Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four - The Department of Mysteries
Harry stepped out of the telephone box and found himself standing at one end of a very long hall. The dim light made the polished dark wood floor appear black. The walls were paneled in the same dark wood, causing the large space to appear even more cavernous in shadow. Far above his head, gleaming gold symbols moved and changed like a notice board in a language he could not read. Enormous gilded fireplaces sat at intervals along the passage. Harry assumed these were connected to the floo network, enabling officials and employees to commute to the Ministry with ease during normal business hours.
These were not normal hours, however. The atrium was empty and silent. The only sound came from a golden fountain halfway down the hall, where jets of water shot from the wands of a towering witch and wizard.
Millie beat her wings, taking off from Harry's shoulder and making one long swoop down the hall. She didn't make a sound as she cut through the air on her return, landing in her human form in front of Harry with a shake of her head. She hadn't seen anyone else.
Harry had an eerie feeling, staring down that long, vacant hallway. It was clearly past closing time for the Ministry, and yet they had been allowed past the visitor's entrance without issue. He felt sure that the absence of any security was an ominous sign.
Draco, Ron, and Theo were waiting for them near the golden fountain. Draco waved impatiently for them to hurry up, though he dared not speak in that large, echoing hall. As Harry moved closer toward the fountain, he got a better look at the figures that were gathered around the two wand-bearers. Like the witch and wizard, these forms were larger than life. There was a centaur, its drawn bow pointed toward heaven, a goblin, and a house-elf. All three were staring adoringly up at the two human figures. Harry suppressed the urge to laugh. After the scene he had just witnessed in the Forbidden Forest, he doubted any centaur would look up to Umbridge with the same rapt expression that had been cast on the gilded centaur's face.
They hurried toward the opposite end of the atrium, where a series of lifts waited behind wrought iron grilles. Harry knew they must be far underground already, and yet Draco stabbed at the down button, opening one of the lifts for them.
He hesitated after all eight of their party had piled inside the lift, asking aloud, "Does anyone know what floor…?"
Harry hadn't seen a guide in the atrium, and yet he seemed to know the answer without thinking.
"Level nine," he said automatically.
Draco pressed the button without question, and the grille slid shut. The lift began its descent, the sound of its jangling and rattling reverberating through the empty hall and following them down the shaft. Harry was sure the sound would alert someone, but still, no security called out to them. Although he was certain that the Order had been posting lookouts here for months, none of its members were present, either. Harry thought of the empty mirror again and felt a deep sense of foreboding for what they were about to face.
The lift came to a halt on floor nine, and the cool female voice that had addressed them in the telephone box now spoke as the grille slid open.
"Department of Mysteries."
Nothing moved in the corridor except the flames of the torches set along the wall, flickering in the rush of air from the lift. It was strange, standing in the place Harry had seen so often in his dreams. He pushed down the feeling of deja vu and led the group forward, walking purposely toward the black door he knew waited for him at the end of the hall.
Just like his dream, the door stood ajar. A shaft of blue light shimmered through the thin opening. Harry's heart hammered in his chest as he placed his hand against the cold surface of the door and pushed. Surely this confirmed what he both expected and feared. His vision was true.
Harry ushered the others across the threshold and stood with them inside a large, circular room. Everything was black, including the floor and ceiling. Identical, unmarked doors were set in even intervals around the wall. Between each pair of doors was a candelabra, whose candles supplied the blue light Harry and seen through the doorway.
"Shut the door," Harry suggested once they were all inside, but Blaise stopped him.
"Wait!" he commanded as Nell took a step toward the door through which they had entered. She looked at him curiously, her hand on the knob, but waited as Blaise turned to Harry.
"You remember me telling you about Mortimer?"
Harry nodded. Mortimer had been one of Blaise's step-fathers. Though admittedly, there hadn't been much more for Blaise to tell. Mortimer had worked for the Department of Mysteries, and had apparently been a very secretive fellow before his bizarre disappearance several years ago.
"He couldn't really talk about work," Blaise continued, "But he did tell me one thing. The department itself has charms to deter intruders… People who aren't Unspeakables who might try to discover the secrets they're hiding here."
"Unspeakables?" asked Hermione.
"You know, the people assigned to this department," Ron offered, "My dad says… He used to say that they're called 'unspeakables' because they never talk with anyone else at the Ministry."
Blaise nodded. "Look around. All these doors look exactly the same. It'll be difficult to find our way out again if we close the one we came in through."
