Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter has finally arrived. Short, sweet and uneventful as always.

Chapter 64

'Lily and James,' his godfather croaked hoarsely, scrunching the handful of paper fragments in his hand into a ball.

'It was just a boggart,' Harry told him gently, brushing the pieces of shredded parchment off his shoulders. He'd done a great deal more damage to the study than he had realised.

'They'd be so disappointed,' Sirius whispered. 'I've run back to a house I hated to hide from the same people they died fighting.'

'They'd be proud,' Harry disagreed, dragging him roughly from the study. 'You survived a decade in Azkaban, you're helping me still, and you're not a coward. No craven would be coming with me to the Department of Mysteries if they didn't have to.'

His godfather considered that for a long moment, then he straightened up, though his hands were still trembling slightly. 'What happened to the boggart?'

'It showed me something I didn't want to see,' Harry smiled coldly. 'It won't be doing it again.' The hair on the nape of his neck rose at the memory. His dripping, red hand, Fleur's hair, and the wide, mad smile that had no place on his face had cut deeper than he wanted to admit.

'You destroyed my father's study,' Sirius noticed, finally taking note of his surroundings, and discarding the ball of crushed paper. He glanced at the mess Harry had made of the boggart once, then made a show of unconcernedly surveying the rest of the room.

'Sorry,' Harry said, unapologetically.

'I hated this room,' Sirius grinned, 'my father used to drag me up here to lecture me about how a proper pure-blood hair should act. My first bout of accidental magic was breaking the priceless heirloom of a vase he kept on the desk. Maybe Kreacher will finally clean it now,' he finished cheerfully.

'It certainly needs tidying,' Harry agreed, poking the tattered remnants of the boggart with one toe. It had died in his form, though he had mutilated it beyond all recognition, and the gruesomely shredded, scattered pieces of his doppelganger's flesh were strewn all across the floor behind the split and splintered desk.

'We should leave,' Sirius suggested, picking up half of the small, ornate, wooden clock that had sat on the corner of the desk and waving it gleefully. 'It's time we split,' he laughed.

'I've got everything,' Harry responded, ignoring what was possibly the worst play on words he had ever heard.

'Good,' his godfather smiled. 'Let's go and destroy a prophecy. It's about time the Order actually took action rather than waiting for Voldemort to strike and hoping to limit the damage.'

'Cloak?' Harry offered, pulling it out from under his robes.

'Just like old times,' Sirius grinned, sweeping it over the two of them and taking a firm grip on Harry's arm. 'Except this time we're stealing a very valuable magical object for Britain not McGonagall's fire-whiskey for a party in Gryffindor. This is probably safer,' he chuckled, 'your mother was a cruelly strict prefect.'

Harry snorted, and shifted his weight in preparation to apparate.

'I'll take us to the entrance of the Ministry,' Sirius said, 'then we'll make our way through to the Department of Mysteries under the cloak from there. Ready?'

'Of course,' Harry answered.

There was a loud crack and Harry staggered forwards along the pavement of an unremarkable London street.

Harry glanced up and down the road taking in the chewing gum marked paving stones, the scatter of scabrous looking pigeons, worn railing's and the battered, red phonebox.

'This is the right place, isn't it?' He asked his godfather.

'What were you expecting,' Sirius grinned, 'a giant entrance saying Ministry of Magic?'

'No,' Harry answered, 'but more than this.'

'It's grander on the inside,' his godfather laughed, 'they don't want the muggles getting curious.'

He stepped towards the phonebox, opening the door and gesturing for Harry to join him inside. The peeling, red painted booth certainly didn't seem like the entrance to the centre of power in Magical Britain, but Harry supposed Sirius knew where he was going.

'This is the visitors' entrance,' his godfather told him, 'normally everyone just floos in, but obviously we can't do that without getting caught. The Ministry does monitor the network fairly efficiently.' He turned to the phone and poked a hand out from under the cloak to quickly dial a number. 'Emmeline will be on her way out by now, so we're within our window of opportunity.'

'Welcome to the Ministry of Magic,' a female voice stated dispassionately, 'please state your name and business.'

'Sirius Black,' his godfather announced magnanimously, 'and I solemnly swear I am up to no good.'

Harry stared at him in disbelief.

'It's probably not a real person,' he grinned, 'the voice is still the same as it was before my stint in Azkaban.'

There was a soft click and a badge slid out of the change dispenser of the phone. Sirius picked it up, pinning it to the front of his robes with obvious delight.

