Chapter 562: Department of Mystery

Chapter 562: Department of Mystery
Unlike in the book, since Umbridge is not in the castle, Harry and his friends do not need to use her fireplace to contact Grimmauld Place, but instead use the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room.

Kreacher's answer shocked the three of them.

Next, they had to sneak into Professor Umbridge's office and borrow her fireplace. She wasn't at Hogwarts anyway, so they just had to avoid other people and ghosts in the corridor.

As for why he didn't inform Professor McGonagall or Snape, it was because Harry didn't trust them at all. He didn't think these adults would believe in a dream that had no basis in fact.

(Note: In order to prevent students from leaving the school at will, although the fireplace in the common room can be used to contact family members, it cannot transport the whole person. If you need to leave the school during the school period, you must use the professors' fireplace)

A few minutes later, they appeared in the Department of Mysteries, with Ginny Weasley following them.

Harry was standing in a huge round room. Everything here, including the ceiling and the floor, was black. A number of identical black doors without door handles or any markings were set some distance apart from each other and embedded in the black walls around them. Some candles with blue flames dotted the walls, cold and flickering with a faint light, making the floor look like a puddle of black water.

"Where should we go?" Ron asked. There were twelve doors in front of him, twelve doors that were exactly the same and there was no difference between them.

As Harry stared, wondering which one to choose, the twelve doors began to spin rapidly around the four of them at the same time.

"What is this going to do..." Ron said uneasily.

"Don't move yet." Hermione looked around calmly. She said with some worry, "I think this is making us confused about which door we came in from."

"Doesn't that mean we might not be able to go back..." Ron's face tightened and a trace of cold sweat seeped out of his forehead.

"Yes, similarly, we have no way of knowing which door we need to go through." Ginny nodded in agreement.

Harry looked at the twelve identical doors anxiously. It was harder for him to identify the exit than to find an ant on the black floor. Any one of these twelve doors might be the one he needed to go through.

"There's no need for us to think about going back now," said Harry excitedly. "We won't go back until we find Sirius -" and he took out his wand.

"Get out the wands," he whispered, "and we'll try them one by one."

"Wait a minute," Hermione screamed, stopping Harry from pushing open one of the doors and going in. "The Mark has appeared!"

She drew a line in the air with her wand, and a flaming "X" appeared on the door.

"If this door isn't it, that eliminates one," said Hermione.

"Good idea." Ron exclaimed, walked forward, pushed open the black door, and four people walked in one after another quietly.

The low-hanging chains of the chandelier hung from the ceiling, illuminating the entire room. The warm, hazy light floated in the room like stars. When several people walked in from a dark room, the place seemed particularly bright.

The room was almost empty except for a table. In the middle of the room there was a huge box filled with dark green liquid, big enough for them to swim in. Many white things were floating slowly in it.

"What is this?" Ron whispered in disgust.

"I don't know." Harry shook his head, feeling disappointed that this was not the room he had dreamed of.

"Let's get out of here," said Harry. "Not this one."

So they retreated back to the previous room, and the door marked with a red X clicked shut behind them. Then there was a deafening rumble, and the walls began to spin rapidly. The blue candle flames on the walls blurred into a faint blue halo around them, and under the halo was a red gold light. When everything stopped, the twelve doors were rearranged, and one door had a fiery red X burning on it, indicating that they had been there before.

So Harry pushed open another door.

The dark curtain stood quietly in the middle of the room. It had been moving windlessly for thousands of years, as if someone was calling for something.

He quickly climbed down the stone bench layer by layer, came to the bottom of the stone pit, and slowly walked towards the stone platform.

"Be careful," Ginny said in a low voice.

Harry stood in front of the door. The arch in front of him was much higher than it looked when he looked down from the top, and the curtains were still swaying slightly, as if someone had just walked through it.

"Who's there?" Harry asked in a low voice, he clenched his wand tightly, a very strange feeling rising from the bottom of his heart, there must be someone standing behind the curtain, he carefully went around to the other side, but there was nothing, he could only see the other side of the tattered curtain.

"Harry?" Ginny called to him softly from the high platform in the distance, and the others also looked over anxiously.

"Anything?" Ron asked.

