Quoted By:
“Riley, get people to start opening the doors, me and Apollo will start getting the keys back-to-front! We meet in the middle!”
“Got it! Everyone, form groups of four, one from each army!”
You can’t really compound magics such as Alohomorra, but you can at least split the tiredness evenly between armies. As each person takes their place, you frantically read the last line.
“Try, uh, 'death' key!”
“<span class="mu-i">Accio </span>ᛞᛖᚦ key! <span class="mu-i">Accio </span>ᛖᚾᛞ key! <span class="mu-i">Accio </span>ᛚᛁᚠᛖ ᛖᚾᛞ key! Got it!”
“So he fought as the orb hung in the sky above…” You read, trying to piece the story backwards. “Sun or moon, one or the other.”
More accios, and by his side, each soldier readies themselves and cast Alohomorra. Not everyone manages to get it to stick, stepping aside for the next one to try.
“'Power' key?”
More accios.
“Nothing!”
“Then try ‘glove’.”
“<span class="mu-i">Accio</span>! Next!”
Once five of the doors are open by brute force, you tell your army to leave.
“Go! Leave two brooms, we’ll finish and catch up to you!”
They leave, seconds ticking down the few minutes you have left as you try key after key until-
“Got the last one!”
You rush, opening door after door, until, finally, you find the star at the end. You two jump on the brooms and fly through the halls of the school, taking sharp turns and more than once slamming against a wall and knocking vases to the ground. But you fly through the entrance to the old forbidden corridor with five minutes left. At the very end, all four armies waiting by a door with eight filled star-shaped holes and one empty one.
You not so much dismount your broom, but fall from it in a roll, catching your balance and slamming the final missing star into the door. You twist the handle and the soldiers pour into the Headmistress Challenge.
“You’ve <span class="mu-i">got</span> to be kidding me,” Brighton says.
In front of you, is an enormous, life-sized chess board, with two-and-a-half meters tall pieces. You enter on the side of the white pieces, and on the opposite wall there is a massive clock, ticking down the seconds until the end of the hour. Below the clock, there is a door with a heavy-looking golden lock. In front of the clock, in an elevated platform and with an amused look on her face is-
“Why, I assure you I am not, Mr. Longbottom,"says Headmistress Minerva McGonagal in her precise Scottish accent. She snaps her fingers and the clock stops. “Though I shall be considerate and stop your time until you all take your positions as pieces.”
“I was supposed to tell you that you won’t be able to move the pieces you don’t choose to replace, but you seem to have arrived here with seventeen soldiers,” she says, frowning. She taps a finger against her cheek. “Potter shall have to instruct the teachers to be rougher, next time. Well, I suppose the correct thing to do would be to get all of you to step on the board and give free passage to the remaining one, don’t you agree?”
[Cont.]
