Disclaimer: Two reasons I don't own Harry Potter or anything associated with it-1) would I really be writing fanfiction if I owned the original story? And 2) Since the author and owner of Harry Potter is J.K. Rowling, and seeing that I'm not J.K. Rowling, then I'm not the author and I don't own Harry Potter!
And...I couldn't make a profit off of any of my fanfiction stories, even if I wanted to!



Chapter Nine-The Long Awaited Arrival

By...me!!!




Harry found himself in an enormous, square room with mediwizards, patients of the hospital, and the patients' visitors roaming across it. All across the room there were stairways and corridors branching off of it, giving Harry the impression that this room wasn't only a lobby of some sort for the hospital, but was also the base of the building. Although the room was too small to cover the entire first floor of the building, it seemed to be covering a good deal of it. In the center of the room was a desk shaped like a circle with parchment, quills, and books covering it. Within the circular desk were two women and one man looking very annoyed and disorganized. As Mr. Weasley cut in front of Harry and began to lead them towards the desk; Harry stared around at the white walls, white floor, and white ceiling. Although Harry wished he could have three heads at once to see all the activity that was happening around him, one thing caught Harry's eyes.

Although all sides of the room were white, it seemed like everything in the room...no, not everything in the room, but the air in the room...had the same lavender and green colored light that Harry had seen surrounding the building. Except here, the light wasn't as visible and glowing, more like a tinge of color, somewhat the same way it would look if there were two lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling giving the room the light. In fact, it seemed to Harry that the colored light inside the building was so subtle that you wouldn't really notice it unless this was someone's first time here and the light stood out to them, or if you were used to the light but were looking for it specifically.

As they approached the desk, Harry heard the three people who stood at it talking very quickly to one another as they hurried across the desk. It looked to Harry like they were only shuffling papers and running around, and he once again noted that they seemed very disorganized.

"With all this press surrounding Black, there are a million people here today-"

"-We're swamped, completely swamped! There are too many darned people here, and with those Daily Prophet reporters floating around-"

"You think the reporters are bad? The Minister of Magic himself is coming here at one o'clock!"

"The Minister? Are you serious? Oh, Merlin, what are we going to do? We need help-"

"Everyone's busy, their all covering the press, it's only us for today-"

"Excuse me?" Mr. Weasley said hesitantly.

"-And the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is coming, too-"

"-Oh, no, not Colette Villons! None of the men work properly when she's around, they all watch her!"

"Um, sir!" Mr. Weasley said loudly to the man, who had rather messy blonde hair and very large glasses. He looked around and jumped backwards slightly, alarmed, as he saw the large party Mr. Weasley and the large party he had in tow watching him.

"Yes?" The man said, quickly recovering from his embarrassment.

"My name is Arthur Weasley. My party and I are here to see Albus Dumbledore, could you please direct us to the room of Sirius Black?" Mr. Weasley asked politely.

Harry looked at Mr. Weasley in surprise. Professor Dumbledore...what? Mr. Weasley, sensing Harry's questioning gaze, gave him a sort of reassuring look, nodding as if he knew what he was doing.

"Albus Dumbledore hasn't arrived yet," the man said, squinting and peering at them all from over his glasses. Mr. Weasley looked at Mrs. Weasley in mild surprise.

"Well then, could you tell us what the room number of Sirius Black is?" Mr. Weasley asked, turning back to the man, who was now looking very carefully at Harry's forehead. Harry shifted under his gaze.

"The room number of Sirius Black? Right-oh, of course...right...give me but a minute..." He started shuffling papers, jumping from spot to spot around the desk as if he were a grasshopper. He kept on squinting through his glasses as if his lenses weren't strong enough, and papers were falling off the desk left and right, once again giving Harry the impression that the people at this desk were very disorganized.

Hermione and Percy both frowned disapprovingly at him. Harry was quite sure that if Hermione had personally known this man she would have begun to lecture him about being neat, but Harry knew she had more common sense than to go bugging strangers the same way she bugged her friends. Percy, however, opened his mouth to comment, but just then the man found whatever it was he was looking for, and good for him-Percy was frowning very deeply and looking quite annoyed.

"Sirius Black is in room 521," the man said, obviously very relieved that he had found what he was looking for, and there was a note of pride in his voice. Hermione noticed and raised her eyebrow at him, but kept her mouth shut. Harry, however, perked up his ears as the man continued to talk. "In the intensive care unit, fifth floor."

Harry felt a short and quick stab of fear. Intensive care? Harry had known that Sirius was hurt, but he hadn't supposed that his head injury was that serious...Harry felt more anxious than ever to see his godfather.

"Thank you, " Mr. Weasley said politely. Then he nodded to Mrs. Weasley, motioned for everyone to follow him, and began leading them all through the enormous room.

Harry followed, feeling very nervous indeed, and as they flattened his bangs down over his scar out of habit. He didn't feel like people gawking at his forehead very much, and he suddenly felt very grateful that his father hadn't been famous, and people wouldn't recognize Harry as soon as they realized he was James Potter's son.

