Finding the hatch that would no doubt lead us to our goal was rather simple as the Cerberus, Fluffy, shifted its front paws and slid onto its side. The position would have been adorable if it weren't for its massive size and the slobber that perpetually leaked from its dirty mouth. I grimaced as the smell of rotten meat and decayed fat burgeoned forth into my nose. Dracoria and Hermione didn't fare ay better, the two of them holding their nose whilst frantically holding their breaths.
Blinking back tears amidst the foul stench I bent down towards the hatch and murmured another Alohomora, the hatch opening with a small metallic screech that made us all freeze for a few moments... There was no need however as Fluffy simply snored and snorted in his sleep. All of us let out a breath before we gathered around the hatch and cast Lumos spells above the opening.
A void met our vision at first until our eyes adjusted to the light difference and I spotted a writhing mass of Devil's Snare. Herbology class had mentioned it a few times and the teacher, Mrs Sprout had been quite informative when I had asked her about the plant.
"I'm going down first. There's Devil's Snare down there." Hermione paled a little before nodding, her brown bushy hair tumbling around her shoulders as she bobbed in nervousness.
"Be careful Harry..." Dracoria smirked and before I could answer Hermione or address the oddity of her smile, she jumped down.
"Shit. Dracoria...!" I whisper shouted in frustration and annoyance as the girl grunted down below, her wand spilling out a bright light that surged into the room me and Hermione were both still inside.
The sound of a dog whimpering filled the chamber as we both turned to look at the sleeping form of Fluffy. Or should I say, the slowly awaking Fluffy... In a moment of sheer panic and adrenaline I shoved Hermione down into the hatch before grabbing the hatch and following behind her. A loud bang of course exploded from the hatch as I hung from the handle, the metal groaning under my weight as the wood splintered somewhat.
"Harry, jump so we can scare away this Devil's Snare!" Dracoria shouted up towards me. I grimaced and then envisioned all the times I had dreamed about jumping off a building when I was younger, just to get away from my 'family'. I let go of the handle and felt the air whip my clothes and hair upwards before my legs met a soft, squishy mass that soon shifted and tried wrapping around me.
"Lumos Maxima!!!" Hermione's voice boomed in the enclosed space, followed by a massive flash of light that could almost rival the sun's rays themselves. The mass below us slithered away with alacrity, some form of primal fear driving the magical plant into the shadows that still clung to the edges of the chamber. Within moments each of us were free and standing in a room just below the Devil's Snare.
"Are you both alright?" Dracoria's voice was coated with worry but was soon drowned out by the near-shrieking of Hermione as she interrupted.
"ALRIGHT..!? Are we alright!? Of course not! Who just jumps into a pit of darkness and casts Lumos straight up!? Even then, you didn't use it against the Devil's Snare, you just used it to blind us and then turned it off!" She was in a huff as the platinum haired girl shrunk in on herself a little, her expression becoming downcast.
I refused to say anything as Hermione had already vented enough frustration for both of us combined.
"I-I just wanted to have fun... I-i'm sorry... I didn't really ever have any friends... So I was just, excited to work together like this..." A pang of sympathy and understanding surged through my usually cold heart, the idea that she had lacked friends as I had making me want to support her.
Hermione didn't know what to say, she was simultaneously annoyed but also guilty at the fact that she had just yelled at someone that had a similar story to her. It didn't help matters that she was probably also a bit excited about the entire 'mission'.
I coughed into the clinging silence. "It's fine, no one was hurt and we all survived. Please just let us know when you're going next time... Some warning is better than none, after all." Dracoria's murky mood evaporated slowly, the previous excitement she held bleeding back in as small tears reached her eyes.
"I-I will, promise!" Hermione nodded and walked over to the girl, hugging her and softly apologising out of ear-shot.
Meanwhile I turned and began scanning the room. There was a single door behind where I had landed, the oak that made the door smothered with soot and dust. Cobwebs and grime framed the entire chamber as the Devil's Snare softly coiled and writhed at the edges of the darkness. Currently our Lumos spells were keeping the tendril-like vines from expanding towards us or further into the chamber.
