both human and animal?"

Abraham appeared to think about this for a moment but Ada didn't pause, "No it wouldn't be their fault! But would you want that vampire roaming the halls of this school? I mean, that would be dangerous! No one's blaming humans who, by some misfortune, cease to be normal. But we can't exactly accept them into society again, can we? Then more innocent children would be getting bit. No it's best, that all those types are gathered up and put on a deserted island and put out of their misery like my man Voldemort has suggested!"

Lily watched Ada finish her speech and then turned to observe what Remus' reaction would be. He seemed to be skeptical, but had no reply and was silent. Lily agreed with him though and decided to back him up, even if Ada was her friend.

"That's the plainest, stupidest thing I've ever heard. I mean, let's start with your island idea... For Morgaine's sake, girl! You come from the Hebrides!" Peter and Remus both laughed. After a second even Abraham decided this was a entertaining notion.

"Well!" Ada replied, her spirit refusing to be broken. "We have accepted the dragons into our care there! More bleeding danger in one of their breaths than a cart load of hags, vampires and werewolves, lead by six giants!"

Lily smiled and accepted a minor defeat with this point.

"You can accept dragons but not a goblin or a house elf?" Remus muttered.

"A house elf?!" Abraham laughed. "You must be kidding!"

"What are house elves?" Lily asked.

From here the debate took a bad turn and within twenty minutes no one was speaking to each other on amicable terms.

"This is so lame!" Peter shouted at the ceiling, high above their heads.

"I've had enough, Evans! How are you going to get us out of here?"

"Yes, Evans! You figure it out!"

Annoyed, Lily swam away from them all and tapped on the glass display of her skeleton friend.

"Yoo, hoo? Mr. Dead Wizard? Could you explain to us how to get back into the dungeon corridor? You see, were awfully late for Transfiguration and Dumbledore we'll be insulted if he thinks we've skipped the grand feast tonight. So help us, wont you?"

She meant it to be facetious. But when the skeleton raised a bony hand and tapped back at her inside the display she leaped back and cried out in terror.

The other four turned and gave her a look, no one had seen the skeleton move but her apparently.

When it rapped politely against the glass again no one seemed to register it.

Lily wiped away more dust and saw a brass latch at the top of the display lid. She couldn't reach, so she floated a rotten chair over and stood on it and unlatched the top.

The skeleton climbed out of it's display and adjusted a few joints, knocked out a few cob webs between it's toes and legs then dove under the water, disappearing.

Everyone had watched this with disbelief, including Lily. As soon as it went under the surface of the flood water they all shuddered and dragged their hands and feet from the edges of their makeshift rafts. The skeleton emerged on the opposite side of the room under a old painting of a curtain and gilt chair. It stared inside for a moment then poked at the paint for several seconds in a irritating fashion until finally a beautiful woman stumbled into the frame anxiously.

"Well! I see! So we finally have caught a few nasties!" She flicked her dark auburn hair out of her long face and focused on Remus.

"You look like such a sweet boy too... Such a shame!"

"Aren't you that lady from the first floor corridor painting?" Ada asked speculatively. Peter nodded and seemed to think she looked familiar too.

"Well of course I am! I stay in friend's portraits often as it gets ferociously dull down here! But now it seems I have to fulfill my task..."

"Excuse me, Madam? What task is that?" Lily asked nervously. She waded closer to the portrait and the skeleton, which seemed to have fallen asleep upon the shelf under the lovely woman in the frame.

"Oh, well, you must be punished!" She looked at all of them with something like pity. "So young! How terrible the times have gotten that mere babies are trying to open the Chamber of Secrets!"

"Chamber of Secrets?!" Everyone screamed at once in reply.

"That thing IS REAL?" Lily shouted as Peter pointed and screamed.

"WHERE?! HERE?! Oh, NO!!!"

"I TOLD YOU ALL!" Ada shouted, although she really had done no such thing.

"Look, were just really dumb, lady! I swear!" Abraham spoke truthfully for once.

