Chapter 1:

Thunder Moon

For a hundred years or more, the Ministry had guarded Azkaban Island with fearsome dark creatures, depending on the North Sea as a secondary line of defense and the strong spells from above preventing a departure to the skies or any sort of Apparition. With the departure of the Dementors, they were forced back to dependence on the sea to keep the prisoners inside. Only Sirius Black had been mad enough to try to escape that way, at any rate.

Harry Potter, the head of the Auror Division, had argued strenuously for greater protection from the outside, pointing out that at least twice, there had been major, concerted efforts from the outside to "liberate" prisoners, but the Wizengamot had balked at the amount of treasure involved, after so much had been squandered during the war. They were already forced to pay human guards, they claimed, and without the Dementors keeping people's appetites low, more was being spent on food and other care. There were even regular visits from Healers. With all the extra gold they were spending to improve Azkaban already, lacing the sea with curses and protective hexes had seemed excessive. "After all," Tiberius Ogden said, "Lord Voldemort-thanks to you, Mr. Potter-is no longer a threat, nor is Bellatrix Lestrange. The Malfoys are repentant. The others are locked up... who's left to want them released?"

Harry Potter had been overridden, and for nearly thirteen years, it seemed to have been a quite logical decision. No one had approached Azkaban. The prisoners had made no serious attempts to escape. Everything was under control. Voldemort's servants were prisoners of something even more fearsome than Azkaban-the past. They were no longer relevant. The new dangers lay elsewhere. Potter's occasional visits to the Wizengamot to urge greater investment in Azkaban were met with gentle chidings about trying to fill old Alastor Moody's shoes.

The guards, of course, kept an eye on the sea. They weren't to be completely ignorant. They searched for all magical disturbances.

Muggle boats occasionally passed, of course. The North Sea was cold and forbidding, but it was well-trafficked, and Azkaban was one of many islands. Such boats always found some pressing business in another direction if they came too close, though-Muggles couldn't see Azkaban, but they were caught in the various Distraction Spells that protected it-so the guards paid little heed to them. Muggles would have no reason to free Dark wizards.

It was quite possible, then, that someone saw the boat on the horizon, a little wooden fishing trawler, in bad shape and over-crewed for its size. Such boats passed regularly. There was nothing to mark where the enchantments began, so no one would have noticed it crossing slowly, drifting into the realm of the island, and certainly, by the time it sheltered in an unforgiving cleft in the rock, it had been long-forgotten by guards getting ready for a pleasant July evening at home, commiserating with the three unlucky souls who would be forced to spend the night here among the prisoners-particularly one of them, given that the moon would be full-slapping one another's shoulders. The tiny evening shift came on, grumbling about its very unpleasant upcoming duties. They drew straws-two would have to subdue and guard the problem prisoner. The other would make the regular rounds. The winner-and in this matter, she certainly felt like one-tucked her wand into its holster, and waved sarcastically to her unfortunate colleagues as she headed down to the main cell block. The woman in charge didn't respond; the young man didn't exactly wave, although his hand was raised. He had never liked her, and never would, rather like most of the people she'd met since leaving the safety of Slytherin House.

Millicent Bulstrode's career after Hogwarts hadn't really taken off.

She certainly wasn't the only member of her year in Slytherin to be saddled with a bad reputation, or even the only one to have worked in Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. She wasn't even the worst-the most she'd ever done was get into a hair-pulling fight with the Granger girl second year. But the others seemed to have had quite a few more assets to cash in when it came time to join the adult world. Millicent didn't have Draco Malfoy's strange family connections to the new regime (no one had been more surprised than the Slytherins-including Draco-when Harry Potter had declared Narcissa Malfoy a hero of the Battle of Hogwarts), or Pansy Parkinson's perky prettiness, or Greg Goyle's family money. Daphne Greengrass had moved in with relatives in Barbados and made a comfortable life there, and Blaise Zabini had charmed Katie Bell into marrying him, and somehow or other integrated himself into life on the outer fringes of Dumbledore's Army.

But Millicent's family wasn't wealthy, she had done nothing in the battle, and she looked rather like the hag her great-grandfather was rumored to have married. (Great Grandmother Bulstrode had mysteriously disappeared, and the rumors were hotly denied, but Millicent owned a mirror, and occasionally used it, so she doubted the denials.) There were no political strings to pull, no husbands to charm, no waiting jobs. She'd worked in a few Knockturn Alley shops, taken a low-level Ministry post sending out owls, and finally, needing more gold than she was taking in if she meant to continue feeding her cats and paying rent on her flat, applied for the post as a guard at Azkaban. She hadn't held out much hope when Granger (now Weasley) interviewed her, but she'd got the job offer two weeks later. One thing about permanently retiring the Dementors-it had created jobs.

"Millicent! Millicent!"

Millicent turned to the small, unkempt woman in cell fourteen. "Yes, Professor Umbridge?"

