A sob started. She turned to see Padma gathering her crying fellow muggleborn into a hug.
Hermione absentmindedly jabbed her wand at John, confirming all his vitals were fine, and that he wasn't dying. Although she did see a nasty cut on one exposed shoulder.
"T-T-T-Thank y-y-you." Sophie sobbed into Padma's robes.
Padma rubbed her back. "Hey, we're all here for you. Okay? We said we would be, didn't we?" Sophie nodded, shakily.
A groan caught all their attentions. Hermione watched as a groggy John Potter raised himself on his elbows. "What happened?" Daphne snorted. "What happened is that you jumped onto a slow moving target, which we were happily outrunning, and cast a blasting curse at pointblank range."
Potter shook his dazed head.
"You're lucky you weren't killed," Daphne finished.
Her lord's twin stilled, as though he'd just remembered something, leapt to his feet and turned away, towards the forbidden corridor. Hermione shot out her arm and grabbed his wrist. "And where do you think you're going?" John Potter looked into her eyes. "I've got something to take care of."
"What? There's only the out of bounds corridor off that direction."
Potter shook off her arm and marched off. She called after him. "You're injured!"
Potter ignored her.
Damn. She and Daphne shared a look. Daphne rose to her feet and made to follow. Hermione turned back towards the group. "You'll be okay, right?"
The two pureblood Ravenclaw witches nodded. Sophie turned her head away from Padma's chest. "I'll be okay, Hermione." she sniffed again, "Thank you, and you too… er…"
Daphne turned. "Daphne. Daphne Greengrass, Heiress of the Ancient and Noble House of Greengrass."
Sophie sniffed again. "Thank you, Daphne."
Daphne nodded and the two of them set off after the Gryffindor time traveller.
They arrived at the corner to the out of bounds corridor a few minutes later to find John Potter standing and staring, wand hanging limply at his side, face pale. "What?"
Hermione caught up to him and her gaze fell down the corridor. She stared.
Daphne joined them and gasped.
The corridor was completely destroyed. Suits of armour lay in heaps of scrap. Great chunks of wall were gouged out. Rubble lay everywhere. The splinted remains of a door lay half way down the space. Tapestries were torn and half hanging off the walls.
John took a step forward. "What? What did this?"
Hermione shared a fearful glance with Daphne. What had happened here? Where was Harry? Was he safe… Or?
Hermione felt a stab of pain shoot through her leg. She winced. The snake Harry always told to keep in her pocket had started writhing and biting at her leg. She saw Daphne's eyes widen. Panic flying through them.
John took another step forward.
Her own heart started beating faster again. Adrenaline started pumping. Basilisk. Harry could be in danger. He could be badly injured. She had to find him. But…
She glanced towards Daphne and nodded at John's back. Daphne nodded.
Hermione raised her wand.
John took another step.
The tip of her wand glowed red. "Stupefy." The boy collapsed in a heap on the floor.
She and Daphne reached into their robes and whipped on twin pairs of muggle sunglasses.
Daphne turned. "Right, let's get out of here."
Hermione blanched. "But we have to find Harry!"
"Are you crazy, Granger? It's a Basilisk! A Merlin damned Basilisk! We're just dead weight!"
Hermione ignored her and marched forward.
"For magic's sake!"
She reached the door and stepped through it. She stared. The corpse of a huge animal lay on the floor. It had the body of a goat, the heads of an eagle and a tiger and the tails of a cat a fox and a snake. The snake tail writhed around in the air. The rest of the creature was very definitely dead. The chimaera was dead.
Daphne arrived beside her and gasped.
Hermione's gaze raised from the massive corpse to take in a scene of destruction even more total than the corridor outside. Huge circular holes were smashed in the walls of several rooms beyond, taking whole doors with them, creating a long passageway of huge, ancient, jagged stones, which stretched on far further than the castle's outer walls could realistically contain.
What was this place?
She felt Daphne tremble beside her. "Why would anyone put a chimaera in a school? And why would anyone ever willingly fight one? Even with a Basilisk? What's this all for?"
Hermione shook her head. Something was very wrong here, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Every time she tried it seemed to slip through her mind like water through a sieve.
