CH6

Remembering what he felt of his scar when he was in that weird tunnel thing, he raised his off-hand to it and gently felt it. His fingers came away with flecks of dried blood, but apparently the wound had already closed over again.

He was in a sort of canyon, was the best he could describe it. He was definitely outside; it was definitely day time, considering the sun was up and beating down; and the only 'man made' object he could see anywhere near him was a much larger version of that weird circle/arch thing he knew he must have fallen through back in the Department of Mysteries; and a sort of low height lectern thing standing about twenty feet in front of it and about five feet from him.

With no 'apparent' danger nearby, he walked over to the lectern thing and took a look at it.

It was covered in what looked like oddly shaped, but perfectly aligned, rune stones with a big red button thing in the middle. As for the rune stones - from what he remembered when scanning through his female friend, Hermione's, texts on ancient runes - he recognised none of them.

Figuring 'whatever-it-was' was dangerous - he knew from Hermione not to touch a runic array when he didn't know what it did or how to operate it - he decided to leave it alone for now and walked back past where he woke on the ground and took a better look at the circle thing.

Closer to it he could see it, too, had those peculiar runes circling it. They were evenly spaced and each seemed to occupy the same amount of space even with the weird non-geometric patterns of each rune. As he chased them down to the ground he could see how the circle wasn't broken once it reached dirt. It clearly performed a complete circle. What he couldn't figure out, though, was how it managed to stand, from what he could see and tell was, perfectly upright. With how much appeared to be in the ground it looked like a strong puff of wind could push it over; or, at least knock it off being perfectly straight.

Looking closer at what he first thought to be metal he couldn't tell what sort it was.

He reached up to pull his glasses off to give them a clean on his robes and his hands met... nothing. He wasn't wearing his glasses.

Spinning about he looked back to where he had woken and saw them lying on the ground, partially covered in sand.

He hurried back to them and lifted them from the ground only to find that one of the lenses had broken, cracked right through the middle.

Frowning he put them on and realised everything had gone blurry. Confused, he took them off again and found he could see clearly again. "What the... Hell?!" he muttered.

Not knowing what else to do with them he raised his wand, pointed at the glasses and incanted, "Occulus Reparo."

A quick flash of light and the glasses were repaired. It was the first true spell he'd ever heard properly incanted and it was done by his best female friend when she repaired his glasses for him back on the 1st September, 1991. It was his first time going to Hogwarts.

Again he put them on and realised everything was still very blurry. If anything, he realised it was about the same sort of blurriness he got when he didn't wear his glasses.

He again took them off, looked about, realised he could actually see quite well, gave himself a mental shrug and dropped the glasses into his inside left breast pocket of his robes. It was a puzzle he realised he couldn't figure out on his own and, therefore, would be set aside for now. He decided to return to that circle thing and try to figure out what it was, other than it had a runic circle etched into it around the... ring?

After getting frustrated he didn't understand any of it, he returned to the lectern thing.

Then, standing before it, he looked down at it and muttered, "I should have taken Ancient-bloody-Runes like Hermione said I should."

With a deep sigh of both woe-is-me and here-goes-nothing he reached out and picked a rune stone at random. Carefully, almost gingerly, he allowed a finger to touch one before quickly yanking his hand back. When nothing happened, he reached out and more firmly pressed on the rune stone.

When that did nothing he then pressed more firmly. Suddenly, the stone depressed under his fingers about an eighth of an inch and then lit up with a red glow underneath.

Jumping back he quickly watched and could see that one of the things he thought was a decoration on the ring also lit up. However, nothing else happened.

Warily making his way back, he then pressed another stone. The same thing happened.

He kept doing that a further four times, making six of the seven bulge things on the ring light up, with six of the runes also lighting up.

However, when the sixth lit, the big red button lit up with a deep orange colour.

Jumping back, he warily waited a few moments before then stepping back forward, reaching over and pressing the now lit red button.

He then felt a surge of magical power leave the base of the lectern and flash to the ring. Before he had a chance to do anything there was a great whoosh of energy at the face of ring before it looked like a huge boiling water jet formed in front of it and surged towards him.

No idiot, he dived out of the way.

However, he saw that the water spout - if that is what it was - only came out about ten to fifteen feet before it retracted back to the ring and settled into what looked like the surface of back-lit rippling water. With his knowledge of magic the fact the surface of the water, if that is what it was, was standing vertical across the 'face' of the ring didn't come as that much of a shock.

Still not willing to touch it he returned to the lectern and looked down at the runes again. That's when he noticed another rune was softly glowing within the red button. 'Seven', he thought. 'That makes sense.' He knew, without knowing why, that seven was a powerful magical number. It was a number even more magically powerful than three and thirteen, the next two most powerful.

While looking down at the runes and trying to reason things through, he felt the 'magic' powering the runic circle around the ring suddenly stop. Then the rippling surface winked out, the seven glowing nodules around the ring went out and the six lit runes and the red button on the lectern also went out.

'No more power?' he thought. 'Or timed?'

Yet another puzzle to figure out later.

Taking a better look at the runes circling the red button he also saw that the inner ring of the two held thirteen and the outside ring held twenty-one.

'Hunh!' he thought. 'Two rings and the button, making three layers, magical number. Thirteen runes in the inside ring, magical number. Twenty one runes... seven times three... in the second ring, both magical numbers.