DUNGEONS
Evangeline cursed to herself then. She slipped away from Li, who had been continuing her anxious ramble and barely noticed her gone. Feeling almost a pull toward him, she made her way towards her brother and down the stairway he had gone.
It always got darker the farther you made your way down to the dungeons. Evangeline didn’t mind it normally, but the thought of a troll coming around the corner and bashing her head in wasn’t a great one. The sorting hat was more than right about her lacking bravery. Whatever stubbornness she had could be attributed to pettiness, often unuseful. But she was starting to think that it was wrong about her being smart too. Going into a dark basement with winding corridors and few ways out with a known troll inside wasn’t smart.
When she got down to the dungeons, Evangeline wasn’t quite sure where Theodore had gone. Somehow, even on gimpy leg, he had taken the stairs much faster than her and from them had gone to places unknown.
Something tugged her forward, not anything physical. Just an unrelenting feeling. She followed it down the hall before her. The walls here were tiled - in them she saw her warped and distorted reflection, but from what lightsource she could never tell. Part of her wanted to be comforted by being in the dungeons. Her favorite class was here, both of her brothers spent most of their time here in Hogwarts. Maybe Theodore was down here so often he knew the faster passages. Edmund twittled in her ear and she shoved a biscuit in his face to keep him quiet. That extortionist knew she would do it and already had waiting little hands. Inside her robe pocket she clenched and unclenched her hand around her wand. Elder, she reminded herself, chuckling dryly at the old saying, ‘wand of elder, never prosper’. She doubted she could do anything respectable with it anyway.
It took a while, but soon enough she heard it, the tap of his cane against the stone up ahead. Hugging the walls, she crept closer until she could see him. It was the smell that hit her first, a putrid odor that made her whole face crinkle. Then she saw it, the troll’s back up ahead. It was a strange green-brown color, with warts covering the skin and dressed in a loincloth, with big feet and a head she couldn’t see. Her eyes went wide and her limbs went numb, instantly her wand dropped back into her pocket. No, she was not brave.
Theodore was though. He inched towards the troll, quiet and careful. The tap she had heard must have been him laying down his cane, as it now sat on the dungeon floor unmoving. It was still the old one, with polished light wood. Without it, walking was slow and clearly more painful, but also much quieter. Briefly, she wondered if he had tried her rendition of the bitterroot balm. But soon hoped he hadn’t, if it failed him here she would feel responsible.
There was some sort of yelling inside of the classroom… no bathroom. The etching before the doorframe explained that it was the girl’s lavatory. It seemed more than simply, “help!” or pleas for mercy. Living, like a plan. The troll was edging closer and closer to whoever was inside and suddenly, with a violent hand motion, it brought its club down on something dreadful. The crash sounded like an avalanche, melding with the scream of broken pipes.
Theodore spared a glance inside, clutching his wand and looking quite near to action. As his wand rose in the air and a spell nearly flew through his lips, a loud thud sang through the air, followed by an even louder one. He sighed in relief, ducking back behind the wall and out of the doorway.
“Is it… dead?” a voice inside asked, which Evangeline soon recognized as Hermione Granger. It was followed by an exclamation of disgust from the voice of Harry Potter. Theodore glanced to his side, up the corridor from where he was and let out an exasperated sigh. Then he lunged for his cane, pulling the rest of his body into a nook across from Evangeline’s hiding place.
She didn’t know how he didn’t see her - a corridor’s width away and breathing heavy. Evangeline pressed herself deeper into the wall, wishing to all she knew that she was hidden enough and that there was only one troll. She heard the teacher’s voices next, along with their footsteps - both were hurried and anxious.That must have been what pushed Theodore to move. But why hide? McGonagall was the first to speak, crying for an explanation. Now Evangeline recognized the final voice - Ron Weasley. All Gryffindors - that seemed predictable. Potter and Ron were looking for some sort of explanation themselves when Granger stepped in.
“It was me, professor, I went looking for the troll. If Harry and Ron hadn’t come to find me I’d probably be dead,” she said. McGonagall gasped, quickly admonishing Granger for her actions, then awarding five points to each student. That was fair, Evangeline supposed, no matter what their intentions were they did take out a troll for the school. However, Granger’s explanation didn’t really make any sense, from what she had seen she was the top of the class. Perhaps a bit prideful, but not enough to assume she had actual practical knowledge like that. Evangeline expected that McGonagall hadn’t bought it either, but also didn’t really care about pushing to the truth. She seemed the kind of woman to award good actions without much care for why they were necessary. It would have been better had no students been there at all.
The whole group started heading back in her and Theodore’s direction. She saw Theodore mutter something, then meld deeper into the dark. All Evangeline could do was will herself to disappear - which did not seem to have any effect. Thinking about it later, she was probably lucky that some case of accidental magic hadn’t really turned her transparent without a way to become visible again.
After they had gone, Evangeline didn’t dare move for fear of where Theodore was. She didn’t hear his cane click away and assumed him to still be there - though it was entirely possible that his spell also drowned out sound. Regardless, she stayed put.
She was right to do so, Theodore stepped out of his place several minutes later. He looked to the left then the right, adjusting his glasses in the darkness. No matter how much she willed him not to look ahead, he did. Whatever power had kept him from seeing her the first time was no longer in effect. Their eyes met and he stiffened. His eyes grew dark and cloudy - like their father’s right before a snap. But he didn’t say anything and neither did she. Without a word, she ran. Up from the dungeons, up the moving staircases, all the way up the Ravenclaw tower and to the knocker at the door. She didn’t look back and he never called for her.
She tapped the knocker against the door quickly, willing it to be a good riddle, an easy riddle, willing that she would just be able to go to bed and ignore everything else. But the knocker didn’t seem to care for her demands. It came to life with a riddle in kind, “How many roads must a man walk down?” it asked.
Evangeline’s head spun. It was the same riddle, complete with the same tone, the same feeling, the same nervousness. She wrung her sweaty hands on her skirt. She didn’t think.
“As many as it takes,” the answer flew out of her mouth with a mind of its own. Opposing her earlier answer, the one that was: careful, thought out, even hopeful. The door swung open, less reluctantly than it had the first time, like its hinges had been newly oiled and cleaned. And this time, it was Evangeline who hesitated to step inside.