Friday 1st
November
Well that was another tortuous Potions class. You would
think, after the fright of the troll escaping around the school, that Professor
Snape would have been a little more sympathetic towards us. Then again, he
could have walked in on the Slytherin Common Room disco last night and decided
that he hated us all. Well, he defiantly acted like it. Limping around the
classroom, Snape dragged his left leg as he hovered behind each of us in turn.
Stopping at Hermione Granger, Professor Snape sneered, “Your little stunt Miss
Granger hasn’t gone amiss to my ears. Just because I wasn’t present, doesn’t
mean I don’t know what the three of you were playing at.” At this he glared at
Potter and Weasley. “You’re just lucky you didn’t get yourselves killed,” he
spat, before making his way back to the blackboard.
The lesson dragged on
something terrible. A shiver trickled up my spine every time his stone eyes met
mine. Stone eyes for a stone-like guy, I guess. Although every time I saw them
there was something familiar about them that I just couldn’t shake. I have no
idea what it is, and it’s been irritating me all day. On our way to lunch I decided
to ask Jed his opinion. “Well you’ve seen Professor Snape every day for the
last two months,” Jed pointed out. “He’s bound to look familiar.” I guess Jed
was right. The only other thing I could think of was that he must have reminded
me of an old schoolteacher from my Muggle school, but the longer I thought
about it none of them rung a bell.
*
Entering the Great Hall, a voice appeared behind me and
shouted, “Boo!” Gasping, I clung onto Jed’s arm tight. “Sorry,” came a giggle,
as a pair of grey eyes bounced before me. “I didn’t mean to actually scare
you.” Jed laughed along too. I glared at them.
“Good one José,” laughed Jed, giving
her a high five. Holding a hand to my chest, I ignored them. Josie looked both
ways, before sliding her fingers underneath the neckline of her blouse. A black
string appeared at her neck, as she pulled out a pendent and showed it to us.
“Look Jed, Mel a key,” she gasped.
Before Jed or I could respond, Josie had slipped the key back inside her blouse
and pressed her finger to her lips. Dropping her hands to her sides she smiled,
gripped her right elbow and looked between me and Jed. We both turned to see
where she was staring.
“Josie!” called a boy in Ravenclaw
robes as he came towards us. He had a head of dark brown hair with a side-swept
fringe. I’m sure that I had seen him before. “Are you alright? I thought I
heard you-” Josie cut him off.
“Oh, hi Malachi,” she called over to
him, as he neared us. “Be right back,” she whispered to me and Jed, as she
slipped through the gap between us and made her way over to the boy who had
called her.
It wasn’t too long
before Josie came skipping back towards us. “What was that all about?” Jed
muttered, as Josie appeared at his shoulder.
“Maybe ‘Mel, a key,’ sounds a little too close to Malachi,” Josie told us
going a little pink. She shrugged. “Fabian’s friend,” she added, seeing Jed’s
frown. “I told him it was nothing.” I gave her a weak smile. Seriously, I felt
lost. Why was a necklace so secretive that she couldn’t show Fabian’s best friend?
It was just a piece of plastic, after all – right? “Follow me,” she whispered
as she left Jed’s side and headed towards the Great Hall door. “I need to show
you something.” Cupping her hand, Josie waved it towards herself. Jed and I
both frowned at each other as we followed her out.
Josie led us down the
main corridor and off by the third right – I have to admit, I have never walked
down this corridor before. Stopping at some stairs, Josie led us around them to
an archway underneath. The archway didn’t lead anywhere – it was just a little
cubby under the stairs. “This used to be an escape point during the English
civil war. Since then, part of the exit caved in, so they sealed it up to
prevent the castle from sinking,” Josie informed us. Folding his arms, Jed
rolled his eyes at her. “What?” she exclaimed. “I can’t help it. I like
castles.”
“So, you wanted to show us this old
hole in the wall that isn’t there anymore?” said Jed flatly.
“No,” sighed Josie shaking her head. “I
wanted to show you both this.” Sliding her fingers underneath the neckline of
her blouse, Josie pulled out a black cord. After fiddling with a knot at the
back, she brought the stings around to her front and showed us the pendent.
In the palm of Josie’s
hand sat a small, grey key. Okay, I should say silver, but its shininess had
faded. This was definitely a rusty-grey. It was a chubb key – one of those with
a long, thin stem that you hold on to. The sort of key that you would imagine
locks the more old-fashioned doors (although my parents’ front door used to
have one until they got it double glazed, now it uses a yale key).
“I found it,”
whispered Josie. “Last night while everyone was running manic.”
“We’d better give it to Filch,” said
Jed.
“Already tried,” Josie told him. “This
is why it’s interesting. I went to Professor Flitwick’s office first thing this
morning. He told me that he didn’t recognise it, but that Mister Filch probably
lost it in the mayhem of last night. I didn’t want to go on my own – Mister
Filch scares me,” she added, as she pulled the key back towards her. “So,
Professor Flitwick came with me. When we got to the caretaker’s office, he said
that he knew he hadn’t lost a key or anything for that matter. Professor
Flitwick even asked him to check, which he did. Mister Filch said none of the
keys are missing.”
