II: The Stone Observatory, or, Tears and Realised Fears, or, What Harry and the Others Found There
No-one had anything to say. Luna's comment was terrifying in a vague sort of way, and Harry tried not to think too much about the fact he might have accidentally transported everyone to a place they couldn't get back from. He went over to open the door, figuring that having to deal with Lucius and Bellatrix was better than being trapped in magical limbo. Harry placed his hand on the door and willed it to open again, trying to recreate the desperation he'd felt minutes before as he pictured Ginny writhing in agony on the floor. Hatred welled up inside him. The door stayed locked.
Luna and Neville had added their own Lumos spells to Hermione's, the three wands bringing the whole room into profile. It was circular, about twenty metres in diameter and constructed entirely from one type of grey stone. The door they'd fallen through was the only way in or out of the room. Hermione lifted her wand up and peered at the ceiling. A thin border of gold formed a faded circle where the ceiling met the walls. A giant network of lines, connecting points labelled in a mysterious text, had been carved into the ceiling.
Harry sat by the wall, knees pressed to his chest, watching miserably as Ron carefully laid Ginny down on a blanket Hermione had conjured, selfishly wishing there were some corners in circular rooms where he could skulk off to.
"Harry", Ginny croaked, her voice hoarse. Harry hurried over and knelt by her. She looked up at him.
"Thank you", she said, eyes slightly clouded from the pain, but grateful nonetheless.
A hot lump had formed in Harry's throat and he found he couldn't say anything. Thanks was the last thing he'd been expecting. Ginny gave him a weak, cracked smile and continued.
"Everyone else had – had gone, and I thought that – they would –" She couldn't finish; recalling the awful, agonising moment proved too much and Ginny burst into tears, burying her face in Harry's chest. He didn't think he could feel much worse, but as Ginny's trembling hands gathered fabric from his jumper and Harry watched her fingers curl into little fists, he wished she'd never had the misfortune of meeting him. Compelled to offer her some comfort, he wrapped Ginny a clumsy hug, conscious that everyone was watching him. Ron looked uncomfortable at the display and Hermione looked on with tears in her eyes.
Once Ginny had stopped crying, Harry eased her back onto the blanket. They let her sleep. Everyone moved to sit on the other side of the room, eager to discuss what their next course of action should be. Hermione said they should try blasting out of the room once Ginny woke up. Neville said he didn't think that would work. Ron said his mother was going to kill him when she found out he'd let Lucius Malfoy curse his sister. Then he wondered aloud when there would be a chance to eat, and Hermione told him to be quiet unless he had something constructive to say. Luna didn't say much, choosing to lie down on the blanket beside Ginny and cuddle up to her classmate. Harry stayed quiet and soon the others did the same. A few hours passed in silence as everyone sought company with their thoughts. Eventually Ginny woke up and saw Luna was lying next to her.
"Hi", she said softly, smiling at her friend. Everyone crowded round, relieved to see Ginny had woken up and stopped trembling.
"Is there anything to drink?" she asked, looking up at the circle that had formed above her.
Ron conjured a cup and filled it with an Aguamenti charm, passing it to his sister.
"Are – are you alright, Gin?" he asked gruffly.
"I'll be okay", she said, giving Harry a shy smile. "What are we going to do now?"
"Hermione's going to try and blast us out of here", Luna said, a little too seriously. Harry stifled a laugh as Hermione glared at Luna, not entirely sure if she was being made fun of or not. She decided to pass over the matter and turned her attention to a patch of wall.
"Confringo!" she shouted, sending a purple beam of light into the wall, which reflected the spell without the slightest sign of damage, forcing Hermione to flatten herself to avoid her own curse as it raced back towards her. The blasting hex ricocheted around the room, bouncing off the floor, the ceiling and every wall; it missed Neville by inches, and Hermione was shouting apologies to anyone who would listen as they cowered in the centre of the room, everyone sure it was going to hit someone in a minute and cause some serious damage. Harry brought up a shield charm and managed to deflect the spell into the door, more by dumb luck than anything else. The door absorbed the spell and the room was quiet again. Everyone spent a minute lying on the floor, trying to get their breath back. Then Luna started giggling and Neville joined in, both of them trying not to look at a very cross Hermione.
