Harry Potter and the Gift of Memories [Harry Potter Fan Fiction]

Chapter XXXXV: Down the Trap Door, Part II

Harry watched his friend's disappear, either under the disillusionment charm or his invisibility cloak, before turning to the trap door and the giant dog still dozing off thanks to the playing harp. He was honestly surprised it hadn't woken up from all the talking that had been going on around it.

Without any further contemplation, Harry set to work, casting a spell over the harp so it would continue playing after the original spell wore off. Afterword, he walked over to the trap door. It was already open, yet he could see nothing inside. It was pitch black.

A small application of magic and intent had the tip of his wand lighting up like a flashlight. He knelt down and pointed his wand into the trap door, lighting up the room below.

The first thing Harry noticed about the room below the trapdoor was that it looked alive. It took him a second to realize that he was not seeing the floor, but a large plant with writhing tentacle-like appendages.

“That looks like Devil's Snare,” Susan said as she, too, got a good look at the plant beneath them.

“It is indeed,” Harry said, “It must be Professor Sprout's part of the protections around the stone.”

“So what do we do?” asked Daphne as she knelt down next to Harry.

“Devil's Snare has one major weakness,” Harry told the blond pureblood as the light from his wand extinguished. He began building up the necessary magic to create flames strong enough to burn the giant plant covering the floor below them. “Fire.”

Pointing his wand into the hole, Harry launched a large jet of flame from its tip. Almost acting like a lumos that had way too much magic pumped into it, the inferno illuminated the room beneath them in its fiery orange light, right before it struck the plant with the rage of a firestorm.

The Devil's Snare released a shrill cry that sounded almost like the death throws of some kind of animal being hung by a pair of meat hooks while still alive. It was sharp and loud and quite possibly the most horrendous noise Harry had ever heard. He wished he could cover up his ears like Blaise, Daphne, Terry and Susan were doing, but since he needed to keep up the pressure, was not afforded such a luxury.

Eventually, the shrill cries stopped, and Harry cut the power to his incendio, then cast another lumos. A quick glance revealed that the Devil's Snare was gone, disintegrated until there was naught but ashes and dust.

Satisfied, Harry once more cut the power to his spell, then turned to his friends.

“Alright, the floor to the room beneath us is about fifteen feet down, I'd wager, so here's how we're going to do this. I'm going to levitate each one of you and send you down the trap door, then follow you down myself. After that, we'll begin making our way through whatever enchantments lie in wait for us.”

“Are you sure that's a wise idea?” asked Daphne. When Harry raised an eyebrow and waited for her to elaborate, she said, “how are you going to get down if none of us are up here to levitate you? The wingardium leviosa requires line of sight to use, and we won't be able to see you from down there.”

“Don't worry about that,” Harry told her. “I've got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

With nothing left to be said, Harry began the process of levitating each of his friends, slowly lowering them through the trapdoor. To make things easier, the first one down, Daphne, cast lumos and let him know when she reached the bottom, then continued directing him by keeping her spell up as the others were floated down as well.

With everyone else having gone through the trap door, Harry jumped down without hesitation. He fell to the floor quickly. Magic traveled through his body and to his legs. When his feet hit the floor, Harry bent his knees and dove into a roll, absorbing the worst of the impact. It still jarred him a bit, and he could feel the stress on his joints and bones from having fallen fifteen feet, but nothing had been broken.