I stepped forwards with my wand held high in front of me, my gaze tracing the stone slabs in front of the door. It didn't seem like it was trapped and there were no human footsteps and even animal marking. No one had been down here without covering their tracks at the very least.
Hermione and Dracoria caught up with me soon after I reached the door. I pushed my wand forwards and covered it in a small amount of pressure which I used to nudge the door open. Beyond the opened doorway was an expansive room of white pillars and confused architecture that had hundreds of flying keys buzzing around in a hodgepodge of bronze, silver and iron colours.
"That's new..." Hermione had muttered out as we softly entered the room.
"Which one is for that door though?" Dracoria pointed over to a circular door on the opposing side of the room. Both girls began working through the logic of the room as I too a glance around the large chamber, noticing a dishevelled broom leaning against a pillar off to the side.
The logic of the trap was rather simple. The keys were flying around and swarming amongst eachother. One key was the true one that would unlock the doorway, one needed to use the broom to catch that key... Like a seeker. I groaned in annoyance at how obvious this trap was. It was as if this trap was made for him, the previous for Dracoria who had more experience with magic due to her upbringing now it was just Hermione left to be 'challenged'.
"Accio- Correct Key." I whispered the incantation and whipped my wand towards the swarm, a pulling sensation attaching to me hand before it abated and a large key was flung into my left hand.
Whoever made this trap had thought that a first year wouldn't be capable of casting this spell, they were foolish. The one rule you always followed with children of any age is that they will find a way and never to underestimate them. I had learnt that teaching in elementary school when the other kids managed to find my hiding spot using word-of-mouth and rumour... I never underestimate my opponents now.
"Got it, let's continue." Hermione and Dracoria blinked in a mixture of confusion and amazement before they quickly rushed in behind me.
I placed the key in its hole and twisted, the staircase beyond expanding before us magically. Rolling my eyes at the drama of it all I guided us down and into the next room. The next trap turned out to be magical chess, a confusing trap seeing as how none of us had played chess before.
"Chess huh..." Dracoria giggled at my drawled comment, followed soon by Hermione. I wasn't trying to emulate our head of house but sometimes it just felt natural when everything around you in the wizarding world was so illogical.
Both of the girls soon ceased their giggles, both of them grimacing at how large the statues were.
"Do we have to play chess to pass this room or can we simply pass?" Dracoria queried aloud as Hermione tapped her right index finger on her chin in preponderance.
"The ultimate goal of chess is to destroy the enemy king, if we were to play we'd need to checkmate as quickly as possible because it looks like we will be playing certain pieces." My right eye twitched as I considered both options. They were both inefficient and angled towards following the rules that a magical had put forth. I grinned evilly as I pointed my wand towards the white king standing opposite 'our' side.
"Reducto" A bolt of pale-white energy phased through the air like a pressure wave before it landed onto the white king, shattering the stone into thousands of itty bitty little fragments that proceeded to shower across the room.
Both girls were squealing and hunching in on themselves close to the ground, the errant shards of marble spraying over their hair and robes alike before the deluge ceased. I chuckled before walking past the white-side of the board, heading towards the next door.
"Why follow their rules when you can create your own...?" I couldn't help the teasing lilt to my speech as I reach the door and pushed it open, the heat from the next chamber wafting over me like a summer breeze.
"HARRY!!!" Hermione shrieked behind me as I entered the next room, footsteps echoing behind me as I beheld a pedestal of varying potions. Beyond the gathering of potions was a wall of flames that writhed up in between the marble pillars, pooling at the ceiling and wrapping back down into itself.
"That was so cool Harry!" Dracoria was smiling widely, barely holding herself back from jumping around in excitement. Her counterpart, Hermione, however, was another story all together. She was staring me down with small embers of rage billowing inside her brown irises all the whilst she gripped her hands tightly, to the point they were going pale. I turned my head and grimaced slightly, Hermione was scary when she wanted to be.
