The Phoenix Prophecy

Chapter Seventeen: The Return

Monday – Early Evening - July 21^st

Hermione: 7:30 PM

When a dark shadow passed overhead, I didn’t even have to look up to know that a dragon caused it. Instinctively I glanced up to confirm my suspicions; sure enough, it was a dragon. It was not one of the two dragons that had been guarding us. This dragon was noticeably bigger, had different coloring, and looked even more menacing, if that was possible.

Escaping to the safety of the passageway was completely out of the question. We would be easy prey on the narrow ledge, and besides, I didn’t think we could navigate the narrow ledge in our present condition. I was still feeling very dizzy from the force of the explosion—the others didn’t look much better than I felt. Our only choice for escape was to head for Mortius’ secret room, even if it was filled with baby dracks. I was hoping that with Harry and Alec’s help we would be able to kill all the dracks or at least keep them at bay until we could come up with a better plan. I was positive that we could not subdue the dragon, and almost as sure that we could not talk our way around it either. No, our only option was the secret room.

There was no time to discuss what to do amongst ourselves, so I just screamed ‘Run’, grabbed Harry by the hand, and took off for the small cave that hid the entrance to the room, dragging Harry with me. I didn’t have to say ‘Run’ twice as Alec and Nicole were right on our heels as we streaked through the cave opening and almost crashed into the inner door.

“Harry! Alec! Stand back and get ready to roast a few dozen baby dracks!” I shouted—at least I think I shouted. I couldn’t tell, as my hearing was still impaired.

Touching my wand to the door, I said, ‘Athene.’ The door opened, and just as I suspected, dozens of baby dracks came pouring out of the entrance, snapping and snarling at each other as they passed us by. The dracks were in such a panic to get out of the room that they quickly pasted us by without noticing our presence. Something must have terrified them to the point of hysteria, otherwise they would have noticed us—we were awfully hard to miss.

As soon as the headlong stampede was over, I jumped into the doorway and flamed the few stragglers that were still inside the room. Thankfully, there were only a few dracks left. The flame from my wand was about half of what it normally was.

“Everyone inside!” I ordered and slammed the door shut after everyone was in the room. Just as the door was closing, a fireball erupted from the entrance of the short cave. Thankfully, the door blocked the flames from reaching us as it sealed us into the pitch-black room.

Harry lit his wand after the door finished closing. I added the light from my wand to help illuminate the room more thoroughly. I didn’t want anything sneaking up on us in the dark. The light from our wands cast eerie flickering shadows on the room’s walls, heightening the anxiety I was feeling.

Once my eyes became accustom to the dark room, I realized that the light from our wands was much dimmer than it should have been, and it was flickering as if it might go out completely at any moment. Something was definitely affecting our magical abilities in this room.

“Curses, that was awful close,” Harry exclaimed once we were all safely inside the room. “We are lucky we were not roasted.”

“You sure got that right, Harry,” Alec added and lit his wand, which flickered just as Harry’s and mine did.

“Good Lord, Alec, you didn’t tell us that you were going to set off such a huge explosion,” I said sharply, once I caught breath. I was still a little dizzy and my ears were still ringing.

“Sorry, Hermione. I didn’t realize it was going to be that powerful, really I didn’t,” he replied sheepishly. Alec wiped the back of his hand across his face and left a trail of smeared blood from his nose to the side of his cheek.

“Alec, you’re bleeding,” Nicole wailed as soon as she saw the blood streaks on his face.

Alec looked at the back of his hand and then placed his hand to his nose. “It’s just a nose-bleed, nothing to worry about. Probably from the force of the explosion,” he added easily.

Nicole ripped a small piece of material from her makeshift dress and used it to gently wipe the blood smears from Alec’s face. At first Alec looked a little embarrassed from Nicole’s attention, but he quickly relaxed and said ‘thank you’ very warmly when she was finished. The whole time Nicole was cleaning Alec’s face she looked as if she might start crying at any moment. I knew something more than the sight of a little blood was bothering her.

“Alec, what did you do to create that explosion?” Harry asked, once Nicole finished.

“I used the ‘Lumos Solarum’ spell you mentioned to cause the seed in a Vitriol Sphere to explode.”

“What’s a ‘Vitriol Sphere’?” Harry asked, obviously clueless.

“Harry, didn’t you pay any attention in Crystallography last term?” I asked rhetorically, knowing full well that neither he nor Ron had done so. They were too busy trying to out-do the Slytherins, led by Malfoy and his bunch.

