Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Four people could fit beneath Harry’s cloak if none expected to walk comfortably. Ron trod on my heel before we reached the stairs, and Hermione caught his jumper before he pulled the fabric off all four of us. We stopped at each corner to listen, then shuffled onwards with our heads bent together. Nobody found the arrangement funny enough to risk making a sound.

My fingers kept finding the folded map inside my pouch. I wanted to check it again, though doing so would mean stopping and letting Harry hold the cloak clear. I also wanted to return to the tower and discover that Percy had arrived with a teacher, Neville was furious and the evening no longer required decisions from me. Instead, I kept walking until Harry stopped so abruptly that Ron bumped into him.

The door to Fluffy’s room was ajar. A thin, delicate tune came through the gap, sounding absurdly small for the creature on the other side. I drew the cloak away from my head and eased the door wider. A harp stood on the floor with its strings plucking themselves, while three enormous heads slept beside it.

‘Someone’s been here,’ Harry whispered. One nose twitched at his voice, and we waited before moving any farther inside.

‘The egg worked.’ I looked past the dog towards the trapdoor. ‘Hagrid told the stranger what he needed to know.’ That did not prove every part of our suspicion, but the open door and unattended harp were real enough. Fluffy’s forepaw lay across the way down.

‘We should get Percy,’ Hermione said. She kept looking between the doorway and the sleeping heads.

‘If Quirrell’s only checking the protections, why leave the way open?’ I nodded towards the harp. ‘Why make it possible for anyone else to come in?’

‘So he can get out again,’ Ron whispered. His expression changed as he heard himself, and he glanced behind us as though the corridor might already contain somebody returning with the Stone.

I moved towards the paw. From a distance, shifting it had seemed possible; close up, one curved claw was longer than my finger. The fur smelled like damp rugs left in a cupboard, and I had to resist turning my face away long enough to see where the edge of the trapdoor lay.

‘We slide it a little,’ I said. ‘Only far enough to open the door. Don’t try to lift the whole leg.’

Harry packed away his cloak and crouched beside me. Ron took the other side, while Hermione found a place near the toes where she could push without putting her hand beneath a claw. I counted with my fingers, then leaned with them. The paw shifted slightly, dragging fur across the boards.

One head gave a wet snort. We stopped, holding our breath until it settled, then pushed again. The effort ran through my wrists into my shoulders, and Ron’s shoe slipped behind me. When the edge of the trapdoor finally cleared, we eased away from the paw rather than letting it drop. I sat back on my heels, trying not to breathe as loudly as the dog.

‘Never getting one,’ Ron murmured. He rubbed his palms against his trousers. ‘Even a small one.’

I slipped my fingers through the iron ring and raised the trapdoor. Below was darkness, without the stairs or convenient ladder I had privately hoped to find. Light from the room faded before reaching anything solid. I crouched beside the opening and told the others I would go first.

Harry caught my arm. ‘You can’t see the bottom,’ he said. ‘You don’t even know what you’d land on.’

‘Which is why we shouldn’t all find out at once. Wait for me to call before following. If I don’t answer, go and get help.’ I leaned closer, still trying to distinguish anything beneath us that might give me a distance.

‘Help is already coming,’ Hermione reminded me. I said that would give them somebody to bring down, and heard how thin the answer was. We had come to look at a door. Now I was proposing to drop through a hole because admitting where the plan had gone wrong would require walking back past the dog.

Harry looked over his shoulder. ‘The music,’ he said, tightening his hand on my arm. ‘It’s stopped.’

The harp’s strings were still. A thick breath stirred the hair at the back of my head, and I looked up into three pairs of open eyes. For a moment, nobody moved. Then one head lowered towards us, bringing its teeth much closer than I wanted to measure.

‘Jump!’ I caught Harry’s sleeve and Hermione’s wrist, pulling them towards the opening. Ron shouted behind us, and something heavy struck the boards where my knees had been.

The fall ended in a springy tangle which caught my back and folded round my shoulders. Harry landed beside me, Hermione’s elbow drove into my ribs, and Ron arrived with enough force to bounce us all. I lay still for a moment, unable to draw a breath. When I managed it, the air smelled of wet earth and rotting leaves.

‘Everyone here?’ I asked. Three replies reached me, though Harry’s sounded mostly like a groan. Above us, a dog’s head blocked the light and snapped at the empty space beyond its reach. The opening was too small for it to follow.

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Ron began saying how fortunate we were to have landed on plants. Something tightened round my ankle before he finished. I pulled away and felt another vine slide across my knee, while the first tightened harder. The mass beneath us started moving, turning what had caught our fall into something intent on holding us there.

Hermione tried to warn us, but Ron shouted and scrambled upwards. More stems rose after him. I had a fire strip between two fingers before looking across at Harry, where a thick vine lay against his chest. Another had wound itself round Hermione’s waist. Burning the tangle would mean burning my friends inside it, and I forced the unused strip back into my pouch.

‘Devil’s Snare!’ Hermione called. ‘Stop fighting it. It tightens when you struggle.’

I tried to open my hands. The instruction was difficult to obey with something pulling my legs together, but the tendril round my wrist paused when I stopped resisting. Hermione sank out of sight first, which made me almost forget everything she had just said. A moment later her voice came from below, clear enough to persuade me she was still alive.

