Chapter Text
Deep within London, beyond the muggle buildings with their plastic plants and carefully off-white walls, down a grubby, graffitied alley and just around a corner, there is a battered phone booth.
It doesn’t look like much, not at first glance. Faded red paint peels off the worn wood in great curling strips, more than a few panes of glass are shattered, and there is even an old bullet embedded deep in the half-rotted wood frame.
Still, the old phone booth bears a great secret. All that you must do to learn it is turn the rusted doorknob, force the sticky hinges to move, and dial a secret string of numbers. From there the journey continues on down, down, down into the belly of the earth.
Down past the fussy, oversized offices of the highest-ranking officials. Down past the sprawling Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the cramped offices of the tiny departments obligated to share a floor with the Aurors. Down past the Departments of Magical Accidents, of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, of International Magical Cooperation— and then down a great deal beyond that. Down, down, down, until at long last, nestled down in the very bowels of the Ministry, you reach the Department of Mysteries.
But the journey does not end there, for there is yet further to go. The path leads along gleaming black-tiled corridors where every step echoes, reverberating and refracting into a cacophony of soft clicks and taps, and then through the door, onward, onward and downward—
Onward and downward to what, Harry cannot say for sure. He only knows that there is something tugging at him, some magnetic pull deep in his core that draws him forward and onward and downward, towards the unknown destination that lies in the depths, in the center, in the place around which everything orbits—
“Harry!” Hermione snaps.
Harry breaks free from his reverie abruptly. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just— strange, seeing it in real life, instead of in a dream.”
It is. In their shared dreams, Voldemort had imbued the door with a sense of deep purpose; the shadows had been a rich velvety black, as though they contained fathomless depths and equally endless secrets. In the waking world, the door is simply a normal wooden door, covered with faded black paint.
Not that the discrepancy is a surprise. Voldemort’s way of seeing things is more than a bit detached from reality, and not just a metaphorical sense. The dreams Harry receives from him are always— strange, rife with mirrored writing and fragmentations and hallucinations. And that’s not even getting started on the prominent fissures that always seem to spread across the world like someone has shattered a pane of glass in front of his mind’s eye.
“But this is the door?” Ron confirms.
“Yes,” Harry replies shortly. He strides forward, the door swinging open before him just as it had in the dream. Beyond the door is a familiar circular room made of the same gleaming black tiles as the corridor.
“Which way?” Hermione asks.
“Er,” Harry begins. Voldemort’s mind has always tended to duplicate objects, like two mirrors lined up to each other reflecting endlessly. The doors had all looked so similar that Harry had simply assumed Voldemort’s mind was multiplying them.
Harry is saved from answering. Neville, who has been bringing up the rear, steps into the room. As he does so, the door they entered through closes behind them with a soft, eerie click, and suddenly the walls are spinning past them, slowly at first but then faster and faster until all they can see is the blur of blue torches flying by—
And then the room abruptly stops spinning again, leaving their motley group dazed and confused. The doors are utterly indistinguishable; it’s impossible to tell one door from another, let alone identify the one that they entered through.
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Hermione announces briskly, “I’ll suppose that we’ll just have to try them all.” With that, she marches up to the nearest door and gives it a hard push. The rest of them follow her a bit more cautiously, raising their wands as they enter.
The room is a fairly small one, with shelving covering the walls and what appears to be a fountain of some kind in the center. Far more noticeable than the contents of the room itself is the smell of it— the cold clean windswept heights of the Quidditch pitch, and the spicy-smoky scent of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, and freshly baked treacle tart, all wrapped up into one utterly irresistible scent. Harry can’t help but take deep, full gulps of air, and around him, the others seem to be doing the same thing.
“Amortentia,” Hermione whispers. “You can tell by the mother-of-pearl sheen and the spiraling smoke. It’s the most powerful love potion in the world.”
“They must be studying love here,” Luna says in a thoughtful voice. “How funny, considering how lacking in love the Ministry is.” She raises the lit tip of her wand, illuminating the shelves. A collection of strange paraphernalia is lined up along them— elaborate wedding rings, and a strange musical instrument Harry thinks might be a lyre, and balls of what looks like some sort of red string.
“This isn’t the room we’re looking for,” Harry points out abruptly. “Let’s go.”
