CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE PORTAL

Harry rapped three times with the brass knocker shaped to look like a griffin (or was it a griffin shaped to look like a brass knocker?)

"Come in."

Professor McGonagall was sitting behind the desk and appeared to be marking through a stack of essays. Harry shuddered, remembering the night he’d spent marking up first years’ essays. She looked up as Harry entered, a rare smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"Good morning Mr. Potter, up and about early aren’t you?"

"I suppose so, for a Sunday," said Harry with a shrug.

"First Quidditch game of the season next Saturday Mr. Potter. Are you ready for it then?"

"As ready as I’ll ever be, though Ron seems to think we’re in need of a lot more practice."

"Yes, yes." McGonagall shifted some of the papers on her desk and withdrew a sheet of parchment and squinted down at it. "He’s booked the pitch for Gryffindor for Monday Wednesday and Friday evenings of this week."

"I’m surprised he didn’t book the whole week," said Harry grimly.

"He would have if Ravenclaw hadn’t clamored for Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday," said McGonagall. "But you didn’t come up here at the crack of dawn to talk Quidditch Mr. Potter. Are you after more books? Or do you have a question?"

"A – a question. Or more like an update."

"An update?" said McGonagall, looking sharply at him over her glasses.

"Yes Professor. I need to search Snape’s office."

"It’s been searched," said McGonagall, leaning back in her chair and observing Harry critically. "It’s been searched by the Ministry’s Aurors and by members of the Order. Even Alastor Moody couldn’t find anything illegal or out of place."

"Professor, what I’m looking for would not be discernable to just anyone."

"Alastor Moody is hardly just anyone Harry."

"Professor, I’m not asking for your permission," said Harry carefully. "When I spoke to you about coming back to Hogwarts you said that I would be able to search for the Horcrux, that you would not interfere. I’m telling you now that I need to search Snape’s office. I just wanted you to know so that if someone reports anything unusual you won’t become too concerned."

"Define ‘anything unusual’," said Professor McGonagall, her eyes narrowing in suspicion."

"To be honest Professor, I have no idea what to expect," said Harry honestly.

Professor McGonagall watched him closely for nearly a whole minute before she spoke. "And you’ll be searching his office today?"

Harry nodded slowly.

McGonagall sighed. "All right then. I’ll give Mr. Filch an assignment in another part of the castle; something to keep him busy."

"Thank you Professor," said Harry. He turned to leave but stopped, his hand on the door. "One more thing Professor. I’m going to need help with what I’m doing. I’ve asked Ron, Hermione and Ginny to help me."

"I wouldn’t expect anything less," said Professor McGonagall with a slight smile. "But Mr. Potter, please keep in mind that it is the duty of the Head Boy and Head Girl to check in with all the House Prefects after curfew and Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger will need to be finished in time to perform their duties."

"Good thing she doesn’t know what her precious Head Boy and Girl get up to on their rounds!" came Ginny’s voice in Harry’s ear.

Harry repressed a smile with some difficulty, wondering as he did so what McGonagall would have thought if it had been she who had descended the stone staircase to the kitchens two nights ago instead of himself and Ginny.

They’d been on their way to the kitchen for a late night snack (using the highly useful invisibility cloak) – something they had indulged in twice before with rousing success, when they’d ducked into a side passage to avoid Peeves (who for some perverse reason had decided to take up a round of tennis just ahead of them), and found themselves in an alcove where Ron and Hermione were engaged in a particularly vigorous snogging session.

Harry had been witness to enough of Ron’s vertical wrestling matches with Lavender. Those had seemed (at least to Harry) to be acts of desperation on both of their parts; partially disgusting and a little sad. This had been something entirely different.

For starters, from the looks of it (and much to Harry’s amazement, given Hermione’s usual hand’s off behavior during school hours and if you took into account the fact that Hermione’s fists were full of Ron’s robes and that Ron seemed to be pinned against the wall by her) it would have appeared that it had been Hermione who had instigated the kiss.

"Damn Hermione," Ron had said, breaking the kiss at last. He appeared to be panting slightly. "I thought you said this sort of thing wasn’t proper behavior when we’re on rounds?"

"And since when do you ever listen to what I have to say?" said Hermione, a wicked grin stealing over her face as she slid the robes off Ron’s shoulders, leaving them to puddle on the alcove floor.

Harry and Ginny had at this point quickly backed out of the alcove, choosing to take their chances with Peeves than to witness anything further, but Harry had been impressed nonetheless. It had been a real eye-opener to see Hermione in action. And, given the fact that Ron hadn’t made it back to the dorm until nearly two in the morning, Harry was fairly certain that the pair of them had done a bit more than some heavy snogging in that alcove.

