Away without official leave
Many thanks to KathyE and Sostrata for betaing!
When I collected the plates in the life sentence zone, I picked up an interesting thought. Sirius Black, doubtlessly my favourite wizard in our collection, was asking Vaqqu if he could visit his godson, The Boy Who Lived. And Vaqqu declined due to safety reasons.
There are lots of "safety reasons" nowadays, to the point that it gets quite irritating. Yes, I know, wizardkind doesn't take it lightly when their former leader gets kissed, even if it was just a fallen sub-leader who broke the very rules he had once so loudly and proudly enforced. Yes, I know, those loud-mouth aurors want revenge on our kind, but I also know they can't harm us until they find out how we slipped through the legendary defences of Azkaban. This once-a-deputy-leader Bartemius Crouch had thought he was the only one who had found an unofficial way out.
I know, because I'm the one who kissed him.
I can still feel him resisting when I want to reach deeper into his memories, or act in a way he never would. (This happens constantly, as I'm not the boring guy he proudly had been.) Vaqqu says I'll have taken him down entirely when I can talk with the sounds he would use. One day, I will. Right now, my breath is good enough communication.
I agree with Black's complaints, life in Azkaban is a horribly monotonous when you compare it to the mainland. I also understand that he wants something in return, now that he has helped us get the Crouches.
His primary guard, who is as mind-numbing as Azkaban itself, claims that Sirius is right but he trusts Vaqqu with making the final decision. Close to them, Nihl counters that a birthday could also be a time for visitors, and those would more likely be aurors, whom Sirius certainly wouldn't want to meet. One explosion with too many casualties should be enough for a wizard's lifetime.
Nihl doesn't like Sirius, but that reminder was devastating. The primary guard immediately glides between the two, claiming that Nihl shouldn't even be allowed near that cell. Vaqqu is on the wizard's side this time. Nihl quietly floats back to the Lestrange brothers.
Rules are rules, even if we hate them. Even when we break them.
I wait for Azkaban to quiet down. Just like the high and low tides, wizards have a rhythm of falling asleep and waking up at more or less the same time. And that's important because when they are sleeping, they don't give off as much emotion, and also, they don't notice when something is happening around their cells. Therefore, when they are asleep, so are most of their guards.
Sirius, as a top-security prisoner, always has someone by his door. That's an incredibly dull position, and highly unrewarding. I have no problem convincing the guard to swap with me. He glides away, and I open the cell as quietly as I can.
I breathe on the wizard, asking him if he wants to come along.
"We're meant to behave," he whispers back, but in the next moment his human-mind vanishes from the cell, and it's replaced with the much simpler thoughts and much keener senses of an animal. He sneaks out into the corridor, his feet quiet on the rocky ground. He's grateful, confused, and eager in anticipation of another night out.
I open the corridor lock for him, and he follows to the southern block of the prison. Just on the porchway to the dementors-only zone, he returns to his human self and asks if I'm sure I know what we are doing. I breathe an affirmative at him.
"I just wanted to clarify," he whispers back. "Vaqqu clearly said I can't visit Harry on his birthday."
But it isn't his birthday yet, and it won't be for three more days. We cannot visit The Boy Who Lived when he is presumably surrounded by the entire Ministry, that's why we have to go now. The remnant of Barty Senior protests against my understanding of Vaqqu's prohibition, which adds to my triumph. I breathe an encouragement at Sirius, and he returns it. We share a deep understanding when it comes to getting around the rules.
Azkaban has some horribly potent magic on it, making an exit all but impossible. However, Ekrizdis wasn't a fool when he put up all those charms, and he certainly didn't die by locking himself up in his own fortress by accident.
Because of his vision, Sirius knows the way better than I do. He places his palm on the touchstone in the wall, and I put mine right next to his. Then off we go.
Touchstones are a disorienting way of travel, much like portkeys. Only, while a portkey is an object that's merely tied to two places at a time, a touchstone exists at two places simultaneously. If you touch one, you've also touched the other. But this one had been jinxed so that it only works when a wizard's and a dementor's hands are on it together. Without a wizard, it's just a particularly wet and salty rock in the wall.
The other place where this stone exists is a much smaller island, on the border line of the apparition-block. The wind is even saltier out here, and I hear the menacing song of the merfolk. Without a wand, we still cannot apparate, but I can fly, and that's just as good for us. First I need a short break to recover from the touchstone's nauseating effect, but we're out of Azkaban now, and the night is ours.
I breathe in Black's happiness and joy, which now comes in plenty. He raises his arms so that I can lift him under the armpits, and I read him for the exact location in Godric's Hollow. He has a great number of good memories of the house (and one horribly bad – not my fault) so I don't have trouble finding the spot.