“It would seem that I didn’t. Maybe there was Quidditch practice the day Vitriol Spheres were discussed,” Harry suggested, looking hopeful that I would buy his poor excuse for an excuse.

“Vitriol Spheres are used as the basic ingredient for life prolonging elixirs, plus other important uses. They are very rare and practically priceless. The sphere grows around a seed that is packed with energy which causes the crystal to grow,” I briefly explained.

“It’s a good thing for us that Alec only had one sphere,” Harry replied gratefully.

“Harry, I’m afraid the size of the explosion is my fault,” Nicole said, lowering her eyes and staring at her feet. I knew that Nicole was feeling guilt about something from the way she was acting.

“What do you mean, Nicole?” I asked, placing my hand lightly on her shoulder and smiling warmly at her when she looked up at me.

“Once I understood that Alec was going to throw the sphere that I gave him into the air, I thought two spheres, one for each dragon, might be better,” she replied hesitantly.

When Nicole looked at me, I could see that she was afraid that we were all angry with her. Since she was only trying to help and didn’t realize that her actions could have unexpected consequences, I gave her a quick hug to show that I wasn’t upset with her in the least.

“Everyone be on guard for more baby dracks. They enter the room through cracks at the bottom of the wall,” I said abruptly, suddenly remembering how Nicole and I were forced to leave the room the first time we were here.

“Hermione, what’s your plan?” Harry asked me. For a moment, I didn’t realize why he asked me that question. Then it dawned on me, “Oh, I guess I have just been telling you all what to do.”

“Yes you have,” Harry replied. “And bloody well done too. I was just wondering what you were planning to do next.”

For an instant, I thought Harry was putting me on and I felt humiliated, but I quickly realized that he was completely serious and that he truly meant what he had just said. I felt a surge of pride shoot through me that made me feel ten feet tall. This was the first time in my life that I had been the leader in anything more dangerous than a hunt for some obscure book in the library. I looked at all their faces; they truly were waiting for me to tell them what to do next. At that moment, I understood what it meant to be responsible for someone other than yourself. This feeling strengthened and scared me all at the same time.

“Hermione, you’re doing great…just keep it up,” Harry said easily, his voice full of trust and confidence, which was just what I needed—short of a hug and a kiss, which I could have dearly used just then.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t have a plan,” I said to all of them. I figured it was better to be honest right from the start. “When we were outside, I knew that our only chance for survival was to get inside this room as quickly as possible. Now that we are here, the only thing we can do is wait for someone to find us.”

“Hermione, how did you know this room was here?” Alec asked, as he directed the flickering light from his wand around the room.

“Nicole and I discovered it a little while ago, shortly after Nicole noticed the Vitriol Spheres on the bottom of the pool. A couple of minutes after that, the dragons showed up and we tossed them each a sphere to distract them so that we could make a break for it. Just after we found and unlocked this room, Luther and Eliza showed up and forced us to leave by setting baby dracks upon us.”

“Do you have any idea what this room was used for,” Harry asked shivering involuntarily. “It’s totally empty. Looks like a storage room of some type.”

“No, I don’t, Harry. However, I highly doubt that this room was ever used for storage. The password to open the door is ‘Athene.’ I think there is more to this room than meets the eye. In fact, I would bet that very few, if any, people other than Mortius know of this room’s existence.”

“Well you wouldn’t know it’s special just by looking at it,” Harry replied as he started walking around the edge of the room, feeling the rough wall with his hand as he went.

“Harry, did you notice that the light from our wands is not nearly as bright as usual?” I asked.

“Now that you mention it, yes I can see something is not right.”

“My flame was much weaker than it should have been too,” I answered, trying to keep my voice casual so I wouldn’t frighten Nicole. “I think it is highly likely that a number of spells and hexes have been placed on this room. Just what they are, I have no idea. My guess would be Mortius, of course.”

“I wonder what else doesn’t work right.” Harry said, more to himself than to me.

“I’m sure we will find out at the most inopportune time.”

“So what else is new?” Harry answered with a touch of sarcasm.

When Harry was directly opposite the door, what appeared to be a foot-wide wooden plank sprang out two feet from the walls’ surface, forming a cantilever ten inches above the floor. On closer inspection, I noticed that the cantilever was not made of wood, but of some type of metal.

“Harry, what did you do?” I asked, looking up from the plank at him.

“Nothing, I didn’t do anything,” he replied defensively.

“You must have done something, touched a spot on the wall, stepped on a hidden level…something.”

“Honest, Hermione. I didn’t do anything. All I did was walk around the edge of the room next to the wall.”

