Hermione, almost brazenly, passed Harry yet another crystal ball.
The Death Eaters narrowed their eyes at the sight, hoods tilting. Every orb looked the same: the same dust-grey glass, the same pearly glow stirring inside. They had no way of telling whether the prophecy orb Potter had taken this time was the real one.
"What a clever little girl… how very, very clever."
Bellatrix stuck out her tongue and licked the corner of her mouth, slowly, staring at Hermione with ill intent. She said it in a sing-song voice to those beside her, pitched to resound:
"When we catch her, hand her over to me. I'm going to make him watch how I torture her—very, very slowly!"
Harry's stomach turned over, but he did not let it reach his face. He edged forward until he stood in front of Hermione, and said softly, without turning his head,
"Shelves."
Hermione gave a barely noticeable nod. Over his shoulder, her eyes flicked to the shelves at their backs, and then away again, as though she had never looked.
"Very well, Potter. I suppose there is no reason I shouldn't let you appreciate just how transcendent the Dark Lord's wisdom is."
Harry hadn't expected Lucius to be kind enough to explain anything. But to his surprise, after a long silence, Lucius actually spoke up, in the lofty tones.
"Think back, Potter. The Battle of Diagon Alley."
"The Battle of Diagon Alley? That's what you're going with? The one where you were utterly routed? What does that war have to do with anything?"
Harry said it with his face expressionless, giving nothing away.
"You charged onto that battlefield without a thought, all to help Sirius Black, didn't you? You were afraid he would die. You feared for him even more than you did for your own life."
Lucius said it softly.
"So what?" Harry said flatly, though his throat had gone tight.
"Ooh, ha-ha-ha!"
Bellatrix cried out amid a burst of shrill, shrieking laughter that rang down the long aisles and set the nearest orbs trembling on their shelves.
"Silly baby Potter! You made the Dark Lord realize just how much that scum of the Black family means to you! If anything happens to him, you'll surely stop at nothing to save him!"
Harry pressed his lips together, his expression was darkening. Behind him, the others had gone very still.
"And then there was the final scene of the Battle of Diagon Alley… the part you remember best, I imagine—"
Lucius studied Harry with probing eyes, as though he could see through the fringe to the scar beneath it, and said, slowly and softly,
"You escaped the Dark Lord's magic by an astonishing stroke of luck… in a way nobody could have predicted. It made the Dark Lord begin to think very seriously… about that scar of yours. Perhaps there is some deeper connection between him and you…"
Harry's heart gave a lurch, as though a stair had vanished beneath his foot.
So, ever since the Battle of Diagon Alley, Voldemort had already realized that Harry could spy on him in his dreams—and that the spying could run in reverse, that it could be controlled!
The black corridor, Sirius's anguished cries, the long walk down Row Ninety-seven: none of it had been a warning at all.
How simple the logic was, laid out like that, like a puzzle with the answer printed underneath. Harry couldn't understand why he had never thought of it before.
But without a doubt, Professor Watson had known—otherwise he would never have given that warning.
But why hadn't he simply told him?
Harry's lips were pressed so tight they had gone numb.
He knew the answer, he thought.
If he had known in advance that Voldemort could also see through his eyes, it would have been the same as turning himself into Voldemort's spy.
To avoid leaking anything important by accident, he would only have sealed himself off, shut every door in his own mind and gone through his days like a locked house—and Professor Watson didn't want to see that happen.
"The Dark Lord needs that prophecy orb… but only the person the prophecy concerns can lift it from the shelf. The Dark Lord had no need to risk coming here himself, you see, when he could simply wait for you to walk in and do it for him. Only you can do this, Potter."
Lucius said it softly, and then:
"Any more questions, Potter?… You may hand over the prophecy orb now. It will be better for everyone."
Harry raised the prophecy orb, turning it in the pale light as though weighing it, and devoted half his mind to the question he wanted answered and the other half to what was coming.
"Someone made a prophecy about me and Voldemort, didn't they?"
The word "Voldemort" rang out in the vast hall, and set off gasps from the Death Eaters, one after another, as though he had spat on an altar. Bellatrix was about to fly into a fit, but Lucius flung out an arm and stopped her first.
"What kind of prophecy is it, exactly? What does it say?"
Harry ignored Bellatrix's threatening glare as though he hadn't seen it and pressed on with his question, keeping his voice level and faintly bored. At the same time, he crooked his elbow casually and nudged Hermione's arm.
"Get ready to cover your ears in a moment—"
So said a low voice behind him, and Harry recognized it as Elune's.
That heartened Harry a little. Small and sharp-tongued and impossible to impress, Elune was, without question, the most formidable among them.
"What kind of prophecy?"
Lucius said it slowly.
