(Look, look! It’s a chapter! Please, if you can, support me on Ko-Fi! I honestly should be better at self-promotion, so… yeah! I’m super grateful for any contributions you guys can make. Anyway, on with the chapter!)

 

As we enter the room where the wing-sounds are coming from, light pours down from a crack in the ceiling. Not firelight, but the cold, pale white-blue of moonlight. Hermione gazes up, eyes wide. “Curious… I’ve never seen birds like these before…” she murmurs, and I look up as well, staring up into the room’s high, rocky ceilings.

Harry shakes his head. “They’re not birds… they’re… keys!” looking closer, I can see it too. The wings aren’t feathery, they’re almost... insectile, metal fins shaped to look like dragonfly wings.  Harry points across the room. “And I bet one of them fits that door.”

Sure enough, there’s another door on the far side. If these wards and traps are designed to keep people out, then they surely reset. In the centre of the room, hanging in mid-air, is a broom. Not a nice, modern one, but an old-fashioned one.

“Ugh, splinter city…” I murmur, wrinkling my nose at it, crossing to the door with Ron and Hermione in tow. Rattling the handle proves ineffectual, much to no-one’s surprise, and Ron casts the unlocking charm.

“Alohomora!”

………. Nothing. Shrugging, he turns. “It was worth a try!” Hermione stamps her foot.

“Ugh! What are we going to do!? There must be a thousand keys up there!”

I turn back to Harry. “What are you doing? Is that broom really so fascinating?”

Ron calls, “I think we’re looking for a big, old-fashioned one. Prob’ly rusty, like the handle.”

Harry, his eyes fixed heavenwards, points, almost straight up. “There! I see it, the one with the broken wing!”

 

I crane my gaze upwards. It’s very hard to tell, in the dim light, but one key DOES seem to flying a bit more awkwardly than the rest. Harry returns his stare to the broom, hovering innocuously before him.

Hermione and I say, simultaneously, “what?”

Harry shakes his head a little. “It’s too simple, there’s got to be a catch-”

Ron groans, “Oh, come on, mate! If Snape can catch it on that old broomstick, than you’ll have no problem! You’re the youngest Seeker in a century!”

With evident reluctance, Harry takes hold of the broom. The sound of beating wings grows louder, and a flock of keys swirls down, dive-bombing the boy and swarming him. Ron gulps, “This…complicates things a bit!”

Starting off slow, Harry takes off, beating at any keys that get too daring, ascending and looping around the pillared room, the damaged-winged key just ahead of him, as it tries to evade capture. Harry’s focus returns, and he speeds up, in hot pursuit. All we can do is watch him, unable to help from down here.

The chase lasts for all of five minutes, ending with Harry clutching the key in one hand as he dives towards us. “CATCH!” he yells, throwing the key down to us. I snatch it out of the air before it can escape, and Hermione, Ron and I hurry to the locked door as Harry distracts the rest of the flying keys.

As Harry comes round for his descent, I twist the key in the lock. It’s stiff and uncooperative, but with a firm, curse-word filled exhalation, Ron and I manage to turn it, hauling the door open as Harry jets past. Slamming the door, we listen in shock to the sound of what appears to be a sudden and torrential rainstorm beating against the stout wooden door.

The next room is dark, and seems… weirdly echoing. Almost like it’s… Bigger than it should be. Hunched, twisted shapes seem to line the edges of my vision, and Hermione murmurs, “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all…” Sister, the feeling is mutual. Ron mumbles, “Where ARE we?? It’s like a graveyard…”

“Thank you for that lovely mental image, Ronald…” I say nervously, sticking close to the others.

We proceed out into the centre of the room, and Ron stops us. “It’s not a graveyard…it’s a chessboard.”

 

Lights begin to flicker on, sconces bursting into flame as the room brightens.  Across from us, the shapes resolve into chess pieces. Pawns, rooks, bishops, knights, and the king and queen, standing impassively at the ready. Harry points. “There’s the door!”

As we try to make our way to the sealed entrance behind the silent white chess pieces, every single pawn shifts its position, drawing a pair of cavalry sabres and crossing one over its neighbour’s blade, barring our path.

I swallow. “Well, they seem… friendly…”

After we back up a few paces, the white pawns return to their original positions, swords tucked away as they turtle up again.

Hermione huffs, “okay, NOW what do we do?” to the room in general. Ron steps in front and turns to face us.

 “It’s obvious, innit? We’ve got to play our way across the room!”

He starts giving instructions. “Harry, you take the empty Bishop square. Hermione, you’ll be the Queenside Castle.” She nods without arguing. I swallow. There’s only one empty space on the board, partially occupied by an equine statue. Ron squares his shoulders.

“As for me? I’ll be a Knight.”

With nothing to do except watch, I retreat off the board, my heart aching. I’m no good at Wizard’s Chess, and I’m pretty sure that intervening will cause the pieces to attack indiscriminately. All I can do is watch and pray that my friends can do this…

Once they take their spaces, Hermione asks, “What… what happens now?” Deferring to Ron’s field of expertise.

Ron muses, “Well… White moves first, and then… We play.”

With a grinding noise, one of the White Pawns slides forward, two squares, closing the distance across the board with implacable slowness. As Ron peruses the board, pondering the best move he could make, Hermione pipes up.

“You don’t suppose this is going to be like… REAL… Wizard’s Chess, do you?”

