The Tangled World!

Wrong Genre Savvy

"This is a bad idea..." Daphne muttered as Tracey guided her, Harry, and Hermione to the end of the third floor corridor. Daphne glanced around the abandoned corridor, noting the eerie silence that pervaded the area. "This is a really bad idea..."

Tracey was, of course, unswayed by her hesitance. "Well, you didn't want to go to Parvati!"

"Of course I didn't." Daphne protested. "If we ask her what's in the third floor corridor, then she'll know that we're curious about the third floor corridor. I am not handing that girl easy blackmail material on us. Just because she's been helpful to us in the past doesn't mean that she won't turn against us given reason"

"That's very cynical of you, Daphne." Tracey commented.

"We're Slytherins, Tracey. We're supposed to be cynical." Daphne hissed before turning to Harry and Hermione. "Please back me up on this, you two."

Harry shrugged and Hermione was unresponsive. "I, uh, think we'll stay out of this argument." Harry said.

"You always stay out of our arguments." Daphne groaned. "I would really appreciate some backup sometimes."

"Call it self preservation." Hermione retorted.

"See, Tracey? She's cynical." Daphne said triumphantly.

Daphne couldn't see if Hermione rolled her eyes, but the sigh she gave made it seem like a pretty likely that she did.

It didn't take much longer for the group to arrive at the end of the corridor. A single door lay in the middle of the wall at the corridor's end.

"So... what do we do now?" Harry asked.

Before Daphne could voice her opinion, Tracey was loudly rattling the door. "It's locked." She said definitively.

"Of course it's locked!" Daphne groaned. "It's a forbidden corridor guarding a valuable object. It's not like we'll be able to get past this door without being smart about it. To start with, we should probably cast some detection charms to see what kind of security we'll be dealing with."

The group stared at Hermione.

Hermione gave them an ascance look. "Just because I know more spells than you guys doesn't mean I know every spell, you know. I don't know any detection charms."

"None at all?" Daphne asked. She had trouble believing that.

Hermione just shrugged. "Not unless you want me to recreate Harry's shoddy attempt at a humanoid revealing charm."

"Hey!" Harry protested. "It wasn't that bad!"

Daphne shot him a skeptical look, and she was sure that Tracey and Hermione were doing the same.

"...Okay, it was pretty bad..." Harry admitted.

"So what now?" Tracey asked.

"I'm not sure..." Hermione said. "I guess we should just see what information we can gather without using magic? Or at least without using detection charms..."

Daphne scoffed. "Please. There's no way an artefact like the Philosopher's Stone wouldn't have wards to block mundane scrying used in its protection."

"Wanna bet?" Tracey asked as she pressed her ear to the door.

"Sure. There's no way-"

"I hear growling." Tracey observed.

"...You're kidding me." Daphne replied as she pressed her ear up to the door.

Daphne continued to listen to the door in denial. There was no conceivable way that whoever set up the wards forgot to put up a sound cancellation one.