Filch, wheezing and holding his sputtering oil lamp, finally reached the end of the eighth-floor corridor, right where the portrait of the Fat Lady should have been. A triumphant, cold smile spread across his face. The gatekeeper was gone. The most secure entrance to Gryffindor Tower was inaccessible.
Perfect.
Not being able to retreat to the sanctuary of their common room meant the students were trapped in the castle's open space, exposed to the wrath of the caretaker. No one escapes my hands, Filch thought with vengeful certainty. No one!
"Ah...ah... sneeze!" George erupted again, the sound muffled only slightly by his hand.
Fred stopped dead, turning to look at his twin with an expression of pure, unadulterated exasperation.
"Where are we heading next?" George asked, rubbing his congested nose vigorously, clearly miserable but still relying on Fred's lead.
Fred quickly consulted the Marauder's Map, watching the convergence of the two threatening dots: Snape and Filch. He had planned a strategic loop around the back corridors of the eighth floor, buying them enough time to safely descend to a lower level that Filch hadn't cleared yet. He instinctively quickened his pace, dragging George along.
But Filch was not the predictable, slow-witted fool they had imagined. Instead of chasing the sound of the sneeze—the most obvious thing to do—he suddenly changed course, backtracking rapidly and planting himself near the corner of a corridor. He was waiting for Snape to arrive, intending to form a two-pronged roadblock that would cut off the twins' intended escape route toward a nearby secret staircase.
"When did that miserable sack of rags get so smart?" Fred muttered, stopping instantly and pulling George to a halt. The sinking realization hit him: Filch had anticipated their strategy of using the nearest bolt-hole.
"Professor, they should still be on the eighth floor. I distinctly heard one of them just sneeze," Filch said, his voice carrying the smug excitement of a predator about to trap its prey. "If you take this corridor, I'll loop around to the other side. They can't possibly slip between us."
Snape's approaching dot indicated he was just moments away from the eighth floor. Once he closed that trap, they would be cornered with nowhere to run.
"It's over, we're completely blocked," Fred said, the despair evident in his voice. Every escape vector was now covered by either Snape's meticulous coldness or Filch's sudden, inspired strategy.
Just as the two were standing paralyzed in panicked defeat, right after they passed the familiar tapestry depicting the Troll Being Thrice Beaten by Barnabas the Barmy, George stumbled on something unseen. He recovered, staring wide-eyed at the wall opposite the tapestry.
There, where moments ago there had been only bare stone, a plain, unassuming wooden door had materialized.
"How did that appear?" George whispered, utterly astonished, reaching out a hesitant hand toward the door handle. It was not marked on the Marauder's Map.
Fred, his priority now immediate survival over scholarly curiosity, gritted his teeth. "I don't care, we need cover! Get inside!"
They threw the door open and scrambled into the darkness, slamming the door shut just as they heard Filch and Snape converging on their location.
Behind the door was not a large room, but a cramped, dusty broom cupboard. A few old, sagging brooms and some rusty buckets filled the tiny space. They pressed their backs against the cold, interior wall, covering each other's mouths with their hands, terrified that even the ragged sound of their breathing would betray them.
Meanwhile, Filch and Snape executed their coordinated trap. They approached the area where the sneeze was heard from two different directions, their boots echoing ominously. They converged—empty-handed.
The space where the twins had paused, the stone wall opposite the tapestry, was now solid. The door they had just used was gone.
"Where are the students?" Filch's face twisted in confusion, his victory turning to instant, frothing frustration. "I heard them! They were right here! They must be hiding!"
"They couldn't have run far," Snape stated, his voice low and dangerous, inspecting the area with cold intensity. "I heard a sound myself—a distinct, pathetic sneezing noise."
The sense of having been tricked again—after being so close, after executing a flawless maneuver—drove Filch into a state of furious, impotent rage. He swore viciously, kicking a loose pebble across the stone floor. He had been so certain of his victory.
Inside the closet, the twins remained utterly still, their fear of the discovery outweighing their need to breathe freely. They listened as Snape and Filch conducted a painstaking search of the corridor, checking every known hiding spot. The two pursuers finally conceded defeat, their voices gradually fading as they moved on to search other floors.
"The next time any student wanders at night, you will report to me immediately, Filch," Snape commanded before he departed, his tone a promise of future pain.
When the footsteps had completely vanished, Fred and George let out twin, shaky sighs of relief. They waited until the Marauder's Map confirmed that both Snape and Filch had abandoned the search for the night. They cautiously pushed open the door and stepped out.
The corridor was silent, empty, and safe.
"That was incredibly close," George whispered, still shaking. "But what on earth was that broom cupboard?"
He raised his wand to light up the area on the wall where the door had been, intending to study the mechanism, but found only the seamless, uninterrupted stone wall.
"What is going on?" Fred asked, running his hands over the smooth, cold stone. He checked the Map again, but it offered no explanation, no hidden annotation about a disappearing door.
"Hogwarts Castle is truly filled with more secrets than even the old Map-makers knew," George sighed, his awe temporarily overcoming his exhaustion. "But first, we must confirm the most vital question: Is the Fat Lady back?"
They quickly made their way back to the portrait. There she was, back in her frame, looking slightly disheveled and incredibly tired.
"Well, where did you two run off to?" she grumbled in a drowsy voice.
"A brief, necessary walk," George said, the password a formality now. "The password is: Concordia."
The portrait swung open, and the twins stumbled back into the welcoming warmth of the Gryffindor Common Room. They collapsed into separate armchairs, their knees weak, and looked at each other before bursting into exhausted, relieved laughter.
"That was the single most thrilling and terrifying night of my life," George declared, his lingering cold now a secondary concern.
"I think Filch's blood pressure is probably spiking right now," Fred grinned, utterly happy at the thought of their triumph over the caretaker.
By the time they crept back into the dormitory, it was nearly five in the morning. They were too keyed up to sleep, and they lay awake in a state of tense, tired euphoria until the rising sun began to paint the windows a dull grey.
A loud, drawn-out groan escaped Fred as the morning light fully illuminated the room. He didn't even bother to open his eyes.
"When did you two decide to crawl back into your beds?" Albert asked, already dressed in his running gear, opening the window to let in the crisp morning air.
"Roughly around... five in the morning," Fred slurred, suppressing a massive, involuntary yawn. "What time is it now?"
"Seven-thirty in the morning," Albert replied, shaking his head gently at the sight of the utterly depleted twins. "I warned you about nighttime excursions this week. You both have two hours of Herbology in the greenhouse this morning. Don't be late."
Lee Jordan, now fully dressed and wide awake, approached the twins' beds. George began to regale him with the full, breathless account of their escape.
"You're telling me you found the portrait gone, got cornered by Snape and Filch, and then vanished inside a temporary broom cupboard on the eighth floor?" Lee Jordan asked, his voice filled with incredulous wonder. "George, you must be lying! How did you ever escape Snape?"
Albert, who had been listening casually while lacing up his shoes, finally looked up. "Wait. When you went back to look for the closet, the door was gone?"
"Exactly! Poof! Stone wall again!" George confirmed dramatically.
"That wasn't just a broom cupboard, you lucky fools," Albert informed them, a wry smile forming on his lips. "You stumbled into the Room of Requirement."
Fred and George stared at him, their exhaustion temporarily forgotten, as the implications of their accidental discovery settled upon them. They had not just escaped; they had found one of Hogwarts' deepest secrets.
The excitement of the discovery, however, could not override physical depletion. That day, Fred and George missed their morning Herbology class, sleeping soundly and naturally until well into the afternoon. The consequences of their nighttime triumph would surely catch up to them later.