Draco Verdant

Chapter Four- The Dungeons of the Deep

"Auta i lomë!" [The night is passing.]

-Tolkien

Harry woke up crying. He watched, cross-eyed, as the tears dripped down his cheek, along his nose, and fell into his mouth. The salty taste of tears had always been familiar to him, although he had learned to never cry when anyone else was around, at least until yesterday. He could remember, at the age of five, having cried in front of the Dursleys. Dudley had mocked him, Uncle Vernon had asked him how he dared to cry when they were being so good to him despite his rudeness, and Aunt Petunia had added an occasional rude remark. Since then, he had never given way to anger or sadness in his features, while others were present, but for years he had fallen asleep and woken up to the taste of salt in his mouth. He wondered how he could have forgotten that so quickly.

The sky outside had not yet turned light. Harry had been driven out of sleep by his sorrow, and knew that there was no point in remaining in bed. Besides- an exciting thought came to his mind- there would be Quidditch tryouts this morning! Saturday was a glorious day to begin the school year with, he reflected. He slipped from his bed and reached blindly for a robe and his glasses. It would be a good idea to wear trousers beneath his robe, of course, since he would be up in the air that morning. He looked through his luggage and discovered that Draco's leather trousers had found their way in there. He pushed them out of the way and, finding some ratty jeans, decided on those.

In the Great Hall, he found a few others already up for breakfast. Madam Hooch sat at the High Table, and various Quidditch players were beginning to assemble at their respective house tables. There was Cho Chang at the Ravenclaw table, along with Jonathan Kerridge, a Beater, who was captain now that Roger Davies had left. Cho had been offered the position, but had turned it down. At the Slytherin table, Draco sat captivating the attention of several of the Slytherins. Harry had a terrible suspicion that Malfoy might be the new Slytherin captain. At Hufflepuff table sat a miserable set of players. Jessie Bellen was trying to get everyone to cheer up and eat well, from which Harry deduced that she was the captain for Hufflepuff. She played Chaser, and often had helped the two other Chasers stick rigidly to strategy when they had been taken by surprise during a game. Harry reflected that the teams looked tough this year, with captains that would be likely to run practises as tight as a ship. He hoped fervently that he would be able to keep up with them. He didn't know the first thing about captaining a team.

A whole flood of Gryffindors approached the table and crowded around Harry. Those already on the team were showering advice on those who were trying out. Fred and George were passing a second-year some completely meaningless tips, enjoying contradicting themselves. All three Creeveys were lined up across from Harry. Ron and Ginny sat right next to him on one side, and Hermione took the other, informing him that she could get some good reading done while the others auditioned. Angelina looked alone without Alicia and Katie. Harry had been used to thinking of the three as a unit. The team had always been the same since he had joined it first year, and last year the Triwizard Tournament had helped him ignore the differences.

Charlie Weasley entered the Great Hall a few minutes after the surge of Gryffindors. He looked from the High Table to where the Quidditch hopefuls sat, brimming with fervent wishes for success, gathered around Harry. With a grin, Charlie jogged over to the Gryffindor table.

"Hello," he greeted them cheerfully. Everyone smiled and greeted him back, scooting over to make room for the much-admired young assistant professor. "Mind if I watch your tryouts, Harry?"

"No," said Harry. He was beginning to feel that this was about to be the most embarrassing day of his life. He would prove in front of half the school that he was only a boy with a fancy broomstick and no actual talent for strategy. Why had he ever accepted the captainship?

"My first tryouts went horribly," Charlie informed the table, sitting down and piling his plate randomly with various breakfast meats. He had to wait a minute for a plate of sausages to fill, as the house-elves had only just woken a few minutes before the Quidditch captains. "The captain was the Seeker, and the only open position was as Beater. She had us do a scrimmage and I dropped my bat and caught the Snitch instead. She was about to kick me off the pitch when her co-captain ran me through a few drills and suggested that I become the Seeker and she switch to Beater. She was furious. I caught the Snitch every game that year. Didn't get us the Cup, though- Ravenclaw kept on winning with more points." Everyone was hanging on Charlie's words. The realisation that the Hogwarts Quidditch legend was an immensely friendly person had doubly confirmed their hero-worship for him.

Everyone was eating so awkwardly that Harry finally had to direct them. He made Ron stop shoveling sausages down his throat three at a time, instructed the Creeveys that they needed to eat something if they didn't want to faint, and took away the fifteenth of Fred's cinnamon buns. Telling people what to do felt odd to him; he was just repeating what Oliver had always done. Harry himself had only had a glass of orange juice and crumbs of something he hadn't even looked at.

After a while Madam Hooch stood up and asked everyone who would be involved in the tryouts to move to the pitch. As they all walked down, Colin made Harry explain the principles of Quidditch to his sister, Annie. When Harry realised she didn't even know how to fly, he backed up and began to explain how brooms worked. He felt terribly worried, aware of Charlie listening and assessing his knowledge of the game. At the pitch, the houses separated and each claimed a different area of the pitch. Gryffindor got the far end, next to Slytherin.

"Er, right," said Harry, racking his brains for something to do, "there's one open position as Keeper and two Chasers. Every player has to be prepared to deal with every aspect of the game," he quoted from a speech of Oliver's. "We can start out dodging Bludgers. Fred and George will bat them at you, and I want you to duck. If you don't, they'll hit you, and they can break your bones." At least you probably won't get them removed, he thought to himself.

