DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. does, and she has every right to do whatever she thinks is best for Harry Potter. I just love writing. So sue me. Wait, seriously… don't.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hermione quickly darted towards the hole where Ron had plummeted in and leaned forward, hoping to find out if he had stopped falling. But as she heard his yelling, she bit her lip in anxiety, concluding how deep the pit was. She listened until the sound faded and then straightened up to dwell on something very odd.
Why was there a hole at the back of the Greenhouses?
Hermione bit her lip as she glanced at the opening and without any second thought, she jumped in.
As she slid on a narrow pipe that seemed to go on and on deeper into the ground, her descending created a slight whooshing sound, which destroyed the silence surrounding her.
Seeing a dim light approaching near, she readied herself for a nasty fall. But when she landed, a mattress, huge and soft, caught her fall.
Ignoring the question of why it was there, she stood up and brushed the dust off her robe.
`Where was she?' She thought silently and looked around.
She frowned; there was nothing in there except for rocks, big boulders of them, including the wall that was also made of huge and stiff stone. It was a hollow cave with corners and holes big enough for an animal as tall as a mare to enter.
As she walked, hollow sounds of her footsteps could be heard. She examined the floor; it was dusty and covered with grease, but crooked, looking as if people had used it as a passageway.
But who would use a place so enclosed and deserted?
No man in his decent mind would think to use this path…unless…
He needed to do it in secret.
A get away room…maybe.
Or…something used for stealing the way in.
All of a sudden, Hermione remembered Ron. She looked around, hoping to see the tall, dangly boy leaning against the wall, but he was nowhere in sight.
"Ron!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
No answer came.
She tried to locate him by walking towards a narrower entry but as she turned around a corner, she met a dead end. She groaned.
"Ron!" she cried out again, impatiently stomping her foot on the ground, this time.
To her utmost relief, his voice, sounding blocked, echoed. "What!"
"Where are you?!" Hermione yelled clearly through gritted teeth.
"In some room---" A pause. "Never mind. I have no idea." He told her truthfully.
Hermione hit her forehead with the palm of her hand and shook her head. It was just him to get lost.
"I'd gone through a wall…" she heard him add, almost uncertainly, not sure if it would help.
"Great!" Hermione exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air, clearly thinking otherwise. "I can't see anything but walls, Ronald! Which one?"
"I dunno..." Ron said his tone full of nonchalance; a moment's silence, then came his mischievous voice. "Start hugging."
Hermione could tell he was sniggering at the moment. She shut her eyes, and tried to control her frustration. Here they were, lost and without a clue where they were, and he still had the initiative to play hide and seek!
She cursed, wanting to kick him right now and wring his neck with her very hands. Although he was there to help, she couldn't resist thinking he was making things harder.
"Why couldn't you just have stayed in place?" she grumbled.
Since there was nothing left to do but take his advice, Hermione moved closer to the wall and pressed against it. Hermione pushed all the while muttering to herself how silly she looked at the moment.
Long, agonizing minutes of roughly pushing her hands on walls passed but still her efforts were worthless; she still couldn't find the entrance! Finally she gave up and leaned sideways on an irregularly shaped wall, not noticing the dirty smear she was to lean on.
She cried out in surprise when it swung and brought her to the other side.
"Finally!" Ron said as he sat cross-armed on one of the heavy rocks near the wall. "I've been waiting for quite some time." He straightened up. "What took you so long?"
Hermione's eyes were wide in disbelief. She gaped at him. Finally, with an annoyed and distressed look, she placed her hands on her hips. "You were just sitting there when you could have gone back where you had come from?"
"It won't budge. I figured it could just be opened from the other side." Ron reasoned out.
"Shouting would have helped…"
"I was…" Ron put in. "Don't you recall? `I'd gone through a wall'. I said that, didn't I?"
Hermione's face turned from a tint of pale to a shade of deep red.
"Come on, Hermione. Give me a break. You're here now, aren't you?" Ron said.
"It had been a waste of time." Hermione pressed on, turning around.
Ron was quiet for a moment. "How'd you find me?" Ron changed topics hastily.
"I didn't. I leaned on something and it swung back." Hermione shrugged.
Ron's eyes suddenly glittered, he nodded then he was grinning malevolently. He turned his back on her and walked to a corner that led to another hall.
"Where are you…?" She started to ask when she saw something at the back of his robes. "What happened to your back?" she pointed gingerly, as if quite repelled.
"This? Just mud." He tried to remove it but it still clung to him. "Got it before I entered this place."
"Hang on." She said, her eyes widening. "You knew all along you got something on your back when you went in here and you didn't tell me?"
"I leaned on many walls, Hermione." Ron said slowly as if talking to a 3-year old. "I wouldn't know which one even if I wager my life for it."