The others seem reluctant to leave, but they follow him out anyway. Harry is glad; the enticing smell somehow reminds him of the unnatural bliss the Imperius Curse brought on, and the longer they delay, the longer Sirius is left at Voldemort’s “mercy”.
As they enter the circular room again, Harry feels his eyes landing on a nearby door, and his heart catches strangely in his chest. He finds himself stepping towards it without any conscious thought, his hand reaching out to push it open—
“Hey, I think we found the room you talked about!” Ginny exclaims. “A room with a bunch of clocks and things, right?”
Harry yanks his gaze away and turns back towards the group. “Yes, that’s the one.” He strides forward, the others parting before him, and enters into the new room.
It’s almost exactly as it was in Harry’s dream— long and narrow, with an endless, glittering array of watches and alarms and grandfather clocks filling the air with a continuous ticking like the sound of rain hitting glass. Harry navigates through the room with ease, having been here a hundred times in his dreams.
The hall of orbs is equally as familiar. Without pausing to stare at the high ceilings or strange, shadowy aisles, Harry hurries along confidently, knowing that Sirius will be under a blue, glowing orb in row ninety-seven.
Eighty— eighty-eight— ninety-five— and then, at last, ninety-seven. Harry peers down the aisle, skimming his eyes along the darkened floor. He can’t see Sirius yet, but that doesn’t mean anything— it’s so shadowy, Sirius could easily be there, hidden— “Sirius?” he calls softly— he steps into the aisle, his wand flaring bright with light— panic, real panic, jolts in his chest as he sees how painfully empty the aisle is. But no— he hasn’t seen a blue orb— the number from the dream must be wrong, he just needs to find the blue orb—
Harry jogs down the rest of the aisle, his heart pounding. He feels certain Sirius must be around the next corner— he can feel his pulse speed up with anticipation— he turns the corner and feels his stomach plummet— but there is another corner, and Sirius must be around that one…
“Spread out and look for Sirius!” Harry orders as he hurries back past the bewildered clump of his friends to check the other side. “He should be under a glowing blue orb—”
He abruptly falls silent, because his eyes have caught onto an orb just like the one he described. Thick and cloudy with dust, yes, but under that, glowing very faintly blue. He approaches it slowly— there’s some strange label affixed to it— dazed, Harry reaches out, uncurls the yellowish parchment with a poke of his wand—
S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.
Dark Lord &
Harry Potter (?)
Harry stares blankly. He can feel something cold in his chest like he’s just swallowed an ice cube and it’s sliding slowly down his throat. Feeling like he’s in some sort of dream— or more accurately, some sort of dreadful nightmare— he reaches forward and closes his fingers around it— he can feel heat blazing within him, and light halos him in a brief, glimmering flicker like a lens flare—
“Very good,” comes a far too familiar drawl. “Now turn around and hand that over— slowly.”
Harry spins to face Lucius Malfoy, who isn’t even bothering to wear a mask. Behind him, a dozen or so Death Eaters are dispersing Disillusionment Charms and training lit wands on Harry and his friends.
Harry feels a sudden hot flare of adrenaline and anger and some sort of wild Gryffindor brashness, a flare that is even more vivid than the blazing heat he’d felt upon touching the orb. He grins, sharp and wild and bright as sunlight on a blade’s edge.
“Hand over what?” he asks, tossing the little orb from one hand to another and relishing the way Malfoy’s eyes follow its trajectory seemingly against his will. “This little thing?” He lets the orb roll along the pads of his fingers like he’s going to drop it before catching it again with a seeker’s lightning-quick reflexes. “You care about this?”
“You fool,” Malfoy grinds out, “if you smash the prophecy, the Dark Lord will—”
Prophecy? Harry wonders, but he says, “The Dark Lord will what? Torture my godfather? He’s already doing that, you idiot.” He gives the orb a little squeeze like he’s about to shatter the thin glass. “I thought Slytherins were supposed to be clever when it came to negotiation. No, the only thing you possibly do to persuade me to give this— prophecy to you is if you deliver Sirius to me, unharmed.”
Malfoy stares back at Harry, something strange in his eyes. Behind him, one of the Death Eaters shifts uncomfortably, and then yells, “Accio prophecy!”
Without breaking eye contact with Malfoy, Harry lets the prophecy slip through his fingers— just long enough to get his hands free— “Finite Incantatem”— the prophecy falls through the air— Harry catches it just before it shatters to a hundred glittering pieces on the floor.
