Thanks to everyone who reviewed.

Previously: Harry meets Dumbledore in a Death Chamber-like limbo and walks through the white veil, which is to supposedly take him to the past.

Chapter Two: The Death Chamber Again.

Harry lay face down again, but there was no silence this time, and he was not perfectly alone. Instead, he could hear voices. Familiar, faraway voices that seemed to become louder and clearer as wakefulness returned to him.

But there was something wrong. Something not quite right. The voices, they sounded terrified and worried, higher than what he was used to …younger.

His eyes snapped open.

Five blurry faces hovered above him, all of which gasped when they saw that he was stirring. Three of the faces cried, "He's awake!" while another shouted, "Blimey, mate, I thought you were–!" and yet another said, "Oh, he might've been dazed by some Wrackspurts. He'll come around."

And Harry realized that they were the voices of Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Ron, and Luna.

He sat up, and everything began spinning so dizzyingly that he yelped and clasped his head in his hands. When the vertigo finally lapsed, he realized that they were all staring at him as though he were brittle glass about to explode at any moment.

"Where–" he started, but his voice cracked, so he coughed and tried again. "Where are we?"

"Harry!" said Hermione. She sounded very scared. "Harry, we're in the Department of Mysteries! We're here to save Sirius, r-remember?"

"I… wha–?" Harry looked from her blurry face to each of the others', and noticed that he was once again in the Death Chamber, but it was all hazy and indistinct. He wondered why that was until someone handed him his glasses.

Putting them on, his surroundings and friends' visages became clear, though he was still quite confused. It took several seconds of utter bewilderment before things settled in: Some time ago he had let Voldemort kill him – and then he'd met Dumbledore in the Death Chamber that wasn't the actual Death Chamber – and then he'd walked through the archway with the white curtain – which was to take him to the past – and so now…

"We've got to get out of here," he whispered, eyes widening.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you till you collapsed!" said Hermione worriedly. The others nodded in agreement, and Ron said, "Harry, you didn't – you know – get another one, did you?"

Another one? What was Ron talking about? If Harry had traveled back in time to the moment where they'd entered the Ministry to rescue Sirius, then they needed to get out here now, because Sirius wasn't here. And they were all in danger if they ran into the Death Eaters!

"What d'you mean 'another one'?" said Harry impatiently.

Ron looked at him with a scared expression, as though Harry had lost his marbles. "Another vision, mate, from – from You-Know-Who. You didn't see anything – did you?"

A vision.

During his fifth year, if he thought about it quick, he had been experiencing constant interference with Voldemort's mind, until the latter started blocking him with Occlumency (which had faltered often during the search for the Horcruxes). Harry himself had been made to take those disastrous Occlumency lessons with Snape.

Snape…

It made him feel odd thinking about that hook-nosed, greasy-haired man. Harry had finally learned about Snape's true alliance and love for his mother near the end, and the way Snape had died had been a horrible death. No matter how much Harry had disliked him and how unpleasant and cruel Snape had been in real life, no one deserved to die like that. Especially when it was at the hands of Voldemort.

And that was the whole reason Harry was here, in the past. Everyone who he knew that'd died had had their deaths linked to Voldemort in some way or another, whether it was directly or through one of Voldemort's followers.

But this time was different, Harry was sure of it. He would make sure of it. This time he had a chance, an advantage. He knew that the dream he had once seen of Sirius being tortured by Voldemort was fake. And the first step to preventing countless innocent murder victims was by leaving this place.

"Look, guys," said Harry. What was it Ron had asked him? Oh, right. "We've need to go back to Hogwarts, because the – er – vision I had just now – it's – it showed me that Sirius isn't here. The earlier dream was fake."

They all looked shocked at his words.

"Are you sure you're all right, Harry?" Hermione asked cautiously.

"You said you were sure Sirius was here earlier," said Ron.

"Maybe he bumped his head really hard when he collapsed," Neville suggested fearfully.

"He did say he heard voices when we came in here," said Ginny.

"I can hear them, too." Luna reminded.

No one answered her.

Harry stood up and felt his head spin again, though not as badly as the last time. His knees shook slightly, but he ignored it. He didn't need them fussing over him right now!

"Look!" he snapped. "I'm fine, alright!"

Then he stared at them.

The reality of their current situation had driven most thought out of his mind, but he only just registered how the war had affected each of the people standing around him: Luna, she had been imprisoned at the Malfoy Manor for months on end – and Neville had been tortured for defying the Death Eaters at Hogwarts – Hermione had been tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange – Ron had witnessed Fred's death and hadn't been able to take proper revenge – and Ginny... Harry had barely had any time to enjoy the short relationship they once shared. Maybe he could make sure they had more this time around–?[1]

Harry shook his head. That would have to wait. Now wasn't the time to let his thoughts wander. Everything would have to wait, because there were other important things to deal with at the moment.

"In the …vision I had," he started, "I saw Voldemort–" (Nearly everyone flinched, but Harry didn't notice, he was too busy inventing wildly.) "– I saw him commanding Death Eaters – Malfoy, Crabbe, Lestrange, Macnair, and a couple others – to corner us in the Hall of Prophecy –"

"The Hall of Prophecy?" they echoed.

