Short, anxious breaths escaped the fifteen year old red head that was looking around the hall. She didn't remember passing through this hallway on the way to the conference room. She knew she should've gotten out of the lift one floor earlier. Lily Evans was lost.
Her hair hit her face as she quickly turned her head to the left, then to the right. Did one of these hallways lead to the lift? A stairwell? Something to get her to the conference room, perhaps?
Everything had gone fine until lunch. She had sat around a table with a few other fifth, sixth, and seventh years from magical schools across the world. They had been listening to lecture after lecture, taking notes as they went, about each department of the Ministry of Magic. They learned the jobs in each department, the department's focus, and how each department worked together. It was a summer learning program the Ministry just developed, and Lily Evans happened to be one of the lucky few selected to attend.
Though at the moment, she was in a bit of a predicament. She had been looking for the cafeteria on the one-hour lunch break, had taken a wrong turn, and had gotten a bit lost. Well, a lot lost, actually.
After standing in the same spot for about five minutes, Lily decided to continue walking forward. At least if she didn't find a way back to the room, she was bound to run into someone, right?
As she turned a corner, the hallway seemed to stretch on forever. If she squinted, she was able to make out the far away figure of a door. Quickening her pace, her hope was replenished. Maybe this could possibly be a stairwell to the main floor. Maybe she did have a sense of direction after all.
After an eternity had passed, Lily was finally standing in front of the black door, its golden doorknob glinting irresistibly with unknown light. Miss Evans was feeling a surge of confidence as she reached out and firmly grabbed a hold of the knob. She slowly turned the knob to the right as she prayed with all her might that this door led to the stairwell. Her directions couldn't let her down now.
She pushed open the door, eyes shut tightly. She swiftly stepped inside and shut the door, searching for the stairs. No luck.
Curse her horrible sense of direction.
She turned around to re-open the door and walk into the hallway, but to her immense surprise, it had sealed itself shut. Just as Lily took her hand off of it again, the door started spinning around the wall.
She faced the middle of the room, which was large and circular. Its walls covered in doors that were flashing past her as top speed. Where was she? How would she get out?
She stood in the center of the circular room and looked at all the doors once they stopped. They were all identical. There was no telling what door she had come in through. All she could do was open a door and hope for the best.
She walked directly across from where she was standing and opened one of the mysterious doors. Taking one last look back at the circular room she had entered, she stepped into the strange room, closing the door behind her.
.::.::.::.
A loud, resounding thud echoed around the room Lily Evans was now in. After shutting the door, she felt dread in the pit of her stomach. Every fiber in her being was telling her that she was not supposed to be in this room, and she should turn around and walk out the door immediately.
But it wasn't that easy.
As she turned around, she found that she was not facing the door directly, but floating twenty feet above it. As far as she knew, this wasn't considered normal.
Alarmed, she looked all around her. What was going on? Why was she on the ceiling? And most importantly, she decided as she looked towards the ground, why the bloody Hell was she not in her own body?
Her heartbeat quickened at a surprising pace that was not good for someone of the tender age of fifteen. Had she died of high blood pressure? A heart attack? Stroke? What had possibly caused the separation from her body?
She tried to fly towards the standing figure that was her form, but was hindered in her short journey. As she bounced off an invisible shield, she tended to do a back flip in the air. Lily sighed in frustration. This was not the time for acrobatics.
She backed up as high as she could to where her trainers were on the ceiling of the mysterious room, then pushed off with all her might, determined to get back into her body. Sadly, she was once more blocked by the invisible force field.
Lily struggled with the tears that threatened to form in her blazing emerald eyes as she wondered how she was going to reunite body and soul. It was things like this they really needed to cover in school. A potion of some sort would be wonderful right now. Or perhaps a charm . . .
That was it!
Lily flew around the room in happiness as she remembered that at the end of fourth year, they had, in fact, gone over what spell would end one of these horrible experiences. Out-of-body experiences, Flitwick had called them.
Lily dug in her pocket for her wand. She was going to fuse herself back together in one piece! She wasn't going to stay down here forever and rot! She was going to be saved!
The auburn-haired teen pulled out her wand, beaming at the thought of getting out of this situation, and opened her mouth to say the incantation. The feeling of dread in her stomach had disappeared for a quick few minutes, only to be replaced when she realized yet another obstacle on her way to safety.
She had forgotten the spell.
Lily whipped her head around in a rush, panic appearing on her young features. This was wonderful. Just plain wonderful. Now she was stuck in here for all of time. Unless they had clues to the spell written on the wall up here, of course. They wouldn't do something like that though; this was the Ministry of Magic!