“That was foolish of you,” Harry says conversationally. “Now, I’m going to ask you again. Where is Sirius?”
“The silly little baby thought what he dreamed was true!” comes a crowing female voice. Harry turns his gaze just enough to see a newcomer striding towards them down the aisle— a woman with wild dark curls and a cruel, feverish shine in her eyes. Bellatrix Lestrange. “Baby Potter thought he was going to heroically save his godfather, did he?”
“So it was all a trap,” Harry says quietly. It feels as though a stone is sinking in his stomach. He’s risked Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Neville and Luna’s lives all for— for nothing.
Lestrange cackles. “Yes! A trick and a trap! A dupe!”
Rage rises in Harry, hot and liquid as magma, but he bites it back with effort. He needs to be clever. “And for what?” he asks, passing the prophecy from hand to hand like he’s lost in thought. “Why would—” he almost says Voldemort, but he wants them distracted, not mad with rage— “why would he go to all this effort?”
“Beyond the simple joy of your suffering?” Malfoy asks with a dry humor that Harry resents. “Use your brain, Potter. You’re holding a prophecy orb with your names on it right there.”
“Speaking of which,” Harry says as he casually slips one hand behind his back, “What kind of prophecy is this, anyway? Something about him getting resurrected using my blood, or something?” Behind his back, he opens his hand wide and flexes his magic as hard as he can, thinking accio other prophecy orb, accio other prophecy orb, accio other prophecy orb, accio other prophecy orb.
There’s a moment of silence, during which Harry pretends to examine the prophecy in his hand with fascination, and then one of the Death Eaters says, “you jest.”
“No,” Harry says, “Although I am very funny, on occasion.” Harry feels an orb slamming into the open hand behind his back; he grins, and lets the Death Eaters think he’s just laughing at what he said.
“Surely Dumbledore told you why the Dark Lord targeted you, that night fifteen years ago,” Lucius Malfoy says in a tone of faint incredulity. He’s staring at Harry like he’s gone mad— which, Harry notes with satisfaction, means he’s not paying attention as Harry slips the hand with the prophecy behind his back as well. “Do you think that the Dark Lord has simply concerned himself with you on your own merits? That you are a worthy enemy for the greatest Dark Lord of all time?”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty clever in a pinch,” Harry says with a shrug. With a quick movement he learned from years of stealing from the Dursleys, he swaps the two orbs. Then he raises the fake prophecy and pulls his arm back. “Fetch!” He yells, lobbing the orb over the shelves with all his strength.
There’s a split second of frozen shock from the Death Eaters, and then they’re sprinting after the prophecy, calling out cushioning charms and summoning charms and expletives. Harry spins and commands, “run” and then he and the others are off, sprinting at breakneck speed through the Hall of Prophecies.
Harry yanks open the door, and they all rush through it, panting and shaking with adrenaline. “That was mad, mate,” Ron exclaims, a wild grin lighting up his face. “The looks on their faces—”
“Everyone here?” Harry asks briskly. “Everyone alright?”
“Yes,” Hermione pants back. “We ought to lock the door to keep them from coming back through— Collo—”
Before she can finish, the door swings open, and a Death Eater in dark robes emerges, wand aimed at Harry’s heart. “I’m no fool,” comes a high, reedy voice. “There was never any chance of saving the prophecy from smashing, and I’m not in the habit of choosing to follow doomed pursuits—”
“Then why are you a Death Eater?” Harry can’t help but ask.
“Insolent boy!” the Death Eater snaps. “Crucio!”
Harry rolls out of the way. “Stupefy!”
A twitch of the Death Eater’s wand redirects the spell, and suddenly the case behind Harry smashes in an explosion of sand and shards of glass. Harry coughs and sputters breathlessly as his eyes, mouth, and nose are filled with clouds of gritty sand, and he winces as he feels several shards of flying glass embed themselves into the arm he raised protectively over his head. He’s sure he’ll be finding sand in unfortunate places for days to come.
“Diffindo Diabolica!” the Death Eater yells, and Harry is too distracted to block in time. He can’t help the choked-off, pained noise he makes as a deep wound suddenly cuts from the bottom of his ribcage to the top of his right shoulder.
“Petrificus Totalus!” a voice shouts, and the Death Eater slams to the ground with a crunching sound that makes Harry think he’s just broken his nose.