Madam Hooch released a Bludger for Harry, and he sent each auditioner into the air, one by one. Ron ducked the ball, but rammed his broom upward into its path by accident. He spun around a few times before swerving and falling to the ground. He smiled weakly at Harry, knowing he'd lost his chance. Ginny, Seamus, and Colin all managed to move well away from the Bludger. Dennis Creevey declined to go up into the air at the last minute, looking pale with fright. The others were clipped or brushed by the ball. Annie Creevey was the last into the air, and she barely managed to stay on her broomstick. The Bludger came whistling toward her and Harry waited to see what she would do, until he realised that she had frozen. On the sidelines, Charlie breathed in sharply. Harry dashed to the bench and his Firebolt, snatching up the broom and lifting into the air before he had even mounted. He barrelled through the air to the paralyzed girl, dodging the Bludger just as it whistled within inches of Annie. He grabbed her off of her broom and swung swiftly toward the ground. Fred flew in to bat the ball away before it could follow.

"That was amazing," Charlie said to Professor McGonagall with awe. "It must have been about a centimeter in front of her, and he snatched her away in an instant. He is human, isn't he?"

"The best Seeker I have ever seen," she replied. "And I still haven't forgiven you for going to study dragons. You could have played for England." Charlie smiled and turned his attention back to Harry's tryouts.

"Er," said Harry, suddenly at a loss for any other exercise to test the Quidditch abilities of the players. "Erm- Quaffle! Nothing too difficult, I just want you to pass this one around, in the air, and then after a while I'll get one of you to try and intercept it." Once everyone had gotten their brooms up, he threw the Quaffle to Ginny, and ducked out of the circle as Ginny threw it to another player. Harry hovered behind Annie and held the tail of her broom in place, hoping that she wouldn't fall. She didn't notice, as she never tried to move to catch the Quaffle. Fortunately for Harry, who had to judge them, the people who threw well were also the people who caught well, making his decisions simple. In particular he noticed Seamus, who caught a very wayward pass from a second-year easily. Ron didn't drop the ball, but didn't catch it very firmly and didn't get to the passes that he couldn't reach just by shifting his broom a little. Ginny caught absolutely everything, but her throws were a little insecure. Colin was good, and so was a sixth-year, the only person older than Harry who was trying out.

"OK, Connor, I want you to move into the middle and snatch the Quaffle while it's in flight. Everyone else, keep the ball away from Connor," he said, indicating a fourth-year boy. Connor was hopeless at this, spinning in all directions trying to keep track of the Quaffle and making himself dizzy and disoriented. The only reason he eventually caught it was that Ginny threw the ball to Annie, who squealed and didn't even try to get it. Connor grabbed it when it bounced off her broom. Ginny became monkey-in-the-middle, even though it had been a perfect throw. Connor passed the Quaffle to Seamus, narrowly out of Ginny's reach, and Seamus threw it beautifully to Ron. Ron tossed it violently towards the sixth-year, but Ginny caught it instantly as it went awry. The game from then on steadily deteriorated, as most of the throwers dropped the ball when they saw someone coming after them, and most of those in the middle couldn't catch it unless one of the inept throwers dropped it. Harry was about to tell them enough when he noticed Malfoy smirking from over where his tryouts appeared to be going perfectly. His players were flying patterns. Harry instantly pointed to three of his players. "We're going to have a scrimmage," he told them. "Ginny, you play Keeper, Seamus and Colin, you play Chasers, for now. The others, I don't want the people who are already on the team playing, so take any position you want. Hey Malfoy!" he shouted out to the Slytherin captain.

"Want me to tell your players how to stay on their brooms, Potter?" Draco called back, flipping upside down and hanging on with his knees. A few of the Gryffindors and Slytherins alike gasped at this amazing feat. Draco's hands rested languidly behind his neck.

"No, I want to see how they cope when people cheat. My auditioners against yours," Harry responded, flipping upside down as well. The effect was slightly ruined as he grabbed his glasses to keep them from falling off.

"You're on," Draco said, with a little twirl as he turned right side up again. Everyone watched to see how Harry would respond.

"No one already on the team can play," Harry told him, with a twirl of his own, letting go of the broom for a minute while he swung himself onto the top. "I'll be watching too."

"Why, do you want your team to lose?" said Draco. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the only Slytherin here who's already on the team. You're losing four good players, and I'm only losing one."

Harry said nothing. He knew that he had three good players in his three new positions, and he wanted to be sure of them. The others, well, maybe he could have some reserves. Or maybe not, seeing how they played. The problem with choosing a Gryffindor team was that there just weren't as many people to choose from. Gryffindor had very few people compared to the other houses. Slytherins were far more common.

Harry watched as Connor took the other Chaser spot, the sixth-year and the second-year (whose names Harry wasn't even sure of) decided to be Beaters, and Ron took the spot as the Seeker. Dennis and Annie had no role, and they and Harry were all perfectly happy with it.

The Slytherin Chasers started off immediately with the Quaffle, racing towards the goal. Their broomsticks showed an amazing speed, but the way the handled them was only average. They wobbled from side to side as they flew. Still, they zoomed toward the goal. Harry was afraid they would hurt Ginny, but at the last minute, she dropped easily off the side of her broom, hanging on with her right hand, and used her left hand to snatch the Quaffle from Blaise Zabini's loose grip. Crabbe, who had planned to knock Ginny off her broom, ran into the hoop with a clang as she swung the Cleansweep back beneath her. Harry noticed that the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had finished and left the field to the Gryffindor-Slytherin game, watching with whispers from the sidelines.

Ginny tossed the Quaffle to Seamus, who caught it even as he zipped towards the other end of the field. The stupefied Slytherin Chasers tried to catch up with him, but even though their brooms were superior, Seamus threw the Quaffle just as they swarmed in around him, and Colin, who had already gotten down the field, caught it and slipped it past the distracted Keeper, instantly ducking back down the pitch to prepare for the next play.

