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

is it, then, isn’t it?’ said Ron excitedly, joining Harry in the attempt to force the door open. ‘Bound to be!’
    ‘Get out of the way!’ said Hermione sharply. She pointed her wand at the place where a lock would have been on an ordinary door and said, ‘Alohomora!’
    Nothing happened.
    ‘Sirius’s knife!’ said Harry. He pulled it out from inside his robes and slid it into the crack between the door and the wall. The others all watched eagerly as he ran it from top to bottom, withdrew it and then flung his shoulder again at the door. It remained as firmly shut as ever. What was more, when Harry looked down at the knife, he saw the blade had melted.
    ‘Right, we’re leaving that room,’ said Hermione decisively.
    ‘But what if that’s the one?’ said Ron, staring at it with a mixture of apprehension and longing.
    ‘It can’t be, Harry could get through all the doors in his dream,’ said Hermione, marking the door with another fiery cross as Harry replaced the now-useless handle of Sirius’s knife in his pocket.
    ‘You know what could be in there?’ said Luna eagerly, as the wall started to spin yet again.
    ‘Something blibbering, no doubt,’ said Hermione under her breath and Neville gave a nervous little laugh.
    The wall slid to a halt and Harry, with a feeling of increasing desperation, pushed the next door open.
    ‘This is it!’
    He knew it at once by the beautiful, dancing, diamond-sparkling light. As Harry’s eyes became accustomed to the brilliant glare, he saw clocks gleaming from every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room, so that a busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. The source of the dancing, diamond-bright light was a towering crystal bell jar that stood at the far end of the room.
    ‘This way!’
    Harry’s heart was pumping frantically now that he knew they were on the right track; he led the way down the narrow space between the lines of desks, heading, as he had done in his dream, for the source of the light, the crystal bell jar quite as tall as he was that stood on a desk and appeared to be full of a billowing, glittering wind.
    ‘Oh, look !’ said Ginny, as they drew nearer, pointing at the very heart of the bell jar.
    Drifting along in the sparkling current inside was a tiny, jewel-bright egg. As it rose in the jar, it cracked open and a hummingbird emerged, which was carried to the very top of the jar, but as it fell on the draught its feathers became bedraggled and damp again, and by the time it had been borne back to the bottom of the jar it had been enclosed once more in its egg.
    ‘Keep going!’ said Harry sharply, because Ginny showed signs of wanting to stop and watch the egg’s progress back into a bird.
    ‘You dawdled enough by that old arch!’ she said crossly, but followed him past the bell jar to the only door behind it.
    ‘This is it,’ Harry said again, and his heart was now pumping so hard and fast he felt it must interfere with his speech, ‘it’s through here –’
    He glanced around at them all; they had their wands out and looked suddenly serious and anxious. He looked back at the door and pushed. It swung open.
    They were there, they had found the place: high as a church and full of nothing but towering shelves covered in small, dusty, glass orbs. They glimmered dully in the light issuing from more candle-brackets set at intervals along the shelves. Like those in the circular room behind them, their flames were burning blue. The room was very cold.
    Harry edged forward and peered down one of the shadowy aisles between two rows of shelves. He could not hear anything or see the slightest sign of movement.
    ‘You said it was row ninety-seven,’ whispered Hermione.
    ‘Yeah,’ breathed Harry, looking up at the end of the closest row. Beneath the branch of blue-glowing candles protruding from it glimmered the silver figure fifty-three.
    ‘We need to go right, I think,’ whispered Hermione, squinting to the next row. ‘Yes … that’s fifty-four …’
    ‘Keep your wands ready,’ Harry said softly.
    They crept forward, glancing behind them as they went on down the long alleys of shelves, the further ends of which were in near-total darkness. Tiny, yellowing labels had been stuck beneath each glass orb on the shelves. Some of them had a weird, liquid glow; others were as