Harry could not tear his eyes from the door. He stood before it in such a complete stillness that even the blood in him seemed to have stopped moving.
For months the door that had come to him in sleep, glimpsed at the far end of a corridor that lengthened with every step he took toward it. All that time he had understood, without knowing how, that it was something Voldemort wanted, wanted so badly that the wanting leaked through into his own dreams.
And now here it stood, no longer a smear of black in a fading dream but a real door with a cold gleam running down its panels, so close that he felt he might have counted the very grain.
This Dark door had also given rise to a misunderstanding.
He had been so sure, back then, that Malfoy's secret trip to Borgin and Burkes, to buy a tool of alchemy that could break magical seals, had been undertaken for this door's sake.
But it had never been so. Malfoy's true mission had been to break into Professor Watson's office and carry away the staff that belonged to the dark witch Cliodna.
And now, slowly and with a creeping chill, Harry began to feel that something about all this was wrong.
He had gazed through the eyes of these visions many times now, and in every single one, without a single exception, Voldemort had been present there.
Then what was happening now?
He was following Sirius through the Ministry's halls, and yet there was no sign of Voldemort anywhere.
"Sirius! Turn round! Sirius!"
Harry shrieked it with every ounce of strength he had. He only wanted to make Sirius stop and look back, because—because—
But it was exactly what he had dreaded. Not one word reached Sirius.
Sirius walked on. He passed along the cool, dim corridor with a firm and purposeful tread, breaking now and again into a short jog as though impatient to arrive, and at the end he laid his hand on the black door, pushed it open, and went through.
Harry, floating at his shoulder, had the strangest feeling that the walls were listening.
For all his fear for Sirius's safety, Harry could not help glancing around, greedily, at the room that lay behind the door. He had been plagued by this dream for far too long, and whatever absurd things had befallen him in his life, he had never been through anything like this.
The chamber was circular and enormous, and every surface of it was black: floor, walls, ceiling, all of one lightless darkness, like the inside of a shut eye.
The wall was broken, all the way round, by doors. There were dozens and dozens of them, all similar, all unmarked, and nothing whatever to tell one from another.
It was obvious that Sirius had been here before. He did not so much as glance at the others. He crossed the floor straight to the door that faced the entrance.
Perhaps it was the thought of Remus's wedding the next day that had put him in such high spirits. He was humming under his breath as he went in a cheerful, tuneless hum that rebounded round the black walls.
Beyond the second door, light came spilling out to meet them, so rich and so bright that the whole room sparkled like a heap of diamonds that someone had tossed into the air.
Harry's point of view lifted from the floor, and he found himself floating above Sirius's head.
The great hall was filled with clocks. They stood on stand after stand, in every size and kind: huge ones and tiny ones, longcase clocks with slow, swinging pendulums, travelling clocks in cases of leather, clocks with faces of enamel and brass and yellowed bone, all of them were ticking together in a soft, endless, whispering rain.
The source of that blaze of light stood on the far side of the room: a bell jar of crystal, spilling rainbows that slid over the walls and the ceiling and the shoulders of the walking man.
The air in the room was warm and dry, and it smelt faintly of oil and brass polish, the smell of a watchmaker's shop on a winter afternoon.
Harry had no idea why the Ministry should keep so many clocks in the Department of Mysteries, and on any other day he would have given those marvellous things a great deal of thought. But all he could think of now was whether Sirius would live through the night.
He shouted above Sirius's head again and again, and he even strained with all his will to rip himself out of the dream and find some way of reaching Sirius in time. Each attempt came to nothing. He was like a leaf riding a river, and the river had its own mind.
All that he could do was drift after Sirius toward the far side of the hall.
But Sirius did not make for the crystal bell jar after all. It was a door behind it that he wanted.
Before he got there, he came to a stop, and turned his head slowly from side to side, examining the glittering room with narrowed eyes.
Even so, he did not hear Harry's frantic warnings.
He pushed the door open, and they passed through it together.
The next room was a great deal plainer than the last.
It was like the nave of an enormous church, a long hall of tall shelves that marched away into a darkness at the top of which no ceiling could be seen.
On those shelves sat small, dusty, grey glass orbs, hundreds and hundreds of them, ranked row on row like a clutch of frozen eggs.
The candle brackets set between the shelves gave a thin, flickering light, and in it the glass spheres glimmered with a pale and sickly shine, as if something drowned lay at the bottom of each of them.
No sound reached them here at all.
The ticking of the clocks had been shut away behind the door, and what was left was a silence so heavy that Harry could almost feel it pressing on his ears. The air was cool and smelt of dust and old stone, like a crypt that had not been opened in a hundred years.
