Tested In Fire

Dedicated to those who have not lost interest. My love and thanks to all of you.

Chapter 18: The Ivy Room

Professor Dumbledore sat in his chair and reread the notice a half a dozen times. Elizabeth had been his student, and towards the end of her life, her organization had been extremely helpful to himself and to the Order. Now he had to break the news of her death to Sirius, a task he was not looking forward to.

He stood as quickly as he could- his old bones didn't work quite the way they used to. Fawkes hummed with concern.

"It's nothing, old friend. Just a cold."

Fawkes whistled.

"I know, I know. Sirius will be here soon, and then I will rest."

Fawkes seemed satisfied with that.

"I don't know quite how I ended up with such a busy-body for a bird."

Fawkes puffed out his chest and tilted his head, as if to say, "You know perfectly well how you ended up with me, and it's your own fault." Dumbledore made his way stiffly towards Fawkes and began to stroke his chest feathers. The phoenix closed his eyes and began to sing a reassuring song.

After a few moments, Dumbledore moved his hand. The song had restored him, however temporarily, and he was grateful.

"Thank you."

Fawkes nodded and gave a low whistle.

There was a knock on the door, and Dumbledore called out, "Come in."

"You wanted to see me, Professor Dumbledore?"

"Yes, Professor Black. Come in and have a seat."

Under other circumstances, Dumbledore would have found it amusing that Sirius was still nervous being in his office, as if he were going to get in trouble.

"I have a class to get ready for tomorrow..."

"Have a seat, Sirius," Dumbledore restated firmly.

"I guess it still makes me nervous to be in here," Sirius said, embarrassed.

Dumbledore smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Sirius."

"Something wrong, Professor?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Sirius, we lost Elizabeth Jones last night. When you knew her, her name was Scardon."

Sirius's face crumpled, then rearranged itself into a mask of stone.

"How?"

"She was a Death Eater." Dumbledore ignored Sirius's gasp of protest and continued, "But she wasn't going to be satisfied with that. She and two others started playing double games."

"Double games?"

"Selling information."

"Damn."

"Sirius, she wasn't the girl you used to know." Dumbledore could almost hear the desperation in his voice, reminding Sirius to stay sane, stay with him. He hoped that this would motivate Sirius, no matter how cold hearted that sounded.

"In school..." Sirius broke off. "I have to go."

"Sirius, I beg of you, take tomorrow off."

Sirius stood and twirled. "Do I have a choice?"

"Yes. But in the state you're in now, what use would you be to your pupils?"

"Bah," Sirius growled. "I don't want Snape teaching my class, or some other bloke that doesn't know what they're doing. Just- let me. I can't do nothing."

"That's the way you've always been."

"Right then," Sirius turned to leave again.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Loss, hell. We were going to get married."

The door to Dumbledore's office shut with a bang.

Fawkes hooted. "Rest, I know," Dumbledore mumbled and promptly fell asleep in his chair.

Two hours later, Professor McGonagall walked in the office.

"Oh, Albus," she muttered. Gently, she shook him awake.

"Wh-What?" Professor Dumbledore stuttered.

"No talking. Off to bed with you. You're working entirely too hard."

"Minerva..."

"Don't Minerva me, Albus. Hogwarts can operate for a few hours without you."

"But-"

"Don't make me get Madam Pince."

Professor Dumbledore sighed and rose to his feet.

"If anything happens..."

"I will let you know."

As he walked out the door, Fawkes crooned a series of notes that sounded suspiciously like 'I told you so'.

**

Harry had disappeared. Ginny bit her lip. It was unnaturally dark in the chamber, and it reminded her of other untoward places.

"Harry?" she called softly and almost ran into him.

"Watch yourself, Gin. There isn't a lot of, um, room in here." Ginny could hear Harry's blush in his voice.

"I noticed," she responded dryly. "There's something funny about this place. There obviously isn't anything here."

