The Touch Of Prometheus

CHAPTER 14 – AS HANSEL AND GRETEL

Sirius's conscience faded in very slowly. A roaring and moving substance reached his neck, and he sometimes felt something pinching him. He could hear noises and smell something disgusting and sour.

Rats. Sirius opened his eyes and realized he was drowning in some sort of pool that was full of rats. The rats' weight prevented him from moving. He wasn't at the circular chamber anymore, but in a large, damp place that was illuminated by a weird reddish light. It was a large subterranean cave, as high as a cathedral.

He heard a disgusting sort of laughter and saw Wormtail's shot and broad shadow, motionless at the edge of the hole.

"Whoa, isn't it arrogant Mr. Sirius Unpleasant Black who fell into my trap for the second time?"

"Peter... you're so different from the last time I saw you. If it's coming correctly back to my mind, you begged me not to kill you, then."

"And things change, don't they, Sirius? The saddest thing is that you're gonna die as a turncoat. Not redeemed, dirty, forgotten and hated as an idle dog. Isn't it ironic? I, vile, mediocre Wormtail, am alive and own a repute that I don't deserve.... you, who was always so noble and full of admirers all over Hogwarts, is considered as loathsome as the worst of the murderers."

"When I get out of here," said Sirius, "I won't repeat my mistakes... I hope your corpse will be enough to show everybody who the scoundrel were... to top it all off having this mark and this new arm. Is this a gift from your master?"

"My master honours those who are loyal to him. Where is your dear mentor?"

"Wormtail, I'd like to know... all these pomp isn't here just because of me, aren't I right? You have never been worried about it, you were always way much more worried about running away from me..."

"Actually, what matters," said Wormtail, "are those little friends of mine who are keeping you company. They're the key."

"You look so happy between your peers."

"Sirius, those rats you despise are going to destroy London."

"What?" asked Sirius mockingly, "Are they going to nibble at it until it falls?"

"It's taken me a year to improve a perfect plague to kill Muggles. And I've put it on these rats. Each one of them is able to suck the vital energy of ten Muggles... I'll slacken them in London as soon as I get rid of you and I'll summon my master to see the destruction I'm going to arouse... but before it all, I'll catch Harry Potter. Pity you won't be here to see it, Sirius..."

"I always thought Voldemort was the most insane guy ever and now I see you're worse than him..."

"In some hours when my rats have sucked all your energy, your irony will no longer exist, Sirius."

"I don't feel anything, you asshole. There must be something wrong about your rats."

"Since wizards' energy are different from Muggles', the rats take more time to kill them. I shall give them a helping hand... Cru..." Wormtail couldn't finish the word, for a large white shape emerged from the shadows and jumped onto him. Before he could even think of how it could have happened, the paw of an enormous Siberian tiger was against his throat.

The tiger turned into Sheeba, who was making pressure against his throat. In her right hand, her wand was just above Wormtail's chest, right on his heart.

"Oh, Wormtail, you don't have a clue of how is it good to seize your neck and be aware that you have a Dementor's Kiss in your destiny..."

"Er... Sheeba..." he gulped, "get off me, I didn't mean to..."

"Oh, yeah, you meant it... you always wanted to screw up Sirius's life, didn't you? Jealous were you, as you always were jealous of James too, eh? You were jealous even of Remus... you would give anything to change places with him, be a werewolf, wouldn't you? You always wanted any kind of power, even if it was a curse."

"Sheeba, be merciful, please."

"How do I get Sirius out of that place?"

"Be calm, I'll tell you."

At this very moment, Sirius, who had been laughing until then, saw a hooded shape getting closer to Sheeba's back. It was the other Death Eater.

"Sheeba, look behind you!"

There wasn't enough time. Before Sheeba could do anything, the Death Eater disarmed her and took off his mask, revealing his face.

The face of Severus Snape.

**

Harry, Ron and Hermione saw lights in the horizon. It was really cold up there. Ron felt reluctantly excited with the sensation of his body rubbing against Hermione's... Hermione, however, was trying not to take cognizance of the times she felt the shivers when Ron's breath lightly heated up her neck... Harry, who was in the driver's place, couldn't think of anything for much time... it had happened some times before... he was fighting against the idea of something bad happening to Cho Chang. He was afraid she was in much danger.