“Now what?” I asked. Josie shrugged.
“That’s the thing. I don’t know,” she
replied. “Professor Flitwick told me to keep hold of it in case anyone says
that they’ve lost one, but he couldn’t see what a student would be doing with a
key – we don’t need them. We don’t have anything to lock.”
“I still don’t get
it,” Jed sighed, looping his thumbs through the straps of his backpack. “What’s
this got to do with anything?” I could tell that he was hungry. We had just been
on the way to lunch when Josie stopped us, and Jed’s stomach had been rumbling
throughout Potions class.
“I don’t know,” Josie mumbled, staring
at her shoes. I noticed for the first time that they had a purple stitched
flower on the sides that matched the colour of her glasses. “But think about
it…” she went on. “This castle is huge and so old. I bet that there are so many
stories, hidden passages and secret tunnels running throughout it that not one
person or ghost at this school knows about them all.”
“I still don’t get the point,” he
grumbled.
“This key could lead anywhere,” gasped
Josie, squeezing it tight in her palm. Retying it as a necklace and tucking it
back into her blouse, she said to Jed, “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“No offense José, but it probably just
unlocks a cupboard or an old trunk,” Jed told her. “Stop living in a fantasy
story. Now can we please go get
food?”
“Okay,” she mumbled with a shrug.
As we walked back to
the Great Hall, I promised Josie that I would help her look for a book in the
library that might help her to solve what the key unlocks. Oh, and Jed and I
both promised to keep it a secret for her. Although what Jed had said had
disheartened her, Josie still gave me a smile when I promised to help her look.
It may have been a strained smile, but at least she still made the effort to
try.
*
We weren’t sure where to start. I met up with Josie in the
library straight after class. I brought my ‘A
History of Magic’ by Bathilda Bagshot book with me and Josie went and found ‘Hogwarts: A History’
by the same author. Sitting at our favourite table in the library, we spread
out our stuff (mostly so that no one else decided to join us) and began our
search. I know that we really should have been studying – especially with the
amount of homework that we keep getting, but this was fun. It was kind of like
homework in one aspect, because we were learning an awful lot about the school
(like: there are one-hundred-and-forty-two staircases in the castle, which I
found out were created by one of the four founders, Rowena Ravenclaw). Josie
seemed to think that it was a good idea to start the search with books by the
same author. “Bathilda Bagshot did an awful lot of research on this castle,”
Josie told me. “I read that she dedicated her entire life’s study to it.”
“Her entire life?” I found myself
repeating. “Is she…?” Dropping the book, I shuddered, unable to even say the
word. Josie laughed.
“No… she’s not dead,” Josie told me
with a smile. “I just meant that she’s retired from writing. She lives in
Godric’s Hollow – somewhere in west England.”
I had just finished
reading about witch trials in the Medieval times, when an object skimmed past
me across the floor. I flinched, losing the place in my book, as the pages
swept in the breeze. My eyes shot to the floor. It was a bag. Jed’s bag. Two
hands landed on my shoulders. I twitched my head up. Panting, Jed looked down
at me. He muttered a, “Hi,” to both of us, before dropping himself down in his
regular seat. “Merlin!” he gasped as
looked down at the table. “How much mess are the two of you gonna make?” Pages
of parchments scattered everywhere. Josie had three different inkpots placed
out in front of her and five different quills. I had my History of Magic notes
scattered about in front of me, as well as a stack of blank parchment. Swiping
a hand across the table, Josie dragged some of the papers together. I felt my
cheeks blush. Jed was right. The table was a little messy.
“What’ve you been
running from this time?” Josie sighed, seeing Jed’s reddened face and hearing
his heavy breathing.
“Running from? Running to is more like
it,” he declared. “I ran all the way here from Snape’s office.”
“Really?” I gasped. That was pretty
impressive. Jed usually struggles to make it from Potions to Herbology without
puffing and panting or complaining of stitch. Then again, so do I. Jed
shrugged.
“Well ya know,” he mumbled. “Most a the
way.”
“Let me guess,” said Josie with a
laugh. “You nearly got caught throwing Dungbombs or Barrelsplats into Professor
Snape’s office?”
“No,” Jed declared. “I came here t’
tell ya somethin’. Something you,” he
said looking at Josie. “Might find interesting.” I watched Josie’s eyes widen
as Jed lent towards her.
“Now you ‘ave t’ swear
not to repeat this to anyone,” Jed whispered as he folded his arms over the
table and leant forwards against them. Josie looked towards me, then back at
Jed and nodded. I nodded too. “I was stood outside a Snape’s office ‘n’ was
about t’ knock to ask him for help with some Potions stuff, when I heard ‘im
talkin’. I couldn’t make out the words, but it was his voice. Then someone else
speaks,” Jed paused. Looking over Josie’s shoulder, then behind his own, Jed
checked that no one else was around. It was after five o’clock in the evening –
the library was dead. “It was Filch.”