"One for Gryffindor," Harry told Draco, who was sitting near him on the sidelines.

"I don't care," Draco replied, looking very much as if he did.

"Not bad, don't you think?" Harry asked. Draco did not answer, but simply seethed as he directed telepathic insults at the players.

One of the Slytherin Beaters snuck up behind Colin, who was waiting for a maneuver of Seamus' to bring the Quaffle to him. The Beater hung silently in the air for a minute as the spell on the Bludger, based on a magnetic principle, caught on to the fact that there were two players very near each other and swerved to their combined attraction. As the Bludger approached, the Beater fell back and slammed it with his bat into Colin's back, just as the Quaffle came hurtling toward him. Colin managed to keep himself from falling by shrinking in very close to his broom, but the Quaffle fell straight into the waiting hands of Blaise.

Blaise raced down the field as the Gryffindor Beaters chased after her. The sixth-year swooped down around Colin and solidly whacked the Bludger that had hit him toward Blaise. The second-year, in front of Blaise, reached out for the other Bludger and only had to prod it with his bat for it to shoot toward her. Both Bludgers hit her at the same time, the one knocking her broom from between her legs so that she held the broom in front of her, and the other hitting her in the stomach hard enough for her to let go. Madam Hooch caught her as she fell.

"Rough game," commented Harry. Draco fumed.

"Why don't you two save your players getting beat up for the actual game?" Charlie asked, walking up behind the boys. "Do the amount of bruises they have reflect your testosterone levels?" Draco and Harry both looked embarrassed.

"We'll call it off," mumbled Harry.

"What?" Draco said. "But that's impossible! I won't let you win by default. It can't end until someone's caught the Snitch."

"Then we'll call all the other players down, and wait until someone catches it," said Harry evenly.

"Oh, come on. Neither of those two could catch the Snitch if it fell in their hand."

"You're insulting my friend," said Harry. "I suggest you stop that."

"But I insulted my player, too," insisted Draco. "It's all perfectly fair."

"Insults are not about fairness!" cried Harry.

"Calm down, both of you," said Charlie. "I'm going to call your game off whether anyone catches the Snitch or no. And you and your testosterone levels can just leave well enough alone." Harry and Draco glared at each other, but assented.

The players all headed downward when Charlie called for the game to end. They flew over to where Madam Hooch was standing and landed there. She was standing, clipboard in hand, with a bright gleam in her eye.

"The team captains will have two minutes to decide their teams," she announced. "When time is up, they will read their lists aloud to the players."

"I've already decided," drawled Draco with a bored expression.

"I think everyone has, Madam Hooch," Harry added.

"Very well," she said, preparing her clipboard. "We'll start with Gryffindor. The open spots are Keeper, Chaser, and Chaser." Harry's decision had been obvious.

"Keeper- Ginny Weasley," he started. Charlie gave her a thumbs-up. "Chasers- Seamus Finnigan and Colin Creevey." Seamus grinned broadly at Harry, but Colin Creevey jumped about three feet in the air with excitement. His grin stretched behind his ears.

"Really? Really, Harry? Do you mean it? Wow! I always wanted to be a Chaser," he babbled.

"Calm down, Colin," Harry said, smiling a little at the bubbling boy.

"Do you have any alternates, Potter?" asked Madam Hooch, writing in names on her clipboard. Ron, who had been regarding his shoe, looked up hopefully. Harry felt terrible.

"No alternates," he said. Ron's face fell.

"Malfoy?" she asked. "Your positions are Keeper, three Chasers, and two Beaters. Almost a whole new team this year."

"Zabini, Crabbe, and Goyle are the only choices for Chasers," he said. "Then it'll have to be Gilbert and LeVan for Beaters," he continued, indicating two boys with far more muscle than seemed needed. "Keeper can be Barr."

"You don't sound very enthusiastic," commented Madam Hooch. "Are you sure of your choices?"

"They'll be good," said Draco. It sounded very much like a threat.

The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw lineups both looked fairly formidable, continuing their pattern of growing stronger every year since Harry had arrived at Hogwarts. Harry had a feeling he was going to have to train like mad if he wanted to beat them this year. As everyone began to leave the pitch, Harry glanced at Ron. Suddenly he had an idea.

"Madam Hooch?" he asked.

"Yes, Potter?" she replied.

"I was wondering," he said. "We're going to need a new Quidditch announcer, since Lee Jordan's still in hospital. Could it be Ron Weasley?" Ron's face suddenly brightened.

"Yes," said Madam Hooch with an appraising look. "Yes, I think that would be very acceptable."

***

When they entered the castle, they found Aimee waiting for them, lounging against a column and polishing her nails.

"There you are," she said, tucking away the various objects she had for her nails. "Did you know there's an elf in this castle?"

"It's terrible, isn't it?" cried Hermione, pulling an S.P.E.W. badge out of her cloak. Ron slumped to the floor and hid his head in his hands. "Hundreds of house-elves, slaving away while we-"

"I did not mean house-elves," interrupted Aimee. "Of course there are house-elves. I mean there is a real elf in this castle. A wood-elf, I believe, although I could be wrong. I sense it deep beneath the school, probably in the deepest dungeons."

"How d'you know?" Ron asked, looking up.

"I have elven blood," she answered. "My own kind stands out to me like a flame on a hilltop. There is an elf hidden somewhere here, and we must find it."

"How are we going to do that?" asked Harry, glancing at Hermione. This seemed quite sudden to him.