"Are you making light of the responsibilities of the Head Boy and Girl?" Professor McGonagall’s sharp tone brought Harry back to the present with a snap and he realized with Chagrin that he was grinning from ear to ear.

"No Professor, of course not," said Harry quickly. "I won’t ask Ron or Hermione to do anything that will interfere with their Prefect duties."

"Hmm." Professor McGonagall’s eyebrows contracted into a rather hawk-like line. "Very well Mr. Potter, off with you then."

Ten minutes later Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were all standing together in the corridor outside of Snape’s Dungeon office.

"Alohamora." Hermione’s spell popped open the thick oak slab of a door with a sharp snap.

"Wands out then?" said Ginny, withdrawing her own wand with a hand that was shaking slightly.

"Keep an eye out for anything unusual," said Harry, holding up his own wand so that the light from its tip spilled through the doorway into Snape’s office. "And remember, we’re not looking for an item exactly. It’s highly unlikely that the Horcrux was hidden here. We’re looking for an entrance of some sort."

"Like the stone archway Dumbledore uncovered?" said Hermione quietly, adding the light of her own wand to Harry’s.

"Exactly," said Harry, nodding.

"But, if it’s invisible, how will we know what it is – if there’s anything there at all?" said Ron curiously.

"Just keep any eye out for anything unusual," said Harry with a slight shrug. "If Snape really was guarding some sort of entryway, he probably used something significant to mark it."

"Significant to him you mean," said Ginny shakily. "And knowing Snape it will probably be something foul."

"And for heaven’s sake, if you do find something you think might be the Horcrux, don’t touch it!" said Hermione, casting a reproachful look at Ginny. "There’s a spell – a holding spell in one of Dumbledore’s books that will act as a sort of stasis chamber for any item that has a spell on it, but I have to perform it before anyone touches it! Remember what happened with the locket!"

"We’d all handled the damn locket when we were at Grimmauld Place," said Ginny defensively. "It wasn’t like any of us expected it to react the way it did the way it did by the lake!"

"Of course not," said Harry quickly. "We’ll all be extra careful this time Ginny, Hermione’s just letting us know how to handle the Horcrux when and if we find it."

"All right then, let’s not just stand here all day," said Ron brightly, and stepped through the doorway. Harry, Ginny and Hermione were on his heels.

"Looks about the same as it ever did," said Ginny, her nose wrinkled in distaste as the light from their four lit wands fell across the shelves full of slimy creatures and other unspeakable items which still hung suspended in their jars of multi-colored liquids.

"Why didn’t he take these with him when he moved the rest of his things to the Defense classroom?" Hermione wondered as she peered into a jar that contained a number of objects that looked suspiciously like hairy eyeballs. "Didn’t most of these used to be in the Potions classroom when Snape was Potions Master?"

"Maybe they don’t like the light," offered Ron grimacing at another jar which appeared to be housing a brain suspended in an evil-looking green liquid.

"Or maybe he didn’t think they were relevant to the subject of Defense," said Ginny quietly. "I mean, what exactly do fingernails or eyeballs, or brains even have to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"By themselves, in jars, nothing," said Hermione, smiling slightly. "Unless he were to use some sort of Potion as a form of Defense."

"And there are plenty of those," said Harry, frowning slightly as he looked around the room. "But most of the ones I’ve heard of take ages to brew up and aren’t any good for spur of the moment defense."

It was going to be a difficult job to go through the office thoroughly. There were so many cupboards and shelves, most of them full to overflowing with books of all sizes and shapes or jars filled with liquid. There were even some stoppered bottles that appeared to contain potions of various types (some labeled, some not).

"Okay, let’s split up – remember - I doubt very much if the Horcrux is here in the room, so unless something looks – or feels – particularly dodgy, don’t worry about touching it. We’re looking for a hidden entrance – or possibly a clue to where the Horcrux is hidden."

Harry stood quite still; waiting; listening as Ron, Hermione and Ginny spread out and began to search the office. For several minutes there was nothing but the sounds of cabinets being opened and closed; books and bottles being shifted on shelves and the creaking of floorboards as they moved across the floor.

Harry looked down, his scalp prickling. Floorboards?

"Stop!" Harry’s voice sounded loud, even to him.

The others looked up, Ron, his hands full of papers he’d been shuffling on Snape’s desk; Ginny, who was poking about in a tall wardrobe and Hermione, who was thumbing through a stack of books she had retrieved from the bookshelf in front of which she was standing.

"Harry?" Ginny’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the far side of a very long tunnel. "Harry, what is it?"

Harry ignored her. He was staring instead at the floor – more particularly, at a particular segment of the floor very nearly in the center of the room and very nearly equidistant from each of the heavy stone walls. There was no rug covering the spot. No item of furniture stood over it; nothing at all to indicate that this particular piece of flooring was any different than the rest. So why did his gaze keep coming back to the one spot?

