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The Trophy Room Passageway


If they had had trouble all fitting beneath the invisibility cloak at the end of their First Year, it was considerably harder now in their Second Year. The four Gryffindor boys had jammed themselves together in a tight knot of legs and arms beneath the cloak, but only just barely - fitting all together was a feat complicated even further by James’s broomstick and Peter’s substantial weight gain. They crept through the dark corridors of Hogwarts to the Trophy Room.

It was several days after James’s detentions; Remus was back from the Shrieking Shack, and Sirius could be held off no longer from his eagerness to explore the passageway that hid behind Brutus Scrimgeour. It had taken all of James’s resolve to keep Sirius waiting until Remus had returned, he’d been so excited to see it for himself. He’d kept James up half the night asking questions about the passageway - everything from where James reckoned it led to what it smelled like inside. But every detail that James could share wasn’t enough to fill Sirius’s insatiable need for adventure.

They’d spent a healthy amount of time discussing what might be in the depths of the pit, too. “Perhaps it’s a dragon,” Sirius had said, wide eyed with excitement. Peter had been quite frightened at the thought of a dragon inhabiting the depths of the castle and claimed Dumbledore would never let a dragon set foot on the grounds, to which Sirius had pointed out he’d allowed a werewolf in, so where was the line to be drawn?

The moment Remus returned, Sirius had bullied him into agreeing to go to the passageway the very next night. He’d tried for the same night, but Remus was far too exhausted and flat out refused.

James pulled off the invisibility cloak as they entered the Trophy Room, tucking it carefully into his book bag. Sirius instantly walked across the room, right up to the empty frame that encased Brutus Scrimgeour’s portrait. He stared up at it with a look of hunger in his eyes. Remus meanwhile had gone to look about at the medals and trophies, as Peter twitched by the door. “Did you hear that?” he asked, pale.

“No,” replied James shortly, joining Sirius. He looked up at the painting. “Think it’ll work alright if he’s not here to open the passageway?” he asked nervously.

“Dunno, don’t see why not,” Sirius answered.

Remus said, “There’s quite a lot of interesting awards in these cases.”

“We’re going to get caught,” Peter chimed in.

“We aren’t going to get caught, Peter,” Sirius said, and he turned to look at Remus, “And seriously, mate, who gives a load about the trophies when there’s a secret passageway?”

Remus chuckled and joined Sirius and James before the portrait. “C’mon, Peter,” he called.

“Yeah, don’t wanna get left behind, do you?” James chided.

Sirius smirked. Honestly, none of them would’ve minded much had Peter been left behind, but they weren’t about to actually say that to his face. When Peter had joined them, Sirius looked to James expectantly. “Alright, let’er rip.”

James cleared his throat, “Beati Pacifici!

The portrait swung upward, just as it had done the other night, revealing the gaping tunnel beyond, leading off into darkness. Sirius’s eyes were quite wide and James realized that, despite all his explanations and details, some small part of Sirius hadn’t believed the tunnel would be there. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.

“Told you,” James said.

Remus held his wand up and the others followed suit so that all four wand tips touched. “Lumos,” they said together. Or nearly together. Peter was a bit slow and sounded more like a little echo. The wands illuminated, and the boys grinned at one another. “Here we go,” said James, and without further prolonging, he stepped into the tunnel once again. “Careful for pits,” he reminded the others and they murmured their recollection and followed along as James led the way, carefully watching for the blue glow of the everlasting flames.

“There it is,” he said, as they came down the last steps on the second little flight of stairs. “Brutus Scrimgeor said there was more than one, but this is as far as I made it last time.”

Sirius inched closer to the edge and held his wand up, staring down. He couldn’t see a thing down there, the glow of his wand seemed eaten alive by the darkness below. “It’s like it goes on forever,” he whispered.

“It very well could,” Peter squeaked, “I’ve heard of pits like that, pits that go all the way to the center of the earth and you burn alive for all eternity there!” He looked right terrified, his eyes wide, “That’s what volcanoes are, you know. That’s where the fire comes from!”

James rolled his eyes.

Remus was inspecting the stuff hanging up on the walls. “Look at this, you guys,” he called over his shoulder. They hurried over to look at what Remus had found. It was an old photograph of a group of Hogwarts students from perhaps ten years prior, clustered together in front of the old tree in the courtyard.

James pointed, “There’s Brutus Scrimgeour.” The boy was heavy set with dark eyes and a Gryffindor scarf wrapped tightly about his neck, his nose pink from a wind that made his scarf flutter as he blinked up at them from the picture.

“Blimey, isn’t that McGonagall?” asked Sirius, also pointing. The girl he was pointing at had long hair that flowed about her shoulders in loose waves and strong arms that held her broom. She grinned up at them as she laughed happily, arm slung around a boy who was dressed in the pads of a Keeper. “This lot appears to be the Gryffindor quidditch team,” he said, counting up the players to find there were seven.

James stared at the picture with reverence. “Scrimgeour said him and his friends used to come down here all the time. You reckon these are the friends?”

“Why else would somebody hang the photo of the quidditch team up down here?” asked Sirius.

“Maybe they’re fans of quidditch,” suggested Peter.

“McGonagall must know about the tunnel then,” James concluded. “Wonder if she figured out I found it? Seems she would’ve said something if she had, when she found me talking to Scrimgeour. Doesn’t it?”

Sirius had a feeling that maybe she wouldn’t have and the thought of her keeping their secret made him like her much more than he had before. She suddenly seemed much less uptight. Maybe McGonagall was secretly more like them than she let on after all.

