Chapter 31: Working On The Riddle, and The Stones Chamber (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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Quinn sat in his workshop with a sheet of paper sitting on the table in front of Quinn. The sheet of paper contained the riddle given to him by Friar that held the clue to the first unknown vault.
[
Beyond sight exist five vaults, not known to many.
Their source unknown; lost in time.
Bearing the knowledge that death might come,
I give you the hint of the first one.
A vault so cold that even death might die,
You will find it on the level five stories high.
]
Quinn tapped his finger on the table as he read the riddle, and it was fairly easy to understand.
”There are five cursed vaults in Hogwarts, and as Friar said, not many people know about the vaults. No one knows how they were created or who created them. And because they have never been opened, no one knows about the contents,” Quinn deciphered the meaning of the first paragraph of the riddle.
Now, the second paragraph contained some information that Friar hadn't given him. ”Now, how does Friar know that there is danger in the vaults; he has never been in there, which could mean that the entrance of the first vault holds some sort of danger, and people have died attempting to enter the vault.”
This part of the riddle did worry him a tiny bit. Quinn wasn't a fearless person; he worried about his health and safety and wanted to be perfectly safe before proceeding forward. But, in this situation, he didn't know how to ensure his safety. There were no precedents for Quinn to reference; he was going in blind this time.
Until now, Quinn had been preoccupied with preparing for the Troll incident, but he had tried to collect some information about these vaults from any source he could, but he wasn't able to find anything. The Room of Requirement didn't have anything on the vaults, neither did the library. The ghosts couldn't tell him anything regarding the vault. He even went to the kitchen to talk to the elves, but they too had nothing to inform him.
”This will be a new challenge for me,” muttered Quinn as he exhaled a sigh.
The last paragraph of the riddle was the real clue. The lines represented information about the first vault.
”A vault so cold that even death might die,” recited Quinn as he tried to understand the meaning behind the sentence.
”A vault so cold...” murmured Quinn as he tapped his finger on the table. ”What can that mean? Is the room freezing; is it a room with an alternate environment, a tundra, or a permafrost type environment.” Quinn had read about artificially cultivated environments within closed spaces. The best example he could give was Newt Scamander's trunk; it had various habitats for different magical beasts.
The second part of the sentence was also intriguing, ”... that even death might die.” Quinn wrinkled his nose before clinking his tongue, ”I hate metaphors. Death might die... what does that mean?”
From the top of his head, Quinn could only think that the room was north pole cold, ”Maybe whatever is in the room is encased by an icecap, is that it?” Quinn scribbled some notes before moving to the final line.
”You will find it on the level five stories high,” Quinn smiled when he read this line, ”Now this is much better, on the level five stories high means the fifth floor, but if we count the basement, then it might be the fourth floor... hmm, two whole floors worth of search-area.”
Recon didn't show any sign of vaults, just like it didn't show the Room Of Requirements. Well, Quinn had tried to enchant the position of the Room Of Requirements in the map but didn't achieve any success as any person inside the room was invisible. When Quinn opened the map inside the Room Of Requirements, he didn't show up on Recon.
The vaults were unplottable. Or, at least Quinn couldn't plot them with his current capabilities.
”I have been on the fourth-floor and fifth-floor a lot, but I haven't felt any unnatural cold on any of the floors,” pondered Quinn.
Quinn had mapped out Hogwarts' entirety for Recon, and he had memorized every inch of the castle for his mindscape transition. Quinn had given himself two years for replicating a working model of Hogwarts in his mind, and his current progress covered floors ground till sixth. Only the dungeons and seventh floor were remaining in Quinn's mind replica. But despite this, Quinn had no clue about there being a vault on the fourth or fifth floor.
”This demands another round of late-night, after-curfew exploration.”
Quinn opened a new project in his workshop and named it,
「Project: Vaults」
Under the 「Project: Vaults」 he opened a chapter,
「Chapter: Vault One (Temp.)」
From that day onwards, Quinn combed through the two floors at night, after the curfew.
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At night, Quinn searched for Vault number one. But, during the day, he was still a student of Hogwarts, attending class, learning magic, practicing magic in Room Of Requirements, working at the A.I.D office, and monitoring what was happening around Hogwarts.
As the year entered November, the weather turned frigid. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost, and students had to walk carefully to not risk slipping. Quinn created an exercise out of the frosted surface.
In the morning, during his run, Quinn would turn all the ice he encountered into ice objects like flowers, ravens, snakes, lions, badgers, and anything that came into his mind. An exercise designed to exercise his focus and control over his magic.
But, enough about that, and back to the next key event of this year, Harry Potter's first Quidditch event. In the canon, Quirrell and Snape were locked in a battle of cursing and counter-cursing Harry's broom, and Hermione had unknowingly knocked Quirrellmort while trying to get to Snape.
Speaking of Harry and Hermione, the golden trio didn't form in this world. Quinn had observed them and found that Hermione and Ivy had gotten really close, whereas Harry and Ron were already friends from before.
Harry Potter in this world was confident and outgoing. He was also involved in pranks, so he was always butting heads with rule-loving Hermione, so their relationship was quite rocky in this world.
But after the Troll incident, they had mellowed towards each other and were much more willing to tolerate each other. Ron had also toned down his insults towards Hermione and only provoked her if she berated Ron's intelligence and manners.
Instead of Harry and Ron becoming best friends with Hermione, Ivy had become best friends with Hermione. The two girls did everything together, and it reminded Quinn of Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass.
Still, Quinn was relieved by this outcome. At least with this, Hermione would still be in the loop regarding things around Harry as the Boy-Who-Lived was close to his twin sister, and Hermione was close to Ivy Potter. Quinn was sure that the challenges they had ahead of them would help these four build a bond similar to that of the golden trio of the canon.
Coming to the present time, Quinn was standing near the restricted part of the third-floor corridor, the part that held the entrance to the Philosopher's stone chamber, guarded by the creations of the Hogwarts professors. He was going to enter the special chamber and try to look at the Philosopher's stone.
It was broad daylight and not the usual hour of operation for Quinn, who liked to pretend as a normal student during the day and do his extra-curricular work after school during the evening and night.
But, the opportunity was perfect as today was the first match of the Quidditch season, and the Boy-Who-Lived, the youngest seeker in Hogwarts history, was playing. A great majority of the school population was at the stadium to see the game.
This game was also the one where Quirrellmort tried to curse Harry's broom so that he could injure Harry, and Snape fought against Quirrellmort by counter-cursing to save Harry. In the canon, Hermione thought Snape was trying to harm Harry and took action to stop him but unknowingly knocked into Quirrell, who was the real preparator.
Quinn didn't care for this event and was going to leave Harry's protection to Snape. 'He will work harder. I am sure he doesn't want his love of life to see her child get gravely injured in front of her,' thought Quinn as he prepared for infiltration.
Quinn was going to use the game and infiltrate the defenses guarding the stone. Quinn really wanted to observe the stone for educational curiosity. With the whole school there, Quinn had plenty of time to go in and out.
Quinn stood in front of the door, and before opening it, he checked it out for wards. He shot out detection spells all around the locked door but didn't find a single ward on the door.
”This is reckless carelessness. Did Dumbledore really not put a single ward on the door; what was he thinking? Or, maybe there are wards, and I just can't detect them,” wondered Quinn. He hesitated about their being high-level wards he couldn't detect but decided to risk it, ”Whatever, let's enter this thing.”