Lily closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to calm her nervous state. As she opened her penetrating green gems, she saw something she could not believe. There, carved into the stone wall was a single letter, perhaps the beginning to the incantation.
P.
This one letter seemed to jog her brain of a monumental memory lapse. Grinning from ear to ear as she remembered the spell, she pointed her wand at her still body.
"Pervenburem!"
.::.::.::.
The feeling was strange. It was as if Lily was being pulled under the ocean's surface. Maybe it was the feeling of passing through the barrier, but all that mattered was that she was back in her body.
Brushing off her clothes and checking to make sure she was actually in her own body, the auburn haired girl smiled in relief. Her emerald eyes observed the rest of the room, looking for a way out.
Stepping carefully, she reached out her left foot and began walking. She turned her head every way she could, making sure there was no one sneaking up on her or any horrible thing like that. She shuddered at the thought of a hand clamping over her mouth and being dragged away against her will, arms and legs flailing about.
Miss Evans poked her head around a shelf full of multi-coloured bottles and viles filled with Merlin-knows-what. And there it was. The answer to her prayers. A large, metal door with the words "Exit" glowing over it.
As much as she would have liked to run, the fifteen year old knew better than that. She slowly walked to the exit sign, excitement at the possibility of freedom showing in her features. Her hand reached out and took hold of the tarnished golden knob. She heard the clicking noise which meant that it had successfully opened. Pulling the door slowly open, she stuck her head in. It appeared as if all the walls were the same, no doubt a trick of the light.
Carefully, Lily placed her right foot into the next room, closely followed by her left. She gingerly shut the door, trying not to make a sound. As she heard the clicking of the door for the second time in seconds and took her hand off the knob, a dim, flickering, pale yellow light shone down on her auburn locks.
The flickering light unnerved her a bit. She reached out her right hand, her eyes still focused intently on the room, only to find that the doorknob had disappeared. She jerked her head around to see that the door had vanished also.
Bugger.
Lily turned once more to face the circle of light on the ground before her. There was something ominous about the room, as if she had seen it before in some kind of film. There was a dull buzz that quickened her heart rate. It sounded mildly like a mechanical buzz, like something was about to happen . . . .
There was a loud CLACK! that echoed a tenfold in the small, confined space. Lily felt something nudging against her left shoulder. Dread filling her stomach like hot acid, she slowly turned her head. She visibly paled.
The wall that had held the door was now slowly but steadily moving in towards her. She sprinted to the other side of the square room, wanting to have as much time to think as possible. That was when she realized that that wall was also moving in.
She looked to the right, then to the left. All four walls were steadily moving inward towards her. It was going to crush her to nothing, and no one would know.
She ran her hands along the stone walls. She had seen so many movies where there had been a hidden button of some sort. Lily knew it was kind of far fetched, but she was desperate to get out of the Ministry alive.
And hopefully she'd succeed.
She had to. Lily had her whole life ahead of her, minus the fifteen years she'd already lived.
The light went out for two long seconds. When the dull light returned to the shrinking room, realization hit her like a car.
In the center of the room, she had seen something. Something on the floor. Something that looked different.
Lily ran quickly to the center, directly under the dull yellow light. There was a brick in the ground, just like the others. Red and jagged. But this one was odd. This one was loose.
She ran her hand over the out-of-place brick, praying it could lead to her way out. A sharp pang shot through her ankle, a temporary sprain, if you will. Lily leaned forward, her hand pushing down on the red rectangle.
She felt and saw the floor open up and swallow her before she was plunged into a black sea of nothingness.
.::.::.::.
The frail girl landed in a heap on a cold, stone floor.
Grimacing in pain, she laid where she landed for a few
moments. She did not want to move. It was a miracle that she hadn’t broken anything. She had felt as if she was falling for quite some time.
But sometimes it’s better just not to question things.
As much as her body protested against the motion, Lily slowly stood to her feet. She looked around, squinting her beautiful green eyes. All that she could make out of the place of her confinement was that it was dark.
Very dark. Eerily dark.
She groaned. Why did every room she encountered have to have that foreboding nature about it? Why couldn’t there be a room that was bright, perhaps pink, and had butterflies fluttering around?
Because the world hated her.
She was going to die in the Ministry of Magic, no one would realize it until school started, and by then, she’d be a rotting corpse. That’s the perfect summer ever for you.
And if she did, miraculously, get out alive . . . well, she’d probably rather be dead. She’d never be allowed in the Ministry again, she might even be expelled from Hogwarts, have her memory Obliviated, who really knew? Her life would be ruined.
