but before the events of the end. These are the first 2 parts, I'm still working on parts 3 and 4 and I will post them as soon as I get them done.Gryffindor Courage: Ginny
My first thought when I woke up was, ‘What the goddam bloody hell is this place?’ I know for a fact I went to sleep in my bed in Gryffindor Tower. I was thinking of Harry, of course, and I know that I was warm, snuggled into my blankets and had a relatively soft mattress under me. Well, it was soft compared to what I was lying on now, which, after a bit of fumbling, was revealed to be rock of some sort.
I sat stock upright, gasping in horror. Until that moment I was kind of half thinking this was part of a really weird dream. But the feel of the solid rock, firm and cool beneath my fingers, jolted me into reality. I really was in some rocky place. Beside me, wakened by my sudden movement, Harry stirred and looked up. He looked as confused as I felt when he saw me there.
‘Ginny? What? I mean – you shouldn’t be here. Not that I don’t like seeing you, of course.’ He stammered out the last line as he saw my less than ecstatic expression. I temporarily shook off my feeling of ‘what the hell is going on?’ and concentrated on the knowledge that Harry was there too. If he was with me, then no matter what this was all about, I figured it would at least be fun trying to figure it out.
‘Take a look around you, Harry. This is not Gryffindor Tower so I don’t think we’re going to be in trouble for sneaking into each other’s rooms.’
Harry grinned. He was remembering the time we did get caught together, I guess. Not that we were doing anything bad that day, mind, just lying together talking, but we must have fallen asleep and old McGonagall found us when she did her morning rounds. Oh, how the rumours flew around the school over that one. I snorted. It had been kind of fun actually, pretending to live up to the reputation. I figured if we were discovered missing today rumours would be even more … well, I bet they would be salacious to say the least.
‘Stop smirking, Harry. I’m serious. And what’s more, we have company.’
‘Company?’
I took his head and turned it to look to his left, where there were six more shapes scattered around the room. It was a room, of sorts. While it was made of rock, it wasn’t solid sheets of rock; on closer inspection, it was made of rough-hewn rock bricks. The room was about twelve feet square and there was one exit from each side. Harry and I were in one corner and the other six people were roughly positioned in the other three. It all seemed awfully – organised, was the best word for it, I guess.
Being a girl of action, I stood up, noticing in passing that I was still in my pyjamas, and moved purposefully off to look over the other people. I saw Harry groping around for his glasses as I moved off. I felt a pang of worry – how were we going to cope if he couldn’t even see? – until I saw them by his legs.
‘By your leg, Harry,’ I called behind me as I reached the first pair. It was Susan Bones and Ernie McMillan. The next two were Cho Chang and Michael Corner, and finally I came to Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. Merlin! Of all the people we could be shut in here with it had to be them? Carefully, so as to avoid waking them too quickly, I made my way back to Harry. He had finally got mastery of his glasses, and was blinking around at the room.
‘It’s Susan, Ernie, Michael, Cho, Malfoy and Parkinson,’ I whispered to him.
‘Malfoy? Oh great. Just who I want to be shut up with.’
‘Have you noticed one thing about this, Harry? Whatever made us come here has selected four couples – one couple representing each house. This smells like a bad set up.’
‘Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? I wonder if this has something to do with Malfoy’s mission.’
I rolled my eyes at him. Seriously, he was still far too obsessed with Malfoy but I could play that one to my advantage.
‘Could be, Harry, could be. Maybe we should, you know, talk to him, try and figure it out.’
He glared at me. OK, I don’t think I did that one very subtly, but talking to the others was still a good idea. While we had been talking the other pairs had woken up, and were doing the double takes we’d already been through.
‘Hey, Susan!’ I called. I chose her because she was the nicest of the other girls. Plus Cho and Michael were both exes of Harry and mine, and of course Malfoy was, we he wasn’t our favourite person, nor were we his if I was being entirely fair. Susan looked up from the intense discussion she seemed to be having with Ernie.
‘What’s up, Ginny? What’s going on here?’
‘I don’t know, but I think we should go check it out. There’s nothing to be gained from sitting here examining our toes, right?’
Beside me Harry was nodding, but the others didn’t look too keen.
‘That’s the way, Gryffin-whores, just go off bull-headed without thinking. Just what I’d expect of a couple of no-brainers like you two.’ Malfoy’s voice came sneering out of his corner. I bristled at the words, but decided to keep concentrating on Susan rather than give Malfoy the reaction he clearly wanted.
‘Until we know what we’re dealing with, we’re never going to work anything out. Besides, we could just walk out one of those exits and be at Hogwarts. We won’t know til we do something.’
Harry was already on his feet and halfway out the nearest exit.
‘No luck with that one, Ginny,’ he called. ‘There’s just a long corridor here with more doors leading off it. Someone check the other doors, but I think this is some sort of maze.’
