Minerva found herself in a dark room. Panic rose in her as the door in front of her shrank until it had completely disappeared. She knew she wouldn’t be able to walk into the hallway right now, but the fact that she was in an unknown room and the door had just vanished wasn’t very reassuring. Slowly, Minerva turned around. The first step she took had the effect of lightning two torches on both sides. Her heart lifted a little — at least now she could see something. She felt like cursing her best friend for getting both of them in this mess, but realized that would not make any difference right now and decided to focus on getting herself back into bed first. She’d tried to save Emily and put her own reputation in danger, there was a limit. This had been Emily’s own choice and it wasn’t the case that Emily hadn’t known the consequences of her actions — neither was she in a life threatening situation. Therefore, Minerva found she had no obligation to safe her best friend out of this situation now. Though, before she could even think about getting Emily back to bed she first had to get herself out of this nasty position.
Minerva took a deep breath and looked around. The room was only partly lighted by the torches and from what she could see now, it existed mostly out of big piles of lots and lots of things she could not place. It seemed like a giant dump of old magical items. Minerva found the biggest stash of books on her left that had torn off covers and missed many pages that had gotten wet, been burned or dispatched in any other way. A soft squeak left her mouth as she almost fell over some books while moving towards the larger stack. She picked up some of the dusty covered books and frowned slightly as she flipped through a barely readable, yellowish book. The blue cover had the letters “deat-“ written in silver on it — the larger part was covered in black ink — Minerva quickly put it away because she could fill in the book wasn’t one that you would find in a proper library. She soon discovered that most of the books that lay all over the place weren’t the nicest books. They were dark and absolutely not the ones she would have had at home, stocked in her bookcase. A shiver ran down her spine and she quickly put a book that was called “potions to kill” back on the pile. The nasty and cruel images in the book had made her stomach do some backflips.
While Minerva roamed through the large chamber — and more torches lit up around her as she passed them — she forgot her plan to get out of here. The content of the room intrigued her — maybe not in a good way because it made her shiver and shake, but she somehow got caught up in the books and magical objects all around her. She knelt down and brushed some dust off a large, copper kettle, she picked up an empty cage and studied it and she almost fell over when one of the books fell open and started to scream. Her fall made some objects topple and that caused the large pile on her side to start and slide. A scream left her mouth and she desperately tried to keep the objects from falling. This didn’t really work out well as she tumbled over herself and got covered herself by books, cages, kettles and more. When she had gotten herself out, the torches had gone out and Minerva was caught in full darkness.
At this point, she realized once again what she’d been trying to do before she got lost in studying the old books and objects. Panic caught her again as she got to her feet and looked around, but there was no point. She couldn’t see a thing through the pitch black dark. She did know however, that the door had been on her left from where she stood now, since that was the only sensible option was she had, she started to walk that way, supporting herself with her hands as not to fall. However, when she heard a low voice whispering softly, she completely froze.
In the corner of her eye she’d seen a glimmer of something, but obviously — since it was pitch black — she could not see what it was. A very nasty feeling crawled over her. The whispering she had heard, brought a feeling with it. The dark books had been nothing compared to the chilling she had felt when hearing the voice. She wanted to run, but couldn’t move her legs and if she could have, she wouldn’t have know where to go. She was stuck in the dark. She slowly curled her fingers around her wand — which she’d completely forgotten about due to the panic.
‘Lumos.’ Her voice was only a whispering but it lit the room, though only for a moment. Suddenly, the light on the end of her wand got dimmed — without Minerva’s doing. She wasn’t sorted in Gryffindor for no reason and therefore she was brave, but even the bravest were scared at some points in their lives and at this point she was. She had a feeling she wasn’t alone in the room but she had not seen anyone when the light had lit up the room, neither had she heard anyone walk around. If they were whispering into her ear, they should have been close to her. She concluded it must have been one of the objects in this room and seeing the pile of nasty books, it could easily be some very dark magic.
Slowly, she began to walk back, her wand pointed in front of her. She didn’t dare to try the lumos spell again, due to the fact that she did not want to attract more attention to herself. Though, she was pretty sure she had made it pretty clear she was heard. Again, she heard the whispering and a cold chill ran down her spine. It made goosebumps appear on her arm and it made her feel very much unprotected. She didn’t know what lured in the shadows, but it scared her out of her wits and as her back touched the cold, stone wall, she wished with whole her heart a door would appear for her.