Harry - ground floor.
Harry shivered. The fog was thick here; the ante-room walls dripped with condensation and the air was cold enough to make his teeth hurt as he dragged in another huge breath. His broom was a splintered wreck; glimmers of brass fittings nestled amongst the clumps of twigs and curls of scorched varnish. He'd hauled on the broom hard enough to split the shoulder seam of his robe - the muscle there alternated between baleful throbbing and a worrying numbness - and had felt his toes scuff the flagstones before he'd managed to pull up out of the dive.
That was when things had started to go wrong, even as he'd dared to think he'd escaped the worst. Emerging into the entrance hall, he'd had to make another screeching turn to avoid barrelling into a wall of what he took at first to be lifelike statues and had found himself neatly funnelled into the ante-room at the side of the hallway, where he'd encountered, in quick succession, a heap of broken furniture, dented armour and then the rotting remains of a carpet, which had probably saved his life. His broom had been less fortunate, leaving him embroiled in the mouldy wool and plunging into the far wall with a horribly final crash.
Inferi! Those had been Inferi, out in the hall. Scrabbling free of the carpet's clammy grasp, he slithered to the floor and raised his wand, expecting the doorway to be filled with blank faces and pale, clutching hands. Nothing. He risked a glance around the side of the doorframe - the door had long since been ripped from its hinges - and saw the figures standing where they had been, somehow menacing in their stillness, unpleasantly like puppets whose operator had momentarily stepped away, leaving them hanging lifelessly by their strings. Most were facing towards the main doors, their hands dangling at their sides, but Harry thought he recognised the profile of Professor Sinistra. It was hard to be sure; mildew had grown out of the collar of her robes and crept up to fill the withered hollow of her cheek and temple, and her hair was caked in moss and dirt.
Harry felt as if his skin was crawling away from his body, and his scalp prickled as his hair, never neat, tried to stand on end. Professor Sinistra. I'm so sorry. He clamped down on a moan of horrified pity and looked past the inert forms to the steps leading up to the Great Hall - to get there, he would have to walk right past them all.
The cloak would be...
It must be kept hidden at all times. Even if you're caught, the dagger must reach the Dark Lord intact - they must not disarm you.
Harry scowled, in spite of his fear, at the remembered exchange. It's all right for you, Snape. You don't have to face him. He reached inside the collar of his robes, tugging out the tightly folded bundle of the cloak, slippery and cool around the length of crystal and glass beneath. He'd admired the dagger, when he'd first seen it, a thin spike of greyish, honeycombed glass, set into a ridged and patterned handle. The Archaeus hadn't been in it, then - Snape had added the final ingredient before his eyes, upending a small vial into a black glass jar and swirling the contents with a look of grave concentration. Harry had resisted the temptation to ask 'is that it?' and had simply watched mutely while the dour wizard, with infinite care, unscrewed the dagger hilt and funnelled the potion - a thin liquid, translucent blue and faintly glowing - into the blade.
Now he was tempted to turn back the folds of the cloak to check the dagger was intact after his crash landing. And if it's not? Are you going to turn around and go back and tell everyone 'sorry, I messed it up'? And then what? Keep running away from him forever? He shook his head, his mouth set in a firm line.
"No. I have nowhere else to go."
Holding the cloak-enfolded dagger tightly in one hand, his wand in the other, he stepped out into the entrance hall.