Annabeth Chase and Things Are Getting Intense

Chapter Thirty Eight

"Yes, this is the place," Dumbledore said, nodding gravely.

Annabeth nodded. Despite her soaking robes and the freezing chill in her bones, she could feel that there was some kind of... tingle in the air. Not a breeze, exactly. More like an electrical charge, if that could be equated to magic. It was in the very air, and not the explosive, excited kind of magic that filled the halls of Hogwarts. This was quiet. Waiting.

"This is merely the antechamber, the entrance hall," Dumbledore said, slowly revolving on the spot while Harry and Annabeth shivered. "We need to penetrate the inner place... now it is Lord Voldemort's obstacles that stand in our way, rather than those nature made..."

He approached the back wall of the cave and ran his hand across the rock, muttering words in Latin too quiet for Annabeth to hear. He walked the perimeter of the cave a couple times, keeping a hand on the wall always. Occasionally he paused to examine a stretch of wall more closely, before shaking his head and continuing. Finally he stopped, his hand pressed flat against the side of the cave.

"Here," he said. "We go on through here. The entrance is concealed."

He stepped back from the wall of the cave and pointed his wand at it. For a second, an arched, fiery outline of a door appeared, blazing brightly.

"You've d-done it!" Harry said, hugging himself to try and keep warm. No sooner had he said it that the archway disappeared into the rock again like it had never been there in the first place.

Dumbledore turned around. "Oh. I'm so sorry, I forgot." he pointed his wand first at Harry, then Annabeth. Both of their robes immediately turned warm and soft, like they were fresh from the dryer. He turned back to the wall, studying it intently as if there was writing on it only he could see. After two solid minutes, he said, "oh, surely not. So crude."

"What?" Annabeth asked.

"I rather think," Dumbledore said, putting his hand in his robes and withdrawing a short silver knife, "that we are required to make payment to pass."

"Payement," Annabeth repeated, eyeing the knife. "As in blood."

"Blood?" Harry said incredulously.

"I said it was crude," Dumbledore said. He sounded like a disappointed teacher, like he'd been expecting better and had been let down. "The idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your enemy must weaken him or herself to enter. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury."

"Physical injury can still be very bad," Annabeth said, thinking of the tunnels under Rome when she'd broken her ankle. Or her injuries in The Pit. Or on any other quest she'd been on. "Don't underestimate it."

"You are correct, Annabeth," Dumbledore said. "However, in this case, incorrect." He shook back his sleeve to reveal his forearm and brought up the knife.

"Professor!" Harry protested, hurrying forward. "I'll do it, I'm—"

Dumbledore just smiled and cut the knife into his forearm. His blood spurted up and sprayed the wall, dotting it with dark drops.

"You are very kind, Harry," he said, passing his wand over the cut and humming under his breath. It healed almost instantly. "But your blood is worth more than mine. Ah, that seems to have done the trick, doesn't it?"

The bright silver outline appeared in the wall once more, staying present this time. Inside the arch it formed, the blood spattered rock faded away into nothing. Beyond it was total darkness.

"After me, I think," Dumbledore said, walking through the archway with his wand raised.

The arch opened up into a whole new chamber and was even darker than the last, but way more eerie. They were standing on the narrow bank of a huge black lake that stretched out farther than the eye could see, filled with black water as still as glass. A narrow strip of land circled the perimeter of the cave, covered in rocks and pebbles.