Harry nodded and raised his wand to point at her head. "Legilimens."
Daphne opened her mental defences and surrendered to him, letting him sink deep into her now vulnerable mind, to feel her feelings, explore her senses.
Harry pushed himself to her sense of sight, and there he settled, sitting snug behind all three of her eyes.
"Ready when you are, Daphne. I suggest we start with the first room."
"Okay." Daphne moved the eyeball into the room beyond, feeling Harry's own mind watching through her's as the eye passed easily through metal and wards alike. She quickly moved it through the various rooms, spotting statues and glasswork and what looked like a small forest, before finding her disembodied self in a completely empty room.
"This was commented.
the
chimaera
room."
Harry
"There's nothing here." She angled the eyeball to take in the whole room.
"It looks like that, doesn't it?"
"I for one am glad we don't have to face another chimaera." Hermione's voice said.
"Next room, Daph." Daphne nodded, turned the eye around, and moved through the solid door into the next room, to be met again, with what looked like tropical rain forest.
"This room didn't present much of a threat when I last walked through it, although I was under the cloak. I'm guessing the plants are here to power all of this."
"Why?" Hermione's voice asked, "Why not just use the magic of Hogwarts?"
"Probably because the Hogwarts magic is channelled through the wards."
A lumos went off in Daphne's head. "Wards that you in part control."
"Exactly — and Dumbledore knows that. Clearly he doesn't want Lord Slytherin to casually saunter down here." "What is that?" Daphne asked, spotting a large vine like thing wrapped around a tree with spikes on it the size of daggers. Many of the spines were embedded in the tree, occasionally pulsating.
"That is a Brazilian strangle vine. It attacks and feeds off the magic of other plants. It moves kind of like devil's snare that we did in herbology."
"It's a parasite?"
"Yep."
"What's it Dumbledore available?"
doing want
here the
then?
most
Wouldn't magic
"He should. I don't know why it's here — it's a dark plant. Voldemort even used it as a symbol of hatred."
"Why?" Hermione's voice asked.
"One of the more extreme pureblood propaganda pieces is that muggleborns steal magic from other witches and wizards."
"And this plant steals magic from other plants." Hermione's voice said, laced with understanding.
"Indeed. Maybe Quirrellmort found his way into here and scattered some strangle vine seeds… actually that would make a lot of sense. If he could drain away some of the magic, breaking through the wards could be a bit simpler."
With little else to see in the room, apart from some venomous tentacular, and a young whomping willow, Daphne moved the floating eyeball into the next room.
A small army of statues lined the two side walls of the room, all armed with battle axes, swords, and crossbows. There had to be at least a hundred of them on each side, forming a wide corridor to the door on the far side of the room.
Daphne swallowed. "I guess if you enter this room, they attack?"
"Or pass a certain point," Harry agreed. "The basilisk made short work of them last time."
"Why put a defence back in place, if Voldemort has already shown he has a way to get past it?" Hermione's voice asked.
Harry shrugged. "Probably because Dumbledore doesn't actually consider this to be the true defence, just a bunch of ways to slow Voldie down, or somehow make a confrontation between me and him more likely."
"Could you handle them, Harry?" Hermione's voice asked.
Daphne looked critically around at the hundreds of armed stone warriors.
"Yes, but it would take quite a bit out of me. Don't think there's much more to inspect here. Daphne?"
Daphne moved the eyeball into the next room.
Complex glasswork lined one side of the room. Hundreds of twisty and curved pipes and tubes joined dozens of glass beakers and spheres. The large sphere nearest them, contained what looked to be a large sphere of dull metal.
"Parchment on the desk in the centre, Daphne."
Daphne spotted what Harry pointed out and moved the eyeball over to inspect it.
Dear visitors,
To open the door, please move the sphere of iron from one side of the glass maze to the other without breaking any of the glass. If any glass is broken, chipped, melted, or in any way damaged, moved from the bench, or transfigured, the locks on both doors will activate and an alarm will sound.
Good luck.
"Magical Merlin," Harry breathed. "This one is actually damn tough. Could you take us to the start of the maze, Daph?"
Daphne did so.
"A maze?" Hermione's voice asked.
"A maze made of glass tubes and spheres," Harry said, presumably inspecting the sphere of iron held in the large glass sphere. "Like they use in our classes to demonstrate magical theory. You have to get a ball of iron from one side of the maze to the other without breaking or interfering in any way with the glass. Problem is, the iron ball is much larger than most of the tubes and even some of the glass spheres on the way."
"Transfiguration?" Hermione's voice asked.
Harry shook his head. "Can't get the transfiguration spell to the ball with the glass in the way — no — there's only one thing I can think of that could do this job… alchemy, but even with my skill, it would be damn difficult. You'd have to melt the ball and move molten iron through the maze in a tiny stream, quickly enough not to melt any of the nearby glass and making sure not to touch any of the glass walls. There's no way any first year could manage it, that's for certain. In fact, I doubt there's a single normal student in the whole school that could."
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