When the night ran deep, even London grew quiet.
The last of the blood-red glow that had wrapped around them thinned and faded like the embers of a dying fire, and the weight of the ordinary world settled back onto Harry's shoulders all at the same time.
Hard pavement pressed up through the soles of his shoes. The air was cold and damp and smelt of wet tarmac and diesel.
Harry blinked until the swimming afterimages cleared, and then, because it was the only thing that stopped his hands from shaking, he began to take stock of the street he was standing in.
He seemed to be in the very heart of London. All around him rose towering office blocks and commercial buildings of a kind that could not exist in the wizarding world.
A rubbish lorry, filled almost to overflowing, was parked on the main road just beyond the mouth of the alley, its hazard lights blinking orange against the wet street. Bin bags bulged over its tailgate like the stuffing of a burst cushion.
Its driver crouched beside one rear wheel, swearing under his breath and fighting a wrench against a stubborn nut, because the tyre beneath him had burst lay flat and shredded on the road.
The Muggle never looked into the alley even once.
"We're in…"
Ron's cheeks puffed out in astonishment. He was staring at the red telephone box that stood a little way down the alley and he said uncertainly,
"…the alley with the entrance to the Ministry of Magic."
Hermione had recognised it too. Her brow slowly knitted, and she turned to look at Elune, as though hoping the little vampire would tell her it was all a mistake.
"That's right, it's here—"
Elune said it confidently. She had her face turned toward the ground like a hound over a scent. "I can sense him. He's underground."
"So, Malfoy came to the Ministry?"
A desolate, bitter wind came whistling down the alley, rattling the telephone box and chasing a crumpled crisp packet along the gutter.
Neville gripped his sword tightly against it and looked in surprise at Harry.
Under the dim yellow light of the streetlamp, Harry's face looked sickly and drawn.
Could it really be such a coincidence?
They had come to the Ministry to save Sirius, and now the mark Elune had left on Malfoy had led them to the Ministry as well.
If anything, Neville thought, it would have made more sense had they landed to find a pack of Death Eaters waiting there to receive Malfoy.
"It fits—"
Harry looked at the battered red telephone box and said softly, so that everyone leaned in to hear,
"Malfoy took that staff to give to someone. Who?"
One by one their faces cleared with sudden understanding, and even Hermione nodded silently, though she did not like where the thought was leading.
That staff belonged to the dark witch Cliodna. But she clearly had no authority to order Malfoy to do her bidding. It could only be You-Know-Who.
And Malfoy, having taken the staff and fled Hogwarts, would naturally have delivered it to You-Know-Who at the first opportunity.
Where was You-Know-Who?
According to Harry, he was in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry below, interrogating Sirius!
"So, what do we do now?"
Luna asked it in a polite, interested tone, her radish earrings swaying in the wind and her silvery hair lifting about her like dandelion fluff. She might have been asking what was planned for the afternoon at a picnic.
"We go down."
Harry took a deep breath, and he was the first to walk over and pull open the door of the telephone box.
Harry had assumed this cramped telephone box would have to carry them down in several batches. But, miraculously, it held all of them at once: eight young Hogwarts witches and wizards, plus one vampire and five broomsticks.
"Excuse me!"
Harry, unable to breathe, shouted through clenched lips,
"Whoever's closest to the telephone, please dial six—two—four—four—two!"
The receiver hung just beyond the reach of everyone but Ginny.
Her arm snaked under Hermione's armpit and after several attempts she finally dialled the right number without being able to see what she was doing.
"Welcome to…"
"Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger… Elune Gangrel!"
Harry roared before the woman's voice on the telephone could finish,
"We're here to rescue someone—unless the Ministry has already done it for us!"
"Thank you!"
the cold female voice said, "Visitors, please take your badges and pin them to the front of your clothes."
It took the whole crowd several more minutes to manage this in a space where no one could lift an arm without striking somebody else. Harry was frantic with worry, and on top of that he had to keep enduring Elune's endless carping about this awkward way of entering the Ministry!
"The Magical Congress of the United States is far more humane!"
As the telephone box shuddered and began to sink, Elune said it with distaste, wrinkling her small nose.
The pavement rose past the glass, the streetlamp's glow was swallowed by the dark of the shaft, and somewhere below them unseen machinery ground and groaned.
But when the box at last juddered to a halt and they spilled out of it in a heap, into the Atrium, a hall gleaming with gold and splendour yet no less solemn and imposing for it, Elune's tone turned appreciative.
"Well, the inside looks respectable enough."
In consideration of the little vampire having been such a great help tonight, no one took her to task.
Now that they were inside the Ministry's Atrium, they might be only a few floors away from the most evil Dark Lord in history, and everyone's nerves began to wind tight!
Harry looked at the empty Atrium and felt a flicker of unease.
