Passing the Obstacles
Charles
That night Charles made sure that the coast was clear before he crept downstairs with Ron, and found Hermione in the common room. They covered themselves properly in the cloak and then crept away. Harry had already left.
In their nervous state, every statue's shadow looked like Filch, and every distant breath of wind sounded like Peeves swooping down on them. At the foot of the first set of stairs, they spotted Mrs. Norris skulking near the top.
"Oh, let's kick her, just this once," Ron whispered in Charles' ear, who shook his head. As they climbed carefully around her, Mrs. Norris turned her lamplike eyes on them but didn't do anything. They didn't meet anyone else until they reached the staircase up to the third floor. Peeves was bobbing halfway up, loosening the carpet so that people would trip.
"Who's there?" he said suddenly as they climbed toward him. He narrowed his wicked black eyes. "Know you're there, even if I can't see you. Are you ghoulie or ghostie or wee student beastie?"
He rose in the air and floated there, squinting at them. "Should call Filch, I should, if something's a-creeping around unseen."
Charles had a sudden idea. "Peeves," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "the Bloody Baron has his reasons for being invisible."
Peeves almost fell out of the air in shock. He caught himself in time and hovered about a foot off the stairs. "So sorry, your bloodiness, Mr. Baron, Sir," he said greasily. "My mistake, my mistake -- I didn't see you -- of course I didn't, you're invisible -- forgive old Peevsie his little joke, sir."
"I have business here, Peeves," Charles croaked. "Stay away from this place tonight."
"I will, sir, I most certainly will," said Peeves, rising in the air again. "Hope your business goes well, Baron, I'll not bother you." And he scooted off.
"Brilliant, Charles!" whispered Ron.
A few seconds later, they were there, outside the third-floor corridor - and the door was already ajar.
"Well, there you are," Charles said quietly, "Harry's already got past Fluffy."
Seeing the open door somehow seemed to impress upon all three of them what was facing them. Underneath the cloak, Charles turned to the other two. "If you want to go back, I won't blame you. You can take the cloak, I won't need it now."
"Don't be stupid," said Ron.
"We're coming," Hermione agreed. Charles pushed the door open.
As the door creaked, low, rumbling growls met their ears. All three of the dog's noses sniffed madly in their direction, even though it couldn't see them.
"What's that at its feet?" Hermione whispered.
"Looks like a harp," said Ron. "Harry must have left it there... he's smart."
"It must wake up the moment you stop playing," Charles guessed. "Well, here goes..."
Charles hardly a drew breath as they slipped out of the cloak and crept toward the trapdoor. They could feel the dog's hot, smelly breath as they approached the giant heads. "I think we'll be able to pull the door open," said Ron, peering over the dog's back. "Want to go first, Hermione?"
"No, I don't!"
"All right." Ron gritted his teeth and stepped carefully over the dog's legs. He bent and pulled the ring of the trapdoor, which swung up and open.
"What can you see?" Hermione said anxiously.
"Nothing - just black - there's no way of climbing down, we'll just have to drop."
Charles waved at Ron to get his attention and pointed at himself.
"You want to go first? Are you sure?" said Ron.
Charles climbed over it and looked down through the trapdoor. There was no sign of the bottom. He lowered himself through the hole until he was hanging on by his fingertips. Then he looked up at Ron and said, "If anything happens to me, don't follow. Go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, right?"
"Right," Ron said.
"See you in a minute, I hope..."
And Charles let go. Cold, damp air rushed past him as he fell, down, down and -- FLUMP. With a funny, muffled sort of thump he landed on something soft. He sat up and felt around, his eyes not used to the gloom. It felt as though he was sitting on some sort of plant.
"It's okay!" he called up to the light the size of a postage stamp, which was the open trapdoor, "it's a soft landing, you can jump!"
Ron followed right away. He landed, sprawled next to Charles. "What's this stuff?" were his first words.
"Dunno, some sort of plant thing. I suppose it's here to break the fall. Come on, Hermione!"
The distant music stopped. There was a loud bark from the dog, but Hermione had already jumped. She landed on Charles' other side.
"We must be miles under the school," she said.
"Lucky this plant thing's here, really," said Ron.
"Lucky!" shrieked Hermione. "Look at you both!"
She leapt up and struggled toward a damp wall. She had to struggle because the moment she had landed, the plant had started to twist snakelike tendrils around her ankles. As for Charles and Ron, their legs had already been bound tightly in long creepers without their noticing.
Hermione had managed to free herself before the plant got a firm grip on her. Now she watched in horror as the two boys fought to pull the plant off them, but the more they strained against it, the tighter and faster the plant wound around them.
"Stop moving!" Hermione ordered them. "I know what this is - it's Devil's Snare!"
"Oh, I'm so glad we know what it's called, that's a great help," snarled Ron, leaning back, trying to stop the plant from curling around his neck.
"Shut up, I'm trying to remember how to kill it!" said Hermione.
"Well, hurry up, I can't breathe!" Charles gasped, wrestling with it as it curled around his chest.