“Filch?” I repeated with a frown.
“What’s he doing in Snape’s office?”
“See,” said Jed as his eyes widened.
“That’s what I was wondering. Snape asked him, “Does it look bad?” And Filch
replied, “Nastier than the time yer got attacked by that beast of a
hippogriff.” I heard Snape growl – he obviously didn’t wanna be reminded of
that. Then Snape muttered something
t’ do with three heads and he used the phrase, “Guarding it.” Guarding what
exactly, he didn’t say. But what I did
hear was Snape sayin’ that the troll was a distraction and then he said to
Filch, “An’ you know whose part was the troll’s.” I ‘eard footsteps after that
though ‘n’ I didn’t wanna get caught, so I ran all the way here.”
Okay, so numerous
things raced around in my head. Someone or something had obviously attacked
Professor Snape. I assumed that his limp, earlier, was due to him trying to
stop the troll, but it sounds pretty serious. Three heads? Were there three
trolls? Do trolls have three heads? Arh, but if the troll was a distraction, does that mean that
something else attacked the professor or that something else has three heads?
Is there something else sneaking around the school? And what was the thing that
attacked Snape guarding? Wow, this really is a mystery.
“It made me think
though,” Jed went on. “I know what I said before,” he sighed and looked down at
the table. “But d’ya reckon that key has somethin’ t’ do with all that?” he
asked as he looked at me. “It j’st seems a little too coincidental now that
José finds some suspicious key after all that happened last night.”
I can’t believe how
willing Jed now is to follow Josie’s theory of some magical mystery. He was
totally against it earlier – okay he was
hungry, but still. There must be more to what he overheard that what he
actually explained. I guess it was one of those in-the-moment things.
“So,” Josie said as
she put down a quill. I hadn’t realised that she had been writing – I was too
busy trying to make sense of it all. “Professor Snape’s been attacked by a
creature guarding something important. Either Professor Snape was trying to
steal it for himself, or he was trying to stop somebody else from doing so,”
Josie whispered as she stared down at the parchment that she had been writing
on. “Whoever let the troll loose last night has another connection to trolls and the trolls were locked in the
dungeons, if I remember correctly… Does that sound about right, Jed?” she asked
as she lowered the piece of paper to the table.
“Pretty spot on,” Jed replied. “Only, I
bet whoever let the troll loose used your
key to do it with. They must have lost it during the ruckus.” I giggled. I
couldn’t help it, ‘ruckus’ is a funny sounding word.
“So, does this mean that someone else
has access to the dungeon keys other than the caretaker?” Josie asked Jed,
frowning.
“Either that or they’ve copied it,”
said Jed bluntly.
“Do wizards even have blacksmiths?” I
asked.
“Sorta, but they wouldn’t clone a
Hogwarst key,” said Jed.
“Cloning spell?” suggested Josie.
“Dunno,” Jed shrugged. “Does one even
exist?” Josie shrugged at him.
“I haven’t heard of one,” she declared.
“Wouldn’t people be cloning stuff all the time if there was?”
“True,” Jed muttered.
Now that we were all
thinking about this together, things were slowly starting to make sense.
Something bad had definitely occurred last night when the troll was let loose
and whoever let it loose had used the key that Josie now possessed to make it
all happen. “Shouldn’t we go to a teacher?” I asked.
“An’ who’d believe us?” Jed laughed.
“What are we supposed to do? Go up to Professor McGonagall and say: Look, we’re
a bunch a First-Years who’ve found a key that we think unlocks trolls in the
dungeon, but Filch says all the keys are accounted for. By the way, something
with three heads that’s guarding something, has attacked Professor Snape and
whoever is in charge of the trolls released them as a distraction, possibly so
that they could steal said something. Oh, and we’ve been listening in on
Snape’s private conversations – just to let you know.”
“Jed’s right,” Josie said as she stared
down at the table. Jed turned to her wide eyed. Even I was surprised to hear
her agree with him. I guess we are so used to the two of them bickering that
Josie agreeing with Jed made a pleasant change. “We have no proof that anything
that we just figured out is true. We need evidence before we say anything.”
“Right,” said Jed with a nod. “So, we
need to find out what that key unlocks and who lost it.” I nodded at him.
“Glad we’re all on the same page,” said
Josie, looking up at us with a smile.
I have to admit, as
crazy as this all sounds – it’s a little exciting. It’s like we’ve just formed
our own little secret club. The three of us are in on a mystery that no one
else knows all of the pieces to, apart from us. Once we find out what the key
unlocks, and who lost it, we’ll be able to find out what they’re up to. It
almost feels like we’re breaking the rules, but without anyone knowing. It’s so
mysterious. Wow! It’s like I’m a part of my very own detective story. And I
have my two best friends beside me. What more could I wish for? Perhaps a hint
or a clue as to where to start would be nice… but Josie and Jed are finally
agreeing on something. That on its own is special. I will have to savour the
moment.
- Josie -
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