The village has changed a lot since Sirius last visited, he barely recognizes the place. It's all muggle now. The house where James Potter and Lily Evans once lived (and died) was already demolished, and now there's a hastily built warehouse in its place.
Sirius is disappointed, anxious, outraged and shocked. Whoever has done this to the ancient wizarding family's home, had no respect for what had transpired here.
Apart from the two of us, I detect no magic around. Yes, the Avada Kedavra still echoes in the area, because that's what killing curses do, but that's it. There are no ghosts, and any wizard who had lived here had moved out long ago. I share my findings with the troubled wizard and read him for what he found.
Experienced dementors claim to cling to the surrounding live creatures and take in their perception of the environment. I tried it for about two minutes, but there was really no fun in that. I was able to see the dark walls all around, so why should I bother?
Next to me, Sirius spots a label on the wall. 'Grunnings Drill Factory, Storage B'. Now, that was helpful.
Sirius finds another sign. "There's an address here." He requests me to give that place a chance. It's a small town in Surrey, a short flight from Godric's Hollow. I still hesitate for a moment.
Vaqqu has told me a thousand times that a dementor should never offer his services to a wizard, ever. We do what we are forced to do, but nothing more, because wizardkind is dangerous and will use us against our will. But I'm in a purely muggle village in the middle of the night with a prisoner whom I have to return to his cell before Chesire realises that he is missing (or worse: before another wizard does) and Vaqqu will throw a tirade anyway, so maybe it's not the best time to change my mind about visiting that godson. I make Sirius promise he won't ever tell about this outing, never, to anyone, and I grab him for a second flight.
Little Whinging is an extremely quiet area, at least in the night. But I detect magic, protecting magic that's fixed on a family home, prominent and impossible to mistake for anything else. Sirius all but jumps out of my hand when I tell him that I sense the presence of a she-cervide.
"Lily's patronus was a doe!" he says, as if that would explain anything.
Sure, I tell him. What is a patronus?
He has memories of this house, meaningless, dull memories that have no particular emotion tied to them. A dementor who only thinks with his stomach would ignore the entire topic, but I'm intrigued. As I read in Black's mind, Lily Evans has a muggle sister, and when the contemporary dark lord made Lily's son a target, the Order of the Phoenix decided to have this muggle house guarded as well. Mostly, it was watched by the registered animagus Minerva McGonagall, but Sirius had to take her place from time to time, just like how we have assigned guarding spots and we swap them when it's needed.
Sirius turns into Padfoot as he reaches the pristine green lawn of Number Four, Privet Drive. Before he would go on, however, he produces the smelly mass we usually have to clean up from the prison cells. (Our digestion, by comparison, has no such byproduct. Yet wizards still call our feeding method disgusting and abhorrent. No wonder we don't like their biased way of thinking.)
I can sense three muggles downstairs, and on the upper floor, there's one adolescent wizard. The wizard is asleep as well, but his window is open. I pick the dog up and lift him into the room. I can't follow him, the defensive spell keeps my kind out.
Sirius is happy and relieved, and memories of the young James Potter come to him. This must be the godson, then. The Boy Who Lived. The boy against whom the Fragile One eventually shattered.
"Gryffindor indeed," Sirius mutters. "James would be so proud."
And so is the godfather, I can tell. Sirius is radiating so much joy that I fear he'd wake the child. I breathe a warning.
"Just one more minute, please."
As he searches the room, Sirius comes across a sheet of parchment that cools his mood immediately. I find memories again, memories of his own childhood, when he had to get the Hogsmeade permission form signed. It didn't go easily for him back then, and apparently, the muggles raising the boy have refused to sign it now.
"What sort of people did Albus find for him...?" Sirius growls.
A dementor should never willingly offer his abilities or servitude to a wizard. A dementor should never help, unless there's really no other way. And a dementor should never interfere with humans' dealings, especially not when muggles are involved.
But this is Sirius, and Vaqqu will be angry anyway, so there's no point in following those rules right now. Even from the outside, I can reach the muggles, so I make sure they get Azkaban-quality nightmares tonight. I know Sirius plans to use some magic to put a valid signature on that parchment, but as long as it's James Potter's and not his own, we're fine. I leave him to do his parental duties.
As we predicted, Vaqqu is furious by the time we arrive home. Worse, he claims that Sirius can't leave the cell unless he personally lets him out. That means our planned visit to the Grunnings factory needs to be delayed.
But that doesn't at all mean 'cancelled'. We just need to rethink a few details.