The Prophecy

Actually, Neville sounded so petrified he might've wanted to be stopped, but he came along, and nobody tried to halt him. Dobby led them into the kitchen, in which about twenty house elves were staring and following, all around hundreds of pots and pans, and cupboards, tables, and barrels full of intriguing food stuffs. Dobby led them to a small fitted oak corner cupboard at the far side of the room. He opened the door to reveal stacks of plates and kitchenware. He quickly moved them out of the way to reveal a little elf sized hole. Dobby could stand up comfortably in it, and it was wide enough for about three elves to move in, like a little elf motorway. It was actually quite nice. It had wooden panelled walls, with little globes spaced evenly along the passage that were lighting it, and a very worn rustic floor of oak floorboards. It was big enough for Merlin, Liselle and Lily to crawl through.

"Thanks Dobby!" said Merlin.

Merlin, Liselle, Lily, Neville, the two Gryffindors, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, clambered into the tunnel and set off. The rest of the sizeable crowd stayed put. It might not even be safe at Hogwarts, and their security was at least partially assured where they were. They did, however, remain ready to crawl through back to Hogwarts should their location become dangerous.

It took quite a while, it must have been at least fifteen minutes, but eventually, they reached a little oak door. Merlin opened it, and the eight crawled out into the Hogwarts kitchen. Merlin had been impressed by the size of the kitchen in the party room, but this was unbelievable, a vast room, that seemed at least as big as the Hogwarts Great Hall.

There were about ten levels, mostly situated around the edge of the room, going all the way up to the ceiling. It was bustling with elves, hundreds of elves, all moving around, some looking at the group that had just emerged from the door. They surrounded huge agas, cupboards, cauldrons, massive barrels full of vegetables, flours, sugar, sweets. Huge canisters full of liquids, containers of herbs. Huge bookcase-like shelves, which had little staircases up them, adorned the walls filled with all different varieties of fantastic foods, jam jars that took two elves to carry, huge cakes. Bottles in neatly stacked layers. Huge tables and cauldrons at elf level around which crowds of elves were gathered. Huge paddling pool sized sinks, some of which were sunken into the ground, were surrounded by busy elves washing and cleaning dishes and plates and glasses.

Huge vessels of wine and drinks stood around the room, some of which were being topped up by several elves. Thousands of pots and pans and cooking implements were hung from the ceiling around the tables at different levels with little ladders round them for them to be taken down. A huge cake that needed about fifteen elves to carry, orange with fantastic decorations and moving flowers made out of icing adorning it, was being stored into a huge pantry.

The eight, headed by Merlin moved to side door (the elves seemed to know they were coming and so didn't bother them too much, although they were offered cakes and biscuits and tea and drinks by several large groups.)

They continued out the door through a dark passageway. Abruptly, Filch ran past in a corridor ahead. He seemed not to notice them, too busy to get where he was going.

Suddenly, a white glow emerged from the wall beside them, Nearly Headless Nick. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost, terrified. He floated towards them with speed.

"You lot, what on earth are you doing here? It isn't safe, you should be in the Great Hall with all the other students. Good grief, come with me quickly," he exclaimed.

"No sir Nicholas," Merlin replied firmly.

"We're looking for something. Dumbledore, if he's ok, will understand. Tell him the Prophecy is being fulfilled and we are going to the Crypt of The Ancients to get the artefacts. What's happened, where are the teachers? Some were with us in Hogsmeade but they just disappeared," said Merlin hastily.

"Your guess is as good as mine good boy. There are about sixteen teachers missing, including Dumbledore. Some of them heard of the trouble and came to find you. When I saw you, I presumed they were successful. There are only a handful of teachers in the school. They've rounded all the students into the Great Hall and they've sent an urgent escorted owl to the Ministry of Magic. They've recalled the Hogwarts Express, everyone's going home," replied Nearly Headless Nick urgently.

