Professor Sprout found Adrian and Cedric outside Greenhouse Three on Friday afternoon.
Most of their classmates had already headed back towards the castle, leaving the two boys to put away a tray of pruning tools and sweep the last of the soil from their workbench.
“I’ve had a word with Professor McGonagall about that reading room you mentioned,” she said.
Adrian set his broom against the wall.
“The one by the moving staircase?”
“That’s the one.
It isn’t assigned to a class, and the caretaker has confirmed that it’s still in use from time to time.
You’re welcome to study there, provided you leave it tidy and don’t interfere with anything belonging to other students.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Cedric said.
Sprout glanced at Adrian.
“That includes any unusual furniture or mechanisms you happen to discover.”
“We weren’t planning to take anything apart.”
“I’m glad to hear it.
If a cupboard refuses to open, leave it alone.
And if the staircase behaves strangely, come and tell a member of staff rather than trying to outwit it.”
Adrian had been about to mention the bell beside the reading-room door.
He decided that explaining their earlier attempts to follow the staircase might lead to a longer conversation than he’d intended.
“We’ll be careful,” he said.
Sprout collected her folder from the bench.
“Good.
I’ve also spoken to a few of your housemates about the visitors.
They had different opinions, as I expected.
We’ll discuss the matter properly after examinations, when everyone has a little more time.”
She left them to finish tidying the greenhouse.
Adrian waited until she’d rounded the corner before turning to Cedric.
“So we can use the reading room.”
“We can study in it,” Cedric said.
“There’s a difference.”
“I’m bringing my books.”
“Your actual schoolbooks?”
“Some of them.”
Cedric shook his head, but he’d been looking forward to returning to the room himself.
They’d found it in January, after following the moving staircase through a passage neither of them had noticed before.
Since then, their drawings of the four House cabinets had been passed between schoolbags, copied into notebooks and occasionally mistaken for unfinished homework.
With examinations approaching, this might be their last chance to compare the clues at the place where they’d found the most promising lead.
They arranged to meet the twins the following afternoon, after everyone had finished the work due on Monday.
Cedric insisted on that condition before Adrian could suggest leaving early.
On Saturday, Fred arrived at the foot of the moving staircase with two textbooks under his arm and a packet of sandwiches in his bag.
George carried their collected notes, including the drawings they’d made of the four cabinet symbols.
Adrian eyed Fred’s bag.
“You remember what the portrait said about food?”
“I’m not eating in front of her.”
“You’re not eating in the room at all,” Cedric said.
“I haven’t even opened the bag.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
The staircase was resting against the landing when they arrived.
Adrian stepped onto it first and waited for the others to follow.
Nothing happened until George reached the fourth step; then the entire flight shifted beneath their feet, carrying them towards the opposite wall.
Fred caught the banister.
“There it goes.”
They’d learned enough during their earlier visit not to rush when the staircase began moving.
Adrian watched the landing ahead, waited for the steps to settle and led them through the narrow passage beyond it.
Their route took them past a high window overlooking the grounds and ended at the familiar wooden door.
The portrait beside it showed an elderly witch seated at a small writing desk.
She looked up from her painted book as the boys approached.
“You again.”
“Afternoon,” Adrian said.
Her gaze travelled across their bags before settling on Fred.
“No food.”
Fred held up both hands.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She returned to her book.
“You know the rule.”
Cedric opened the door while Fred whispered something to George about portraits having excellent memories.
The room beyond was as quiet as Adrian remembered.
Daylight fell across a row of tables, and the shelves along the far wall held mismatched books left by generations of students.
Near the entrance, a brass bell hung beneath a small sign reading Ring for stairs.
George set their notebooks on the largest table.
Adrian had brought a fresh sheet of parchment for a better drawing of the room, along with his pencil and the measurements they’d taken during their first visit.
Cedric opened his Transfiguration book beside them.
“Before anybody starts searching,” Cedric said, “we agreed to compare what we’ve actually found.”
