Having made it all the way to the Ministry of Magic, down to the Department of Mysteries, we were now facing a rather ominous door. I didn't like the fact that this was too easy. Too smooth. There should be people here, guards, late night workers, but there was nothing. If anything this proved that something was going on here on this floor, and I dreaded to know the answer. Harry insisted on leading the way so I stuck close to him, knowing that he would most likely be the first target if someone had set a trap.
The door opened smoothly and permitted us inside with no hindrance so we came face to face with a dark, lightless, circular room. There were doors all around us and before Harry could lead us forwards, the room started to shift and change. My wand was raised to the ready, standing firmly as the walls all moved quickly until it seemed to decide that it had had enough of that and stopped altogether. "What was that about?" Ron squeaked so I patted him on the shoulder lightly.
"I think it was to stop us knowing which door we came in through." Ginny murmured so I arched an eyebrow.
"Well there's a delightful thought." Most of these doors looked the same so as I lit my wand, I raised it higher to look around.
"How are we going to get back out?" Neville worried but Harry pointed out that this didn't matter at the moment as we wouldn't be leaving until we'd found Sirius, my dad. We all looked at Harry expectantly when Ron asked him which door it was we needed to go through, seeing as he'd seen all this before.
"I don't…in the dreams I went through the door at the end of the corridor from the lifts into a dark room – that's this one – and then I went through another door into a room that kind of…glitters." Right, so all we're looking for is glitter. Brilliant. "We should try a few doors, I'll now the right way when I see it." Moving forward confidently, Harry chose the door right in front of him and after readying himself to attack anything behind it, he opened it up. Well, there was no glittering, but there was a huge tank full of pale white objects that I couldn't distinguish at first, and whilst the others wondered at what they could be, Hermione was the one to recognise them as brains.
After investigating, we hurriedly left that room and Hermione smartly drew and 'X' on the door before we closed it so that when the room rotated again, we knew which door we'd already tried. The next door was not much better, though rather creepy. It was like a huge amphitheatre with a stone archway in the middle where Luna insisted that she heard voices and after a moment, Neville also admitted that he could hear something, he and Ginny staring to stare in a trance. We promptly marked that door and picked another. The third door wouldn't open, and neither an unlocking spell nor the knife that Harry had received from my dad to unlock things worked. In fact, the knife became ruined and as Harry stared at it dejectedly, I tentatively promised to try and fix it later. We marked that door with a zero to say that we'd tried and failed to get that door, but kept it distinguished as the possible correct door until Harry tried the fourth door.
"This is it!" Stepping inside eagerly, I looked over his shoulder to see that it really was glittering, and not only that, it was full of clocks. This department was just weird. Harry was almost running now, refusing to stop for anything as he made his way down the narrow passageway to the back of the room, calling for Ginny to hurry up as she became distracted by an egg that hatched into a bird and back again repeatedly.
All of us had our wands at the ready and although my pulse had been racing before, it was now very calm and slow as I took a deep breath, focusing on preparing myself for what I might find. When Harry swung the door open, we were faced with endless towering shelves of what looked like cloud filled orbs, all of them in various different sizes as they went all the way to the ceiling and as far back as the eye could see. "You said it was row ninety-seven." Hermione said in a tiny voice as Harry and I looked around, searching for any signs of anyone else here. It was too quiet. Harry shone a light on the row closest to him, revealing the number fifty-three. "We need to go right, I think…yes, that's fifty-four."
So right we went, all of us with our wands raised and moving slowly and steadily. We counted the numbers off as we passed them in our heads, gradually moving upwards whilst listening for any signs of movement or noise that would give us some indication of what we would be facing, but nothing. As far as I could tell, we were the only people in here. "Ninety-seven!" Hermione said to us tightly as we finally reached the right number but there was still no sign of my dad or anyone. This was not good, I had a bad feeling about this, but even as I tried to tell Harry that we needed to leave, he shook me off.