‘A Maze?’ Cho’s voice finally joined in the commotion. ‘Why would we be dropped into a maze? That just doesn’t make any sense.’
Ernie had leapt up when Harry asked someone to check the other doors, and he finally shouted, ‘Yeah, there’s a corridor out all of these doors. OK, let’s just figure out what we’re going to do here. We don’t need to fight, we need to work together’
I growled in frustration. Enough with the talking, I wanted some doing. I damn well wanted to be out of this place and back home with some sort of hearty breakfast on a table in front of me. Having a happy little chat about what to do was not going to get us any-bloody-where. Harry seemed to feel the same way.
‘No use in talking, I want to get out of here. Let’s just pick a door and walk ... we can talk about it on the way out.’
‘Who died and made you King, Potter?’ Pansy Parkinson said in her slimiest Slytherin way. ‘No-one elected you leader of this bunch, no matter how beloved you are at school. We rational people want to think it through before heading off into who-knows-what.’
I threw my hands up and marched towards the door Harry was still hovering in.
‘No-one asked your opinion, Parkinson. You all can sit here debating the finer points of maze lore all you like, but we are going to get out of this dump.’
Without caring who came too, I grabbed Harry’s arm and went out the door into the darkness of the corridor.
‘Guys! Wait!’ Cho’s voice was anxious, but I didn’t care. ‘Wait up, Harry. Ginny. We’re coming too.’
‘We are not. There was no discussion,’ blustered Ernie.
‘But, in a way they’re right,’ said Cho. We really do have no idea what’s out there; we need to find our bearings. We can be careful.’
By this time Harry and I had stopped and waited for them. I was conscious of his hand, warm in mine. I squeezed it, and smiled up at him. The others were going to do the sensible thing after all. We could get the hell out of here. All that crap about being careful was all very well, but at least we’d be moving, doing something. Harry smiled back, and by that time the others had got to us.
‘Can’t you two keep the googly eyes to yourselves? It makes me ill seeing you all over each other like that.’
‘Like you’re any better, Parkinson. Couldn’t find a real man, so you had to take the slimeball over there, huh?’
‘For Merlin’s sake!’ Susan shouted. ‘Stop with this stupid fighting all the time. You all make me want to crash your heads together. We need to work as a group to get out of this place.’
I blushed. It was incredibly fun to fight with the Slytherins, in fact it was almost compulsory if you were a Gryffindor, especially in my family. But it wasn’t really fair to other people. Cho, Michael, Susan and Ernie deserved better than dealing with our constant bickering all the time. I mumbled an apology to Parkinson, and she muttered one back. We’d called a truce, for want of a better word, just for the duration of course. She was still Slytherin slime, and I’d never be best pals with her, but I vowed to hold my tongue, at least for now.
Impatient to get moving again, Harry pulled on my hand and we started off down the corridor. He determinedly took the first door we came to and we ended up in another room. This one was about half the size of the first one and had 2 doors leading off directly from the wall opposite us. We walked straight towards one of them and found a whole raft of doors all leading off one side. We took the first one and came abruptly up short. This one had led us into a tiny room with no other exits at all.
I was beginning to get a prickly feeling that something wasn’t right and the feeling only intensified when the others piled in behind us. When we were all in there, there was no space for anyone to move and several people stood on each other’s feet. There was a general muttering and cursing and an ‘ouch, get off me’ chaos around me.
‘OK, stop!’ Michael’s voice was firm and authoritative. ‘Whoever is nearest the door, back out please.’
Malfoy began grumbling, but did as he was asked, pulling Parkinson with him.
‘Good. Now the rest of us should be able to get out too. This is obviously not the right way.’
As we got ourselves righted and were getting out the door, Ernie bent down quickly. He picked up a small flat rock which had an inscription on it. He read it aloud: ‘Courage is needed in face of the foe, but courage alone will lead to woe.’
What the hell did that mean? Since when was courage a bad thing? I could see my confusion mirrored on Harry’s face, but the others were nodding. Nodding! As if it was true. I huffed in exasperation.
‘You guys think there’s something in that comment? I think it’s just some stupid cryptic message left by someone. It might not even be for us.’
‘Weasley, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’ Malfoy. I curled my lip at him.
Harry leapt in; he never could resist when Malfoy made one of his cracks. ‘Like you have all the answers, Malfoy. If you’re so damn clever, you can get us out of this place.’
Cho stepped in. ‘We were put in this place for some sort of reason. Why else would it be so … so pat? This clue thing is here, where whoever put us here knew you Gryffindors would lead us.’ Cho was being reasonable, damn her. ‘It’s clearly a commentary on not being able to battle through this with just sheer guts.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off, saying, ‘I mean, it says courage is a good thing, and that we need it to solve this problem, but that it isn’t the only thing we need to use to get out. I don’t know, I just feel we should take heed and do something else, rather than wander aimlessly around barging into whatever door we get to without thinking through the possible consequences.’