Harry slowly walked across the floor, crossing the space that had pulled his gaze and wasn’t at all surprised to feel on the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand upright as if he’d crossed some sort of barrier. He stopped dead still, looking around him, trying to see something, anything that would indicate why the very air in this few square feet felt different.

"Harry?"

Ron’s voice this time, and Harry, without looking up heard himself respond. "This place has known magic," he said, and his voice, while still his own, sounded different, fuller, as if there were several Harries, all of them speaking at once. Where had he heard those words before? Oh yes, Dumbledore had said something very like that when they’d stood before the invisible stone archway in the cave. But there was no archway here. There was nothing but empty air and the floor beneath his feet and . . .it was then that Harry looked up. There, carved into the beam above where he stood, was the perfect replica of an eagle in full flight.

"It’s an eagle!" said Ginny in a hushed voice.

"Bloody hell!" Ron had dropped the papers, which were fluttering gently to the floor, like leaves that had fallen from a tree, like the shed feathers of a bird . . .of an eagle . . .

"There’s something here." Harry had taken a step backwards, moving backwards through the invisible barrier. He circled the center of the room slowly, carefully, keeping his eyes on the floor.

"You don’t think it marks an archway or something?" said Ron, who was still looking up at the carving.

"Not up there, anyway," said Hermione who was watching Harry through narrowed eyes. "You’re wondering why this room has floorboards instead of flagstones, aren’t you, Harry?"

"Blimey," said Ron, seeming to notice the wooden floor for the first time. "You’re right Hermione. You think there’s something hidden beneath the floor? You think it might be the Horcrux?"

Harry was shaking his head, but it was Ginny who answered. "Not the Horcrux," she said quietly in a tone that belied the hard, blazing look in her eyes. "I looked – I looked all around the office. Tom had me look all around the office, but he wasn’t looking for the Horcrux."

"He was looking for the entrance to wherever it is the Horcrux is hidden," said Harry, taking Ginny’s hand in his own and squeezing it tightly. "He knew Snape was guarding it, but he didn’t think he could trust Snape to tell him where it was."

"I went around the whole room," said Ginny. Her hand was shaking slightly but her voice was firm. "He had me looking at every inch of each of the walls . . .under the carpets . . .behind the books . . .inside every cabinet. But not here . . .never here."

"Here?" said Ron, looking around blankly.

"Under the floorboards," said Hermione, nodding sagely. "You think it’s another opening Harry?"

"Probably," said Harry, still staring at the floor. "I don’t see where else it could be. He had Ginny look, but because she couldn’t feel the residual magic, there’s no way that he would have been able to tell, at least through her. He probably thought that he would recognize the entrance when he saw it."

"Why can I feel it now then?" asked Ginny curiously. She removed her hand from Harry’s and extended it in front of her until it seemed to have reached some sort of a barrier. "Here," she said, poking at the air in front of her with a forefinger. "Right here. I can feel a sort of tingling on my skin."

"That’s the magic," said Harry quickly. "That’s what I felt in the cave. But you couldn’t feel it before? When Tom had you looking?"

Ginny shook her head. "Odd now that I think of it," she said slowly, turning to look at Harry, a strange sort of light was shining in her eyes as she spoke. "I felt like there was something odd in the room when we walked in, but I didn’t know where the feeling was coming from until you pointed it out. But it’s not just this," she said, reaching out again to where the tingling started. "There are a lot of things that I can do now – things that I couldn’t do before."

Harry looked at her sharply. She hadn’t spoken that last sentence, the voice hadn’t been audible to Ron and Hermione for Ron was responding to what she had said about being able to do things she hadn’t done before.

"You think it’s because he possessed you?" said Ron bluntly, looking around at his sister with a skeptical look on his face. "But You-know-who possessed Harry, or tried to back in our fifth year, and Harry’s no different now than he was then."

But that wasn’t entirely true, thought Harry with an internal grimace. That night in the Atrium wasn’t the first time Voldemort had been in direct contact with Harry. Voldemort had tried to kill him as a baby. He’d left Harry with a scar shaped like a bolt of lightning and powers that he never would have had if Voldemort hadn’t tried to destroy him.

Perhaps something like that had happened when Voldemort had poured his soul into Ginny. Perhaps even when the Horcrux had been destroyed something of Voldemort – or part of the Voldemort that had been in the diary - had remained. Harry met Ginny’s eyes and he couldn’t help but grin. Something else they had in common then. Ginny grinned back at him, one eyebrow raised.

