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

Chapter 16:8

George and Angelina followed the woman along the corridor and down a spiraling marble staircase to the ground floor, keeping enough distance between them, but not so much that they would lose track.

"She certainly knows her way around." Angelina pointed to a shadow at the end of the hall. "There, she's turned the corner."

"We should be...cautious," said George apprehensively. Although he and his brother had nearly the entire castle memorized, this was the first time George had gone roaming without a destination since the day they had learned how to activate the map, and this particular stretch of classrooms looked unfamiliar. In fact, he'd been attempting to convince Angelina for some time that they should turn around, but the girl was even more stubborn and single-minded than Fred.

They hustled down the empty hallway, and George held Angelina back when they reached the corner.

"Let me look. It's safer."

"Are you joking? Because I'm a girl I can't protect myself?"

"No, I'm just...more observant than you."

Angelina sneered. "Says the boy who can't tell the difference between a spider and a tree."

"Fine, but I'm dead sneakier. Trust me."

George gazed into the corridor. In the faint torchlight, the witch's features were more discernable. She had long hair, black as the deepest shadows of the forest. It fell in delicate waves over her shoulders. Her shrewd, amber eyes stared up at the ceiling, as if she was taking in the vastness of the castle above them. With a small face, high cheekbones, and plump lips that partly concealed a row of ivory-white teeth, the mysterious woman was something to behold.

"So?"

"She's beautiful."

Angelina exhaled stridently. "Could you be any more useless?"

"Right — she's moving."

George took a cautious step into the hall just as the witch turned a corner. He was quick to advance.

"Will you wait? What if it's a trap?" Angelina muttered, trailing from behind.

"A trap..." said George through a laugh. "Don't be stupid. You really think I'd just stroll right into a trap?"

"Yes, which is precisely why I said something."

George took the same turn and stumbled to a stop as he reached the center of the hallway, his face stricken with fear.

"What? What is it?" Angelina begged in a whisper.

"She's — staring — at me," said George in a brittle voice, his every limb immobilized.

Angelina hastened to his side, a hand on her wand, just as the witch veiled herself under the hood of her silky, black robe. The woman lingered in the dim corridor, unmoving and separated from them by the length of a classroom. Which is why, when she suddenly raised her wand and whispered an incantation, George and Angelina were unable to know just how frightened they should be in that moment. Then the witch dropped her head to her chest, whirled in a circle, and threw out her arm in a violent thrust.

They jostled in place, expecting the worst, but nothing came from her wand. No light, no spells, nothing. That is, until a monumental wave of rushing water sprouted out of thin air at the witch's back. It quickly climbed to the ceiling and consumed everything in its path.

"We're dead. We're very dead," George uttered, wide-eyed, as the wall of water impacted the space where the woman stood. She faced it, without flinching.

To their amazement, the water parted around her and continued to flow in a torrent down the corridor. It quickened toward them. Angelina swore they had been hit first with a Stunning Spell, because she had gone completely rigid.

"George...?"

"Run, Angelina! RUN!!"

They spun on their heels and hightailed it down the hall. Angelina reached for his hand, as classroom doors blew off their hinges, left, right, and center.

"What are you doing?" he spat, slapping her hand away.

"Don't let go, George!" she yelled.

As they sprinted around the corner, the surging flood crashed into the wall. It would overtake them in seconds. Splashes of water clawed at their heels. George instantly recalled the pipeline he had discovered earlier that year with Fred and lunged for Angelina's robe, but it was too late — the wave was upon them. It hit their backs with the force of the Hogwarts Express, scattering them in opposite directions. Just before the current toppled George end over end into an adjoining classroom, he could make out Angelina's chestnut arms flailing above the surface as she was swept down the hall.

It was a full minute before he could understand his dreadful circumstances. George was on the ground floor — in a room with no windows. And on the off occasion, when he wasn't being throttled by the turbulent waves, he was able to detect just how alarmingly fast the small classroom was flooding.