the corner. Alone, in the damp, dreary dungeon, the only thing Box had for company was the sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance. It went drip drip drip.
He had no idea how long he had been standing in the doorway; it might have been only a few minutes, or it could have been more than an hour. Time meant nothing there; the only thing that mattered was the sound of the water dripping. Suddenly the lights in the passageway flickered, dimmed and went out, leaving both it and the dungeon in darkness. It was scary. A hand; Box suddenly felt an invisible hand grabbing hold of his arm, pulling him, yanking him out through the doorway and fast down the corridor. “Stop! What are you doing?” he shouted, fearing for his life. The hand, however, continued pulling, tugging and dragging him down the corridor with so great a force it was impossible for him to resist. When his arm felt like it was about to break, to snap off, Box saw a glimmer of light, ahead, and he watched it grow bigger and bigger, thinking, hoping he could see something – anyone – standing within it. Finally, the tugging, the terrible pull on his arm ceased and he saw what – who it actually was. It was Harry.
“What are you doing?” he roared, rubbing his terrible soreness, “And how did you do that? You could have broken my arm! You do know that, don’t you?”
“The last time you hollered like that,” Harry warned, “you alerted almost everyone in the entire school as to our presence. Are you trying to do it again?”
“No, no I’m not, sorry…” Box uttered contritely. Then he added, “I told you that I wanted to stay put. Why didn’t you just leave me there?”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No, not really,” he mumbled. “But that doesn’t mean that I am agreeing with your actions, your plans for those marbles!”
“Can we not agree to get over our immediate problems, first,” Harry suggested, “and talk about it later?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Box agreed, though reluctantly.
“The way I see it,” said Harry, “we have more enough problems to deal with, without us creating more.”
“Where are we, anyway?”
“Beneath the Great Hall,” she explained. “It’s my guess the old coot, Tumbledown, has withdrawn there, to reassess his options.”
“I thought it was us who were losing, not him,” said Box.
“Lose – win, they are only words,” said Harry, her mind drifting away to a time long ago, when, as a baby, she had been abandoned by her parents and left on the doorstep of Hagswords.
“There’s a big difference, in my reckoning,” said Box.
“It’s all a matter of perspective,” she said coldly. Then turning a corner, she stopped.
“What is it?” Box asked.
Pointing upwards, to a circular metal disc, a hatchway, Harry said, “Shush, not a sound from here on…”
Following his cousin up the rickety iron ladder attacked to the wall, Box wondered what might or might not be waiting for them, above.
With a finger to her lips, Harry whispered, “Remember, not a word.”
“Mum’s the word,” said Box, ever so quietly.
Giving him a weird look, Harry thought, ‘Weird Muddle talk!’
Pushing up the hatchway cover, just ever so slightly, with it resting gently upon her head, Harry peered furtively across the floor of the room above, to see if there were any signs of life. There certainly was. Less than twenty feet in front of her, Harry spied Tumbledown sitting comfortably upon a chair, a throne, like he was king of all he surveyed. On his right-hand side, Professor McGonagain, sitting in a chair almost as grand as his, looked for all intents and purposes like his consort. The teachers were also there, some to his left and the remainder to his right – and all them flanked by every last pupil of Hagswords, looking, watching them blankly. It was a ‘right royal assembly’ to beat all others.
Lowering the hatchway cover, Harry motioned for Box to return down the ladder. “It’s worse than I could ever have imagined,” she said gloomily.
“What did you see?”
“I saw Tumbledown all right, but with ever last manjack of the entire school surrounding him – and all of them seemingly under his control!”
“Everyone?”
“Yes,” she said chillingly, “they’re all there, every last one of them, Professor McGonagain, the teachers and all of the pupils. I even saw Wan Measly and Miocene d’Anger, my, for want of a better word, friends. I tried to catch their attention, but they were too zonked out to notice. Box, we’re in trouble, big trouble!”
“There’s no need to be getting in a panic,” Box whispered, “You still have your wand.”
