Dumbledore's half-blood grand-daughter: Year One

Chapter Eleven: Mirror Troubles

Since we got back to Hogwarts on a Friday, our classes didn’t start until Monday. In the meantime, Ron started teaching Harry and I wizard chess. This was exactly like Muggle chess except that the figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron's set was very old and battered.

Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family -- in this case, his grandfather. However, old chessmen weren't a drawback at all. Ron knew them so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted.

Harry and I played with chessmen Seamus Finnigan had lent us, and they didn't trust Harry and I at all. Harry wasn't a very good player yet and they kept shouting different bits of advice at him, which was confusing. "Don't send me there, can't you see his knight. Send him, we can afford to lose him." When I played they did the same to me and it got very annoying. So annoying that I ending us using my powers to make them silent. It was very funny they didn’t stop trying to “help” me but all they could do was move their mouths with no sound.

All of us spent a happy Friday afternoon having a furious snowball fight on the grounds. Then, cold, wet, and gasping for breath, we returned to the fire in the Gryffindor common room.

Suddenly I was being shaken. I looked around and realized I had fallen asleep. Harry was leaned over the side of the couch with the invisibility cloak in his hand. “Let’s go look for Flamel in the Library. I nodded and he pulled the cloak over us. We crept across the common room, and climbed through the portrait hole. "Who's there." squawked the Fat Lady. Harry and I said nothing. We walked quickly down the corridor.

The library was pitch-black and very eerie. Harry lit a lamp to see the way along the rows of books. The lamp looked as if it was floating along in midair, and the sight gave me the creeps. The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. Step ping carefully over the rope that separated these books from the rest of the library, Harry held up his lamp to read the titles. They didn't tell him much. Their peeling faded gold letters spelled words in languages I could strangely understand. Some had no title at all.

“Can you understand them?” Harry asked me. “Yeah Winx can understand any language.” I whispered back. He nodded and pointed to a book spine: Сто и один способ убить. “It’s Russian for 101 Ways to Kill. So, that is not the book we need.” He nodded and pointed to a black book: Ασυγχώρητο κατάρες και τον τρόπο χρήσης τους. “Greek for Unforgivable Curses and How to Use Them.” We moved on.

One book had a dark stain on it that looked horribly like blood. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Maybe I was imagining it, maybe not, but I thought a faint whispering was coming from the books, as though they knew someone was there who shouldn't be. I also sensed great evil coming from some of them.

A large black and silver volume caught Harry’s eye. He pulled it out with difficulty, because it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open. A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence -- the book was screaming! Harry snapped it shut, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, earsplitting note. He stumbled backward and knocked over his lamp, which went out at once.

Panicking, we heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside -- stuffing the shrieking book back on the shelf, we ran for it. We passed Filch in the doorway; Filch's pale, wild eyes looked straight through us, and we slipped under Filch's outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book's shrieks still ringing in our ears.

Harry came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor, and I slammed into him. We had been so busy getting away from the library, we hadn't paid attention to where we were going. Perhaps because it was dark, I didn't recognize where I was at all. There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, I knew, but we must be five floors above there.