At midnight, as the full moon hung overhead, the door to the boys’ quarters opened quietly. Sol quietly looked around before stepping out and closing the door behind him.

With quiet and nimble steps, he made his way down the stairs and into the common room. As he reached out to grab the door handle, something shifted behind him. He snapped his head around and looked toward the origin of the sound with narrowed eyes.

The couch was still and the atmosphere eerily more so. Under his gaze, nothing moved an inch. After a while, he turned around and left the common room.

As the door clicked behind him, a gasp for air sounded and something moved on the couch. It looked as though someone had removed the fabric of space from over them. On the originally empty couch, the figures of Harry, Hermione, and Ron revealed themselves.

They gasped for air. Under Sol’s pressuring gaze, they held their breaths. Even breathing made it feel like they were going to get found out.

“How does he do that?” Hermione whispered frantically.

“The penetrative eyes or the weight behind them?” Harry asked.

“Both.”

“Ask him.”

“No time to waste,” Hermione got up and opened the door. She looked back and urged them, “Come on, let’s go!”

“Why are we even doing this?” Ron complained but still followed her and Harry as they exited the common room under the cover of Harry’s Invisibility Cloak.

“What do you mean ‘why’? Don’t you think Sol’s a bit suspicious? Just last week I saw him researching something ‘Cursed’. What if he makes the school close down again?”

“I agree with Hermione here, Ron. If he intends to do something risky, we might as well stop him; both for his safety and the school’s.”

“Ugh, fine!” Ron relented. “I can’t win against you two anyway. But I’ll just say this- I don’t see this ending well for us.”

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Harry pacified him.

They stopped talking and picked up the pace. Soon, they saw Sol leave Gryffindor Tower. Following behind him, they exited the tower as well.

They saw him walk on the cobbled path with cautious steps. After a few steps, he stopped around and turned around. The three tensed and quickly held their breath instinctively. Seeing nothing behind, Sol turned forward again. But he didn’t start walking again. Under their curious gaze, Sol left the path and picked up something from the grass next to them. He did this five times.

“Are those pebbles?” all three of them had that same question in their brains as they looked at his odd actions. Pebbles in hand, Sol once again started walking.

The trio followed behind him. As they entered the castle, Sol’s steps became more measured and quiet. He would peek around corners every once in a while.

“See?” Hermione chirped. “He is doing something suspicious.”

“Quiet,” Ron hissed. “We don’t want to get caught by him.”

“I know, I know,” Hermione whispered back.

The windows let in the soft moonlight. It barely lit the dark hallways of the castle. Sol peeked around another corridor and hastily shrunk his neck. Professor McGonagall was patrolling in the hallway he needed to go. The small orb of light from her wand was just enough to light five feet in front of her.

Sol took a pebble from his hand and threw it in an adjacent hallway while he receded further back and crouched down. The trio moved slightly as Sol crouched down right beside them.

The pebble made a sound in the hallway and Professor McGonagall looked in the direction of the sound. With narrowed eyes, she went towards the origin of the sound.

Before the three could react, Sol made a run for it around the corner.

Hermione urged them, “Hurry, hurry.” All three started speed-walking. As soon as Hermione stepped on the floor around the corner, she lost her footing.

“Aah!” with a panicked scream, she fell backward, and toppled Ron and Harry who were behind her. They also let out muffled grunts of pain as they fell to the floor.

As they tried to regain their bearings, they heard Professor McGonagall’s hurried footsteps getting louder.

The three decisively backed off and covered themselves with the Invisibility Cloak once again. They slowly stepped back as the Professor came to the place they fell. Upping the intensity of the light, she checked around. There was no one on the ground and no one around the area. She shone the light on the ground. The ground was slightly frosted with a skid mark on it.

“Ice? And someone slipped?” the Professor frowned. She shone her light once again but still saw nothing.

The trio’s hearts beat like a drum as they begged God to not let them get caught. After a while of suffocating silence, Professor McGonagall finally walked off in the opposite direction.

The tension finally released as they felt their legs go soft. They stood there in a daze, breathing a sigh of relief.

“…can we go back?” Ron finally suggested.

Harry nodded, “Y-Yeah, that’s a good idea. Hermione?”

“We won’t be able to catch up to him now. So, let’s just head back.” She sighed and they walked back to the castle.

On the fifth floor, Sol kept walking. “Did they really think I wouldn’t know?”

He shook his head. It was really obvious. If you know someone has an Invisibility Cloak, any strange occurrence will be pinned on them. And even putting aside that fact, they really weren’t quiet with their footsteps.

He had meticulously planned everything. Well, almost everything. He didn’t think those three would follow him. He went out during a full moon as Professor Lupin would be out of commission, so, that’s one obstacle out of the way for him.

Being followed didn’t really impede him in any way. Even their actions could be calculated to some extent.

“Arithmancy only shines in situations like this,” Sol sighed. He had walked all the way towards the east end of the fifth floor. The parchment revealed that the Vault of Ice was down a flight of stairs behind an illusionary wall. This wall was located on the east end of the fifth floor and that’s exactly where he was going.

Standing in front of an ordinary-looking corner of the hallway, Sol looked at the wall in front of him. There were no telltale signs of it being an illusion. A perfect hiding place.

He took out his wand and waved it at the wall. “Revelio.” With the chant, the wall started to become more and more transparent as it eventually faded away, revealing a set of stairs descending into darkness. Cold air wafted from the abyss-like darkness.

He pointed his wand towards the stairs and small orbs of light floated out from his wand. They danced and illuminated the darkness. Sol finally saw beyond the darkness.

The stairs gradually became encased in frost. The frost became thicker, the more you descended and at one point, it looked as though the stairs themselves were made from ice.

“Ah, I should get going.” Sol picked his feet up and descended the stairs. The further he went down, the colder it became. He used the Hot-Air Charm to keep himself warm and Incendio to melt the ice on the stairs.

At one point, he could no longer use Incendio on the stairs as he didn’t know how many layers of ice the stairs were covered in or if they were made of ice entirely. He decided to concentrate on not slipping. Even the Hot-Air Charm became useless as it was not hot enough to keep him warm. He conjured flames on the tip of his wand and used that to warm himself.

In the midst of the biting cold, Sol finally reached the bottom after what seemed like fifteen minutes. His skin had noticeably paled and the tips of his hair had become frosted. He did wear winter clothing beforehand but that did very little.

In front of him stood a door, made entirely out of blue, crystalline ice. There was no handle nor were there any hinges. Only the door frame gave it some semblance of a door. Sol took a few steps back and pointed his wand at the door.

“Incendio Tria!” a torrent of flames gushed out from his wand and attacked the ice door. The flames heat up the surroundings which caused the ice on the walls and floor to melt. Yet the door showed little signs of melting. Sol’s condition became better as he no longer felt as cold and focused on melting the door.

His wand made exhaust sounds as the flames blasted out. The door melted very slowly like ice cream in a refrigerator. After half an hour of painstaking efforts, the door melted just enough to let Sol through. He lowered his wand, massaged his arm, and entered through the gap.