Slowly but surely, Ginny’s soft features melted away, her freckles were lost in the colour of her increasingly pasty cheeks, her big brown eyes became small and almost black, and the delicate outline of her chin hardened. As quickly as the transformation had started it stopped. Harry was no longer staring at Ginny, but found himself staring at the pug-like face of Pansy Parkinson. Harry and Ron gazed with astonishment from Draco to Pansy; however, Hermione’s face had hardened. “Keep them here, I’m going to get Professor McGonagall,” she said as she surveyed the two Slytherins through narrowed eyes.
“No, I’ll get Ellie here.” Harry pulled his wand out with one hand and his pendant with the other. “Ellie,” he said to it firmly. A second later his cousin popped in to the space beside him. She looked at the five students in front of her with a bewildered look that slowly turned to suspicion.
“What’s going on here?” she asked, she had her wand out and it was itching to be pointed at Draco.
“These two were masquerading as Ginny and Dean,” Hermione informed her quickly.
“Is that so? Petrificus Totalus!” she said twice. Draco and Pansy went as stiff as boards and fell backwards. “Ron and Hermione, can you get Draco? Harry and I’ll take Pansy.”
“What are we going to do with them?” Harry asked as he finally snapped out of his trance, he couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed.
“The headmaster’s office,” Ellie replied shortly before casting a Disillusionment Charm on herself and the two stunned students. So Ron and Hermione grabbed a hold of Malfoy while Harry and Ellie got a grip of Pansy, they made their way down the stairs and out through the common room with a fair bit of difficulty, but before long they were hauling their detainees over the threshold of Professor Dumbledore’s office. The headmaster was in the middle of dictating a letter to his quill when they burst in.
“What is the meaning of all this, Elizabeth?” Dumbledore asked with concern.
“How did you know?” Hermione inquired of her headmaster.
“Ms. Granger, when one has become accustomed to the sweet smell of your granddaughter’s perfume your nostrils seek it out wherever they go, and dance with glee when they find it. Although it could, of course, be because I recognised the glitch that her outline is causing to the view of my bookcase.” He pointed to the shelves that were quite rightly behind Ellie. She made herself and the two Slytherin students visible again. Dumbledore watched from his seat with a great deal of interest in the proceedings.
“These two were found in Gryffindor Tower,” Ellie told him. “Would you three tell the story of how you managed to uncover them?” she ushered the three Gryffindors forward to tell their tale. They covered everything from Ginny’s peculiar behaviour to Dean and Ginny turning in to Pansy and Draco, although they left out the details of what Ginny was doing with her hand in Dean’s pocket and what the pair had been up to when they were discovered in Gryffindor Tower.
“I see, well, that is certainly very interesting,” Dumbledore said very carefully. He revived the two stunned students, who picked themselves up off the floor and began to dust their robes off. When Pansy realized where she was she began to draw daggers at Draco. “Mr. Malfoy, Ms. Parkinson, please take a seat,” Dumbledore’s voice was as light as ever. Ellie conjured four seats behind the other two for Harry, Ron, Hermione and herself to sit in.
“I would like you to explain to me, how you came to be in Gryffindor Tower disguised as Dean Thomas and Ginevra Weasley.” Dumbledore watched them both carefully. Pansy gave Draco a panicked look before she blurted out an answer.
“We took Polyjuice Potion,” she divulged.
“Keep your mouth shut!” Draco hissed.
“And how did you come to have the ingredients for that potion?” Dumbledore asked her calmly, he pretended that Draco wasn’t there and that he couldn’t hear him. Malfoy was giving Pansy very threatening looks.
“We stole them from Professor Snape’s store cupboard,” she said quickly.
“You’ll pay for this, Parkinson!” Draco murmured venomously.
“Please do not threaten other students, Mr. Malfoy. Ten points from Slytherin.” Dumbledore said calmly.
“An essential ingredient would be a part of Mr. Thomas or Ms. Weasley, how did you obtain that?” Dumbledore’s acute stare was enough to break most grown wizards and was enough to reduce Pansy to pieces.
“He had those goons Crabbe and Goyle kidnap them! I don’t know where they are or what they’ve done to them, it’s not my fault, Professor, and he made me do it! I think I was under the Imperious Curse!” Pansy sobbed.
“I very much doubt that, you would know if you had been under the Imperious Curse,” the headmaster replied frostily. “Professor Weasley, would you please take this student to her Head of House, explain the current situation and return with him immediately?”
“Yes, headmaster,” Ellie replied. She grabbed a fierce hold of Pansy’s arm and frog marched her from the room.
“I’m not telling you anything,” Draco said casually after several minutes of an intense staring competition between him and Dumbledore.