Lily thought of what to do. Should she even try to get out? It seemed that the harder she tried to get out, the further in she got. She could at least try and make it one more room, she reasoned. This one was a bit cramped, a bit claustrophobic.
She thought of how small of a space she was standing in, and her heart began to race. Small spaces were one of her fears. She didn’t like the feeling of being like a caged animal, helpless and defenseless with no way out.
As her heart rate quickened, so did her breathing. It was basic knowledge from science class that your heart needed oxygen to pump blood to the body. But still, it scared the living daylights out of her.
She was in an enclosed, dark, room, hyperventilating, and thinking of the worst possible scenarios. Life was just great sometimes.
Her mind wondered to what would happen when school started up, and she wasn’t there. Teachers would be suspicious, possibly even worried. Slytherins would be ecstatic. Others wouldn’t notice or just shrug it off, thinking she’d move.
Then there would be the Marauders. The four boys whom she couldn’t stand. With the exception of Remus Lupin.
They’d wonder where their favourite target had gone to, why she wasn’t at school.
Or in James Potter’s case, worried at where the love of his life had gone. Prat.
Pulling her thoughts from the future, she focused on the present. She was trapped. Smashing.
What could she do to get out? What should she do? How would she get out? Panic started forming in her brain, soon coursing to every centimeter of her body.
As far as Lily was concerned, life sucked.
As she finished this depressing, yet accurate thought, her head jerked to her left. She had heard some sort of noise.
Was there someone else in here? Would they help her to get free?
Or was it just another obstacle to overcome in this dreadful place?
Almost unwillingly, she moved towards the noise. The rational part of her told her to just stay where she was, don't move to the noise, but the curious and hopeful side won over.
As she neared what she thought was the wall, she stumbled into another room.
The wall was just a curtain!
And then she knew the source of the noise: there was a dull buzzing coming from this room.
.::.::.::.
“Over here.”
“This way...”
“We can tell you the way out.”
These gentle whispers and thousands of others were forming a cacophony in the strange room. This had been the buzzing. So many unfamiliar voices had been speaking at once.
Lily was a bit frightened by this room. There was a billowing veil in the middle of the room. This made her uneasy, for there was no wind in the stuffy hallowed room.
She could see shadows in the corners and on the walls.
Shadows cast by nothing, but were moving about like they had a mind of their own.
It was as if she had seen this room before. She knew she hadn’t, for she had never been in the Ministry before today. But perhaps in a dream she had been here.
“Follow us. We can help you.”
“You want to escape. I can sense it.”
“You’re lost. Let us help.”
The veil seemed familiar. And the shadows reminded her of something she’d seen before. She remembered that much because it reminded her of Peter Pan’s stubborn shadow. It wouldn’t cooperate. It seemed like these shadows would be more than happy to help her.
Or was it a trap?
It was different. Lily realized as the thought of a trap entered her mind. The colors, the placement, even the number of shadows. It was all different.
“Come here young one.”
“I know the way…”
“Lily…”
The last calling voice whipped her head around. Where had the voice come from? It couldn’t be who she thought of. It was impossible. He had been dead since she was a mere infant.
It was a wonder she remembered him at all, really. She was two when he got in the wreck. Two when she had visited him in the hospital. Two when she had attended his funeral.
And her mum had never been the same. She would put on a cheery face, but Lily knew her mum was still upset at losing him. He had been so young. He should have had another forty years ahead of him. But one speeding fugitive had ruined it all.
“Lily…”
The voice called her again. She wanted to find the source, to find him. She wanted to hug him, so let him see how much his little girl had grown up.
“Dad?”
Her voice was swallowed by the dull buzzing of whispers in the room. Her voice was hoarse, as she had not used it in a while.
“Lily darling, why are you in here?”
“I don’t know. I’m lost, I can’t get out. Can you help me, Dad? Can you help your little girl?”
She held her breath, hoping, praying, that he knew the way out. She felt that he was the only one in this bizarre room she could trust. If he couldn’t tell her the way, she would be stuck here.
“I can Lily, I can. Turn to your left.”
She obeyed. As she turned her body to face the specific direction, Lily’s eyes fell on what she presumed was the door.
“I know what you see, Lily, but don’t be fooled. That’s not the way out. I wanted you to realize that things aren’t as easy as they appear. The way out is to walk through the veil. This is not the Veil Room. You will not cross to the other side. You will simply appear out of this room and in another.”