Fred pulled out a chair.
“You’ve made that sound terribly dull.”
“You can make it exciting by remembering where you put your notes.” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
George handed him a folded sheet.
“He’s got them.”
Fred unfolded it and spread it between the textbooks.
It contained their earliest drawings of the cabinet symbols, including several details they’d copied poorly in their excitement.
Later sketches were neater, though the boys had never agreed on whether the small marks beneath each symbol were letters or decorative cuts.
Adrian laid all four drawings side by side.
They weren’t identical.
Each cabinet bore its House’s emblem, but the marks below them occupied different positions: one near the left edge, another beneath the centre, and two at opposite corners.
“We’ve been looking at these as separate clues,” he said.
“Maybe we should put them together.”
George turned the pages so the drawings faced the same direction.
Fred moved one to the other side of the table, but Cedric stopped him before he could arrange them into a square.
“We don’t know whether that order means anything.”
“It’s four Houses,” Fred said.
“How many arrangements can there be?”
“Enough to waste an afternoon guessing.”
Adrian took out his original drawing of the reading-room door.
The frame had a narrow border of carved leaves, and he’d marked four little shapes at its corners without paying them much attention.
He got up to check whether he’d copied them correctly.
The carvings were still there, half-hidden beneath layers of dark varnish.
One corner held a shallow diamond-shaped mark; the others had a circle, a short vertical line and a pair of crossed cuts.
None looked like the House emblems themselves.
“George, bring the cabinet drawings over.”
George joined him at the door, with Cedric carrying the page Adrian had drawn in January.
Fred followed after making sure the other notes wouldn’t slide off the table.
They compared the marks one at a time.
The diamond belonged beneath the Hufflepuff symbol.
Adrian had drawn the circle on the Gryffindor cabinet, and George found the remaining two marks on their Ravenclaw and Slytherin pages.
“So the door’s connected to the cabinets,” Fred said.
“Or whoever decorated the cabinets also decorated the door,” Cedric replied.
“We still don’t know what the marks are for.”
Adrian ran a fingertip along the edge of the frame.
The wood was solid, and the carvings didn’t shift when he pressed them.
He withdrew his hand, remembering Sprout’s warning about unusual mechanisms.
“We can ask the portrait.”
Fred looked towards the entrance.
“You ask her.
She likes you better.”
“She’s told me not to bring food in twice, too.”
“Only twice?
You’re practically family.”
Adrian stepped into the passage.
The portrait witch was still reading, though her eyes followed him over the top of the book.
“Excuse me.
Do you know who carved the marks around the reading-room door?”
She glanced at the frame.
“They were here long before I was hung in this corridor.”
“Are they connected to the four House cabinets?”
That made her lower the book.
“You’ve been looking for those?”
“We found some clues,” Adrian said.
“We thought they might lead here.”
The witch considered him, then looked past his shoulder at the other boys waiting inside the room.
“Students have brought drawings to that table before.
They generally spend a great deal of time arguing over them.”
Fred brightened.
“See?
We’re doing it properly.”
She ignored him.
“If you’re looking for something left by the students who used this room, I’d try reading what they’ve written.
You’ll learn more that way than by pulling at the doorframe.”
“Where did they write it?” George asked.
“I’m a portrait, young man, not your librarian.” She returned to her book, but added, “There was a register on the shelves the last time anyone bothered to ask.”
The boys thanked her and went back inside.
Fred headed straight for the bookcases, while Cedric checked the room’s tables for anything that looked like a register.
Adrian stayed near the door for a moment, examining the four marks again.
They’d been close enough to see on their first visit, but without the cabinet drawings, he’d had no reason to connect them.
George found the register on the lowest shelf, tucked between a broken atlas and a stack of old examination guides.
Its cover was scuffed, and the pages contained columns for names, dates and the books students had borrowed.
The earliest entries were decades old.
Some students had signed only once; others appeared so often that their names filled entire pages.
Fred began reading aloud the more unusual book titles until Cedric reminded him that they were looking for something specific.