"We can worry about getting out after we've found my mother!" Draco snapped, "What are we wasting all this time talking for?"
Without waiting for the others, Draco strode purposely over to a door on his left. It had not been left ajar, but swung open easily at his touch. Ignoring the cries of the others, he plunged forward. Harry was right behind him, though he paused at the doorway. This room was unlike the one he remembered from his dreams. Instead of the glittering light and ticking sounds, there was a vast, rectangular room. It sank toward the center, forming a sort of stone pit twenty feet below him. The door opened on the topmost tier of a set of stone benches, descending down to the bottom of the pit like the steps of an amphitheater. In the very center of the pit, resting on a raised stone dais, was an ancient archway. It seemed to have been hewn from the very same stone on which it rested, but it was older, its bricks cracked and crumbling. It was not supported by any wall or structure, and Harry marveled that anything so broken and old could still be standing. Across this ancient archway hung a tattered black curtain, nearly transparent with age. The fabric fluttered despite the completely still air that surrounded them, as if it had just been disturbed by the movement of a hand.
"Who's there?" Draco called, already scrambling halfway down the steps, "Mum? Is that you?"
"Draco, wait!" Harry shouted, snapping out of his brief trance and following Draco as fast as he could, "This isn't right! It's not the right room!"
Draco stopped, one foot already resting on the stone dais. He turned back to Harry with a frown. "The curtain moved! Didn't you see…?"
"Yes, but there's no way anyone's hiding behind that arch! You can see through the veil…"
The words were barely out of his mouth before he paused again. He thought he heard voices. It could not have been their own words echoing back at them. The cold, still room seemed to dampen any sound. But it seemed impossible to think anyone was hiding behind the arch. And yet he continued to hear the whispers, as if two people were having a conversation on the other side…
Draco did not appear to hear it. He had turned his back to the archway, prepared to leave on Harry's instruction, but now Harry stood transfixed.
"What do you think is on the other side?" he asked. "What is this thing…?"
"I don't care if my mother isn't here," Draco said stubbornly, pulling on Harry's arm. "Let's go, Potter!"
Harry allowed himself to be drawn away from the strange arch. The others were waiting near the top of the stone steps. Harry noticed that both Theo and Millie seemed strangely transfixed by the sight of that slightly swaying veil, but Ron and Blaise grabbed each of them by their arms and led them back into the circular chamber.
"What do you suppose that room is for?" asked Nell.
Blaise shook his head, "Based on everything Morty could tell me about this place, it's probably better we don't know."
Meanwhile, Harry was thinking. In his dreams, he had always walked directly across from the open door and into a room full of dazzling white light. But thanks to Draco's mistake, two doorways now stood open. It wasn't really a hindrance. Harry could simply walk straight forward from the door they had originally entered. But the thought of leaving two openings behind them filled him with an unexplained fear. He thought of what Blaise said, about charms to discourage unwanted visitors… Was it wrong to leave too many open passages at their backs, hardly knowing who, or what, might pass through them?
Then he had an idea. Turning to Hermione, he asked, "Is there a way to mark this door?"
She returned his look, puzzled, but nodded her head. Stepping forward, she raised her wand in the air and said, "Flagrante!"
A fiery X appeared on the back of the door that Draco had opened. Blaise, realizing where this was headed, quickly made a similar mark on their exit. He exchanged a glance with Harry, who took a deep breath and said, "Close it."
Hermione and Blaise closed their respective doors at the same time. Almost instantly, the black, circular wall began to rotate. Hermione stepped back and gripped Harry's hand, as if frightened the floor would move, too. But they remained stationary as the wall gathered speed, spinning faster and faster until the blue flames and the fiery orange sigils blurred together. Eventually, the spinning slowed, then came to a complete stop.
"Told you," said Blaise, "Whole place is booby-trapped."
"At least now we know why they left the door open," Harry said.
Too late, Harry realized that he should have told his friends to use different symbols. The large glowing X that marked each of the doors was too similar. Harry wasn't sure if the door that now stood behind him was the door Draco had chosen, or the one leading back toward the lift. Harry took a gamble and strode directly forward, picking the blank door that stood opposite one of the sigils.
It opened on another long, rectangular room filled with a soft golden light. It was brighter here than either the black circular room in which they stood, or the cold, dim hall where the archway had been, but Harry didn't see the glittering, shimmering lights he had seen in his dreams.
"This isn't it," Harry said. He was about to turn away without another glance, until Ron whispered, "What are those things?"