“There’s loads of interesting things in here,” Remus said. “There’s a map of the tunnel over here. Look, shows all the pits. It looks like this goes down to the fourth floor,” he added, illuminating a parchment with hand drawn details of the passageway. He reached for the tack and loosed the map from the wall, “This will be dead useful,” he explained.

“Does it say what’s in the pits?” asked Peter, voice tremulous.

“No,” answered Remus.

“What if there really is a dragon down there?” Peter whispered.

Remus raised his eyebrow, amused, “A dragon?” He looked at James and Sirius, “Which one of you doffers told him that there was dragons down there?”

Sirius grinned sheepishly. “We were only joking about that, Peter, nobody would ever dream of trying to keep a dragon in the bottom of a pit. Imagine the chains that would take to keep it down?”

“They say there’s one in Gringott’s,” James said.

“That’s got to be a load,” Sirius answered, “Dragons breathe fire, he’d just burn the bank up and fly off.”

“I s’pose,” James mused. But it made him rather sad to think that there weren’t any dragons inside the wizard bank. It had always made him more excited about following Charlus through the gloomy old tunnels of the bank with the little goblins to the Potter family vault. Charlus had told him about the Gringott’s dragon one of the many times he’d begun to cry about the turbulent ride in the train cart through the dark. It made sense Charlus would’ve made something up about dragons to distract James’s attention.

Remus was studying the map closely, his wand raised as he hunched over it, but James was rather sick of standing around in the dark. “Let’s get across this thing,” he said and he quickly mounted his broom. “C’mon, Sirius,” he said, “I’ll fly you over first.”

Sirius climbed on the back of James’s broom and hung on as James lifted off and flew over the pit’s mouth. After depositing Sirius on the other side, he flew back ‘round to collect Peter. Peter’s fingers dug into the fabric of James’s robes rather tightly and he shivered as the broom attempted to lift off. The weight of Peter had the broom groaning, though, and it resisted lifting too far up from the ground. “Blimey, Peter,” James muttered as the poor broom struggled to fly the short distance across, “You could do with losing a couple stone.”

As though to emphasize, the broom dipped suddenly at the last moment as they went across and Peter clutched James, squealing loudly, though they’d reached the other side just fine. He scrambled off the broom and ran several feet away, banging into the wall and falling to his bottom, where he twitched and shivered nervously. “You’ve almost killed me,” he accused James.

“I didn’t, you’re quite alright,” James argued, landing, “You almost killed me grabbing me ‘round my neck like that, bloody hell.” James rubbed his throat.

Remus was looking at the pit more closely. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

Peter looked up, “Dragons?”

“Bloody hell, there’s no dragons, Peter,” James said hotly. Then he turned back to Remus, “...right?”

“There wasn’t an echo,” Remus said. “There was one from either end of the tunnel, but not one from the pit.”

Sirius said, “So?”

“So…” Remus hesitated, then took a step forward.

“REMUS!” James and Sirius both shouted at once as he stepped into what appeared to be the center of the opening of the pit. Except he didn’t disappear. He didn’t fall. He simply stood there, the ankles of his robes disappearing, appearing invisible, in a false darkness. Peter literally passed out with relief and surprise.

“It isn’t a pit at all,” Remus said. “It’s a decoy.” He bent down and waved his hand ‘round in the darkness, feeling the floor beneath. It was an odd sensation, feeling a floor, seeing nothing, as though he were walking on empty space. “I wonder what kind of spell this is? It’s quite good magic… advanced, I’d guess.”

Sirius felt the need to test it out and jumped into the center of the darkness, too, laughing as he landed. “That’s rather cool. Give it a try, James.”

“What happened?” Peter asked as he roused. “Is he dead? I can’t look.”

“He’s fine,” Sirius answered.

“It isn’t a pit at all,” Remus explained.

Peter’s eyebrows raised, “Whoa!”

James had joined Sirius and Remus on the patch of mysterious darkness and begun jumping about, laughing, “This is brilliant,” he said.

“C’mon Peter,” Remus said, “Come give it a try.”

Peter got up rather clumsily and tentatively walked over to where they stood, hesitating at the edge. He closed his eyes, squeezing them very tightly shut, and stepped forward slowly, as though he were testing water for it’s temperature. Feeling solid ground beneath him, he breathed a sigh of relief, and stepped forward wholly.

The boys played a bit with the mysterious darkness, rolling across the pit so that they disappeared entirely and Sirius did a bit where he looked as though he were walking down stairs, just slowly lowering himself down ‘til he was kneeling in the darkness and they could only see him waist up. But soon the anticipation of what might come next drew them onward and they got James’s broom and started moving on.

“This lot were brilliant,” James declared, looking at the photo of Brutus Scrimgeour and his friends. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“We’ll add them to our list of heroes, right alongside Bilius Weasley,” Sirius agreed.

“There ought to be a hall of fame of mischief makers,” James announced. “That’s the trophy they ought to award, instead of those boring Services to the School trophies. Who bloody cares that some bloke named Tom helped the school out back in the 50s? I mean come off it, nobody gives a damn about that anymore. He probably helped Filch mop the Great Hall or something.”

Sirius laughed, “I’d rather hear about why the Great Hall needed mopping. I bet one of our mischievous hall of famers started a food fight or something.”

“A food fight in the Great Hall!” James said dreamily, “My God, could you imagine it? It would be absolutely amazing.”

“Look!” Peter squeaked suddenly, “Another fake pit!” He pointed ahead where more everlasting fire glowed blue in the darkness of the cave. “Last one across is a rotten egg!” And he pelted himself forward, determined to win.

“Peter, wait, don’t! What if it’s really a --” Remus said, voice panicked, but he was too late, for Peter had already run pell mell, and with a shout of surprise, he tripped and disappeared over the edge of a very real pit.

“PETER!”