Department of Mysteries

"...and that's Bode and Croaker...they're Unspeakables...from the Department of Mysteries, top secret, no idea what they get up to..."

- Arthur Weasley

The Department of Mysteries is a section of the Ministry of Magic that carries out confidential research. Most of its operations are carried out in total secrecy. Few wizards within the Ministry actually know what is located within this department. Those wizards who work in the Department of Mysteries are known as Unspeakables because of the confidential nature of their work.

Some of the covert research projects this department has undertaken were revealed to Dumbledore's Army, and an important battle of the Second Wizarding War took place within the department in 1996.

Location
"Bartemius! Not trying to lure Potter into one of the Ministry's summer internships, are we? The last boy who went into the Department of Mysteries never came out!"

- Bartemius Crouch Jr (disguised as Alastor Moody to Bartemius Crouch Sr

The Department of Mysteries lies deep in the lowest level of the Ministry of Magic, on the ninth level. It is accessible via the lifts from the Ministry Atrium. From the lift, a plain corridor leads to a black door, behind which is the Entrance Chamber, which is designed to disorient any unauthorized personnel who enter it. It is a circular room with a highly polished floor that looks almost like standing water and twelve handleless doors. Whenever a door closes, the walls rotate, making it impossible to determine which door is which. This chamber will respond to a verbal request for an exit by the opening of the correct door.

Divisions
The Department apparently works to uncover the secrets of death, time, thought, and love, among other things, and records prophecies whenever they are made. It includes the following known chambers:

Thought Chamber
This chamber is long and rectangular, lit by low-hanging lamps. It contains a tank of encephalon, or brains, that swim in a green solution. These particular brains are highly aggressive and will attack and constrict anything that tries to touch them or pick them up, as was the case with Ronald Weasley. This office seems to study the concept of thought.

Space Chamber
This is a dark room full of planets floating in mid-air. Visitors may find themselves floating as well. Luna Lovegood deemed it "a very odd place" and used the Reductor Curse on Pluto at a Death Eater during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.

Death Chamber
This large, square room somewhat resembles Courtroom Ten of the Wizengamot. It is dimly lit, with stone tiers leading down to a pit in the center. In this pit is a dais, upon which stands a very old stone archway with a tattered black curtain hanging from it. This arch separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Some people, such as Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood, will hear voices through this veil; it may be the case that those who have lost loved ones will hear the voices. Sirius Black was pushed to his death by a curse of Bellatrix Lestrange's during the battle in 1996. (In the movie, the Arch contains a semi-transparent veil of what appears to be some kind of smoke.)

The Time Chamber
This long, rectangular room is filled with beautiful, dancing light that sparkles like gems. All kinds of time-related devices fill the chamber, such clocks of every description, including Time-Turners. It also contains a large crystal bell jar at its far end, from which the sparking light comes. Inside it, anything will grow increasingly younger, to its pre-life state, be re-born to grow older, and cycle through endlessly.

"They were all gazing, open-mouthed, appalled, at what was happening to the man's head. It was shrinking very fast, growing balder and balder, the black hair and stubble retracting into his skull; his cheeks becoming smooth, his skull round and covered with a peachlike fuzz… A baby's head now sat grotesquely on top of the thick, muscled neck of the Death Eater as he struggled to get up again; but even as they watched, their mouths open, the head began to swell to its previous proportions again; thick black hair was sprouting from the pate and chin..."

- Description of a Death Eater whose head fell into the bell jar

At the end of the room there is a door that leads into the Hall of Prophecies. There are also small offices just off the main chamber, in which Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom faced two Death Eaters during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. During this battle, the department's entire stock of Time-Turners was smashed.

The Love Chamber a.k.a. The Ever-Locked Room
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all."

- Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter

A room behind a door that remains locked at all times and which cannot be unlocked by either Alohomora or magical unlocking penknives. According to Dumbledore, behind the door is the most mysterious subject of study of the department, and the most powerful force in existence — love. The chamber contains a cauldron full of Amortentia that Unspeakables use to study the effects of love. It may also be used in attempts to understand and duplicate the magical protection self-sacrificing love creates, the only magic capable of repelling the Killing Curse.

The Hall of Prophecies
Records of prophecies are stored in this long, cold chamber with high ceilings and towering shelves lit with blue-flame candles. These prophecies, held in glass orbs, are magically protected, so that the only people who can lift them off their stand are the Keeper of the Hall of Prophecies and the subject or subjects of the individual prophecy. Anyone else who attempts to inspect the orb with their hands will be afflicted with instant madness. Alas, during the battle that took place within the Department of Mysteries in 1996, the six D.A. members used Reductor Curses to smash the shelves of prophecies in order to distract the Death Eaters, and destroyed every single prophecy in the Hall.

Known Prophecies
A year before Lily and James Potter were murdered by Lord Voldemort, the seer Sybill Trelawney made a prophecy involving Voldemort and a child who would come to be his destroyer. After his return, Voldemort sought to know the entire prophecy and lured Harry and other members of Dumbledore's Army to the Hall in attempt to steal and confirm the contents of the orb. Due to the incompetancy and failures of the Death Eaters, the orb was shattered in a commotion that prevented anyone from listening to the contents. However, Harry was able to hear the prophecy from the Penseive in Albus Dumbledore's office, since Trelawney made the original to Dumbledore himself.

The Battle of the Department of Mysteries
In 1996, Lord Voldemort had his Death Eaters attempt to steal the abovementioned prophecy. After two failed attempts, Voldemort lured Harry Potter and five of his friends there by planting a vision of his godfather being tortured into his mind. Harry, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood flew to the Ministry, where they were confronted by twelve Death Eaters.

The six members of Dumbledore's Army managed to distract their attackers and flee, scattering throughout the Department of Mysteries and combating the Dark wizards who pursued them. The Order of the Phoenix soon arrived, saving the teeangers but losing one of their own, Sirius Black. This battle caused considerable damage to the Department of Mysteries, including the loss of many Time-Turners, and signaled the beginning of open war in the wizarding world.

Under Voldemort's Control
"Recent research undertaken by the Department of Mysteries reveals that magic can only be passed from person to person when Wizards reproduce. Where no proven Wizarding ancestry exists, therefore, the so-called Muggle-born is likely to have obtained magical power by theft or force."

- Daily Prophet article in August 1997

On August 1, 1997, the Ministry of Magic fell under Voldemort's control, with Imperiused Pius Thicknesse the new puppet Minister for Magic. In line with the Death Eaters' ideology about blood purity, the Ministry began distributing anti-Muggle and Muggle-born propaganda, based on research allegedly conducted by the Department of Mysteries. Muggle-borns were forced to register with the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, which convicted them of having stolen magic from "real" wizards and witches and sent them to Azkaban. Since this is not factually true, it is likely that this "research" either did not exist at all or was strongly skewed in order to support false conclusions. Unspeakables may have been intimidated into doing this, as many were shown to be terrified and under surveillance while the Ministry was under Death Eater control.

Presumably, after Voldemort's defeat in May of 1998 and the reform of the Ministry under Kingsley Shacklebolt, this information was exposed as untrue.

Known Employees

 * Broderick Bode
 * Croaker
 * Augustus Rookwood (Death Eater spy)

Behind the scenes

 * Luna Lovegood – probably influenced by an article in The Quibbler – once stated that Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge "uses the Department of Mysteries to develop terrible poisons, which he secretly feeds to anybody who disagrees with him" . There is no proof that this is true.
 * The name of the department may be an allusion to the Mysteries of the Ancient Greek and Roman religions, in which admission and knowledge was restricted through arcane initiation rites. The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and important of these.
 * Apparently, the last child who went into the Department of Mysteries never came out.

Appearances

 * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
 * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film)
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (video game)
 * Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
 * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Notes and references
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