Nearly Triggered a Death Ending

It all began after the Quidditch Match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.

After Gryffindor won, James was overjoyed. I had no idea how he had gotten involved in the Quidditch celebration, but he was still excited when he came back, and eventually tossed me a note while we were doing our homework.

"How about a night stroll together tonight?"

I looked up from the note to see Remus and James both watching me. Only Sirius still had his head down, working on his homework.

[Marauders squad side quest unlocked]

[As this is the first squad side quest, it cannot be declined]

[During the first quest, the system will relax certain restrictions]

I'd had enough of this system.

After finishing my homework, I walked openly out of the common room and found the other three already waiting at the entrance.

"I don't mind a night stroll, but where are you planning to go?" I was curious. "I thought you'd already been to lots of places lately."

"Hogwarts is so big. How could we possibly see all of it in a year?" James shook out his Invisibility Cloak, and I knew at a glance we were about to do another lion dance-maybe we should put on a lion dance performance next Christmas.

The four of us wandered the corridors beneath the Invisibility Cloak. James looked awfully mysterious.

"I found an incredible place when I was being punished by cleaning the storeroom." He elbowed Sirius as he spoke. "It's a shame you didn't go."

"I think it's a shame I wasn't punished too," Sirius replied. For a moment, I really couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or genuinely regretful.

"Where's this incredible place you're talking about?" I had an inexplicable bad feeling. Then again, there were few places in Hogwarts that could be called "incredible" and were also normal.

"Don't worry. You'll know when we get there."

James presumably wanted to preserve the mystery, so he never told us where we were going. But as the route grew increasingly familiar, I realized something-

Wasn't this the way to the Basilisk's Chamber of Secrets?!

That couldn't be right. Why did James know about this place? Or had he just found it without knowing what was inside?

In the previous loops, I'd never encountered the Basilisk during the Marauders' generation. But some events did vary slightly, so I thought it might just be a minor change and kept walking without saying anything. When we were almost at the entrance, though, I felt that if I didn't speak up, I'd probably have to start over again.

"James, did you see anything here before?" I asked.

"No, I didn't." James tapped the wall. "But I noticed it seems to be hollow underneath this wall. There's got to be a secret chamber or something in here." His eyes lit up as he spoke, just as they always had when he discovered a new adventure. "I've made it my goal to explore every secret chamber in Hogwarts!"

"Um... I think we'd better not go in." I wanted to tell him there was a Basilisk inside, but I was more worried that, with James's boundless curiosity, hearing that would make him even more eager to enter. So I could only skirt the issue. "Besides, this doesn't look like there's a secret chamber here. Are we going to pry it open?"

"That's why I've been studying it these past few days. I've tried lots of ways, but I still can't get it open." James tapped the wall with his wand. After a moment's thought, he turned to us with an innocent smile.

"Let's smash the wall down."

"You can use your head. That way, whether it's your head or the wall, at least one of them will crack open." Sirius was utterly speechless at James's attempt to get himself killed. "Besides, the noise would definitely attract Filch's attention. For damaging school property, the professors would probably send you home to cool off for a while."

"Boo-hoo, why are you saying that too?" James hugged his shoulders and leaned against Sirius, pretending to cry. Sirius held out a finger and pushed him away.

"If you lean on me again, I'll swing you into the wall."

"I think we'd better not smash the wall either." Remus, who had been silent until then, spoke softly. "And I think something's coming over there."

The two of them stopped fooling around, and I stopped watching. We all looked into the darkness. It was so dim that we could only vaguely make out something moving.

"Is it Mrs. Norris?" Sirius frowned.

"No, if it were that cat, she'd probably have started yowling already." James had been caught by Mrs. Norris many times and could be said to have the most experience. "Besides, that thing doesn't look anything like a cat..."

As we talked, the thing gradually came into view. The hazy moonlight outside the window shone across the floor, letting us just make out what it looked like.

It had enormous tentacles that made it look like a giant octopus at first glance.

But looking farther along, it was very much like a Mandrake-except that it had clearly overgrown, and its tentacles were astonishingly long, crawling across the floor like snakes. In the darkness, they writhed like a mass of wildly dancing shadows.

"Fuck!" Faced with that sight, I couldn't help expressing myself in the purest way possible.

Confronted with such an indescribable, Cthulhu-like creature, we turned and ran in perfect unison. Even though we were still under the Invisibility Cloak, the tentacles followed close behind us. I felt like it could see us.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Sirius was shocked. "You never saw it when you came here before?"