In the dream earlier, he had seen a great many Ministry employees coming down from the lifts in a steady stream, hurrying home from work.
But now there was not a single person in the hall, not even at the desk where wands were checked. A stack of forms had been filed down away neatly there. Their footsteps and the faint trickling hum of the magic were the only sounds.
Perhaps, with Minister Bones away from the Ministry, everyone had taken the chance to knock off "early."
Harry thought.
Since Madam Bones had taken the post of Minister, with Professor Watson's help, the Ministry had thoroughly overhauled its old, slapdash working habits and its lavish ways, and become remarkably efficient.
This was a change acknowledged by the whole of British wizarding society, and the Daily Prophet was never short of articles praising it.
But correspondingly, the employees' workload had grown far heavier than before.
With Minister Bones away, it was only natural that they would want to enjoy a relaxed weekend.
Come to think of it, what exactly had happened over in Paris?
The golden grilles of the lift clashed shut behind them, and as the car began to rattle downward on its chains, Harry began to turn the question over in his mind.
What could be so serious that Professor Watson personally holding the fort there wasn't enough, and Professor Dumbledore had been drawn away from Hogwarts in haste to deal with it as well?
"The Department of Mysteries is the most mysterious department in the Ministry. Nobody knows what they actually do all day."
After Harry frantically jabbed at the button for their floor, Ron spoke of the Department of Mysteries in a tone full of awe,
"Dad told me."
The Department of Mysteries was just one floor below the Atrium, and the lift arrived quickly, with a last lurch and a rattle of chains.
A cold, indifferent female voice announced the department, and the grilles slid open on a darkness that seemed to lean in toward them.
Harry burst impatiently out of the lift car.
Though it had been only tonight that he had walked this black corridor before, and he remembered it with perfect clarity, seeing it in a dream was nothing like standing in it.
The torchlight guttered against smooth dark walls, the silence pressed against his ears, and at the far end waited that black door, with its cold gleam running down the panels. At the sight of it with his own eyes he still couldn't help sucking in a few breaths of icy air, his heart was pounding hard in his chest.
"Shouldn't we get some backup?"
The thick air pressed on everyone until they could barely breathe; only Neville spoke, and he spoke in a joking tone.
"With just the few of us, we probably can't take down Voldemort. Maybe we should go upstairs and see who else is in the Ministry, and call them down to help."
"Good idea, Neville."
Hermione nodded approvingly.
And so Neville, who had come up with the idea, was sent off upstairs to look for help. He gave them a small salute with his sword hand and jogged back toward the lift, and the rattle of its chains faded away above them, until the corridor was silent again.
A very large circular room, with doors set into its walls—exactly as in the dream Harry had described.
"You could be a Seer."
Fred said to Harry with a touch of awe, but everyone could hear the tension in his words.
"The door across from this one is—"
When Elune had also walked into the room, Harry pointed out the second door they would need to take.
Before they could go in, they ran into another problem. Once the black door they had come through closed behind them, the black walls all around suddenly began to spin, so fast that they blurred into a single dark smear, and the blue flames streaked across it in long, dizzy rings.
Ginny grabbed Luna's arm. Ron swore under his breath.
"This way—"
Once again tonight, Harry was glad to have a vampire with them.
Elune pointed straight to the second door they should go through and, with a hint of smugness, cast a sidelong glance at the doubtful Hermione,
"I can feel the mark I left, on the other side of this door, a little further in."
In his ears, Sirius's anguished cries seemed to ring out once more, and Harry could not wait to push open the second door.
"Wait, Harry!"
Hermione seized the impulsive Harry by the sleeve and lowered her voice as far as it would go,
"If You-Know-Who really is behind that door, there's no way we can save Sirius on our own. I think we should wait for Neville to come back with help."
Harry hesitated. His hand was already on the door and his pulse was hammering in his throat, but it was, indeed, a sound suggestion.
"There's no one else behind the door—"
Elune twitched her nimble nostrils and suddenly said, "Only Malfoy—"
"That's impossible!"
Harry, who had been wavering, immediately shook off Hermione's hand and hurriedly pushed the door open.
A musty smell flooded his nose, thick with dust and stale air, as though signalling that no one had set foot in this hall for a very long time.
Now that it had come to this, they had no choice but to steel themselves. Hermione bit her lip and followed right behind.
Their only chance of winning was that Neville had already found the Ministry staff on duty, and that they could find Professor Watson or Professor Dumbledore right away.
But Harry had run only a single step forward before he stopped, rooted to the spot, staring blankly at the one lamp burning in the vast exhibition room.
"Potter?!"
Standing in the middle of the room, a staff dangling from one hand and his own glowing wand held high in the other, Malfoy heard the voice and whirled around.
And when the faces of Harry and the others came into view, the colour drained all at once from Malfoy's face, which had been anxious and uncertain already!
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