Knowing that she had to be fearless to lead her friends, Lily walked over to the trapdoor first and nodded everyone's way, "I'm going down. Don't follow me until I say so."
"Lily," Hugo said, his voice serious.
"If something bad happens to me on the way down, I don't want it to happen to all of us," she said. "I'll go down first, and I'll shout when I reach the bottom."
"You can't go down there by yourself," Rudy said. "Someone has to go with you just in case something happens."
"I'll go," Hugo said. "Cousins for life."
"That's kind of how it works," Lily said, shaking her head at her cousin before sighing. "Okay. Hugo and I will go down the ladder together first. We'll shout up to you all once we get to the bottom."
With that, Lily took to the rope ladder, carefully moving down it, rung by rung as the tunnel got darker and darker. There was no telling how far she was from the bottom, so she did not want to chance falling to her imminent doom. Two minutes later, Lily's foot touched solid ground. She and Hugo had finally reached the bottom of the ladder.
"Lumos!" Lily said, turning behind her to illuminate the rest of the underground tunnel.
"WE'RE HERE!" Hugo yelled up to the faint dot of light at the top of the ladder, from which they had just descended.
Lily ignored the shouting conversation Hugo was having with Eli and surveyed the area. A thin tunnel, lined with unlit lanterns, and supported by fairly new wooden beams was dug out of the earth. Wherever the mystery would lead, Lily knew that they'd get their answers at the end of that tunnel.
"They're coming down now," Hugo said, interrupting Lily's surveillance.
"How in the Wizarding World is Rudy going to get down that thing?" Lily asked, looking up at the unsteady ladder.
"RUDY! HOW ARE YOU GETTING DOWN?" Hugo yelled up.
Lily rolled her eyes in the darkness. Of course he hadn't thought to ask that very important question.
"VERY SLOWLY!" he yelled back down the tunnel.
"DON'T GET YORUSELF MORE HURT!" Lily yelled, her hands around her mouth amplifying her words.
"I WON'T!"
And by some miracle, Rudy's ankle wasn't any worse by the time he made it to the bottom of the ladder with the rest of the group.
"Is everyone okay?" Lily asked once the final person had reached the ground. When nobody answered, she continued, "Okay. That's good. We're going to go through this tunnel now. It'll be a pretty tight squeeze, but we have to see where it leads. I suggest that you all get your wands at the ready. I don't know where this is going to lead."
"Lumos!" someone behind Lily said, lighting their wand.
The others followed, and soon, armed with their wands, the nine slowly slid through the dark, dank tunnel.
"Why does this tunnel have to be so low?" Hugo asked, his voice whiney.
Though she was thankful for her short height, Lily couldn't help but feel some pity for both Hugo and Eli as they had to stoop to get through the tunnel.
"Hopefully wherever this leads to will have a higher ceiling," Eli agreed.
"If you can even call this a ceiling," Cassie said.
Lily could agree with that statement. The dirt above them being held up by wooden beams wasn't exactly a ceiling, and in the same regard, the dirt floor wasn't exactly the stone floors of Hogwarts, to which everyone had been acclimated.
The strange group of Hogwarts students continued through the thin, low tunnel until they came to a wooden door. There had been no twists or turns along the way, so Lily knew whatever was behind the door held some sort of answer.
"So this is where it ends," Hugo said from three people behind Lily. "Are we going to open it?"
"What if all this is a trap?" Cecily asked, her voice timid and shaking. "Who knows what's behind this door?"
"Answers," Lily said. "Answers are behind this door."
"Why are you so hell-bent on getting answers?" Addie asked.
Though she was finally speaking English, Lily noticed that her tone hadn't become less accusatory and inflammatory; no language barrier could hide that.
"We're trying to help you two," Eli said. "And if Lily wants answers while we're down here, then she'll get her answers."
"Why are you so obsessed with the revolution, Lily?" Addie asked, pressing on and evidently ignoring Eli.
"Addie, please—"
"I want answers," Lily said, interrupting Romy. "At over the Christmas holiday, I heard my dad talking about the revolution. He's the Minister for Magic now, and I want as many answers for him as I can get."