Harry grew cold. It was not the cold of the air. It came from within, welling up out of the marrow of his bones.
And with the cold came a hunger, a strange, fierce craving that rushed through every inch of him, so overpowering that he abandoned his shouting altogether. Instead, he slid along beneath the ceiling above Sirius's head, tracking each step he took.
"Ninety-seven," Sirius murmured. "Row ninety-seven. Now where are you?"
He lit his wand and held it close to the shelves, reading the silver numbers that glinted at the end of each, talking murmuring to himself as he went.
Quickly! Quicker!
A hissing voice had risen without warning in Harry's mind, and it seized hold of his thoughts and left no room for any of his own.
At last, after walking nearly the whole length of the hall, Sirius found row ninety-seven. He turned to his right and stepped into the narrow passage between two banks of shelves.
The craving broke over Harry like a volcano erupting. He felt his viewpoint sinking, falling slowly out of the air and down toward the ground, as though something were reeling him in on a line.
Something's going to happen!
"Watch out, Sirius! It's a trap! an ambush!"
Harry yelled it, his eyes were starting out of his head with rage and terror, and begged every god he could think of to let Sirius hear him. And once more, it was all for nothing.
Sirius only bent forward at the waist to study the crystal orb on its shelf. When he had made certain that it was safe, he visibly eased, and he even yawned and stretched, arms above his head!
Hope and despair wrestled in Harry's breast with such ferocity that he nearly lost himself, but the longing to save his godfather was stronger than either.
He screamed with every last scrap of his strength, and strained to get closer to Sirius, so that perhaps, just perhaps, Sirius might hear.
And then, quite suddenly, his wish was granted.
His viewpoint leapt across the line of the ninety-seventh shelf and entered the passage.
Sirius, who a moment earlier had settled himself cross-legged on the floor as though preparing to keep a long watch, was on his feet in one swift movement.
For the first time since the dream began, Sirius's eyes truly looked into him, and those grey eyes were wide with shock and terror.
His viewpoint rose, like someone pushing himself up off hands and knees.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at the crystal orb beside him. And the face he saw in its glow sent his heart plunging down into an icy abyss.
The voice that came out of his own mouth was high and cold, and had nothing of human warmth in it.
"You know what I have come for. Lift it down for me. I cannot touch it. But you can."
"How—how can it be you—!"
Sirius lurched back and struck the shelves behind him, and the crystal orbs that sat on them came crashing down on the stone in a clattering, splintering shower.
"How did you know that it was here?"
"Surely you do not think, Black, that the Ministry, or that foolish little Order of the Phoenix, is free of Lord Voldemort's spies?"
Voldemort's nostrils, two narrow slits in a flat white face, flared wide, and his scarlet eyes shone with scorn.
"Give it to me, Black, and be quick. I, Lord Voldemort, can be generous. I might grant you a death that is… oh, a little less painful than it might be."
Voldemort said it in a voice as soft as silk.
"Or, if you prefer to follow the example of those poor, foolish Potters, why, then I fear you will have to suffer a little before the end. Make haste, Black. Lord Voldemort grows impatient."
"Don't you dare say a word against James and Lily, Voldemort!"
The two words, "the Potters," spat out of Voldemort's mouth, set Sirius's blood ablaze. His tired, haggard face hardened into a mask of stubborn resolve, and he swept his wand up to strike!
"A pity, then."
Through the storm of Harry's frenzied cursing, Voldemort breathed the words, and stretched out his wand.
It was not the wand he had held on the night of his rebirth, nor the one he had used in the Battle of Diagon Alley. And yet it was still, somehow, a little familiar—
Harry was amazed to find that he was studying Voldemort's wand at a time like this. But then a scream split the air, a scream of such unbearable agony that it cut the thread of his thought and shattered the whole dream into splinters!
"Stop! Don't! Don't do it!"
Harry's green eyes were stained red as he flew up off the floor.
He took no notice of Hermione, whose forehead he had struck as he rose, and who collapsed on the ground with a cry of pain. He snatched out his wand and swept it wildly from side to side.
"Leave him alone, you coward! Don't touch him!"
Harry roared, utterly wild, like a deranged man, and the crowd that had gathered round him fell back in fright.
"Harry!"
It was not until Ginny gave a loud sob and threw herself at him, holding him tight, heedless of everything, and until the flowery scent of her hair came up to him, the one that sometimes made his heart race, that the blood-red in Harry's eyes slowly began to fade.
————————————
For More Chapters; [email protected]/FicFrenzy
Tip: replace @ with letter 'a'.