This time I stood off to the side allowing Hermione to figure out the trap, her intelligence easily chewing through the basic riddle. Honestly, if this was the extent of the protections placed upon the philosophers stone it deserved to be stolen.
Mione was stressed that there was only one potion but that cleared up in the next moment or two as another potion of the same type emerged in the same place that the last one had taken upon the pedestal. We grinned at one another and pulled this second one off before another popped up, Dracoria grabbed it this time and we all took the potion, walking through the flames as if they were mere droplets of water from a waterfall.
We all looked around and congregated around the single mirror that stood in the middle of the room. The room was closed off and made of dark stones that shone with candlelight. Sconces upon the walls mixed with the small wax light sources and created patterns of shadow and flame upon the stone that mimicked the form of magical creatures. Wind flickered the flames and caused the shadows to change from one form to another and then back. It was all very theatrical and made my suspicions narrow upon the mirror.
I watched the mirror and found myself sitting next to a red-haired woman with green eyes, her smile radiant and beautiful. My heart ached at the vision for some reason at her visage before I looked at the man and saw him nod proudly toward me with a cocky grin plastered on his face. Both of them were standing behind me and ruffling my hair.
'Mum, dad...' Tears collected in my eyes as the hollowness inside my chest deepened and broke wider.
"Whoa, I have a red stone? HUH!?" Dracoria yelled out in surprise and shot a hand into one of the pockets on her robe, a glowing red stone glimmering in the flame light and hazing with raw magic.
I witnessed her spinning the philosopher's stone in her hand but it all felt hollow to me. The stone would never grant me my parents back and it wouldn't stop my surrogate 'family' from beating me and torturing me at every chance they got.
The flames at the entrance to the chamber shifted into a corridor of open air. Shuffling of shoe against flagstone followed the ominous display as professor Quirrell stepped down into the chamber. His purple head-wrap tilting to the right a little as he cracked all of the bones in his neck.
"Ahhh, how fortunate that I meet you here, Potter!" He spat my name out as my scar lit up in pain, a migraine suddenly sparking inside my mind as if his presence were a sirens' wail.
"P-p-professor, we, we didn't want to steal, anything!" Hermione was sweating buckets as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher stood in front of us. She had a bad habit of being a teachers pet at the best of times, when she had just been caught doing something 'wrong' she practically melted into a puddle of horror and nerves.
Dracoria on the other hand narrowed her eyes and regarded Quirrell with scepticism. I rolled my eyes upwards inside my skull and watched the professor stare me down. There was something wrong with him.
"Let me speak with the boy..." A voice hissed from somewhere near the professor, the man twitching in discomfort before turning frantic.
"B-But master, you don't have your full power..." A hiss escaped into the air and made the professor straighten unnaturally.
"ENOUGH! You shall do as you are told, or I shall devour your magic! " I grimaced as another figurative poker was plunged into my mind, my magic spinning wildly around me as it tried to quench whatever was effecting me.
Quirrell stuttered out a multitude of apologies before quickly unwrapping his head-scarf, his bald head gleaming in the light of chamber. That normal view was then warped as he slowly turned, a malformed face pressing out of the skin upon his head, beady red eyes gleaming with hatred at me. In that instant pain was replaced with revulsion and disgust, my stomach pulsing with the need to empty itself.
"Harry Potter... Supposed slayer of Lord Voldemort, me...! "
"Voldemort." A sickening grin slid across the abominable face, both of my friends barfing onto the ground at the sight as the gross magic leaked into the air and carried a taste of decay along with it.
"Ah, so brave... So foolish..." Voldemort intoned mockingly before continuing, "Give me the stone, Harry, otherwise I will kill your friends..." The gaping hole that was in my chest tightened and narrowed as my will forced the pain and disgust away into a tiny little cave inside my mind where it all could die.
"No one threatens my friends." It was a new conviction but it made sense given the fact that I had never had friends before...
Voldemort scowled in anger, his imitation of teeth grinding against one another as Quirrell quivered and moaned in pain.
