The incomplete plan had taken over one end of Adrian’s desk by Saturday morning.
He had copied the surviving corridors onto fresh parchment, compared the four cabinet symbols with the marks around the reading-room door, and added measurements from memory until the margins were crowded with arrows and notes.
Cedric watched him add another line while eating breakfast, then reached across the table and took Adrian’s pencil.
Adrian stared at his empty hand.
“Seriously?
I’m checking one thing.”
“You’ve been checking one thing since before I sat down.” Cedric placed the pencil beside his own plate, well out of reach, and went back to his toast.
“Eat something first.”
Adrian gave him a look that Cedric ignored.
With no chance of getting the pencil back without reaching across somebody’s breakfast, he pulled his plate closer and left the folded plan beside his elbow.
“Fine.
I’m getting that back when we’re done.”
“Finish breakfast and you can have it.”
By early afternoon, Adrian, Cedric, Fred, and George were back in the old reading room with their notes spread across the largest table.
The original register lay open beside George, while Fred had arranged the four cabinet sketches around the copied plan.
George rotated the parchment, studied it, then turned it again.
“We keep treating this as if it shows where everything actually sits,” he said, tapping one of Adrian’s measurements.
“This passage is wrong.
We’ve walked it.
It’s much longer than this.”
Fred leaned over his shoulder.
“It’s a drawing of corridors.
Treating it like a map seems reasonable.”
“The castle moves,” Cedric said as he dragged his chair closer.
“Staircases do, anyway.
Some doors don’t always lead where you expect.”
Adrian studied the route again.
One staircase had been drawn nearly as large as the reading room, while a corridor he remembered taking several minutes to cross was reduced to a few strokes.
“What if it isn’t a floor plan?
Maybe it’s directions.
You don’t need every wall if you already know where you’re starting.
You only need the things you’re supposed to pass.”
George looked down at the parchment again while Cedric followed the route with one finger.
“Staircase, narrow passage, door with the carved frame, another turn.”
“And whatever this is.” Fred tapped the final surviving mark near the torn edge.
“We called it a door because it’s rectangular.”
George pulled the register closer and checked the four names they had found on their previous visit.
Each belonged to a different House, and the four had written together on the same page before leaving the incomplete plan behind.
“That part still bothers me.
Why four people?”
“Maybe because one person couldn’t get all the pieces,” Adrian said.
Fred sat back, glancing at the four cabinet sketches around the plan.
“Like us.”
Cedric nodded.
“We already know the House clues overlap.
None of us would’ve got this far alone.”
Adrian looked again at the four names.
Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin.
Whatever those students had been doing, they had done it together rather than treating their Houses as boundaries.
“If the cabinets belong to all four Houses, maybe the route was meant to be followed by all four too.”
George had stopped listening.
He angled the parchment towards the window and bent closer to the torn side.
“There’s writing here.”
The ink was faint enough that Adrian had missed it when he copied the page.
He came around the table while Cedric leaned over George’s shoulder.
After a moment, Cedric traced the faded letters without touching them.
“Two words.
‘From above.'”
Fred turned towards the windows.
“That would’ve saved us quite a lot of guessing.”
The reading room faced the grounds, but nearby roofs and towers blocked most of the useful view.
Adrian crossed to the window anyway.
Far below, paths curved between the castle and the lawns.
Beyond them, the Forbidden Forest formed a dark line along the edge of the grounds.
“Could mean a tower,” Fred said as he joined him.
“Maybe, but we’d still need a reason to get up one,” George replied.
“Our next lesson is Monday.
We can look while we’re already in the air.”
Cedric was beside him before he finished.
“Looking is fine.
Staying where Madam Hooch tells us is also fine.”
“I wasn’t planning to fly into a window.”
“That isn’t the only thing you could do.”
Fred grinned.
“He knows you rather well.”
Adrian ignored him.
“We only need enough height to see whether anything on the grounds matches the mark.”
George folded the copy of the route and handed it back.
“Easy enough.
We fly the lesson, look while we’re already up there, and compare notes afterward.”
“Without chasing whatever we find,” Cedric added.
“Yeah, okay.”
They spent another half hour comparing the route against corridors they already knew.
The phrase by the torn edge was the only useful addition they found, but it gave them something specific to check.
Adrian copied the words into his notebook, returned the original parchment to the register, and tucked his pencil behind his ear before they left.
A steady crosswind moved across the flying lawn on Monday afternoon, strong enough to tug at robes without making the lesson unsafe.
The Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors shared the period, and the school brooms had already been laid out in rows when Adrian and Cedric arrived.
Fred had selected one with a slightly crooked tail and was turning it over in his hands.
“It might handle better.”
George looked at Adrian.
“He’s decided age counts as an improvement.”
“It could turn sharper.”
“Or badly,” Cedric said as he stopped beside them.
Madam Hooch called everyone into place before Fred could test his theory.
Adrian left his bag near the edge of the field with the others.
His notebook stayed inside; he remembered the final mark and the words beside it clearly enough.
Flying had become easier over the past few months.
Adrian still wasn’t the best in the class, but he no longer spent every lesson fighting the broom.
Lunar Rhythm helped most when he left it alone.
He could feel when the broom was about to swing back beneath him, when a repeated movement was settling, and when the wind had changed the pattern enough that he needed to adjust.
That progress had also made him more willing to push his luck, something Madam Hooch had begun correcting almost as often as his turns.
“Clarke, take it wider,” she called as Adrian came around the floating marker.