Adrian noticed a faded drawing in the margin of one page.
On the next page, the circle appeared beside a different name.
“Here,” he said, turning the register towards the others.
George drew up a chair.
Four names had been written together beneath a date nearly twenty years earlier.
Each had a little mark beside it, matching one of the cabinet drawings.
Beneath the names, in smaller writing, someone had added: Plan returned incomplete.
Keep the loose sheet with the register.
Fred looked towards the shelves.
“A loose sheet.
That’s promising.”
Cedric turned the page carefully.
A narrow strip of parchment had been folded into the binding near the back, where it was almost concealed by the cover.
George eased it free and laid it flat on the table.
It was part of a castle plan.
The drawing showed several corridors, a staircase and two adjoining rooms, but one edge ended abruptly through the middle of a passage.
A line of small letters ran along the torn margin, and four unfamiliar names had been written beneath the plan.
They matched the students in the register.
Adrian brought over their castle sketches.
The plan’s staircase resembled one they’d drawn, but the passage on its left didn’t match what they’d found during their explorations.
There were also marks at several doorways that looked like the ones on the cabinets.
“Could be an older layout,” George said.
“Or somebody drew it wrong,” Fred suggested.
Cedric examined the ink.
“The register says it’s incomplete.
Maybe the other half would explain the passage.”
Adrian studied the torn edge.
It wasn’t a clean cut.
Whoever had separated the parchment had pulled it apart, leaving little fibres along the margin.
The missing portion might be in another book, another room or somebody’s belongings.
They had no way of knowing.
He copied the four names and the note beneath them, then began drawing the plan onto his own parchment.
George held the original flat while Cedric checked the details against their earlier observations.
Fred searched the surrounding shelves for another loose sheet, taking care to return each book where he’d found it.
When Adrian finished, he placed the original back in the register exactly where they’d discovered it.
“We’re not taking it?” Fred asked.
“It belongs here.
We’ve got a copy.”
George checked the reproduction and added a small correction to the shape of one doorway.
“We ought to find out whether any of these corridors still exist before we start looking for the missing half.”
Cedric looked at the clock above the entrance.
“Not today.
We’ve got less than an hour before supper, and I promised I’d finish my Transfiguration revision tonight.”
Fred closed the register.
“You’ve been waiting all afternoon to say that.”
“I said it before we came.”
Adrian gathered the drawings.
They’d returned to the reading room expecting to settle an old question about the cabinet symbols.
Instead, they had a set of names, a fragment of a castle plan and a new question about why four students from different Houses had left their work together.
He wanted to stay and examine every doorway on the drawing, but he couldn’t do much with the missing corridors until they compared the plan with the castle itself.
They still had examinations to prepare for, and the longer daylight hours wouldn’t help if they spent every free afternoon getting lost.
“Let’s come back after exams,” he said.
George nodded and shut his notebook.
Fred made one last pass along the shelves before conceding that the missing sheet wasn’t lying in plain sight.
They left the register on its shelf, put their chairs back beneath the table and carried their schoolbooks into the corridor.
Adrian closed the door behind them and stopped beside the portrait.
“Thanks for the help.”
The witch looked up from her book.
“Did you find something?”
“Part of a map.”
“Then I hope you’ve copied it properly.
Students have a dreadful habit of returning to ask me where they left things.”
George glanced at Adrian’s carefully labelled pages.
“We checked it twice.”
“Good.” She nodded towards the bell.
“You’ll want the stairs, then.”
Adrian rang it once.
Somewhere beyond the wall, the moving staircase began to turn.
Fred adjusted his bag while they waited.
“Next time, I’m bringing a better sandwich.”
The portrait witch shut her book.
“Not in my room, you aren’t.”
Fred grinned at her as the staircase came into view.
Adrian followed his friends onto it with the copied plan safely tucked inside his notebook.
They hadn’t finished the four-House hunt, but they finally had something new to investigate when they returned for their second year.