There was a silence in the tunnel for a moment. Lily had revealed the truth. She had been so driven to solve the Hogwarts mysteries to have some information to bring back to her father and the Ministry. She would do anything to make her father's work safer. Often, she had feared for her father as an Auror, but being the head of the Wizarding World in the United Kingdom and Ireland put him in a new sort of danger, with which Lily had a difficult time coping.
"Lil, is that what all this has been about?" Hugo asked, his voice gentle. "I don't think your dad would want—"
"It doesn't matter what he wants now," Lily said. "We're here at this door ready to get some answers, and hopefully get the pendants and all of the artifacts back as well."
"So we're going to open this?" Cecily asked, her voice smaller.
"Let's just take a vote," Rudy said. "We'll make it as fair as possible. If the majority of people don't want to go through the doors, then we don't. If the majority of people do want to go through the doors, then we do."
"Well, we did establish this friendship as a democracy, so I guess that's how we're going to do it," Hugo said. "Alright, who wants to open the door?"
When everyone except for Cecily and Addie voiced their support for opening the door, Lily nodded, "Then, it's settled. We got through the door. Cecily, Addie, are you okay with going through the door, or do you two want to turn back?"
As much as Lily wanted to open the door, she knew that she had to make sure her two friends who were not in the majority felt comfortable.
"I'll go," Cecily said though not sounding very convincing.
"Are you sure?" Lily asked. When Cecily nodded, Lily turned her attention to Addie, "Addie, what about you?"
"Fine. I'll go."
As much as Lily loved Romy, her distaste for Addie hadn't softened much in the last twenty-four hours. Lily and her friends were risking themselves to help Addie and Romy, and Addie wasn't acting very happy about that fact. Though she was annoyed, Lily knew that starting an argument wasn't the correct course of action and sighed instead, "Okay. Well, then let's get this door opened."
Being at the front of the line, Lily put her hand on the doorknob, and much to her surprise, the door was not locked and opened right away.
"So much for security," Lily said.
"I guess when you've got a secret trapdoor, you don't really need to worry about security further into your secret lair," Nora said.
"Probably true," Cassie said before adding, "but what are we waiting for? Let's get inside."
Lily nodded to her Ravenclaw friend and took a step inside of the room. As soon as her foot touched the floor, flames in lanterns around the circular room sprang up, lighting the room in an orangey hue.
"Whoa," Lily breathed, taking in the room and moving out of the way to let her friends inside.
No longer were the nine friends in a dank, low room surrounded by dirt. The room was alight with high ceilings mad out of stone, which matched the stone walls and floors. The room was empty aside from something mysteriously covered with a sheet on the opposite side of the room.
"I think we all know what's under there," Eli said.
"Can we get the stuff and please get out?" Cecily asked. "I'm a little scared still."
Lily nodded, and after throwing a cautionary glance behind her shoulder to make sure no one was creeping up on the group from the tunnel, she crossed the stone floor and pulled the sheet away, revealing a stash of the stolen objects. Instantly, the other eight students were by her side, looking down at all of the objects that had gone missing from the halls of Hogwarts in the last months.
"It's all here," Rudy said, shaking his head. "This is unbelievable. How can this all be here?"
"I guess they haven't sold it yet," Romy said.
"They probably have to wait until they get a buyer who won't tell the authorities that they stole all of this from Hogwarts," Cassie said.
"How are we getting all of this up to the surface?" Eli asked.
"My children, none of this is going up to the surface," a new yet familiar woman's voice said.
"Our plans won't be foiled again," a male voice of the same nature added.
Hairs sticking up on the back of her neck, Lily turned around slowly only to see two figures from her first year at Hogwarts standing in the doorway.
-+-
Cliffhanger...again...I'm sorry...
Anyway, only two or three chapters left until this book is finished! Woo!!!!! I'm excited!!!! I'm going to try and finish this before Wednesday, so we'll have to see if that ends up happening!!! Woo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, thanks for voting, commenting, reading, sharing, and being just fantastic people in general! I'm still shocked to this day about how much support I've gotten on this website, and I can't thank you all enough for it!!!!!! You all rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I should also thank anyone who actually bothers to read my author's notes, which are possibly filled with too many exclamation points. Oh well!!!!
Thanks again!!!!
-aquaseahorse