He shifted his weight, brought the broom around, and heard her repeat the instruction before he widened the turn again.
“Better.
You are not being timed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cedric passed him several yards away on the return line.
“She told you that last week.”
Adrian smiled.
“You keeping a list?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
The exercise was straightforward: climb to the marked height, cross between two floating flags, circle the far marker, and return without drifting outside the lane or losing too much altitude.
The wind made holding the line more difficult.
Adrian’s first attempt was untidy; he climbed too quickly, corrected late, and passed the first flag at an angle.
On the second, he waited for the broom to settle before moving.
The turn came cleaner, and he needed only a small adjustment to compensate for the wind.
“Much better,” Hooch called as he straightened for the return.
With the broom steady beneath him, Adrian finally had enough attention to look beyond the field.
The grounds fitted together differently from the air.
Paths that seemed unrelated from below connected around walls and lower buildings, and one stretch near the castle matched part of the old route closely enough that he followed it outward with his eyes.
Near the edge of the Forbidden Forest stood a weathered stone structure.
Adrian had seen it from the ground before and never given it much thought.
From above, four low sides formed a rectangle around a central post, matching the mark beside the torn edge of the plan.
“Cedric!” Adrian pointed towards the Forest when his friend looked over.
“Near the trees.
The stone marker.”
Cedric followed his hand.
“I see it.”
George heard them from lower in the lane and looked towards the boundary.
Fred followed his gaze, though neither left position.
Adrian slowed the broom and shifted slightly to improve his angle.
Beyond the stone structure, a narrow track ran towards the first line of trees before disappearing beneath the canopy, aligned with the final section of the route. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
Madam Hooch’s whistle cut across the field.
“Clarke, watch your lane.”
Adrian looked forward and found the wind had pushed him close to the outer marker.
He corrected, brought the broom back between the flags, and felt it settle beneath him almost immediately.
The recovery came so easily that Adrian’s grin widened.
“That’s it,” he called towards Cedric, pointing again.
“That has to be it.
The track lines up with the tear, and if I get just a little higher I might be able to see where—”
He was talking faster now, leaning forward as he looked between the old path and the tree line.
His right hand tightened around the broom without him noticing.
A prickling sensation spread across his fingers.
Adrian’s smile vanished.
“Oh, crap.”
He tried to loosen his grip, but the excitement had already pushed the lightning loose.
Blue-white light snapped across his knuckles and discharged straight into the broom handle.
The broom shot forward.
Adrian’s arms jerked straight, his body snapping back before he managed to clamp himself against the handle.
The flying lawn began disappearing beneath him at a speed no school broom had any business reaching.
His eyes widened.
“Oh shiiiiiiii—!”
The rest of the word stretched behind him as he rocketed past the outer marker.
“Adrian!” Cedric shouted.
Fred twisted around on his broom, staring after him.
“Was that supposed to happen?”
“No!” George shouted back.
Madam Hooch was already moving.
“Diggory, stay inside the boundary!
Weasley, down!”
Adrian forced his right hand away from the handle while his left held on hard enough to hurt.
A smaller spark crawled across the wood and vanished, but the first discharge had given the broom more speed than he could bleed off quickly.
The stone structure flashed beneath him.
“Okay, okay, slow down!”
The broom offered no indication that it cared.
The Forest filled his view.
Adrian pulled left, trying to turn back towards the field.
The broom answered, but his speed carried him much farther before the turn began to tighten.
The first branches swept past his shoulders.
His brief panic sharpened immediately.
Adrian ducked beneath one branch, twisted around another, and tried to find a clear opening back towards the lawn.
Leaves struck his face.
A thin branch whipped across his upper arm, and the broom bucked as its tail clipped another.
He hauled on the handle, trying to climb above the canopy instead.
A thicker branch crossed the gap ahead.
Adrian turned too late.
His shoulder slammed into it.
One hand tore free from the broom, and although he caught the handle again for a moment, another branch struck his side and broke his grip.
The broom continued through the trees while Adrian dropped into the lower branches.
One bent beneath his weight and threw him sideways.
Another scraped across his back before he hit the ground on his hip and rolled through damp leaves.
He stayed down until his breathing steadied, then tested his arms and legs before sitting up.
His shoulder hurt, his ribs ached when he drew a deeper breath, and the back of his left hand was scraped and bleeding.
He could move everything without the sharp pain he would have expected from a broken bone.
Most of the sky disappeared behind the canopy.
Adrian cupped one hand around his mouth and called for Madam Hooch, waited, then tried Cedric’s name.
Wind moved through the branches overhead, and something small disturbed the leaves somewhere off to his left.
Once he was on his feet, he looked towards where he thought the flying lawn should be.
The trunks were too dense to see beyond them, and the turns he had made while trying to regain control had left him uncertain of the straight route back.
A hollow crack came from farther ahead, followed a few seconds later by wood striking another branch deeper among the trees.
Adrian turned towards it.
His broom had gone that way.
He could try walking back without it, but getting above the canopy would let him orient himself and make him easier for Madam Hooch or anyone else searching from the air to spot.
Adrian drew his wand, checked the ground ahead, and moved towards the last sound at a cautious pace.
The Forest was full of noises he could not identify: small movements beneath the leaves, distant calls between the trees, and branches shifting above him.
He kept his attention on the direction his broom had taken.
He needed to find it, get above the trees, and head back to the grounds.
Adrian watched where he placed each step and continued into the Forest.