"Right, just tell Dumbledore if you see him. He might have been captured, but somehow, I don't think he has. We've got to go Sir Nicholas, there are still about forty people in Hogsmeade. Tell the teachers to go and get them, say they can ask the house elves, they know a way."

"Very well," said Nearly Headless Nick, slightly surprised and looking worried, he floated off quickly through a wall.

No one knew where they were going apart from Merlin. He kept taking out his wand and casting unusual spells, muttering passwords, taking them down passages they'd never seen. Odd, secret corridors. He continued opening up walls, making certain objects disappear to reveal doorways and passages. They went up hundreds of steps, enough to make them sure they were near the very top of Hogwarts. This was all very surprising, Merlin didn't seem the type to know all this. He was a great student, descendant of Merlin, excellent at Quidditch (although he'd never tried out for the team), he sometimes did this weird thing with Snape, he could sort of shut him up just by looking at him. His past had always been a bit shrouded in mystery, they knew he and his family had had at least one encounter with Voldemort, but as far as they knew, they'd all survived (apart from his uncle, but they'd only just found that out). Like Dumbledore, Merlin had never seemed too frightened of saying Voldemort's name, much to the admiration of everyone else, and he was acquainted with Dumbledore, but Dumbledore always came across as the type of person who'd be friends with anyone if they had the courage to say hello to him, but other than that, Merlin was pretty normal.

After what seemed like a very fascinating twenty minutes of secret passages, some of which looked as if they hadn't been touched for centuries, some of which were lavishly decorated and carpeted, some grand halls they'd never been in. All were totally deserted. They emerged in a smallish room with impressive mahogany doors with brass handles, carpeted with a very pleasant royal blue and elegantly panelled. There was a roaring fire at one side, a high up window at the other showing they were definitely very high up, and a large gold model of a sleeping lion on a grand platform directly in front of them. As soon as they entered the room. The lion (which was bigger than any normal lion), rose to its feet, towering above the group. It was very beautiful, in pure gold, with a huge swishing tail and mane, and ivory teeth. It had rubies for eyes, and looked like it could swallow them all in one gulp into its huge gold stomach if it had wanted to. It stood on all fours on its plinth, looking deadly and aggressive, yet strong and calm, curious and suspicious of its visitors, who, by the expressions on their faces, were also very wary of it, and were very unsure of what Merlin was leading them into, but Merlin looked confident and, like he had done when he was annoyed with Lily, looked bigger than usual.

Merlin went right up to the lion who discreetly bared its powerful ivory teeth. Much to the astonishment and fear of the ten, it assumed a posture as if it was about to attack, but it didn't, but looked down at Merlin, who was now right in front of it, in a superior way and opened its huge mouth. The eight recoiled in fear, a few readying themselves to help Merlin, as it looked suspiciously like it was going to just put its huge jaws over him and eat him whole, but rather, it growled, in a very deep and dangerous, yet calm and prestigious voice,

"You come to seek the Crypt of the Ancients. Before you may enter, you must prove your worth, tell of the password, and state your intention." Its voice boomed and roared round the room, like it was coming from all around them, in its deep, growling yet controlled, growling and oddly calming voice.

"I seek the saviours of the second age, the prophecy of the ancient age. I come to take them from the crypt, as the ancient texts depict."

The lion growled restrainedly, its ruby eyes flashing. Merlin rolled up his sleeve and showed the lion the glowing blue spot on his wrist. The lion growled gently once again, with a very subtle yet approving nod, its eyes still looking very dangerous, the crowd still huddled at the back of the room...