"Come," she replied. "Follow me and I will be able to trace it through the school."

"This is ridiculous," Draco snorted. Harry hadn't expected him to follow, but he had come to greet Aimee. "We're going to tramp through the mucky underground of this ancient castle which could fall on our heads at any minute? I absolutely refuse."

"Good," said Harry. "I doubt you'd be much use anyway." Draco gaped.

"I would so be useful," he muttered, and added something that sounded very much like "probably ruin my hair."

"Ginny," said Ron, turning and addressing his sister, who had followed them from the Quidditch pitch, "you don't have to come if you don't want to."

"I want to come," she insisted, crossing her arms and setting her eyebrows in a position of protest. Then she glanced at Harry and blushed.

Aimee shrugged, indifferent to who came along, and motioned to everyone to follow her. She started down the familiar corridor that led to the Slytherin common room, but passed the entrance to the green and silver dormitories. The paintings on the walls began to get darker and grimier as the passage sloped downward, covered in centuries of untouched dust. I suppose even the house-elves don't come down here, Harry thought. The portraits at the entrance of the hall had been chattering happily, but these dark ones began to mutter cruelly and even to whisper curses, until finally they all fell silent. The six live people passed a tapestry in which an emperor watched with glee as a subject was beheaded, and then a fresco of a bloody battle. Harry paused before a full-length mirror that showed only his bones and muscles, and his veins full of raw blood, and suppressed a shudder.

"I've never been down here," Draco commented with a little surprise. He tried to arrange his hair in the anatomical mirror.

"Why would you want to?" muttered Ron, looking with disgust at a stuffed bat that seemed to be moving when he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, no," said Hermione suddenly, stopping in her tracks. "I know where we are. This is the Dead Hall. I read about it in-"

"Hogwarts, a History," chorused Harry and Ron with identical rolls of their eyes.

"It's not funny!" she replied. "We really shouldn't be going down here, it's not safe. Before this castle became a school, this used to be the hall that the lord would send people down who he had condemned to death. There's a monster, or a curse, or something."

"Well, obviously there is an elf alive at the end of it, so if the elf hasn't died, why should we?" Aimee pointed out.

"We're not elves," Hermione answered, drawing her cloak close around her as she regarded a picture of a tortured man, horror showing in her face. She did not share Aimee's cheerful attitude.

For some reason they kept on going. Harry suspected, without admitting it to himself, that it was because they couldn't leave an adventure alone anymore. He wondered, though he wouldn't let himself realise that he wondered, whether someday, after Voldemort was defeated, they would start wrestling crocodiles to keep themselves busy. He fervently hoped not.

Yesterday Harry had felt sick of adventure, but now he felt as if it were just the ordinary thing that he should do. Perhaps it didn't bother him so much because he didn't seem to be the hero of this quest. Maybe, he thought, it was just that he didn't like fighting imps.

Hermione watched Harry carefully. She, too, remembered what he had said yesterday. And she remembered what he had done yesterday...but that was something else entirely. She pushed her hair away from her face and tried once more to put everything that had happened together. The curse on Petunia Dursley. The dream Harry had told her about, where Lucius Malfoy and another Death Eater had plotted rebellion. The attack in Diagon Alley. The djinn on the way to school. And if everyone had told her the other strange things that had happened, she would only have been confused that many times more.

"Oh," said Aimee simply, and Hermione broke off her train of thought to look at what stood before them. The passage had split off into three corridors before them. "I cannot sense any more here. Hermione, have you heard of these?"

"Yes," replied Hermione slowly, glancing from left to right. Each of the passages looked dark and untrustworthy. If the choice were hers, she would choose to turn back. "One of them is the passage of fire, one is the passage of water, and one is called the Road Beyond. The latter is probably the one we should take, but which one is it?" Nobody answered her question. The three passages looked exactly the same, except that they went in different directions.

"It would be too obvious if it were the one in the middle," offered Ginny unsurely.

"Unless whoever built it assumed that everybody would think that was too obvious and take one of the others, and then it really would be the one in the middle," added Draco glumly. He pondered following this logic into an infinite loop, but decided against it.

"There's a marking on this one," said Harry, tracing a strange pattern on the right-hand wall. He peered at it closely as the dust came loose from the age-old pattern. His finger tingled at the touch.

"This one, too," said Ron on the left, sneezing as the dust came loose. "I reckon we could've got them if we'd taken Symbolism yet."

"It wouldn't help," Hermione said irritably. "They're runes, not symbols, honestly. There's a big difference." Ron rolled his eyes.

"They are the runes of eld," whispered Aimee. Harry thought she was being a bit overdramatic, but ignored it. After all, she was French. "There is one spell that I know it that tongue. Maybe it will help."

"Well, try it," said Harry. Aimee rolled up her sleeve with flair and a flick of her wrist, and lifted her hand, pointing it toward the passages.

"Dimartheae!" she chanted. The air around her hand seemed to glow brighter for a minute, but nothing happened.

"You didn't use a wand," Ron pointed out, fairly obviously.

"But neither did the wizards of eld," Aimee said, disappointed. "It should have worked without one."

"Maybe it's just because you're used to working with a wand," said Ginny. Harry nodded; the theory made sense. He had no idea how to do wandless magic. Aimee looked reluctant. He wished she would try it, because the cold, dank air and the wavering light of the torches were making him very uncomfortable.

She slipped her wand out of her pocket and lifted her hand just as she had before, except this time she was pointing forward with her wand instead of her finger. The torches flickered ominously. She swallowed and concentrated firmly on the spell.

