"What?!"
"Harry, you were hissing!" Hermione said quietly.
"What do you mean, hissing?" Harry narrowed his eyes.
"Hermione, what are you talking about?" Richard stared at the girl in surprise.
"That's snake language—Parseltongue!" Granger declared authoritatively. "I've read about it. Salazar Slytherin could speak Parseltongue, and so could You-Know-Who."
"Whoa!" Richard stared at Hermione with enormous eyes. "Now that's news!"
Grosvenor immediately understood what was going on. Harry had a Horcrux containing a fragment of Voldemort's soul, while Richard had a similar piece of jewellery; both of them had heard words instead of hissing, which meant they could both speak Parseltongue.
"Richie, what's wrong?" Hermione stared at the boy in confusion.
"I hope, dear Hermione, that this information won't go any further than you," Grosvenor replied.
"Of course not!" Hermione sounded offended. "Richie, how could you even doubt me?"
"Just a reminder..."
"Hey!" Potter put a finger to his lips and pointed towards the door. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he continued, "I think I heard footsteps."
The two boys and the girl strained their ears. At that very moment, shuffling footsteps sounded in the corridor, accompanied by hoarse muttering.
"Show me, Mrs Norris, where are the rule-breakers? In the lavatory? The girls' lavatory?!"
"Filch!" Hermione breathed sharply.
"Run!" Harry whispered loudly, immediately bolting into the tunnel.
Granger, swept along by herd instinct, dashed after Potter.
Richard glanced somewhat doubtfully at the lavatory door, shifted his gaze to the mouth of the tunnel, and considered simply activating his invisibility. Then he heaved a sigh and stepped into the tunnel. In the dim light, he found an engraving of a snake on the wall.
"Clos-s-se!"
A strange hiss escaped the boy's mouth. At once, the passage sealed itself from the inside. It became as dark as in one particularly famous place.
From farther down the tunnel came Granger's loud, rapidly receding shriek and Potter's yells as the two of them hurtled down the dark, slimy passage as though they were going down a waterslide.
"Lumos."
The light at the tip of Richard's wand drove back the darkness. Richie stared in horror at the sloping descent. Checking the updated map, he discovered that the inclined tunnel levelled out after about a hundred metres, continuing horizontally from there, with some sort of chamber beyond it.
Heaving yet another sigh, Grosvenor took a glider out of his bag, enlarged it, stepped aboard, and smoothly flew down, hovering some ten to twenty centimetres above the highest point of the floor. There was still plenty of clearance overhead; he could stretch his arms up without touching the ceiling. Smaller branches of the tunnel flashed past on either side. The glider wouldn't fit through those, but even an adult could comfortably walk through them upright.
Before long, muffled swearing could be heard from below. The echoes carried the words to Richard's ears.
"Harry Potter! Why the devil did you go charging into the tunnel?! I'm absolutely filthy because of you!"
"Filch was coming!" Potter tried to defend himself.
"So what?" Hermione continued indignantly. "We have bloody invisibility suits!"
"Er... I didn't think of that. Oh! Where's Richie?"
Hermione spun around and spotted a bright light rapidly approaching them. A short while later, Richard stepped off the glider onto the wet floor beside them. His eyes gleamed mischievously as he looked at Harry and Hermione, both pale and plastered with filth from head to toe.
"Charming!" he drawled. "I've always known that Gryffindors were closeted suicides and ascetics with nothing but contempt for comfort. Now I'm even more convinced."
Harry's eyes betrayed his embarrassment. He muttered:
"Richie, have you got anything I can change into?"
"Harry, don't be shy," Grosvenor replied ironically. "Nothing's too good for my friends. I'd even sacrifice my unicorn-wool pants with the family crest!"
At the sight of Potter's elongated face—he had pulled off his mask and was now staring at Richard with huge, horrified eyes—Hermione couldn't help snorting into her fist.
"Anything but that!" Harry exclaimed with superstitious horror. "No, Richie! God save me from your magic-horse pants! A normal robe will do!"
"Sure?" Grosvenor drawled doubtfully.
"Absolutely!" Potter nodded like a bobblehead.
"Then here, take a robe."
Harry took from Richard the very same Hufflepuff robe he had changed into earlier. Richie handed Hermione an identical robe. She accepted it with some embarrassment.
"Turn around," she said.
The boys turned away, giving the girl some privacy to change.
"Not as if there's anything there I haven't seen before," Richard muttered.
"Well, I haven't seen anything," Harry joined in, quickly changing out of his filthy ninja suit and into the robe, just as the girl was doing.
"Hmm..." Richie gave his friend an openly sceptical sideways glance. "That's a strange thing to hear from the owner of an Invisibility Cloak and a ninja suit..."
"Boys!" Hermione's voice vibrated with menace. "You do realise I can hear every word you're saying?"
Harry flinched at Granger's tone and instinctively hunched his shoulders. It vividly reminded him of stern Aunt Petunia.
"No, that's perfectly fine," Richard replied, unperturbed. "You've got a whole collection of spy gadgets yourself."
"Richie!" Hermione called ominously. By the time Grosvenor turned around, the girl was already wearing the robe, her hands planted firmly on her hips. "Do you actually think I spy on boys in the showers?"
The glider's headlights flashed across Richard's spectacles. By now he had taken off his mask as well, and a broad grin lit up his face in the underground gloom.
"Notice that I'm not the one who said it!" he replied.
Hermione practically choked with indignation, completely forgetting where she was.
"As if I haven't got anything better to do!" she exclaimed.
Richie tilted his head to one side. Once again, the lenses of his spectacles caught the glare of the headlights.
"What about Lockhart?" he asked in an insinuating whisper. "You haven't been spying on him either?"
Hermione's face took on a look of vexation, as though she had just realised what an opportunity she'd missed.
"No way!" Harry's eyes bulged. "Granger, were you seriously planning to spy on Lockhart in the shower?!"
"Er... NO!"
Harry smirked, straightened his shoulders, and continued in a syrupy voice:
"Hermione, is it just me, or did that 'no' sound suspiciously like you wanted to say 'yes'?!"
Granger's face went completely blank, and she replied in a stony voice:
"Mr Potter, you're imagining things. Are we going to stand here all night, or are we going to carry on exploring the secret passage?"
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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