"Devil's Snare, Devil's Snare... what did Professor Sprout say? - it likes the dark and the damp... light kills it..."
"So light a fire!" Charles choked.
"Yes - of course - but there's no wood!" Hermione cried, wringing her hands.
"HAVE YOU GONE MAD?" Ron bellowed. "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"
"Oh, right!" Hermione whipped out her wand, waved it, muttered something, and sent a jet of the same bluebell flames she had used on Snape at the plant. In a matter of seconds, the two boys felt it loosening its grip as it cringed away from the light and warmth. Wriggling and flailing, it unraveled itself from their bodies, and they were able to pull free.
"Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione," Charles said as he joined her by the wall, wiping sweat off his face.
"Yeah," said Ron, "and lucky Charles doesn't lose his head in a crisis -- 'there's no wood,' honestly."
"This way," Charles pointed down a stone passageway, which was the only way forward.
All they could hear apart from their footsteps was the gentle drip of water trickling down the walls. The passageway sloped downward, and Charles was reminded of Gringotts.
"Can you hear something?" Ron whispered.
Charles listened. A soft rustling and clinking seemed to be coming from up ahead.
"Do you think it's a ghost?"
"Or maybe Harry?" Charles cringed. He didn't want to encounter his brother...
"I don't know... sounds like wings to me."
"There's light ahead - I can see something moving."
They reached the end of the passageway and saw before them a brilliantly lit chamber, its ceiling arching high above them. It was full of small, jewel-bright birds, fluttering and tumbling all around the room. On the opposite side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.
"Do you think they'll attack us if we cross the room?" said Ron.
"Probably," Charles said. "They don't look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once... well, there's no other choice... I'll run."
He took a deep breath, covered his face with his arms, and sprinted across the room. He expected to feel sharp beaks and claws tearing at him any second, but nothing happened. He reached the door untouched. He pulled the handle, but it was locked.
The other two followed him. They tugged and heaved at the door, but it wouldn't budge, not even when Hermione tried the Alohomora charm.
"Now what?" said Ron.
"These birds... they can't be here just for decoration," said Hermione. They watched the birds soaring overhead, glittering - glittering?
"They're not birds!" Charles suddenly said. "They're keys! Winged keys -- look carefully. So that must mean..." he looked around the chamber while the other two squinted up at the flock of keys. "... yes -- look! Broomsticks! We've got to catch the key to the door!"
"But there are hundreds of them!" Ron examined the lock on the door.
"We're looking for a big, old-fashioned one -- probably silver, like the handle."
They each seized a broomstick and kicked off into the air, soaring into the midst of the cloud of keys. They grabbed and snatched, but the bewitched keys darted and dived so quickly it was almost impossible to catch one.
Charles, though, was an excellent seeker and had a knack for spotting things other people didn't. After a minute's weaving about through the whirl of rainbow feathers, he noticed a large silver key that had a bent wing, as if it had already been caught and stuffed roughly into the keyhole.
"That one!" he called to the others. "That big one - there - no, there - with bright blue wings - the feathers are all crumpled on one side."
Ron went speeding in the direction that Charles was pointing, crashed into the ceiling, and nearly fell off his broom.
"We've got to close in on it!" Charles called, not taking his eyes off the key with the damaged wing. "Ron, you come at it from above -- Hermione, stay below and stop it from going down and I'll try and catch it. Right, NOW!"
Ron dived, Hermione rocketed upward, the key dodged them both, and Charles streaked after it; it sped toward the wall, and Charles leaned forward and with a nasty, crunching noise, pinned it against the stone with one hand. Ron and Hermione's cheers echoed around the high chamber.
They landed quickly, and Charles ran to the door, the key struggling in his hand. He rammed it into the lock and turned -- it worked. The moment the lock had clicked open, the key took flight again, looking very battered now that it had been caught twice.
"Ready?" Charles asked the other two, his hand on the door handle. They nodded. He pulled the door open.
The next chamber was so dark they couldn't see anything at all. But as they stepped into it, light suddenly flooded the room to reveal an astonishing sight.
They were standing on the edge of a huge chessboard, behind the black chessmen, which were all taller than they were and carved from what looked like black stone. Facing them, way across the chamber, were the white pieces. Charles, Ron, and Hermione shivered slightly - the towering white chessmen had no faces.
"Now what do we do?" Charles whispered.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" said Ron. "We've got to play our way across the room."
Behind the white pieces, they could see another door.
"How?" Hermione asked nervously.
"I think," said Ron, "we're going to have to be chessmen."
He walked up to a black knight and put his hand out to touch the knight's horse. At once, the stone sprang to life. The horse pawed the ground and the knight turned his helmeted head to look down at Ron.
"Do we - er - have to join you to get across?" The black knight nodded. Ron turned to the other two.
"This needs thinking about he said. I suppose we've got to take the place of three of the black pieces...."
Charles and Hermione stayed quiet, watching Ron think. Finally, he said, "Now, don't be offended or anything, but neither of you is that good at chess --"
"We're not offended," said Charles quickly. "Just tell us what to do."
