The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|124| the Foiled Plan

As the lift rattled away again, I shivered slightly, looking toward the distant black door that marked the entrance to the Department of Mysteries. Bad memories.

Harry and I set off, our destination not the black door, but the doorway I remembered on the left-hand side, which opened onto the flight of stairs down to the court chambers. My mind grappled with possibilities as we crept down them: We still had a couple of Decoy Detonators, but perhaps it would be better to simply knock on the courtroom door, enter as Runcorn's assistance, and ask for a quick word with Mafalda? Of course, I did not know whether Runcorn was sufficiently important to get away with this, and even if we managed it, Hermione's non-reappearance might trigger a search before we were clear of the Ministry.

Lost in thought, I did not immediately register the unnatural chill that was creeping over me, but Harry did. Harry's brisk walk slowed down and I did too; then it hit me. It was becoming colder and colder with every step we took: A cold that reached right down into my throat and tore at my lungs. And then I felt that stealing sense of despair, of hopelessness, filling him, expanding inside me: Dementors.

And as we reached the foot of the stairs and turned to the right I saw a dreadful scene. The dark passage outside the courtrooms was packed with tall, black-hooded figures, their faces completely hidden, their ragged breathing the only sound in the place. The petrified Muggleborns brought in for questioning sat huddled and shivering on hard wooden benches. Most of them were hiding their faces in their hands, perhaps in an instinctive attempt to shield themselves from the dementors' greedy mouths. Some were accompanied by families, others sat alone. The dementors were gliding up and down in front of them, and the cold, and the hopelessness, and the despair of the place laid themselves upon me like a curse...

Fight it, I told myself, but I knew that we could not conjure a Patronus here without revealing ourselves instantly. Close together, Harry and I moved forward as silently as we could, and with every step we took numbness seemed to steal over my brain, but I forced myself to think of Hermione and of Ron, who needed us.

Moving through the towering black figures was terrifying: The eyeless faces hidden beneath their hoods turned as we passed, and I felt sure that they sensed us, sensed, perhaps, a human presence that still had some hope, some resilience...

And then, abruptly and shockingly amid the frozen silence, one of the dungeon doors on the left of the corridor was flung open and screams echoed out of it.

"No, no, I'm half-blood, I'm half-blood, I tell you! My father was a wizard, he was, look him up, Arkie Alderton, he's a well-known broomstick designer, look him up, I tell you— get your hands off me, get your hands off —"

"This is your final warning," said Umbridge's soft voice, magically magnified so that it sounded clearly over the man's desperate screams. "If you struggle, you will be subjected to the Dementor's Kiss."

The man's screams subsided, but dry sobs echoed through the corridor.

"Take him away," said Umbridge.

Two dementors appeared in the doorway of the courtroom, their rotting, scabbed hands clutching the upper arms of a wizard who appeared to be fainting. They glided away down the corridor with him, and the darkness they trailed behind them swallowed him from sight.

"Next— Mary Cattermole," called Umbridge.

A small woman stood up; she was trembling from head to foot. Her dark hair was smoothed back into a bun and she wore long, plain robes. Her face was completely bloodless. As she passed the dementors, I saw her shudder.

Harry and I gave each other a look and quickly followed Mrs. Cattermole into the courtroom.

There were more dementors in here, casting their freezing aura over the place; they stood like faceless sentinels in the corners farthest from the high, raised platform. Here, behind a balustrade, sat Umbridge, with Yaxley on one side of her, and Hermione, quite as white-faced as Mrs. Cattermole, on the other. At the foot of the platform, a bright-silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up and down, and I realized that it was there to protect the prosecutors from the despair that emanated from the dementors: That was for the accused to feel, not the accusers.