A hand grasps his good arm, and Harry finds himself being slung over a familiar shoulder— Ron’s, he recognizes distantly— and half-carried through the room full of clocks.
“He’s losing blood,” Luna says, her voice not as dreamy as usual. “We should probably put pressure on the wound—”
“Ferula!” Hermione calls, and suddenly bandages are appearing from thin air and wrapping around Harry’s injury. Harry winces as they tighten, but he doesn’t complain— he knows that the looser they are, the more blood he’ll lose. “Renneverate Minor! That should keep him awake and functioning, at least for a while.”
Neville pushes open the door. “C’mon, through here,” he says; they all hurry along after him into the circular room from before.
“Which door should we go through?” Ginny asks urgently.
Harry’s gaze falls on the door directly opposite them, and he swears he can feel a tugging sensation in his chest— perhaps his magic acting out to help him, to direct him to the exit? Either, he decides to trust his instincts. He pushes himself off of Ron’s shoulder, ignoring the disapproving frown Hermione sends his way, and steps through the door.
He knows at once, instinctively, that this is the center of the Department of Mysteries, and, for that matter, the Ministry of Magic. He can tell by the feeling in the air; it’s like he’s standing in the eye of a storm, in the oddly calm and quiet place around which all of the chaos and violence revolves. He wouldn’t be surprised if this existed long before the Ministry did, if all of the rest of the Ministry was built up around it.
Above him, dim lighting casts the high, unwrought ceiling into vague shadows that twist and dance in strange, dizzying patterns. Harry steps further into the room, squinting as he struggles to adjust to the lighting. At his feet, the floor seems to sink away slowly in natural steps, as if carved over uncounted years by the movement of ever-flowing water; in the center of the room, a sunken pit yawns hungrily.
It looks, Harry thinks, a bit like the courtrooms. And yet, he instinctively knows that this was not created in imitation of the courtrooms— rather, the courtrooms were created as a paltry imitation of this.
He descends the steps slowly, each footfall echoing through the air like stones dropped into a stagnant pond. In the center of the pit lies the room’s focal point— the heart of the room, and thus the heart of the Department of Mysteries and the Ministry itself. It stands atop a mesa, hanging from a lone, unsupported archway, nearly invisible to human eyes but impossible for Harry to miss.
It feels… magnetic. It almost reminds Harry of the feeling when he’d closed his hand around his wand— or for that matter, the feeling when he’d closed his hand around the prophecy that now sits in his pocket.
Now that he’s closer, Harry can see that the surface is shifting slightly, as if it is still water being marred by drops of rain. He thinks he can hear a soft whispering sound, like wind or rain— or perhaps voices muffled by glass.
“Harry,” comes Luna’s calm clear voice from the top of the steps, “I don’t think you should go any closer to that.”
Harry jerks back, abruptly realizing he’s standing just a few paces from the mesa. He opens his mouth to defend his actions, to give some sort of explanation, but before he can speak several Death Eaters burst in through one of the entrances, shouting, “THERE HE IS!”
Knowing that he’ll be at a disadvantage if he’s below his opponents, Harry clambers quickly up onto the mesa, his wand held defensively in his right hand and prophecy cupped in his left.
The Death Eaters come to a halt perhaps a meter away. Like before, their eyes are latched onto the prophecy in his hand with unerring accuracy.
“I have to admit,” Malfoy says in a tone that suggests this is meant to be a compliment, “that your trick with the fake prophecy was very clever. Still, it shows that you know just as well as I that you cannot face us head-on. We have you backed into a corner, Potter— simply hand the prophecy over and make this easier for all of us.”
“Again,” Harry says with a slightly hysterical laugh, “you’re terrible at negotiating. Almost as bad as your master— did you know he once offered to bring my parents back, in exchange for the Philosopher’s Stone? And he really seemed to think that I would believe him!”
“You’re in no position to bargain here,” Malfoy says in a cold tone. “Surely you don’t think that you can face ten of us head-on? All on your own?”
“He’s not alone,” comes Neville’s voice from perhaps a foot away, and then spellfire is erupting from seemingly empty stretches of air— he and the others must have Disillusioned themselves and snuck up on the Death Eaters while they were distracted.
