Black's Prophecy || Book 1

Seventeen

"It hates sunlight or light Hermione! Come on, hurry up!" Julius shouted at Hermione helping her with this plant thingy.

"Yes -- of course -- but there's no wood!" Hermione cried, wringing her hands.

"HAVE YOU GONE MAD?" Ron bellowed. "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"

"Oh, right!" said Hermione, and she whipped out her wand, waved it, muttered something, and sent a jet of the same bluebell flames .

They all felt the plant cringe away from the light and they wriggled out of its grasps. They went towards Hermione.

"Lucky Hermione and Julius pay attention in herbology." Harry commented, wping the sweat off his forehead.

"Yeah," said Ron, "and lucky Julius doesn't lose his head in a crisis -- 'there's no wood,' honestly."

All this time you were trying to look for a way and when you finally found it, you called out, "this way." Your voice overlapped with Harry who also found the way.

All they could hear apart from their footsteps was the gentle drip of water trickling down the walls. The passageway sloped downward. they traveled insolence when Ron's voice sounded out, "Can you hear something?" Ron whispered.

You listened carefully. A soft rustling and clinking seemed to be coming from up ahead.

"Do you think it's a ghost?"

"I don't know... sounds like wings to me."

"There's light ahead -- I can see something moving."

They reached the end of the passageway and saw before them a brilliantly lit chamber, its ceiling arching high above them. It was full of small, jewel-bright birds, fluttering and tumbling all around the room. On the opposite side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.

"Do you think they will attack us?" Enzo whispered.

"Probably," said Harry. "They don't look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once... well, there's no other choice... I'll run."

He took a deep breath, covered his face with his arms, and sprinted across the room. He expected to feel sharp beaks and claws tearing at him any second, but nothing happened. He reached the door untouched. He pulled the handle, but it was locked.

The others followed him. They tugged and heaved at the door, but it wouldn't budge, not even when Hermione tried her Alohomora charm and Cordelia with her Aberto charm.

"Now what?" said Enzo

"These birds... they can't be here just for decoration," said Hermione.

They watched the birds soaring overhead, glittering -- glittering ?

"They're not birds!" Harry said suddenly. "They're keys! Winged keys -- look carefully. So that must mean... " he looked around the chamber while the other two squinted up at the flock of keys. "... yes -- look! Broomsticks! We've got to catch the key to the door!"

"But there are hundreds of them!"

Ron examined the lock on the door.

"We're looking for a big, old-fashioned one -- probably silver, like the handle."

They each seized a broomstick and kicked off into the air, soaring into the midst of the cloud of keys. They grabbed and snatched, but the bewitched keys darted and dived so quickly it was almost impossible to catch one.

Not for nothing, though, was Harry the youngest Seeker in a century. He had a knack for spotting things other people didn't. After a minute's weaving about through the whirl of rainbow feathers, he noticed a large silver key that had a bent wing, as if it had already been caught and stuffed roughly into the keyhole.