The Other Side: A Harry Potter FanFiction

Chapter IV

The man led her past the gates and into a smaller hallway, where a series of lifts waited for usage.

            Lana watched from behind the golden gates as he stepped into one of the lifts and said, "Department of Mysteries." Then the doors closed and he was lost from her sight.

            Quickly, she hurried down the hallway to another lift and stepped inside, repeating, "Department of Mysteries."

            Like the phone booth, the lift lurched undesirably. First it moved backwards, making Lana lunge forward and catch herself on the metal door, and then it moved up one floor before stopping sharply, causing her to stumble again as the doors pulled themselves open.

            "Department of Mysteries," the familiar female voice said out of nowhere. Lana stepped out of the lift cautiously, wondering what she should do next, where she should go, when suddenly she heard the man's heavy footfalls across the black tiled floor, almost immediately to her right.

            Jumping back into the lift and hiding, she saw the man walk right past her and down the short, plain hallway to a single door directly across from her lift.

            The man hesitated for a single moment before grabbing hold of the door knob and swinging the door open. Then he stood there, motionless in the doorway, staring at the room before.

            Then he swung around and stepped backward into the room, stared around for another moment and closed the door, concealing himself inside.

            Lana waited a moment before stepping out of the lift and walking towards the door. She was sure if she didn't open it at exactly the right time, she'd get caught, which was exactly what she didn't want to happen.

            She placed her ear against the door and tried to listen, unsure of what it was she was listening for.

            And then she heard it; a door opening on the inside of the room.

            Lana was sure the entire building was deserted except for them, so it had to be him leaving the room. Quietly and carefully, she turned the knob and peeked through a crack in the door.

            The man was just disappearing behind another door in a circular room with a polished black floor that almost looked like it could've been water, just frozen in time.

            Closing the door behind her, Lana stared around. There were at least a dozen doors in this circular room. She remembered which door the man had gone through, but couldn't help but wonder how he'd know which one led where; she had a feeling this floor was like some sort of maze.

            She walked across the floor, her flat shoes making a soft padding noise against the tiles, and stepped up to the door the man had gone through. Slowly, she pulled it open barely enough to make a crack to spy through.

            The room she was looking into was huge and filled with beautiful, brilliant, sparkling light, which she realized came from a jar at the end opposite to her.

            And everywhere she looked, she could see clocks! Large and small, grandfather and carriage, all hanging in spaces between bookcases or desks, filling the room with relentless ticking.

            Many desks formed a narrow passage between them that led to the jar at the other end of the room and a door, where she finally saw the man, pushing the door open and stepping out.

            Quietly, Lana pulled the door open and walked slowly through the room. It was an odd room; it just didn't seem as if it could be real. As she looked, she could see that inside the jar was a small object...

            It was a hummingbird.

            As she stared the bird seemed to be going back in time in age. It went from a bird to a fledgling to an egg right before her eyes, and then back to a fledgling and bird.

            In amazement, Lana continued to stare at it as she walked towards the door at the other end.

            Finally, upon reaching it, Lana leaned against it and took a few deep breaths. She was feeling really horrible all of a sudden; her head felt heavier and fuzzier than it had been, her legs were shaking and the feeling that she could vomit at any moment was rising in her stomach.

            But she couldn't lose this strange man, whoever he was, if she wanted to ever get out of this amazing and terrifying place... the Ministry of Magic, was it called? Whatever it was, she would never get out and go home as long as she was trapped inside.

            Taking another deep breath, she took the knob and pushed the door open.

            The new hall was endless, with black tile flooring and walls, and the only source of light came from the millions and millions of... snow globes?

            That was what they looked like. Hundreds of shelves all holding hundreds of snow globes lined the hall. Lana took a step toward the closest shelf and saw that the snow globe was like none she'd ever seen before; it was round, of course, but instead of a model of a city or a little snowman or anything like that, the middle was glowing inside. It was as if a small cloud with its own miniature Sun had been trapped inside it.

            But not every globe was the same.

            While some of them glowed brilliantly, others were cold and dark. As she looked, Lana could see the number 53 on a gold plate at the very edge of the shelf.

            This place is amazing, she thought as she walked down the aisle between shelves, staring around, I've never seen anything like it.

            Suddenly, movement to her right made her jump. She hid herself within the shelves and watched as the strange man suddenly walked by her again, entered the aisle just diagonal from her, pulled a snow globe off the shelve, and stared deeply into it.

            He stood like that for a long time, just staring at it before a creepy smile spread across his face and he pulled out the stick Lana had forgotten he'd had. He pointed it at the globe and said, barely loud enough for her to hear, "Let's see if it works."

            Then he started to whisper things. Things that were obviously in some language, a language the Lana couldn't even begin to wonder what it was. He repeated the same words over and over again, but so quickly and quietly that she couldn't pick anything up.

            Finally he stopped speaking and looked around the room unsurely. Then he looked back to the globe, gave his stick-thingy a flourish and shouted loudly, "Morsmordre!"

            A bright light burst from the end of the wand, and suddenly the entire room seemed to flip upside down.

            Disoriented, Lana tried to catch herself from falling, but her head crashed onto one of the shelves, and her entire world was sucked into darkness.