“We shall see about that,” Dumbledore smiled one of his quietly confident little smiles, the kind that lit the fire of hope in Harry’s heart. “So, you stole the ingredients for a Polyjuice Potion from Professor Snape’s private store. You had Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle kidnap two students and I assume leave them somewhere in the castle incapacitated. That particular potion doesn’t work unless the person you wish to turn into is still alive. And I trust it wasn’t difficult to sneak into the tower along with some other Gryffindors, perhaps younger students who wouldn’t know your victims so well and who would be easily intimidated.” He surmised. The whole time Draco just stared at him with a smirk plastered on his face. Professor Snape swept into the room behind Ellie and looked at the scene before him with unmistakable intrigue.
“You required my presence, Headmaster?” Snape tilted his head to the older wizard ever so slightly.
“Did you bring the vial, Severus?” Dumbledore inquired of him.
“Yes, sir,” Snape plunged his hand in to he pocket of his robes and withdrew a little bottle that Harry could guess held Veritaserum, when he looked at Hermione’s face he knew he had guessed right. There was an expression of satisfaction settled on her features.
“Thank you. Mr. Malfoy, this is Veritaserum, do you know what it does?” Dumbledore asked Draco.
“Yes.”
“I would like you to take two drops,” Dumbledore instructed.
“No,” Draco sneered.
“If you do not take it willingly I am prepared to force you to do so,” he warned.
“See if I care.”
“Very well, Patefacio Hisco!” Dumbledore flicked his wand and Malfoy’s mouth opened wide. Professor Snape dropped several little beads of liquid on to the boy’s tongue. “Now tell me, Mr. Malfoy, who asked you to carry out this plan?”
“The Dark Lord.”
“Are you one of his followers?”
“Yes.”
“Have you taken the mark?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you infiltrate Gryffindor Tower?”
“I was told to keep a close eye on Potter.”
“How long have you been disguising yourself as Mr. Thomas?”
“Two weeks.”
“Where are Mr. Thomas and Ms. Weasley?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I left it to Crabbe and Goyle to hide them.”
“You have no idea where they are?”
“I know that they’re still in the castle, but that’s it.”
“Why did you involve Ms. Parkinson in all this?”
“She caught me stealing stuff from Snape’s cupboard and asked what I was up to. She’s got a big mouth so I had no choice but to let her in on the whole thing. She thought it’d be funny to turn Potter’s little Weasel against him and it was.”
“How often do your associates collect samples from the impersonated students?”
“They don’t, they cut off a load of their hair when they grabbed them.”
“What exactly did they do to them?”
“I’m not really sure, I know that they laid their boots into Thomas, I overheard them talking about it but I don’t know what they did to Weasley, just that she’s unconscious.”
“Can you tell us anything else that might be useful to our search for them?”
“No. You might want to hurry though they’re probably half dead by now.”
“Severus, would you please take Mr. Malfoy to the containment cell that he was held in last May, I shall have to write to the Minister,” Dumbledore instructed. Snape looked at Draco as though he was the most disgusting thing that he had ever laid eyes on, the Potions professor used ropes from the end of his wand to secure Draco before he pulled him out of the room. “We will make an immediate search of the castle, I would be glad if you could enlist the help of the DA members,” he said as he turned to face the other four. “Elizabeth, would you please go and inform the staff?”
“Of course,” Ellie replied dutifully. She was about to sweep from the room when Hermione spoke up.
“That might not be necessary,” she said calmly to Professor Dumbledore.
“And why is that, Ms. Granger?” Dumbledore was giving Hermione a little knowing smile.
“Harry has a map, don’t you?” she nodded at him. Harry contemplated this for a moment, admitting he had the map would mean revealing its existence to Professor Dumbledore while denying it would delay their search for Ginny. Ellie’s voice in the back of his head stopped him from thinking any further.
‘You’re as stupid as your father, Harry James Potter, tell him about the map now or I will!”
“Yes, I do,” Harry replied with a slightly fearful look over his shoulder at Ellie, she was giving him a very hard look that told him he was probably going to get a telling off that she really would have rather given to his dad.
“A map of the school?” Dumbledore replied with his usual twinkle back in his eye. That was when Harry realized that he had known about the Marauder’s Map all along.
“Yes, it shows where everyone is within the castle grounds,” Harry nodded vigorously.
“That is very good indeed; would you be prepared to tell Elizabeth where it is so that she can retrieve it for you?”
“It’s at the bottom of my trunk under the invisibility cloak,” Harry told Ellie, she then vanished.
“Professor, may I ask a question?” This came from Hermione who was now staring at the spot where Ellie had departed from.