"I swear, this is my first time seeing it too!" James raised a hand to swear to the heavens and nearly knocked the cloak flying, though he looked more excited than afraid. "There are so many interesting things in Hogwarts!"

"Bang!"

I was running forward when a muffled thud suddenly sounded beside me. Without time to think, I hurriedly raised my wand.

"Lumos!"

Light instantly appeared at the tip of my wand, and by its glow, I saw that a tentacle had wrapped around Remus's leg and tripped him.

"Remus!" James quickly stopped. Only then did I realize that the enormous thing itself hadn't moved; only its tentacles were constantly growing longer. Even after wrapping around Remus, it had done nothing else.

"It's just like a plant," I muttered. When plants encountered something as they grew, they would climb over it and keep growing.

I'd only seen this thing once before. When I went to see Hagrid, I'd seen him hastily stuffing something into his hut, and the tentacles poking out beside him had looked exactly like these.

Seeing that Remus wasn't in immediate danger, we gathered around him.

At first, we tried to pull Remus free, but the tentacle was wrapped a little too tightly. We strained ourselves for ages without making any progress, and only ended up squeezing his hands red;

Then we tried cutting the tentacle. It was both soft and hard, and extremely springy. We couldn't cut through it at all.

"If it's a plant, it must be afraid of fire, right?"

Out of options, James came up with an idea. "Let's burn it! It'll definitely be scared."

"With the fire we can produce with our magic right now, I don't think we'd set it alight. We might even make it angry instead." I was worried. "How about trying a potion? I brewed some failures before, but they're pretty corrosive."

"Your choices are as bad as each other." Sirius practically rolled his eyes at me. "Either one would make it angry."

"Don't worry. As soon as I light it up, the pain will make it let go of Remus. Then we'll grab him and run. It'll be fine." James confidently took out his wand and cast the spell before either of us could stop him.

"Incendio!"

A burst of flame landed on the tentacle, but the little flame quickly vanished without a trace. Instead, the plant that had been quiet all this time went berserk!

"Remus!" I cried. The tentacle wrapped around Remus began whipping him into the air. Once it had lifted him as high as it could, it dropped him swiftly, as if he were bungee jumping. The three of us scrambled beneath him, casting several Levitation Charms in succession before we managed to slow his fall.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

More tentacles surged in from every direction. The walls and ceiling rumbled from the impacts, and grains of sand and gravel began to patter down. Cracks spread outward from the center of the wall like a spiderweb. In moments, the room was on the verge of collapse.

"The door's about to collapse!"

That was the first thing Remus said after he landed, his face ashen with fright. James looked at the doorway, half of which had been crushed, and finally realized how serious things were.

But the tentacles were completely enraged. They kept falling from above, slamming heavily into the floor. We dodged them constantly, never knowing when they would strike, and soon the floor was covered in deep gouges.

"Hurry, this place is about to collapse completely!"

James grabbed Sirius and me and shoved us forward, sending Remus, whom I was supporting, lurching forward with us. Realizing something, I turned to see James cast Incendio twice more at the tentacles.

Casting so many spells in such a short time would overtax his mental strength! And they were spells that would make the plant angry!

Sure enough, the tentacles grew even more violent after being struck by the flames in succession, and all the ones chasing us withdrew. Now its original form was fully revealed, like a gigantic octopus living on land. Countless tentacles surrounded James and came crashing down on his head from every direction-

"Petrificus Totalus!"

At the last moment, I could no longer worry about the system's restrictions or anything else. I raised my wand and cast Petrificus Totalus on the enormous creature, which was far beyond the range my current magic could cover.

The moment after I cast the spell, a strong taste of iron rose in my throat. The immense mental shock made everything go black before I could react, and I lost consciousness completely.

[Magical power surge detected!]

[Reinforcing...]

[Rollback successful]

[Author's note]

★ Tips ★

As a game with a high degree of freedom, unexpected situations will often arise. If handled poorly or with the wrong approach, they can easily lead to a death ending;

However, if an unexpected situation arises during the first rehearsal, the system will relax its restrictions to a certain degree, allowing a small amount of magical power to be temporarily rolled back. Note, however, that the amount is not large.

★ Side quest reminder ★

* Congratulations on unlocking James's main romance route-[Beware the Night Stroll · 1]

* Participated in a Marauders squad event. Marauders members' affection +5