"Any other plans I should be worried about?" Ginny asked her scowling brother, sharing a smile with Harry as she did so.
"I bloody hope not", Ron muttered, failing to see the funny side of nearly being bludgeoned to death.
Luna leant across and whispered something to Neville, causing them both to erupt in laughter. Hermione glowered at them. Harry hid his smile behind his hand.
Now the immediate threat of being hit by a blasting hex was gone, the six teenagers weren't really sure what to do. Harry and Ginny chatted on the blanket; Harry kept trying to apologise but Ginny wouldn't let him, talking about anything that wasn't on the subject of the Department of Mysteries in an effort to keep Harry from thinking about Sirius. Ron wasted half an hour trying to open the door, first with some complicated wandwork, then by talking to it, and then by hitting it limply until Ginny told him to stop because he was giving her a headache. From time to time Neville or Luna would look at Hermione and collapse in a fit of giggles. Hermione would scowl at them, well aware they were laughing at her.
"I think it's probably evening now in England", Ron said, sounding wistful. Harry would have bet his entire Gringotts account Ron was thinking about Hogwarts supper.
A deep, rumbling noise started, and for a ludicrous second Harry thought it was coming from Ron's stomach. Fine particles of dust filtered down from above as the ceiling started to move. Neville sneezed. At the very centre of the dome, a yellow point of light flashed briefly and other points around it started to pulse, causing even more lights to blink into existence. Once two dots connected by a line were lit up, white light would spill out slowly from both ends, like water being poured down a channel. Soon a network of lights was spreading out across the ceiling, illuminating the room below where everyone stood looking up in wonder. The rumbling noise continued as the ceiling began to rotate slowly, splitting into segments of rocks which slid ponderously past each other. They would take hours to complete a circuit of the room.
"It's some sort of magical observatory, I think", Ginny said, gazing up at the dome. "All of the dots are stars, and the lines make constellations."
The others murmured in agreement. A few larger, unconnected dots above Neville's head began to glow green. Harry thought they might be planets. He looked behind him, where a lonely cluster of stars was slowly disappearing into the gold border between the ceiling and the wall. New constellations crept into existence on the other side of the room.
With an excited skip, like she'd just worked something out, Luna walked across to the door and placed her hand on it. To everyone's surprise, it opened with click, and they all hurried over to crowd around Luna. She had paused with her hand on the handle.
Hermione spoke up from the back of the group. "How did you manage to get the door open?"
Luna turned around and smiled. "Once Ginny had worked out what the room was, I thought it might be nice enough to open up for us."
"Luna, that's brilliant", Harry breathed, relief evident in his voice. "Let's get back to the Department of Mysteries." He couldn't imagine Lucius and Bellatrix had spent the whole afternoon waiting by the black door in full Death Eater garb.
"Oh no, it doesn't lead us back to where we came from", Luna said seriously. "It's a magic door."
"Er – where does it lead then?" Ron asked, sounding apprehensive.
"I don't know", Luna said truthfully, and pushed the door open to reveal a rocky passageway. A flight of stone steps led downwards into darkness. Water could be heard dripping from stalactites, pooling on the floor and trickling down the steps. Luna cast a Lumos and stepped through the door, the others following behind her. Their breaths rose in smoky puffs as they descended through the cold damp air. Ginny shivered, looking even paler by the light of Luna's wand. Harry wished he knew how to conjure blankets. After a while the path flattened out and they came to a landing. A large rectangular slab of rock blocked the entrance to what looked to be a cave.
"What do you reckon? We could shift this and see what's behind it", Ron said, sizing up the slab of rock. "I've had enough of walking for a while."
Harry and Neville said they felt the same way, and after much pushing and panting, and a few silenced Glisseos from Hermione so as to not injure the boys' pride, they managed to shift the rock a couple of feet. Harry and Neville slipped through the gap and peered into the dark. It was drier inside the cave, and the light that filtered through from the passage showed loose rubble and rocks strewn by their feet.