Sirius Black, Harry read, laughing despite himself, up to no good.

'I always wanted a badge like this,' his godfather sighed. 'This is the best thing the Ministry has ever given me.' He paused, frowning. 'It's the only thing they've given me, actually, it's not like I received a trial.'

The phonebox lurched and they descended into the depths of the Ministry. Harry watched the pavement slide up past the window, wondering all the while how no muggle had accidentally dialled the number and ended up in the Ministry by mistake.

The atrium was empty. The only movement came from the ceiling. Golden runes twisted around one another, flowing in ever changing patterns across the royal blue background.

'This way,' Sirius said, taking Harry's elbow and leading him along the hall of empty fireplaces past the noticeably empty security desk. 'We're lucky, whomever's on duty must have snuck off somewhere, or Mundungus might have bribed him to be absent for a convenient moment so he can get in and out unobserved.'

They hurried past the desk, and the overly cheerful denizens of the fountain who quietly spouted water from the strangest places, though the golden gates of the true entrance to the Ministry.

It is a bit grander on the inside, Harry decided.

'In here,' his godfather instructed, leading him across to a set of lifts and impatiently tapping the down button over and over until the lift appeared.

The gates to the lift rumbled apart, and the two of them slipped inside. Sirius prodded the number nine button several times, then the doors clanked shut.

'Department of Mysteries,' the same female voice announced coolly.

'It's on the lowest level,' Sirius told him seriously. 'We're inside the wards now, so the only way out without breaking them is by floo, which is monitored, or back the way we came, and breaking those wards is no mean feat.'

'So don't get caught or we'll be trapped,' Harry translated dryly.

'Exactly,' his godfather grinned. 'But we can dispense with the cloak,' he decided, 'the Department of Mysteries has a very complicated, well protected door that the Unspeakables seal when they leave. Mundungus will be the only one down here.'

Harry slowly folded the cloak back up, stuffing it securely into his robes as the lift ground to a jerky halt.

'Welcome to the Department of Mysteries,' the voice announced as the two of them hurried out into the corridor.

'It's just around the corner, but it won't be easy to get in. The wards are some of the strongest in Britain; it took us half the time we've been protecting it to figure out how to get past the illusions and actually see that there's only a single door and not a thousand identical ones' Sirius whispered, eyeing the flickering torches. 'And we've been guarding the door from the moment the Order was reformed last summer. Luckily Voldemort hasn't said anything specific about it to his Death Eaters yet.'

'How do you know that?' Harry inquired. He didn't imagine that Riddle's meetings had minutes that were easily available.

'Snape,' his godfather gritted. 'He's Dumbledore's spy within the Death Eaters. Not much gets past him,' Sirius added with begrudging respect. 'He's always been a sneaky, clever sort, but I think he can be trusted…' He trailed off as they rounded the corner.

'Not much gets past him,' Harry commented, flicking his wand into his palm.

'Apparently he's not as sneaky and clever as I hoped,' his godfather ground out.

The plain, black door at the end of the corridor had been melted back to the hinges by fire fierce enough to scar the floor and ceiling above.

Fiendfyre.

It was likely one of the few pieces of magic capable of destroying the wards on the door when cast with sufficient strength and intent.

'I'm calling for the rest of the Order,' Sirius decided, reaching inside his robes for a battered, bronze phoenix amulet.

Harry advanced down the corridor a bit further, stepping carefully over the dark, crimson smear along the floor next to the door and retrieving the broken halves of a wand from next to the ashen remnants of the both door and likely Mundungus Fletcher.

'They'll be coming,' Sirius announced, 'but it will take a while without Dumbledore to get them in.'

'We should keep going,' Harry decided. He hadn't come so far and done so much to give up and not discover what that prophecy said. 'If they're already inside then someone has to stop them.'

His godfather nodded, drawing his wand from inside his robes, and stepping cautiously through the door.

'There are no wards,' he murmured. He pressed the back of his hand to the frame of the door, then hissed and flinched it back. 'It's still hot,' he shot a worried glance at Harry, 'they're probably only a few minutes ahead of us.'

'Let's go,' Harry slipped past Sirius into the department.

The corridor continued on beyond the ruined door, a long, unremarkable hallway, tiled and paved in shiny, black slabs that reflected the gleaming torches.

They followed it along for several minutes before Sirius swore quietly and pulled him harshly to a halt.

