SCARLETT: THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Chapter 29: The room

Everyone remained silent as the phone booth lowered itself into the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. We all held our wands out in preparation to be attacked as soon as we stepped into the Atrium, but that proved to be slightly difficult because of how cramped we were. When the door opened, all of us braced ourselves for an attack and we were pleasantly surprised that nothing was sent our way.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic," the woman's voice echoed.

All of us slowly walked out and looked around the area like we were expecting Death Eaters to start jumping out and killing us where we stood. It was too easy...almost like some sort of trap so we would get our guard down. But the only thing that had any sort of movement in the area was a large, golden fountain that was sitting directly in the middle of the Atrium. On top of the water I noticed that there were statues of a witch, a wizard, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf all standing together as if they were one.

"Well," Neville said quietly. "That was anti-climactic..."

"Let's get moving," Harry said. "We need to get into the Department of Mysteries before anyone finds us here."

"Right," I nodded. "And how exactly do we do that?"

"I remember going past it during my hearing at the beginning of the year," Harry said. "Just follow me."

All of us grew silent as we quickly walked through the Atrium and toward the lift. I continued to look around with my wand at the ready until we made it across the room. Something about this entire situation didn't seem right. Voldemort didn't seem like the type of person that would have come here without any sort of army surrounding the place.

"It's a nice place really," Luna said suddenly.

Everyone's eyes darted over to her as we stepped into the lift and Hermione just rolled her eyes and shook her head. Did she realize that we were here to fight off Voldemort or did she miss that part completely? It's really hard to tell if she's listening half of the time.

Harry pressed the down button and we all readied our wands again. When we finally stopped, we all stepped out slowly and found ourselves in another dark corridor that was completely vacant. Harry caught my eye and seemed as confused as I did.

"Something's not right," he said quietly. "Someone should be here."

"I know," I said. "A security guard, a Death Eater - someone. It shouldn't be this easy to get into the Ministry..."

"Especially with Voldemort in here I would have thought that something would have been set up," Harry said and then looked back down the hallway. "Okay, we need to move - we're nearly there."

We all nodded and then walked quickly down the hallway behind him. The only thing other than us in this entire hallway seemed to be the flickering lights that lead us this way and that didn't comfort me in the least.

We passed loads of doors but we stopped in front of one.

"It's that one there," Harry said. "Let's go - someone shut the door so no one can follow us."

Neville stepped back and shut the large, black door.

"Do you remember which door we came through?" Hermione asked.

Everyone looked around at each of the doors and I was horrified to see that they all looked exactly the same. Now I understood what the purpose of the doors moving around was - they wanted to confuse us so we couldn't get out.

"Now what are we going to do?" Ron asked.

"What else can we do?" Harry asked. "We're going to have to go through each of them until we find Sirius."