"It's the room I saw in my dream," Harry explained hurriedly. "It's filled with these blue glowing glass spheres – prophecies – and Voldemort wants them to retrieve one that's about me and him."

"But Harry," said Hermione slowly, "if what you saw really is real, and Sirius isn't here, then why did You-Know-Who show you a fake dream in the first place?"

"Well, because the only people who can take the prophecies are the subjects the prophecies are about! Er – Voldemort said so! And he wants me to get it for the Death Eaters because he can't just prance into the Ministry himself!"

"A-are you sure, though, Harry?" said Ron, now looking convinced that Harry was mad. "I mean, you even checked Grimmauld Place through Umbridge's fire and Sirius wasn't there!"

"Well, he is there!" said Harry. "I just know, alright! So we have to leave now!"

Why couldn't they see how dangerous it was to be here? If they didn't leave now, the Order and Sirius would come and any one of them could die!

"C'mon!" said Harry insistently. He started to scramble up the stone benches, reaching instinctively into his pocket for his wand, which wasn't there. "Where's my wand?"

"Oh, here," said Ginny. "You dropped it."

"Thanks." Harry felt a spark of both sadness and relief as he claimed possession of his wand. The last time it had worked properly had been when he and Hermione had gone to Godric's Hollow and encountered Nagini, Voldemort's enormous snake, which also happened to be one of the Horcruxes Harry never destroyed. In fact, none of the Horcruxes were damaged anymore, no longer counting himself (Dumbledore had said something about it being destroyed in the forest). Harry was redoing a part of his fifth year now and had yet to get his hands on all of them.

Harry warily mused about how he was going to get Slytherin's locket from Umbridge or Hufflepuff's cup out of the Lestranges' Gringotts vault again, ignoring the way Hermione and Ron exchanged looks behind his back.

"All right," he said to them all when they reached the top of the room. "We came here by Thestrals, right?"

"Yeah," said Ron, staring at him incredulously. "We all rode them here, didn't we?"

"Er, yeah, but they might've left by now," said Harry. "So we'll have to get back to Hogwarts by Floo powder. There are fireplaces in the Atrium."

"Harry, you can't Floo into Hogwarts," said Hermione at once. "It's in Hogwarts, A History."

They couldn't…?

"Are you sure?" he asked her. "Sirius was able to do it during the Triwizard Tournament, wasn't he?"

"Yes, but Sirius only traveled by Floo with his head," Hermione pointed out. "When you're not inside Hogwarts itself, you can only Floo partially, unless you know the specific grate code or have an authorized connection from the Floo Regulation Panel."

"Fine, we'll just have to Floo somewhere into Hogsmeade," said Harry, and he moved forward to turn the handle of the door but was halted by Luna, who put her hand on his shoulder.

"It's all right, Harry," she said with a small, reassuring smile. "Wrackspurts always get us at some point or another, even when we least expect it. And if you say that Sirius or Stubby Boardman isn't here, then I believe you."

Everyone gave her a weird look, and Harry said, "Er, thanks, Luna," forgetting how Luna could be rather …Luna-ish at times. "I'll check if the coast's clear, then."

He cracked the door open a few inches and peered through, a hex at the ready in case any of the Death Eaters were on the other side.

But there weren't.

The circular room was clearly vacant, black and interspersed with the branches of blue-flamed candles like he remembered it.

Relieved, he pulled the door open wider, and they all trampled in. Hermione went to add another fiery 'X' on the front of the door like there was on one of the others, but Harry stopped her.

"There's no need."

"Why not?"

"You just have to ask this room what room you want to enter," said Harry, recalling how he had shouted for the exit when he'd been chasing after Bellatrix Lestrange after she'd killed Sirius.

"Why didn't you say so before?" said Hermione with a frown.

"I – er – I saw Voldemort tell the Death Eaters in my vision just now," said Harry quickly, relieved to see that she bought it. Shit, he really had to be careful about what he said from now on. Or they'd all think he was insane (Ron probably already did by the looks of it). It would be rather suspicious if he knew too much about certain things, and he couldn't always blame his slip-ups on Voldemort's interference with his mind…

Hermione shut the door to the Death Chamber, and Harry waited edgily till the room stopped rotating before asking, "Where's the exit – the way out?"

A door to his left immediately flew open and he could see the (thankfully empty) torch-lit corridor toward the lifts stretching ahead of him.

"Wow, Harry," said Neville with an air of amazement, as they all left the circular room and started making their way down the hall. "That room back there really does answer you when you ask it! It's almost like the–"

But what the circular room behind them was almost like, they never found out, because Neville's voice had abruptly faltered. The reason for this was that, before they had even approached the end of the corridor, one of the lifts in front of them suddenly clanged down, and out of it came a group of black, hooded figures with wands pointed directly at their hearts.

"Leaving so soon?" spoke a drawling voice from the middle of the group.

Death Eaters.

-~-

[1] Okay, I know that Harry momentarily thinks about starting a relationship with Ginny again, but that's all it'll ever be. Thoughts. I'm not a fan of the H/G pairing myself, so those of you who dislike it as well will only have to gag when Harry thinks of her. I promise.