The Touch Of Prometheus

Chapter 12 - Rats!

Harry, Ron and Hermione were trying to remain concealed, so that they would not attract anybody's attention. Harry was hiding his Invisibility Cloak under his robes. They were in the Gryffindor common room trying to figure out what should they do to get out of the castle without being noticed. All the students had been absolutely prohibited to leave their Houses, which made them stuck in their common rooms, far away from the two passageways that would make it possible for them to run away. The sun was slowly setting behind the mountains. Then, Hermione decided to put her plan into action. She stood up from her armchair and furtively hexed Neville's hot chocolate mug (sorry, Neville, she thought, thank God you agreed). Immediately, the liquid in the mug exploded and Neville got all wet from hot chocolate (which Hermione wisely chilled so then it would do not Neville any harm).

Professor McGonagall promptly showed up, "But what...? Longbottom, how can you possibly destroy so many things? Come with me, I'll take you to the Hospital Wing, so Madam Pomfrey will make sure you didn't get hurt."

Quickly, Harry, who had hid himself under his Invisibility Cloak, while everybody was concerned for Neville, followed them, passing through the portrait hole. Moments later, he saw the teacher walk back to her office, then he waited for Neville to go back. About ten minutes later, Neville passed before Harry, who thanked him in a whisper, and opened the portrait hole again. Hermione and Ron left just in time for Harry to cast the cloak on them and prevent the Fat Lady from noticing they had gone out.

"What are we going to do now?" asked Ron, "Which passageway will we use?"

"Whopping Willow's seems the best," said Harry, "there might be a teacher or Filch around the other passageway. Thanks for casting your loveliness at Neville to make him help us, Hermione..."

"Let's go, Harry."

Step by step, they left the castle under James Potter's Invisibility Cloak, as they had done many times before (deja vú, thought Harry again). They passed before Hagrid, who was guarding the castle from outside and got slowly near the Whopping Willow, not without searching for a branch (which had to be long enough for activating the willow's knot and stop it's dangerous branches from whomping) before. Ron took one of his arms off the cloak and stretched it out, holding the branch, until he could touch the knot. The willow stopped shaking and the three of them entered quickly through the passageway. As they got rid of the cloak, they ran as fast as they could until they reached the Shrieking Shack.

**

Sirius glared doubtful at the mirrors in the circular room. The door banged behind him and turned also into a mirror. Among the other magical artifacts he knew of, there were the magical mirrors, that were capable of disturbing desire, fears and frustrations, capable of confusing and maddening. He turned around to examine the room and found out there was not mirrors just on the walls, but also on the ceiling and floor. Whoever arranged this room had the intention of making every spell done in this place go back at the person who had conjured it. Think, Sirius, he thought... and found out he simply could not ratiocinate. He looked at one of the mirrors and was amazed at his own glare. But it was not him anymore.

He saw himself at the age of sixteen, dancing in a ball at Hogwarts with Sheeba. He turned around quickly and saw himself in another mirror, inside a cell at Azkaban, mad eyes facing him. He closed his eyes quickly (Think, Sirius). He opened them again and watched the day in which he found Wormtail in an alley. He closed his eyes again (Think! Think! THINK, DAMN!). Then, before he could break his train of thought, he turned into a dog. He opened his eyes again and noticed that all the mirrors were reflecting the same thing at once: a dog. Just then he managed to read an inscription that rounded the room: "EACH MIRROR IS A DOOR, EACH DOOR IS A MIRROR. THE RIGHT DOOR IS YOUR WORST CHOICE." He had to turn back into his human form.

Sirius looked up slowly to each mirror. Each one of them had a scene he remembered: a moment in his childhood when he got Hogwarts's letter, a moment in his teenage, with Sheeba, and other scenes. He looked to the scene in which he found Peter Pettigrew. Maybe that had been his worst choice ever, after all, that was what made him go to Azkaban... then he paid attention to another mirror, the one which showed a very beautiful afternoon, before Lily and James's deaths. He was sitting by the two of them, young Harry was on his lap, playing with his jacket's buttons... he ran at this mirror: that scene was the day when he talked Lily and James into accepting Peter Pettigrew as their Secret Keeper.

**

"All right, Hermione, what are we going to do now, since you do have a plan?" asked Ron inside the Shrieking Shack, at Hogsmeade.

Hermione took Sheeba's home key from her bag and asked Ron and Harry to hold hands with her. She turned the key and in a moment, they were at Sheeba's home.

"Trespassers!" said the voice of Smiley, the house-elf, who was running towards them, fury playing in his big blue eyes.

"Smiley! It's me, Harry."

"Harry? Harry Potter? Oh, yes, forgive imbecile Smiley, Mr Harry Potter, sir. Smiley is a bad elf," Harry was already acquainted with this kind of imprecation; Dobby did this all the time, "Okay, what do you want, gentlemen and lady?" it added.

Harry and Ron looked at Hermione. After all, the plan was hers.

"Smiley," said Hermione, "We need you to show us where the garage is."

**

Sirius entered a corridor with damp walls, just as Azkaban's had been. There were huge strings of black moss, smelling like mildew. He could hardly discern anything right in front of his nose. "Lumos!"

Now he could see thousands of insects - cockroaches, earwigs and moths - walking across the walls. Sirius walked carefully ahead. The corridor headed straight on and he could not see anything that was in front of him. Suddenly, the floor sagged under his feet and he skidded for some minutes until he fell down onto a circular chamber, whose walls were made of stone. The place was really high and the walls were full of holes which were exactly equal to the one he had fallen into it by. The chamber was totally empty but for him, however, he could still feel Wormtail's nasty smell. A strangely dark and cold fog was covering the floor.

