Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (30 page)

Ron dived, Hermione rocketed upwards, the key dodged them both and Harry streaked after it; it sped towards the wall, Harry leant forward and with a nasty crunching noise, pinned it against the stone with one hand. Ron and Hermione’s cheers echoed around the high chamber.

They landed quickly and Harry ran to the door, the key struggling in his hand. He rammed it into the lock and turned – it worked. The moment the lock had clicked open, the key took flight again, looking very battered now that it had been caught twice.

‘Ready?’ Harry asked the other two, his hand on the door handle. They nodded. He pulled the door open.

The next chamber was so dark they couldn’t see anything at all. But as they stepped into it, light suddenly flooded the room to reveal an astonishing sight.

They were standing on the edge of a huge chessboard, behind the black chessmen, which were all taller than they were and carved from what looked like black stone. Facing them, way across the chamber, were the white pieces. Harry, Ron and Hermione shivered slightly – the towering white chessmen had no faces.

‘Now what do we do?’ Harry whispered.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ said Ron. ‘We’ve got to play our way across the room.’

Behind the white pieces they could see another door.

‘How?’ said Hermione nervously.

‘I think,’ said Ron, ‘we’re going to have to be chessmen.’

He walked up to a black knight and put his hand out to touch the knight’s horse. At once, the stone sprang to life. The horse pawed the ground and the knight turned his helmeted head to look down at Ron.

‘Do we – er – have to join you to get across?’

The black knight nodded. Ron turned to the other two.

‘This wants thinking about …’ he said. ‘I suppose we’ve got to take the place of three of the black pieces …’

Harry and Hermione stayed quiet, watching Ron think. Finally he said, ‘Now, don’t be offended or anything, but neither of you are that good at chess –’

‘We’re not offended,’ said Harry quickly. ‘Just tell us what to do.’

‘Well, Harry, you take the place of that bishop, and Hermione, you go there instead of that castle.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m going to be a knight,’ said Ron.

The chessmen seemed to have been listening, because at these words a knight, a bishop and a castle turned their backs on the white pieces and walked off the board leaving three empty squares which Harry, Ron and Hermione took.

‘White always plays first in chess,’ said Ron, peering across the board. ‘Yes … look …’

A white pawn had moved forward two squares.

Ron started to direct the black pieces. They moved silently wherever he sent them. Harry’s knees were trembling. What if they lost?

‘Harry – move diagonally four squares to the right.’

Their first real shock came when their other knight was taken. The white queen smashed him to the floor and dragged him off the board, where he lay quite still, face down.

‘Had to let that happen,’ said Ron, looking shaken. ‘Leaves you free to take that bishop, Hermione, go on.’

Every time one of their men was lost, the white pieces showed no mercy. Soon there was a huddle of limp black players slumped along the wall. Twice, Ron only just noticed in time that Harry and Hermione were in danger. He himself darted around the board taking almost as many white pieces as they had lost black ones.

‘We’re nearly there,’ he muttered suddenly. ‘Let me think – let me think …’

The white queen turned her blank face towards him.

‘Yes …’ said Ron softly, ‘it’s the only way … I’ve got to be taken.’

‘NO!’ Harry and Hermione shouted.

‘That’s chess!’ snapped Ron. ‘You’ve got to make some sacrifices! I’ll make my move and she’ll take me – that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry!’

‘But –’

‘Do you want to stop Snape or not?’

‘Ron –’

‘Look, if you don’t hurry up, he’ll already have the Stone!’

There was nothing else for it.

‘Ready?’ Ron called, his face pale but determined. ‘Here I go – now, don’t hang around once you’ve won.’

He stepped forward and the white queen pounced. She struck Ron hard around the head with her stone arm and he crashed to the floor – Hermione screamed but stayed on her square – the white queen dragged Ron to one side. He looked as if he’d been knocked out.

Shaking, Harry moved three spaces to the left.

The white king took off his crown and threw it at Harry’s feet. They had won. The chessmen parted and bowed, leaving the door ahead clear. With one last desperate look back at Ron, Harry and Hermione charged through the door and up the next passageway.

‘What if he’s –?’

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Harry, trying to convince himself. ‘What do you reckon’s next?’

‘We’ve had Sprout’s, that was the Devil’s Snare – Flitwick must’ve put charms on the keys – McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive – that leaves Quirrell’s spell, and Snape’s …’

They had reached another door.

‘All right?’ Harry whispered.

‘Go on.’

Harry pushed it open.

A disgusting smell filled their nostrils, making both of them pull their robes up over their noses. Eyes watering, they saw, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll even larger than the one they had tackled, out cold with a bloody lump on its head.

‘I’m glad we didn’t have to fight that one,’ Harry whispered, as they stepped carefully over one of its massive legs. ‘Come on, I can’t breathe.’

