Adrianna Tonks - Book Five - The Order Of The Phoenix

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 17: 𝓦𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓘𝓼 𝓢𝓱𝓮?

Addy turned towards the plain black door. After months and months of finding out what the order had been protecting, she was here at last.

'Let's go,' Addy whispered, and Harry led the way down the corridor, Addy was right behind him, gazing around.

'OK, listen,' said Harry, stopping again within six feet of the door. 'Maybe . . . maybe a couple of people should stay here as a--as a lookout, and--'

'And how're we going to let you know something's coming?' asked Ginny, her eyebrows raised. 'You could be miles away. '

'We're coming with you, Harry,' said Neville.

'Let's get on with it,' said Ron firmly.

Harry still did not want to take them all with him, but it seemed he had no choice. He turned to face the door and walked forwards . . . just as it had in his dream, it swung open and he marched over the threshold, the rest of them at his heels.

They were standing in a large, circular room. Everything in here was black including the floor and ceiling; identical, unmarked, handleless black doors were set at intervals all around the black walls, interspersed with branches of candles whose flames burned blue; their cool, shimmering light reflected in the shining marble floor made it look as though there was dark water underfoot.

'Someone shut the door,' Harry muttered.

He regretted giving this order the moment Neville had obeyed it. Without the long chink of light from the torchlit corridor behind them, the place became so dark that for a moment the only things they could see were the bunches of shivering blue flames on the walls and their ghostly reflections in the floor.

"Lumos." Addy whispered .

In his dream, Harry had always walked purposefully across this room to the door immediately opposite the entrance and walked on. But there were around a dozen doors here. Just as he was gazing ahead at the doors opposite him, trying to decide which was the right one, there was a great rumbling noise and the candles began to move sideways. The circular wall was rotating.

Hermione grabbed Harry's arm as though frightened the floor might move, too, but it did not. For a few seconds, the blue flames around them were blurred to resemble neon lines as the wall sped around; then, quite as suddenly as it had started, the rumbling stopped and everything became stationary once again.

Harry's eyes had blue streaks burned into them; it was all he could see.

'What was that about?' whispered Ron fearfully.

'I think it was to stop us knowing which door we came in through,' said Ginny in a hushed voice.

Harry realised at once she was right: he could no sooner identify the exit door than locate an ant on the jet-black floor; and the door through which they needed to proceed could be any one of the dozen surrounding them.

As everyone walked to a door, Addy went over to a different one and said. "Harry something in here."

This room was larger than the last, dimly lit and rectangular, and the centre of it was sunken, forming a great stone pit some twenty feet deep. They were standing on the topmost tier of what seemed to be stone benches running all around the room and descending in steep steps like an amphitheatre, or the courtroom in which Harry had been trialed by the Wizengamot. Instead, of a chained chair, however, there was a raised stone dais in the centre of the pit, on which stood a stone archway that looked so ancient, cracked and crumbling that Addy was amazed the thing was still standing. Unsupported by any surrounding wall, the archway was hung with a tattered black curtain or veil which, despite the complete stillness of the cold surrounding air, was fluttering very slightly as though it had just been touched.

'Who's there?' said Harry, jumping down on to the bench below. There was no answering voice, but the veil continued to flutter and sway.

'Careful!' whispered Hermione.

Harry scrambled down the benches one by one until he reached the stone bottom of the sunken pit. His footsteps echoed loudly as he walked slowly towards the dais. The pointed archway looked much taller from where he now stood than it had when he'd been looking down on it from above. Still the veil swayed gently, as though somebody had just passed through it.

'Cedric?' Addy spoke, but more quietly now that she was nearer.

Addy had the strangest feeling that there was someone standing right behind the veil on the other side of the archway. Gripping her wand very tightly, Addy edged around the dais, but there was nobody there; all that could be seen was the other side of the tattered black veil.

'Let's go,' called Hermione from halfway up the stone steps. 'This isn't right, Harry, Addy, come on, let's go. '

She sounded scared, much more scared than she had in the room where the brains swam, yet Harry thought the archway had a kind of beauty about it, old though it was. The gently rippling veil intrigued him; he felt a very strong inclination to climb up on the dais and walk through it.

'Harry, Addy, let's go, OK?' Said Hermione more forcefully.

'OK,' he said, but did not move. He had just heard something. There were faint whispering, murmuring noises coming from the other side of the veil.

'What are you saying?' he said, very loudly, so that his words echoed all around the stone benches.

'Nobody's talking, Harry!' said Hermione, now moving over to him.

'Someone's whispering behind there,' he said, moving out of her reach and continuing to frown at the veil. 'Is that you, Ron?'

'I'm here, mate,' said Ron, appearing around the side of the archway.

'Can't anyone else hear it?' Harry demanded, for the whispering and murmuring was becoming louder; without really meaning to put it there, he found his foot was on the dais.

'I can hear them too,' breathed Luna and Addy, joining them around the side of the archway and gazing at the swaying veil. 'There are people in there!'

'What do you mean, "in there"?' demanded Hermione, jumping down from the bottom step and sounding much angrier than the occasion warranted, 'there isn't any "in there", it's just an archway, there's no room for anybody to be there. Harry, stop it, come away--'

She grabbed his arm and pulled, but he resisted.

'Harry, we are supposed to be here for Sirius!' she said in a high-pitched, strained voice.

'Sirius,' Harry repeated, still gazing, mesmerised, at the continuously swaying veil. 'Yeah . . . '

Something finally slid back into place in his brain; Sirius, captured, bound and tortured, and he was staring at this archway . . .

They walked out of the room. for some reason it had an effect on Addy, Harry, Neville, Luna and Ginny, but not Hermione and Ron.

Maybe they had all lost someone they loved. Harry heard Ron and Sirius, Addy heard Cedric, Luna probably heard her mum, Neville probably heard his mum, dad and grandad, but Ginny? she lost her uncle's but surely Ron would be entranced to it as well.

Addy walked over to a door. It was unlocked. She walked in thinking everyone was behind her but Merlin was she wrong. The door shut behind her and she felt someone grab her when everything went black.

"WHERE'S ADDY GONE!" Hermione screamed.