Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
Chapter 2: Empty streets
Harry woke up feeling very disoriented. He slowly opened his eyes and, after adjusting his view for a few seconds, he realized that he was lying on a stone floor.
His head felt heavy, but pushing past the discomfort, he tried to recall his last memories, and they soon came to him.
Sirius being kidnapped, the encounter with Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries, and…the fight in that strange room, surrounded by Time Turners.
Harry then opened his eyes wide.
"Neville!" Harry cried before quickly standing up and looking around, expecting to find Bellatrix and Neville fighting still. But instead...he found no one.
The room was the same as before, but there was no sign of any person present in it.
"What happened here? Where are the Death Eaters and Neville?" They couldn't have left him behind.
Neville would never abandon him, and the Death Eaters were obsessed with obtaining the Prophecy for Voldemort, so they wouldn't leave without it.
This situation made no sense.
Harry looked behind him, expecting to find a mess of broken Time Turners, but there was no mess to be seen and no silver dust. The shelves were lying on the ground, and many of them were broken, but they were empty.
However...Harry found that the most unsettling part of this whole thing was the silence for some reason.
'Everything is too quiet,' he thought.
Just moments ago, the Department of Mysteries was filled with total chaos, people yelling while throwing spells at each other and things being destroyed left and right, but now…the place was quiet as a tomb.
Harry had a very bad feeling about this, so he adjusted his glasses, held his wand firmly in his right hand, and started running towards the exit of the room.
He then turned right and continued running, trying to find some of his friends.
Harry went through several corridors and passed many strange rooms, but again, he could not find anyone or hear anything. Everywhere he went, it was silent and devoid of people.
The Department of Mysteries had a very confusing layout, but eventually Harry managed to make it back to the room of the prophecies, where everything started.
The room was a complete mess, just as he expected. There were broken shelves everywhere and pieces of glass that must have belonged to all of those orbs that contained the prophecies.
"Hermione! Ron! Ginny! Luna! Is anyone there?" Harry started calling.
'Could they have all left? But…they wouldn't forget about me. Besides…'
Harry opened his robes and pulled out a glass orb that somehow managed to remain intact.
'This is what the Death Eaters came here to acquire. They were too obsessed with getting this.'
Harry was trying to understand what could make everyone just leave the Department in such a rush and abandon him there, but nothing made sense.
"I need to get out of here." He finally decided.
Harry could recall the way from the room of prophecies well enough, so it didn't take him long before he arrived at the elevator area and went in.
He went on to press the button that would take him to the first level and heard a noise as the elevator started moving.
He gave a sigh of relief... There was a part of him that was expecting it not to work for some reason.
He exited the elevator on the first floor and looked around. He remembered the day that he came through here for his trial after he used the Patronus on those dementors to save his cousin. This floor was completely busy with people going around. But now…it was so empty and silent that it was making his skin crawl.
"Let's get out of here," he reminded himself.
He found one of the many exits that would lead him to the busy streets of London. They had left the thestrals close by.
Harry went into one of the small capsule-shaped chambers and pressed the combination of numbers that would take him outside.
The capsule closed and was shot up, Harry closed his eyes for a moment at the sudden movement, and when he opened them again, he was inside a familiar phone booth, right on the streets of London.
He opened the door, went outside, and looked around, but what he saw made his blood run cold.
This busy street of London was as empty as the Ministry…
"No...this can't be possible," Harry muttered with dread.
Whatever happened down at the Ministry should not have any effect on the muggles' lives, so why would they all leave?.
There was something else that caught Harry's attention. They all came to the Ministry at night, but now it was clearly daytime.
'I must have been unconscious all night,' he concluded. However, this revelation made the situation even more strange. London being empty during the middle of the day?. Impossible...
Harry looked up towards the sky. "But why does everything look so…off."
It was daytime, but it wasn't very bright...like it was a cloudy day, except he couldn't see any clouds in the sky.
In fact, he could not see the sun either.
And it wasn't just the lighting. Everything had a bizarre tonality. It was hard to explain, but it all looked desaturated...like there was still color, but it seemed to be a lot more muted and subtle than how it was supposed to look. It was as if someone had placed a grey filter over his eyes.
Harry had already passed the point of being worried and was now straight up terrified. Whatever had happened down at the Department of Mysteries seemed to have leaked into the muggle world as well.
Harry rushed to the place where they left the thestrals and was not very surprised to find them missing.
"I need to find another way to make it back to Hogwarts, maybe Professor Dumbledore is back by now and has some answers.
"The Headmaster always seems to know everything that is going on." His own knowledge about magic was still too lacking to figure this out on his own, so his best bet is to ask for help.