"Dimartheae!" she cried. It worked. A swirl of golden dust poofed out of the end of her wand and blew over to the walls. It hit them lightly, just sprinkling them with a fine golden powder that centred around the strange marks, concentrating itself in their grooves. As the six watched, the shining runes exploded and reformed into letters, carved on the wall. The dust disappeared and left only the words.

"Well done!" exclaimed Hermione. She moved forward and began to read aloud the words on the left wall.

"Look not for your hopes to find here,

If living be your aim.

In me dwells the breath of a fire-worm,

And deadly is his flame."

Everybody stared at Hermione. "Well, that's obviously the passage of fire," she said, turning back to the others. She moved toward the markings on the right-hand wall.

"There's nothing obvious about that! We can't even read it!" cried Ron. Hermione frowned.

"I admit the letters are a little old-fashioned, but they aren't that difficult," she answered, peering at the wall. She brushed a bit of dust from the letters, cleaning them absentmindedly.

"Hermione, that's not English," insisted Ron. "It's the language of eld or whatever you call it."

"But- how?" she spluttered.

"The same way I speak Parseltongue, probably," Harry replied. "Remember after the Dueling Club? I didn't even know I was speaking it. This is probably the same sort of thing. What does it say on this side?" Hermione looked.

"Never this passage enter,

Unless you seek your end.

Here there is death by drowning

If you step around my bend.

Essentially the same as the other, except this is the passage of water," she said. "These poems are much too easy."

"Good," said Draco. "We can go down the middle passage and get this over with." He started to walk towards the remaining corridor, happily deciding that his logic had been correct after all.

"No!" shouted Hermione quickly, pulling Draco away from the entrance. "I don't know what that is, but it's just as dangerous as the other two. Look at the inscription on the floor here."

"Oh," said Draco, looking down and seeing the letters. "That's nice, but I can't read it, if you remember."

"It says 'look up'," continued Hermione. All six of them looked up at once. As they did, a slab on the ceiling swung loose and a staircase folded out. It was jet black and reflected the light from the torches oddly. It looked far creepier than anything else they had seen, but Harry trusted it far more.

"Thought you said it was down," commented Ron.

"We're very far down already," said Aimee. She tucked her wand back into her pocket and started up the staircase. The ceiling seemed to engulf her as she disappeared into the blackness above. Harry followed. He could just see the others below in the dim half-light that flickered up to them, but not what lay at the top of the stairs. As he strove to glimpse anything in the darkness, the other four scrambled up the staircase quickly. As Ginny finished climbing the stairs, after everyone else, the flight noiselessly rose up and sealed itself into the floor behind her. Wherever they were now, it was completely dark.

"Lumos," Hermione's voice came out of the darkness. A pale light glowed from the end of her wand. The dim glow revealed a tunnel as ebony-coloured as the stair that had led them in. There were markings on the walls, more runes like the ones inscribed on the passages below before they had become the strange language that Hermione could read. On one side, the direction they had come from, there stood a wall. On the other the tunnel stretched on until it was lost in blackness. Harry and Draco both lit their wands as well.

"Well, I guess we're going that way," Draco said. "I vote Potter goes first." Harry scowled at Draco, but scooted forward into the darkness beyond the reach of their combined wand-light. There was plenty of room for him to move easily on hands and knees, but not enough to stand up. However, the tunnel narrowed as he progressed, just enough to compress his movements inch by inch, making him more and more uncomfortable. Soon he was sliding his elbows through some sort of gooey muck on the floor.

"This is disgusting," he heard Draco say behind him. "I can't believe I'm wearing perfectly good robes and ruining them by crawling through slime."

Harry was about to make a rude comment, but he, too, felt disgusted by the goopy nature of whatever was sticking to his previously clean school robes, and especially by the smell. He decided it must have been the strange teal-coloured mold he had seen growing on the sides of the tunnel that gave off an odor very much like a pile of rotting zucchini. The tunnel sloped very steeply downwards, scraping his robes completely into shreds at the elbows as he fought to keep from tumbling downwards. Obviously, this passage had not been intended to make it easy for people to climb down.

Wrinkling his nose and concentrating very hard on breathing through his mouth, Harry almost didn't notice when the tunnel abruptly stopped on a ledge at the top of a vast cliff. Halting himself just in time, he tumbled from the inclined passage and stood up on the narrow shelf, scooting out of the way of the tunnel. Draco crawled clumsily out behind him, brushing the stinking goop off of his robes, and blinked in the sudden light.

They were standing in an immense, circular cavern, on a thin strip of rock that formed a band around the entire room. The flaky mineral they stood on broke off entirely at places, and hung on to the wall precariously in others. The light shone from the bottom of the room, from a vast river of lava that flowed in the depths of the chasm. It glowed from a very long way down. Around the thin ledge that they were standing on, there were several small, barred cells.

"The Dungeons of the Deep," said Hermione, standing on the ledge beside them. "They haven't been used since the days of the Founders. Actually, the Founders weren't supposed to use them either, but Slytherin might have thrown one or two people in here."

She slipped past Harry, a tricky feat on the slim shelf of rock, and started walking briskly along the side of the cavern. Harry followed nervously and concentrated on the rock at his feet. The others came behind him with similar apprehension. Glancing into the cells, he discovered that almost all of them held a single skeleton. The others held more, or parts of several.

"Hermione," he said, jumping a risky spot where the stone looked as though it would fall at any minute. "Where are you going?"

"The elf must be held in one of these dungeons," she replied enthusiastically. "Honestly, Harry, isn't it obvious?"

"No," muttered Harry, hurrying to catch up to her.

