Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

18 June, 1996 - The Department of Mysteries

It was empty. Completely and utterly empty. And true, it was well after hours, but... But there should have been security, surely. The night shift, maybe. Anyone at all. But their footsteps were the only sound in the atrium as they all hurried to the lifts, stealing across the entrance hall like burglars through the night.

It made everything worse, somehow, that hollow silence in the halls. Even the rattling and jangling of the lift felt like the sound was merely echoing into a tense emptiness. Like the whole damn world knew what was happening and was holding its breath, waiting for the moments to come. For the storm to hit. For the silence to shatter.

But then the lift stopped. And the doors opened. And the storm didn't hit. The world stayed silent. Each and every one of them stood, frozen for a moment, wands pointed down the hallway in a single heartbeat of hesitation. Of calculation. And then they ran. Straight down the hall and through that foreboding black door at the end that Moody said led to the Department of Mysteries.

Inside, they found themselves in a circular room with doors going off in every direction. It was lit only by eerie blue candles that did nothing at all to help the sinking put Lavinia could feel expanding in her stomach, waiting to swallow her whole. To swallow all of them whole.

"Split up into pairs," Moody reminded them. "If you hear a commotion, it probably means some of us found them. Head towards it."

Everyone nodded, but Lavinia didn't bother. She just grabbed Sirius's arm and headed for a door, not waiting to see if Moody was going to tell them who to go with. She didn't care who Moody wanted her to go with. Who he thought would make the strongest pairs. If Sirius was here, if she couldn't make him go home... well, then Lavinia wasn't letting him out of her sight. She wasn't letting him out of her grip, if she could help it, though she suspected that would have to change before this was over. Still... if he was close to her, if she could hold onto him, touch him... It meant he was still alive. And, perhaps more importantly, it meant she could get in front of him. It meant she might just be able to save him. So she headed for a door and since no one called after her, she assumed the others had done the same.

The room they entered was a strange one. Full of darkness and planets and stars. At another time, Lavinia might have admired it. Might have spent hours here, staring around her. It was like walking among those heavens she had watched so often in her youth. Like the very air around her was composed of that calmness she'd always gotten from watching the night sky. And in the middle of it, she stood, as far from calm as she thought she'd ever been, a wild, raging torrent in the middle of this peaceful ocean of dark.

For a moment, Lavinia just breathed, trying to force that gentle ease to fill her up as she seemed to float there, anchored only by Sirius's hand. Feeling... peaceful was the wrong word, because she was very very far from peaceful. There was still the fear, the urgency, the screaming panic, all of it. But it was as though the wildness of it, the expanse of it, dulled in the face of the vastness of the cosmos and Lavinia felt suddenly small. Unimportant. Blissfully, delightfully insignificant.

And then someone screamed.

Lavinia and Sirius swore at the same time, the vehemence of their mixed curse words dulled slightly by the endless velveteen darkness around them. But the words and their strange softness in this room didn't matter because both Lavinia and Sirius sprinted towards the screaming. It was like running through sludge and Lavinia hated it. Every step felt like it got her nowhere at all and she wasn't even sure there was ground beneath her feet until suddenly, she ran face first into a wall.

Sirius apparently did as well because he swore again and his hand tried to pull out of hers. She didn't let him go and she could have sworn he sighed, whether in exasperation or understanding, she didn't know. She didn't think she cared either, as she used her free hand to feel along the wall in the momentary silence, searching for a door, a knob, anything.