Everyone remained silent as the phone booth lowered itself into the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. We all held our wands out in preparation to be attacked as soon as we stepped into the Atrium, but that proved to be slightly difficult because of how cramped we were. When the door opened, all of us braced ourselves for an attack and we were pleasantly surprised that nothing was sent our way.
"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic," the woman's voice echoed.
All of us slowly walked out and looked around the area like we were expecting Death Eaters to start jumping out and killing us where we stood. It was too easy...almost like some sort of trap so we would get our guard down. But the only thing that had any sort of movement in the area was a large, golden fountain that was sitting directly in the middle of the Atrium. On top of the water I noticed that there were statues of a witch, a wizard, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf all standing together as if they were one.
"Well," Neville said quietly. "That was anti-climactic..."
"Let's get moving," Harry said. "We need to get into the Department of Mysteries before anyone finds us here."
"Right," I nodded. "And how exactly do we do that?"
"I remember going past it during my hearing at the beginning of the year," Harry said. "Just follow me."
All of us grew silent as we quickly walked through the Atrium and toward the lift. I continued to look around with my wand at the ready until we made it across the room. Something about this entire situation didn't seem right. Voldemort didn't seem like the type of person that would have come here without any sort of army surrounding the place.
"It's a nice place really," Luna said suddenly.
Everyone's eyes darted over to her as we stepped into the lift and Hermione just rolled her eyes and shook her head. Did she realize that we were here to fight off Voldemort or did she miss that part completely? It's really hard to tell if she's listening half of the time.
Harry pressed the down button and we all readied our wands again. When we finally stopped, we all stepped out slowly and found ourselves in another dark corridor that was completely vacant. Harry caught my eye and seemed as confused as I did.
"Something's not right," he said quietly. "Someone should be here."
"I know," I said. "A security guard, a Death Eater - someone. It shouldn't be this easy to get into the Ministry..."
"Especially with Voldemort in here I would have thought that something would have been set up," Harry said and then looked back down the hallway. "Okay, we need to move - we're nearly there."
We all nodded and then walked quickly down the hallway behind him. The only thing other than us in this entire hallway seemed to be the flickering lights that lead us this way and that didn't comfort me in the least.
We passed loads of doors but we stopped in front of one.
"It's that one there," Harry said. "Let's go - someone shut the door so no one can follow us."
Neville stepped back and shut the large, black door.
"Do you remember which door we came through?" Hermione asked.
Everyone looked around at each of the doors and I was horrified to see that they all looked exactly the same. Now I understood what the purpose of the doors moving around was - they wanted to confuse us so we couldn't get out.
"Now what are we going to do?" Ron asked.
"What else can we do?" Harry asked. "We're going to have to go through each of them until we find Sirius."
"Which one should we start with?" I asked and then I looked to my left and picked out a door. "Maybe this one?"
"We have to start somewhere," Harry said urgently.
We all nodded and then walked up to the door. It was easily pushed open to reveal a room that seemed almost as empty as the one we came through. After a moment, I noticed a fairly large tank that was set up on the right side of the room that was filled with some sort of strange, green liquid that appeared to have something moving around inside of it.
"What is in that thing?" Ginny asked with a look of disgust.
"I don't know, but I know it isn't Sirius - we should probably move to the next room," I said.
Everyone seemed to ignore me as they moved closer to the tank aside from Neville who looked like he would rather jump off a cliff than see what that tank had swimming around in it.
"You know," Neville said to me. "They call this place the Department of Mysteries for a reason - I can't really blame them for wanting to keep strange things like this away from everyone."
"Exactly my point," I shrugged. "But no one listens to me..."
Harry stood up next to it and had the strangest look in his eye. Whatever was in that tank wasn't something that any of us could have predicted judging by all of their reactions.
"Brains?" Hermione said as though it couldn't be true.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Are you saying that their are brains in there?"
"They're just floating around in there," Ron murmured. "That's disgusting..."
"Hey, maybe you could grab one so you could have a brain for yourself," I said. "Can we go now?"
Ron laughed and rolled his eyes at my comment before we all made a sort of awkward shuffle towards the door. When I glanced back over towards the tank, I could have sworn that I saw a brain swimming through it myself. I needed to get out of this place...