He pulled open the next door, both of them hardly daring to look at what came next – but there was nothing very frightening in here, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.

‘Snape’s,’ said Harry. ‘What do we have to do?’

They stepped over the threshold and immediately a fire sprang up behind them in the doorway. It wasn’t ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway leading onwards. They were trapped.

‘Look!’ Hermione seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Harry looked over her shoulder to read it:

Hermione let out a great sigh and Harry, amazed, saw that she was smiling, the very last thing he felt like doing.

‘Brilliant,’
said Hermione. ‘This isn’t magic – it’s logic – a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic, they’d be stuck in here for ever.’

‘But so will we, won’t we?’

‘Of course not,’ said Hermione. ‘Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire and one will get us back through the purple.’

‘But how do we know which to drink?’

‘Give me a minute.’

Hermione read the paper several times. Then she walked up and down the line of bottles, muttering to herself and pointing at them. At last, she clapped her hands.

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire – towards the Stone.’

Harry looked at the tiny bottle.

‘There’s only enough there for one of us,’ he said. ‘That’s hardly one swallow.’

They looked at each other.

‘Which one will get you back through the purple flames?’

Hermione pointed at a rounded bottle at the right end of the line.

‘You drink that,’ said Harry. ‘No, listen – get back and get Ron – grab brooms from the flying-key room, they’ll get you out of the trapdoor and past Fluffy – go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, we need him. I might be able to hold Snape off for a while, but I’m no match for him really.’

‘But Harry – what if You-Know-Who’s with him?’

‘Well – I was lucky once, wasn’t I?’ said Harry, pointing at his scar. ‘I might get lucky again.’

Hermione’s lip trembled and she suddenly dashed at Harry and threw her arms around him.

‘Hermione!’

‘Harry – you’re a great wizard, you know.’

‘I’m not as good as you,’ said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.

‘Me!’ said Hermione. ‘Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery and – oh Harry – be
careful!
’

‘You drink first,’ said Harry. ‘You are sure which is which, aren’t you?’

‘Positive,’ said Hermione. She took a long drink from the round bottle at the end and shuddered.

‘It’s not poison?’ said Harry anxiously.

‘No – but it’s like ice.’

‘Quick, go, before it wears off.’

‘Good luck – take care –’

‘GO!’

Hermione turned and walked straight through the purple fire.

Harry took a deep breath and picked up the smallest bottle. He turned to face the black flames.

‘Here I come,’ he said and he drained the little bottle in one gulp.

It was indeed as though ice was flooding his body. He put the bottle down and walked forward; he braced himself, saw the black flames licking his body but couldn’t feel them – for a moment he could see nothing but dark fire – then he was on the other side, in the last chamber.

There was already someone there – but it wasn’t Snape. It wasn’t even Voldemort.

It was Quirrell.

‘You!’
gasped Harry.

Quirrell smiled. His face wasn’t twitching at all.

‘Me,’ he said calmly. ‘I wondered whether I’d be meeting you here, Potter.’

‘But I thought – Snape –’

‘Severus?’ Quirrell laughed and it wasn’t his usual quivering treble, either, but cold and sharp. ‘Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn’t he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who would suspect p-p-poor st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell?’

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.

‘But Snape tried to kill me!’

‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’

‘Snape was trying to
save
me?’

‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly. ‘Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn’t do it again. Funny, really … he needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor winning, he
did
make himself unpopular … and what a waste of time, when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.’

Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry.

‘You’re too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school at Hallowe’en like that, for all I knew you’d seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone.’

‘You
let the troll in?’

‘Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls – you must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there? Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off – and not only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn’t even manage to bite Snape’s leg off properly.

‘Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror.’

It was only then that Harry realised what was standing behind Quirrell. It was the Mirror of Erised.

‘This mirror is the key to finding the Stone,’ Quirrell murmured, tapping his way around the frame. ‘Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this … but he’s in London … I’ll be far away by the time he gets back …’

All Harry could think of doing was to keep Quirrell talking and stop him concentrating on the Mirror.

‘I saw you and Snape in the Forest –’ he blurted out.

‘Yes,’ said Quirrell idly, walking around the Mirror to look at the back. ‘He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I’d got. He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me – as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side …’

Quirrell came back out from behind the Mirror and stared hungrily into it.

‘I see the Stone … I’m presenting it to my master … but where is it?’

Harry struggled against the ropes binding him, but they didn’t give. He
had
to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the Mirror.

‘But Snape always seemed to hate me so much.’

‘Oh, he does,’ said Quirrell casually, ‘heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you
dead.
’

‘But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing – I thought Snape was threatening you …’

For the first time, a spasm of fear flitted across Quirrell’s face.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions – he is a great wizard and I am weak –’

‘You mean he was there in the classroom with you?’ Harry gasped.