The motorcycle was getting closer to London really quickly. The thought of getting in trouble if Muggle people saw them using the Dogtorcycle popped into Harry's mind and, with Hermione's help, he covered what could be covered with his Invisibility Cloak. It didn't get all hidden, but it was better than nothing. They passed before the Big Ben and could see what time it was: ten o'clock in the evening.

"Right, can you smell Sirius?" Harry asked the vehicle.

The motorcycle roared in response and dove, making Hermione close her eyes firmly and grasp Ron's arm, which passed past her waist until getting to Harry, tightly. Nothing prepared them to what came next: the motorcycle landed on a crowded street and sped up, running between the cars as a bullet, but it seemed they turned aside as it passed. Harry had already seen it somewhere else. Oh, yeah, it was like being at the Knightbus, but even faster. Deja vù again.

The Dogtorcycle entered a subway station, apparently not caring that the stairs didn't fit motorcycles (7 feet motorcycles, no way)... they got surprised that nothing happened to the vehicle; everything just turned aside. "This definitely won't come out well," said a terrified Ron Weasley as the motorcycle entered a tunnel.

But the Dogtorcycle uplifted and started rolling on just a wheel, for its passengers'despair; they were screaming, really afraid. When they could see lights in the end of the tunnel, their screams got even louder and sounded more terrified, and the fact that a moment before it would be impossible not to clash against the subway, the motorcycle entered a lateral tunnel that sprung up as it in magic, didn't make them feel much better, it continued rolling even faster until it skidded into a crumbling in the wall. The three of them fell onto the floor. Hermione fainted. Ron leaned out onto her, and she muttered, "I'm okay, but I think I'm going to throw up."

"Only you?" said Ron, "Guess what Harry's doing this very moment?"

After some minutes, they stood up and looked at the Dogtorcycle, who sped up and perished various times.

"Okay then, you mongrel," said Ron, "You brought us to a blind alley."

"It's not a blind alley," Hermione replied, "I saw Sheeba coming here, in the Eye of the Tiger... it's a barrier as Platform 9 ¾... after that, the image faded away."

"So let's get in here now," said Harry as he ran towards the barrier and passed through it. Ron and Hermione did the same right next him.

Hermione noticed that her own Eye of the Tiger also turned off on its own. When they got right in front of a door, there was a message: Follow the Instructions.

"Sheeba left this note, I guess," said Harry, "she probably knew we would come for them."

They went downstairs and find similar notes that had things such as Impedimenta written on them, and they repeated them and disarmed hexes that they sometimes they hadn't even seen. They got to the place with the two corridors very quickly. There was a note, in which:

"FIRST GO RIGHT – ACT UNAFFECTEDLY INSIDE THE GREEN DOOR AND GET OUT BY THE CLOSET'S DOOR"

"Great," said Ron cheerfully, "She left us instructions."

"As it in Hansel and Gretel's story," said Harry, grinning.

"What story?"

"Never mind," said Harry, as he remembered that in Hansel and Gretel, the witch was evil.

They got into the green door and there was a Muggle man cleaning the room.

"Hey, you're going to ruin my cleaning! Isn't it enough that a madman left a bomb here this afternoon?"

"It's all right," said Harry, "We just want to get into the closet."

The man watched as they got into the closet and shook his head, "Hey, you cannot enter..." and he opened the door and realised the three teenagers had simply vanished.

Chapter 15 – The two Snapes

They left by the orange door, where there was a flying note: "GO TO THE YELLOW DOOR". They ran to the yellow door, and before entering it, they found another note: "LET HERMIONE MAKE THE CHOICE." And they finally got into the mirror room, where each one of them saw different images. Hermione looked at the inscription: "EACH DOOR IS A MIRROR, EACH MIRROR IS A DOOR. DO YOU KNOW YOURSELF? THE RIGHT CHOICE IS THE THING YOU'RE MOST AFRAID OF." She didn't know it, but just as the images, each one of them read a different sentence. Hermione tried to fight against the sensation of dizziness in her mind. Then, she saw just in front of herself, Professor McGonagall saying she wasn't good enough, that she had been reproved... it was the same thing she had seen two years before, when she faced a boggart... in a deeper reflection, she thought it wasn't the thing she was most afraid of now... she looked and saw herself between Harry and Ron, who were saying"You made the wrong choice, Hermione". She opened this door quickly, just in time to pull Ron (who had just been bewitched by a veela he had seen in the mirror) and Harry inside it with her.