"Then how come you told me you had it before you went in there?" Hermione pointed back.
"Because of that." He pointed to her sleeve and raised an eyebrow.
"Huh?" Her brows crossed as she followed his gesture and saw a patch of brown and sticky dirt on her right sleeve.
"Tough luck." Ron muttered then shoved his hands in his pocket. "Now, how are we going to get out?"
Hermione looked up from the stain to him. "You're asking me when you're the one who got us in here in the first place."
"We'll just have to find another way." Ron shrugged then turned around.
As Hermione opened her mouth, she heard something creak.
The revolving wall.
It sounded as if it had swung something inside.
Or someone…
She slowly made her way back even with Ron calling her name. She looked and saw nothing. The wall was set and no sign of movement had taken place. She breathed out the breath she was holding back.
Then, at that precise moment, she felt something weird prickling at the back of her neck. It felt as if someone was looking at her. She shivered.
"Hermione!" Ron's sudden shout startled her. "I found another door!"
Abandoning all suspicions, Hermione retraced her steps and found him waiting for her, leaning against another wall, crossed-arm and all.
"Is it safe to go in there?" Hermione examined the entranceway as she approached him, eyeing a doorway as if it was some kind of wild animal that may attack unpredictably.
"I don't know. I've never been here before," Ron said mockingly as he straightened up and followed her gaze, leaning close.
He barely missed her hand as she threw them up into the air and cried out an exasperated yell that reached to the beam of the ceiling and echoed back to them, intensifying the strength more than its normal power.
"We can't just go inside!" she looked at him. "We don't know if we'll be able to get back again. For all we know, we'll keep on entering doors after doors after doors, going deeper into a place we don't know, not sure if we can get out. This is the craziest thing I've ever…"
She stopped to Ron's relief, and appeared to see something through the open door. "Look!" Hermione exclaimed, going inside in a hurry.
He followed her and stopped as soon as he reached her side. They were now standing over a small plant that reached just below their knees.
"That's strange," she whispered as she bent over. She was ogling at a patch of flowers and then opened the book she was carrying. "I would have never known Sequined Flowers grew underground."
"Oh, yeah." Ron said, crouching beside her, familiarity dawning on his face as if only remembering the flower. She made a move to touch it when Ron caught her hand at the last second.
"No! Don't touch it, yet. We don't know if it's safe or not. It might not be the same type we handled in Herbology," he then pointed at the rounded contour of the flower which was covered with white cotton balls. "I don't recall seeing that."
"Nonsense," she pushed his hands away. "Those are not dangerous. They actually look harmless. Here," she touched it abruptly and cried out in surprise. Snatching her hand away, she hissed out a complaint.
"You see?" Ron discoursed, giving her an I-told-you-so look when he saw blood oozing out of Hermione's fingers. He took out his bandanna and slowly wiped her fingertips with it. "You should have listened to me, Hermione. Just because…" Ron began to talk as Hermione tried to listen patiently.
She would have had to endure his sermons a bit more if she wasn't distracted by hollow sounds of footsteps, thudding then stopping, coming from the previous room they were in.
She turned her head slowly a few feet away from them, anticipating for someone to show up and enter through the door they'd just gone through, but nobody did.
She bit her lip.
Could it be…no.
It wasn't possible.
She turned her head back to Ron and managed to hear his lecture's last 4 words.
"Do you understand, Hermione?"
"Y-yes," she said simply. `Whatever that is," she thought.
Ron looked at her skeptically.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Come on," Ron said.
"Hang on. What about the sequined flower?" Hermione looked at the plant.
"Never mind that now! We have to find a way out of here!" Ron dragged her up.
"No!" she pulled away. Hermione took out her handkerchief and wrapped it around her uninjured arm tightly and securely. "I did not come here to leave empty-handed!" she said, tugging the plant.
After a lot of heaving, it was uprooted and the bud's petals slowly withered and fell on the cold pavement. The seeds were revealed and it produced no more than 10 all in all.
After getting a small closable plastic container out of her pocket, she placed the seeds inside carefully. She handed it out to Ron cautiously as if carrying a very fragile vase.
Ron, on the other hand, placed it jerkily in his pocket. Hermione rolled her eyes at him, looked up and stared around. Something caught her eye, making them glitter in response.
"Let's go," Hermione said, dusting off the sandy particles of her robe and stood up.
"Uh…go?" Ron started. "Go where?"
Before answering him, she pointed towards the east corner of the room where a small, wooden part of the rocky wall was located.
It blended almost too perfectly with the wall that she didn't notice it at first, and she was sure that neither did Ron because he was still looking around and had no idea what she was talking about.
"Over there, the one with slight crack and brown tint…" Hermione stepped forward and lightly touched it, helping Ron see.
"Ah."
