Year Four - Chapter Twenty-Four

My eyes twitched ravenously as I dimly realized I hadn't yet asked Harry for another glance at the Marauders' Map. In my effort to channel everything Dumbledorish that I could, I had utterly forgotten about the one thing I needed.

My eyes glanced back and forth through the empty hallway of Hogwarts. My steps abruptly came to a halt. My fingers touched the old, dusty map that Filch had kindly given me. Since he was also a caretaker of Hogwarts, he knew where the plumbing was, and when I had asked for a map of it, he had surprisingly given me a copy. It was no Marauders' map, but it served another purpose.

I neared my fingers to the right wall, tapping it with the tip of my wand as I moved forward. The castle was quite quiet during lunch hours, if not for the muttering of the portraits. I tapped what I hoped was the correct brick, and quietly whispered the needed spell to slowly make it open, as if dug by a really powerful acid. The plumbing in question had four long tubes, of which only one was sparkling pink.

It was the one that was in truth a fake one; the one used by the basilisk of Salazar to move unseen through the castle.

I made a small hole in that particular tube, and then tapped the insides with the tip of my wand, clearing it of the muck and the random dead skin. A few seconds later, a Draghul's small stone head appeared from one of the sides, glancing up at me with burning, fiery eyes. I smiled at it, and then watched as it gracefully moved on to the other side of the tube in question.

I then closed the brick, putting a nice illusionary charm over it to make it seem as if nothing had changed.

The closest suit of armor was just a few steps to the right, and as I quickly beckoned it in the spot I had been before, it flawlessly hid the oh-so-accurately hidden hole.

"All right, fifth floor's done," I muttered. I looked up at the various portraits, most of them seemingly interested in their own lunches. It was interesting just how flawed portraits were for security reasons. They could be used to call a professor, but they slept during the night, ate during lunch, and generally had a really short memory of things that didn't deal with a brief history of whom they were.

Some went mad, like Cadogan, and invaded other portraits or did silly things.

Yet they didn't work that well as flawless CCTV-things.

Hogwarts was a place filled with wonders, and mysteries. One could walk through a familiar hallway, and find a new door once every month; since some rooms only opened up to visitors on specific occasions, and others never did. A room meant only for singing fairies, for example, wouldn't open unless you had a fairy in your hand. If you couldn't flawlessly sing the British Anthem, another room wouldn't appear.

The castle did not judge one's tastes, or likes. As long as one wished for it, one could create their own room, with their own blackjack and vending machines. Sure, it required quite a bit of charmwork and preparations, but otherwise everything was possible to the student who wished for it.

My stomach rumbled, but I didn't pay attention to it. I'd get something from the kitchens at a later date.

My steps echoed in the silence of the hallways. It was strange, but with things as they went the sudden attack on my person had started to take a secondary spot in my mind. The maze could have anything, from Manticores to Firecrabs, and while I didn't put it past myself that I could ruthlessly deal with some of them, I wondered if I'd raise some feathers dealing with a Sphynx in a more than strictly un-lethal manner.

I was never really good with riddles. The only reason I managed to get back into the Ravenclaws' common room was because I either went together with someone else, or actually passed through the Room of Requirements, or had a House Elf side-apparate me there.

Thus, since I didn't want to bother the House Elves during lunch, I took to exploring the castle. It would be ludicrous for someone to claim to have explored it all; the entire thing was a Hypercube of some kind. Hallways super-impressed upon other hallways, rooms that could lead to different places depending on the ticking of the minutes, on the odd or even day, and handles that required tickling, licking, or talking to in order to open.

This was magic at its finest oddity, where common sense went to die and logic took the Seppuku way out.

"Hello there, adoraburble, could you please open up?" I asked to a newly found door, who remained steadfastly closed. I sighed, and pulled out a parchment. "Dearie me, I'm kinda lost, could you open up sweet host?" when even that didn't work, I pushed on to yet another line. "Name's Shade Umbrus, can I have yours, pretty door-lady?"

I had written a bullet-point list of attempts to get doors to open. The door in question, case in point, opened only when addressed in Scottish. "Cannae ya fair lady pry yer handlebars open?" I parroted a Scottish accent, and the door clicked open.

Within, bagpipes were humming along some kind of dreadfully out-of-tune song.

I closed the door and moved along.

Nobody ever said that the rooms of Hogwarts all had to be interesting, or filled with mysterious, hidden, highly dangerous magical experiments and whatnot. I giggled as I went through a room that was filled with feathers, whose only purpose was to tickle anyone coming through them. The only reason I did it was because at the far end was another door, which led to the top of a tower.

Even so, the tower itself was the Astronomy one, and not a mysterious, secret tower. I closed the door behind me, reopened it, and found myself trudging through the second floor of the castle. From there, I took the stairway up to the fourth floor, and then waited patiently for the one that would lead me to the ground floor. It arrived, punctually, three minutes later.

This time though, it stopped on the first floor. I sighed. Having missed the coincidence with the first floor to ground floor staircase, I had to wait ten more minutes.

"I need a pocket watch," I said in the end, tapping my foot against the floor. "A cool one, with bizarre lances that tells you anything but the time, and yet makes you always aware of what time it is when you hold it up."

That would be positively magical, I reckoned.

I shook my head as I finally reached the ground floor. "Seriously, I'm going native again," I grumbled as I walked out of the castle.

The lake's shore was a tranquil oasis, and as I quietly plopped down, I witnessed one of Squiddie's smaller tentacles break the surface tension of the lake, and then land, ever so gently, on my knees. I giggled at that, and began to pat the tentacle.

"Squiddie, how's your day been?" I asked, not really expecting an answer.

The Giant Squid, in answer, wailed a tiny bit. After a while, it became quite a melodious sound if you got used to it.

Later in the day, I'd have to follow Bagman into witnessing the growth of the Magic Maze of Doom and Gloom.

But that would be later.

"You know, I wonder," I hummed as I rubbed the tentacle. It wasn't even all that slimy. It had a strange texture, like wet leather, but it wasn't that disgusting of a thing, and I had touched worst during Herbology lessons. "Are you sure you're not an Animagus who forgot how to turn back into a human? Because you know, I'm reasonably sure we could work something out if that was the case."

The Giant Squid wailed a bit more, but I reckoned it was something eerily similar to a 'Silly student, don't you worry about me.'

The smallish tentacle then rose a bit, rubbed my head, and disappeared into the lake.

It emerged a second later, and dropped on my lap some fishes.

"Thanks," I said with a chuckle, "You wouldn't have some galleons to go with it too, wouldn't you?"

The tentacle waited ever so briefly, and then disappeared below the water of the lake.

Then, I watched the tentacles start to stretch over the Durmstrang's Galleon.

"No!" I shrieked, "Not that kind of Galleon!"

The Giant Squid wailed ever so briefly, and then stopped trying to grasp the Durmstrang Galleon.

"The golden kind one! But it was a joke! You don't really have to-"

Something landed with a hefty thunk against the lake's shore.

It was an old, encrusted chest. It was filled with golden coins. Not galleons, but literal golden coins.

Was this part of some old Spanish treasure left at the bottom of the sea?

I began to laugh.

Common sense, even in magical animals, was apparently sorely lacking too.