"Lumos," said the three of them at the same time (just after Harry brought Ron back to reality slapping him lightly on the face). The walls got lighted and Hermione screamed as she saw the amount of insects. Ron did the same as an enormous spider passed past his foot. A luminous note appeared just in front of them: "COUNT TEN TILES ON THE FLOOR AND SKIP THE ELEVENTH. KEEP AWAY FROM THE TRAP SIRIUS GOT INTO." They counted and jumped and another note emerged: "IF YOU GOT HERE, RUN." And so they did, and also heard something really big getting closer to them. A flying arrow pointed at a niche in the right, where the three of them jumped into and right after this, an enormous rock passed rolling. They were in the middle of a winding staircase, that headed both upstairs and downstairs. There wasn't any note.

"Hey," said Ron, "do you think something happened to the note?"

"Or to Sheeba," replied Harry, "What are we going to do now? The best thing we can do is to separate: the two of you go upstairs and I'll go downstairs."

"No way, Harry," said Hermione, "There might be a trap both upstairs or downstairs. Let's go upstairs together, the three of us, and then we go downstairs."

They climbed five loops of the stairs and were already running out of breath when they saw a massive door with a burdensome padlock.

"What might be there?" asked Ron, "Maybe it's an exit door?"

"There must be someone imprisoned there..." said Hermione, knocking the door, "Is somebody there?"

"It's me!" said a voice, inside the door, "Snape! Who's outside?"

"Is Cho Chang there with you?" asked Harry.

"Who?" replied the voice. Hermione grasped Harry's arm, she had heard a noise. Somebody had started climbing the stairs, "Whoever is it outside, I'm imprisoned here, alone and without my wand. He took it away from me."

"He? Who?" the steps were getting louder.

"Somebody else, with my looks, but it's not me. Try to open the padlock, the key's here," he said and a key appeared under the door.

"Don't do it!" a voice echoed from downstairs, it was Snape's unmistakable voice, "he's an impostor!"

"What are we going to do now, Hermione?" whispered Ron, "Which one of them is the real Snape?"

"I don't know! I can't see the eyes of anyone of them, how am I supposed to know?"

"Who's upstairs?", Snape number two repeated.

"How did you get the key being held inside the door?" asked Harry.

"Potter? Is it you? Get me out of here or I'll put you in Detention for making inconvenient questions."

"There's only one way to discover," said Hermione, "Harry, open the door."

Snape 2's steps got even louder as he kept going upstairs, now even more quickly. Harry put the key into the padlock and Snape 2 appeared at the last casting of stairs and Hermione saw his eyes, "Don't open!"

Too late. Somebody, wearing Snape's exact appearance, flung the door open, "Fools."

"Expelliarmus!" shouted the true Snape from where he was. The trio ducked aside just in time to slip from the white light that disarmed the fake Snape, who jumped onto Hermione and seized her.

"I'm going to strangle you, you disgusting know-it-all."

"Impedimenta," shouted Ron, whose wand almost touched fake Snape's chest, who ended up falling at the other side of the room, just next to his own wand.

He grabbed his wand and pointed it to Ron, "Avada Kedavra!"

"No!" yelled Hermione, holding Ron, but nothing happened. Fake Snape ran through a door behind him and the real Snape reached them at the very moment.

"You're lucky that one was incompetent," he said.

Harry immediately remembered the class he had about the lethal curse Avada Kedavra, and how the teacher said it was necessary much magic behind the wand to conjure it.

"I managed to be away from them until now, but I believe they got hold of Black and Sheeba. We have to go after him."

"Who are they, professor?"

"One of them is that bastard, Pettigrew. The other one I really don't know," said Snape, "I just know he uses much Polyjuice potion. He was wearing the looks of a student when I started following him, and now he's wearing my appearance."

They walked towards the door where fake Snape disappeared, but at this very moment, an invisible someone's voice said behind them, "Expelliarmus!" their wands flew towards the opposite door, "Atonos!" a purple flame crossed the room and knocked all of them down, making them lose their senses.

At the door, Wormtail removed his Invisibility Cloak and started laughing as a madman.

Many miles away from there, a nurse witch yelled. The patient Sibyll Trelawney, who had gotten into the hospital unconscious, started changing her looks slowly. Some minutes later, she changed completely. Now she was a seventeen year old girl, with black hair and almond shaped eyes.

She had turned into Cho Chang.

To Be Continued...

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