She broke off, looking nervous. ‘I mean, I want to get out as much as the rest of you. But this, what we’ve been doing, hasn’t gotten us anywhere except a dead end. And this thing,’ she waved the stone for emphasis, ‘shows that it isn’t the ‘right’ thing to be doing.’
‘Chang’s right,’ said Parkinson, with a smirk in my direction. I glared through slitted eyes at her. The evil cow was trying to wind me up and make me break the truce, but I wasn’t going to let her win like that. I held my tongue. ‘We need to try something different. Now Draco and I,’ she simpered at him in the most nauseating way, making me glad I’d had no breakfast to bring up, ‘have been using our heads while the rest of you have been blindly following Potter.’
Susan and Ernie both began fidgeting. ‘Get on with it please, Pansy,’ insisted Ernie. ‘We don’t want to be stuck here all day.’
‘Well, those of us who use our eyes have noticed that every single passage way and room in here is made of exactly the same stuff.’ She was right, damn her. The whole place was completely featureless.
‘Yeah, what of it?’ Harry was getting impatient; I could feel his hand shaking in mine. He wanted to be moving again, and so did I. But we’d agreed to let the Slytherins take over – for now. I just wished they would hurry up. Malfoy must have sensed that Parkinson was losing the group’s good will because he butted in right then.
‘Same old Potter, no brains to speak of.’ I wanted to slap the foul little git, but he hurried on, ‘If there are no features in the open, there are probably hidden features. It makes sense. The doorways and rooms are all the same. So the only way to differentiate them is by finding what each one hides.’
‘But, that’s stupid!’ Susan burst out. ‘What could they be hiding? Secret tunnels?’
‘Bingo, Bones. Not as stupid as your average Hufflesquib, are you? Yes, secret passages, and we have an idea where to find one.’
Slytherin Cunning: Pansy
I watched Draco facing down all the other sceptics in the corridor and I knew without a shadow of a doubt why I liked him so much. Unlike the other idiots, he actually had a plan. The Gryffindorks, precious Potter and his weasel, were all for just running off like headless chickens. That was typical of them, but it was never going to solve anything and the others all just wanted to talk. As if talking was going to solve anything either.
No, Draco and I had a plan. We’d been whispering together since this whole thing started, and it was as obvious as the nose on my face that there was only one solution to this problem. There had to be a hidden way out.
The clue thing on the stone just enhanced my feelings. We had to be brave, but bravery wasn’t enough all by itself. What could that mean other than we needed to go into the deep, dark recesses of the maze to find our way out? That would require cunning with a small smidge of bravery. Who could be better than we Slytherins to winkle out the secrets of the maze makers? After all, it was a Slytherin who created the master secret: the Chamber of Secrets that not even Dumbledore had been able to penetrate in all his years at Hogwarts.
I called myself back to the maze itself as the others grudgingly admitted that Draco was right. Well, of course he was. There was no other reasonable explanation for the maze set-up. I looked up at Draco with a smile, ignoring Weaselby’s snarly smirk. He was, for once, not looking drawn and distracted. Whatever had been bothering him all year was clearly pushed aside in the excitement of working this thing out. The lines that had been etched around his eyes, and which had tightened significantly when Weaselby’s brother almost died, were loosened.
I squeezed his hand and looked over at Potter. He was staring at us with a look of disgust on his face. I almost snarled myself. He had almost killed Draco mere weeks ago, and yet he had the gall to stand there looking as if he had been wronged. Potter was dangerous, no matter what everyone who was under his thrall thought. He was stupid and reckless and if we let him take charge of this thing we would never get out and would probably end up dead. It hadn’t escaped my notice that the people who went places with Potter ended up killed unless they were his very best buddies. It was up to we Slytherins to get us all out of here in one piece and ensure that Potter didn’t get everyone with him offed this time.
I tugged on Draco’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s show them what we mean.’
He nodded and we all moved off together. We were heading towards a tiny blemish we had noticed in one of the cracks between the rocks of the corridor wall. Draco expertly curled his long fingers into the small gap and tugged. There was a crunching sound and I felt a moment of deep satisfaction and triumph. We had done it, Draco and I. Using our superior brains, we had found the entrance to our passage out. No need to keep up that truce with Weaselby any more. I turned to give her the lashing she deserved for some of the things she said.
Then the sound stopped and a small section of the rock fell away in Draco’s hand. I felt all the stab of bitter disappointment. Clearly we had found something, but it wasn’t big enough to be a way out. I looked around, trying to avoid seeing the look of smug satisfaction I was sure was on the weasel’s face.
