The Azkaban cell Marvey and his fellow Auror, Jones, just finished examining locked shut with a deep clunk that reverberated subtly through the floor. Checking that the door was truly secured, Marvey stepped back and, taking a steadying breath, reversed the freezing charm on the prisoner locked inside.
For a moment, the prisoner was completely still, but once she realized she'd been freed, she staggered forward with reckless speed and slammed into the bars.
"Traitors!" she screeched, hands reaching through the bars, and Marvey and Jones stumbled further away, cursing. "I'll burn you alive and rip out your insides—"
The dementor accompanying them interrupted her spiel, sweeping forward and beginning to feed on her memories. The prisoner fell back with a howl, scratching at her ears.
Marvey shivered for the umpteenth time since entering the prison. He hated this assignment. He hated the dementors, whom they were ordered to leave alone. He hated the misery and the yelling and the prisoners. He hated everything about this place.
Why did Sirius Black have to escape and force them to check the prison's security?
"Merlin," Jones said, throwing Marvey his signature grin, and Marvey rolled his eyes and relaxed slightly, thankful for the normality of the gesture. both began to walk down the hall. The next cell was more than twenty meters away, removed from the rest.
"On to the big one, eh?" Jones said as they approached it, regarding it curiously.
Marvey nodded nervously. This was one of the last cells they had to check, and it was also one of the most heavily fortified. Where others were given bars, this prisoner was behind a magic-enforced, transparent door that they'd had to obtain special access to learn how to open. The prisoner was all the more mysterious. Even after researching the issue for days, Marvey'd only learned that the prisoner was very dangerous yet very susceptible to dementors.
Stepping closer, Marvey peered through the door. The other side of the door held a faint glow, but it shone too weakly to allow Marvey to see very far into the cell.
"Let's get this over with," Marvey muttered before knocking and tapping the door systematically as he'd been told to while saying a series of numbers and letters. This was supposedly the key to opening the door. Thankfully, Marvey remembered everything, and the door whirred under his touch and unlocked moments later. After casting the immobulus charm, he opened the door, and they both entered, a dementor quickly following.
The prisoner lay in the far, left corner of the square room, facing away. Marvey wasn't sure if this made him more or less uneasy.
Jones appeared to be indifferent, humming tunelessly as he thoroughly examined the walls, floor, ceiling, door, and sparsely-spread objects of the room, muttering spells irregularly along the way. Marvey continued to closely watch the dark wizard.
He was starting to let his mind wander, debating internally what Prisoner 373 must have done to get placed in the most secure cell in the entire prison, when he realized that the dementor had left the room without feeding.
Marvey frowned. The dementors never ignored a prisoner. They were always hungry for more.
He hoped the prisoner wasn't dead. They had already found one corpse. This cell didn't smell like the other hand, though, so maybe he was in luck…
He carefully took a step closer to the prisoner and squinted at the still form.
"You alright there, Marvey?" Jones asked, still absorbed in his work.
"Yeah, yeah," Marvey answered absentmindedly, "It's just that… The dementor left, and…"
Something wasn't right about the way the prisoner was positioned.
Jones paused. "Peter?"
Marvey beckoned Jones over. "Look. It—he looks…unnatural."
Jones glanced at the prisoner briefly but went back to his work. "He looks a bit out of it if that's what you mean. But he's with dementors all day long. 'Course he's a little…you know." He motioned toward his head vaguely with his left hand.
"No, that's—that can't be it," Marvey said.
Jones sighed and took the few steps to where his partner was. He peered at the prisoner only a moment before he frowned and stepped forward. "His body's twisted wrong," he muttered, lighting his wand with a silent lumos.
"That's what I mean," Marvey said, lowering his voice to meet Jones's mutter. "Something's very wrong here."
Jones took one last step towards the still figure and reached out slowly.
His wand pushed against it. Both Aurors froze as the prisoner shifted.
"I thought you cast the immobulus charm," Jones whispered, eyes wide.
"I did," Marvey whispered back.
They flipped the body onto its back carefully, which it did lollingly. Both stared for a good minute.
"We need to take this to Scrimgeour," Jones said in a strangled voice.
The door slammed shut behind them as they ran from the room.
"I don't believe it!"
The Minister of Magic—with his typical green bowler and suit—stood near the cell entrance to Prisoner 373—also known as Emrys to a select few. The Minister tried to cover it up by blustering, but with the way he twisted the bowler in his grip and from the tell-tale pastiness of his skin, it was easy to see he was nervous. And uncomfortable. Between his cleanliness and his colorful, top-of-line clothing, he stood out like an extravagant oasis in the middle of a desert.