Ron finally acts, pointing to one of our Pawns, and ordering, “You there, D-5!” the Black Pawn slides out, until it’s diagonal with the recently-moved White Pawn. With a rusty chime, the blades emerge as the White Pawn swings, crashing the worn steel through the body of our Black Pawn, shattering it in a great gout of mist and a scattering of shards.

With a pale, wan face, Ron looks over. “Yes, Hermione, I think it’s going to be EXACTLY like playing Wizard Chess…”

The match begins in earnest, although calling it a ‘match’ feels… disingenuous. It’s a pitched battle, is what it is! One by one, pieces on both sides of the board are broken and smashed, with Ron’s shouted orders growing more and more frantic. “Castle to E-5!” and “Pawn to C-3!” The battle isn’t all one-sided, with a fair number of White pieces crumpling and breaking apart to lie scattered amid the Black.

 

I shriek as our other Black Castle, not Hermione thank Merlin, is demolished by the White Queen, before she smashes the tower off the board, sending it crashing past me. Ron’s face blanches, and I see Harry look at Ron with horror. Ron nods, locking eyes with Harry.

“You understand, don’t you? Once I make my move, the Queen will take me. Then you’re free to put the King in check.”

“No, Ron! NO!”

Hermione looks to Harry with fear and confusion on her face. “What is it?!”

Harry shouts, “He’s going to sacrifice himself!”

I gasp in sickened horror. Seeing the damage those huge swords and flails can do to statuary, I can’t bear to imagine what they’d do to a human…

Hermione screams, “No, Ron, you can’t! There MUST be another way-”

Turning on his horse, Ron snaps back, “do you WANT to stop Snape from getting ‘is hands on that Stone or not?!”

Hermione bites her lip, and Ron faces the other boy. “Harry… it’s YOU that has to go on, I know it! Not me, not Hermione, not Maxine, YOU.” He maintains eye-contact until Harry nods.

Once confirmed, he sets his shoulders, grips the reins, and advances. “Knight… to H-3!”

The horse sculpture and his human rider advance, and Ron nods to me as I peer out to watch, unwilling to look away. We murmur, “Check…” as one.

As if in a nightmare, the four of us watch the White Queen turn to face our Knight. She grinds over the chip-strewn chessboard, approaching inexorably…

As soon as the tall statue queen is face-to-face with Ron, she pauses, as if giving him time to wallow in his defeat, before whirling into motion, impaling the horse through the neck and shattering its head clean off, rocking it from the board as Ron falls back with an ear-splitting cry, falling limp in a heap.

Harry bellows, “ROOOOON!” as he watches our friend fall. Hermione moves to leave her square and go to him, before I scream, “Hermione, no! If you move, we lose, and Ron’s sacrifice will be for nothing!”

She freezes, nodding slowly. Harry moves the last few squares across the board, standing before the White King. Looking up at the blank white helmet, he announces, “Checkmate.” The White King’s sword falls, and the battle… is over.

The three of us rush to our fallen friend. He’s unconscious, but doesn’t seem to be obviously hurt, other than the bruises and cuts from flying stone shards. Harry looks up. “Take care of him, then go to the Owlery. Send a message to Dumbledore. Ron’s right… I have to go on.”

 

I reach out and touch Harry’s elbow. “You’ll be fine. You’re a great wizard, Harry… you really are.”

He chuckles slightly. “Not as good as you or Hermione.”

She huffs in amusement. “Me? Ms ‘Books and cleverness’? There are more important things. Like friendship, and bravery. And, Harry… just be careful.”

He nods, rises, and proceeds onwards. I look after him, and then turn to Hermione. “I’m… I’m going after him. I think… I think I have to help. It’s a feeling I can’t shake…”

She smiles. “Go, then! I can take care of Ron, you’ll only get in my way,” she says jokingly, and I flash a warm smile back, turning and sprinting off after the Boy Who Lived, feeling my hair stream out behind me.

 

I catch up as he descends a dank, lightless staircase, our shoes scuffing near-silently on the carven stone.

The stairway culminates in a small, chapel-like room. In the centre are two things. One is that wretched mirror! The other is…

“Professor Quirrel?!” I hiss, pointing at him with a trembling finger. Have we been wrong, all these months?!

The turbaned young man is staring at the mirror, muttering to himself.

Harry advances. “YOU?! No, it can’t be! Snape, he was the one-!”

Quirrel turns, a sneer on his face. “Yes, he does seem the type, doesn’t he?” his voice isn’t tremulous and timid. Instead, it’s whip-like, sharp and hard, and so very cold…

“And next to him, who would suspect p-p-po-poor, st-s-st-stut-ttering Professor Quirrel?”

Harry stares, slowly descending into the chamber. “But, but that day, at the Quidditch match! Snape tried to kill me!”

I follow, wand tucked into my sleeve in preparation for something untoward. Quirrel snorts in cruel amusement.

“Mmmmm, no dear boy. I tried to kill you! And trust me, if Snape’s cloak hadn’t caught fire and broken my eye-contact, I would have succeeded, even with Snape muttering his little counter-curse!”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Snape was… trying to save me??”

Quirrel continued, as if he hadn’t heard Harry. “I knew you were a danger to me, right from the off. Especially after Halloween…”

I gasp, and Harry points. “then YOU let the trolls in!”

Very good, Potter, yes… Snape, unfortunately, wasn’t fooled. While everyone else was running about the dungeons, he went to the Third Floor to head me off. He, of course, never trusted me again.”

Quirrel turned back to the Mirror of Erised, and I subtly drew my wand. This could get uglier than the Devil’s Snare very quickly… I don’t want to miss my chance.