Harry turned back. In the very center of the room, surrounded by a few desks, was an enormous glass tank. Inside were a number of pearly white objects, drifting at random through deep green water. At first glance, Harry thought they were pale jellyfish, but they didn't possess the characteristic pulsing movements of one.
He took a hesitant step closer, trying to get a better look, as Nell asked in a hushed voice, "Are they… fish? Or maybe some type of grindylow?"
"No…" said Harry, peering through the dewy glass into the water, "They're… brains."
"Brains?" repeated Theo with incredulous disgust, "What are they doing with a tank full of brains?"
"No idea," replied Harry, turning away resolutely, "But this isn't what we're looking for. Come on, we need to try the other door."
"There are doors here, too," observed Nell, pointing at the four rectangular walls of the brain-room.
"Just how big is this place?" Draco complained with a groan of frustration.
"We're looking for a room that sort of… glitters. It'll have a ticking sound," Harry said, leading them away from the brain tank and back into the black room. "We just have to keep trying…"
Hermione marked the door leading to the brains with another giant X as a precaution, though Harry thought he already knew which door they needed next. As they closed the door behind them, the wall again began to spin round and round. It didn't matter where they stopped. Two giant X's gleamed opposite one another, while the third faced a blank, unmarked door. The former had to be the door marked by Blaise, the one that would take them back to the bowels of the Ministry. But the one directly opposite… Harry quickly dashed forward, pushing the door open to reveal a room filled with beautiful, dancing light.
"This is it!" he exclaimed to the others, pushing his way forward even as his eyes struggled to become adjusted to the blinding glare. He now realized that the brilliant light was being reflected from hundreds of clock faces. They covered every surface of the room: wall clocks hanging between bookshelves, mantel clocks adorning desks and tables, tall grandfather clocks resting in nooks…. Harry now understood the sound he always heard in his dreams. The timepieces filled the room with a busy, relentless ticking. The source of the light, however, came from a large crystal bell jar at the far end of the room. And beyond that jar, standing just slightly behind it, was another door. They were right on track.
Harry turned to the others and nodded. He led them forward, Draco following at his heels, through the narrow space between desks covered in open pocket watches and bedside clocks.
The crystal bell jar was nearly as tall as Harry, and had been placed atop a heavy looking desk. As they drew closer, Nell gave a cry and said, "Oh, look!"
Drifting along in the sparking current inside the jar was a tiny egg. As it rose on the current, it cracked open, revealing a hummingbird. The bird was then carried to the very top of the jar, but as it fell on the downdraft, its feathers became bedraggled and damp. By the time it had been borne to the bottom of the jar, it had been enclosed once more in the egg.
Nell's footsteps had slowed, as if she wanted to stay and watch the bird's cycle repeat itself once more, but Blaise gripped her wrist, tugging her forward with an exasperated shake of his head.
Harry paused before the last door. He knew what lay beyond it, knew that it contained the room he'd seen in his vision. He glanced back at his friends. They had each drawn their wands, with the exception of Millie, who had adopted her falcon form once more and perched atop Harry's shoulder. The others looked anxious, but ready. Harry looked to Draco last, who gave him a solemn nod, before Harry placed his hand against the door. It swung open.
They had found it at last. A ceiling as high and peaked as a church roof, full of nothing but towering shelves bearing thousands of dusty glass orbs. They glimmered in the light cast from candle brackets set along the shelves. Like those in the circular room behind them, the flames here burned blue.
Harry edged forward. One hand held his wand, while the other gripped the sleeve of Draco's robes, preventing him from bolting at random down one of the rows of shelves. He couldn't hear anything, nor see any signs of movement.
"Where are we supposed to go?" Draco whispered.
"Row ninety-seven," Harry murmured. He gripped Draco tighter to stop him from rushing in that direction, then whispered to the falcon on his shoulder, "Millie?"
She needed no further instruction. She took off, soaring on silent wings far above their heads, nearly disappearing in the blue-tinged shadows of the tall ceiling. She seemed to be circling their row, searching for danger ahead. In a moment, she had returned, landing on Harry's shoulder and giving a slight shake of her feathered head.
"What does that mean?" Draco asked fearfully, "Did she see…?"
