Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [88]
“Hogwarts, Gryffindor Common Room!” yelled Hermione as she stepped into the flames and disappeared. Ron did the same, and Harry was left alone.
“Hogwarts, Gryffindor Common Room!” he yelled as he stepped into the warm flames. The world around him melted away into a black oblivion, and it started spinning very fast. Then, just as soon as it started, Harry found himself in a large room. After he recovered from his dizziness, he looked around.
“This is not Hogwarts.” Was the first thing to cross his mind. The room he was in was large, but it looked nothing like any Hogwarts room he knew of. The room was very dark, except for a few fireplace-shaped torches that were lit in the corners. There were old and dusty statues of witches and wizards all over, stacked on top of each other, as if no one cared about them anymore. From behind one of them, a dark figure appeared.
“Ron, Hermione? Is that you? How did we get down here?” he called out to the figure, but it did not respond. It continued to climb over the statues and come closer Harry realized it couldn’t be Ron or Hermione, it was far too tall. “Who are you?” Harry called out, both hoping to get and not to get a response. He didn’t get one.
The large dark figure stopped moving when it was a few feet away from Harry. It stood up in front of him, and crossed its arms. Its hood magically lowered itself, and Harry saw before him Wormtail.
“So, Harry Potter… we meet… yet again…” hissed Wormtail through a very wide smile. “My master will be very pleased when he discovers that I have you.”
Suddenly, Harry remembered that the fireplace behind him was still lit. He quickly threw some Floo Powder into it.
“Hogwarts, Gryffindor Common Room!” he yelled, getting ready to step back into it. The fire quickly turned green.
“Oh no you don’t! Aquaius!” yelled Wormtail. Just as Harry had stepped one of his feet, not the fire, it was immediately put out by the water that Wormtail created. All of Harry’s hope went out in a quiet ‘hiss’.
“You can’t kill me Wormtail,” gasped Harry, trying to recover from his failure. “You may look stronger now, but I knew that inside, you’re still the little weak man that turned in my mom and dad.”
Wormtail gave quick laugh and shook his head.
“Harry, Harry, Harry…” he said, “you misunderstand my intentions. If I wanted to kill you, you would have been dead long ago. Accept the fact that I have not subdued you as a good intention. You see, my master no longer wishes to kill you… he wants you to join us.”
“Never!” yelled Harry immediately. “I’ll die before I’ll ever join you!” Wormtail laughed again.
“Oh Harry, there are far worse things than death…” he snapped his fingers, and several more cloaked figures entered the room, Voldemort’s servants, the Death Eaters. All of them, including Wormtail, formed a circle around Harry. Harry recognized some of them: Lucius Malfoy, Macnair, Crabbe, and Goyle. There were a few more that Harry didn’t recognize, they must have just been rescued from Azkaban seeing from how they looked. Then, one member among them caught Harry by surprise.
“Professor Snape?” asked Harry, gaping at him. He was standing right next to Wormtail, as though they were best friends. What was going on?
“Ah yes, Severus…” said Wormtail. “He returned to us last summer. My master understood his delay in coming, he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself by leaving Hogwarts so suddenly. He has been very helpful to us, especially in accomplishing this Azkaban invasion.”
Harry immediately understood, Professor Snape must be working undercover… somehow. Harry didn’t have time to figure it out, he had to find a way out of this predicament.
“Anyway Harry,” said Wormtail, “back to business…” He snapped his fingers again, and some dementors rose from the ground, as if floating up through the floor, and into the room.
Harry immediately felt their presence, felt the coldness of them flowing over him, felt the happiness being slowly sucked out of him, he had to act now.
“Expecto