“What the heck is this used for?” Alec asked as he walked over to get a closer look at what Harry had discovered. “It’s too low to sit on.”

“It’s just the right height for me to stand on so that I will be taller than you are, Alec,” Nicole said teasingly and stepped up on the cantilever to prove her point.

The moment Nicole placed her weight on the cantilever, another cantilever popped out of the wall slightly higher and ahead of the first one. Nicole squealed and jumped down, apparently startled by the sudden appearance of the second cantilever. A few seconds after Nicole stepped off the first cantilever, the second cantilever retracted back into the wall.

“Everybody, back away from the first cantilever,” I said on a hunch.

A few seconds after everyone had moved back a few feet, the cantilever disappeared into the wall.

“Okay, Harry, move along the wall, just like you did before,” I said, guessing what was going to happen.

Just as I had thought, when Harry neared the place where the cantilever had first appeared, it re-appeared.

“Harry, something about you is triggering the step to emerge from the wall,” I said, thinking furiously. “Harry, you step back and when the step retracts, Nicole you follow in Harry’s footsteps.”

After Harry had stepped away from the step and it retracted, Nicole walked the same path as Harry but nothing happened. She was well past the spot where the step had emerged from the wall when I called her back.

“Alec, you try it,” I told him.

Alec traced Harry’s path and just as it had done for Harry, the step emerged from the wall when Alec was two feet away from it.

“Nicole, maybe the step doesn’t work for females,” I said teasingly. “However, I doubt very much if that is the reason the step didn’t work for you.”

“Harry, hand your wand to Alec and retrace your footsteps,” I told him on a wild hunch.

Harry walked right past the spot where the step had previously appeared and nothing happened.

“I think we can conclude that the step is activated by the presence of a wand,” I concluded. I would like to have Nicole take one of our wands and see if the step would open for her, but that was too risky. We hand enough problems for the time being.

“Hermione, the openings at the base of the wall look more like holes that were deliberately placed there than cracks,” Alec said after he handed Harry’s wand back to him.

We all took a closer look at the base of the wall. Once you got close enough, it was obvious that the holes were there by design.

“I think these holes are here to drain water out of this room,” Alec said after a few moments of reflection.

“Why do you think that, Alec?” Harry asked.

“This whole room reminds me of the watering cans we used on the farm.”

“What’s a watering can?” Nicole asked. I was wondering the same thing but was too embarrassed to ask.

“A watering can is cylindrical in shape and has holes at the bottom, along the outside edge of the can. Two of them are suspended from a stick that you carry across your shoulders. Once they are filled with water, you walk down the rows of a garden to water the plants on either side of the row.”

“Now that you mention it, I can see why you would think of the holes as drains,” I said scanning the floor of the room. “If I’m not mistaken the floor is higher in the center of the room than it is at the edge. Any water in the room would naturally drain out though the holes along the wall.”

“But where would the water come from in the first place?” Harry asked.

“From somewhere up above,” I replied, suddenly feeling very exposed.

“Hermione, since the door opened inward, if the room were to suddenly start flooding with water, we would be trapped and unable to escape,” Harry replied, sending a cold chill up my spine.

“Yes, you’re right,” I answered. “In that case we would have to float or levitate to the top of the room and hope that the water doesn’t reach all the way to the ceiling.”

“Hermione, do you think our ability to levitate will be affected in this room?” Harry asked.

“There is only one way to find out,” I replied and tried to levitate myself off the floor without success. “I guess that answers your question,” I added, wondering if we should take our chances with the dragon. I dismissed that thought immediately as all it would take was one fireball and we would be cooked quicker than a Christmas goose.’

“I wonder if this room was used as some kind of prison for people that crossed Mortius?” Harry asked speculatively. “From time to time, he could just flood the place with water to wash down the room.”

“Harry, that’s down right disgusting,” I replied, trying very hard not to think of the implications of what Harry had just said.

Looking up at the dark ceiling, some thirty feet over my head, I thought I could make out the silhouette of a dimly lit door, hidden deep in the shadows of the ceiling. I was sure that the cantilevers would lead us to whatever was hidden in the shadows.

“We may have another option. Harry, step up on the cantilever and keep stepping up on each new cantilever as they appear,” I said, suddenly realizing that we might have another way up.

Harry did as I instructed. Within a short period, he was four feet off the ground on a series of cantilevers that were spiraling upward around the edge of the room.

“Hermione, are we going to follow these stairs to the top of the room?” Harry asked, reading my mind.