'It's a circle,' he whispered angrily, 'a loop. It just seems like a straight line. We've been walking around the same ten feet of corridor all along.' His godfather raised his wand and swept it viciously at the nearest torch.

The blue flames guttered out all along the corridor, plunging them into blackness and even with his enhanced vision he could barely make out anything more than the silhouette of Sirius and pools of shadow that seemed darker than all the rest. He tried to conjure a light, or cast the light-casting charm, but although he knew that both spells were successful the corridor somehow remained just as dark as before.

'Let's try this door,' Sirius suggested. He had been running his fingers along the wall until he came across something that wasn't the smooth, tiled surface of the corridor.

The room they entered was perfectly circular, tiled just the same as the corridor, and empty except for the tall, gleaming mirror at its centre. Harry had never expected to see the Mirror of Erised again, and knowing hoe dangerous it was he wasn't all that glad he had.

'This isn't it, Sirius,' he said. His godfather had his fingertips pressed against the glass of the mirror, obscuring Harry's view of the surface.

'We're all together again,' Sirius breathed. 'I can see us all together again, Remus, James, Lily, me, even Peter.' He moved further forwards, pressing his forehead against the mirror's surface. 'He's not a Death Eater,' he rejoiced, 'he never betrayed us.'

'Sirius,' Harry snapped up, dragging his godfather back from the mirror. 'It's a lie.'

'A lie,' his godfather murmured, 'but I can see them, they're there.'

'No,' Harry told him, 'you just want to see them.'

'Oh,' the lines in Sirius' face suddenly sunk terribly deep, the shadow of Azkaban spreading over his features. 'I thought, I hoped, it might be real.'

'It isn't,' Harry told him, glancing past Sirius into the mirror himself. His face smiled brightly back at him from behind the glass. His reflection had one arm around Fleur, who leant into his shoulder and wrapped her own arm around his waist. He knew immediately they were happy, together and free. From the side of the mirror a smaller, silver-haired girl leapt across to take Fleur's arm and stared up the beautiful French witch, her back facing Harry.

Gabrielle, Harry smiled.

Gabrielle turned to glance up at him, but her eyes were bright emerald, not summer sky blue, and Harry felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Not Gabrielle, he realised, warmth flaring from somewhere within him. A daughter. Our daughter.

She was perfect enough for him to want to reach through the glass and drag her out into reality, but he knew the mirror too well to fall for the temptation and his hand remained at his side.

'It only shows you what you want most,' Harry said, tearing his gaze away from the girl's startlingly vivid, green eyes.

'Let's go,' Sirius said, shaken.

They exited the circular room, leaving the mirror behind, and Harry forced the memory of the green-eyed girl from his mind, banishing her from his thoughts. It was too early to dream of things that might never be.

He trailed his fingertips along the wall, mimicking Sirius who did the same on the other side of the corridor. His fingers slid smoothly over the tiles, each line in between the tiles another bump of hope then disappointment, until, eventually he touched something warmer.

'Sirius,' he murmured. 'I found another door.'

His godfather nodded in the gloom, but seemed a lot less eager to cross the threshold after the room with the mirror.

This room was as perfect a circle as the last, but worn, weathered and ancient stone benches were carved in concentric circles from the walls into the raised dais at the centre, and upon that platform a simple, single arch of stone stood.

'What is it?' His godfather whispered distantly behind him.

'I'm not sure,' Harry replied, unable to look away from the rippling, shimmering aperture between the pillars. The harder he stared the more he was sure he could hear it crying out to him, whispering, just too low for him to hear the words, no matter how he strained his ears.

Somehow he found himself standing in front of the arch, though he had no memory of stepping any further than through the doorway, and running his fingers down the stone arch. Harry could feel thousands of tiny runes under his fingertips, they stretched in spirals, circles, triangles and stars all across the span of the stone, but they were in no language he knew. The only glyph he recognised was large enough to read with his own eyes, imprinted faintly at the summit of the arch. He had seen the same symbol on the fading graves in Godric's Hollow.

'Harry,' his godfather hissed urgently, 'we need to keep going.'

He snatched his fingers back from the symbol, and stepped away from the whispering fissure that had been close enough for its cold to brush at his nose.

With great difficulty her turned his back on the arch, ignoring the whispers and following his godfather out of the room.

'What was that?' Sirius asked him fearfully. 'You were standing there for ages.'

Harry blinked.