It was as all he said before he followed her.
The old door creaked as he opened it and a dimly lit and narrow passage greeted them. There were cobwebs on the ceilings, but so little amount of it on the wall. Unlit torches were on the sides, having equal distances from one another, about ten feet apart. The path was only pavement, dusty and dirty.
Their hollow footsteps were eerie against the close built of the walls and it destroyed the silence in their environment. It seemed like hours before they found themselves facing three more cave entrances.
"Where now?" Hermione asked in a distressed tone.
"I don't know. Let's take the middle one," Ron said moving in first.
Hermione was too tired to argue and just wordlessly followed him. Feeling too exhausted and heated to move, Hermione stayed behind, letting Ron get ahead of her. But his footsteps soon faded and before she was aware of it, they had already become faint sounds to her.
Before she could catch up to him, Ron's voice traveled back. "Oi!"
She didn't answer, just sort of stood there, waiting for him to say what he wanted.
"I found a fireplace!" He exclaimed, sounding as if he was making his way back.
She couldn't see why he had done that, since they were only going forward, and not once did they make a choice again over three entrances or more.
`But a fireplace…in a place like this?" she thought after it dawned on her.
She continued to think how absurd it was, but as they were welcomed into a wider way, it turned out Ron wasn't kidding at all.
There really was a fireplace.
How it got down there and why it was there was way out of her knowledge.
But seeing it caused questions to stir in her mind as a new problem occurred to her.
Searching around, she saw that apart from the fireplace, three wooden chairs, battered and old were located in front of the hearth. But aside from those, nothing else could be seen.
No door and no suspicious looking revolving-wall to go through.
Heck she'd take on seeing a window now just to make sure they have some other way in going out rather than just trace their whole steps back to where they have started.
"Can we rest for a few minutes?" Ron suddenly spoke up, breaking her train of worries.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Its 15 after 2."
Hermione sighed.
"5 minutes."
Ron smiled like a 2 year old and made his way towards the seats. Hermione shook her head sheepishly and also sat down. When she did, she felt her hand close on a thin thread-like jewelry. She held it up to her eyes and examined it more closely.
It was a white gold necklace with seemingly like vines, entwined on the body. It was shaped like a snowflake and was sparkling like diamonds, but not that bright.
It belonged to a woman, Hermione was sure of that. There was such intricate detail on the locket that could only describe a woman's perception and moods.
The intertwined vines were a symbol of some sort. And the snowflake shape was thin and flashed light shades of blue as she turned it to the side then to the other. Then, she noticed a slight opening at the side and fastened by a small lock.
Curious, Hermione opened it and gasped in surprise as she saw Harry's parents beaming up at her.
Only they were her age.
"Ron! Look at this!" Hermione nudged him, as he slouched on the chair.
He sat up straight and leaned over. In his surprise he snatched it away from her and just like what she had done, he examined it. "Wicked! Harry would want this," he said.
"He'll get it…" she said as she got it back from him. "Once we've made up." Hermione said, she wore the locket around her neck, then became still and stared out into space.
After a while, a cool atmosphere took place inside the cave and Hermione shivered as it breezed through her. "Ron, could you…? It's chilly in here."
Ron stood up and went towards the fireplace.
He took out his wand and muttered a spell.
A bright fiery glow emerged from the fireplace, but neither heat nor light swept around the room.
"Would you look at that!" Ron breathed out, clearly amazed over something.
"What?" Hermione asked as she stood up and strode over.
"It's some sort of…I don't know…it's like Floo Powder, but the only difference is you can see the other end," Ron explained, looking at the fireplace that had suddenly revealed another room at the other side.
"Maybe. Or it could be an illusion," Hermione concluded.
"Of course. But, wouldn't hurt if we tried, would it?"
"But where are we going to end up?" she asked.
"Who knows?" Ron said. "At least we'll get out of here."
"Wait…"
"We'll just find a way out of wherever we're going to land. Come on."
With that, he tugged her through the fireplace and into the other room.
A room that was entirely different from the one they've been from. It looked more like a library. There were bookshelves placed parallel to the wall. Racks on the opposite side and adjacent of them were two doors. Also, to add the new civilized environment they were in was furnishings in the room, complete, but old looking.
In front of the racks full of slimy looking materials, was a mahogany table, big and sturdy, with papers and folders on top of it. Ron walked slowly to the table and examined it. He scanned the papers on the top of the desk and gaped at them, in shock of what he saw.
"Hermione…" He muttered nervously.
"What?" She was at the other end, beside the bookshelves, going through books indifferently and was dimly aware of what Ron was to say next.
"Hermione…" Ron called again, more tensely.
"What?" she cried out with irritation, turning to look at him.
His face was pale and his voice shook when he said.
"We're in Snape's Dungeon."
-->