“You undoubtedly wish to know how Elizabeth comes and goes in that way when it is not possible to Apparate at Hogwarts?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Elizabeth has a very special gift that comes from her Grandmother’s side of the family. My dear, departed wife was the Great Granddaughter of Professor Everard.” He pointed to a picture of a sallow face wizard with short black hair. “He was a very celebrated headmaster and an extraordinarily powerful wizard; it was he who devised most of the protective charms and wards that protect Hogwarts from intrusion. Legend has it that because he created the wards he was the only one able to pass through them and that he locked the charms so that only someone with his magical thread could open them.”
“Is that even possible?” Hermione asked in disbelief.
“It is if you believe that nothing is impossible. The proof of it lies in the fact that Elizabeth can transport herself to any where on the grounds in the blink of an eye while I cannot and am forced to use much more conventional methods.” Dumledore smiled, you didn’t have to be a Seer to spot the intense look of pride on his face.
Ellie popped back in to the room with the Maruader’s Map clutched within her grasp, she laid it out on the table and Harry pointed at it and said, “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.” The little black ink lies started spreading from the point where his wand had touched the paper. When the map was fully formed they began their search in earnest.
Their eyes scrolled over the surface of the map a hundred times or more but there was no sign of Ginny or Dean. “They must be somewhere, Malfoy said that they were definitely still within the castle!” was Hermione’s strangled cry.
“Calm down, Hermione, we’ll think of something.” Ron laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“But what, we’ve searched through every room, every nook, and every cranny, they’re not there!” she cried.
“There must be something we’re missing, we’ll look over it again,” Ron pulled her gently in to his side and rubbed his hand up and down her arm.
“Ron, you’re a genius!” Ellie suddenly exclaimed.
“I think you’ve got me confused with Hermione, she’s the brains of this outfit,” Ron pointed at the girl tucked under his arm.
“Harry, look at this,” Ellie manoeuvred the map so that Harry was now staring down at a seventh floor corridor.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Harry asked her puzzled. His eyes were slipping up and down the corridor along empty classroom after empty classroom.
“You’re supposed to be looking at what’s not there,” Ellie said cryptically. Harry looked up at her to see that her eyebrows had risen several centimetres and she was clearly urging him towards her target. He look back down at the passageway and began to trace his finger over the parchment, he closed his eyes and imagined himself walking down the corridor. There was an empty room, another full of spare desks, a bust of some famous witch and the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, another classroom. Hold on, he thought to himself, he traced his steps back towards the tapestry and opened his eyes. When he looked down at the spot where his finger was on the map there was a big blank space where a room should have been.
“The Room of Requirement, it’s not on here,” Harry said hitting the jackpot.
“That could be where they are. If Crabbe and Goyle had needed somewhere to hide them, then the map wouldn’t show any occupants because one of the requirements is that it’s kept a secret!” Ellie said to her grandfather who nodded his concurrence.
“Quite right, we should…” Dumbledore didn’t get the opportunity to say what he thought they should do because Ron, Hermione and Harry had already sprinted from the room. They were already hurrying up and down in front of the stretch of wall on the seventh floor when Ellie and Dumbledore caught up to them, but the usual method of getting the room to expose itself didn’t seem to be working.
“It won’t work!” Harry yelled and banged his fist off the wall.
“What is it you’ve got to do?” Ellie asked as she stared at the bricks in front of her, she was running her fingers across them searching for something.
“You’re supposed to walk back and forth in front of it three times while thinking of the thing that you need,” Hermione answered, her face was screwed up in concentration as she strode purposefully up and down. Ellie took a step back from the wall and began to follow Hermione’s movements. On her third trip past the wall a handle appeared. Everyone looked at each other wondering if this was the door that would lead them to their injured friends. Ellie reached out nervously and twisted the handle; she pushed the door open forcefully and pointed her wand into the darkness.
“Lumos!” she said, but instead of her wand lighting up, the room did. It resembled a dark and disgusting dungeon, there was a pool of stagnant water in the middle of the room and the walls were covered in moss and decay. In one corner lay the broken figure of Dean Thomas, he wasn’t moving and he was lying in a very odd position, Harry could tell that some of his bones were broken. His face was bruised and bloody, both his eyes were swollen, he had quite obviously taken a severe Muggle beating. He searched the room for Ginny and when he saw her, his breath caught in his chest. She looked exactly as she had all those years ago when he found her in the Chamber of Secrets on the verge of death. She was sprawled on the floor uncomfortably, and when he knelt down to touch her she was as cold as ice, there was not a single hint of colour in her cheeks and even her flaming hair looked pale.
“Ginny? Ginny, please talk to me? It’s all right, I’m here now, and you’ll be okay. Please hang on,” he whispered as he kissed her on her frozen forehead.
“Harry?” she breathed almost silently.
There we go, everyone can relax a little, Ginny is still alive. The next chapter is…Unlocking The Door.