Dolores Umbridge leaned forward conspiratorially. "I think Alecto is planning something nasty. I heard her talking about stealing her brother's food. Also..." Umbridge signaled for her to come closer, and whispered. "There are centaurs. They come at night. I'm sure Potter is sending them to torment me, and surely that's against the law. I'm sure you aren't involved, of course, Millicent."

"Professor..."

"And the Mudbloods! I wish you'd move them out of my cell, they don't let me get any sleep at all, filthy things."

"I'll talk to my supervisor, Professor," Millicent said, looking into the empty cell.

"The babies are the worst," Umbridge went on. "They just cry and cry and cry..."

Millicent patted her hand and moved away, revolted. She didn't have much use for the Mudbloods herself and never had, but even they hadn't deserved what Umbridge had done. There had been an unproven rumor-as hotly denied, of course, as the Bulstrode hag rumor-about a Potion that St. Mungo's had been instructed to administer to any pregnant Mudblood that year. Millicent hadn't really believed it until she'd seen an article about how few babies had been born during the year Voldemort controlled the Ministry, and even then hadn't really internalized it until she heard Umbridge raving about crying babies who weren't there. Now, she believed. As she moved on down the corridor, Umbridge was already carrying on a lengthy justification of her crimes to a judge who wasn't there.

"Hey, where's our feast?" Amycus Carrow growled. "Greyback got a right feast. Werewolves gettin' special rights, are they?"

"Greyback's less trouble to take care of tomorrow if we see to it that he's well fed before his transformation. You, on the other hand, are never any less trouble."

"And he up and gets a surface-side cell once a month! I reckon he done worse than Alecto and me put together."

Millicent sighed. It was bad enough that two guards on night duty had to be exclusively devoted to guarding Greyback during his transformation; she didn't need to take complaints about his "special" treatment. "He gets a surface cell once a month so he can see the moon, and before you start in on him having it all to himself, I could always offer to let you share it with him."

"Er... no thanks."

"Animal ought to be put down," Macnair grumbled from a few cells up. "I can do it for you, free of charge even. As a favor to the new Ministry. I hear they're not averse to killing a werewolf or two. Did one last month, if you believe the Prophet."

"It sounds like a fine idea to me," Millicent said, "but I doubt they'll go along with-"

In the world above, something crashed. A high-pitched scream rose, and someone cut it off.

Alecto Carrow, at the far end of the corridor, let out a whoop of laughter. "Trouble in the guardhouse, trouble in the guardhouse!"

Millicent almost called out to her supervising officer, Leonora Graves, but something held her tongue. She drew her wand-carefully staying to the center of the corridor, where none of the Death Eaters could make a play for it-and hurried up toward the surface, toward the door where the dying sunlight played like phantom blood on the dark gray stones. Once she reached the stairs, she pressed herself against the wall, trying not to cast a shadow or make a sound. She mentally forgave Umbridge for trying her patience-had it not been for her time in the Inquisitorial Squad, she'd never have learned to move like this.

"Toss out the rubbish!" a woman yelled. "Toss it in the ocean!"

"I say we keep it handy," a man said. "Might get hungry later."

"Well, get it out of the way, anyhow," the woman said. "They don't give their guards much room up here."

Thundering footsteps came toward the stairwell, and a huge man, made into a black silhouette by the red sun, tossed a bundle toward the cells, and Millicent fought the hardest battle she could imagine to keep from screaming.

It was Leonora Graves. Her throat had been torn out, and as her body rolled unevenly down the stairs, she left a sticky trail of blood oozing out behind her.

"What about the other one?" another woman asked, and Millicent forced herself up another step, staying in the shadows.

"Need him to open up the door, don't we?" the first woman said.

Millicent came to the top, Disillusioned herself, and peeked around the door frame. The guards' office was crowded with two dozen strangers. They were all dressed in rags, disheveled and dirty. Many of them had filed their teeth to points. The crash she'd heard had been the fireplace caving in, blocking out their means of communication and transport. Millicent could see two charred and broken wands in the rubble-they must have burned them before they put out the fire.

Jack Sloper had been dragged to the center of the room, and-like the idiot Gryffindor he was-was still trying to fight. He kicked one of the men, who stomped down on his calf. Millicent heard the bone break, and Jack howled.

"Now," the woman who seemed to be in charge said, "you're going to open up Greyback's cage."

"No!"

"Oh, I think you will. We can make a right mess of you if you don't. Where's the key?"

Jack snorted. "It's magic, you idiot. And you burnt my wand."

"Oh, that's a shame," the woman said. "We'll have to tear the cage down. And we won't need you anymore."

Before Millicent could process what she was doing, let alone respond to it, something silver flashed, and Jack fell forward, blood staining the front of his robes. A huge man picked him up and took him to the door that led out onto the landing platform outside, and she saw the shoulders heave, then Jack was gone, into the depths of the North Sea.