"I feel it again," said Aimee, shuddering a little as she almost slipped on a pebble. "The elf is in this room. We are very close, and we are also in very much trouble. There is no way out."

"You don't think we can get the stair down again?" asked Ginny nervously, her hand on the wall.

"There must be some way out," Ron insisted, though he didn't sound sure of it at all. "The jailers would have had to get out of here." Aimee shrugged in confusion, and they continued walking in silence. Suddenly Hermione began to run, very carefully. She reached one of the doors along the wall and strove to pull it open, yanking at the bars. Harry looked past her through the covered opening in the cliff face. Someone, someone alive, sat in the cell.

***

Snape sat hunched over a steaming blue beaker, dropping in the murky cubes of frozen eagle's blood that he had ordered from The Potion-Maker's Guide Deluxe August edition with his special teacher's discount. He was muttering to himself, something about interesting side-effects.

"That smells terrible," commented someone standing right behind him with a tone of utter disgust. He jumped about twenty feet in the air, then quickly regained his composure and smoothed down his hair. "What the heck are you making?" asked Cynthia.

"Nothing," snapped Snape, dropping in another cube with pewter tongs. "It is merely an experiment."

"I would have thought you wouldn't experiment so randomly anymore after that time Sirius got you to mix yoghurt and Flameleaves," Cynthia mused, looking as though she found the situation slightly humourous.

"Heaven forbid," Snape commented dryly, "that I, an experienced Potions master, would ever make a mistake like that again." He added a cup of sautéed spinach, dripping with butter, and a dark gray dove's feather. He watched as the beaker began to vibrate slightly.

"A dove's feather and eagle blood?" Cynthia asked, eyebrows raised. "Doesn't sound that safe to me."

"Nonsense," replied Snape. "It is perfectly fine."

"Unless there was salt on the spinach," added Cynthia with a grin. Snape's face became even paler, something Cynthia would not have thought possible. He scooted his chair quickly away from the poison.

"Merlin," he whispered. "Run." The two professors escaped from the classroom just as the beaker exploded, showering the classroom in liquid of a decidedly fuschia colour.

"Heaven forbid," Cynthia mimicked, "that I, an experienced person who likes to make things blow up, would ever make a mistake like that again."

"I do not like to make things blow up," said Snape in a very annoyed tone of voice, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. He closed his eyes in exasperation, letting the exhaustion on his face show.

"Then why do you keep on doing it?" Cynthia pointed out as she also leaned against the wall with a smirk.

"It was an accident!" shouted Snape as his eyes flew open, jumping away from the wall in a fit of rage. Cynthia ignored him and peered through the small window into his office, cleaning the thick grime from it with a corner of her robe.

"Do you think it's safe to go in now?" she asked. Snape looked through the window himself.

"No," he answered. "The potion is still bubbling."

"Well then," she said cheerily, "I'll just ask you what I was going to anyway."

"What?" Snape asked grumpily. His hair stuck up in all directions, disheveled by the potion. He attempted to use the window of his office to reorganize it, but the glass refused to reflect.

"What exactly is your position in the war against the Dark Lord?"

"I am not going to tell that to you, of all people, standing in the middle of the corridor," retorted Snape.

"Why not me, of all people?" she asked. She appeared offended by the reply. "I'm an Auror. Either you're on the good side and you trust me, or you're evil and I get to smash you to smithereens."

"Or maybe it isn't either," hissed Snape, so violently that Cynthia backed away. "Maybe my position is more complicated than that. Maybe it isn't something I want to discuss in public. And maybe I still regard you as a traitor to Slytherin House!" Cynthia narrowed her eyes.

"So I went out with Sirius," she spat back, mustering just as much venom as Snape had. "So he was a Gryffindor. Big. Fucking. Deal. I got to hate the Gryffindors twice as much that way. As an enemy, it made me bigger, better, and stronger. I played twice as many tricks on them as you did. And I've heard you still carry a grudge, you've never grown up, never forgotten how much you hated them. You're an unfair teacher because of it. Everyone but the Slytherins despise you. Don't be so surprised, you know I can hear gossip from a mile away. I don't know what's the matter with you and I couldn't care less. I just want to know if you're evil or if I can trust you to work with me." Her wand was almost poking Snape's eye out. Snape glanced back through the window.

"I think we can go back inside now," he said. Cynthia put her wand down and they entered the room. Snape took a seat and motioned for Cynthia to do the same. Reluctantly, she did.

"I want to hear all about your relationship with the Dark Lord," she said. Snape smirked.

"Well, at first he would bring me flowers..." he began, putting his feet up on the table.

"Severus, you idiot," Cynthia interrupted. "Just the political part, please."

"Very well," said Snape. "I am a member of both the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters. I report the plans of the Death Eaters to Dumbledore, in the utmost secrecy and at great risk to my safety, and he tries to do something about them. Is that clear enough for you, or do I still need to bring it down to your level?"

"Why wasn't I informed of this earlier?"

"A few reasons," he replied, standing up and stirring a cauldron full of something crimson. "First, it isn't exactly information that I tell very many people. You, even though you are an Auror, are not a member of the Order, or rather were not until you set foot on Hogwarts grounds. Therefore, I could not release this information to you."

"Bureaucrats," muttered Cynthia as she poked out the stuffing of her chair with her wand.

"Secondly," Snape continued, "you tend to overreact to startling news. I might say that you like to blow things up."

"What?" cried Cynthia, jumping to her feet. "That's ridiculous! I don't- oh." She sat down. Snape lifted an eyebrow and poured a ladleful of the crimson potion in the cauldron into a glass.

