How I Spent My Spring Holidays, By Prof. Severus Snape

Chapter Four: The Eternal Sudoku of the Doddery Mind

I expected darkness. The portal shrank back into the rocks behind me, closing so completely that not a chink of light could slip through it, and I expected to be plunged into inky blackness. However, to my surprise, the low-ceilinged cavern that I had entered had a warm, orange glow, as though a fire had been lit. Stepping forward I saw a torch, mounted on a wall bracket above a long, stone bench. The bench was almost fully covered by a dusty collection of cloths. On the opposite side of the cavern from where I stood, a passageway led into the darkness.

The torch intrigued me. My first thought was to take it from the wall and explore the dark passage, in the hope that there might be some other way out of the cave. But when I examined the torch's heavy bronze handle I saw that it was covered in ornate engravings featuring mighty eagles. Further, the tip of each flame danced with a delicate, blue-green tinge. There was no doubt about it: this was Gubraithian fire - fire which burnt eternally, and which only the most powerful witch or wizard could conjure.

"Most impressive," I breathed.

"Helga's granddaughter gave it to me -" a reedy voice behind me explained.

I wheeled around. A tiny, stooped woman, no bigger than five feet tall, was standing there. Her skin looked so pale that it was virtually transparent - in fact, it was transparent. I could see straight through to the rockface behind her. She floated gently towards me, and I then understood that I was in the company of a ghost.

" - for my two hundredth birthday," the ghost continued. "The handle, I mean. Naturally, I enchanted the fire myself."

I should pause to explain at this juncture that the ghost did not address me with the exact words I have written. Her speech was a Northumbrian dialect of Old English, a language which I happen to understand perfectly. However, since I strongly suspect those who read this tale are not as intelligent as I, and because the orthography of Old English is difficult to reproduce on my Muggle computo's keyboard, I have translated the ghost's speech and my subsequent discussion with her.

"A difficult spell to cast," I conceded. "Pray tell, who taught you such advanced magic?"

"Taught me!" The ghost bobbed in the air in indignation. "Young man, I will have you know, I invented that spell! And even though I am an excellent teacher, in one hundred and eighty-seven years as a Charms mistress, that spell was so complicated that only seven of my very best pupils were ever able to accomplish it."

One hundred and eighty-seven years as a Charms mistress. Only one witch ever taught the inarguably boring subject of Charms for so long, and she was the loveliest of the Founding Four. I stared at the wrinkled, wasted spectre before me. Her long hair hung in strands so thin that portions of her grey scalp poked through it. Her hands, as bony and knobbly as chickens' feet, fidgeted with a scrap of parchment, and picked at her skirt. Her robes, no doubt expensive and once fine, hung so loosely on her insignificant frame that she looked like a child dressing up in her mother's frock. Was this truly Ravenclaw the Fair?

"Now," the ghost said briskly, "tell me why you have gone to all the bother of finding me. But first," her voice sounded cross as she waved me towards the stone bench, "wipe all that nasty green woad off your face."

She pointed at the cloth lying there. I picked it up, shaking a portion of the copious dust from it, and was startled when a femur rolled onto the floor with a clatter.

"Eurgh!" I exclaimed. "This is a shroud!"

"Never mind what it is, young man," she snapped. "Wipe your face at once!"

I did so, nearly choking on the gritty linen. When I looked down I saw a disarranged skeleton lying where the shroud had rested, a delicate, white wand clasped to its chest. The wand of Rowena Ravenclaw had been made of unicorn's horn - one of the last to use this substance before the Ban on Unicorn Hunting of 956. Tentatively I reached down to touch the elegant, ivory-coloured relic.

"Oh, no you don't!" the ghost commanded. I now firmly believed the spirit was Ravenclaw's. All the signs pointed to it, even though (to my knowledge) the last resting place of that venerable sorceress had never been ascertained by wizarding historians. "First tell me how you found me," she said. There was an unmistakable edge of menace in her wavering voice and her eyes glinted.

"It was no easy task," I bluffed, "to locate your tomb... so far south... careful review of all the records and studious enquiry indicated that your family settled in the glens."

"Yes, that's true," Ravenclaw agreed, more evenly than before. She seemed to be pleased that I claimed to have done my homework. As a reward, she said encouragingly, "But Queen Ethelfleda granted me this little parcel of Mercia, after I banished the dragons back to Wales. Well... all except Mopsy. But the queen was jolly grateful that I sent most of the Welsh Greens back where they belonged."

"Ah, yes... dragons," I continued, clutching at straws. "You had an affinity with all beasts of the air. But why did you choose to be buried in such an obscure place?"

"I had my reasons," she replied shortly.

"The stories pertaining to your death are very vague," I added, by now doing no more than thinking aloud. "There is no account of a funeral, no hints to the date of your decease. Some say that you never died, but found a way to slip beyond the veil body and soul. Indeed, the Ministry of Magic has spent many decades constructing a gateway between life and death in an attempt to repeat your achievement. But to date, nobody who has used that gateway has been able to return and report." Good thing, too, I thought, since Sirius Black met his well-deserved demise by recklessly duelling next to the Ministry's handiwork.

"They say that, do they?" A smug smile played on her lips. "Well, I'm glad they think I was so brilliant, but I'm afraid not even I found a way to completely conquer death."

"Another school of thought," I went on, "suggests that you actually became lost in Hogwarts Castle when a moving stairway sent you into a vanishing corridor -"

"WHAT?" shrieked the ghost, flying into the air and circling the cavern like an angry, withered wasp. "Became LOST? I made those moving staircases! Do people honestly believe I couldn't recollect where they all went to?"

