XXXII
The Department of Mysteries
London | April 1995


Harry's been holding his breath for so long that, if Ron hadn't grabbed is shoulder, he might've passed out. He inhales sharply, his body stiffening, trying to sense any movement among the rows of high, teetering shelves lined with dusty globes.

"Over there. I heard something." Ron whispers, jaw stiff, eyes wide with darkness. Hermione shoots him an angry look, drawing her finger across her mouth. Harry treads in the direction Ron indicated, excruciatingly aware of the noise the rubber soles of his sneakers made against the highly polished floor. He approaches the aisle, pauses at the end, and very very slowly, peers around the shelf. A figure stood about five feet from him, bent over, scrutinizing the faded plaques affixed beneath each globe.

"You won't find what you're looking for here." The figure says without turning its head, at full speaking volume, shattering the hush like a rare vase on the floor.

"Professor?" Harry steps around the shelf. He'd know that voice anywhere. "Sirius is hurt…" He begins frantically, squeaking towards her, a false sense of safety elbowing out his better judgement. Professor Spektor turns her head slowly to look at the boy before her, and then turns back to the shelf she was just scanning, the minuscule plaques inches from her nose, her breath a warm frost upon the cold past before her. "Professor? Please, you've got to help us! You-know-who…"

"Harry please, quiet down." She sweeps her hand at him as she would a fly buzzing too close to her ear. After hearing the exchange, Ron, Hermione, and Neville round the corner, treading more cautiously, but with the same anxious gait Harry exhibited before. They were all getting a small dose of it — the unsettling yet comforting feeling of seeing a teacher out in the world, beyond the school walls. All the more reassuring now that they're in this…situation.

"What are you doing here?" Ron blurts. He imagines she also came here to find Sirius, event though she hates him, wait, does she really hate him? Maybe not. Maybe she's got a thing for him? She's certainly doing that thing guys do when they like a girl but tease her mercilessly and pick fights with her for no reason. Anyway, what? If she's here, maybe the rest of the Order is already on their way…

"Trying to find something. Which is difficult because your friend keeps blabbering…" She deadpans, kneeling down to peer now at the bottom shelf.

"Have you seen Sirius? Are you here with him?" Hermione asks.

"What? No. Sirius isn't here." Professor Spektor's tone is oddly annoyed, the four think.

"Well obviously." Ron says, resting a hand on his hip, his eyes glancing about.

"Stop being so dense, Ron." Hermione snaps, rolling her eyes.

"Really now. I thought you were all smarter than this. C'mon Potter, think about it. What does this seem like to you?" Professor Spektor straightens up, coughing up ancient dust and grime. Potter looks up at her, blinking.

"It's a trap." Hermione's whisper is startled and forceful, as though the wind was just knocked from her lungs. "It's a trap, Harry."

"A trap." Harry says, just beginning to process this.

"Well well well. Here they are. Ah, V. I didn't know we'd have the…um…pleasure of your company." Lucius Malfoy, dressed in full Death Eater regalia, steps forward out of the shadows, removing his mask.

"Funny, that." V stretches a strained, sarcastic smile. "Neither did I."

"Aww come on." Bellatrix Lestrange's whine precedes her. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Saving a child's life." She places her hand atop Harry's head and grabs a clump of hair in her fist. Harry winces, his eyes crinkling in pain.

"I'm not really a…child…" Harry mutters under his breath. Nobody hears him.

"What's that? What's she got there?" Bellatrix points at Hermione, who's carefully lifting a globe off a nearby shelf. A swirl of blue light dances within it's glass shell. Underneath this particular globe, Hermione noticed moments before, was a plaque bearing Harry's name. Her she spins around and hides the globe behind her back. Ron stealthily takes it from her.

"Nothing." Hermione shows her hands.

"They found it." Bellatrix shrieks. "They found it! Get it, Lucius!" She shoves Lucius in Hermione's direction and he stumbles over his feet.

