Adventure in the Dungeons (Open)

[Tommy Bryce]

With all his homework finally done, Tommy felt exhausted. His hand hurt, his eyes were aching, and it wasn’t even dark yet so he couldn’t go look at the stars. There were plenty of books in the library on astronomy that he could read, but to be honest, he really didn’t want to read anymore. He already had a nasty paper cut on his thumb from turning one page a bit too quickly, and he thought his brain might just drop out or die on him if he insisted on looking at any more long words. And astronomy did tend to have some fairly hefty vocabulary. When he was younger his favourite word had been ‘perihelion’, closely followed by ‘spectrophotometry’. Both just sounded so... alien. And it had taken him some time to work out how exactly you said them aloud. It was much easier just reading the letters in your head, but not as much fun as stumbling over the words as he said them aloud for the first few times, eventually improving to the point where he could say them over and over again, like a tongue twister. That had certainly impressed his younger brothers.

With nothing else much to do, Tommy found himself wandering the castle, exploring once more. He had done lots more of this when he first joined Hogwarts, but had focussed on the towers, and finding where the best place would be for star-gazing; not to mention that his common room was high up. Unsurprisingly, that place had turned out to be the astronomy tower. On this occasion, he found himself going down steps instead of up, finally ending up at the stone stairway that led to the dungeons; the below ground level of the castle. The only times he had been down here were for Potions lessons with Professor Sparrow, but other than that it was a unknown area. The idea of exploring a strange place sent adrenalin through his body and a tiny grin appeared on his face – just the corners of his mouth twitching upwards in reality, but inside he was beaming. This was gonna be fun. Quite a few people might not expect Tommy to be the adventurous type, considering how cautious he was otherwise, but if something caught his attention or he found interest in something, he would not just let it go.

Venturing down the steps, his eyes alert and watchful, he peered around for a moment, but saw nothing but the potions classroom and Professor Sparrow’s office. Going further, he came to his first junction. After a moment of deliberation, he turned right. Then left. Then left again. Bad move – it was a dead end. Back, then right this time. It was a complete maze to Tommy, even though many of the older students, especially Slytherins, knew the place like the back of their hands. He passed a seemingly out-of-place picture of a bowl of fruit, but then stopped when he was only a few metres away from it. He thought he’d heard a noise. Having learnt very early on not to have your back to something that might harm you, he quickly spun around.

[Serdic Sanganius III]

Once his latest charms lesson had finished, for once annoyingly in the day when outside the sun still shone brightly over the delicate everglades, Serdic decided that now would be a good time to proceed onto scouting out the quest given to him on his fathers deathbed. Wandering down the first passageway he found, Serdic came up to what must be said an interesting portrait of a rather divine gentlemen, next to a suit of incredibly rusted medieval armour, complete with pike and chains. Serdic stopped and had a long, hard look at the portrait, admiring his moustache and gleaning eye as he casually waved at him, all the while leaning his cane against a rather flimsy piece of leg armour. This prompted a strange, almost aggressive rattle. Serdic looked up, wondering what was going on, but thought nothing of it. Then the floor caved in, swallowing him up with it. With a load bang, he landed in what looked like a secret passage, with a quick flamboyantly done ‘Lumos’ showing him some carefully hidden, if very tiny, stairs leading the way back up. The obviously thing to do would have been to turn back, however, due to his total lack of direction, he stumble down one of the what he gathered must have been of the many, many secret passages hidden inside the Castle. The dull and dusk smell piercing his nostrils when he reached the end told him he must be in something below ground, the walls feeling like they were about to cave in at any minute. Spotting a moving shadow upfront, he decided to investigate, timidly moving closer….

[Tommy Bryce]

Tommy was contemplating what exactly that noise could have been. It had echoed, but then anything would echo down here. Really, it had sounded like a bang – like the sound of a door slamming open, its handle cracking against the wall and making more plaster crumble from the dent already there while a large, slightly swaying figure stood in the doorway. He pushed the memory away with a quick shake of his head and instead turned to continue down the passageway, away from the noise. He was beginning to wonder whether it had been a good idea coming down here alone or not.

Taking a few more corners, he was soon lost again and feeling as though he was now facing the same direction he had just come down. Another noise sounded behind him and he spun, wand out, to see another figure with a wand. He gasped, dropping his with a clatter and making the light go out. He was just grateful that the other person, whoever they were, also had a lumos charm going as he dropped to his knees to scrabble for his wand, raising it and immediately restarting the lumos as he point it at them, unable to see their face. [red]"Who... who are you?"[/red] he asked, his voice quavering.