Daphne slowly nodded. "I guess it's a good thing we don't actually have to do it then?"
Harry grinned. "Quite."
The next room would have been pitch dark, if it weren't for the thousands of stars that lighted up the roof, just like midnight great hall on a clear night. Daphne looked around. "I can't see anything."
"Keep looking."
Daphne kept looking, but it wasn't until she'd lapped the room several times that she finally found a parchment on a desk. "Wish Angelystor had already taught us the night vision charm," she muttered as she leaned into the parchment, just making out the writing in the almost total darkness.
To continue, move the stars and planets to the positions they held on your birthday.
"That's it?" Daphne asked. "How do you do that?"
"Is there a control panel? Maybe something like Professor Sinistra's astrolabe?"
Daphne spent another few minutes searching around the room before finally finding it. "Here!"
"Mmmm…" Harry said.
"What is it?" Hermione's voice asked.
"Birthday ID check combined with astronomy knowledge. I don't know how it's supposed to know what your birthday is to make sure you're telling the truth, so, unless this whole thing is completely pointless, there must be a list of acceptable birthdays." "So, you could enter the position of the stars and planets on Dumbledore's birthday and it would let you through?"
"Maybe — or maybe just professor Sinistra's? Either way, let's move on."
Daphne moved the eyeball through the far doorway, and into the room with the muggle pensieve in it.
"Careful now." Harry said as she neared the next doorway to the next room. "We should be fine here, but there's always a risk that the tripwire will still trip, even for the eyeball."
She nodded and pressed ahead. The eyeball slipped through the door, into the next room, and into its middle… and she still knew why they were here. She smiled. "Excellent." Harry sounded delighted. "Well, that's one problem cracked."
Daphne now took the time to look around the room, mostly dominated by a huge stone statue of their currently, and rather ironically, petrified potions professor and former head of house, Severus Snape. A small table sat in front of the statue, on which stood a single tiny glass of perfectly clear liquid… and a parchment.
Daphne moved the eyeball over to it and read.
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
So drink the potion and answer my questions truthfully, because I'm not in the mood to write another damn poem! "Veritaserum." Harry said, "And neither Voldemort nor Quirrell are noble, so they have no defence against it" He snorted. "How very cunning. So this one is probably a straight up lie detector test with certain preprogrammed answers granting access to the next room." He paused for a moment. "Or just poison, of course."
"Two of us are noble." Daphne supplied.
"Yeah, I'm going to have to think about that. Obviously whichever of us goes in front of this thing will be under the cloak with a modified voice. It would be rather embarrassing if the statue could tell Dumbledore that one of us was granted access to the next room."
"That would be bad." Hermione's voice said. Harry nodded. "Next room, I think, Daphne."
Daphne moved the eyeball through the door next to the massive statue, into the next room, and a dozen doors suddenly appeared before her, but something wasn't quite right. It took a confusing moment to understand what it was she was seeing. "Mirrors?"
"Mirrors." Harry said.
The room was filled with hundreds of mirrors, all ornate, old looking, and angled just so to reflect a billion reflections from all the other mirrors, creating a confusing maze of images that stretched her large green eyeball out and into infinity. Every mirror had the same plaque at the bottom. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi."
"Oh Merlin," Harry whispered. "This must have taken Dumbledore ages to set up. Does the man not have anything better to do with his time?"
"Harry?" Daphne asked. "What are they?"
"I think they're supposed to be copies of the Mirror of Erised, although exactly how closely they resemble the original, we'll only be able to tell once we're actually in here. But there was only one last time."
"This is the last room," Daphne said, looking around. "Is the stone in here?"
"The stone's hidden in the real mirror… probably. Last time around, John was able to somehow extract the stone from it. Voldemort later theorised that the mirror screens for intent, so only someone who wanted to find the stone, but not use it, would be able to retrieve it." "Won't that be a problem?" Hermione's voice asked.
"Hopefully not," Harry said, smiling, "I have a plan. Daphne? Can you check the room's edges?"
Daphne moved the eyeball where Harry asked and immediately saw something she recognised.
Harry started laughing.
Daphne stared. Rune stones. The exact same miniature rune stones Harry always used for his makeshift fidelius charms.
Harry grinned. "Mmmm… that should give us some possibilities."
"What?" Hermione's voice asked eagerly. "What are we going to do?"
Harry shook his head. "Just… just give me some time to think first, okay?"
Daphne Harry."
could hear Hermione
pout.
"Yes,
The next few days had Hermione on high alert. Dumbledore didn't seem to make any moves, although Harry had caught the man studying him during dinner more than once. Unsurprisingly with the amount of damage caused, news of the incident had spread around the castle, no one quite knowing what to believe, but the general understanding being that Harry Potter had done a particularly destructive piece of accidental magic and had spent the night in the hospital wing to recover. Many Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors were treating Harry like a bomb that might go off at any moment. Most Ravenclaws were more interested in understanding what had happened to trigger the event. Slytherins, by contrast, tended to thump her friend on the back and congratulate him, usually while making comments like, 'Give em' hell at the duelling tournament, Potter.'
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