"Wait," Harry demanded sharply. "Don't move."

Small tendrils of something were poking at her legs. "It's coming from the wall," she managed to whisper without sounding hysterical.

"I'm going to have a closer look," Harry said and began to move slowly toward the edges of the room.

"Have a closer look at what?"

"Whatever's covering the wall, that's what."

From a pocket in his trousers he drew out the knife that Bill and Charlie had given him for his birthday. He had decided it would be a better prodding tool because he could live without it if it didn't come back home whole. If his wand got snapped, then he'd be out of luck.

"It's ivy, of some sort." Something was prodding the back of his mind, something that he knew he should remember. He looked down at his finger. "Ivy is the Potter symbol. I don't think it being here is just a fluke. It was put here."

Ginny nodded. "It makes sense, but let's not get our hopes up. This particular sort of ivy is resistant to most of the spells you would normally use to cut it." At Harry's odd look, she shrugged. "I like Herbology. Anyway, it looks like it's trying to hide something. Try to cut it, after you cut the bit that's cutting off circulation to my leg."

Harry laughed and did as she told him to. Sawing through the ivy took more time than he wanted it to, but finally the vine gave up.

After that, he began to work on a piece covering the wall. There was an awkward silence.

"What?"

"Are you?" They both spoke at the same time.

"Sorry," Ginny whispered. "You go first."

"No, it's okay. Hey, look at this!"

"What is it?"

"It's growing around something. If I could just get a bit more off, I might be able to tell what," Harry said through gritted teeth.

"A 'P'," Ginny said, confused. "That's what it's growing around."

"The family seal," Harry said almost reverently.

"Now I'm convinced it's guarding something," Ginny stated confidently.

"That's what I thought, but perhaps it's a door."

"Well, it's got to do something," Ginny mused. "Why don't you see if you can't get more of this awful stuff off?"

Harry nodded. "All right. Seems like a good idea to me."

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Something's not right. I can feel it."

"What is it? You've got to tell me more.

"I think it's booby- DUCK!"

A ray of light burst over their heads and incinerated an entire vine of the plant that grew on the walls.

"Thanks for the warning."

"It'll come again, Harry." With a swift tug, Ginny dragged Harry to one side.

This time the energy hit stones that crumpled. Stones fell down on them like rain. Soon, there were more bursts, and Ginny and Harry no longer had time to think.

"Harry, there has to be a way to block or stop these. We can't take much more," Ginny managed a while later.

"I know. We should have brought Hermione. She would know a spell, or a wand movement, or something..."

Ginny grimaced as a falling rock nearly smashed her. "You know, in retrospect, I think we could have waited to find this place until we found her."

"No, the sooner we work this puzzle out, the better," Harry said, and ducked his head.

Just then, Harry saw another beam heading straight for Ginny.

"Ginny! Move!"

When she stood still, Harry jumped in front of her and waited for the pain.

**

"I can't find Harry or Ginny anywhere!" Hermione shouted as she pushed open the door of the Divination classroom and went on through to Anna's private quarters. "I've looked everywhere, and the only clue I've got is this- oh."

A slow blush crept over Hermione's cheeks as she took in her Professors in varied states of undress, clinging very tightly to one another.

"Oh dear. Um," she started. "I'm going to- leave."

Anna and Remus pulled away from each other sheepishly.

"Hullo, Hermione," Anna grinned, finding this too amusing, considering the circumstances. They'd just been getting dressed anyway.

Hermione's cheeks really caught on fire, and she backed slowly out of the door and shut it firmly behind her.

A short time later, Remus and Anna reappeared to find Hermione studying a book, apparently very interested. Her finger moved to trace her place, and Anna could see her mouth moving.

"What do you need, Hermione?" Remus asked, irritated.

Hermione jumped and dropped the book, then bent hastily to pick it up again.

"Harry and Ginny are gone. They left me a note, but I don't know what to do about it."

"What does it say?" Remus asked.

