Into the Underground Chambers
As soon as everyone else had gone to bed, Hari, Ron, Draco and Hermione slipped out of the common room under the invisibility cloak. They made their way quietly through the school, thankfully passing no one as they made their way to the third floor corridor. Carefully, Hari pulled the invisibility cloak off of them and unlocked the door keeping Fluffy inside and stepped in, followed by the other three. Immediately, he heard soft, melodic music playing and saw Fluffy fast asleep beside a harp.
“We’ve already missed them!” Hari stage whispered, pulling the flute he got from Hagrid out of his pocket. As the harp stopped playing music, the three headed dog began to stir and Hari quickly started playing notes at random from the flute. He sighed in relief as Fluffy went back to sleep. He gestured towards the trap door beside one of the giant paws and they made their way over silently.
Draco crouched down to lift the trap door and they looked down into endless darkness, giving no sign of the bottom any time soon. “Are we sure it’s safe jumping down? Maybe they jumped to their deaths?” Draco suggested hopefully.
Hari handed the flute over to Ron to start playing and said, “I’ll go first. If I do fall to my death, go back and get Minerva immediately.”
“Are you sure you want to go first, Hari? It’s a long way down…” Draco worried his bottom lip between his teeth anxiously. He looked back down into the darkness below.
Hari patted Draco’s shoulder and lowered his feet into the hole in the floor. “See you guys in a minute.” And then Hari plunged into black. He could feel the air whipping his robes up as he fell, heart racing as he plummeted for what seemed like miles and miles of complete darkness. He was just about to wonder when he would land when he felt himself thudding onto something strangely soft and slightly damp. It felt like some kind of plant. “It’s okay! I landed on something soft!” Hari called above him.
A minute later, Draco landed unceremoniously beside him, grunting. “What is this stuff?” he asked, looking around in the dim lighting. Ron landed a second later, nearly hitting Draco in the face with his foot. “Oi, watch it, Weasel!” Draco snapped, pushing Ron off of him.
Above them, Hari heard the music stop playing again, followed by a loud bark and then Hermione landed next to them a second later, hair in her face. As soon as she landed, she gasped and scrambled over to a wall, gaping in horror at the others.
“Lucky this plant is here,” Ron stated, patting the vines that had kept them from no doubt falling to their deaths.
“Lucky?” Hermione exclaimed shrilly from the wall. “Don’t you recognise this? It’s Devil’s Snare!”
“Oh, brilliant. Now I know what kind of plant I landed on. That’s so helpful, Hermione, thanks!”
Hermione groaned irritably, scowling at Ron’s sarcasm. “Devil’s Snare is deadly, you idiot! It strangles you!” she screeched. At her words, Hari realised that the plant he had landed on was in fact wrapping quite tightly around him, as though it were trying to strangle him. “Oh, no. I can’t remember how to kill it! Professor Sprout said it prefers the dark and cold,” she cried, panicking.
“Then light a fire!” Ron snapped.
“But I haven’t got any wood!”
Ron scoffed. “Are you a witch or not, Hermione?!”
As Hari, Ron and Draco began tugging furiously against the vines wrapping tighter and tiger around them, Hermione conjured up her bluebell flames. Finally, Hari felt the vines recoiling away from the blue flames and he scrambled out of the tight grip and over to Hermione against the wall. He reached out a hand to help drag Draco the rest of the way out of the vines while Ron crawled to safety, wheezing and coughing. Once they caught their breath and Ron got to his feet, they started along a narrow, dim corridor together.
“‘But I haven’t got any wood!’ Honestly, Hermione. You really lose your head sometimes,” Ron was complaining as they made their way deeper into the tunnel.
“We must be miles beneath the school,” Draco remarked to Hari in a whisper, looking around the dark tunnel. Finally, they reached another chamber at the end of this corridor. There were hundreds of strange birds floating around the room with different coloured wings, flapping aimlessly about. There were also half a dozen broomsticks nearby. Draco crossed the room and attempted to unlock the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “It won’t open!” he said, eyes narrowed.
Hermione peered up at the ceiling and wondered aloud, “These bird things can’t be here just for decoration, can they?”
As Hari looked closer at the birds flying above them, he realised that they weren’t birds at all. They were keys with wings. He said as much, pointing up at them.
“You don’t think we have to catch the key to the door, do you? How will we know which is the right one?” Hermione asked.
Ron moved beside Draco and examined the lock on the door. “The key will be old and rusty like this lock, surely,” he deduced. “These broomsticks must be so that we can catch the right key.”
