Auror Li had just gotten back to the Auror's quarters from his last patrol of the night. In thirty-three minutes he would awaken the two sleeping trios, and he and the other five on-duty Aurors would take their places during the night shift. Two months ago he would have been going home for his three days off, but two months ago everything had changed.

Li was the senior Auror on duty now, so he sent the B trio on their last patrol, then sat down at the table with McCusker and Brown.

Right about now Brown would say…

"Wanna play some poker before we hit the hay?"

McCusker didn't quite suppress his groan. Hannah Brown, the newest Auror on Azkaban duty, was terrible at poker. She had no poker face at all, and she forgot the rules far too often. She ruined the game for everyone else. Li missed Bahry, but after February, he couldn't blame Bones for finding some nice desk work for him to fill out his last few months of duty. Bahry had protested, but Bones overrode him. It was things like that that made Li think Bones had more of a heart than she let on.

"I'm pretty tired, Hannah," he said to Brown. "Maybe tomorrow."

Brown seemed sad and disappointed, and McCusker groaned more loudly than before and said "Not again." Li gave him a look, this was even ruder than McCusker usually —

Then he saw where McCusker was looking. It wasn't at him or at Brown.

It was at their Patronuses. Which had stopped patrolling and were staring intently down toward the pit.

Li swore loudly and knocked his chair over as he leaped up and ran towards the communicator, Brown was looking around with wide eyes and said "What is it? What does that mean?" and Li was just about to hit the button to contact the Ministry —

There was a flash of fire in the middle of the room, and there stood Albus Dumbledore, with Fawkes on his shoulder and a strange look on his face, part worry and part… something else.

"Chief Warlock!" said Li. "I was just about to call for backup. Should I —?"

"I will take care of it," said Dumbledore. He looked at the three Patronuses, then back at Li. Li thought he saw those eyes turn to ice for a split second, but the enigmatic look replaced the cold one in an eyeblink. Then Dumbledore flourished his wand and produced his phoenix Patronus, to which he said "Go to Amelia Bones and say this: 'Come to Azkaban at once, bring your best Aurors with you, but do not be… overly alarmed.'" The silvery phoenix disappeared.

"Chief Warlock?" said Li hesitantly.

"You all might want to come over here and look," said Dumbledore, as he gazed out the window with the remaining Patronuses. There was some kind of light coming in through the window then, and it was getting brighter.


For the first second, Harry clutched the phoenix with a death grip. He hadn't quite thought through what he was doing when he teleported into the open air above the Dementors' pit. It was only a second, though, before Harry remembered that a phoenix could hold him up with no effort at all; he felt strangely weightless as he grasped the bird's foot.

He looked up and down, trying to gauge his altitude in the moonlight. He was in the centre of the triangle, about halfway between Azkaban's roof and the pit below — perhaps a little lower than halfway. I need to be closer to the pit, Harry thought, and he willed that thought toward the phoenix, but the phoenix didn't descend. Then Harry looked up and yelled over the wind to the phoenix: "If I'm going to have a shot at surviving this, I need to minimise my effort, and that means going lower!"

The phoenix cawed loudly, not the defiant shriek he'd once heard from Fawkes, but a strong declaration of certainty. The phoenix, it seemed, had its own opinion of the optimum point from which to launch this attack and had done that work for Harry. Does it want me to encase the whole building in my Patronus? I don't know if I can extend it that far down and maintain consciousness. Does the phoenix know something I don't? The phoenix said nothing; it just looked down at Harry, as if to say "What are you waiting for?"

It came and brought me this far, Harry thought. I should probably trust its judgement. All Harry needed to do, then, was cast the Charm.

Just cast the Charm, and expend his life.

Well, the shadows of Death weren't going to kill themselves.

Harry thought of the prisoners of Azkaban, tortured for months and years and decades, of erasing that torture, and of putting an end to the instruments of that torture, if not the actual torturers themselves, and cried, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" The human sprang into existence immediately, and then Harry willed it to grow. He was doing it, he was actually doing it, he felt alive as he hadn't felt since February, and he poured that life through his arm and into the light, the blazing silver sunlight that burned away only the Darkness, waxing as big and as bright as it had when he had almost given over in February, so he could see nothing but the glowing air around him, and then brighter.