A loud squeak echoed in the chamber. Sirius felt the floor quaking. Immediately, from the holes in the walls, hundreds, thousands, millions of dark and fat rats - some were the size of an adult man's forearm - started falling down. They quickly ran towards Sirius, who pointed his wand at the floor and shouted, "Aeros!"

Immediately he levitated about ten feet off the ground, and looked around to see where Wormtail's squeak, which was useless since there were squeaks coming from everywhere, came from.

"Expelliarmus!" said a voice behind the shadows. Sirius's wand flied away from his grip and he fell from the air. He shook for a moment, since he was wearing Sheeba's magical garment, and then he fell on the floor on his back. Before he could do anything, hundreds of rats started covering him up. He could just see a man taking of an Invisibility Cloak somewhere in the room. Then, everything went dark.

Chapter 13 - The Dogtorcycle

"Hermione, are you MAD? Do you really, really think we'll be able to get to London on Sirius's motorcycle?" asked Ron.

He, Harry and Hermione were at Sheeba's home, standing in front of a frightened Smiley, who was definitely resolute not to open the garage for them, for he did not want at all to face the ‘dogtorcycle', as himself called it.

"Ron, we don't have any other choice... if you think it's not going to work, we can go back to Hogwarts and leave everything up to Sheeba... look!" she showed them the ‘Eye of the Tiger', in which there was an image of Sheeba running through a tube.

"Why did she give you this?"

"She trusts on me."

"Oh, sure. And you're going to betray her trust by taking Sirius's motorcycle from here..."

"Hermione," Harry cut Ron off, "how will you be able to drive the motorcycle? Have you ever driven one?"

"No, but I've got a feeling."

"Marvellous. Harry, have you already broken your neck? Hermione's inviting us to do it."

"Listen, the two of you. Come here," Hermione dragged them to a door in a corner and opened it, "I've seen Sheeba put him here earlier," by the gap, they could see inside the room a big wolf sleeping, "that's Professor Lupin. I guess he won't be able to help us out. Snape's missing and Dumbledore's at school. Who could try anything?"

"What about Cho?"

"I've got a feeling that when we solve everything, we'll find her too."

"Hermione, what's going on?" asked Ron suspiciously, "You've never had any feelings, forebodings and so..."

"Okay, I'll tell you. I'm a Sniffer."

"What? A Sniffer?" asked Harry and Ron simultaneously.

"Exactly. That's why Sheeba gave me an ‘Eye of the Tiger' and..." Hermione glanced at the gem and noticed that the reflection had faded out, "God! The reflection has vanished. We need to hurry. Smiley, please, tell me how can we get to the garage."

"No! Dogtorcycle will kill the three of you. Smiley can't tell, it can't tell."

"Smiley," Hermione looked furious, "I own a key of your Mistress's house and I work with her. I'M DEMANDING!"

The house-elf looked down and said, "All right... Smiley's duty as a house-elf is to serve everybody who its mistress trusts on... take it, lady, garage's key, dogtorcycle's key, roof's key, chains' key..." there was about ten keys, each one of them opened a different padlock. He handed her the keys and hid himself under a table, very scared.

"Hermione, I'm amazed," said Ron teasingly, "As a girl who claims she loves house-elves, you were very harsh to Smiley."

They got into the garage and the vehicle automatically made a noise as if its engines were speeding up. Harry had never seen a motorcycle that huge before. It was really enormous: big and black and silver. Now he understood why Hagrid used it to bring him to Privet Drive when he was a baby. It might be the only vehicle in the world that was proportionate to Hagrid's size. And listening to the roaring sound that came from the motorcycle, he thought that Hagrid would love to have such a vehicle.

"How can Sirius use such a thing?" asked Ron. As it listened the name of its owner, the motorcycle made a loud speeding noise, and this time Harry thought it sounded much like a bark. He looked at Hermione, who was walking around the motorcycle, staring seriously at its two enormous headlights. They switched on and Hermione shut her eyes closed; the vehicle seemed to have growled again.

"Hello," she said, "you're missing your keeper, aren't you?"

The motorcycle sped up and perished various times.

"You also don't like to be chained, do you?"

The vehicle seemed to agree again.

"What about a ride?"

The motorcycle made noises that sounded like the bark of a very excited dog.

"How long do you take to take me to London?"

It honked twice.

"Two hours from here to London?" said Ron, "It can't be true."

The motorcycle started growling again and Hermione shot Ron an angry glance and mouthed, "Don't insult it!"

"See, these boys are Harry and Ron... we're going to set you free, but you have to be quiet, okay? I promise you that when we arrive at London, you'll be able to see Sirius," this made the motorcycle go really out of control. Harry could swear it was drooling.

While they were unlocking the chains that kept the vehicle linked to the floor, Harry asked "How did you know Sirius's motorcycle was a dog?"

"Actually, I thought it could find Sirius by itself. This kind of magical artefact usually is very attached to its owner. When Smiley called it a ‘dogtorcycle', I thought I could try something, and used some of my Truth Sniffer skills to see what it wanted, and it wasn't very difficult. I used to have a dog, and when it was kept chained for a really long time, all it wanted was to run a lot."

Ron had just opened the roof. The motorcycle was seized by only a chain; the back tyre was about three feet away from the floor, running on wheels excitedly. Above them, the full moon was shining brightly in the sky. Something popped into Harry's mind and he asked the motorcycle, "Could you take us to Sirius? He's in London."

The vehicle made a deep and mighty roar that sounded like a ‘yes'.

"Hold on!" shouted Harry. He unlocked the last padlock and the motorcycle darted as a bullet, upright, heading to the sky. They could not help but screamed. When they got really high (many clouds later), it sped up and turned right, as a jet. It flew above Hogsmeade, roaring very loud and heading to London.