Mass Collision

36. Prophecy

They were standing in a large, circular room. Everything in here was black including the floor and ceiling — identical, unmarked, handle-less 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 so that it looked as though there was dark water underfoot.

"Someone shut the door," Harry muttered.

Natalia could tell they regretted him giving this order the moment Neville had obeyed it. Without the long chink of light from the torch-lit 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 below.

In his dream, Harry had 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 side- ways. 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 and then, quite as suddenly as it had started, the rumbling stopped and everything became stationary once again.

Natalia couldn't help feeling exhilarated. She wanted to fight something. Only thing she wished for was for her armor, maybe she should've grabbed it before she left the dorm.

"What was that about?" whispered Ron fearfully.

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

They all realized at once that she was right: Natalia could no sooner have picked the exit from the other doors than located an ant upon the jet black floor. Meanwhile, the door through which they needed to proceed could be any of the dozen surrounding them.

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

"Well, that doesn't matter now," said Harry forcefully, blinking to try and erase the blue lines from his vision, and clutching his wand tighter than ever. "We won't need to get out till we've found Sirius —"

"Don't go calling for him, though!" Hermione said urgently, but Harry had never needed her advice less; his instinct was to keep as quiet as possible for the time being.

"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."

He marched straight at the door now facing him, the others following close behind him, set his left hand against its cool, shining surface, raised his wand, ready to strike the moment it opened, and pushed. It swung open easily.

After the darkness of the first room, the lamps hanging low on golden chains from this ceiling gave the impression that this long rec- tangular room was much brighter, though there were no glittering, shimmering lights such as Harry had seen in his dreams. 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 water, big enough for all of them to swim in, which contained a number of pearly white objects that were drifting around lazily in the liquid.

"What're those things?" whispered Ron.

"Dunno," said Harry.

"Are they fish?" breathed Ginny.