When the applause ended, everyone returned to reality.
Ron glanced at the stone chamber and asked Luna earnestly, "Luna, did those Wrackspurts you mentioned happen to say what was behind this door?"
Luna did not answer. She merely tilted her head slightly, the bells on her earlobes swaying, and stared blankly into the darkness with her large, silvery-gray eyes.
"Step back a little. Don't get too close." Harry cautiously edged forward, shielding the others behind him.
"Let me try. Since this is Ravenclaw's treasure, Ravenclaws need to learn, learning requires reading, and reading requires light. The ball of light on the door earlier was a hint. Lumos!" Cho Chang took a deep breath, explained her reasoning, then raised her wand and cast Holmes's version of the Lumos charm.
A ball of light rose from the tip of her wand, then floated through the doorway. Everyone held their breath as they watched it.
Then something happened that made their scalps prickle. The moment the ball of light passed through the doorframe into the darkness, it vanished.
Devoured. The light had been devoured completely, and the darkness beyond the door remained unfathomably deep.
"Merlin's beard!" Several students at the front gasped under their breath. Everyone tightened their grips on their wands and took a step back.
"Could it be some kind of spatial trap? Like a gravitational collapse point that swallows everything." Justin Finch-Fletchley, standing at the back, swallowed. "Er, I mean like the black holes in Muggle popular science magazines. Once you get sucked in, there's nothing left. They can even swallow light."
As he spoke, Justin picked up a quill and hurled it through the doorway. The quill shot into the darkness like a dart, passing smoothly through the entrance, and that was that.
"There's no gravitational pull. If it