The door groaned open and beyond it waited a dark stairway leading even further down.
"Are you sure we should go down there? It might be dangerous." Terry said worriedly.
"It might be but anything worthwhile tends to have an air of danger about it to begin with." I said as I took the first step down the stairs.
"What about light? It's pitch black." Mike pointed out.
"Did you forget the Lumos spell already?" I asked as I continued down the stairs.
I had observation haki so a lack of light didn't bother me at all but for anyone else I could see how it might and gave them an easy fix.
They reluctantly pulled out their wands and cast the spell in question before following closely behind me. The stairs were overly long as they only went down for about a minute before we reached a set of three doors and a metal plaque on the wall.
Three doors before you, one gives lies, one treasure and one nothing.
At the center of each door was a small plaque that read a single word.
Pride
Greed
Patience
"A riddle, not a good one either as obviously the patience door is the correct choice as the other two were sins while that one is a virtue." I said with a shake of my head.
"What if that's what they want you to think and it's just a trick?" Mike pointed out and I frowned.
It was a good argument but not one I could say for sure applied here. This riddle seemed fairly cut and dry to be honest and playing such a trick so early seemed odd.
"I'll have to take that risk I suppose. Stay here in case theres a trap on the other side." I said as I walked up to the patience door that was humming with magic to keep it preserved and pulled on the iron ring loop handle.
The door opened effortlessly and beyond it lay darkness that I easily saw through with my haki.
"It's clear, another test though." I said before walking into the room.
Once I crossed the magical sheet of darkness of the doorframe the surroundings lit up to reveal a small room. Two magically glowing orbs at either side providing light. There was a series of marked pressure plates on the ground alongside a glowing blue magical symbol floating above it and another door at the end of the room.-
"Some sort of agility test?" Terry pondered out loud as he and Mike joined me in the room.
"No, see the glowing symbol there? It changes constantly but if you pay attention to it those shapes match the ones on the tiles. I bet we have to memorize the pattern and follow it to get through that door." Mike said after a moment of observation.
"Good eye. I was thinking the same. Let me take the lead to try it out though as I'm a bit more durable than you two." I said as I stepped up to the edge of the tiles and began to try and decipher the correct order to step on them from the glowing symbol.
'I get why it was behind the patience door now. If you rushed and made a mistake you'd have nowhere to put your regret except on you.' I thought idly as I mentally mapped out the right path.
It wasn't a stereotypical zig zag or other easy to follow path either as the order of the symbols if followed would have you backtrack and even step on the same tile a second time. Once I was holding the correct pattern in my head I stepped on the first tile. It sank slightly with a "click!" sound and the symbol on it began to glow blue while the same symbol appeared on the door frame at the end of the room. I confidently moved on to the second tile and it lit up the same with it's symbol also appearing on the door frame. I proceeded to follow the path of sixteen more tiles which created an archway of glowing symbols on the door frame that the moment the last one appeared glowed even brighter before a resounding "CLICK!" rang out as the lock on the door unlocked.-
My friends followed my already charted path carefully and soon joined me on the other side.
"What do you think is hidden behind all these trials?" Terry asked curiously.
"No idea. That's what makes it so fun." I said with a grin.
"I hope it's treasure. You know gold, jewels and artifacts." Mike said dreamily.
"I hope it's rare magic or at least books on the stuff." I said honestly.
"Of course YOU would. I'm with Mike, a plain old treasure trove would be bloody brilliant." Terry said rolling his eyes.
I just shrugged at that as our priorities were not the same. I preferred knowledge to wealth since the former was so much harder to obtain for me but for them wealth was simply the more practical option at this moment. Mike came from an average muggleborn household so he didn't have any real wizarding money for himself at all. Terry came from a slightly more well off family so he had a little pocket money but again very little.-
This was actually the case for most muggleborns really as only a very small amount came from families wealthy enough to give their child a plentiful piggy bank in the wizarding side of things. Hermione was one such case and another was was Justin Finch-Fletchly in Hufflepuff who was even lined up to go to Eton before he got his Hogwarts letter. Eton being the boarding school for the elites of society. To be fair though besides school supplies a first year didn't need money for other things because they'd be clueless if it was even something they'd need. Magical ignorance shopping was not a good habit after all.