“Yes, we are,” I replied. “Do you want to go first or bring up the rear?”

“Hermione, this room is your discovery. You should go first, unless you would rather I go first,” Harry answered and came back down the stairs to stand on the ground.

“Oh, I definitely want to go first. I wouldn’t miss this for all the tea in China. Nicole, you follow behind me and the guys can bring up the rear.”

I stepped on the first cantilever and started upward as each new cantilever appeared. Nicole kept two steps back, with Alec two steps below her and Harry two steps below Alec.

Half way around the room, I was standing on a cantilever directly over the center of the door. I guessed that we were about twelve feet above the floor of the room. At this rate of ascent, we should reach the ceiling in two full turns around the room. Thankfully, the cantilevers were solid and did not bend under my weight. Not having any railing was a little unnerving.

“Is everyone doing all right?” I asked, glancing back over my shoulder.

“I’m okay,” Nicole replied with out much conviction.

“Okay, here” Alec replied enthusiastically.

“Keep going, Hermione. We are all with you,” Harry replied, flashing me a broad smile. “What do you think we are going to find when we reach the top?”

“Harry, these stairs are here for a purpose, and unless I miss my guess, we are going to find things that Mortius did not want anyone to have access to, or even know about.”

I turned back to continue climbing and almost lost my balance as Luther and Eliza materialized through the wall just a few feet in front of me. The instant Luther spotted us, he rushed at me, stopping just inches from my face.

“You! This is all you’re doing!” Luther shrieked, his voice cracking from the intense rage he was exhibiting. “You are going to pay for this…you and your friends,” he added as his nostrils flared and collapsed under the force of his heavy breathing. “You are all going to die the most painful death imaginable, being slowly eaten alive. Eliza and I shall enjoy watching you beg for mercy as the dracks rip the flesh from your—

“Luther. Get out of my face! Better yet, go play with your little dragon friends, I’m sure they must be missing you by now,” I said emphatically as I stared into his grotesquely contorted face.

“You have no idea how lucky you are to be inside this particular room,” Eliza shouted. She was almost as angry as Luther was. “If it were not for the protective shield that Mortius placed around this room, Cleo would have battered the door in and ripped each of you limb from limb.”

“Protective shield? So this room was very important to Mortius. And who is this Cleo?” I shot back, turning my attention to her.

“Cleo is your worst nightmare” Eliza replied menacingly, ignoring my comment about the room’s importance. “Lucifer and Brutus were her mates.”

“Were? You mean to say that those two playmates are dead?” I asked, feeling better already.

“Yes, the force of the explosion you caused mortally wounded them,” Luther answered. “Brutus fell into the lake and Lucifer died after he plummeted into the grasslands just beyond the edge of the lake.” For a second I thought Luther was going to cry over the loss of his pets.

“Serves them both right. I for one don’t plan to spill any tears over their demise.”

“Now, get out of our way,” I added and started climbing the cantilever steps as quickly as they emerged from the wall in front of me.

“And just where do you think you are going?” demanded Luther, his rage suddenly renewed.

“Up there,” I replied, pointing to the silhouetted door at the top of the room.

“I think not,” Luther replied and then he and Eliza disappeared through the wall in front of me.

“You sure told them off,” Harry said after the ghosts disappeared. “I could not have done better myself.”

“Thanks, Harry. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have seen the last of those two. I’m sure they are up to something unpleasant.”

To prove my words, baby dracks started pouring into the room through the small cracks at the base of the room’s circular wall. Within thirty seconds, the floor was covered, side to side, with snarling, hissing and furious baby dracks. Anyone who fell off the stairs would be devoured in less than a minute.

I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief that we were well out of their reach when the dracks started mounting the stairs, six at a time. It was obvious that the dracks would catch up to Harry long before we could reach the top of the room from the speed of their ascent.

“Harry! Stop them!” I ordered. I wasn’t sure just how he was going to do that, but I had faith in Harry’s abilities. I knew he would come up with something.

For several seconds Harry just stood there watching the dracks draw steadily closer to us. For the life of me—which was exactly what was at stake—I could not figure out why he was taking so long to do something.

“Serpensortia,” Harry shouted, pointing his wand half way between the dracks and us.

A large serpent shot out of the end of Harry’s wand and landed on one of the cantilever steps. When the snake looked back at us, Harry said something to it in parseltongue. Turning around, the snake started weaving its head back and forth. As soon as the dracks were close enough, the snake started striking at them, its head moving wickedly fast. Unable to get past the snake, all the dracks could do was screech their frustration.