"I don't know." Harry answered casually. He stared at the curtain closely and put his ear close to it again. He thought he heard something, a whisper and murmur coming from behind the curtain.

"Let's go." Hermione's voice sounded very scared, and she shouted anxiously: "This room doesn't look like it, let's go to the next one."

"Wait." Harry said absentmindedly. He found that although this archway was very old, it had a unique beauty. The gently fluttering curtains aroused his interest. He had an impulse: to pass through the curtains. "Harry, we are here to save Sirius!" Hermione shouted at the top of her voice this time, scaring the others.

"Sirius..." Harry repeated, his face dazed, his eyes fixed on the curtains. "Oh..."

Harry stepped back from the dais, his eyes snapping away from the curtain.

"Let's go." Turning his head reluctantly, he finally walked slowly to the stone bench on the bottom floor and climbed all the way back to the entrance of the room.

"We have to hurry. We won't be able to find Sirius if we move so slowly." Hermione said to the four of them when they returned to the black round room.

The wall began to spin again, then stopped again. Harry walked to a random door and pushed. Nothing happened.

"What's the matter?" said Hermione.

"It's... it's locked..." said Harry, and banged on the door with all his weight, but it didn't budge.

"That's it, isn't it?" said Ron excitedly, as he and Harry tried to force the door open. "That must be it!"

"Get out of the way!" Hermione snapped. She pointed her wand at where the normal lock would be and said, "Aloho!"

no response.

"Sirius's knife!" said Harry, pulling the knife from his robes and thrusting it into the crack between the door and the wall.

As the others watched anxiously, Harry slashed the knife from top to bottom, then pulled it free and rammed his shoulder against the door again. It was still as tightly shut as before, and Harry looked down and saw that the blade had melted.

Harry's heart beat faster and faster, and his chest seemed to be blocked by something.

The image of Sirius's suffering kept echoing in his mind, and the cries for help seemed to penetrate the illusion and strike deep into his soul. He could no longer hold back, and his impatience burned like a flame.

"We can't wait any longer," Harry gritted his teeth and raised his wand suddenly, with an unusual fierceness flashing in his eyes.

He uttered a spell aloud that his companions had never heard before - the words had an ancient and evil tone.

The next moment, a black flame suddenly burst out from the tip of his wand and rushed towards the tightly closed metal door. The flame did not make any burning sound, nor did it emit any temperature or even a hot breath, but it quietly corroded a round hole in the center of the door in an almost corrosive way.

"Harry...what magic did you use just now?" Hermione asked in a low voice, looking at him with some worry in her eyes.

Harry didn't answer, but just stared at the dark flame gradually dying out with a solemn expression.

He himself didn't know what kind of magic this was.

All he knew was that the spells had suddenly and inexplicably popped into his mind during the Christmas holidays.

At that time, he was intoxicated with the pursuit of power for various reasons. During the entire holiday, he was obsessed with learning these powerful magics and couldn't extricate himself. A trace of fear flashed through his mind. Judging from the situation in front of him, these should be evil and dangerous black magic.

Behind the cave entrance was a dark room where you couldn't see your hand in front of you. They hesitated for a moment, but stepped in cautiously.

The room was eerily empty, and the air was filled with an indescribable strange smell, like a mixture of dampness, dust and a faint smell of metallic rust.

In the middle of the floor, there was a solitary glass bead. The bead was clear and transparent, and inside it was suspended a crimson feather, shining and lively like a raging fire.

Harry recognized it; it was a phoenix feather.

Harry stared at the feather steadily. As if being pulled by some invisible force, he slowly stretched out his hand, and just as his fingertips touched the bead -

"Chirp—!"

A clear, high-pitched cry echoed throughout the room. It was Fawkes's voice! The phoenix that had appeared to save Harry in his darkest hour.

A beam of warm light shone down from the ceiling, instantly dispelling the darkness in the room.

Everyone held their breath and saw a golden XZ prayer wheel appear in front of them, slowly turning in the air. With each rotation, light golden words appeared and dissipated from its surface, like a meditation ritual.

"What on earth is...?" Hermione murmured in a low voice, her eyes full of surprise.

But before they could see more clearly, a long-drawn voice suddenly came from behind, sliding into everyone's ears like a snake: "Very good, Potter."

"Now, turn around slowly and put your wands down."