Harry Potter 05 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

around the room and descending in steep steps like an amphitheatre, or the courtroom in which Harry had been tried by the Wizengamot. Instead of a chained chair, however, there was a raised stone dais in the centre of the pit, on which stood a stone archway that looked so ancient, cracked and crumbling that Harry was amazed the thing was still standing. Unsupported by any surrounding wall, the archway was hung with a tattered black curtain or veil which, despite the complete stillness of the cold surrounding air, was fluttering very slightly as though it had just been touched.
    ‘Who’s there?’ said Harry, jumping down on to the bench below. There was no answering voice, but the veil continued to flutter and sway.
    ‘Careful!’ whispered Hermione.
    Harry scrambled down the benches one by one until he reached the stone bottom of the sunken pit. His footsteps echoed loudly as he walked slowly towards the dais. The pointed archway looked much taller from where he now stood than it had when he’d been looking down on it from above. Still the veil swayed gently, as though somebody had just passed through it.
    ‘Sirius?’ Harry spoke again, but more quietly now that he was nearer.
    He had the strangest feeling that there was someone standing right behind the veil on the other side of the archway. Gripping his wand very tightly, he edged around the dais, but there was nobody there; all that could be seen was the other side of the tattered black veil.
    ‘Let’s go,’ called Hermione from halfway up the stone steps. ‘This isn’t right, Harry, come on, let’s go.’
    She sounded scared, much more scared than she had in the room where the brains swam, yet Harry thought the archway had a kind of beauty about it, old though it was. The gently rippling veil intrigued him; he felt a very strong inclination to climb up on the dais and walk through it.
    ‘Harry, let’s go, OK?’ said Hermione more forcefully.
    ‘OK,’ he said, but did not move. He had just heard something. There were faint whispering, murmuring noises coming from the other side of the veil.
    ‘What are you saying?’ he said, very loudly, so that his words echoed all around the stone benches.
    ‘Nobody’s talking, Harry!’ said Hermione, now moving over to him.
    ‘Someone’s whispering behind there,’ he said, moving out of her reach and continuing to frown at the veil. ‘Is that you, Ron?’
    ‘I’m here, mate,’ said Ron, appearing around the side of the archway.
    ‘Can’t anyone else hear it?’ Harry demanded, for the whispering and murmuring was becoming louder; without really meaning to put it there, he found his foot was on the dais.
    ‘I can hear them too,’ breathed Luna, joining them around the side of the archway and gazing at the swaying veil. ‘There are people in there !’
    ‘What do you mean, “ in there ”?’ demanded Hermione, jumping down from the bottom step and sounding much angrier than the occasion warranted. ‘There isn’t any “ in there ”, it’s just an archway, there’s no room for anybody to be there. Harry, stop it, come away –’
    She grabbed his arm and pulled, but he resisted.
    ‘Harry, we are supposed to be here for Sirius!’ she said in a high-pitched, strained voice.
    ‘Sirius,’ Harry repeated, still gazing, mesmerised, at the continuously swaying veil. ‘Yeah …’
    Something finally slid back into place in his brain; Sirius , captured, bound and tortured, and he was staring at this archway …
    He took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil.
    ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
    ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to – well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron grabbed Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.
    ‘What d’you reckon that arch was?’ Harry asked Hermione as they regained the dark circular room.
    ‘I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was dangerous,’ she said firmly, again inscribing a fiery cross on the door.
    Once more, the wall spun and became still again. Harry approached another door at random and pushed. It did not move.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ said Hermione.
    ‘It’s … locked …’ said Harry, throwing his weight at the door, but it didn’t budge.
    ‘This