And that second was when Harry first felt the life leaving him. It felt strange; it didn't hurt, it didn't feel like an injury or an illness. A few years ago, when Harry had first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he had laughed so hard at one passage he had fainted. That hadn't hurt, either; in fact, he had imagined afterward that it might be similar to how some narcotics made you feel. He had just lain back on the sofa in paroxysms of laughter until he briefly whited out and went unresponsive. His parents had witnessed this and been quite concerned for the three seconds it took him to wake up again.

This was like that. No pain, just a very slow, gradual, blissful loss of consciousness.

That was the first thing Harry felt.

The second thing he felt was when his Patronus reached the sides of the building where the prisoners were kept. Just as in February, he could sense each prisoner as they fell under his Patronus's radius, being sheltered from the torture magical Britain had inflicted upon them. His consciousness was waning in earnest, now; he had to hurry up and reach the Dementors before it was too late. He gave his Patronus another push —

And then he felt the third thing. He felt the second time he annihilated the shadow of Death. He felt the first Dementor, floating down there above the pit somewhere, disintegrate as his Patronus encompassed it.

It felt good.

When he had killed the Dementor in January, it had been the first time he had ever cast the True Patronus Charm. The thrill of success, his resolve to protect humanity and end Death itself, the further erasure of his previous Dementation, and the feeling of actually destroying the Dementor had all sort of blended together then.

Now he could feel the destruction of the Dementor separately from those other sensations. And it felt good.

Then another Dementor died. That felt really good. In fact, he wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but he thought he felt less faint…

A third Dementor, and Harry was sure: he was no longer fainting; his life was being restored. He stopped increasing the flow to his Patronus for a moment to think. Maybe…

Maybe it gave something back, as well as taking…

When he had cast his Patronus strongly in the Azkaban raid, he had expended some of his life. But when he had done the same while destroying a Dementor in January, he had had some of the expended life returned. Harry had just killed three Dementors with one casting of the True Patronus, and he now felt invigorated, brimming with life, better than he had felt before he had cast the Charm, better than any time he could recall.

Harry remembered Professor Quirrell telling him that there were more than a hundred Dementors in Azkaban.

And that's when the Boy-Who-Lived began to laugh.


Dumbledore, three Aurors, and three Patronuses gazed down towards the pit, where a brilliant sphere of silver light was growing, fully obscuring its source.

"Is that… a Patronus?" said Auror Brown.

"Indeed it is, Hannah," said Dumbledore.

"Chief Warlock," said Li, "Our Patronuses — the way they're sitting and staring with us —"

"The same happened in February?" said Dumbledore.

"Yes, sir," said Li.

"Yes, so I perceived. It is not yet certain, but I believe the source of that light was present here that day, as well."

"What is the source of it?" asked Brown.

"The Boy-Who-Lived. And his new companion."

The three Aurors spoke at once: "Harry Potter's doing that?" "Who's his companion?" "The Boy-Who-Lived broke Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban?"

"Peace. All will become clear soon. I will —"

The Vanishing Cabinet slammed open, and out trod Amelia Bones with her wolf Patronus, followed by a gaggle of other Aurors, a dozen of whom immediately leapt upon broomsticks and darted out the window, only to quickly pull to a halt and stare down at the sphere of light, which was quickly approaching their altitude.


Amelia had stridden over to the window and gazed down as well, and when all the broomsticks were outside, she tapped the mirror on her belt and said "Aerial units, prepare to fire," then turned to Dumbledore. "Thank you for the alert. In return, I shall allow you to decide whether it will be Killing Curses or Stunning Hexes my Aurors rain upon the source of that light."

"Amelia, it is Harry Potter —"

"What? Oh, very well, then." She drew her wand, pointed out the window, and cried "Leviosa immobilis! Stunning Hexes! Fire!"

Those Aurors who were not completely transfixed by the silvery light aimed toward the indistinct centre of the sphere and cried "Stupefy!"

Dumbledore sighed. "It won't help you. Even if you could see him, he has a phoenix with him. He will come willingly, if he can, once his task here is complete."

"A phoenix brought him here? Another phoenix? Did you, did you procure one for him so he could attack the Ministry?"

Dumbledore replied coldly: "I do not have the power to 'procure' a phoenix for anyone, and I would not have so used it if I did. The phoenix came to him of its own accord. I arrived in time to see them leave, and deduced where it would take him."