Merlin then began to say some very long words that sounded like a mix between Latin and ancient Wizard tongue. When he'd finished, the lion softened its look, its eyes became much less dangerous and it bowed down like a servant, closing its eyelids quite humbly. It then began to open its mouth, a deafening growling noise filled the room. Its mouth was now becoming unnaturally open, even for its great size. It was strange, the lion's mouth was backing up on its own body. There were looks of disgust and intrigue from the crowd behind them, as the mouth lost its features and gradually morphed into a huge, perfect golden ring, which settled back flat onto the ground, engulfing the lion (or more the lion and its mouth had become the opening), leaving a large circular opening in the middle of the room, rimmed with a huge golden circle. Merlin beckoned to the others to follow, and they came up to him cautiously. The huge golden rim led down to an elegant spiral mahogany staircase with no banister, just flat mahogany stairs, perfectly polished around a huge cylindrical mahogany core, spiralling downwards. They could only see about twenty steps down before the wide stairs spiralled out of view. There were brass trimmings on the walls, but nothing else. The crowd cautiously followed Merlin down the staircase. There were no lights down there, but it was lit like daylight. As the last person entered the hole, there was a morphing sound and the golden seal closed the entrance. Presumably, the lion was now sitting above again. This unnerved several people, worried about how they might get out again, but they didn't say anything.

It seemed like hours that they walked down the staircase, Liselle pointed this out. "Where are we going? When are we going to get there, we've been going down for ages. We must be below the dungeons now."

"No, we haven't been going down for ages," retorted Merlin.

"What? Well it seems like we have to me," she replied.

"What I meant, is that we haven't been going down, we've been going up. It's a trick you see. The staircase goes downwards, but we're actually going up, further into the tower."

Astonished, people began to contemplate this, but said nothing more. After about ten more minutes, they arrived in another, circular room, but this one was predominantly stone and marble. As Merlin had said, they had been going up, as there was a very high up set of windows, showing glimpses of the sky.

There was a floating turquoise globe, about the size of a global map of the world. It seemed to be made out of some vibrant bluey-green jewel, perfectly shaped into a sphere. Around it was an elegant mahogany counter that was suspended from the ceiling by five impressive curving brass beams, at the centre of which was a gold edged, perfectly polished, glass skylight indicating that they were definitely at the top of some sort of domed tower. The circular counter was countersunk with twelve perfectly oval, brass edged and diamond encrusted wells, eleven of which contained beautiful, perfect amber ovids, about the size of someone's palm. The insides were swirling gently in elegant amber patterns, like a particularly beautiful evening sky's clouds were captured in them. Merlin went and picked up one of them, meaning there were now two gaps, and beckoned everyone over.

"Right, now on my mark, we all have to touch the gem in the middle ok?"

Everyone nodded. Merlin slipped the amber ovoid in his pocket and counted down, "Three, two, one, now."

They all touched the blue globe, and there was a sudden whooshing sound. The globe remained fairly constant, but it was dissolving fast as the background around them swirled away at great speed, like they were spinning very fast through hundreds of landscapes. The globe was a Portkey.

They emerged in a truly vast room, but before they could take it all in, they realised something was wrong. Now, only Merlin, Lily, Neville and Liselle were there, the others had gone.

"Oh no, where are they? Are they ok?" said Lily, shocked. Neville seemed to concur (although he was still recovering from the encounter with the golden lion.)

"Yes, they're ok, they're probably in the Great Hall with everyone else," replied Merlin. Liselle and Lily didn't quite seem to understand why, but trusted Merlin when he said they were ok.