When we stepped out of the door, Hermione immediately pointed her wand at the door and drew an enormous red X on it just as we went to shut it. I began to question why she did that when the wall and doors began to spin around once again. When they stopped, the X was still on a door and I realized that she was going to be keeping track of which doors we had already used.
"Good idea," Harry nodded. "Okay - let's try this door here."
We all followed behind him as he pushed the next door open. We all held our wands up, but we found ourselves in another vacant room. Although it was different from the previous one we had seen, it didn't look at all like the room that we had seen in our vision during the OWL exam. However, there was something different about this room that sent a shiver down my spine. From what I could tell, it was once some sort of amphitheater at one point or another. In the very center of the room, just underneath the rows of chairs that surrounded it, there was a large archway that had a black curtain hanging from its hinges.
"Let's go," Ron said. "I don't like this place..."
We started to walk away when I suddenly heard some whispering and I quickly spun around with my wand pointed directly at where I heard it. My eyes flickered all around the room, but nothing else seemed to be there.
"What is wrong?" Hermione asked sounding terrified.
"I heard something," I said while shaking. "Who's there!"
Nobody answered and Harry glanced around the room too in suspicion. I knew that I wasn't crazy - I had just heard something. It wasn't like I could make out what was said, but it was enough to let me know that someone else had to be there, but we seemed to be the only ones in the room. I heard something again and I immediately shot a spell the way.
"Stupefy!" I shouted.
The red spark shot across the room towards the archway, but it seemed to have been completely worthless.
"What are you doing?" Hermione asked.
I ignored her as I listened to the voices slowly fading and it was silent again. Whatever it was, I knew that it couldn't have been Death Eaters because they would have fired back by now.
"You heard it too," I said slowly to Harry. "Didn't you?"
Harry nodded and I looked around at the others. Ron and Hermione looked confused and scared while the Ginny, Luna, and Neville were all looking at the archway like they had heard something as well. There was no way that we had all imagined it.
"Can we just go now," Hermione said nervously. "We need to hurry up."
"You're right," I said slowly. "Come on guys, let's check the next room..."
I grabbed onto Luna's arm and moved her back towards the door while she continued to stare back at the curtain that we had all seemed to have heard something from. Whatever it was, I knew that it wasn't a good sign.
Hermione marked the door once we were all out of the room and we went through the same process that we had before of waiting for the doors to stop spinning so that we could check through the next one. When he didn't open it immediately, I quickly grew impatient at the thought of Sirius waiting for us and suffering because of how long we were taking.
"What are you waiting for?" I asked.
"It's locked," Harry said.
"Okay, well then we'll try another one," Hermione said as she began to walk towards another one.
"Wait - what if this one is it," I said. "We can't just skip it."
"Then how do you suppose we get through?" Ron asked.
"Er...well, I don't know," I shrugged and then pointed my wand at the knob. "Alohomora!"
The knob didn't move in the slightest and nothing seemed to change at all. I shrugged and stepped back thinking that we might actually have to skip this one since we couldn't get into it.
"Wait a minute," Harry said while reaching into his pocket. "What about the knife that Sirius gave to me? It's supposed to be able to unlock anything."
"It's worth a shot," Ron shrugged.
"It couldn't hurt to try it out."
Harry jammed the knife into the lock and suddenly dropped it as the blade completely melted on the door. We all stepped back from it and let out a big sigh.
"I guess we could try another door," Hermione said softly. "Let's do this one."
We moved on to the next one and easily pushed it open. As soon as we did, I knew that this was the one that we had been searching for. It looked just like the one that we had seen in the dream and it led right into the room that Sirius was being held with Voldemort.
"This is it!" Harry said excitedly. "Come on - hurry up!"
We all raced through the room that was filled with all sorts of clocks and fancy jewels to find the second door in the room that we had been searching for all of this time. When we finally made it there, Harry quickly pushed open the other door and all of our wands flew up quickly as we moved our way into this room.
There were rows and rows of shelves that were stacked with all different sized orbs that didn't look like anyone had touched them due to the large amount of dust that was caked on them.
"Wow," Ron said with his mouth gaping.
"Where do we go?" Ginny asked.
"They were next to row ninety-seven," Harry said.
We located where the numbers were on the shelves and quickly raced through the room. Before we knew it we were running by eighty-nine...why couldn't we see anyone, I don't know.
We finally arrived in row 97 and started to walk through...