Five things That Never Happened In The Department of Mysteries
Author Note: Readers of No Time Like the Present may recognize one of these…
ONE.
The veil was entrancing and fascinating, ragged and dirty. It held a kind of ethereal beauty about itself as it swayed in an unseen wind.
Hermione hated it. She hated Harry's distant eyes and the others' silence and the still, jerky movements Neville and Luna made as they walked closer to it.
Her voice shook as she pleaded Harry to stay, to remember. She tried to grab his arm, but he pushed it aside. She spoke of Sirius- and for a moment his eyes cleared, for a moment she thought he would be all right- but they clouded over once more.
"Harry, won't you listen?" she almost-wailed.
But he was listening to something else now, and when he stepped through the archway she couldn't stop him.
The veil swung in the non-existent wind, and Harry did not return.
Neville didn't seem to notice.
Nor did Luna.
But Ron grabbed them both and stated yelling, and Ginny stood with her mouth open at the empty space where Harry should have been.
Hermione was calm, though.
It was obvious what needed to be done.
She looked at Ron, and he knew, too.
"Ginny," he said, his voice cracked and strained, "as soon as we leave, take Neville and Luna out."
The red-head opened her mouth to argue, but Hermione cut her off. "Then travel to headquarters, raise the alarm."
"But where are you two going?" Ginny asked.
As if she didn't know.
The Death Eaters didn't bother to attack them on their way out.
Potter was gone, after all, the prophecy made useless. No need to risk themselves for a bunch of useless teenagers. The Dark Lord would be pleased enough.
When the Order finally did hear what happened, finally finished screaming and crying and yelling at those left behind, Ginny just smiled.
Because the adults never had gotten the hang of following the Golden Trio, not really. For all that talk about things worth dying for, grown-ups weren't willing to take risks. Or actually stop and think about things, instead of blindly accepting what they'd been told.
Adventures were for children because adults were such a thick lot.
(Not a one had noticed she still couldn't see thestrals.)
TWO.
Lord Voldemort easily bypassed the feeble guard in the Atrium, didn't even need to kill him. And the ever-circling room was easily navigated.
He smiled, snake-like, as he picked up the prophecy and Apparated away.
THREE.
Neville's arms were heavy and his legs burned but he kept running and running and running. Because if he stopped he was dead, dead like Harry in that blast of green light, dead like Ron choking on the tangling vine-like tentacles of the brain, and he didn't want to die. But Hermione was so heavy to carry and he was running out of breath and what had happened to Ginny and Luna?
He didn't think about it, didn't thing about anything but getting Hermione away as the doors whirled and footsteps crashed behind him and torchlight glittered off the broken time turners. He was so busy not thinking about it or Bellatrix's screaming laughter that he crashed into the grandfather clock when he dodged the curse that slammed into the shelf holding the time turners.
Hermione fell out of his weakened grip, and both shelf and clock fell onto her as the second curse hit Neville and pain exploded down his arms in tendrils of white-hot flame. And Bellatrix was laughing at the game and Neville was giving up on life and Hermione was so very still and Neville knew then-
the world changed
and Neville knew then that if he called out because of the strange dream Gran would give him a lecture for waking her up in the middle of the night. He was almost five, after all.
FOUR.
There was a white light behind the veil, Sirius noticed rather dazedly. Very warm and calm. It felt like home, or what home would have felt like if he'd ever had one. Strange, but not a bad strange. Nothing to worry about.
There was a bushy haired girl behind the veil, wearing a rather annoyed expression.
"Sirius?" asked a surprised voice.
A short pause. Then, "I don't suppose you know where we are." It was more statement than question, and Sirius didn't answer it. (Despite his suspicions.)
There was a pull, a tug that got stronger the longer you stayed here, Hermione had told him.
Not that she needed to.
It was fairly obvious, from the way he could sometimes see through her to the warm light beyond, from the way her shadow flickered and brightened and ran through the spectrum of rainbow-colors, that she wasn't supposed to stay here.
They'd only been here five minutes.
He missed Harry.
(He missed James.)
He wasn't sure who he missed more.
He cursed himself for being selfish as Hermione's face flickered and wobbled and showed for an instant how very smart she was, to suspect the truth with not half the information he had had.
He pulled her closer, tighter for what he suspected might be a last hug or embrace or gesture of friendship or interaction with another living human being. (Here he almost snorted.)
Were they living?
Ten minutes later and he could feel the tug, too, but Hermione lifted he head out of his shoulder with a strange expression on her face and said, "Something's different."
Blue-white fire, so different from the gradual changing beauty of the light, snaked around her waist but Sirius didn't loosen his grip. He didn't like the light and he didn't want her to leave and he hadn't ever thought he would be so afraid of a spell with Healer's colors before.
Oh.
She could be healed, then.
She wasn't dead yet.
"It's all right," he sighed, and let her go.
He'd held on long enough for the light to grab hold of him too, though, pulling him through to the living world. He wondered what things would be like when he woke up. (If he woke up.)
He woke up when too-long eyelashes snapped open to the white of the ceiling in Hogwarts Infirmary. Sirius? asked Hermione's voice in his head (no, her head, the head they were sharing.) Sirius are you all right?
He wasn't sure.
When Madam Pomfrey gave them a potion and told, in a solemn voice, of his death, Sirius almost burst out laughing.
When Harry's mouth dropped open with amazement and shock and hope and Hermione made a dry comment about guppies, he did.
There were increasingly strained conversations with Dumbledore and teary one-armed hugs with Moony and the uncomfortable realization that he was sharing a body with a teenage girl.
But there was no funeral for Sirius Black.
Not for a long time.
FIVE.
It was always so quiet in the Ministry at night, thought the Order member standing guard outside a certain door. Really, he didn't see why Dumbledore insisted they take so much time out of their schedules to stand around here when they could be doing something important.
It wasn't as if anything ever happened here.
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