I know I said it would be a while before I updated, but I was just so excited to write this chapter that I couldn't stay away from my computer! Again, I should be studying for an AP test, but that seems to be taking secondary importance (not a good thing, darn it) because the chapter after this one is the entire reason I started writing this fic… a year ago. Wow, has it really been a whole year? Goodness, I don't write very fast, do I?

Chapter 35

The Department of Mysteries

Harry stood in his office and gazed at their handiwork. The last time they had made this potion had been in their second year, when they were trying to prove Draco Malfoy guilty of opening the Chamber of Secrets. When they had done that, disguising themselves as Crabbe and Goyle (and Hermione, unintentionally, as a cat), Harry had felt a thrill of fear about what he had been about to do.

If that had been a thrill of fear, then what he was experiencing now must be near a nervous breakdown.

Hermione sat beside the bubbling Polyjuice Potion, her hands trembling as she stirred it. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"Hey," Ron said from by the window, gazing out at the Quidditch pitch, "it was your idea in the first place."

"You two were supposed to disagree," she snapped. "I didn't think we'd actually end up going through with this."

"At least we don't have to do it in a dysfunctional girls' bathroom this time," Harry remarked. He frowned over the paper he was grading, hoping that the student had been kidding when he explained that the main purpose of hexes and jinxes was to curse his teachers. Sighing as he scrolled a large D at the top, he turned to the next one.

"Tell me again how you plan on getting hair from these people," Ron said, looking at Hermione.

"I sent them owls, saying that I'm doing a report for school and I was wondering if they could give me a description of their job," she explained patiently. "I've cast a spell on the owls that will make two or three strands of the Unspeakables' hair stick to their legs when they take off. And the letters have Fred and George's Bewitching Powder in them, which I've charmed to make it so that they'll completely forget to go to work tomorrow."

"And we'll go in instead of them."

"Exactly." Hermione inhaled deeply, and then she moaned. "We will be so dead if we get caught. We'll be expelled, and we'll be lucky if we don't go to Azkaban."

"We won't get caught," Harry said reassuringly, glad that this student's main goal in life was not to hex his professors. "I have complete faith in your planning and executing abilities."

"What if I've brewed the potion wrong?" she asked worriedly. "I don't want to end up a cat again… or worse."

"You brewed it right when you were in the second year, Hermione," Ron said exasperatedly. "Surely your potions skills haven't gotten worse since then."

When Hermione continued to look nervous, Harry put aside his papers and leaned forward. "Look, Hermione, even if we do get caught, at least we'll know it was in doing the right thing."

Hermione shot him an exasperated look. "The right thing? Taking the places of two Unspeakables? Hexing them without their knowing? Going to the one place in the Ministry of Magic that is absolutely forbidden? That's the right thing?"

"It's not too late to back out, you know."

"Yes it is," she said darkly. "I've already sent the owls, and they've probably already touched the Bewitching Powder, so they won't go to work tomorrow. So if we don't go, neither they nor anyone disguised as them will come."

"Who exactly did you send them to?" Ron asked.

"A woman named Matilda Frond, a man named Kurt Hutchinson, and…" her voice trailed off and she looked guiltily at the dark mess in the cauldron.

"And…?" Ron prompted.

"David Hoffman." She paused, looking as though she hated herself for using a friend like this. "I thought it would be easier to be him, seeing as we know him, but I didn't want to involve him because if we got caught and it was found out that he helped us willingly, he'd be in trouble too. So the most obvious answer was to make his cooperation… unwilling."

"Some friend you are," Ron said jokingly, but Hermione practically burst into tears.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Harry swallowed hard as he looked at the blackish liquid in the two vials he had in his hands. They stood before the fire in his office, a pot of floo powder on the hearth beside them.

"Don't forget," Hermione said urgently as she uncorked her own vial, "we have to take the second one no more than an hour after we drink this."

They each had two vials filled with the Polyjuice Potion, one to take now, before the Apparated to the Ministry, and one to take later, if they had to be there for more than an hour. Hermione withdrew three envelopes. On each was written in her neat handwriting a name. She handed Harry the one that said Kurt Hutchinson and Ron the one with David Hoffman's name. "There are two hairs from each in there. Don't lose them," she implored, keeping her own with the name Matilda Frond.

Harry distastefully pulled out one of the short, ginger-colored hairs and dropped it into one of his vials. It turned a dark, sickening color of purple. "Alright," he said, plugging his nose as the putrid scent reached it, "Here goes."

He drained it, making a face at the horrible taste, and then he felt it. His bones changing shape, his muscles clenching and reforming, his hair changing color, his face twisting into another man's.

Five long, agonizing, tortuous seconds later, Harry was no longer Harry, but an unknown man named Kurt Hutchinson. Luckily (or, more probably, by Hermione's good planning and thinking), Hutchinson's frame was about the same size and shape as Harry's was. The plain black robes he had pulled on were slightly tight around the shoulders, but other than that, they fit perfectly."

"You have a goatee," Ron said in amazement as Hermione downed her own potion. After a lot of whimpering in pain, she became a tall, somewhat plump black woman with charming dark eyes. She had used a robe that belonged to one of the girls in her dormitory, a girl who was rather larger than she, and it fit her well as well.

Ron, who was ogling at them both, voiced the question that Harry was thinking. "How did you know what kind of robes to get?"

She blushed. "I used a form of Legilimency on the owls," she said sheepishly. "I got visuals on all the people we would be impersonating."

Ron let out a low whistle as he dropped Hoffman's hair into his vial. "Smart, that was."