"Drink," he said, handing it to her. Cynthia looked at him suspiciously.

"What is it? Is it going to explode? Or will it turn me into a newt?" she asked, inspecting the goblet.

"It's spiced wine," he replied irritably, pouring a glass for himself. "And it's perfectly good."

***

The person sitting in the cell wore deerskin leggings and a jerkin. On his feet were leather buskins which looked as though they had carried him over all of England. His head was bowed as he sat, hunched over, on the tiny bench along the cell wall. His raven black hair hung down over his face, the once-shining braids covered in dust. Not a wood-elf after all, thought Aimee. This elf had crossed the sea long ago, and sailed back with the rest of his kin who had chosen the curse of the gods for their own honor.

"Excuse me," said Hermione. He looked up with startlingly grey eyes.

"Spectators," he commented with a resigned and dusty tone of voice, a voice that had not been used in centuries except in whispers to himself. "I'm sorry, but these bars make it rather difficult to throw rotten tomatoes at me. I didn't know they were letting spectators back in now."

"We're not spectators," said Harry. "People don't do that anymore. We want to let you out."

"His Lordship sent you to let me out? But why did he send six students?" asked the elf in surprise.

"Nobody sent us," Ginny spoke up, surprising herself. "Aimee sensed that you were here, and we came to rescue you. There isn't any lord. Nobody's even remembered where these dungeons were for a thousand years."

"A thousand years already?" said the elf. "The key won't fit the rust of the lock anymore, then."

"We haven't got a key, anyway." Ginny looked at the floor.

"I'll figure out how to open the lock," said Hermione, and immediately went to work with all the spells she could think of, starting with Alohamora.

"Why were you put here? Have you been sitting there for a thousand years?" Harry asked.

"I was the last messenger," the elf replied dreamily. "My name is Eregdil. On the day before the Sealing of the Gates, I was at the castle in Godric's Hollow."

"That's where my parents lived," Harry said.

"It was the castle of Lord Potir," continued the elf. "He had gone to Hogwarts to be at the Sealing and lend his power to the Founders. He left Sir Weseley in charge."

"Over a thousand years," said Hermione, dropping the lock for a moment in surprise, "those names must have become Weasley and Potter."

"Perhaps," the elf shrugged. "I myself was not familiar with the castle, but I rode in from the woods to help Sir Weseley govern. The minute I arrived he came rushing up with the news that Salazar Slytherin intended to stay on the other side of the border, and that he had discovered what would happen to him if he did."

"What?" Ron asked. Eregdil shrugged again.

"It was written down in the letter Sir Weseley gave me," he said. "He asked me to take it to Hogwarts and give it to Lord Potir. I rode to the castle, but when I arrived I had the misfortune of running into the Duke of Hogsmeade. Nasty man. Name of Malfoy."

"I'm a Malfoy," replied Draco. He looked insulted; he had flushed a very pale pink, barely noticeable to anyone who had never seen Draco annoyed.

"I could tell," said the elf, gazing thoroughly at Draco. "The Malfoys have not changed in a thousand years, even if the rest of the world is as strange as it seems to be, from the clothes and manner of speech of your companions."

"I've got it!" cried Hermione. The door slid open, and the elf hesitantly stood up.

"I have had nothing to eat but mold in the past millennium," he said. "Give me a minute." Very slowly, he walked out of the cell. Harry glanced again down the sharp cliff to the molten river.

"How do we get out of here?" he asked.

"Down that way," said Eregdil. Harry looked at him with alarm. "That is the way the duke left after he locked me in. I can only assume it is not really a river of flame, or that there is some way out without touching it. The ladder is there," he added, gesturing to what looked like only a small chip in the rock of the cliff. Hermione walked over to where the elf had pointed, inspecting the groove and the steep drop beneath it incredulously.

"It's not exactly a ladder." She sounded dubious. "It is a way down, but it's worn out after a thousand years. There are a few handholds, but they're shallow."

"It is the only way out," the elf replied with certainty, moving slowly to where Hermione stood. He peered down into the abyss. "I, too, wish that there were another way."

"I believe we could use my ring again," Aimee suggested. She spoke up loudly, as if she felt left out of her own adventure. She was used to things being under her control and hers alone. "We could not use it on the way in because we did not know where we were going, but now it would be simple. Anywhere I have seen, it could take us there."

"Not on Hogwarts grounds!" Hermione insisted. "Honestly, we'd be splinched in a second."

"Calm down," said Ginny, gently shoving the arguers out of the way, and swung herself off the cliff, grabbing onto the first handholds and digging her toes tightly into the rock. Ron looked alarmed. "It's just what I thought," she continued. "It's a lot safer than it looks from up there. For one thing, there are bars in the handholds, and for another, there's actually a slope. Come on!" With that she disappeared down the cliff as if it were the simplest thing in the world. After a moment, Harry followed, and if he were going, no one else would stay behind. They climbed down slowly and carefully, trying not to look below them. Harry concentrated firmly on the rock in front of him. Down one step, then another, putting his mind only on the cliff and not the fall so that there was no need for fear. Suddenly, he reached a spot where no stone rested against his legs to support his weight. He panicked and swung his legs wildly, scrambling for a hold, and the rough rock slipped from his hands. He slid down and hit another ledge with an ungraceful tumble onto his butt. Ginny stood there looking perfectly calm and pleased with herself.

"I knew it wouldn't go all the way down," she said. Behind her gaped the mouth of another black tunnel. Hermione dropped down on to the cliff, followed by the elf and then the others. "This is the way out," Ginny announced.

"Finally," grumbled Draco.