"It says they've gone to Filch's office."

"What for?"

" 'To fetch something that the flower wrote' is what they said, but I have no clue what that means, nor how they're going to manage to get into Filch's office."

"I doubt Filch's office is their destination," Remus said and pushed open the door, heading out down the corridor.

"James and Lily's room!" Anna gasped and took off after him.

"What?" Hermione gasped. "Wait, not so fast. I don't understand. What's going on?"

"When James and Lily wanted some privacy they would disappear into this room. It wasn't on the map. James made sure of it. It was next to Filch's office, or so we think. I don't know how Harry would know about that, though."

"Sirius gave him 'Headboy Diaries' for his birthday, remember?" Anna said, after she'd thought about it for a moment.

Remus nodded. "That was probably James's personal copy. They left everything to Harry, with Sirius as the executor of the estate until Harry came of age."

Hermione shook her head. "Why next to Filch's office?"

Remus chuckled. "Filch is smart, no doubt about that, but he's not brilliant. James was, and Lily was too. Filch was so concerned with these imaginary grandiose plans that he thought we were cooking up that he forgot to look for them in the most obvious place. Right in plain sight."

Hermione found herself grinning at Remus's tone. He might be a Professor now, but that didn't mean that Remus...didn't appreciate the brilliance of the four former mischief makers.

There was just one more point that needed to be cleared up in Hermione's mind. "What happened to the room when James and Lily left school?"

Remus shrugged. "I don't really know."

"Lily didn't tell me what they planned to do. She was pretty close-mouthed by the end of seventh year, though. Voldemort had started taking over by that time, and they suspected that they would eventually be a target."

"In all likelihood, though, they probably shut it up, made it inaccessible to people," Remus mused.

"I remember," Anna thought aloud, "that they spent a great deal of time in there just before you all left."

Remus stopped momentarily. "Perhaps- Lily left something there. But how would Harry and Ginny know to look there...?"

Anna frowned. "Ginny is a Seer, you know."

"But that does not make her infallible," Remus countered. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"I never said that it made her infallible, I'm just saying that it would make things easier for them should things get messy. And, I don't have any remarkably bad feelings about this."

Hermione blew out her breath. "Well, I don't want to rely on anyone's feelings. I want to find Harry and Ginny and work out what they're up to. If they couldn't wait until they found me, it's obviously something important. The sooner we find them, the better."

They ran a while longer and suddenly Remus stopped at a door that Hermione had never noticed before.

"This wasn't here yesterday," she breathed.

Anna looked it over, and her hands stroked the stone around it. "It's the original stone," she concluded. "Logically, there's no way it could have not been here yesterday."

"Then again, logic doesn't always necessarily apply to magic," Remus said with an appreciative grin.

"It would take a strong piece of magic to make it disappear and then reappear randomly, and then even stronger to make it appear for only certain people," Hermione voiced.

"Not to mention keeping a strong dark wizard from being able to make it reappear," Remus agreed.

Anna ran a hand through her hair. "So we agree that we're dealing with a strong magic here. What else do we know?"

Hermione twisted the knob. "Well, we know it's locked."

Remus and Anna chuckled. Hermione shot them a look.

"I fail to see the humor in the situation. Here, listen at the door."

Remus pressed his ear to the door and heard the faint sound of rocks hitting a stone floor. "Something's not right."

Anna joined him and listened intently. "Oh Merlin. Harry! Ginny!"

"Let me try," Remus said and pulled at the door with all of his strength.

"I revise my earlier statement," Hermione said after squinting at the door for a moment. "It's not locked, it's only sealed."

"Just sealed?" Remus nearly hollered, then took a deep breath. "I think that your books have given you no idea of how much strength a sealing spell has. I shudder to think. Not to mention the number of spells for this purpose that James knew off of the top of his head. If he researched at all, then we've got a very slim chance of breaking this charm. We'd better start now if we want a chance at being able to help them."

**

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