"What in Merlin's name is that?" Bella whispered in awe as they approached it carefully. Snape shook his head to indicate that he, too, had never encountered anything like this before. He reached out a hand close to one of the glowing lines, only to yank it back quickly, looking at his hand in confusion. The skin was red, as if he'd almost been burned, though for that to be the case, the entire chamber should be warming up at an alarming rate.
Harry, noting Snape's reaction to the apparition, took a different approach, and began inching the tip of his ivory wand closer to one of the corners of the thing. When nothing happened and the wand didn't burst into flames from the same heat that had almost burned Snape, Harry closed the remaining distance and touched the corner formed by three glowing bars of light. To his surprise, his wand passed right through it. A sudden rumble went through the room again, and the object in the air solidified, sheets of light forming between the vertices of the structure. The outside of the tesseract glowed blood red for a brief moment, before fading to a dull, semi-transparent light red. Inside, hovering in the air, was a jet black staff.
"Merlin!" Bella had moved to stand behind Harry, and was gripping on to his shoulder in awe. "We did it," she whispered.
"Are we sure this is it?" Neville asked dubiously. "I mean, it doesn't look like a powerful magical artifact." And he was right. The staff was a simple rod, roughly six feet tall, and an inch and a half in diameter. Whether it was painted black, or that was the natural color of the material it was made of was impossible to tell.
"Only one way to find out," Harry muttered as he reached for the staff.
Bella's cry of horror echoed around the chamber as Harry was thrown a dozen feet through the air to land hard on his back. He tumbled and rolled for a few moments, before groaning in pain. The witch was at his side before he could try to rise. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?" she asked frantically.
"I'm fine… I think," Harry muttered. "Lost my glasses somewhere."
Bella glanced around and located the errant visual aid. Summoning it silently, she passed them to Harry, who promptly placed them on his nose. "Guess I won't be trying that again," he managed with a weak chuckle.
"No, you're not."
Harry glanced back at where Snape and the Ice soldiers were looking over the now solid construct. "Any idea what the heck that is?"
Bella shook her head. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen, I'm afraid. Usually when you're breaking or erecting wards a skilled mage can 'feel' the connecting magic threads, and then with some effort and time, he or she can figure out how to unravel the spell and neutralize it. This…"
"There's nothing," Snape commented from the other side of the hall. "It's not giving off any magical signature. It does not trigger any of the detection and identification spells I've been using, and it seems completely incorporeal, despite evidence to the contrary." Snape nodded at Harry, then proved his point by chucking a small rock at the thing. The surface rippled as the rock passed through, only to completely disappear. It reappeared an instant later, but not where they had expected it to. Instead of coming out of the other side, the rock had emerged from the top, falling 'up' towards the ceiling, before gravity took hold again and forced it back into the construct. It bounced around, emerging from random locations for a few more minutes, before finally dropping out the bottom.
"For all intents and purposes," Snape commented, "this thing shouldn't even exist."
"So what do we do now?" Neville asked.
Snape grimaced. "As much as I hate to say it, the headmaster would probably be of more help here. Maybe he has seen something like this before. As it stands, I have no idea where to even begin to deconstruct this ward. If it is, in fact, a ward."
"I have to agree," Bella admitted sourly, her expression softening as she noticed the dour look on Harry's face. "It's the only thing I can think of, Harry," she told him. "We don't have the time to go looking for more information in the libraries."
"I know." Harry nodded grimly. He was getting the sinking feeling something bad was about to happen, even as they all hurried back to the surface to get back to Nair'i'caix.
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