'It only felt like moments,' he muttered. 'I hope the next door is the one we need, this place is far more dangerous than I expected.'

'The most abstract, dangerous and mysterious aspects of magic are studied here,' Sirius smiled grimly, 'we were never just going to be able to waltz through to the prophecy with ease.'

'The Death Eaters,' Harry remembered, 'we've wasted so much time, where is the rest of the Order?'

'Coming,' Sirius assured him. 'Don't worry about the prophecy, Dumbledore told us that only you can remove it from the shelf. You have to be part of the subject of the prophecy to take it.'

There was a short silence.

'I've found another door,' his godfather whispered apprehensively.

'Let's hope this is the right one,' Harry replied.

It stretched further than Harry could see, shelf after towering shelf of sparkling, glowing, swirling white orbs descending into the distance. The blue flames burned cold at every junction between the shelves, illuminating the cathedral of prophecies in an ethereal light.

'How do we find the right one?' Harry asked. There had to be hundreds of thousands of the glass orbs that he assumed to be prophecies.

'They're labelled,' Sirius answered from where he was inspecting the nearest shelf. 'These are all this year. We need to go further in. The prophecy had to have been made at least sixteen years ago, that was when Dumbledore said Lily and James needed to go into hiding. We'll start there.' He strode off into the shelves, keeping an eye on the labels.

Harry followed tentatively, his wand back in his hand.

They passed almost fifty shelves before they found the first from the year before Harry's birth. Scanning the shelf he found a list of dusty labels, each detailing the subject of the prophecy and the date it was heard.

'Here,' Sirius said sharply. 'It was made to Dumbledore, he's the only one with so many initials, and it's about you and Voldemort.'

'Me and Voldemort,' he whispered, 'nobody else?'

'Just the two of you,' Sirius grinned, 'good thing we came to find out, now let's hear it and leave.'

Harry stepped up to his godfather's shoulder, eyeing the small, glowing orb fascinatedly. The answers to almost every question he had might reside within this swirling, misty piece of glass. He plucked it off the shelf and tucked it into his pocket.

'Very good, now let's go,' Sirius decided. 'It doesn't matter if the Death Eater's find an empty shelf.'

Harry's blood ran ice cold as he suddenly realised that the Death Eaters could not have come alone, not if they wanted the prophecy.

'If it's about Voldemort and I, then he won't have sent Death Eaters to retrieve it,' he realised aloud. 'He would have sent them to clear the way, because he has to come and get it himself.'

'Shit,' Sirius eloquently summarised.

'Let's get out,' Harry decided, hurrying back towards the door as quickly as he could.

They stepped out into the shadows of the corridor, then froze at the sound of brisk footsteps and the clicking of metal on stone.

'Where is the room, Lucius?' A furious, female voice hissed.

Sirius had gone still as a statue, so Harry dragged him back several steps and pulled him after him into the nearest door, leaving it ajar so he could hear.

'The next door,' Malfoy's smooth voice answered. 'If you hadn't been so distracted by trying to get through the sealed door at the far end then we'd already be there.'

'Hush,' the witch hissed. 'We're not alone.'

'My Lord?' Lucius called softly along the corridor.

Harry shook Sirius back to life, taking in the room around them. There was no other exit, but thousands of time-turners hung along the walls, and at the centre of the room, on and old, blackened table, a bird with a bell jar was born over and over again.

'They're between us and the exit,' Harry whispered, 'and there's no room to sneak past under the cloak.'

'Perhaps the Order have another guard within the Department of Mysteries,' Lucius Malfoy suggested, amused. 'One that prefers to hide rather than do his duty.'

'A wise one,' the witch giggled. 'Homenum Revelio,' she cried. 'Ahead on the left, two of them.'

'We'll have to fight,' Sirius decided. 'I'll go out first.'

He drew his wand and stepped out into the corridor. Harry made to follow him, but stopped.

I can't leave a whole room of time-turners here, he realised.

All it would take is one, and Voldemort would have a huge advantage. Every attack, action or plan he made would be almost impossible to stop. Harry couldn't leave them here. He couldn't leave any of them here.

I wonder what happens when they break?

The fiendfyre swirled from the tip of his wand, coalescing into the smouldering, white-hot, form of the basilisk, then lunging forwards, coiling around the room, incinerating everything along the walls. The shelves, racks and tiny, golden hourglasses were consumed by the fire immediately, but Harry forced it hotter, just in case.