"No- no," I said placatingly. As I spoke Ravenclaw swooped for my head, forcing me to duck for cover and sit with a rattle and thud on her bones. "A tiny minority believe it - a pitiful few," I explained. "True scholars scorn these heretics, and decry their cheek. Personally, I would never adhere to such an outlandish theory."

She stopped swooping and eyed me suspiciously. "Well, young man - then tell me how you found my resting place. My heirs have managed to keep nearly all the Muggles and magical folk alike away from this spot for over eight hundred years - and then, lo and behold! Two of you stumble in on the same afternoon! Are you certain that you didn't just follow that bearded gentleman in here? I can't abide a cheat, you know."

"Bearded gentleman?" I asked. "Was he in a chintz armchair?"

"No he was not," Ravenclaw replied primly. "He had better manners than to sit in a lady's presence."

I stood up immediately and made a respectful bow. "Forgive me, madam," I said. "I merely enquired, because I caught sight of that gentleman briefly when I was outside. He did not lead me here. Far from it - he seemed eager to avoid me. So you see, I deduced the location of your tomb quite independently, by intensive study and thorough research."

"Oh." She sounded almost deflated. "So the bearded gentleman didn't tell you why I was buried here? Because he seemed to know you fairly well. He wrote you a message on the wall." Her skeletal hand pointed to the stones in the part of the cave where the entrance had been. A short message had been written on the wall in scarlet ink. The writing was thin, slanting and extremely familiar. Ravenclaw floated closer to me, so that her ancient face was mere inches from mine, and added, "He told me, 'When an unattractive wizard with greasy hair and a hooked nose visits you, kindly pass these instructions on.'"

I tried to look through the spectre to the writing on the wall, but it was difficult to make it out from a distance. "Pardon me," I said, attempting to brush the ghost aside. As I did, I noticed that the parchment in her hand had writing on it as well. In fact, it was covered in numbers, arranged in neat squares. "Why are you in the process of solving a Sudoku puzzle?" I asked.

"I'm not," she shot back, whipping the parchment behind her back.

"Yes, you are," I argued. "It seems an odd way to while away the afterlife."

The ghost seemed very shaken and tried to grip my forearm. Her fingers, icy cold, slipped straight through my wrist. "Don't tell anyone, will you?" she pleaded. "Nobody must know - it's so shameful."

"Why?" Unearthing a scandal that related to a Hogwarts Founder was such a novelty, that I momentarily forgot about the writing on the wall.

"It was all that little Italian boy's fault," she explained. "An ex-student - now, what was his name? Pollo something? Or Marco?"

"Marco Polo?" I suggested.

"Yes!" said the ghost. "Marco Polo. A complete nitwit at Cheering Charms, but he and his father managed to travel all the way to the palace of the Mighty Khan. Little Marco visited just after he arrived back home. Lots of my old students would call on me once they made a name for themselves. I suppose they wanted to show me that they weren't the dunderheads I took them for."

"And his visit was shameful... because?" I prompted.

"Well, it was the night before I died, wasn't it?" Ravenclaw continued sharply. "And he gave me this wretched number puzzle, as a present - what'd you call it?"

"A Sudoku."

"He gave me this puzzle, and I stayed up all night, trying to solve it. I used every Arithmantic theorem I could recall - and, let me assure you, young man, I know them all. No magic would unlock this conundrum -"

"Well, there's your problem, right there," I interrupted. "The solution requires logic, not magic." And most witches don't have an ounce of logic, I thought.

"Magic - not required? Young man, I have never heard of anything so absurd! I used Revealers and all forms of divination - even scatomancy - to unravel the mysteries of those infuriating, little squares. I worked on the puzzle so intently that I never even noticed that I'd died, until my great-niece came into the kitchen the next morning and gave my corpse a sound shaking." The ghost moaned miserably, wringing her hands. "The sun came up, and the choice to enter the great unknown had simply passed me by. I was a ghost, a paltry shade, all because of a silly puzzle which I absolutely could not solve." She whispered darkly, "That's why my death was hushed up - why I needed to keep my tomb so secret - why it must remain so. How can everyone know that I still walk the earth, for the sake of solving an idiotic puzzle?"

"I'm not surprised you never solved it," I remarked, glancing at the parchment. "You've written two nines in the bottom left-hand square."

"TWO nines!" she screeched, holding the parchment up to her nose. She checked and rechecked the grids frantically, until eventually she realised I was speaking the truth. "Th-there can't be -" she sputtered. " - you're lying -oh - oh - BOLLOCKS!"

No sooner had the words been spoken than the entrance slid open. I was stunned to see Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger staring at me, their mouths agape. "Bollocks, indeed," I said loudly.

Fortunately, my utterance of the spoken key had the effect of closing the rock wall immediately. But it was unsettling to know that the three Gryffindors were standing just outside my hiding place.

"Friends of yours?" Ravenclaw asked. She smiled meanly.

"Not exactly," I admitted.

"So you wouldn't like me to invite them in?" She laughed a girlish, tinkling laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. "Because I could do that, you know. Particularly if I thought you were the kind of wizard who'd tattle-tale about my little you know what." She waved the Sudoku puzzle meaningfully.

"Madam," I said silkily, "your secret is safe with me."

"Well then, we'll just be three of us in here together until those three outside give up and go away." Ravenclaw said.

"Two of us," I corrected her. "Unless the gentleman with the beard said he would return?"

"No, three I think," Ravenclaw replied curtly. "I can still count, young man. There's you and me... and Mopsy."

At that exact moment, a light blazed in the dark corridor. An instant later a thin jet of flame burst into the cavern. I leapt out of the way, narrowly avoiding a comprehensive singeing.

"Mopsy's awake," Ravenclaw said happily. She fixed me with a gimlet eye before adding, "That's good - she loves having visitors for tea."

TO BE CONTINUED...