Amelia hesitated, then nodded. "Is there any danger to anyone here? I assume not, based on your standing around watching it happen."

Dumbledore shook his head and said "No danger to any person save Harry himself, if you follow my advice. The Aurors were for the prisoners, not the intruder; in a few moments you should send them in pairs to guard the most powerful prisoners capable of wandless magic. In the meantime, I suggest you watch these last moments, and enjoy them, if you can bring yourself to."

Amelia frowned, but then turned to look out the window. The light was level with the window now, and seeping into the room through the floor and inner wall —

Suddenly veins of colour appeared around and amidst the silver glow, oranges and yellows and reds, long straight ribbons of fire appearing and disappearing, streaking toward the centre of that bright silver light.

"Don't let them touch —!" cried Amelia, before one of them passed directly through her torso, causing a pleasant warming sensation and absolutely no pain. Apparently Dumbledore was right.

The glow grew faster then, and before Amelia could order her Aurors to use the streaks of light to help them aim, it had encompassed them all, and all she could see was silver light turning distinctly orange, punctuated by multiplying fiery rays….


Harry Potter felt everything his Patronus touched. Each prisoner waking up from his years-long stupor, each Auror looking down from above, each Dementor for the last half-second of its existence. He felt the Aurors' Patronuses and knew them — badger, anteater, dachshund, wolf — and he felt Fawkes on Dumbledore's shoulder.

Harry floated there in bliss, his body blazing with its own phoenix fire in the centre of the expanding Sun, until he knew no Dementors remained. He also knew that he couldn't cleanse the whole Earth from here, or even any other nearby land masses; he had done more than anyone had ever done, but one hundred and five was still very, very finite.

He thought at the phoenix: Can you teleport me somewhere else? Take me to where there are more Dementors? The phoenix softly cawed in the negative, as Harry had expected.

Harry was tempted to just stay like this for a while, revelling in what he'd accomplished. But with no more Dementors to feed his Patronus, it wouldn't be all that long before he was in danger again.

So Harry concentrated, and instinctively channeled his excess life energy down his arm, into his wand, and out of his body. He saw the opaque, orange-silver air flare to white around himself; the whiteness rippled outward in a spherical shell, banishing the radiant glow from the inside out, fading as it expanded into the night.


Amelia Bones, despite herself, gasped at the sensation of that last wave of the spell passing through her. She glanced around and could see that everyone else except Dumbledore had the same slack-jawed, blissful expression.

She peered down toward the origin of the spell. What it left at its centre looked for just a moment like a single creature, a fiery chimera that seemed to flicker as she looked; but within seconds, the lower half was fading into mere substance, while the top half remained distinctly a phoenix.

She looked around at the Aurors and Dumbledore, then gasped a second time when she realised that all their Patronuses were gone. Their Patronuses were gone, and she still felt incredible.

"He destroyed them, didn't he?" she asked Dumbledore.

Dumbledore spoke gravely: "Send the Aurors to guard the prisoners, Amelia, then bring Mr. Potter to the highest cell on the A spiral. I need to speak to him alone."


Harry Potter sat smiling, with tears on his cheeks, in the highest prison cell in Azkaban. Director Bones had led him there, saying only that there he would remain until the Ministry could decide what to do with him.

The implied threat of a prison sentence had very little effect on Harry. He had been mentally prepared for the possibility, he had just turned Azkaban into a mere building, and…

…and the phoenix hadn't left when Harry finished his mission. It had flown him to the Aurors' station at the top of Azkaban, and it had sat on his shoulder as he walked the short distance to the cell. Slowly the realisation dawned on him that it wasn't going to leave, ever, unless he asked it to.

He had passed the test; the phoenix was his.

The part of his brain that couldn't help it was feverishly calculating all the things he would ask the phoenix, all the experiments he would perform with its powers. But the greater part directed Harry to just sit there smiling and crying for a little while, basking in the warmth. Harry didn't think anything could spoil his good spirits right then.

Then the cell door clinked open, and Dumbledore walked in.


Albus saw the joy on Harry Potter's face when he entered the cell, and he saw it crack when Harry saw the look on Dumbledore's own face. Someday, he would tell Harry how much he hated spoiling this moment; they should have shared in the joy of the phoenix, he should have been able to tell Harry everything Harry wanted to know about having one.

But Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, as always, was a complicated case. He would already be in enough trouble for what he had done today; he might be in considerably more when Dumbledore asked what he must ask. So Dumbledore levelled his sternest gaze at Harry, and added this moment to his long, long list of regrets.


The look on Dumbledore's face was almost as cold as, yet altogether different from, any look Harry had ever seen from the Defence Professor.

He was very solemn when he spoke: "You have a phoenix now."

Harry nodded, and said "I wanted to ask you, how —"

"We will speak later of the phoenix's mastery. For now, we have a great deal else to discuss. To begin with, tell me: Would you have accepted your phoenix's charge had I not intervened on the tower?"

"I don't think so," said Harry after a hesitation. "I was about to ask it to return in a few months when you spoke."

"I see. You have greatly desired a phoenix ever since you met Fawkes, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then you surely agree that you owe me a debt."

Harry's eyes widened for the briefest of moments. "I suppose," he said, with a barely perceptible quaver in his voice.

"You will certainly further agree that you will owe me even more of a debt if I can manage, and decide, to transport you beyond the wards of Azkaban, to where you can utilise your phoenix's full power."

"Yes," said Harry, who was now looking a bit coldly himself.

"Very well. Then you may discharge that debt by giving me, immediately, an exhaustive account of your and the Defence Professor's whereabouts and actions on Saturday the eighth of February this year."

Harry took a breath, then said "Headmaster, I already told you —"

A shockwave blasted Harry's senses, deafening without sound, blinding without light, discomforting without pain, and Harry's limbs went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head for a moment as he recovered. Harry slowly regained control of himself, blinking a few times, and by the time his eyes were able to focus on Dumbledore again, he had started visibly panting.

Dumbledore's voice was level when he spoke: "I must apologise; I would have spared you that demonstration if I had realised it would cause you to miss the cries these two phoenixes just produced at your deception.

"Harry Potter, it was out of respect for you and a desire to trust you that I did not forcibly view the contents of your mind that day. You may be an Occlumens, but you are still a new Occlumens, and if I am not terribly mistaken, you haven't had much practice lately. A skilled Legilimens can attack an Occlumency barrier and cause you significant distress even if he fails to fully penetrate it. And though you may manage to break eye contact with him, imperfect Occlumency will not help you if he decides to force you to look him in the eye again."

Harry's breathing was still ragged, his eyes still wide, but he said nothing.

Dumbledore sighed. "I don't wish to do that, Harry, even now that I have seen evidence indicating that you have been to Azkaban before. But Bellatrix Black is vital to Voldemort's plans, and so she is equally vital to your quest against him, regardless of who else was involved. And as you have just converted Azkaban from a torture chamber into a mere prison, you should now have less to fear from anyone you care about being kept here.

"I am sorry to give you an ultimatum, Harry, but I will do what I must: If you tell me the full truth, I will do everything I can, keep it secret from whomever I must, to return you to Hogwarts. But I am not the only one who has seen that evidence, and I will not be able to protect you if we do not resolve this now."

Harry was breathing rapidly and his stomach was churning. Quickly his mind enumerated all the competing pressures upon it: It's clearly time to lose — but Professor Quirrell will be fired — that's guaranteed anyway — but they'll try to arrest him — but they won't succeed — they might if Dumbledore's with them — but he'll go to prison — "prison" won't kill him anymore — but I gave my word not to tell —

Into the maelstrom, Harry's phoenix softly cawed.

— but everything Dumbledore said is right. Everyone will already know I was here before. I don't have time to concoct a foolproof story that omits Professor Quirrell. Bellatrix Black can be returned here safely, too, if she can be found. And in the end, I'm a criminal, and I got caught, and it's time to lose, promises be damned.

Harry took a moment to be sure he, and not just the phoenix, actually agreed with the whole line of thought. Then, looking down at his hands, unable to lift his eyes to meet Dumbledore's, he began to speak.


Dumbledore let Harry speak. He had been in enough similar situations, and he knew enough of Harry's knack for the impossible, that he instinctively took conscious control over his face, his movements, and his breathing, so as not to give anything away by his reactions.

Dumbledore was lucky to have his instincts, because when Harry described the end of the Defence Professor's battle with Auror Bahry, it was all he could do not to scream.