'Cousin Sirius,' he heard the witch cackle delightedly. 'It's a reunion. If only the blood traitor Andy and her daughter were here. I could purge the family of all its filth in one go.'

He slashed his wand horizontally through the air, extinguishing the flames. The time-turners were gone, destroyed, and though it seemed a terrible waste Harry knew it was better they were destroyed than risk Malfoy, or Voldemort getting hold of them.

Stepping out into the corridor he held his wand low and ready at his side, joining Sirius who poised on the balls of his feet across from Malfoy and his companion.

'Potter,' Malfoy sneered. 'The Dark Lord will be pleased when we bring him you.'

'He's here for the prophecy,' the witch realised furiously. Malfoy blanched.

'You'll never hear it, Bellatrix,' Sirius spat. 'It's too late.'

So that's Bellatrix Lestrange, the witch who tortured Neville's parents into insanity.

A cold point of anger froze within his chest as he took in her appearance. If he had not been aware of the ugliness within he might have thought her beautiful. She had the same delicate cheekbones, nose and jaw as Narcissa Malfoy, with perfect, pale skin, slender eyebrows and thick, sultry, red lips that pouted out from under her heavy-lidded, smouldering, dark eyes. The fire of madness burnt there within, glimmering in the odd, purple-hued irises and stretched across the shadows of her face.

'Give it to us,' she spat. 'It belongs to the Dark Lord.'

'It belongs to me,' Harry retorted lightly, almost amused by the way she reverently breathed Riddle's adopted title.

The black-haired witch's wand was in her hand faster than Harry thought possible, even with a wrist holster, and sickly, yellows curses flashed past their heads as both he and Sirius ducked desperately.

'Protego,' he spat, shielding them both from the next barrage of curses. 'We need to get back to the lift and the atrium,' he whispered urgently.

'We'll have to get round them somehow,' Sirius realised. 'Stick together, we stand a better chance if we fight them at the same time than if we're separated. Bella's not all that good at playing as part of a team.'

'Crucio,' Lestrange shrieked from outside the shield.

The Unforgivable splashed harmlessly against the wall between them.

'Papilionis,' Harry responded immediately, conjuring his shield of butterflies to swarm around both him and Sirius.

'Oooh pretty,' he heard Bellatrix laugh. 'Avada Kedavra,' she giggled.

A single butterfly burst into black smoke.

'Clever little Potter,' she sang. 'The Dark Lord said you were more than you seemed, maybe you'd like to play with Bella for a bit. I won't kill you, that pleasure belongs to the Dark Lord, but we can still have a little fun together.' Harry was certain he heard Malfoy sigh exasperatedly at his partners antics.

He flicked his wand, transfiguring one of the butterflies into a sharp, steel spike and sending it hissing towards Malfoy. The blond Death Eater blocked it, ripping the black tiles from the walls to act as a shield against the following wave of projectiles.

Sirius was casting bright orange curses down the corridors at Bellatrix, but the witch was deflecting them all back or into the walls, shrieking with laughter as she ducked under the shattered fragments of tile from Malfoy's shield.

'Reducto,' Harry murmured, whipping his wand through the motion for the blasting curse, then blending seamlessly into the action for the bone-splintering curse, flicking his wrist so fast his fingers blurred.

The tiles disintegrated beneath the onslaught of spells, forcing Malfoy to dive across the corridor behind Bellatrix.

Sirius laughed delightedly at the sight of the proud wizard sprawling across the floor to safety, redoubling his efforts to break through Bellatrix's defences. Lestrange chose that moment to go on the offensive, and the brightly coloured beams of light from many spells that Harry didn't recognise shot between them down the corridor, ricocheting off one another to shatter tiles not the walls and scorch the stone floor.

He defected the few he knew back down the corridor towards the two Death Eaters, but he was forced to dodge the vast majority of the spells simply because he didn't recognise them and couldn't risk unsuccessfully blocking or deflecting something.

The shattered tile fragments sprang to life between them, shifting into a swarm of scorpions that scuttled down the corridors towards them when Malfoy swept his wand forwards.

'Incendio,' Sirius spat, incinerating the insects long before they reached either of them. Harry took his place exchanging spells with Bellatrix, unleashing every spell in his arsenal as fast as he could.