"Then I shall end them... As I ended your parents... I believe your mother cried out for mercy on you before I killed her...? I'm glad I am able to deny her even that satisfaction..." Pure rage scourged through me as my magic turned into a visible umbra around me, dark green and black, like the depths of a murky lake.
"At least she had the dignity to die facing her opponent, you have to use minions and servants like a pussy." Voldemort snarled harshly.
"KILL HIM! " Quirrell turned and raised his wand just as a bright white flash of light surged into the room.
"AVADAKEDAVR-" Quirrelmort's incantation was silenced as soon as the white light landed to his side, a fist connecting with the side of his face as a wand jabbed into his side and pulsed with bright red light.
"Reducto", "Depulso", "Fulmen" A female with a crazy mane of frizzy black hair stood tall and began pummelling spells in the direction of Voldemort, her body twisting and turning to facilitate differing wand movements before she spun and run, her wand spewing spell after spell in chains that I couldn't even comprehend.
"ARGGHHH! " Quirrellmort screamed in pain as he was launched through the room. He landed with a deep thud of bone and stone before getting to his knees and slashing his wand upwards before him. A magic shield, a Protego to be specific, appeared before him in a bright yellow hue, consuming the ten or so spells that had launched after the first few had struck.
"Ah, ah, ah, that's enough out of you, little bitty dark lord!" The cackled that followed the woman's retort drowned the feeling of dread that had once swallowed the room. Voldemort's presence had been matched or maybe subdued, I couldn't truly understand what was happening, but it was happening.
"BELLATRIX!? YOUR DARE BETRAY ME!!!!!???? " An aura of pure black and flaking white exploded out from Quirrell's form as Bellatrix Lestrange cackled in delight.
"HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAAH! Of course I do! You're nothin, but an, itty, bitty, bastard."
"AVADAKEDAVRA" A green blast of light streaked across the room only to meet bare masonry as Bellatrix spun on the spot and unleashed ten more spells, many of them being dark curses that would probably flay the dark lord or spin his innards inside out.
"Vox Mortua", "Carne Putresco", "Sanguis Ligare", "Ossa Flectere", "Nervi Ardent", "Mors Lenta", "Viscera Inverto", "Corpus Intus Ruere"
Most of her spells were non-verbal but some of them she cried out incantations before dodging. Protego shields and other defensive spells that I couldn't comprehend flared sporadically before dying out in explosive clashes of sparks.
As the fight continued Quirrellmort was wearing down, his physical form sloughing off as the magic that contained the spirit of Voldemort broke into fragmented shards. His aura was lessening by the second and a faint hissing noise could be heard as another shield sprung from Quirrell's wand.
Before I knew it the man was a puddle upon the ground and the spirit of Voldemort was surging towards me. Unfortunately for the spectre Bellatrix was vindictive and unleashed a particularly foul-looking spell that immediately twisted the spirit upon itself and banished it to wherever it came from originally.
"She'll be pleased... Hehehe, I fucking beat him!!!" The woman cackled before turning towards me, Hermione and Dracoria, her lilac eyes softening a touch.
"Come on dearies, let's go before that bastard of a headmaster pops up and wonders why you're all here..." She stopped and grinned. "And why I am here..." Her eyes shone with mirth as she tagged that little bit on the end of her request.
'What the fuck just happened!? And why is a mass murdering servant of Voldemort saving me and defeating said dark lord...!?" A cackle broke out as I realised I'd just spoken my thoughts aloud.
"I love the thought process cousin! Leave them for later though..." She grabbed my shoulder and the other girls' shoulders and twisted space around us.
"That's impossible, it says in Hogwarts a Histor-" Hermione was cut off as Bellatrix apparated us out of the chamber.
...
A few moments later...
Dumbledore stepped into the chamber and immediately noted the pile of organic matter to the side and the remnants of a fierce spell battle. Smatterings of ash, soot and shattered wall were the only signs he needed to see to understand that a single party had dominated the conflict. Now he just needed to know who was down here...
"First, let us check the mirror, shall we..." He murmured the comment to himself, paling as he waved the elder wand over the mirror; failing to detect the Philosophers Stone.
"Fuck..."
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