“Way to go, Harry,” Alec said enthusiastically.

“Hermione, I don’t know how long the snake will be able to keep the dracks from advancing. We had better not waste any time,” Harry called up over his shoulder to me, keeping a close eye on the snake and the dracks.

“Are you all right?” I asked Nicole. She just shook her head, ‘yes’, never taking her eyes off the dracks.

“Everyone be careful!” I ordered and resumed climbing the stairs.

Just past the halfway point, Luther and Eliza returned through the door at the bottom of the room, quickly realized that their plan had failed, and came rushing up to us.

“Go ahead, just keep going,” Luther sneered. “The last person to enter that room never came out of it alive.”

“It’s over, Luther. Your plan to abduct Nicole and Alec’s bodies is finished. So give it up and go hibernate for another thousand years, will you?” I replied, continuing to climb the stairs without stopping.

“You will never come out of there alive,” Luther yelled after I passed him by.

Ignoring Luther and Eliza’s taunts, we made steady progress towards the top of the room. Less than a dozen steps from the top, Harry yelled for me to hurry as the dracks had out maneuvered the snake and were coming on fast.

The door at the top of the stairs was plainly visible. It was open just enough that the light from behind it made the outline standout against the dark ceiling. After glancing at Nicole to make sure she was all right, I continued climbing as quickly and safely as I could. A few more seconds and we would reach the safety of the room. A horrid thought suddenly crossed my mind. What if the dracks could get into this room? Then what were we going to do.

I was so completely absorbed by this new possibility, that I didn’t realize the door opened outward, instead of inward as I had assumed. Two steps from the top, the door suddenly opened of its on accord and slammed into me, sweeping me right off my feet.

Before I even realized what had happened I found myself falling backwards towards the drack-infested floor, twenty-five feet below me. The first thought that went through my mind was that the fall would probably kill me and I wouldn’t feel it when the dracks devoured me.

As I fell past the others, I saw the look of horror frozen on Harry’s face. I desperately wanted to say ‘I love you’ one last time, but I could not get my voice to work, even to scream.

My stomach leapt into my throat as I rushed towards the floor below. Not wanting to see death coming to take me, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and focused my mind on Harry’s smiling face.

Suddenly out of nowhere, I felt something soft hit me in the back and I stopped falling so abruptly that I almost blacked out. In a stomach-twisting lurch, I went from falling to climbing all in the blink of an eye.

My first thought after getting over the shock of the sensation that I had just felt, was that I had hit the floor and died, my ghostly spirit rising from my body. It wasn’t until I heard the familiar sound of a phoenix’s call that I dared to open my eyes.

On each side of my body, I could see long outstretched wings that must have belonged to Fawkes or Iseult. I dared not move, for fear of sliding off the phoenix’s back, as I was lifted smoothly toward the ceiling and a very joyous, Harry, Nicole and Alec. When the phoenix reached the step Harry was standing on, it arched its back and I gently slid off to land on the step next to Harry—who promptly began crushing me to death from his relief that I was still alive.

“Harriee… I can’t…breathe…” I gasped, fighting to get some air into my lungs.

“Oh, Hermione. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to suffocate you, really I wasn’t,” Harry said sheepishly after he stopped hugging me.

“I know that. I’m just as happy to be alive as you are to have me alive, probably happier,” I replied, smiling as I placed the palm of my hand on his cheek and kissed him gently—I didn’t want to kiss him vigorously and risk falling off the stairs again.

Fawkes and Iseult landed on the stairs right below where I was standing as our lips parted. I glanced down and noticed that dracks had ceased advancing. I was pretty sure they were trying to decide what to do about the phoenixes.

“I’m not sure which one of you I owe my life to, but thank you from the bottom of my heart,” I said to the two birds that were eyeing Harry and I closely.

“It was Fawkes that saved you,” Harry said affectionately, his feeling for the bird clearly showing. “Hermione, this may sound silly, but I think Fawkes and Iseult are staring at us because we were kissing.”

“You know, Harry. You just might be right,” I replied and pecked him on the cheek so that I could see the phoenixes’ reaction. They did seem quite interested and I suddenly felt a little self-conscious.

“Nicole, do you think you could lead the way,” I asked her. “The stairs are just a trifle narrow to try and get around all of you so that I can resume the lead.”

“I guess I could do that,” she replied hesitantly.

“Alec, Harry and I will be only one step behind you, so try not to be nervous, okay?”

“I’ll try,” she replied and started climbing the remaining steps to the room whose door was now wide open.