One by one, they all climbed onto the backs of a broomstick. As soon as they got on, however, the keys began whizzing violently around the room, making them much harder to catch. Hari kicked off into the air, ducking out of the way of the vicious keys trying to attack them and trying to look around for the right key through the chaos.
“There! That one there has a broken wing as if someone grabbed it!” Draco exclaimed over the noise of the clattering keys, pointing in the direction of an old key with blue wings. It was flying much slower than the others and its wing looked damaged, just as Draco said.
“Draco, go up and Ron and Hermione, you go on either side so we can corner it!” Hari directed, gesturing towards where he wanted the others to go. They complied, Draco confidently rising higher and Ron moving over to one side while Hermione nervously moved to the other, much less confident on a broom than the others. “Okay, on three! One… two… three!” Hari dove towards the key, which seemed to be unsure of where to go as people flew towards it on all sides. Hari grabbed it in his hand, nearly sliding off the end.
Hari dove one handed towards the door, jamming the key in the lock and then burst into the next chamber. He landed unceremoniously on the ground and Ron, Draco and Hermione arrived next to him a second later, panting and messy-haired from the attacking keys. Hari looked around this next chamber. They were standing on what looked like a giant chessboard, the floor painted in black and white checks. Directly in front of them were the black chess pieces, while on the other side of the board, Hari saw the white pieces, guarding another set of doors.
“What strange statues,” Hermione said, admiring one of the large black rooks curiously.
“These aren’t just statues, Hermione. This looks like a chessboard,” Draco pointed out, gesturing at the board laid out in front of them.
“You don’t think we have to play to get across, do you?” asked Hermione anxiously, looking at the pile of broken chess players piled on either side of the chessboard.
Ron shook his head sadly. “I think that’s exactly what we’ll have to do,” he said. Hermione whimpered slightly. Ron rolled his shoulders back and straightened up, the best chess player among the four of them. “Right. I think we’ll have to each take a player. Draco takes the rook there, Hari can take the bishop there, Hermione takes one of those pawns and then I’ll be the knight.” Ron directed them all to their individual places and they moved at his command while the black pieces they replaced moved over to the side to watch. “Now, the white side will move first,” Ron explained, just as one of the white pawns began to move forwards.
They jumped right into the game, Ron directing the chess pieces where to go and making sure Hari, Draco and Hermione stayed out of trouble from the other pieces. As each side took another player from the other team, they pulled out a weapon and hit the other piece, making it crumble to pieces. On a few occasions, Ron nearly didn’t catch another piece trying to take one of them, until he quickly directed them to move another square before they could be defeated. Finally, when the piles of broken chess pieces were piling high on both sides, Ron paused suddenly, looking worried.
“What is it?” Hari asked, noticing the sudden quiet and Ron’s new nervousness.
“I’ve got to sacrifice myself,” Ron muttered. “If I move forwards, the Queen will take me and that will leave you, Hari, to checkmate the king!”
“But, Ron, you can’t! You’ve seen what they did to the other pieces!” Draco protested anxiously.
“But that’s chess! It’s all about sacrifices!” Ron replied back determinedly, “Sometimes you have to sacrifice your own players in order to win, but that’s what you have to do. It’s better me than Hari, isn’t it?”
Hari frowned. “That’s not t-”
Ron cut him off. “You know it’s true, Hari. You’ve got to go ahead more than the rest of us!” When no one else said anything, Ron took a deep breath, turning to stare ahead. He closed his eyes, moved forwards and then to the right and then-- *BAM* Ron was knocked unconscious by a vicious swipe from the white queen. Hari, Draco and Hermione winced at the movement, watching in horror as Ron crumpled to the ground, a tiny trickle of blood going down his cheek.
Heart racing madly, Hari turned his eyes away from Ron and took a step diagonally, landing in front of the trapped, white king. “Checkmate!” he said and then the white king bowed his head, tossed his white crown onto the floor and he and the rest of the players moved off the board, allowing them to cross to the doors behind them. They hurried over to Ron’s side, crouching down beside him worriedly. He thankfully didn’t look too badly hurt, the cut in his head rather small and bruised on the edges, but otherwise unharmed. He would certainly recover quite easily from the injury.
“He’ll be okay. Madam Pomfrey can mend things in a second,” Hari assured the others.
“We better hurry before the Stone is stolen. It could be getting taken right now,” Draco said, getting up from his squat and moving slowly towards the doors. “I think I’ll take this. It’s pretty cool,” he mumbled, bending down to lift the small marble crown and tucking it under his arm. Hari rolled his eyes but begrudgingly left Ron’s side to go join Draco.
