Book 1 - James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing

Mr. Pink led them through the doorway, ducking to fit through. It became apparent by the smell
and the echo of their footsteps that they were in a deep cavern. Mr. Pink produced his wand and illuminated
it, but it revealed little more than the shiny, wet rock beneath their feet. The blackness sucked at the light,
and Mr. Grey had the sense that they were in a place so deep that it had never known sunlight. Raw, musty
cold pressed onto their skin, chilling them after the warmth of the corridor. Mr. Grey glanced back once and
could just see the shape of the door leading back. It glowed like a pillar of silvery light, almost as if it were a
mirage.
“Wh-where do you think we are?” he asked.
“Air pocket in a cavern under the Atlantic ocean,” Mr. Pink replied, still walking.
“Under…” Mr. Grey said faintly, then swallowed. “I got a bad sense about this. Really bad. I want
to go back, Bistle.”
“Don’t call me Bistle,” the goblin said automatically.
“What’s in this chest, anyway?” Mr. Grey moaned. “It better be worth a lot. I can’t think of
anything worth coming to a place like this.”
“Never yeh mind that,” Mr. Saffron said gruffly. “It’s more than yeh’ve ever dreamed of. We’ll
never have to work like this again. No more petty cons and midnight holdups for us. Once we get the chest,
we’ll be set for good.”
“But what is it?” Mr. Grey insisted. “What’s in the chest?”
“Well, yeh’ll just wait and see, won’t yeh?”
Mr. Grey stopped walking. “You don’t know, do you?”
Mr. Saffron sputtered. “It doesn’t matter what it is, yeh great dummy. We was told it was more
than we could ever dream of, wasn’t we? Alls we have to do is nick the box and gives a twenty percent share
to our inside informer. They’d hardly help us break into the Ministry of Magic if they didn’t have a prize bit
of swag in mind, would they? Mr. Pink knows what it is, anyway. Why don’t yeh arsk him?”
darkness.
“I don’t know either,” Mr. Pink said thoughtfully.
There was a long moment of silence. Mr. Grey heard the steady drip of water echoing out of the
Finally Mr. Saffron said, “Yeh don’t know neither?”
Mr. Pink shook his head slowly, barely visible in his own wand light.
The goblin frowned. “Each of us only knows what we needs to know, aye?”
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