"He's right down at the end. You can't see properly from here." Then he took off and we had no choice but to follow him, Harry continuing to search desperately. "He should be near here, anywhere here…really close…somewhere about…here." There was nowhere else for us to go now without moving into a different aisle, away from ninety-seven.
"Harry, we have to leave." I told him firmly, beginning to take hold of Ginny's arm as I looked around me sharply. "We were wrong Harry, we shouldn't be here. Let's go." But Harry remained frozen solid, refusing to look at any of us. "Harry." Then he was moving, rushing up and down the aisles to check them, searching for my dad who clearly wasn't here. I was just about to grab him and haul him out of here when Ron suddenly spoke.
"Harry?"
"What?"
"Have you seen this?" Immediately Harry returned, looking a bit hopeful but when he saw that Ron was only looking at one of the glass spheres, his shoulders sagged in disappointment but came over all the same. "It's…it's got your name on." Pointing to it so he could see, Harry moved in closer in order to read the label, repeating after Ron a little dumbly until his face then dropped. "What is it? What's your name doing down here?" None of the rest of us had labels, just Harry's and after a few moments, he reached out to try and pick it up. All of us protested, feeling that he shouldn't touch the thing since we had no idea what it was or what it might do.
"Why not?" Harry demanded a little aggressively, making Hermione and me look at each other quickly. "It's something to do with me, isn't it?"
"That doesn't mean you should go picking up random objects in the Department of Mysteries." I told him bluntly but he ignored me and instead, quickly plucked it from the stand in order to hold it, drawing it down from the shelf then looked at it as we all held our breath, waiting to see if anything would happen but thankfully, nothing did.
"Very good, Potter." With a whirl I had turned and pointed my wand at the intruder, none other than Lucius Malfoy himself as he lifted his hand outstretched expectantly. "Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me." All around us figures were starting to emerge from the shadows and everyone clustered together in a tight circle and I was inwardly cursing myself. I should have knocked Harry out and dragged him away. "To me, Potter." Mr Malfoy pressed, focusing on Harry so I whispered to him out of the corner of my mouth.
"Put it back!"
"To me." Mr Malfoy repeated but Harry ignored him.
"Where's Sirius?" Clearly we were the punch line of a joke that we weren't aware of, because suddenly a few of the Death Eaters started laughing, one of them cackling shrilly above them all as they proclaimed that the 'Dark Lord always knows'.
"Always." Mr Malfoy agreed curtly whilst never taking his eyes off Harry. "Now, give me the prophecy, Potter." Prophecy? Did he just say Prophecy?
"I want to know where Sirius is!" A high voice mimicked Harry mockingly as I hissed at him.
"Are you an idiot? Sirius isn't here!" But Harry shook his head, refusing to listen to me, focusing on Lucius still.
"He's here. I know he is."
"The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo." The same woman from before continued to mock, making my teeth bare at her slightly as I saw her finally amongst the blinding lights of too many wands. She had the same mass of curling black hair as I did, pale skin as untouched as chalk and eyes glinting maliciously as she grinned. Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry quietly told us not to do anything yet, and I rather grumpily wondered since when did he start giving out the orders around here. Bellatrix clearly thought his was laughable herself, as she cackled once again. "You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"
"Unless you shut your mouth you hag, a fight's exactly what you're going to get." I told her bluntly and her eyes darted to mine.
"Ah…the baby Black, dear cousin, is it?" She questioned but I did not even bother to answer her, maintaining her stare with a powerful gaze.
"Give me the prophecy, Potter, and try to keep your penchant for heroics to a minimum, why don't you?" Lucius interrupted, impatiently shaking his hand which was still held out towards Harry, who once again demanded to know where Sirius was. "It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter. Now, give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."
"Go on then." Harry said with a great deal of false bravado. I could tell he was panicking, and quite probably blaming himself for this mess he'd gotten us all into.
"Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt."
"And we're supposed to take your word on that, are we?" I questioned calmly, my eyes flicking about as I tried to figure out our best means of escape. Bellatrix screamed to summon the prophecy but Harry smartly deflected it with a shield charm, allowing him to keep a hold of it.