‘There’s a floor,’ she called. ‘Let yourselves relax. It will let you through.’

I made myself lie still while the pressure shifted. The coils supporting me separated, and I dropped onto cold stone, landing awkwardly on one hip. Harry fell beside me and knocked my shoulder as we tried to stand. We looked up together when Ron’s frightened breathing reached us from the plant.

‘Ron, do what she said!’ Harry called. A shoe thrashed through a gap overhead, accompanied by Ron’s insistence that he was trying. The vines closed round it again, and his next shout came out muffled.

Hermione had her wand ready. She stared upwards with her lips moving, then said the plant liked shade and damp. She recalled Sprout’s lesson aloud: sunlight was what it hated. She raised her wand towards the thickest tangle and called, ‘Lumos Solem!’

Light flooded the chamber, bright enough to make me turn my face away. Above us, the vines recoiled and exposed Ron with both hands locked round a stem. He let go as the plant withdrew. Harry and I caught enough of him to turn the fall into an untidy heap, with Ron sprawled across our legs and all three of us complaining at once.

‘Didn’t panic,’ he managed when he had enough air. He rubbed the place where a vine had pressed against his neck, looking much less certain than he sounded.

‘Delighted to hear it,’ Hermione said. She lowered her wand and crouched beside us to check him. Harry pointed out that her attention in Herbology had been rather useful, which finally stopped Ron defending the dignity of his escape.

I helped him sit up. His neck was marked, but after a moment he pushed my hand aside and stood under his own power. Behind us, the plant had begun closing over the opening again. Harry looked at it and said we needed a better way back. Remembering my plan to call to someone above the trapdoor, I agreed without qualification.

A passage led away from the chamber. We followed it cautiously, and a dry fluttering reached us before we saw its source. Harry raised his wand for light as the passage opened into a high room crossed by narrow pillars. Hundreds of keys flew beneath the ceiling, their small wings flashing as they turned.

On the far side stood a heavy wooden door. Broomsticks rested against the wall near us, suggesting a method I did not particularly like. Ron crossed to the lock and tried Alohomora, then tested the handle when the charm accomplished nothing. The door remained firmly closed.

‘One of those, then,’ Hermione said, looking at the keys. ‘This seems like Flitwick’s sort of work.’

I studied the broomsticks, which came with no instructions or promise that the keys would leave their riders alone. Harry joined Ron beside the door and examined the lock before looking up. I asked whether he could find something that fitted it. He had an answer before I had decided which part of the flock deserved attention first.

‘There. The large silver one with the bent wing.’ He pointed beside a pillar, and I finally saw it dip as the damaged wing folded. Something had already caught that key hard enough to mark it.

‘I’ll get it,’ Harry said. He went to the brooms while I told him we would have the door ready. If the keys came after him, he was to throw his catch to me and keep moving. He nodded, chose a broom and closed his hand round its handle.

The fluttering changed immediately. Keys wheeled towards him, and he kicked off just before they struck the place where he had stood. Ron ducked as one clipped his sleeve. The rest followed Harry upwards in a bright stream, pressing close enough that I could hear metal striking stone as he banked round a pillar.

The flock scattered against it and gathered again. Harry was already turning towards the damaged key, using the space the collision had opened. I ran to the door with Hermione, and Ron flattened himself beside us. We could help him most by getting out of his way and being ready when he came down.

Harry reached with one hand and missed. The silver key jerked sideways, while smaller ones struck his shoulder. He climbed away from the flock, rolled round another pillar and approached from above. This time his fingers closed, and he immediately turned towards us.

‘Oswald!’ he shouted. The key flashed down towards my chest, and I caught it with both hands before turning to the lock.

For a moment it resisted. I pushed it fully in, turned again and felt the bolt slide back. Hermione and Ron pulled the door open while Harry came at us low, one foot trailing and a cloud of metal close behind. I flattened myself against the frame, waited until his broom cleared it and helped slam the door.

The first impacts sounded like hail. Then more keys struck together, producing a crash like cutlery falling down a staircase. Harry dragged his heels across the floor beyond us and stopped just short of the wall. He climbed off the broom with his glasses crooked and announced, somewhat unnecessarily, that he had got the key.

‘I noticed.’ I squeezed his shoulder, then looked at the scratches on his arm. They were shallow, though he winced as his sleeve brushed them. He leaned the borrowed broom beside the closed door and followed us along the next dark passage, leaving the furious fluttering behind.

A tall figure raised its sword when we approached the room ahead. I stepped back before the point reached my chest, and the others stopped beside me. More figures waited beyond it in opposing ranks, with helmets, crowns and enough stone weaponry to make the keys seem briefly manageable. Huge black and white squares covered the floor between them.

Ron stared past me. ‘Chess,’ he said, moving far enough to see the nearest army clearly. There were gaps where a bishop and a rook should have stood, and a stone horse waited without its rider. ‘We take their places. That’s how we play.’

Hermione counted the available positions, then looked at the four of us. She asked where that left her, and Ron turned towards the waiting horse. I watched the nearest sword instead. Whatever answer he found, I wanted it before any of us stepped far enough to begin the game.