"Well, Charles, you take the place of that bishop, and Hermione, you go next to him instead of that castle."
"What about you?"
"I'm going to be a knight," said Ron.
The chessmen seemed to have been listening, because at these words a knight, a bishop, and a castle turned their backs on the white pieces and walked off the board, leaving three empty squares that Charles, Ron, and Hermione took.
"White always plays first in chess," said Ron, peering across the board. "Yes... look..."
A white pawn had moved forward two squares.
Ron started to direct the black pieces. They moved silently wherever he sent them. Charles' knees were trembling. What if they lost?
"Charles - move diagonally four squares to the right."
Their first real shock came when their other knight was taken. The white queen smashed him to the floor and dragged him off the board, where he lay quite still, facedown.
"Had to let that happen," said Ron, looking shaken. "Leaves you free to take that bishop, Hermione, go on."
Every time one of their men was lost, the white pieces showed no mercy. Soon there was a huddle of limp black players slumped along the wall. Twice, Ron only just noticed in time that Charles and Hermione were in danger. He himself darted around the board, taking almost as many white pieces as they had lost black ones.
"We're nearly there," he muttered suddenly. "Let me think let me think..."
The white queen turned her blank face toward him.
"Yes..." said Ron softly, "It's the only way... I've got to be taken."
"NO!" the other two shouted.
"That's chess!" snapped Ron. "You've got to make some sacrifices! I take one step forward and she'll take me -- that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Charles!"
"But --"
"Do you want to stop Snape or not?"
"Ron --"
"Look, if you don't hurry up, he'll already have the Stone!"
There was no alternative.
"Ready?" Ron called, his face pale but determined. "Here I go - now, don't hang around once you've won."
He stepped forward, and the white queen pounced. She struck Ron hard across the head with her stone arm, and he crashed to the floor. Hermione screamed but stayed on her square - the white queen dragged Ron to one side. He looked as if he'd been knocked out.
Shaking, Charles moved three spaces to the left.
The white king took off his crown and threw it at Charles' feet. They had won. The chessmen parted and bowed, leaving the door ahead clear. With one last desperate look back at Ron, Charles and Hermione charged through the door and up the next passageway.
"What if he's-?"
"He'll be all right," Charles said, trying to convince himself. "What do you reckon's next?"
"We've had Sprout's, that was the Devil's Snare; Flitwick must've put charms on the keys; McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive; that leaves Quirrell's spell, and Snape's."
They had reached another door. "All right?" Charles whispered. "Go on."
He pushed it open.
A disgusting smell filled their nostrils, making both of them pull their robes up over their noses. Eyes watering, they saw, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll even larger than the one they had tackled, out cold with a bloody lump on its head.
"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one," Charles whispered as they stepped carefully over one of its massive legs. "Come on, I can't breathe."
He pulled open the next door, both of them hardly daring to look at what came next - but there was nothing very frightening in there, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.
"Snape's. What do we have to do?"
They stepped over the threshold, and immediately a fire sprang up behind them in the doorway. It wasn't ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway leading onward. They were trapped.
"Look!" Hermione seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Charles looked over her shoulder to read it:
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, which ever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting bidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end,
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.
Hermione let out a great sigh and Charles, amazed, saw that she was smiling, the very last thing he felt like doing.
"Brilliant," said Hermione. "This isn't magic -- it's logic -- a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here forever."
"But so will we, won't we?"
"Of course not," said Hermione. "Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple."
"But how do we know which to drink?"
"Give me a minute."
Hermione read the paper several times. Then she walked up and down the line of bottles, muttering to herself and pointing at them. At last, she clapped her hands.
"Got it," she said. "The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire - toward the Stone."
Charles looked at the tiny bottle. "There's only enough there for one of us. That's hardly one swallow."
They looked at each other.
"Which one will get you back through the purple flames?" Hermione pointed at a rounded bottle at the right end of the line.
"You drink that," said Charles. "No, listen, get back and get Ron. Grab brooms from the flying-key room, they'll get you out of the trapdoor and past Fluffy -- go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, we need him. I might be able to hold Snape off for a while, and there will be Harry, but I'm no match for him."
"But - what if You-Know-Who's with him?"
"Well -- I was lucky once, wasn't I?" Charles pointed at his scar. "I might get lucky again. Besides, as I said, I'll have Harry by my side. Hopefully."
Hermione's lip trembled, and she suddenly dashed at Charles and threw her arms around him.
"Hermione!"
"Charles - you're a great wizard, you know."
"I'm not as good as you," said Charles, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.
"Me!" said Hermione. "Books! And cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery and - oh Charles - be careful!"
"You drink first. You are sure which is which, aren't you?"
"Positive," said Hermione. She took a long drink from the round bottle at the end and shuddered.
"It's not poison?" Charles asked anxiously. "No - but it's like ice."
"Quick, go, before it wears off."
"Good luck -- take care." Hermione turned and walked straight through the purple fire.
Charles took a deep breath and picked up the smallest bottle. He turned to face the black flames.
"Here I come," he said, and he drained the little bottle in one gulp.