As they strolled into the next room, immediately Hari felt his eyes beginning to water at a horrific, overwhelming stench like garbage and old socks. Covering his mouth and nose with his robes, he looked down at an unconscious troll lying on the ground, even larger than the one they had to fight in the toilets at the start of the school year.
“I’m glad we didn’t have to fight that one,” Draco remarked, pulling Hari and Hermione across the wide chamber and over to the next set of doors. Hari really hoped the next chamber would be the last… “Come, I can’t breathe,” Draco said, pushing the next door open.
In this next room, they came across a table scattered with 7 bottles of varying shapes and sizes, all filled with different coloured potions. As soon as they stepped over the threshold, a burst of purple flames appeared behind them while the door on the other side of the small room burst into black flames. They were completely stuck.
They walked closer to the table and Hermione picked up a sheet of parchment set on the table with a riddle written on it. She skimmed the sheet with Draco, muttering under her breath. “Oh, this is brilliant! This isn’t magic, it’s logic!””she exclaimed brightly. “Many great wizards have got no logic in their head and would be completely stuck in here!”
“But won’t we be stuck as well?” Hari asked. Draco moved around the table, examining the different bottles closely with narrowed eyes.
“Not if we can figure out this logic puzzle. That shouldn’t take too long…”
Draco shook his head, lifting up one of the bottles. “Actually, I already know which ones to choose,” Draco stated. Hari and Hermione looked at him curiously. “Well, see that one there?” He gestured to one of the bottles filled with purple liquid. “That one is a fire protection potion, but it hasn’t been drunk yet. That’ll get you back through those purple flames and back the way we came.” He then lifted a smaller bottle, half-filled with a black potion. “This one is also a fire protection potion, but it’ll only work for that one over there. See how someone’s already drank some of it?” He shook the bottle lightly.
“So, what do you suggest?” asked Hermione, folding her arms.
Draco grabbed the fire protection potion, holding it up close and squinting at it. “I think this should be enough for 2 of us to go back that way, but there’s really only enough for one more person to go onwards,” Draco explained. Hermione and Draco both turned to Hari at once. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not to me,” said Hari, frowning.
“Hari, only one of us can go through that way. Obviously, it’s got to be you,” said Hermione.
Hari did a double-take, his frown deepening. “What? How? But I can’t do this without you guys!” Hari spluttered, blinking. “I’m not as clever or talented as either of you. I’ll just fail on my own.”
Draco scoffed. Hari blinked at him. “Oh, come on, Hari. Don’t be ridiculous,” he remarked.
Hermione rolled her eyes. She reached up and covered Draco’s mouth with her hand. “What Draco is oh so insensitively trying to say is that you’re much more capable than you may think,” she explained gently. A split second later, Hermione yelped, yanking her hand away from Draco in disgust. “Did you just lick me, Draco?”
Draco shrugged, devious smile giving him away instantly. “Hari, you were raised by Minera McGonagall. You outsmarted Severus’ attempts to catch you up in class, you’ve been surrounded by magic since you were a child and you instinctively know magic without even thinking. If one of us is capable of getting out alive, it’s you,” Draco said firmly. “Hermione and I might be good at logic puzzles and magic theory, but that’s nothing compared to your abilities. Your bravery.”
Hermione nodded vigorously. “He’s right, you know.”
Hari huffed, looking back and forth from his friends to the black flames leading into the next chamber. He took in Draco’s words, internalising them, playing them over. What if he was right? Hari had grown up at Hogwarts for many years now, already exposed to magic well beyond his years merely by association. He couldn’t memorise the entirety of a textbook or instantly get a spell to work without even trying, but he knew magic like he knew his own heartbeat.
Hari took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders back, looked back to his friends once again. “Okay. You two take the potion and get back to Ron. Use the brooms to get back up to the school and get Minerva immediately,” said Hari. “I’ll… I’ll go on myself.”
Hermione softened, eyes swimming with tears. She threw her arms around him, almost knocking him into the table of potions. “Oh, be careful!” she cried, bushy hair scratching Hari’s face and neck.
She pulled back, sniffling.
“Good luck,” said Draco, nodding.
Hari waited for Draco and Hermione to each take a sip of half the potion and then they stepped through the purple flames, one after another. Hari lifted the half-full vial of black potion and moved towards the flickering black flames.
“Bottoms up,” Hari murmured, downing the last of the potion in one gulp.
His whole body temperature rose in seconds, tingling at the fingertips. Hari shut his eyes and stepped through the black flames into the next chamber, ready to see who he would be facing.