The Forgotten Olympian |BOOK 1| PJO X HP | Alexandra Marine

Chapter 174 - Percy - The Department Of Mysteries

"Someone shut the door," Harry muttered.

I hated that order. Without the long chink of light from the torchlit corridor behind us, the place became so dark that for a moment the only things we could see were the bunches of shivering blue flames on the walls and our ghostly reflections in the floor.

There were around a dozen doors here. Just as Harry 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.

For a few seconds, the blue flames around us 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.

"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.

"How're we going to get back out?" said Neville uncomfortably.

"Well, that doesn't matter now," said Harry forcefully, "we won't need to get out till we've found Sirius--"

"Don't go calling for him, though!" Hermione said urgently.

"Where do we go, then, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I don't--" Harry began. He swallowed. "In the dreams I went through the door at the end of the corridor from the lifts into a dark room--that's this one--and then I went through another door into a room that kind of... glitters. We should try a few doors," he said hastily, "I'll know the right way when I see it. C'mon."

"Awesome," Jason said. I could taste the sarcasm in his words.

Harry pushed the door open.

After the darkness of the first room, the lamps hanging low on golden chains from this ceiling gave the impression that this long rectangular room was much brighter, though there were no glittering, shimmering lights as Harry had said. The place was quite empty except for a few desks and, in the very middle of the room, an enormous glass tank of deep green liquid, big enough for all of them to swim in; a number of pearly-white objects were drifting around lazily in it.

"What're those things?" whispered Ron.

"Dunno," said Harry.

"Are they fish?" breathed Ginny.

"No," Annabeth said. It sounded like she was just about to vomit.

"Aquavirius Maggots!" said Luna excitedly. "Dad said the Ministry were breeding--"

"No," said Hermione. She sounded odd. She moved forward to look through the side of the tank. 

"They're brains," Will, Annabeth and Hermione said together.

"Brains?"

"Yes... I wonder what they're doing with them?" said Hermione.

"Blech," Nico said, squinting the slimy cauliflowers.

"Let's get out of here," said Harry. "This isn't right, we need to try another door."

"There are doors here, too," said Ron, pointing around the walls. 

"In my dream I went through that dark room into the second one,' he said. 'I think we should go back and try from there."

So we hurried back into the dark, circular room.

"Wait!" said Hermione sharply, as Luna made to close the door of the brain room behind them. "Flagrate!"

She drew with her wand in midair and a fiery 'X' appeared on the door. No sooner had the door clicked shut behind them than there was a great rumbling, and once again the wall began to revolve very fast, but now there was a great red-gold blur in amongst the faint blue and, when all became still again, the fiery cross still burned, showing the door they had already tried.