Harry’s friends may have the element of surprise, but they’re no match for full-grown wizards, and Harry knows it. He stuffs the prophecy into his pocket and leaps into the fray, stunners flying from his wand almost faster than he can cast.
“Foolhardy Gryffindor!” Malfoy spits. “You’ll smash the prophecy and doom us all!”
Harry grins as he realizes what this means— namely, that he’s going to be a truly excellent human shield. Across the room, Antonin Dolohov is twisting his wand, teasing out a thick whip made out of what appears to be some sort of purple flame. Intent on testing his theory, Harry dives in front of Hermione— “don’t smash the prophecy!” Malfoy orders frantically— a snarling Dolohov jerks his wand at the last second so that the whip only grazes Harry instead of striking him head-on.
“Someone Stun Potter or something, for Merlin’s sake!” Malfoy snaps, sending a particularly vicious spell Ron’s way. Harry can see Ron’s shadowy, half-visible form rolling out of the way just like Harry’d taught him. It makes pride fill his chest, although he can tell that Ron is rapidly tiring.
The warmth in Harry’s chest freezes as he sees Lestrange dispelling the Disillusionment Charm on Neville. “Longbottom!” There’s a truly vicious sneer twisting her face. “I knew your parents, boy!”
“I KNOW YOU DID!” Neville roars, and he lunges forward towards her with a sort of blind rage— a laughing Lestrange points her wand down at him— “Crucio!”— Neville is writhing helplessly, a silent scream painted across his face—
Under the sound of battle, Harry can faintly recognize someone calling, “Accio cord,” but it’s so innocuous he doesn’t register it— he’s too caught up in the agony of watching Neville—
Suddenly, red string is looping around his wrists, yanking them together so tightly that he can’t even move his hand enough to cast. Harry struggles against the string, trying to find some sort of give, trying to break the seemingly flimsy string, but another wave of a Death Eater’s wand and it becomes rigid and inflexible.
Malfoy stalks closer slowly, an expression of deep satisfaction on his face. “I hope the way I’m about to be rifling through your robe pockets doesn’t lead you to believe I’m some sort of common thief,” he says, “I can assure you that—”
“THE ORDER!” a hoarse, cracking voice cries, and Harry turns his head to see that yes, five or six Order members— including Sirius— are dashing in through one of the entrances.
Malfoy spins to face the newcomers, and Lestrange tosses Neville aside like he’s a toy she’s done playing with; he drops to the floor with a terrible, wet thud. Lestrange starts striding towards Sirius, a huge, bloodthirsty grin splitting her face. “Cousin!” she calls. “It’s been so long since we last saw each other!”
“That was on purpose, you mad bitch,” Harry hears Sirius mutter in a very audible undertone. “Petrificus Totalus!” he calls, handily felling Malfoy before he can get any closer to Harry. “Get out of here, Harry—”
Sirius is cut off as Lestrange sends a Killing Curse flying towards Sirius. Sirius manages to dodge, but it’s near enough that Harry knows there’s no way in hell he’s leaving Sirius alone here. With an ease born of desperation, Harry pops the joint in his right thumb out of its socket and wriggles his hand out of his bindings.
Clumsily grasping his wand in his free hand, Harry starts running over to where Sirius and Lestrange are mid-duel. Sirius’ eyes catch on Harry, and he yells, “Get out of here!”
“Focus on the duel!” Harry yells back, and falls in at his side, his body slipping into the stance that Sirius himself had drilled into him.
Huffing in a way that Harry knows means he’ll be getting a lecture for this later, Sirius turns back to Lestrange. “Since we’re having a family reunion and all,” Sirius tells Lestrange drily, “This is my godson, Harry.”
“I would say nice to meet you,” Harry says, “but it really isn’t.”
Sirius barks a laugh, and it’s then, eyes still crinkled with mirth, that Lestrange hits Sirius square in the chest with some sort of curse. His eyes widen with shock, traces of laughter still lingering in the curves of his cheeks, and then he falls backward, backward and onward, into the veil.
For a split second, Harry just stares, too shocked to react properly. Sirius sinks backward and upward slowly, like a man sliding into a bath, sinking into the soothing embrace of warm water after a long day. But there is nothing soothing about this, and this is not the end of Sirius’ day. Harry refuses to let the only person he can really call family leave him so soon.
Harry jerks into motion. Without a single moment of hesitation, he dives into the veil after his godfather.