Fred and George and the Toilers of Trouble (Year 1) ✔

Chapter 8:5

Plunged into darkness, the twins lit their wands. The passage was as wide as the map detailed, with sloping walls coated in heavily tarnished metal.

"It's damp in here," said Fred sourly. "Smells rank."

"He gave up rather quick, didn't he?" George wondered aloud as they traversed the passage. "Peeves can float through walls. We've seen it on the map. Maybe he wanted to let us go."

"That doesn't sound like something he'd do. Keep an eye out, George."

After a few very dark and silent minutes, with nothing but the tinny reverberation of hand-me-down shoes dragging across the metal floor, Fred glanced down at his wristwatch and reopened the map with a skeptical expression. "It's just about time, but I don't see anything unusual."

"Why did they write the time on the map, then?" George asked, continuing past his brother.

Fred craned his ears toward the direction of where they had come. Then he turned and leaned his head forward, squinting in the glow of his wand. He swore he could hear something.

"Why do we have to be here right now?"

"George, do you hear that?"

The noise grew louder.

"Maybe..."

And louder.

"George..."

"Hang on, Fred. What if they wrote down a time we needed —"

"GEORGE!"

"— to stay away?"

There was hardly a second to react. The wall of rushing water collided into them, sending the twins surging down the passage. Fred had just enough time to grab his brother's sweater and yank him to the right before the passage split in two. Toppling head-over-foot, they gasped for air as best they could in the tumult, but it was only sucked out of their lungs when the floor gave out beneath them an instant later. Bursting from the wide plumbing pipe, Fred and George thrashed feebly as they nose-dived to the pool below.

When the waterfall eventually stopped threatening to drown them, and the dripping pipe groaned to a halt, the boys were able to see another door at the edge of the darkened reservoir and climbed out.

"Fred..."

"Yeah, George..."

"I think — I have an idea why they wrote down the time on the map," he said, twisting the frigid water from his sweater.

"You don't say?" Fred clarified with a lopsided smile. "Maybe write it down so we don't forget."

"Where did the pipe take us? We've got to be on the other end of the castle."

"Oh, no! The map!"

Fred scrambled through his pockets for the folded parchment, but his panic transformed into something like wonder. Out came a completely dry scrap of parchment, water gently beading down the page.

"It's...dry..." said Fred, mystified.

"Magic. Good thinking, Marauders," George hummed with a satisfied smirk. He spun the wheel to the hatch on the wall and gave it a shove.

"Wait!" Fred blurted, yanking him back from the screening tapestry.

With the map open and in working order, they were able to see a dot roaming the corridor outside. It belonged to Professor Kettleburn. And he wasn't the only one searching that hall. Zooming around the corner, Peeves was still counting in a rabid, little voice. He was up to ninety-seven. The twins nudged the door forward and peeked over one another as they spied the conversation from the fringed edge of the tapestry.

Kettleburn's metal shoes clanked and scraped against the stone floor. He was so close to the wall, they could see his mangled head, riveted with copper plates, and could even hear the gears whirring on his metal armature.

"What is it, Peeves?" roared the Care of Magical Creatures professor. "Lose your way again?"

"Don't blow steam at me, Kettleblast," Peeves hissed. "Ickle firsties are up to no good."

"Friends of yours?"

"Perchance...enemies first, and then friends."

"That's fascinating," Kettleburn drawled in a rasping, cantankerous voice. "I didn't know you had friends."

Peeves only seemed more delighted by the war of words. He narrowed his eyes and soared up to Kettleburn's discolored cape. "At least my schoolmates didn't leave me alive with fewer than four limbs."

The professor swayed in place and smacked his gums, steam emanating from his arm. "They didn't, eh?"

"Why, of course not," Peeves said, elated. "They did the kindlier thing and murdered me!"

Peeves floated through the ceiling, having been caught trying to track the twins, and Professor Kettleburn waddled mechanically to his office, looking slightly pricked by the taunting. With the poltergeist's cackle still ringing in their waterlogged ears, Fred and George checked the hallway before leaving, for fear that the map wasn't telling them the truth. They eased the door back into position, flattened the tapestry, and scurried down the shadowy hall. Quidditch tryouts were finished and they only hoped there was enough time to change out of their wet clothes.