"Give it here, girl. Before you drop it." Lucius holds out his leather-gloved hand. Hermione staggers backwards, her eyes fixed on Lucius Malfoy, as Ron turns full around and breaks into a sprint, Neville clambering behind him.

"Leave her alone!" Harry yells, yanking against Spektor's grip, his scalp straining in agony. "Professor? Professor, let me go."

"I'm sorry, Harry, but I can't do that." Professor Spektor frowns down at him. "You'll want to come with me."

"What? Wait, no! No! Get off!" Harry struggles against her as she releases his hair and grabs him swiftly by the arm. Lucius and Bellatrix have disappeared. In the gathering darkness Harry can hear Hermione's frantic breathing as she scrambles after Ron and Neville, trying to follow the slapping of their footsteps as they echo off the teetering shelves of prophecies.

They're walking quickly now, Spektor practically dragging Harry down the long rows of shelves until they reach a large iron door. She places her hand on the center panel it and it opens with ease. Harry briefly wonders how she did that without a spell or incantation. But that thought is quickly replaced with another one.

"Professor, do you really think it's a good idea to leave all of my friends back there with those death eaters?" Harry spits, sarcastically.

"Yes." Spektor says flatly, lurching him through the door. They're in a room full of long thin tubes, floor to ceiling, filled with shimmering iridescence. "The Room of Tears." She says, as though they were on the quick tour, and she was his disinterested tour guide. "There was a time, long ago, when people would sell their tears. Not a very lucrative business to be in, but if you're particularly inclined to weeping, why not? Less painful than selling blood, although I guess that depends on how you feel about crying…" Harry notices a tube labeled "Phoenix Tears." He was about to ask whether tears from different people had different properties when Spektor gives another strong tug on his arm and he almost falls over. Then, another door, another hand placed on the center panel, and another room, this time circular, with a single archway in the center, hung with a black curtain billowing in an unfelt breeze. There's a deep silence in the air. Harry thinks for a moment that maybe there's no air in the room at all. "The death chamber." Spektor says, mimicking the voice that makes the announcements on the tube, although Harry seriously doubts she's ever even been on the tube…

"I know you're in here." Spektor's sharp voice cracks the thick quiet, sending shards clattering to the floor.

"Oh. Um. Yes." There's a cold voice echoing from a dark corner, and quick footsteps approaching. "So you're angry, but really is there anything to be angry about? I…" The voice stops. The footsteps stop. "Is that…Harry Potter?"

"Your favorite boy." V releases Harry's arm and puts a hand on his shoulder, still gripping rather hard. The source of the voice takes a step closer, into the light, and Harry is face-to-face with none other than Lord Voldemort. A wicked smile stretches across Voldemort's waxy face.

"I knew you'd come around." Voldemort says, either to V or to Harry.

"You really think I'm going to let you murder this boy?" V laughs a little.

"I…come on. You…you have to understand. You have to understand!" Voldemort's tone falls into a deep growl as he clenches and unfurls his fists.

"No, you have to understand." V says. "If you think for one moment I'm going to allow someone to kill an innocent boy for no good reason other than 'he must die,' you're not the man I once knew. You're not the man who saved me from a similar fate. He's a child, and he's done nothing but want to grow up, to experience the gift of life that was given to him. Tom, if you truly care about me, about the work we'd set out to do, about what we could accomplish together, you will stop this and leave Harry Potter alone." With every word her grip tightens on Harry's shoulder, to the point where he can't feel his arm anymore.

"Leave. Harry. Potter. Alone." Voldemort drops the words like stones onto the cool clear surface upon which they stand. And then he begins to laugh, that high, cold laugh. "It looks like you've got an admirer, Harry." Harry chances a glance up at V, who is not amused in the least. He wants to speak, but he can't manage to make a sound.

"Kill all the idiot wizards you want, Tom. But this boy, his friends, the muggles, they're defenseless. They've done nothing… Let them be. Please, just…"

"So soft, you've gone. Dumbledore's influence, no doubt." Voldemort spits.