Daphne pointed. "There! Look."
Hermione stared. A figure stood on the far side of the chimaera's corpse, just hidden from the doorway. She walked forward. Her eyes widened.
It stood perfectly still. It was tall, had a long, billowing cloak, long hair, a hooked nose. It's skin looked like stone, and it held the smashed remains of a large potions bottle to its face. Glass littered the floor around it. It was a petrified Severus Snape.
A human head appeared from no where. Hermione shrieked and clutched her chest. "Harry! Don't do that!"
Harry's head frowned. "ID check?" Daphne gave the fidelius location.
Harry nodded. His eyes were urgent. "As you can see, I'm fine. Get back to the dorms, fast. The damn snake isn't here just now, but that doesn't mean it won't turn up again." Hermione pouted. "And you?" "I'm going to investigate a bit more. I don't know what all this is all for, but I know I want to find out. Anywhere with this much security must be guarding something quite special."
Daphne nodded. "Let's go, Granger."
They left after a few hissed words from Harry to the snakes in their pockets and made their way back to where they'd left John Potter. "Argh!" Hermione stamped her foot. "We forgot we have to take him to the hospital wing."
"We could enervate him and send him there?"
"He'll ignore us and inconvenience Harry."
Daphne sighed. "Yeah. He would."
They heard the approach of many footsteps. She and Daphne shared a panicked look, whipped off their sunglasses and pocked them just as Dumbledore appeared around the corridor corner. "Miss Greengrass! Miss Granger! What is happening here?"
McGonagall and a few others followed a split second later. The old witch gasped. "Is that Mister Potter?"
Hermione stepped forward. "Heir Potter was injured in the fight with the troll and refused medical attention. He left and we followed. I was forced to stun him for his own protection and was about to take him to the hospital wing."
Dumbledore seemed to take in the destruction of the corridor, and in particular the smashed door to the room behind them. And here?
Daphne took over. "We don't know. We just got here." The headmaster nodded. "Then please take Mister Potter to the hospital wing, immediately. Do not dawdle. Thank you for assisting Miss Patil and Miss Turpin in rescuing Miss Roper. Professor Vector, if you would escort them?"
Vector nodded and the three of them, plus a levitated Potter, left for the hospital wing.
At least they had avoided a detailed grilling from the headmaster. Hopefully Harry would be okay.
Harry followed the trail of destruction down the series of rooms. Everywhere, rubble and debris covered the floor. Rune stones lay smashed on their pillars, marking the former presence of a battery of formidable wards, all now gone.
The first room after the chimaera contained a miniature rainforest. The many rare species of magical plant curled and sniffed the air as he passed, unfelt and unseen.
The second room contained the remains of a small army of charmed warriors. One of the stone soldiers groaned and reached into the air, its bottom half completely shattered.
The third room was empty, bar a complicated looking set of glass pipes and spheres, which twisted and turned in on themselves. The basilisk seemed to have ignored it and just smashed its way straight through to the next room.
The forth room was completely dark, save for the massive hole in the far wall, and the carpet of stars, lighting the high, domed roof by the thousand.
The fifth room, he recognised from his and the girl's exploration of the pipe network. A room empty but for a muggle TV and a VCR. He padded over to the table in front of the TV, waved his wand over the parchment on it, and read.
'To reach the next room, you must program the tape recorder to record East Enders on Sunday at 7:00pm on Channel One.'
Next to the parchment was a remote controller with over a hundred buttons on it.
Harry put down the parchment and frowned. It seemed like a strange kind of lock. And why would anyone go to the trouble? What on earth was so important as to set up such an elaborate defence system while also making said defence system kind of dumb?
He peeked into the sixth room to spy a three metre tall bronze statue of Severus Snape, a set of vials of clear liquid on a table, and nothing else. There was no extra hole in the wall. The snake was nowhere to be seen.
What the hell was going on?
Behind him, he heard approaching voices. Dumbledore.
Shit.
He sidled up to the far wall of the TV room, hissed, and stepped into the pipe network beyond.
Whatever was going on here, in this strange magical obstacle course, he could leave it for another time. Ultimately, it wasn't that important. It wasn't as though it was going to help him find the stone, after all.