"It doesn’t matter why I can feel it," said Ginny, still grinning at Harry. "What matters is that there is something here. I don’t know what it is, but it can’t be a coincidence that both Harry and I can feel it and that we just happen to be looking for something that used to belong to Rowena Ravenclaw, and that whatever it is Harry and I can feel is located directly beneath a carving of the bird that has come to be her symbol."

"So you think the entrance is here?" Said Hermione, scowling at the empty space Harry had been staring at for so long.

"But where would it go?" wondered Ron. "I mean – if there was an invisible arch or entrance or whatever – it’s not like it opens into a rock wall or something, like in the cave. There’s nothing here!"

Ginny’s voice spiraled around the room and Harry felt his skin crawl as he recognized the words he had read from the crumbling parchment while all alone in Grimmauld Place – the words that had clued him in to where he might find at least one of the Horcruxes; the words that had led him back to Hogwarts. How had she known? Had he read the parchment aloud then?

The roots of the castle. But they were in the dungeons. Wasn’t that as far down as they could go?

"So there must be someplace lower," said Ginny as if he had spoken out loud. "The Chamber of Secrets was lower. The tunnels, the pipes I had to slide down, they went on forever."

"So was the chamber where Dumbledore hid the Philosopher’s Stone," agreed Harry. "We had to jump through that trapdoor," he said, turning to grin at Ron and Hermione. "Remember?"

"How could I forget," said Ron with a grimace as Hermione made a noise somewhere between a cough and a snort. "We’d still be down there if Hermione wasn’t so good at Herbology."

"So you really think this is some sort of entrance?" said Hermione, eyeing the space beneath the carving with professional interest.

"What else could it be?" said Harry shrugging. "Neither the Ministry Aurors or the Order lot were looking for an entrance – they were all looking for items that might incriminate Snape; clues as to his being a double agent; clues as to where he might have gone, not an entrance to a lower dungeon."

"So if it’s an entrance," said Ginny, squinting at the space beneath the carving. "Like a door, how do we open it so we can get through?"

"That’s easy enough," said Hermione, whipping out her wand and pointing it at the carving. "Alohamora."

Nothing happened.

"Recludere"

"It’s not going to be that simple," said Harry, shaking his head as he remembered Dumbledore’s having to use his own blood in order to reveal the entrance to the cave.

But this entrance had been sealed by Snape, and somehow blood sacrifice didn’t seem in line with Snape’s personality. He would have used something more subtle and less obvious than a blood spell. "For one thing, it’s probably not a door, but an entrance."

"Well, I can try can’t I?" said Hermione tetchily. She waved her wand again. "Revelare!"

"If it’s just an opening, there’s nothing he could have hidden, so the Revealing Charm isn’t going to do any good," Ginny pointed out.

Hermione gave her a rather dirty look then raised her wand again. "There has to be a spell that will show us how it is hidden! Exhibere!"

"But if there’s nothing to exhibit-" began Ron.

"That’s not the point!" snapped Hermione. "There’s only so many revealing and opening spells available. Invenire!"

"There’s nothing to find Hermione," said Ginny gently. "If it’s an opening, not a door or a stairway or any other tangible item that was disguised, all the standard opening, finding or reveling charms aren’t going to do any good."

"What would you suggest then," said Hermione acidly. "I suppose we could all just go back up to the common room then and forget that any of this ever happened." Hermione looked flushed, hurt and angry that all her memorized spells had let her down.

"Isn’t there a spell for opening a space?" asked Ron reasonably, coming up behind Hermione and wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned into him, her tension visibly draining away at his touch.

Harry and Ginny exchanged amused grins.

"Please Ron, how can you open a space?" Hermione’s tone was calmer now, more relaxed. "There has to be something to open."

Ginny’s eyes went wide and when she spoke it was in an odd, dreamy tone that Harry had never heard from anyone other than Luna. "It’s not a space," she said slowly. She pulled out her wand and pointed it at the eagle carved into the beam. "It’s a portal, a hidden portal! Recludere Occultus Portae!"

The effect was instantaneous. The air in a space of about six feet in diameter below the carving began to shimmer. An instant later everything shifted slightly and the air snapped back into place.

Where, a moment before there had been solid wooden flooring, there was now a dark, circular hole; an empty space that seemed to absorb all available light as if the darkness were somehow alive, or . . .

"Hungry," said Ginny softly, and once again Harry turned to look at her. "It looks hungry." She was shivering slightly, which wasn’t surprising seeing as that the temperature in Snape’s office had apparently dropped by about ten degrees.

"Well," said Ron, shrugging slightly. "It would seem we’ve found the entrance to wherever it is we’re trying to go." He looked around at Harry, his face creased with concern. "Any idea where it goes then?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Only one way to find out," said Harry, and, without another word, stepped forward into the darkness.