***

Snape and Cynthia sat chatting over their spiced wine. "I left for America the day Sirius was arrested," she was saying. "Not because of him, of course, because of a kraken that had found its way into the Great Lakes."

"Of course," Snape agreed. He had given up trying to drink the wine and instead was amusing himself by putting powdered hens' teeth into it and causing blue smoke to float everywhere.

"I had no idea Voldemort had returned at all until Albus contacted me," she continued.

"American news is so lacking in international information," Snape commented, shaping the smoke into rings with a charm. He prodded them with his wand until they began to resemble something round.

"Not only are you not paying attention to me, you're drunk," Cynthia informed him.

"Rubbish," replied Snape. "I am paying perfect attention, and I never get drunk. I have only had one glass of wine in any case," he lied, attempting to look sober and failing miserably.

"Why are you lying to me? I've just seen you drink three glasses, and I know you have no tolerance for alcohol."

"Because I feel like it," he answered glumly. "I would like to pretend that I am not drunk. Also, it is of no importance. There is a sobering potion in that cabinet." He gestured to what looked like a box tacked onto the wall.

"What does it taste like?" asked Cynthia. "Can you put it in the wine to keep yourself from getting drunk in the first place?"

"Nothing, and yes," Snape told her. Cynthia stood up, opened the cabinet, and found the potion. She poured it into the cauldron of spiced wine.

"Bring on the alcohol," she said.

***

This tunnel, too, grew smaller after only metres. They could fit in on hands and knees, instead of having to squiggle along the ground like they had in the last passage. It was because of this and the order in which they had entered that Harry was unable to avoid a view of Draco's boxers. They were glow-in-the-dark green, the colour of Roswell aliens. They matched the mold.

The tunnel sloped upwards, towards ground level. Eventually the dirt turned to brick and the round shape became square. The filth lessened and the mold hid in the corners. They had come to a much more orderly realm of the castle.

"We're somewhere in the walls now," Hermione's muffled voice came from behind Harry. Ginny, in the lead, agreed.

"I think we're over someone's ceiling, but-" whatever she was about to say cut off as she tumbled through a trapdoor that had opened in the floor. As Ron bumped into Aimee at the back of the line, the passage suddenly re-oriented itself and sloped downward. All of them fell in a jumbled mess into a cauldron of something crimson. It was Professor Severus Snape's spiced wine.

Cynthia and the bemused potions master both jumped up with alarm as the wine splattered all over them, watching in amazement the seven grimy beings who had disturbed their drinking. After a moment of stunned silence, Snape recovered his voice.

"Well, I'll never be sober now," he said. "Who are these unrecognizable ruffians and may I give them detention?"

"Not until we find out what happened," answered Cynthia firmly. Harry disentangled himself from the pile of limbs and stood up, shaking the wine from his hair and attempting to wipe his glasses on his robes.

"We didn't mean to be above your office, professor," he told Snape. "You see, there was this elf, Eregdil, and we went into the dungeons- I mean, Aimee sensed-"

"Mr Malfoy," said Snape, distinguishing one of the other participants. "Perhaps you should tell the story." Draco launched into a fluent account of exactly what had happened, ending with a complaint about the state of his robes and his hair. He really did present a strange picture for someone usually so perfectly dressed. His robes were torn, so that his lime-green boxers showed in the back. He was covered with splatters of mud and mold. His face was scratched, and drops of wine were dripping from his hair, now dyed pink by his head-first landing into the cauldron. A bruise was beginning to form next to one of his ears. Perhaps it was his pathetic appearance that made Snape relent.

"Very well," Snape decided. "No detention. For you, Miss LeVert, there will be an extra essay that I will assign to you the first time we have class, for foolishly dragging others into ridiculous rescues. And somebody take this elf to the Headmaster. Out. Now." They fled from the classroom, running toward Dumbledore's office. The door closed behind them with a bang.

"Congratulations," Cynthia smirked. "For once in your life, you haven't abused your power."

***

One other strange event occurred before classes began. On Sunday night, after lights-out, Aimee lay awake in the dormitory. Parvati was snorting and mumbling in her sleep as she tossed and turned on the opposite bed. Aimee silently expressed her thanks that there was only one other girl in the room to make noise, as it was quite annoying. Beyond Parvati's snores, she could hear a strong wind outside, and the hoot of an owl.

And something else. She couldn't tell what it was, but it sounded like something moving. The sound was coming from the top of the room, like a current of air blowing along the ceiling. She wondered if one of the windows were open. It didn't sound quite like that, though, it sounded more like something creeping along.

A ghostly, transparent hand stuck itself through the curtains that surrounded her bed. Slowly, an arm followed, and then a head and a body. A distinct chill settled inside her canopy. Watching in horror as the dark creature entered, Aimee suddenly screamed with all the force of her lungs. The shriek rent the still night air, and the transparent being disappeared into the ceiling. All Gryffindor Tower had been awakened, and several of them came running into the room within moments.

"What is it?" asked Professor McGonagall, her eyes searching the room for any signs of what had happened. It seemed as undisturbed as ever.

"I saw an incubus," Aimee gasped. "It vanished into the ceiling." Immediately half of the people in the room climbed onto chairs and dressers and began to search for the intruder. Only one of them rushed over to Aimee herself. As Harry watched, she collapsed into Ron's arms. He hugged her tightly.

"Well, I guess we don't have to worry about how Ron is going to take the news about you and me being together," Harry murmured to Hermione. She smiled at him and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.

When Aimee told Draco the next morning, he was significantly less sympathetic."If you're going to be evil, you might expect to attract dark creatures," he told her. "It's one of the basic facts of evilness."