Lily raised her eyebrows at this cryptic and possibly forewarning message. She took a deep breath, deciding she would take the plunge.
“Thank you Dad, I love you,” she whispered. She began to walk to the billowing drapery quickly.
She stepped through it just before her father responded.
“I love you too, my little girl.”
.::.::.::.
Lily found herself inside a round, circular room with only one object in the center of it. Naturally, the fact that there was only one item in the room alarmed her, but by now, she had learned no to be surprised about what she came
across.
She looked around the room. There had to be a door
somewhere, right? She walked around the room, searching for a wooden door, an iron door, a curtain, something.
As she turned around to walk back to where she had been when she appeared in the room, she saw that the door was behind her the entire time.
“Oh that’s right, I just appeared in the room,” she said aloud.
She began to walk to the door, only to stop halfway.
Was this the way out? Or did it lead back to the mysterious room in which she spoke to her father?
She paced around the armchair, pondering what to do. It was only the third time she glanced at the armchair, but it seemed that it was calling to her.
She stopped in her tracks, suddenly realizing how much her feet were aching from her little expedition. The arm chair was looking very comfortable.
It somehow reminded her of the two back in the Gryffindor Common Room. It, like they, were big enough to accommodate two people in the seat. It also gave the impression of almost-bursting seams filled with stuffing.
The only difference between the furniture was that this one was coloured black, while the one’s in the familiar Gryffindor Common Room were coloured a deep crimson.
As much as her conscious advised against it, her feet screamed for mercy. She could sit down for a little bit. It couldn’t hurt, right?
She reasoned that she might as well sit down while she thought of what to do.
She walked over to the large chair. Lowering herself carefully into the plush, velvet material of the engulfing furniture, Lily felt a sigh escape her lips. The chair was so cushy; she thought she could stay sitting forever.
She didn’t have a care in the world at the moment. Nothing mattered except for relaxing. That was it. Not school, not
family, not escaping, not even thinking coherently.
Nothing.
Then her thoughts wandered to the Gryffindor Common Room. She couldn’t wait until she was back at school, so she could enjoy this sense of relaxation in front of a fire, perhaps with a good book. That would be nice.
But she wouldn’t be able to have the experience unless she was able to move herself from the comfortable arms of the chair.
“Idoenwannagetup,” she murmured lazily to herself. She was so peaceful where she was, did she honestly have to move?
'If you ever want to see anyone again, then get your lazy arse up and MOVE!' the logical part of her brain commanded her.
She knew that it was right; she just didn’t want to move.
Her legs had no feeling, and she was sure that if she stood, she’d be like Jell-o.
Maybe if she pushed up with her arms…
Lily tried it, and within a few, agonizing seconds, was on her feet in front of the chair.
Ok, so in retrospect, it wasn’t that hard.
She turned around so she was facing the chair. Her eyes glanced slightly over the top, and she saw what she had been accustomed to after a few rooms of searching.
She sprinted to the door with all her might, only stopping to turn the handle before she crossed the threshold.
.::.::.::.
As Lily slammed the door shut with a resounding BAM, she felt the floor melt away to liquid right under her own two feet.
Before she had time to scream, her head was submerged under the water. Air bubbles flowed out of her nose and mouth as she used her arms and legs to reach the surface of the magical lake. Gasping for air as she broke the surface of the lake, Lily took in the room around her. She saw that there was a door on the far side of the room.
Next to it, hanging from a hook on the wall, was a rusted key.
Was it that easy? Lily pondered. She looked around the room, seeing another key on the ceiling. There had to be a catch, why else would there be two keys?
Lily looked down at her swishing feet that were treading the water. She saw something that made her dive down into the unknown, mysterious lake.
As she reached the bottom, she slowly reached out her right hand and enclosed the rusted key in her fingers. She had a theory; she just needed to see if it was right.
Kicking off from the ground, she shot up, piercing a path through the clear liquid. She took deep breaths as her head once again floated on the surface of the lake.
Still keeping her grip on the key, Lily began swimming towards the door with a breaststroke. It was a lucky thing her parents had made her take a lifeguard class at the very beginning of the summer. She now knew the correct way how to dive, the name of many swimming techniques, and how to perform CPR.
She reached the wooden door, and realized there was a small platform in front of it. She pulled herself up, her red hair sticking to her face out of a combination of sweat and water.
Shaking a little bit, Lily attempted to insert the key into the keyhole. And just like she thought, it didn’t work.
The two easiest keys were red herrings. The real key that would unlock the door was the one on the ceiling. Lily reasoned that Accio probably wouldn’t work, but figured it was worth a tried.
