This room was larger than the last, dimly lit and rectangular, and the center of it was sunken, forming a great stone pit some twenty feet below them. They were standing on the topmost tier of what seemed to be stone benches running all around the room and descending in steep steps like an amphitheater, or the courtroom in which Harry had been tried by the Wizengamot....Unsupported by any surrounding wall, the archway was hung with a 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 onto 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 . . . ."Sirius?" Harry spoke again, but much 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....he edged around the dais, but there was nobody there.
"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 okay?" said Hermione more forcefully.
"Okay," he said, but he 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 the words echoed all around the surrounding 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!"
....On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too.