Orli felt dazzled, as if her two eyes weren't enough to take it all in. She noticed some passages on the map that she hadn't paid attention to before.
# Fred
"There are seven secret passageways leading to Hogsmeade, Filch knows about four of them. One of them we used frequently, but unfortunately, it collapsed last year."
Fred pointed out several thin lines on the map with a finger:
# Fred
"We believe no one has ever used the one leading to the Shrieking Shack because the Whomping Willow is planted at its entrance, and we haven't figured out how to get through it. But the one leading to Honeydukes' cellar, we've used many times. You might have noticed, the entrance is right below this room, through the hump of this one-eyed witch."
# George
"Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs,"
George sighed, patting the map's title,
# George
"We owe them a lot."
Orli smiled. If he knew Moony and Wormtail were currently at the school, she wondered what he'd think. Of course, now the little dot markers on the map showed their real names instead of their nicknames.
# Fred
"Don't forget to clear the traces after using it."
Fred added:
# Fred
"Just tap it again and say, 'Mischief managed!' and it'll turn back into a blank piece of parchment."
# Harry
"Let's go then."
Harry said excitedly as he tried to fold up the map.
Fred and George led them to the witch statue, where Fred lightly tapped the witch with his wand and said:
# Fred
"Dissendium!"
The witch's hump opened wide enough for a slender adult to fit through. They quickly glanced up and down the corridor, then Harry stowed the map away, crawled headfirst into the opening, with Orli following right behind him. George closed the witch statue behind them and called out:
# George
"Have fun!"
——————
The passage behind the witch was winding and twisting, much like a rabbit hole. Orli and Harry hurried along, occasionally stumbling due to the uneven ground. Harry held his wand at the ready, while Orli illuminated their path with a glowing light. She was grateful that she had a fear of heights rather than claustrophobia.
They walked for a long time, nearly an hour, before the passage began to ascend. Orli's feet were sore, but her anticipation for Hogsmeade kept her going. Ten minutes later, they reached the foot of a broken staircase that stretched upwards into the unseen.
Orli couldn't recall how many hundreds of steps they climbed before Harry suddenly bumped into something hard—it seemed to be a trapdoor.
He slowly pushed the trapdoor open and peeked outside. They were in a cellar, surrounded by wooden chairs and crates. Harry cautiously climbed out of the trapdoor, pulling Orli along, then closed it securely—the door blended seamlessly with the dusty floor, making it impossible to tell there was a door there.
They could faintly hear various voices upstairs, the shop bell ringing, and the sound of doors opening and closing. Suddenly, a nearby door opened, and footsteps descended the cellar stairs.
"Fetch another crate of jelly slugs, dear, they're almost buying us out..." a woman's voice said.
Harry and Orli quickly donned the Invisibility Cloak and hid behind a large crate. As the man who came downstairs moved to the far end of the cellar behind a pile of boxes, they hurried up the stairs, squeezed past Honeydukes' counter, and found a secluded corner to survey the surroundings.
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