Harry Potter and the Girl Who Never Died

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Last Room

A disgusting smell filled their nostrils, making both groups pull their robes up over their noses. Eyes watering, they saw, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll even larger than the one Camellia had tackled, out cold with a bloody lump on its head.

"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one," Hermione whispered as they stepped carefully over one of its massive legs. "Come on, I can't breathe."

He pulled open the next door, both of them hardly daring to look at what came next -- but there was nothing very frightening in here, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.

"Snape's," said Neville. "What do we have to do?"

They stepped over the threshold, and immediately a fire sprang up behind them in the doorway. It wasn't ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway leading onward. They were trapped.

"Look!" Hermione seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Harry looked over her shoulder to read it:

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,

Two of us will help you, which ever you would find,

One among us seven will let you move ahead,

Another will transport the drinker back instead,

Two among our number hold only nettle wine,

Three of us are killers, waiting bidden in line.

Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,

To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide

You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;

Second, different are those who stand at either end,

But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,

Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right

Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

Camellia and Hermione let out a great sigh and the rest, amazed, saw that they were smiling, the very last thing they felt like doing.

"Brilliant," said Hermione. "This isn't magic -- it's logic -- a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here forever."

"But so will we, won't we?"

"Of course not," said Camellia. "Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple."

"But how do we know which to drink?"

"Give me a minute."

Hermione read the paper several times, though Camellia went straight on, examining the bottles. She smelt each one, and dipped a finger in one, tasting it.

''What are you doing Camellia! What if that's poison!?''

''Well, it's not. Got it Hermione?''

''Yeah. The one you tasted was nettle wine.''

''So, the largest and the smallest, isn't poison. Two of the poisons are on the wine's left hand side. One is still lurking around. The second to left and second to right are twins. So if the largest, which is second to right, isn't poison, and is twin with the one second to left, it means that those two are nettle wine. Poison is on the left hand side, so the one on the far left and the one third from the right is poison. That leaves the smallest bottle, the bottle in the middle, and the bottle on the far right. If we want to go forward, the one on the far right isn't our bottle, so that one's either poison or the bottle to go back. The smallest one can't have poison, so that one's the bottle which takes you forward. So, that leaves the one on the far right and the bottle in the middle. I took a bet, that if nettle wine was going to be on the right of poison, poison would be next to another bottle of poison. So the middle one is poison, and the one furthest to the right, is the one to go back.'' Camellia explained. 

Harry immediately took hold of the smallest bottle and drank all of its contents. He ran through the black flame, and the others gasped at his betrayal. Camellia sighed at her brother.

''The rest of you, go back. Drink a sip each though. Lavender, why don't you go first?'' Lavender nodded her head quickly and sipped some of the potion. Dean was next, and then Seamus. They all jumped through the purple flame safely. 

''Mellia, what are you going to do?''

''Make a potion of course.'' Camellia transfigured her hair into a cauldron, and cast a simple incendio charm on the floor, and she poured the nettle wine and poison inside the cauldron, letting it simmer for a second. She let a strand of Draco, Ron, Neville, and Hermione's hair in, as well as her own, inside the cauldron, and it began to change colour. It became the same clear blue as harry's potion. 

''What?''

''My uncle was smart. He knew that there will be people with enough logic to solve the riddle, but he tested for people who had even more logic than that, to see if they knew, that nettle wine acts as a catalyst for poison, and it breaks it down, making a potion for letting a person through the unforgiving flames: the black flames. We'll drink this, and let the rest simmer for ten minutes, which will change the potion into one which lets us past the forgiving flames: the purple flames. So tadaa! Now we've made a potion for entering and exiting, as well as a potion only for us, since only our hair was combined.'' Camellia transfigured her hair into a spoon, and took a sip, jumping through the flames. 

The rest quickly followed, to find Harry standing in front of the mirror of Erised, bewitched by its charms. 

Professor Quirrell stood behind Harry, smirking as he saw the entranced boy before him. 

Camellia was seething. She pushed Harry out of the view of the mirror, and Harry jolted awake. 

There was someone behind him - but it wasn't Snape. It wasn't even Voldemort.