It was bad enough that practically every guy in the whole school fawned over her freckly little face without having her be so arrogantly sure of her own superiority. She was all over Potter, the Chosen One, for the fame and fortune that came with him. But the whole castle seemed to fall all over themselves about how gorgeous she was, as if freckles and a weasel face are attractive. And now, now she was going to lord it over me like she somehow knew better than I did. In that moment I hated every freckle on her horrid little face. Her and Potter both. Ugh, I had no idea what I’d done to deserve being trapped with those two out of all the Gryffindorks available.
I pulled my attention away from them, to avoid being totally grossed out by looking at their arrogant faces. The others we were with were all looking excited and interested in what we had found. Bones and McMillan looked eager to see what was in the gap created by the missing stone, and Chang and Corner already looked like they were processing the data in their massive brains. None of them seemed to be worried about the fact that we hadn’t found a way out. Maybe we could save some face here. I saw a small flat rock in the indentation left by the piece Draco had pulled out.
‘Draco? What’s that? Is that another one of those stupid clue things?’
He slid his hand further in and pulled out the stone. At first glance it was empty, but as he turned it over in his hands I saw that I was right. Something had been scratched onto the surface of this rock too. The hand that had carved the letters used the same curved writing that was on the Gryffindorks’ stone. I sighed; it was becoming increasingly obvious that someone was playing some sort of sadistic game with all of us. I nudged Draco, as he seemed to have drifted away from us while contemplating the message.
‘What does it say? Draco?’
He shook himself, and whispered the words, ‘You will use all your cunning to succeed, but more than cunning you will need. Dammit!’ He yelled, throwing the stone on the ground, where it spun on its edge for a moment or two before coming to rest with its written face up. The words stood there, accusing us from the ground. ‘I don’t believe it. There must be some passageway out of here. There must!’ He began tearing at the hole as if hoping that he could conjure a passage out of there just by wishing for it.
Chang finally spoke up. ‘Draco, I think you’re right, in a way. But I think I’m getting a sense of what this all means.’
He stopped scrabbling at the wall and looked up at her, a snarl on his lips. ‘Yeah? In what universe did you suddenly become the font of all knowledge?’
‘I’m not,’ she said calmly, ‘but I do have pretty good reasoning skills, and this is just a logic puzzle.’
‘All right, then. Enlighten us all.’ I could hear the sarcasm in his tone, but I could also hear the trace of vulnerability. I felt a surge of affection for him. He was so vulnerable and sensitive, and yet most people only saw the outward arrogance he put on to hide his true self. Knowing him the way I did, knowing how broken and sweet he was under all the bravado, I was amazed that every single person alive didn’t fall for him the way I had. But then, if others felt the same I wouldn’t have him to myself. I could feel a tension in him as he listened to Chang, so I surreptitiously rubbed my hand on his arm to sooth him. It didn’t work, he remained rigid with his stare focussed on the wall behind Chang’s head, but I felt a little better for trying.
‘We have two clues now, and both say we need a trait but not that trait alone. The two traits mentioned are both dominant characteristics of Hogwarts houses. Isn’t it obvious what that means?’
Beside her, Corner was nodding enthusiastically and that wretched Potter was looking enlightened too, damn him. The others were all thinking hard while looking as confused as I felt, so Corner sighed impatiently and spelled it out.
‘We have been put here, wherever here is, as representatives of all the houses. The clue things are telling us we have to use all our dominant traits to get out of here. Whether we like it or not we have to work together to find our way out of this mess.’
My heart sank. I was afraid that was the way of it; but now he spelled it out it was obvious what we had to do.
‘No, stuff that! Why would we want to work with the likes of them?’ Potter spat out the words, while indicating in our direction. ‘They just aren’t trustworthy. They were in Umbridge’s Inquisitorial squad, for goodness’ sake. And I certainly don’t trust him. He’s up to something.’ The eyes he turned on Draco glittered evilly.
I opened my mouth, ready to defend Draco, when to my infinite surprise, The Weasel spoke up.
‘Harry! Would you stop with the Malfoy conspiracy already! You almost killed him, in case you don’t remember, and Cho’s right. We are going to have to team up to get out. That’s far more important than house rivalry.’
‘What she said,’ said Bones, matter of factly. ‘Now, I happen to agree with Draco. We should check each of these rooms for cracks and crannies. There may be more clues and there may be a way out hidden in here somewhere. We just need to be methodical, look in every single room and passageway and we’ll get there in the end.’
I could see the Gryffindorks rolling their eyes, and felt a sudden wash of satisfaction. Hah! The Hufflesquibs were agreeing with us for once. How galling that must be for them. To make things even better, the Hufflesquibs were bent on slowing us down, making a through going over of the place. The Gryffindorks would be fuming about the lack of action and excitement. My day had just got a little brighter.