"Run!"
The echo of the scream still crashed against the corridor walls, making Fred's eardrums buzz. The fleeting thrill of mischief just moments ago was ripped apart by the twisted face of the caretaker before him. Fear poured over him like a bucket of ice water, sending shivers down his spine.
He yanked George, who was frozen in place, his knuckles standing out white from the force of his grip.
"Run!"
No second word.
They turned and bolted, backs to Filch's swaying oil lamp—the one casting its ominous yellow glow—as they sprinted in the opposite direction, toward the grand staircase that led into the main halls.
The stone beneath their feet was cold and unyielding. Each stomp echoed heavily, booming through the vast, silent castle at midnight. Now, their only hope lay with the world-famous shifting staircases of Hogwarts. Those unpredictable steps, once a playground for the prankster twins, were now their one and only chance of escape.
"Stop! You little brats!"
Filch's roar followed them down the corridor, laced with the kind of fury that had hardened into something close to glee after years of chasing rule-breakers. The lamplight stretched their running shadows across the walls—long, twisted, frantic. His bowlegs pounded the floor with surprising speed for his age, the thudding of his boots like a war drum beating right at their backs.
The twins' hearts hammered in their chests, nearly cracking ribs with every thud. They raced past the third floor, the fourth, their lungs aflame. But survival instincts drowned out the burn.
The fifth floor. They had reached it.
Up ahead, not far away, a wide marble staircase was slowly, solemnly shifting to the left, aligning to connect with the sixth-floor landing. If they could just leap onto it in time, the stairway's shift would cut Filch off, stranding him with no path forward.
Hope. So close they could taste it.
Fred almost felt the victorious breeze against his sweat-soaked hair.
And then—
A sudden chill clamped around their throats. Not the chill of a spell. Not cold air. But a primal, bone-deep fear. The kind only prey feels in the presence of a predator.
Their steps faltered. Their heads rose.
At the archway of the seventh floor staircase, framed by the moonlight spilling through tall windows, a figure emerged from the depths of shadow.
He walked slowly, soundlessly, as though his boots did not touch stone but hovered over a void. His robes—long, black, and flowing like the wings of a bat—swept behind him with every silent step.
His face bore no expression.
No anger. No surprise. Not even the faintest trace of human emotion. The waxy pallor, bathed in cold moonlight, looked sculpted from stone, lifeless and grim.
Professor Severus Snape.
His bottomless black eyes pierced through the dim stairwell, pinning the fleeing twins with surgical precision.
That gaze was cold, heavy, suffocating—like an invisible barrier sealing their final escape.
Clearly, Peeves' gleeful, echoing shrieks had drawn more than just the caretaker. They had roused this other hunter too—the Slytherin Head of House, patrolling by night.
Fred and George froze completely.
Upward, Snape's eyes walled off the path.
Downward, Filch's footsteps drew closer, heavy with malice.
Snape above.
Filch below.
No way up.
No way down.
For the first time in their lives, the Weasley twins—the pranksters who treated Hogwarts like their backyard and school rules like suggestions—felt what it meant to face a true, absolute dead end in the castle they had once thought of as paradise.
Every sound vanished.
Filch's footsteps. Their own pounding hearts. Even the whisper of air currents. All were swallowed by the crushing silence of this trap. The world became a frozen picture frame, pressing in on them from all sides.
Below, Filch's wrinkled face flushed red from exertion, twisted with the cruel triumph of cornering his prey.
Above, Snape's death-mask face, devoid of life.
They were rabbits on a cliff edge—an eagle circling above, hounds snapping from behind.
And then it happened.
The diary.
The very object George had been clutching in a death grip, its aged, blank pages suddenly stirred with change.
From the fibers of the paper, black ink seeped out—not written, but alive. It flowed, converged, and shaped itself into a new line of words.
Words heavy with malice.
Silent.
Slow.
Etched across the page.
[The game has only just begun.]
On the seventh floor, Snape's gaze was no longer just sight. It was pressure itself, seeping downward like molten lead through the gaps of the spiral staircase, chilling the air until it clung thick and heavy.
On the third floor, Filch's furrowed face loomed closer from the shadows. He lifted his lantern, his thin figure stretched grotesque and long, step by step closing in. His grin twisted wider in the swaying light.
Above, Peeves rolled mid-air with shrieking laughter, his voice echoing through the hollow corridors, drilling into their ears.
"The Weasley pests are caught! Off to the dungeons! Hung up by their ankles!"
Behind them, the cold stone wall pressed tight. The hidden passage behind the tapestry had already vanished, sealed beyond recognition. No retreat left.
This was a perfect cage.
Fred's breath grew ragged, his lungs stripped bare by Snape's crushing stare. Beside him, George's palms slicked with cold sweat, the black diary nearly slipping from his grip.
Their minds blanked.
It's over.
~~----------------------
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