"I haven't changed. Not one bit. It's you. It's you that's changed." V growls.

"Did she tell you she's a devil?" Voldemort asks Harry. Harry stares at him, eyes wide and unblinking. "Did she tell you how many men she's killed with her bare hands? Those very hands?" Harry flinches. V tightens her grip.

"Tom, please. You're not that different than you once were." She releases Harry abruptly and walks over to Voldemort, and takes his hand. Harry watches, stunned. "You know how much I care about you. Listen to me, this is for the better. For the greater good. Let him live, so we can live. Please. Do it for me." She looks up at him, pleading, with her great black shimmering eyes. He blinks, frowns.

"What else then? I don't know…this is it. To find this kid. To kill him. That's all I've been doing. What else is there for me to do? How am I supposed to do anything while he's alive?" Voldemort's tone of voice has shifted dramatically. There's a youthful whine in it, and Harry can almost imagine him as the Hogwarts student he met in the diary all those years ago.

"We'll figure something out." V says, smiling softly.

"I just…" It's as though Voldemort's completely forgotten Harry is even there, however unlikely that seems. His thought is interrupted by a slamming as the door bangs open and Lucius and Bellatrix rush in, Harry's friends in tow. They stop in their tracks, surveying the scene. Bellatrix has a glimmering globe in her hand. Voldemort's eyes fix on it immediately.

"Bring that here, Bellatrix." Voldemort orders. Bellatrix saunters up, a cocky jaunt to her shoulders, a wicked smile on those painted lips. She wrinkles her nose at V, and stands there, waiting. But the globe does nothing.

"Looks like it's broken. Oh well." V shrugs.

"It's not broken." Voldemort says, turning toward Harry. "Give this to him." He drops the globe into V's hands. Reluctantly, she returns to Harry, who instinctively takes a step back, then heaves a deep breath and holds his hands out.

"I'm sorry." V says, not meeting his eyes, and rolls the globe into his cupped palms. As soon as the globe touches his skin, a very familiar voice echoes throughout the chamber.
""The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…" Says Sybill Trelawney, Hogwarts' Divination teacher and Dumbledore's trusted friend.

"Either must die at the hand of the other." Voldemort muses.

"For neither can live while the other survives." V finishes, the anger rising within her. In a moment of haste and fury she grabs the sphere from Harry and chucks it against the wall. It bursts in a million shards of liquid light.

"No! No. Child. Will die. Here. Tonight." She roars, looking from Voldemort, to Harry, to Bellatrix and Lucius, who've taken a step back.

"It must be done." Voldemort shrugs his shoulders and draws his wand. Another crash reverberates in the circular chamber as a flood of people rush in, wands drawn. In an instant, Voldemort vanishes in a wisp of cold dark air. At the helm of the party is Sirius Black, who sprints to Harry's side, and trains his wand steadily on V, now standing alone.

"I knew it." Sirius spits at her feet.

"No, Sirius. You've got it wrong!" Harry hastily tries to explain. "She's here to protect me!"

"He's right, cousin." Bellatrix sneers. "But to what end, I wonder…" She also trains her wand on V.

"Wait a second — I haven't done anything! Everyone just calm down." V backs away, putting her hands up.

"Don't hurt her! She's trying to save Harry! I saw it!" Ron yells. "She's on our side. Sirius, stop!"

"How dare you claim you tried to save Harry when you brought him here." Sirius barks, advancing.

"I didn't bring him here! Your bitch of a cousin tricked him into coming here!" V points at Bellatrix, who responds with a ear-splitting cackle.

"Who's the bitch?" Bellatrix advances. They're closing in on her. Her back's up against the archway. The billowing black curtain laps against her hand. She inches around to the opening, slips her hand in, and withdraws it.

"My my, from this vantage point it almost looks like you're all on the same side." She says, the corners of her mouth curling. With a quick wink at Harry, she steps backward into the archway and disappears behind the black curtain. A rush of icy wind fills the room. And then all is silent.