I landed softly on a bed of damp, grasping tendrils at the bottom of the shaft, the darkness below absolute. A moment later, I heard the frantic, panicked cries of the Golden Trio from further down the corridor. They had landed just moments before me and were already ensnared.
"It's Devil's Snare! Devil's Snare! What did Professor Sprout say? It hates sunlight!" Hermione's voice, sharp with academic recall even under duress.
"So what're we supposed to do? We don't have any sunlight!" Ron roared in panic.
A faint light bloomed below as Hermione, ever the clever one, cast a weakLumos Solem. I, however, had no intention of wrestling with a psychotropic plant in the dark.
I remained on the upper ledge, a silent observer. My own wand lit up, not with a gentle glow, but with the tip burning like a hot coal. While Hermione was trying to remember the correct incantation, I applied pure, focused intent.
A silent, jet-black stream of fire, a spell taught to me by the diary's ghost, erupted from my wand. It wasn't the wild, uncontrollable Fiendfyre; it was a precise, controlled burst of cursed flame. It struck the center of the Devil's Snare plant. The effect was instantaneous. The entire plant shrieked, a high-pitched, almost human sound, and recoiled violently, its tendrils shriveling into black ash.
I had cleared a perfect, ten-foot circle of safe passage in less than a second. I dropped to the stone floor below, my feet landing silently in the ash, and proceeded down the corridor, leaving the trio to struggle their way free. Their path was one of trial and error. Mine was one of overwhelming efficiency.
The next chamber opened into a vast, high-ceilinged room filled with the flutter of a thousand tiny, jewel-bright wings. High above, a flock of enchanted keys swarmed like birds, guarding a single, heavy wooden door on the far side. A collection of old, rickety broomsticks lay in the center of the room.
By the time I entered, the trio was already airborne, with Harry masterfully weaving his broom through the chaotic swarm, chasing a single key with a battered, silver wing. It was a test of a Seeker's skill, a challenge tailor-made for him.
I, however, had no interest in a brutish chase. This was a puzzle, and it had a more elegant solution.
My first instinct was a simple summoning charm. "Accio key," I whispered, but as expected, the key merely shuddered in the air, resisting the call. It was protected by a powerful anti-summoning jinx. A brute-force magical approach would be equally ineffective against a thousand enchanted objects at once.
But the jinx was designed to protect the key from being summoned itself. It was not designed to protect it from the other keys.
I raised my wand, not aiming at the silver-winged target, but at the flock surrounding it. I didn't cast a powerful spell. I cast a series of silent, multi-targeted, low-level Confusion Charms.
The effect was immediate and chaotic. The flock of keys, their simple enchantments disrupted, suddenly lost their flight patterns. They began to dart erratically, crashing into one another. Dozens of them, now confused, mobbed the one key that was still trying to evade Harry, their tiny bodies forming a chaotic, fluttering swarm around it.
The silver-winged key, its flight path now hopelessly obstructed, slowed to a near-halt. From the ground, I cast a single, simpleWingardium Leviosa, plucked the now-helpless key from the air, and calmly walked to the door. I unlocked it and passed through, just as Harry triumphantly snatched it from the air behind me. He would believe he had won through skill. He would never know the game had been rigged in his favor from the start.
The third chamber was my favorite. A massive, life-sized wizard's chess set stood before me. On the far side of the board, the shattered remains of several black stone pieces lay scattered across the checkered floor. Ron's sacrifice. A noble, but ultimately inefficient, move.
The remaining white pieces turned their blank, stone helmets to face me as I approached. A new game had to be played. And I was the only player.
//SYSTEM ANALYSIS: Enchanted Chessboard// Objective: Cross the board safely. Rules: You must assume the role of a black piece and checkmate the white king. The white pieces will retaliate against any illegal moves with extreme prejudice. Standard wizard's chess rules apply.
Playing a full game would take time and was fraught with risk. But the System had also highlighted a loophole in the enchantment's logic. The pieces were programmed to enforce the rules, but they had no defense against a player who could think outside the board.
I assumed the position of the black king. Then, instead of commanding my own pieces, I focused on my opponents. I used the[Subtle Casting]skill I had acquired during the Quidditch match, weaving a series of incredibly faint, almost undetectable illusion and confusion charms directly onto the white pieces.
To the room's magical sensors, I was simply standing still, contemplating my move. But in reality, I was subtly altering the white queen's perception, making her see a threat on a different flank. I made a white knight misjudge its L-shaped path by a single square. I made two white pawns mistake each other for enemies and lock themselves in place.
I wasn't just playing chess. I was hacking the game's code, introducing tiny bugs and glitches into the enemy's AI. I moved my own pieces only when necessary, navigating a path through the confused and self-sabotaging white army. It took me less than ten minutes to achieve a checkmate, my king never once being threatened. I had won not through sacrifice, but through pure, cold, logical subversion.
I stepped through the final door and into the antechamber. The troll from Halloween lay unconscious in the corner, clearly dispatched by Quirrell earlier. And before the final door, a table stood, holding a line of potions and a scroll of parchment. Snape's logic puzzle.
I saw the small potion Hermione had drunk to proceed forward, and the larger one Ron had taken to retreat. I glanced at the riddle. It was a clever, intricate piece of work, a true test of logical deduction.
I ignored it completely.
I raised my wand and cast a series of advanced alchemical analysis charms Cadmus had taught me, spells that were not on any Hogwarts curriculum. The magical signature of each potion lit up in my vision: poison, nettle wine, the fire-shielding potion, the path forward. I had the answer in seconds, without needing to solve a single line of the riddle. It was, I conceded, a beautiful puzzle. But I was not here to play by the rules of others.
I picked up the small, round bottle that would allow me to pass through the black flames, a cold smile on my face. I could hear voices now, from the final chamber. Harry's, high and defiant. And another, a voice I knew all too well from my nightmares of the original timeline—the cold, high, cruel voice of Lord Voldemort.
The final act was about to begin. And I had a front-row seat. I drank the potion and stepped through the fire.