"Oh, he knows how to play! Itty bitty baby Potter." Bellatrix looked completely insane as she stared at us, broadly grinning as she raised her wand. "Very well then."
"I TOLD YOU NO!" Lucius suddenly bellowed, pushing her wand down. "If you smash it…!" Well that's a useful piece of information. Thank you for that.
"You need more persuasion?" Bellatrix reasoned as her eyes then fell on Ginny who I promptly shoved behind me. "Very well, take the smallest one. Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it." We all closed in around Ginny as one of the Death Eaters started forwards and my wand jumped to point at them as Harry made a smart barter with the only valuable thing he had. The prophecy in his hand.
"You'll have to smash this if you want to attack any of us. I don't think your boss will be too pleased if you come back without it, will he?" They all fell silent and I nudged Harry to keep going, we needed to buy as much time as we possibly could. Let's just hope my patronus did it's work. "So, what kind of prophecy are we talking about anyway?"
"What kind of prophecy?" Bellatrix echoed as she stared coldly at Harry. "You jest, Harry Potter."
"Nope, not jesting. How come Voldemort wants it?" A strong reaction came from the Death Eaters around us, most of them hissing like snakes as Bellatrix, if possible, looked even wilder and madder than before.
"You dare speak his name?" Harry causally said that he had no problem saying Voldemort's name out loud but was interrupted by an unearthly shriek which would have put a mandrake to shame. "Shut your mouth! You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your halfblood's tongue, you dare…"
"Did you know he's a halfblood too?" Probably feeling reckless and jumping onto the flow of the conversation just to keep it going, Harry ploughed on as part of me wanted to hit him. "Voldemort? Yeah, his mother was a witch but his dad was a muggle, or has he been telling you lot he's pure-blood?" Voldemort was clearly a touchy subject with Bellatrix who clearly idolised her beloved master beyond anything in the realm of ordinary. She tried to stun harry but Lucius deflected it with a roar, reminding her that they still needed the prophecy.
Several prophecies broke when the spell shot off course, and as one of the orbs hit the ground two ghostly figures rose up and spoke their prophecy as Lucius continued to bellow at Bellatrix, clearly staking his life on getting this prophecy back in one piece. Once all was quiet, Harry then casually spoke again. "You haven't told me what's so special about this prophecy I'm supposed to be handing over." I felt him nudge my foot.
"Do not play games with us Potter."
"I'm not playing games." He insisted as I twitched next to him, feeling his foot touching the back of my heel.
"Dumbledore never told you the reason you bear that scar was hidden in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries?" This distracted Harry for a moment as he asked about his scar so I nudged him back to remind him that he'd wanted something. After a moment, I heard the faintest whisper that sounded a lot like 'mash elves', but I quickly picked up on what he meant whilst Lucius crowed over the fact that Harry didn't know anything. Harry kept Lucius busy, everyone too focused on him and didn't notice us discreetly passing the message around to smash shelves on Harry's signal.
"…wanted me to come and get it, did he? Why?"
"Why? Because the only people who are permitted to retrieve a prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, Potter, are those about whom it was made, as the Dark Lord discovered when he attempted to use others to steal it for him." Well that made a lot of sense, considering all the strange coincidences that had been happening for the past year, including the fact that the Order had been guarding something down here. Turns out, it was the prophecy. Lucius and Harry continued, bandying words as Harry got as much information as he could out of Lucius, getting him on a roll before suddenly yelling.
"NOW!" We all reacted at the same time, each of us shouting reducto with a great deal of desperation as we pointed our wands at the shelves above us, causing a cascade of explosions. It was effective as the entire structure started to sway and with our distraction, Harry yelled for us all to run. He grabbed Hermione by her robes to drag her, and together we charged forwards as I sent a few spells at Lucius and Bellatrix, both of them blocking but my spells were powerful enough to throw them back together, clearing the way and without looking back, we all ran.