Hmm, little more than a – what did you call it? Oh, yes, a matchstick,” she said despondently. “I need my new wand, Box. But it’s not there,” she pointed upwards, “in the hall.”
“And the marbles?”
“No, no sign of them either.”
“Listen,” said Box, “These friends of yours…”
“Yes, what about them?”
“Can you trust them?”
“That’s certainly a question,” Harry replied, “considering they were hardly close to begin with.”
“But if we were able to talk with them, to reason with them, to try to explain... Do you think we might be able to get them onside?”
“If we could get through to them, yes, I think we could trust them – but how?”
“Leave that to me?” he replied, hatching a little plan of his own.
“Let me hear that again,” said Harry, uncertain if she had heard her Muddlesome cousin correctly.
“We give up,” Box said for a second time.
“I though that’s what you said, and for the life of me I still don’t understand how that’s going to help,” said Harry, confused by his Muddlesome way of reasoning.
“It’s easy,” Box said again. “We give up, and then attack from within,” he explained. “We tell old Tumbledown that we were able to escape with the use of this.” He held up his hand, showing Harry a small gadget that he had up until then kept concealed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a nothing, really,” he replied. “It’s just a silly little thing I invented in my workshop, err, bedroom.”
“A nothing? What kind of a nothing?” she asked with a growing curiosity.
Feeling a might embarrassed, Box fidgeted with his fingers.
“Come on, what is it?”
“A laser beam…”
“I don’t mean to rain on your party,” said Harry, “but haven’t they already been invented?”
“Of course they have,” said Box, “but this one is different. Its beam is multidirectional.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s multidirectional, it shoots out in all directions at the same time.” Box showed Harry the pen like object, and he said, “Watch, I’ll give you a demonstration.” He switched it on. The device began to hum. “Stand back,” he warned, “and cover your eyes,”
An enormously bright multidirectional light shot out from the gadget, blinding Harry, despite the fact that she had been partially shielding her eyes.
“Wow,” she said, struggling to see. “That’s great! I wish that I had invented something like that.”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” he said, looking it over “If the power supply lasted longer, it might be useful... The problem,” he explained, “is that the battery runs down after only a few goes.”
With a smile creeping onto her face, and her eyesight returning, Harry said, “A few goes will be more than enough…”
Surrender
It was decided they were to ‘give up’. That was the plan. Harry didn’t like it, but without another, better one, she agreed to go along with her Muddling cousin’s wacky idea. The laser beam was good for no more than three uses, but despite this unpalatable fact, this little item had swayed Harry to come over and go along with the, seemingly, futile plan. You see, that little instrument had given her an idea, an idea that might, jus
t might sway the battle in their favour. Having said that, she still thought Box’s suggestion of attacking from within was a foolhardy and ill-conceived notion that needed some considerable fluffing out. With the help of the little laser beam, she hoped to do just that, and, thus, be in with a chance of winning, albeit a small one.
Pushing the hatchway cover upwards and sliding it over to one side, Harry pulled herself through the opening and onto the floor of the Grand Hall.
Gasps; she heard gasps as everyone watched in amazement as she emerged from the hidden depths.
More gasps; there were even more gasps when her cousin, the Muddle, joined her on the shiny, wooden floorboards.
“What have we got here?” Tumbledown asked, stroking his red beard as if it was a dreadfully spoilt feline. “Is it a thief?”
Turning round, Harry mockingly searched to see whom he was speaking about.
“So she wants to be a comedian,” Tumbledown continued, speaking softly, his eyes locking onto Harrys. “And from what I have seen, thus far, she is no better at humour than she was at her studies.” The zonked out pupils laughed at this. Turning his attention to Box, he said, “Ah, the wretched Muddle, and what an abysmally thin one at that!”
“At least I don’t have a moth-eaten old beard,” Box blurted. “I can smell it from here – and it stinks, phew!”
Pointing at Box, Tumbledown said, “This one should be the comedian, Harry. He’s far more entertaining than you could ever aspire to be. But then, weren’t Muddles always so entertaining?”
“I’ll knock your block off,” Box shouted, making a run at him.
“And spirited, too,” Professor McGonagain