Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [1]

⚡️ Chapter 19 ⚡️

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,"

Vega 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," Vega realised out loud, eying the strange bottles and their components. "I wonder what we have to do now..."

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!" Vega said as she went ahead and seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Harry looked over her shoulder to read it:

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;

Second, different are those who stand at either end,

But if you would move onwards, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right

Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

"Goodness," Vega said as she let out a long sigh and Harry, amazed, saw that she was smiling for the first time that night – the last thing he felt like doing.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"This isn't magic – it's a logic, a riddle," Vega informed him. "A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here forever,"

"But so will we, won't we?" Harry said. Vega shook her head no at him as she moved nearer to the bottles in order to inspect them.

"Of course not," Vega replied quietly. "We have all the hints to get to the right bottle right here on this paper. There are seven bottles: three of them are poison and two are wine. One will get us back out of the purple fire and the other through the black fire ahead,"

"But how do we know which to drink?" Harry asked.

"Give me a minute," Vega said. She looked through the paper a few times and then stared at the bottles. "I believe I've got it. The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire, towards the stone," She picked up the bottle. "This will get us across,"

Vega and Harry looked at the tiny bottle.

"I will take the first sip to make sure it's safe for us," Vega said, swallowing her fear. They had come this far, and things will go well ahead, too.