On the opposite of the room, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Rufus Scrimgeour, examined the fake body in the corner from a crouch. Though tall and thin, this man was, by contrast, clearly strong, and he held himself with a confidence won only through battle and experience. His hair, beard, and sideburns were reddish-brown and clean-cut, and his eyes were sharp and almost black in the dark room. He was not a man to be trifled with, that was certain.
"First Black, and now this—this lunatic!" Minister Fudge continued, eyes nervously flickering to the cell door where dementors were barely kept out by a silvery barrier.
"Emrys must have bypassed the magic-suppressant wards without taking them down," Scrimgeour replied gruffly, ignoring the Minister and standing up from his crouch.
Fudge huffed. "The public's already panicking enough, Scrimgeour! They're questioning my ability to lead this country!"
"Then don't tell them," the other man said frustratedly, scowling as he cast a different spell. The replica floated into an upright position, spinning lazily in space. "This man is ten times more dangerous than Black. We can't risk him knowing we're on to him."
Fudge began to speak and paused, closing his mouth. "Oh, well," he said, fumbling with his words. "As I said. The public would panic."
Scrimgeour's scowl deepened, and he glared at the Minister briefly before turning back to the replica and smoothing out his features. "His magic is too unnatural," he commented, not bothering to deign the Minister's own comment with a response. "I can't read a proper read on the age of the spell."
"Age?" Fudge said, attention suddenly caught. "What do you mean, age? He can't have escaped more than a few days ago."
Scrimgeour crossed his arms and turned towards Fudge, giving him a displeased look. "The dementors were tricked. We have no way of knowing how long ago he escaped." Scrimgeour became slightly more thoughtful, more introspective. "We must assume he's been gone since we last visited him."
Fudge's eyes were almost bulging out of his face. "Since we—that was over a decade ago!" he exclaimed with a false laugh, as if he could dismiss it by treating the idea as a joke.
"He may have used the Dark Lord's fall to escape," Scrimgeour mused to himself. "It would have been the easiest time to leave unnoticed. Too many people celebrating, and then no one cared about the imprisoned."
"Preposterous," Fudge sputtered. Scrimgeour's eyes refocused on the indignant minister sharply, and Fudge deflated. "No one could be so powerful as to fool the dementors that long," he added defensively.
Scrimgeour unfolded his arms and stepped forward so he loomed over the other man. "He must be. This is the man performed a powerful memory charm wordlessly and wandlessly while in Auror custody. He is not a man to be underestimated."
"I read the reports!" Fudge said, outraged and defensive. He straightened to try and meet Scrimgeour's height. "He was extremely susceptible to the dementors. They described him as—as catatonic around them. How could he escape like that?"
"It could hardly have been that bad," Scrimgeour said harshly. "Perhaps he faked the severity of their influence, perhaps the reports were exaggerated. It doesn't particularly matter. He did escape, and we must be prepared to follow an extremely old trail to find him, not a new one."
Scrimgeour turned back to the replica, which was still floating, leaving the Minister sputtering. Eventually, however, he calmed down, and the room became silent and still, though thick with tension.
Clearing his throat, Fudge patted the hat in his hands nervously and attempted to restart the conversation. "So," he hedged. "What's your plan then?"
"Read his files, examine this cell, and search for signs of abnormal magic," Scrimgeour listed promptly. "We usually can't keep track of someone's magical signature on a large scale without the trace, but his magic is so unusual, we may be able to find it."
"Ah, well, good then," Fudge said awkwardly. "You will be leading the investigation, I assume?"
Scrimgeour sniffed and cast a preservation spell on the replica before shrinking and placing it neatly in a small bag on his belt. "I will oversee it. Auror Shacklebolt will lead."
Fudge swayed back, eyes wide with alarm. "Shacklebolt! How do we know he won't tell anyone? Or what about the other Aurors, the ones who were here? We can't risk the public discovering this!"
"I don't have the time to lead a case like this, and Auror Shacklebolt is one of our best. He would have been given Black's case if something more important hadn't come up," Scrimgeour said sharply.
"B-but, but—"
Scrimgeour cut off the Minister's blubbering. "Aurors Shacklebolt, Marvey, and Jones have already sworn to secrecy."
Fudge's shoulders slumped. "Well, they better be discreet."
Scrimgeour rolled his eyes and walked out the door without responding, the light following him. Cursing, Fudge stumbled out of the now-dark cell to follow, and as they walked back to the boat off the island, he hoped this Emrys fellow wasn't doing anything too terrible out there. He shivered at the thought of what a Death Eater so dangerous could do.
Miles away, in a small apartment in south England, Merlin disrupted the water of his scrying bowl and sighed wearily.