"This is Hermione we're talking about," Harry—or Hutchinson—reminded him dryly. "Of course it was smart."

When Ron downed his potion, Harry found himself face to face with David Hoffman. A pang of guilt hit him; he had not thought much about Hermione's culpable feeling until now, when he was face to face with the impersonation of the man who had trusted them enough to risk his career to help them. Hermione, with Frond's eyes, nearly started crying again.

"Are we ready?" Ron asked with a nervous gulp. "This feels so weird, he added, pinching his own cheek. "I'm old."

Harry was rather young, as far as he could tell. No wrinkles, no hurting knees or feelings of weariness. He sighed. "I suppose we're ready. Hermione?"

"As ready as we'll ever be. But we have to call each other by our names—Kurt, David, and Matilda. If we call each other Ron, Harry, and Hermione, someone's bound to notice, and I doubt at our age that we'll be able to pass them off as nicknames."

"Let's go," Harry said decisively. "We should stagger it, so that we don't all arrive at the Ministry at the same time. I'll go first, Hermione, you come a minute after I go, and Ron, you come a few minutes after her."

Without waiting to see if they had any objections, Harry took a pinch of the floo powder by his fireplace and tossed it into the flames. They whirred an emerald green, and he stepped in, too nervous to enjoy the pleasantly warm, tickling sensation. "The Ministry of Magic!" he said loudly and very clearly, not particularly wishing to end up somewhere like Knockturn Alley.

There was a whoosh, and Harry spun rapidly past thousands of fireplaces before finding himself stepping out into the lobby of the Ministry of Magic.

He went up to the security desk. The young wizard looked up at him. "'Ello, Kurt," he said jovially. "Wand please." Harry handed him his wand, hoping that he would not notice that it was different from Kurt Hutchinson's normal one. Unfortunately, his brow creased and he asked, "Get a new wand?"

"Erm… yeah," Harry said quickly, seizing on the excuse. "Mine broke the other day."

"Oh. This one working well for you?"

"Perfectly."

He handed it back. "Have a good day, Kurt!"

Harry nodded as he walked away, hoping his nervousness did not show on his face. He passed many other witches and wizards as they emerged from the grates, came out of the elevators, and poured through the many doors that opened into the lobby. Some people nodded to him, and he nodded back, assuming that he was supposed to know them. He made his way towards the lifts, tracing from his memory where to go.

Two memos got out of the lifts with him, but he paid them no heed. He turned a few corners, starting every time he saw someone, and finally found himself face to face with an unobtrusive, black door. He inhaled sharply; he knew this door by sight. He had been in there before, both in dreams and in reality.

He decided to wait for Ron and Hermione. The latter showed up not a minute after he did, looking at least as anxious as he felt, and Ron came a few moments later. He looked back and forth between his companions. "Shall we go in?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"I don't see why not," Harry answered. "We've done this much, haven't we?"

Harry took the initiative and turned the doorknob.

Or, at least, he tried to.

Hermione moaned. "I didn't even think of that," she whispered. "Oh, I'm so stupid! It's locked!"

Harry and Ron exchanged glances. If there was one word in the word that did not describe Hermione, it was 'stupid'.

"Hermione, calm down," Ron urged. She looked as though she were about to hyperventilate.

Hermione turned to the door and in a desperate attempt, whispered, "Alohamora."

Nothing happened. The door remained locked.

"We can't do it," she said in a mortified whisper. "We can't get in…"

Ron looked helpless. "I guess we'll… have to go back."

Harry was about to agree when an idea popped into his head. "Wait," he said softly, turning back towards the door. He ran his fingers along the steel. "Hang on a moment."

He reached out and felt the magic in the metal of the door. Slowly, he moved his attention from the actual door to the magically enforced lock. He felt it, though faint: the magic of the lock.

If there's any time I need it, he thought desperately, it's now. Please, talk to me. Listen to me.

He felt the magic, he only had to grasp it.

It's not coming…With a final, desperate effort, Harry lunged with his magic, pressing his face against the lock, begging with it, pleading with it to open.

Nothing happened.

And then, there was the quiet sound of metal grating on metal.

"Harry," Ron whispered in awe, "you did it."

Hardly able to believe it himself, Harry turned the doorknob. The door swung open.

Hermione threw his arms around her neck. Harry had to be glad that there was no one else in the hall—this would have been a strange sight indeed.

When they entered, they found themselves in an all-too-familiar room. There were twelve black doors set into a circular wall. The door they had entered through swung shut behind them.

"Remember what we did last time?" Ron whispered.

"Let's do it again," Hermione and Harry agreed simultaneously.

They picked one door. It was locked, and naturally, Alohamora did not unlock it. Harry once again reached out of the magic in the metal and asked it to open. It happened a lot faster this time.

"The brain room," Ron whispered in horror.

"Nope," the other two said at the same time. "Let's go."

They retreated back into the circular room, and before they closed the door, Hermione marked it with a flaming red X. They shut it, and the walls around them began spinning faster and faster and faster, until finally coming to a halt, and the only way they knew which door they had last entered was by the glowing X on it.

They tried two other doors before finally landing on the right one. Harry found himself looking down at a stone dais, some twenty feet below where they stood. It was surrounded by what seemed to be tiers of stone benches, rising up to the door at which they stood. In the center, on the dais, stood an old crumbling archway that looked like it was about to collapse.

Only one couple was still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light: He was laughing at her. "Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.

The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest.

The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.

Harry released Neville, though he was unaware of doing so. He was jumping down the steps again, pulling out his wand, as Dumbledore turned to the dais too.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch…

It was fluttering slightly…