The Defence Professor was Voldemort.

The Defence Professor was Voldemort.

Voldemort was in Hogwarts, had been there the whole year, teaching the children, influencing them, with a body and the full power of a professor —

The Defence Professor was Voldemort?

So many questions — so many things didn't make sense —

the Defence Professor was David Monroe — no, he must have killed him during the War and then pretended to pretend to be him —

he'd had a million opportunities to kill Harry — no, he must still be unable to, so he tried to gain him as an ally

he trained the children to fight, they would be much better equipped to defend against a second reign of terror — but not if his strategy were completely different this time —

but Voldemort is pure, inhuman evil, without the capacity to understand anything else, not even the sardonic pessimism of the Defence Professor…

…But no. Tom Riddle, more than anything else, was a genius. In the end he had turned that genius toward unimaginable horror. Dumbledore had always thought that his lust for immortality had driven him to create multiple horcruxes, and that his soul, halved and halved and halved again, had degenerated to the point where all he knew or could ever know was bloodlust.

But the Defence Professor…. The Defence Professor was certainly not a paragon of goodness. He was certainly Dark to some extent. But he was ambiguously Dark. He had unknown, elusive goals. He seemed complex; not just capable of complex, ingenious schemes to do evil like Lord Voldemort was, but complex in himself, complex as a person.

If that person were Lord Voldemort, if the entire persona of Lord Voldemort had been a pretence, it meant that Tom Riddle was altogether different from what Dumbledore thought he was. What was he, if he wasn't Voldemort? Was he somehow even more depraved than the world had thought when he was flaying children alive? Or was there something in his core, something never hinted at before, that could still be redeemed? Did he even have a core anymore? If not, what drove him to act at all?

"Headmaster?"

Dumbledore focused on Harry; he had not even heard the last part of his story. Dumbledore cleared his throat softly. Harry didn't seem to realise what had distracted him, and he knew he mustn't give any clue of who the Defence Professor really was, in case Voldemort could read his thoughts that specifically. But there was one question, above all, that Dumbledore couldn't help but find an answer to: Why didn't this brilliant child, who guessed his own life's story his first day in Diagon Alley, realise that the man he had a strange magical connection to must be Lord Voldemort?

"Harry…." Dumbledore said slowly. "…Have you spoken to anyone else at all about any of this? About the raid on Azkaban, about the motive for Bellatrix's escape, about your magic's resonance with the Defence Professor or your Patronus's possible ability to block the Killing Curse?"

"No," Harry said. "Well, at the beginning of the year I started to tell Minerva about the Defence Professor, but she made —"

"— made you stop talking, on threat of violence, no doubt."

"Yep."

"I see." Dumbledore stood, said "Very well. Thank you for your candour today, Harry," and turned to leave.

"Headmaster?" Harry said again.

"It will take time to secure your release from Azkaban," Dumbledore said over his shoulder. "How much time, I cannot say. Take comfort spending time with your phoenix, for now." He half-turned toward Harry then, and tried to put the twinkle in his eyes, despite the panic he felt inside. "I'll try to have you out of here in less time than I spent agonising over Fawkes's name." He winked at Harry, then left.

Amelia stood in the corridor alone. "What did he say?"

Dumbledore didn't answer, instead speaking to Fawkes: "Bring Remus, Alastor, Arthur, and Molly. Meet me outside the wards." Fawkes cawed his assent, then swept from Dumbledore's shoulder and sped off toward the Aurors' station. Then he produced his Patronus, and instructed it: "Go to Remus, Alastor, Arthur, and Molly, and say this: 'Fawkes will be along shortly to bring you all to Azkaban. Harry Potter is here. Remus, keep Harry company if he wants it. Everyone else, guard him and don't let him know you're there. Pair off with Aurors, guard the roof above, the cell block below, and the interior wall from outside. Everyone mount a broomstick before you leave with Fawkes. Hopefully none of this will be necessary, but be vigilant until you hear from me again.'"

"What in the name of Merlin did the boy tell you?" Amelia yelled.

"That none of us ever knew anything about Voldemort," Dumbledore replied as he withdrew the broomstick he had just started keeping in his mokeskin pouch. "Guard Harry with your best Aurors. I hope to return shortly."

"Do you need help?"

"I don't believe so. And if I do, it's unlikely that any help would be sufficient."