Harry truly did not know how long he had spent in the underground cavern beneath the Department of Mysteries that Voldemort and his cohort had abandoned him within. Hunger no longer troubled him, nor did thirst, and he also seemed to have no further need for sleep.

For a time he had tried to keep track of days by using a rock he had found to scratch lines into the wall, but with no change of light to signal the days or any sort of internal rhythm brought on by a sleeping and waking he soon gave it up as a bad job. He took to doodling ont he walls and floors as the mood struck him, but as time marched ever onward Harry found that, at least subjectively, more and more time passed between his bursts of artistic inspiration.

The only reason he didn't just sit in despair at being trapped here, seemingly indefinitely, was the knowledge that his friends were still out there… somewhere. He did find, however, that has time went on he spent more and more time just sitting and staring aimlessly into space. One nice side effect of whatever Voldemort had done to him was that his limbs no longer fell asleep if he stayed motionless for too long, and he didn't feel any discomfort at maintaining the same position either. Harry had spent an extended period of time sitting with his legs crossed just because he could, but eventually that grew boring as well.

Surely there must be some kind of way out here… but what could it be? All of the entrances were sealed as if by magic, and he hadn't had a wand in… however long it had been.

Harry sat and thought about that for a very long time but the only thing that that accomplished was a slight buildup of dust on his unmoving form.

The only real break in the monotony, aside from his attempts at art, came from the ghosts, if they could even be called that. Occasionally, a spectral figure would appear in the room with him, but try as he might he couldn't seem to communicate with them in any way.

This was unfortunate as the figures seemed to be doing many of things that he was as well; alternately sitting propped up against a wall, pacing back and forth, banging on doors, and so on. While the shapes were too indistinct to make out any specific features and never lasted more than a handful of seconds, Harry occasionally felt as though they were somehow familiar to him. On one memorable occasion, he thought he saw a ghostly figure that looked just like him, sitting just as he was, but that might have just been his mind playing tricks due to having been isolated for… however long it had been.

He was going in circles again. Just as he was about to give up and have a nice long sitdown, he saw yet another ghost swirl into being in his peripheral vision.

As he turned to regard this latest apparation fully, he beheld a figure leaning dejectedly against the wall, arms crossed and forehead resting on them, posture radiating a feeling of weary resignation. It was a pose with which Harry was distressingly familiar. What happened, next, however, was not familiar at all; the ghostly figure raised one fist and slammed it down on the wall and then suddenly stumbled forward through the wall and out of sight.

Harry jerked backward in shock and then warily made his way over toward the seemingly innocuous section of wall. As he approached, he felt a sudden thrill as, bubbling up from the ground like magma, words formed from flame appeared before him. They weren't written in any language he could understand, and it certainly hadn't been there earlier, but as he reached out a curious hand to touch it the characters suddenly shifted into a form he could recognize.

Try attacking

"What."

The strange message continued to burn away, uncaring of his confusion, and he pointedly stepped forward so that he was standing on the words.

With a shrug, Harry halfheartedly smacked the section of wall in front of him, and to his shock there was a sudden whoosh of air as a part of the wall vanished before his eyes. The gap was just wide enough for him to walk through, and he could feel a faint breeze playing across his face. The path before turned sharply not too far in, preventing him from seeing what lay in store, but it did seem to slope slightly upward. Up could mean out, which was promising indeed.

He took some time to think about it then proclaimed to nobody in particular, "Well, no idea where this goes, but it can't be worse than this bloody room."

Unlike the previous chamber, there were no ever-burning torches present in the hidden hallway, but to his surprise Harry found that he seemed to give off a very faint aura of light. It wasn't enough to see very far, but he could at least see where he was putting his feet, and that was something, at least. He chalked this up to a side effect of whatever it was that Voldemort had done to him; yet another on a list of questions to be answered, once he got out of this place.

He made his way slowly down the hallway, mindful of how deteriorated the construction looked, and wary of how it looked as though it could crumble it looked at too fiercely. To his surprise, he found what he at first glance appeared to be a dagger lying against the wall. On picking it up to examine further, however, Harry learned that it was in fact a sword, albeit one that had been through a rough time indeed, if its broken off blade was any indication.

Despite its shortcomings, it was still a weapon, and Harry held it gratefully as he continued his slow progress, occasionally stepping over fallen bits of masonry, as he followed the path upward towards parts unknown.