Millicent froze. They were on a skeleton staff, because the night approach to Azkaban was quite impossible to make by sea, and the magical defenses from the air were unbreachable. She couldn't floo out, and she was the only one left, and she knew who they were now... oh, yes. No doubt about it.

After thirteen years, Greyback's pack had come for him.

"Come on!" the woman yelled. "I haven't been hiding on a boat for six hours just to watch you lot change before we do what we came to do!"

"Oh let up, Mina!" one of them said. "We're already on it!"

The pack had gathered around the cell built for Greyback's use. It was heavily reinforced on the inside-she helped with the spells that kept the powerful werewolf from breaking it down each month-but the outside was stone and mortar like anything else. As Millicent watched, they started battering it, prying at the mortar with anything they could find. On the inside, she could hear Greyback: "What's the matter with you, Jamieson? Can't you get anything right?"

Millicent shook her head sharply, trying to shock herself awake. How had things gone this wrong? She raised her wand, and whispered, "Stupefy."

A man went down.

"Someone's here!" Mina shouted. "Invisible. Grab around! Not you!" she added to the group around Greyback's cell. "We only got about ten minutes!"

"Stupefy!" Millicent yelled. "Stupefy! Stupefy!"

More fell, but the room was full, almost end to end, and grasping hands brushed her robes.

"Got 'im!" the man called Jamieson said.

Millicent pulled away, yanking herself back. She was at the edge of the stairs, and she felt herself teeter and turned frantically, grabbing the wall. Two nails tore, and her wand clattered out of her hand and down to the floor below. Out of nowhere, she thought of her cats, sitting at home, waiting to be fed. No one would think to check on them for days.

Grasping hands followed her. She ducked.

"He's gone down!" Jamieson called to Mina.

"Forget it, then. He's not going anywhere from there. Someone keep a guard on the stairs. The rest of you, to work!"

An old woman with a long knife gleefully took up a position at the top of the stairs, her arms spread across the door. Millicent moved backward slowly, taking the steps as silently as she'd come up. If she could just get to her wand-

There was another horrendous crash of stone on stone, then a broad, harsh laugh. "Come for me, did you?" Greyback said, in the high good humor that he adopted before the moon rose each month. "Took you long enough."

"Stanfield was alpha when you were gone. Didn't want to come collect you," Mina said. "But the Aurors killed him last month. Thought it was time to bring you back."

Millicent reached the bottom of the stairs. If she could get her wand, she could blast the one guard out of the way, make her way to whatever boat they'd come in, and sail away, leaving them stranded here. She'd go as far as it took to get past the Apparition barrier and then go straight to London, straight into Harry Potter's office, if that's what it took. She scooped it up and started to head back.

A great shadow fell across the door above.

Greyback.

He tipped his head to one side. "No time to get back tonight, but I reckon there's good pickings here. Those little bars won't hold out for long."

Millicent's hand froze.

The prisoners would be trapped in their cells. Even if a transformed werewolf broke the bars, the other werewolves would prevent any escape.

If she left now, blasted her way past the two at the door, she could escape.

But they couldn't.

Granted, the world wouldn't miss Amycus Carrow much, but he was her responsibility.

She gritted her teeth, and started back down the cell block, casting the spells they used on Greyback's cell each month on the bars of Dolores Umbridge's cell. "Stay inside, Professor!" she hissed. "Whatever any of you see, don't stick your arms out!" She ran down, casting it on Amycus's cell, on Macnair's, on Alecto's, then turned down toward the lower level, where Rabastan Lestrange and his brother kept their vigil. Far above, she heard the first screams, the first howls. Powerful paws scrabbled down the stone steps, then there were yips and yaps of frustration as the werewolves tested the spells.

Millicent ran on. Yaxley, Rowle, a non-Death Eater called Simms who'd murdered his twin daughters trying to make a Potion to restore his wife. Poor Vincent Crabbe's father. Nott.

She turned and ran up a crooked staircase, coming up on the east wing of the main cell block. She Conjured bars across the passage to the minimum security wing, then reinforced them, then moved on to the other Death Eaters. Avery. Jugson.

The corridor doglegged, and she found herself face to face with a gray wolf, pointed ears and tufted tail catching the moonlight. It growled at her, right through the Disillusioning spell, but of course, the spell did nothing for her scent.

The wolf leapt.

Millicent ran blindly, neither knowing nor caring where she meant to go. A left, a right, a staircase-up or down, she wasn't sure-another left. Finally, she saw the light of the night sky. She ran past the empty cell that had once held an innocent man called Sirius Black. He had escaped from here, jumped to the ocean through a gap in the bars.

But as a dog, he'd been much smaller than Millicent Bulstrode.

She ran flat out into the bars, but no matter how she squirmed and turned, she couldn't force more than her arm outside. She looked up at the full moon.

Behind her, something howled.

She started to scream.