Chapter Text
Into the Dark
It was lunchtime and Harry was bored. This was almost an insult to this beautiful autumn Saturday just a few days before Hallowe’en. Ron and Ginny were off at a rare, private family gathering that included the entire family… including Charlie. Hermione was at her parent's home. Even Neville, Luna, and seemingly everyone else he might consider hanging out with were either gone or otherwise occupied.
Harry left the castle and headed to the Quidditch pitch. Not a soul one was available to practice or scrimmage with him. What could he find to fill all of his empty time?
" Blimey. I've got to find something to do," he thought. "I'm going to go bonkers just hanging around here."
If he was Neville, he would mostly likely go searching the bogs and lake for rare water plants. Delightfully quirky Luna would probably be venturing out on a hunt for the elusive crumple-horned snorkack or feeding the thestrals. Hermione would probably be sitting by the lake reading a book she had just found in the library. But that was not for him. He preferred more 'interesting' diversions as his mind would call them. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort was popping into his mind.
As he finished a pumpkin pasty, he pondered the idea of going into Hogsmeade and wandering through the shops. Hermione would be okay with a solo venture such as that. She would inevitably go into the bookstore and snoop around. He preferred to have some company for a trip such as that.
Once back in the castle, he had a tea and some brownies in the dining hall. After finishing them, he grabbed his book bag and walked into the entry area near the Grand Staircase. At first, he considered going up. However, he could not think of a thing to do or a reason to go that way. Instead, he started down towards the dungeons. There were parts he had never seen. Parts he had only heard about. Maybe, this was time to explore them.
"There might be something interesting to find or see down there," he thought as he began his descent.
It was not long before he was passing beyond the most familiar parts of the dungeons. Everyone knew the areas in and around the Potions classroom and its adjoining facilities, including Snape's office. He was prepared to go deeper.
A queasy feeling had gripped his stomach as he suddenly considered what might happen if Snape were to suddenly appear in the corridor. He would certainly query him as to why he was skulking about the dungeons…Snape would surely use the word skulking, or possibly prowling…on such a lovely autumn Saturday.
"Whew," he thought a moment after successfully dodging an unwanted encounter. "I hadn't considered meeting Snape down here. That's the last thing I would have needed. He would surely have interrogated me, then warned about who knows what, and sent me on my way with a sneer and a growl."
At least he did not have to fear running into Draco and his crew. Draco almost always was at Malfoy Manor on the weekends hobnobbing with the elite of the pureblood community. That was displeasure that he always enjoyed missing.
As he trekked on, his soft-soled shoes moved silently along the stones of the corridor. He had originally gotten them to go along with his invisibility cloak on his secret escapades. It did not make much sense to be invisible if the crunching of a pair of hard-soled shoes was announcing your every step. However, they were so comfortable that he soon took to wearing them all of the time.
Eventually, he passed the stairs that would lead to the Nearly-headless Nick’s Deathday Party Hall and several other areas including the way to the Slytherin common room and dormitories. He was now in the area where the detention cells sat vacantly…enduring vestiges of a different time only mourned for by Argus Filch. This was uncharted territory for him.
He walked stealthily into the deeper reaches of the dungeons. It gave him a creepy feeling, but that was to be expected. The only life he encountered other than a few rats, insects, and spiders, was a pair of older Slytherin girls engaged in a make-out session that was clearly headed in an even more intimate direction.
They gave him quite a start, as he did them when he suddenly happened upon them. It took him a second to realize it was a pair of girls, not a boy and a girl. He was suddenly taken even further aback.
You could see the shock and fear in the eyes of the girls in the torchlight as they quickly jumped up. They hurriedly attempted to pull up the bras, fasten buttons, pull up their scanty knickers, rearrange and straighten their clothes, all while fleeing as rapidly as possible. The situation ended as quickly as it started amidst a clatter of their footsteps as they escaped without making any further eye contact.
Harry stood frozen like he had been hit by a full-body bind curse for several seconds. Of the things on his list of things he thought it was possible to encounter on this little foray, this was not one of them.
"Wait until the guys hear about this," thought Harry with a wry grin as he regained his composure. "This is cooler than when Lavender and Parvati caught Mickey and that Hufflepuff girl doing it down by the lake. The whole school knew about it in about an hour. They're lucky they didn't get expelled. If Mickey's parents didn't have friends at the Ministry… Well, they were lucky."
The detention cells, while not officially off-limits, were considered places not to be visited. There were many stories about them. They were said to be haunted, and not in a nice way like the hauntings by the regular Hogwarts ghosts, or even by the mischievous, obnoxious Peeves. It was said they were home to some truly evil spirits left behind by some of the more sinister prisoners from bygone days.
The dungeons were originally supposed to be an area for the punishing and 'reinstruction' of wayward students. However, so the stories go, they became a place filled with dark witches and wizards who needed to be imprisoned in the days before the building of Azkaban. The Ministry supposedly warehoused unforgivables there. The Hogwarts dungeons became a sort of oubliette for forgetting their problems. None of this has ever been proven, but it is a common tale. The feel of the place made him wonder about the real truth.
A cold, dark chill ran up his spine as he walked deeper into the corridor of steel cages. The thick, damp air smelled ugly like one might imagine the breath of a dementor. This was a place that knew only things like pain, despair, torment, hopelessness, and other evil feelings. He could only try to imagine how many poor souls had spent how many countless days, weeks, years in these horrible cells. If a dementor were to happen upon this place, it would surely starve to death unless it fled.
The steel bars making up the front of the cells and their doors were dirty black and appeared to be damp. Everything was covered with ancient cobwebs that were so dust-covered that multitudes of hideous local insects, centipedes, millipedes, and other creepy crawlers walked on them with impunity. The occasional active spider web was decorated with many a poor bug that failed to discern the difference between it and the rest of the dirty silk highway lining this place.
As he walked onward, the enchanted torches that lined all of the halls and corridors of Hogwarts flared to life in front of him as the ones behind him died out. The double row of cages seemed endless as it twisted and turned deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle. The only interruptions in them were the occasional space with chains hanging from the ceiling for the suspension by the wrists, thumbs, feet, whatever. There were also places to shackle an unfortunate soul to the wall, presumably for flogging or other unimaginable methods of torture. He could almost hear their horrible screams, cries, and moans still echoing off the walls around him.
"This is a horrible place," he thought. "I can't imagine actually having to be here. How can Filch even feel a second of remorse for no longer having students being forced to serve detention here?"
He finally realized that he had walked for longer than he planned. He finally started to feel the need to turn back. He was ready to give up on finding anything of interest when two torches lit up in the middle of the corridor instead of on the walls. In their light, he could make out a large door sitting between them.
It was just a couple of torches further ahead, so he stopped his turn and walked toward the door. When he got to it, he found it to be made of thick, heavy wood with huge, steel hinges fastening it to its frame. It was secured with a large lock that looked fairly recent by comparison, almost out of place.
He rattled the lock to no avail. He tried Alohomora and several other charms he thought might open the door. None of them had any effect. Even a frustrated Bombarda Maxima did little more than rattle it a bit and cause a few spiders and bugs to fall onto the damp rocks of the floor.
"I guess this is it," he told himself. "Might as well get out of here. I don't think there is anything else to see here."