The room they were in was like a vault, full of fascinating things. Gold, odd contraptions, buzzing and whirring. Things were flying around above them. The room extended out of view. It was truly huge, and well lit, although that was probably from the glow and reflection of all the gold objects in the huge vault. There were massive shelves full of items, hundreds of doors obviously leading to other rooms in huge circular areas. Towering marble walls dwarfed the four, and huge oak and mahogany beams that looked as if they couldn't have come from any normal tree, rimmed the room. There were huge shelves, full of glistening gold objects, platinum, silver, jewel encrusted things, some artefacts that looked familiar, like swords or goblets maps pieces of armour, and some things that looked completely out of place and useless, like a little old wooden box, a tattered trunk, and old cauldron with a hole in the bottom. They passed countless wonders, some of which seemed to think they were just as fascinating, a huge domed library-like room containing over six levels with strong, gold trimmed ladders connecting them, holding thousands of neatly arranged wands. Some fine and elegant, all different sizes, some old and broken. They passed several more vast rooms containing what had to be millions of similarly fantastic things, and un-fantastic looking things like an old black bike (although it was floating). There were glowing things, dark looking things, things that stared back, endless towers of books. They passed one small room, like the wand room, but containing level-upon-domed level of tiny mahogany draws, obviously containing other amazing creations and items. Eventually, Merlin guided them into a small carpeted room, separated from the others by means of a large oak door with a brass knocker. The door had just opened and let him in. The room was like a reception room, but with no seats. There was a large mahogany door (that had no handle) opposite the entrance door. Other than that, the only fantastic thing in the room was its elegant form and decor, and a chandelier that seemed to have not candles, but miniature stars as lights, that were orbited by little planets, which were in turn, orbited by tiny moons. The entrance door closed behind them promptly, much to Neville's dismay, but this all seemed like something that had to be done to Merlin. In the brief seconds that it took Merlin to go to the next door, the bewildered, and utterly overwhelmed four had time to contemplate what wonders they had just seen, as they had been too overcome to ask Merlin where they were.

They had seen enough wonders to occupy a million life times, and that was just in the few areas they had darted past, they were sure there was a thousand, thousand times more to this place then what they had seen. Merlin looked as if he'd been here before though.

"What is this place? Where are we? Have you been here before?" asked a breathless Liselle.

"We are in the Crypt of the Ancients, although not everything here's that ancient. I can't tell you where we are, but I couldn't do even if I wanted to because I don't know. I've never been here before, but I've read about it ancient scriptures."

That response, if anything, had only added to the wonder of the place. The three vaguely recorded Merlin saying something, and out of the corners of their fascinated eyes (which were still darting around even this tiny room), saw him tap his wand on the door.

"We're in, come with me," he said.

They all followed. They entered a similarly proportioned room, although it was slightly darker. The walls were lined with bookcases and cupboards and glass cases, containing very elegant and incredibly well crafted items. One of which, on a tiny mahogany table, seemed to be a globe of the Earth. It had a magnifier attached to it, with a little dial on the side. Liselle went up to it. The globe even showed the moving clouds in the sky, and the tides of the sea. She looked into the magnifier and twiddled the dial. The magnifier slowly moved in towards the Earth, going through the clouds, past a flock of birds and into a city. By looking out of the magnifier onto the globe and looking at the land, she could tell this was England. She was looking at a city in England! Moving closer in, the houses and roofs began to take shape, she could see a river nearby, and the moving buses, even tiny moving people, and right down to the cracks in the pavement. She zoomed out again, and gently turned another dial on the magnifier, moving the image left, and zooming out to get a better view. It was London, she was watching a live image of London! She could see Diagon Alley, this globe obviously showed areas magically concealed from Muggles too. She could see that there were also a few other dials, including one labelled 'time'. Fascinated, she realised she could see back in time. But before she could do anything else, Merlin had called them all over to a set of draws and a small cupboard risen on a cylindrical podium in the centre of the room. He put his wand in a little tube-shaped opening, and the cupboard swung open. Merlin's face was lit up with a dazzling blue glow. He pulled something, very gently, out of the cupboard. The item was set in a little wooden gap lined with purple satin and velvet, with symbols and runes engraved all over it in gold. The symbols seemed to be moving. It was a golden snitch, like those used for Quidditch, but it was far different from any other snitch. It contained a perfect spherical turquoise blue gem in the middle, surrounded by a rim of gold engraved symbols, and beautiful patterns. The snitch had taken out its delicate wings and was flapping, but wrapped them away as Merlin put the snitch in his pocket. He took his wand out of the opening, and put it in another one, the doors opened to reveal the hilt of a grand gold and silver sword. Merlin pulled out the sword. It was glowing gold, and encrusted with fantastic jewels. He swished it from side to side, a gold sparkling mist swept from it. He muttered something, and stowed the sword in his robes. The four looked on, intrigued.