"It concerns your scar, Potter, but as for what exactly… we'll find that out soon enough, so long as… you—"
"Now!"
Harry shouted.
"Cover your ears!"
Even before Elune's reminder had finished, Harry and the others had all clapped their hands over their ears tightly!
Then Elune—barely taller than a first-year wizard drew a deep breath. Her chest swelled ridiculously; her soft, lovely hair whipped wildly in the windless air, as though in a gale only it could feel; streaks of blood slashed her cheeks into something ferocious, and her sharp canines lengthened by half an inch in an instant!
"AAAHHH!!!"
In an instant, with Elune at its centre, tangible ripples in the air surged outward in every direction like enormous waves, and wherever the wall of sound passed, glass orbs burst apart with a clattering crackle, shelf after shelf, row after row, until the whole Hall rang like a smashed chandelier.
It was exactly like taking a Cruciatus Curse full in the face. The sound did not enter through the ears so much as through the skin, the teeth, the bones.
Harry and the others, pressed up close against Elune, couldn't help doubling over, their faces twisted in pain, their hands clamped uselessly over their ears.
Harry felt his pounding heart might burst; the blood all through his body churned and boiled, and for one endless second he was sure his skull would split like one of the orbs!
A Killing Curse, loosed blindly by some Death Eater half-doubled over in the dark, streaked past several feet above his head and struck the wall, igniting a single bloom of green sparks that died instantly.
"Go!"
Silver mist drifted everywhere, and the faint, flickering ghost-shapes that had risen from the shattered prophecy orbs, murmuring and twining, left the whole world a blur.
Harry could only dimly make out the cluster of Death Eaters, bent double in agony too, their hooded heads were bowed as if in prayer.
He was the first to mount his broomstick, fumbling for it, nearly dropping it twice.
The thick drift of ghost-shapes in the air and the scream's effect on him had left Harry's vision a hazy blur, and he could not have said which of the shapes beside him were friends. He grabbed someone from behind and hauled her onto his own broom,
"Hold on tight and don't let go—we're breaking out!"
Harry roared again, kicked off the ground with both legs, and rose into the air.
Which way should he go? Every aisle looked the same, a long pale corridor of broken glass and drifting silver, and every one of them ended in darkness.
Elune's scream had snuffed out nearly every flame in the hall; the only light came instead from the eerie, whispering "ghosts,". He couldn't tell at all which direction he had come from, so he simply picked a direction at random and flew.
Another curse flew past him, and then, in a hall still ringing with the lingering echoes of Elune's scream, Lucius's voice rose behind them, sputtering with fury.
"Nobody act rashly! You heard the Dark Lord's orders—he still wants his prophecy orb! We don't know which one is real, so catch them all first, and sort it out after!"
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Another Death Eater shouted from somewhere below and behind, but Harry didn't hear anything like the sound of someone falling.
"There's a door over there, Harry—"
Luna's distinctive, ethereal voice, calm as ever in his ear, told Harry who it was he had pulled onto the broom.
He bent low over the handle and dashed toward it. Luna blasted the door apart ahead of time with a single silver musical note, and through the wood splinters spraying everywhere, Harry flew through the doorway, reined in the broom, and landed.
"Reparo."
Luna hopped down from the broom, light as a cat, and turned to restore the door she had shattered. The splinters flew back into place and knit themselves together.
"Colloportus—"
Luna murmured again, and from the lock came an odd creaking sound, as though the door were settling in for a long sleep.
"Hermione, Ron, and the others… they're still back there—"
Harry froze for a moment.
"They'll leave through the other doors. They're clever, and there are plenty of doors."
Luna said it with a smile. Then she noticed, in the middle of the room, a glass tank the size of a swimming pool—large enough for the few of them to swim around in freely, without ever bumping elbows. Pale, plump things drifted in it, and quivered.
"Quivering maggots! Look, Harry!"
Luna's grimy face, smudged with dust and soot from the flight, suddenly burst into an excited smile.
"Daddy said the Ministry was breeding them in secret! He never could prove it, you know."
After a moment of silence, Harry pressed his ear to the door and heard Lucius Malfoy shouting on the other side it.
"Hold on, Bellatrix! We need a plan before we go charging about… Rookwood, you know the layout here—what lies behind these doors?"
"Every door leads to a different room, Lucius, and I couldn't tell you which is which!"
"Damn. Then we'll have to search every room, one by one… You, and Macnair, and Rabastan—you're with me. Bella, take Jugson and go left… And remember: we don't know which prophecy orb is the real one, so catch them first and sort it out after!"
Lucius roared, out of breath; then he turned and saw his own son, standing there at a loss.
"You're coming with me too, Draco. Stay where I can see you."
After a moment of silence, Lucius said it in a low, stifled voice.
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