Soon enough Harry felt a lump rise in his throat, and he dimly thought that he hadn't felt this nervous since before the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, when he was going to face a dragon. Ron seemed to sense Harry's emotions and gave him a pat on his bag, although he looked slightly sick himself. Hermione gave him a reassuring smile, but it was hard to see past the anxiousness in her eyes. Harry suddenly realized that Ron and Hermione looked almost as worried as he was...

Although the two of them might not have become as close to Sirius as Harry had grown through their letter correspondence over the past year, they had known him as long as he had, and both of them had played an important part in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic last year. There were only five people in the world that knew of Sirius's innocence, other than Sirius himself-Harry, Ron, Hermione, Remus Lupin, and Professor Dumbledore. Although Harry hadn't spoken to Lupin in over a year, the five of them had shared a secret that, when revealed, could change the thoughts of every member of the magical world, and that gave them a sort of almost bond...

Lost in thought, Harry didn't even notice when Mr. Weasley led them to one of the staircases that branched off from the main room. After all the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione were all on the crowded, narrow staircase, Mr. Weasley stopped. Harry was confused, and peered around Percy to see what Mr. Weasley was doing. However, he wasn't doing anything, he was just standing very calmly on the staircase. Harry wished that he would hurry up, the staircase had walls on both sides of it, and with everyone crowded together Harry was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. Everybody looked at Mr. Weasley expectantly, and then he said, in a very clear voice, "Room 521."

Then to Harry's great surprise and amazement-and apparently to Ron's, Hermione's, Ginny's, Fred's, and George's as well-the staircase began to move. Although...the walls on either side of the staircase didn't appear to be shifting, and for the life of Harry he couldn't figure out at all what was going on. He knew he was moving, though, because he had felt the lurch, and he had the sensation that they were moving. The movement reminded Harry of something, but he couldn't put his finger on it. It seemed that the whole staircase-along with the walls on either side of it-was moving through the hospital building.

Then a thought occurred to Harry, and he whirled around to see the bottom of the staircase. Instead of the foot of the staircase opening up into the enormous room that was on the ground floor-like it should have, in Harry's mind-there was now a wall there, identical to the white-washed walls that surrounded the sides of the staircase. At the top of the staircase there was also the same identical wall. Suddenly, Harry laughed aloud. Of course! He knew what this reminded him of! He chuckled at the simplicity and similarity of it, because this...this was the magical version of an elevator! In Harry's anxious and cluttered mind, this small similarity and slightest bit of humor that the thought of this magical elevator produced was enough to make him laugh.

Suddenly, the stairway (or "magical elevator," as Harry began to call it) stopped moving, and the wall at the top of the staircase slid away to reveal a hallway. Quickly, the nine of them hurried up and out of the stairway.

When Harry emerged from the stairway, he found himself in a corridor that was completely empty, save for the doors that opened into rooms for the hospital patients.

Gazing around and wondering where room 521 was, Harry saw that Mr. Weasley was doing the same thing-trying to find the room. Looking at the door in front of him, Harry saw that there was a sign on it that read "Room 511." Looking at the door a few feet away from it, he read "Room 513." Soon Harry was walking down the hallway, reading the room signs as he went, until he reached a door with a sign that read, "Room 521."

Harry, paused, taking a deep breath, and put his hand on the doorknob. Then he turned around and saw Hermione, Ron, and the rest of the Weasleys watching him anxiously and expectantly.

"Go on, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said quietly. "You go in first, we'll wait outside." Harry looked at her gratefully, and then at Ron and Hermione, who nodded encouragingly to him. Breathing in deeply again, Harry turned to the door. Biting his lip and trying to ignore and thumping of his heart, Harry opened the door.





A/N: I bet you guys are all thinking, "FINALLY!" Haha, this did take a long time to work up to didn't it? I have this habit of dragging these things out, I guess. Maybe I shouldn't have ended the chapter here, because now you're all going to kill me...oh, well. Chapter 10 might take a bit longer to come out, it's going to be hard for me to write (a bit like this one, you guys have no idea how long it took me to write this chapter! I am the "Queen of Procrastination") so I don't know when it'll be posted, I'll try to make it not too long-I'll work like a house elf to get it up! (Hehe, don't tell Hermione I said that!)
I went back and realized how many typos were in the last chapter-oy-but I was too lazy to go back and change it.

Abby: Sorry to burst your bubble, girl, but you never did answer my question! I can't answer anything if I don't know the question...
Don't worry, you didn't have to do anything! FanFiction.Net has been acting retarded lately, I wouldn't have done anything if I had been you, I don't think.

WeasleyTwins1112: "Oops I did it again..." okay wait forget I ever sang that...when I was writing these chapters I didn't realize what I was doing...geez, I'm sorry guys. Argh...next chapter, Harry sees Sirius, I promise!

Wellduh... :Yeah, poor Sirius! You know how Harry feels? Aw yeah I guess I do too when it comes down to it. Don't worry, he's not going to be incredibly bad. At least, I don't think!

Yuffie-Girl: Okay, just out of curiousity, what does "Yuffie" mean? Right that was really randomn...magical hospitals ARE different, exactly! Actually, I looked it up-lavender is associated with healing other people, and green for general healing, so I thought that it would be a nice touch. Bigger event? Hehe there are going to bigger events...hehe...