"My, my. And children do scream a lot more than they used to do." She looked down at them disapprovingly but then suddenly the skeleton raised a arm and jabbed at her chin and she backed away and shook a finger at it.

"Okay! Okay! So maybe the children have always been quite mad! Godric and I created this trap for the heir of Slytherin. Our intent... Well my intent was to keep the perpetrators locked within this abandoned hall for all time. With every attempt of uncovering the Slytherin monster we would have more prisoners, see. Now we have you as the latest additions. I'm sorry. It seems cruel, but this is the price we must pay to keep the school safe for future generations of witches and wizards. You'll have plenty of time to think things through. I'll pop in of course and visit from time to time. I'll have some of the house elves deposit some food for you every other day through that large unattractive pipe over there!"

They turned and looked for the pipe but couldn't identify it as there were several that had punched through the ceiling.

"Yes, that one with the green goo dripping from it! So, are there any questions or will you let me get back to my card game? Violet is probably sneaking a peek at my cards and the Bloody Baron only promised to keep an eye on her for a few minutes."

"I have a question!" Lily cried.

"Oh, I have several!" Remus exclaimed standing up on his desk angrily.

"Yes, ladies first then!" She yawned.

"You can't lock students up here! Can't you at least take our appeal to the Head Master?"

"My dear, I can and have locked many up here. Or did you think those were just old quills cracking under your shoes in the water?"

Lily froze and looked at the skeleton. It shrugged apologetically.

She immediately flung herself towards the closest person, Ada, and the two girls hung onto the top of the swinging podium for dear life.

"This is mad!" Peter shouted at the lady.

"To answer your question," she continued, "I will indeed bring your appeal to Dumbledore. To tell you the truth not one person has landed in here since Phineas was Head Master and I must convey my own relief... He was a lot less, sympathetic, shall we say. And I am rather sick of watching people waste away in here!"

"I can't believe it! These were students!" Lily shouted, red-faced with fury, gesturing wildly to the water.

"Oh, well... Actually, I haven't got a single student until you five. Mostly staff or unauthorized visitors that were intelligent enough to trigger the authorizing doors manned by the gargoyle, but thick enough to stumble in here. Well, I'll bring word back from Dumbledore! Ta! Ta!"

Lily clung to Ada's robes and saw that Peter was close to tears.

"C'mon, Dumbledore won´t let us rot down here! We weren't even trying to find the bloody Chamber of Secrets!" Lily tried to encourage the others.

"Speak for yourself!" Peter cried, stumbling then falling into the deep water. He started to scream and thrash until Abraham reached down and pulled him out of it like a little drenched muskrat.

"What does that mean, Pettigrew?" he asked.

"We were trying to find it," Remus admitted.

"Why?" Ada asked.

"It was Potter's idea. He got it into his head for us to find it and then go tell so they could get rid of it. Not what your thinking, I'm sure, Mac Fusty."

"Oh, so we have Potter to thank for this do we?" Abraham sneered.

"Well, yes. But you'll have to go ahead and blame me too because I helped him," Remus defended, crossing his arms stubbornly.

"Okay, then!" Abraham hurled something across the room but Remus caught it and threw it into the water below.

"It was against my better judgment!" Remus added.

"Good reflexes," Ada commented.

"Let's please not throw things gentlemen!" Lily exclaimed suddenly. "Dumbledore will let us out soon, and the less we have to explain the better. So let's not kill one another." She knew though, that it could take a while for Rowena´s portrait to attract attention...

"Shut up! Bossy little Mudblood," Abraham shouted at Lily and pushed Peter off the table. But Peter was surprisingly quick and swung around so Canard went belly flopping into the foul sea, where at the bottom many anonymous remains were laid to rest. His head bobbed at the surface and he turned to glare at Lily.

Abraham floundered to a lopsided desk and pushed himself on to it, dripping evil black water.

Lily took out her wand and he eyed it angrily. He had dropped his own somewhere in the water apparently.