To his delight he found that he could cast far more quickly than she could, his spells moved faster, and dealt far more damage when they smashed into the tiles around them, but to his dismay the advantage was short lived. The mad witch stopped trying to match his speed and strength and settled for deflecting his own spells back at him at equal speed. He was less adept at deflecting them than she was, and many of the ones he attempted to deflect again went off target, allowing Bellatrix to slip in a few of her own, more obscure, dangerous spells.

Harry quickly found himself retreating across to stand by Sirius, unable to deflect the spells he didn't recognise.

'Switch,' Sirius commanded, transfiguring the tiles behind Bellatrix into ropes that swirled around her, hampering her wand arm as she repeatedly cast the severing charm to get rid of them, forcing Malfoy to shield himself from her carelessly cast magic.

'Expulso,' Harry hissed, pouring a great deal of strength into the curse in the lull and aiming his wand down the corridor past the two Death Eaters.

The explosion threw Bellatrix and Malfoy down the corridor towards them. Harry grabbed Sirius arm and pulled him past the sprawling pair, twisting to rain bone-splintering curses over his shoulder as they ran towards the lift.

They made it as far as the next door before Malfoy ripped every tile off the wall and and sent them flying across the corridor to bombard them. His attack knocked them both into the room on their right, breaking the door and sending them both rolling down over the benches.

Harry dragged himself to his feet, aware that Sirius was also hauling himself up on the bench nearest the dais.

'Lacero,' he whispered viciously, sending the purple curse though the wall to where he guessed Malfoy must be. There was a hiss of pain from the other side of the wall, so Harry unleashed every spell in his arsenal though the wall, smashing through the tiles, tearing ragged holes into the corridor to reveal a dishevelled and furious Bellatrix who had her fingers pressed to the deep gash across her thigh.

Malfoy remained somehow untouched, his long blonde hair coated in dust, and his robes creased, crumpled and torn. Neither he nor Sirius looked any better.

'Avada Kedavra,' Bellatrix cried. There was a bright flash of green, but the Killing Curse vanished harmlessly into the archway behind Harry who retaliated by transfiguring the bench nearest them into a stone serpent and sending it plunging through the ruined wall at the pair.

'Confringo,' Bellatrix sneered, shattering the stone serpent contemptuously, but the flying fragments hit Malfoy who doubled over pressing a hand to his ribs.

'You never could play well with others,' Sirius taunted her, casting many of the same bright orange spells he had started with at the injured Malfoy.

Lucius' hand came away covered in crimson, but his wand came up just as swiftly as before to deflect the curses harmlessly away.

'Silly cousin Sirius,' Bellatrix cooed, caressing her wand, 'thinking he can betray the family and not pay the price. You'll die today for your treachery, just like James and the mudblood, then I'll show little Potter what I did to his friend's parents.'

His godfather gave Lestrange a look that dripped loathing, and looped his wand in a wide, sweeping motion, the tip covered in conjured, purple flames.

'Ardens flagello,' he spat, and the flames lashed out, slicing, in a dark, shimmering line of purple fire, across the room. The fire melted through the ceiling, tiles and benches as if they weren't there, leaving the edges glowing and smoking as it hissed across the room towards the pair of Death Eaters.

Bellatrix ducked, cackling madly, but Malfoy wasn't quite swift enough and the purple flames seared across the left side of his face and shoulder. It was a glancing blow, but the fire melted the flesh like wax, sending it bubbling and running down the side of his face in smoking, stinking rivulets.

Lucius screamed, dropping his wand to press his hands to face, and Sirius' next spell, a stunner, caught him in the chest, sending him back into the ruined wall where he slumped down unconscious.

'Such dark magic,' Bellatrix giggled, dodging Harry's blasting curses and deflecting Sirius' second stunner away.

'I know that spell too,' she giggled. 'Ardens flagello.'

Bright, vivid, pink flames burst from the tip of her wand as she flicked it upwards, melting a deep line through the floor where Harry would have been had he not thrown himself sideways. Sirius flinched from the heat of the fire as it splashed harmlessly off the archway behind him, wincing away into the centre of the dais.

'Expelliarmus. Crucio,' she spat, as Harry span, struggling to his feet, and expecting the searing pain of the torture curse.

No pain came, but Bellatrix's triumphant laughter echoed across the room regardless. Harry desperately summoned his wand to his hand, realising now that he had never been her target.

'Crucio,' she delighted, thrusting her wand forwards gleefully at Sirius, who was wandless before the whispering veil within the archway.

The red beam hit Sirius square in the chest.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who has and does! I just couldn't resist ending the chapter here, the temptation was too much for me.