"Oh, if you were wondering why the others didn't come here, it's because the globe only admitted those who were the truest Gryffindors of the group. So be proud of yourselves."

They had nearly forgotten about the globe back in the marble room at the top of the tower but were fascinated nonetheless by this nugget of information. Neville just looked confused and utterly flabbergasted.

Merlin patted his chest where the sword was. "This is much more than a sword, it will endow the one who holds it with incredible powers, but only if that holder is an heir of Merlin. Otherwise, it's just a normal sword," he explained. He the patted the pocket holding the snitch. "This is the Eye of Merlin. It is an orb possessed of even greater power and mystery. Nobody knows exactly what it does, but I have read about some of its basic powers in Merlin's texts. I can't tell you just now though. It is placed within this snitch so it may defend itself, move away from danger, and not rouse suspicion This particular room in the crypt is Merlin's vault. It contains some of his greatest creations. These are the ones we need though." Merlin had a note of finality in his voice. "Now we've got what we need, we have to go."

There were mixed feelings about this. This was a truly fascinating place and seemingly very safe, and no-one really wanted to leave, but there were no objections nonetheless. Merlin went up to a circular counter, much like the one in the marble room in the tower. It had twelve edifices, one of which already contained a swirling amber ovoid.

"Now, you have to hold this ovoid with me ok?" Merlin put the cloudy ovoid into the space next to the already filled one. There was a flash of light beneath it. "Alright, now."

They all touched the ovoid. It was obviously another Portkey. They felt themselves being hurled through the air and spinning through landscapes until, slightly dizzy, they landed in a pleasant circular room, containing portraits of several sleeping people. There was a tall man with a long silver beard standing in the middle of the room, almost as if he was expecting them. Dumbledore.

"Professor, you're ok !" Lily exclaimed, it looked as if she was going to lurch forward and hug him. But Lily thought better of it.

"I trust you have the orb and sword," Dumbledore said pleasantly to Merlin.

"Yes professor." Merlin handed Dumbledore the sword and the little snitch.

"I suppose you're wondering what has happened?" said Dumbledore calmly. Everyone seemed to agree, apart from Merlin who, by the look on his face, already knew.

"That was a diversion. We have known for some time now that Voldemort was planning his first strike at Hogsmeade. We were able to evacuate most of the inhabitants in time, and a little more-" Merlin nodded, no-one else knew what this meant though, "-whilst the some of our strongest wizards were fighting those Death Eaters. As I can see, you have already guessed the truth. That was not myself, nor Mr Potter, nor, in fact, any real wizards involved in the fighting. We wanted to provide a target too tempting for Voldemort's servants to resist. What better way than bringing him the one who had been his previous downfall, and me. Those were Magimorphs, given the appearance of myself, Mr Potter and the others, but were not. They are created using a mixture of complex alchemy, potions and incredibly powerful magic. Hopefully, Voldemort will try to kill them all. They cannot speak and suffer no pain- they are just images, nothing more. So don't worry," he added, spotting Lily, Neville and Liselle's horrified faces. "When he tries that, all the magic used to create them will move against evil and attack Voldemort, draining him of some of his powers. That should weaken him. If he doesn't do it within a few hours, they will simply dissolve into nothingness."

Merlin, Liselle, Lily and Neville seemed to agree that this was a good plan.

"Now, I must thank you for your help, and ask you to go down to the Great Hall, your party friends from Hogsmeade have also been safely retrieved. The danger is still great, and so you will be taken to your homes on the Hogwarts Express with Ministry escort."

Dumbledore moved to the door of his office, opened it, and smiled as they filed down to the Great Hall.

"Wait a minute," said Liselle. "Didn't you say only an heir of Merlin can use that sword you gave Dumbledore properly? What's he supposed to do with it?"

Merlin looked at Liselle and smiled slightly. Liselle seemed to understand. They continued to the Great Hall where there was still a great air of panic as people were separated into their houses.

It wouldn't be long before more mysterious, exciting, and deadly things were happening... What a party this was turning out to be!