She smirked at him and then waved her wand.

Suddenly the surface of the water began to bubble violently. All their perches began to rock dangerously.

"What was that?!" Remus asked Lily in horror. Peter screamed as a figure came out of the water.

The skeleton under the empty portrait clapped, making a unpleasant clacking noise as several of it's kindred, though considerably less clean and in tact rose from the water with slimy moldy rags dripping off their yellow stick arms and ribs.

Lily's skeleton battalion stood before her in the glowing silver mist from her wand.

"What the HELL?" Ada muttered, astounded.

Remus blinked and looked at Lily with disbelief. Peter had passed out, luckily on top of the desk so no one had to brave the water to rescue him.

Abraham clutched the ends of his desk and turned very pale.

"Aciem portal!" She shouted at the conjured skeleton crew.

They dutifully marched towards Abraham and he began to scream. He dove into the water and swam into the corner desperately. But they seemed not to pay him any attention as they stormed past him and began climbing the walls and until they reached a shape of a small door that was high on the wall. It was where they had all fallen from upon entering this dungeon.

The skeletons tore viciously at the stones. Despite their brittle appearance something of the charm Lily had bestowed seemed to make them unbreakable and very strong. The cracked bones were quickly taking chunks out of the stone wall like so many street drills.

A light, not the ethereal candle light of their prison, but of the outside corridor glowed through the empty spaces of the rotted pieces of the skeleton´s clothing. When a a three foot hole was made they slid down the wall eerily and then stood in the water below as if taking ten. One imitated Peter´s fainting and the others chuckled silently. Another skeleton stuck it's thumbs into it's skull and wiggled it's fingers at Abraham. He yelped and dove under the water.

Lily was collapsed from exhaustion, but looked up and saw a long white beard fall into the hole the skeletons had made, followed by a kind, old face. Despite there being a impressive hole torn into his school Headmaster Dumbledore was smiling congenially down at the students and the skeletons.

The welcome voice of reason and good humor could be heard by the students below saying, "Ah! I'm afraid Madam Ravenclaw's portrait was not `full of it' as you so aptly put it Professor Bond!"

*

"So what then?"

"Well, then Dumbledore came and had us pulled out. I think he said something about the skeletons going on the road with an act. He provided the instruments as compensation for being locked up in the castle for so bloody long... Funny really!"

"Funny, Miss Evans? How so?" McGonagall narrowed her eyes, perfectly unamused. "After Professor Glint got himself poisoned, you should have gone straight to the infirmary or to a staff member! I'm incapable of understanding why one so usually exemplary and rule-abiding as yourself saw it fit to abandon your class and fly into some misadventure... You do realize that we were very worried... These are not the best times for strange disappearances, Evans. I'm afraid this calls for serious punishment. With your help I'm going to demonstrate why this sort of mischief shouldn't occur at Hogwarts."

Lily nodded, "Am I to be expelled?"

"No. Even worse. A week of detention will do it, with Professor Glint. You will be helping him with his class lessons. I imagine he will have quite a few jokes to run by you..." Lily could detect a faint smile on the Professor's face but it quickly disappeared and Lily was dismissed with a pat on the shoulder. "It's good to see you safe. You all gave us quite a scare for only being gone a few hours. Really!"

"What did you get?" Ada asked pouncing on Lily as she walked around the corner.

"Oh, a week of pure hell. You?"

"I got a weeks worth detention with Filch! Cleaning the school trophies and picking moss out of the cracks in the floor of the new dungeon class room."

"That's disgusting."

"Well, I must agree!" Dale suddenly jumped out at them gleefully. It had only been a few hours, but both girls flew around and hugged him passionately.

"No!" he cried beating them off with an earnest expression of horror.

"You didn't let me finish! I was going to say some witty thing or other about you two looking as bad as you stink! Now your dungeon funk has transferred on to me! It's true what my mum says. If you choose a bad crowd at school they'll bring you right down with them!"