“Accio Key!”
She thought she saw the key jiggle a bit, but other than that, it was a fruitless task. She was going to have to find some way to reach the key on the ceiling.
Lovely.
This situation reminded her of a riddle she once heard.
A man hung himself in a room. The room had no windows, no stairs, nothing. The only thing other than the man and the noose was a puddle of water. How did he hang himself?
The answer was that the water had been a block of ice, and he simply waited for it to melt.
Lily had concocted a plan. Why not freeze the water into a stairway, walk up the stairs, grab the key, walk down, and walk out the door?
Yeah, that sounded like a good plan.
She fought to get her wand from her pocket. The wet blue-jean material clung to her tightly; it was hard to retrieve it from its spot.
As she pulled the instrument from her pocket, she aimed it at the water directly below the key. Muttering a spell under her breath, a yellowish light show out and hit the water.
Slowly but surely, little steps started forming a staircase, which led to the key dangling from the ceiling.
Carefully, Lily placed her left foot on the first ice step. After assuring herself that it was safe, she lifted herself onto the next step.
So, little by little, Lily worked her way to the top, only
slipping about three times. She made her way down quicker, happy to be on a stone floor instead of an ice one.
She inserted the key into the designated hole, turning it to the right. She was greeted with a very welcomed click.
Pulling the door open, a grin on her face, her green eyes sparkling, she walked through the door.
.::.::.::.
Lily quietly closed the door, leaning on it once it was securely shut. Now that she was out of there, she had to focus of how to get out of this room.
She opened her eyes that were tightly shut and looked around. She saw two doors at the far end of the room, each next to a dangling chain.
And to make everything a bit more interesting, in the middle of the room, chained to one of the doors, there sat a majestic, innocent-looking, red-orange fox.
Alarmed, Lily frantically looked around the room. She loved foxes, but she knew that they were dangerous, she wasn’t stupid.
She was in a stone room. The walls were stone, the floor was stone, and so was the ceiling. Everything but the three doors and three chains were made of stone.
“Three chains?” Lily wondered aloud. What could the third one possibly be for? She didn’t…she couldn’t…did she have to unchain the fox, and then re-chain it to this one?
She didn’t have much time to ponder it, though.
Unexpectedly, the fox lunged forward towards Lily, teeth bared. For a split second, as the animal was floating in the air, she was almost reminded of her patronus.
Her patronus. What a coincidence.
Or was it some kind of conspiracy?
Whatever it was, she had to think fast. The fox was bounding towards her at light speed. She didn’t want to harm it, so what could she do?
“Stupefy!” The spell was flying across the room before Lily even comprehended that she had taken out her wand and fired it at the creature.
She held her breath as it seemed to fly in slow motion towards the canine, not sure if she wanted it to hit or miss.
She watched as the swift animal dove to the left in order to avoid the curse. Instead of its intended target, the red jet of light hit the wall and vanished.
The fox bared its teeth at the red-head girl. It could sense that she was trying to do it harm, and it didn’t like it one bit.
Lily felt herself trying to step back, only to have her backside meet the stone wall.
Oh right, those things.
As the fox began to walk back and forth before her, growling all the while, Lily wracked her brain. What spell could she used that would temporarily render it unable to move.
Grinning slyly, she flicked her wand in the direction of the fox, whose back was turned to her. She saw it fall into a heap on the stone floor, and suppressed a small giggle. It kept trying to stand, but failed miserably.
Lily stored her wand in her pocket and dashed across the room, tugging on the door next to the chain that the fox was hooked to.
The knob turned, but the door wouldn’t move.
She tried the door next to it, but the sphere of a knob didn’t even move.
She then remembered that there was a chain hanging next to the door she had entered. That had to be it.
Whipping her wand back out for the zillionth time, she cast Diffindo on the chain that led to the fox. She walked across the room at a fast pace, enchanting the chain to grow as she walked as to not choke the animal.
After re-chaining the fox, she sprinted to the other side of the room, tried the first door that she had earlier, and found that, luckily, it pushed open easily.
With relief washing over every inch of her body, she shakily walked through the door.
.::.::.::.
Lily almost cried as she gazed the bustling corridors before her. Never before had she been so happy to see complete and total strangers.
She was out.
She was out of that room, that maze, that trap, and she couldn’t be happier.
Freedom.
Complete and total freedom.
It felt good to be out. Alive.
The Escapades of Lily Evans by HarrynHermione_06
Chapter Notes: Hey Guys! This is my submission for the Gauntlet challenge on the forums! I hope you like it!