"It just means she didn't see an ambush waiting for us," Harry explained, "C'mon. Let's check for ourselves…"
"Keep your wands up!" Blaise advised as they followed Harry and Draco past a shelf labeled Fifty-Three. They crept forward, directing nervous glances behind them as they made their way down the long alley of shelves. Tiny, yellowing tags had been stuck beneath each glass orb. Harry didn't bother trying to read them, but noticed as he passed that some had a strange, liquid glow, while others were as dull and dark as blown lightbulbs.
Harry listened for any sounds of movement as they passed row Eighty-Five. In his vision, Mrs. Malfoy had been begging, pleading for herself and her son. And Voldemort had been there, the same high, cold voice Harry often heard in his nightmares. And yet still he heard nothing. No murmured conversation. No screams of a woman being tortured…
This should have come as no surprise. Millie had not warned him of any danger. Perhaps Mrs. Malfoy had lost consciousness, or been gagged when she failed to cooperate. Perhaps they had already moved on…
"Ninety-Seven!" whispered Hermione.
They were standing at the end of the row, gazing down the length of shelves before them. There was no one there.
"She… She should be right down at the end," Harry said as Draco shot him an anxious glance, "That's where she was… in my vision."
Draco took the lead, lighting the end of his wand and proceeding down the alley with a determined stride. Harry followed him. He felt Millie's talons leave his shoulder as she opened her wings, catching the air and landing on her feet with a soft thud as she pursued them in her human form. Harry's eyes were trained on the floor, expecting any moment to see Mrs. Malfoy's ragged and discarded form…
They reached the end of the row, and still there were no signs of Mrs. Malfoy.
Draco rounded on Harry, his expression murderous, "She's not here. You said she would be here!"
No one else spoke. Harry stared into Draco's eyes, unsure of what to say. He felt like he was going to be sick.
"I… I don't understand… This is where I saw her… Maybe… Maybe he's taken her somewhere or…"
"Or what?" Draco challenged fiercely, shoving Harry hard in the chest, "Or what, Potter? Say it!"
"I'm not… I wasn't… I didn't mean that she…"
"That she's already dead? That he's got what he wanted and killed her? That you were too late to save my mum, just like you failed to save Ron's dad?"
"Oi, Draco!" Ron shouted angrily, "That's too far! We don't know what's happened. Maybe… Maybe she was never here to begin with? Maybe Harry's dream was just that, a dream?"
"No, it wasn't like that! I wasn't even asleep!" Harry argued, desperate to defend himself while the sick sensation in his stomach grew. Despite what he said, he was having doubts. What if he'd hallucinated the entire thing, after all? What if he'd been overstressed from his exams, just as Professor Tofty had said? What if Sirius hadn't answered his calls because he was simply in another room, and hadn't heard Harry's voice through the mirror?
"Hey, Harry?" called Theo in a rather distracted voice, as if he hadn't been paying much attention to their argument at all, "Have you seen this?"
"What?" demanded Harry and Draco in unison.
Theo flinched when confronted by both of their accusatory glares. He pointed sheepishly toward one of the small glass spheres that adorned the shelf of row Ninety-Seven. It glowed with a dull inner light. It was very dusty, as though it had not been touched for many years.
"It's got your name on."
"What?" Harry repeated blankly, "My name?"
He pushed past Draco, making his way back to where the rest of their party had gathered. He was not quite as tall as Theo, and had to crane his neck to read the yellowish label affixed to the shelf beneath the glass orb.
In spidery writing, with a date set some sixteen years prior, were the words:
S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.
Dark Lord
And (?) Harry Potter
Harry stared at it as Blaise shifted uncomfortably, "What's your name doing down here?"
Millie glanced down the length of the shelf and observed, "I'm not here. None of the rest of us here…"
Harry stretched out his hand, but Hermione stopped him, "No! Remember what Blaise said about this place being booby-trapped? I don't think you should touch it!"
"Why not?" asked Harry stubbornly. They had come all this way for nothing. He might as well take something for his trouble. "It's got my name on. It must have something to do with me."
Feeling reckless, he closed his fingers around the dusty orb. He had expected it to feel cold, like the chill air that permeated the large room. But it was not. On the contrary, it felt hot, like it had been lying out in the sun for hours.
Harry was expecting, even hoping for something to happen. Something dramatic that would justify their long, desperate journey there. He lifted the orb from its small, spindly stand and held it in the palm of his hand.
Nothing happened. The others had moved closer, even Draco, gazing at Harry and the orb as he brushed the dust away. It continued to glow with the same dull light, but seemed to contain nothing remarkable.
Then, from directly behind them, a drawling voice said, "Very good, Potter. Now, turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me."