Harry thought he could hear something beating softly in the distance, and a shiver of unease ran down his spine. Neville gave him a worried look. The beating noise grew louder. And then something hellish came out of the dark. There was a rattling breath, a violent ripping noise, and Harry saw something huge and wraith-like lunge toward him, shrieking viciously, driven out of its mind by the passage of millennia. A pale wing ending in talons nearly decapitated Neville, who managed to duck and squeeze back out through the gap, and Harry turned, desperate to follow him. It was only a couple of steps, but he could hear wings beating about his head and there was a hot, putrid breath on the back of his neck. He tore back through the gap between the wall and the rock, slicing his palm on the bare stone, and spun to face whatever foul demonic creature had come out from the back of the cave.
"Close it up! Close it up! Put the rock back!" he screamed.
Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Luna sprang into action. They ran round to the other side of the rock and started pushing, managing to get it closed most of the way before the monster made it to the entrance and managed to get a hand through.
The hand was colourless and huge. Each finger was close to half a foot in length, and all five were grappling and clawing at the rock, trying to prize the entrance to the cave open. The palm was a shrunken waste of skin the size of a man's head. And in it you could see a mass of tendons, snapping and sliding desperately. The worst of it all was how high up the hand was – it must have been ten or twelve feet above the ground – so that they could all see all how just how big the creature was.
"Harry, get rid of it!" Ron shouted, putting all his weight into keeping the door closed.
"Stupefy!" The first spell missed by an inch inside and hit the rock, which rattled ominously. The second shot hit the hand dead on. It froze for a moment, then twitched and began clawing again.
"Cutting curse!" Ginny called, hardly sparing breath next to her brother.
"What if I hit the rock?" Harry asked, full of dread.
No-one answered him. Neville lay trembling on the floor. Steadying himself, Harry took a deep breath and fired a bolt of blue at the flapping hand; it hit the creature's wrist and went through it with the clean snap of bone. The rock rumbled across the entrance, blocking it completely. Ron, Ginny, Hermione and Luna all collapsed to the floor, spent, the severed hand landing next to them. It didn't so much as twitch, lying curled and brittle on the floor. There was silence for a couple of seconds and then a frenzied shriek came from inside the cave. The creature, furious at being cheated of its freedom began to claw at the boulder. Horrible chilling sounds came through the rock. Harry hoisted Neville up and dragged him on down the path, desperate to put as much distance between them and the cave. The others ran after him, fuelled by terror, only stopping for breath when they couldn't hear the scratching sounds anymore.
Ron, Ginny and Luna kept up with him and Hermione arrived a few seconds later, panting heavily.
"What – what was that thing?" Ron asked, visibly shaken.
"I don't know", Harry managed between breaths, "but it looked really old. It was ancient." The others were watching him, expecting him to tell them what they were going to do next. "I guess we keep going, then", he said.
They wandered on in silence until Ginny said she was feeling tired again and hopped on Ron's back, asking him to carry her in her best little sister tone. Ron tried protesting but Ginny refused to get off and eventually he gave in, grumbling that she was too old for this and that she'd been much lighter as an eight-year-old. He got his own back a few minutes later by telling Harry that Ginny would much rather he carried her but unfortunately, she was too shy to ask. Ginny hissed at Ron furiously to be quiet, and then had Harry said he wouldn't mind carrying her, a little too quickly, and got an odd look from Hermione as a result. He didn't get another chance to embarrass himself, because by that time they'd reached another landing.
Here tHeHfasf\he passageway ended abruptly in a sheer wall of rock. Set into the wall was a door that looked identical to the one that had taken them out of the Department of Mysteries. It was formed of the same black substance, had the same triangular silver handle, and the same rows of symbols Harry couldn't decipher. He opened it. It led into an empty corridor. Once everyone had filed in, Harry closed the door and tried opening it again, only to find it had locked. It seemed they were stuck in the corridor for the time being.
By now everyone was tired, starving and all out of sorts. Hermione conjured some hammocks and fixed them to the walls. There was nothing to do but for everyone to go to bed. Harry lay awake as Ginny tossed and turned in a bunk above his, reliving the horrors of her day. The familiar sounds of Ron's and Neville's snoring could be heard. Eventually Harry fell asleep, and the next thing he knew, Ron was shaking him awake with a huge smile plastered on his face.
"Harry, wake up mate. You've got to see this."
