Chapter 4 update for you all, would love to hear how people hope or think it'll turn out though?!! Please review and give me your ideas, see who I can keep happy or disappoint?!!

Chapter 4

Harry appeared with a loud POP at the gate to Azkaban, he had been here a few times before but it got no better with each visit, it was bad whenever you visited and the fact that the sea was rough and swirling around the bottom of the rock today did nothing to make the visit more bearable. A watchwizard was waiting for him at the gate, "Mr Potter," he growled, Harry noticed the gaunt look around his eyes and the sad look in his face, working at Azkaban day in and day out had to be much worse than just visiting, it took its toll on everyone which is why watchwizards were only allowed to work two months out of the year at the prison. After the last time the dementors had been in charge of Azkaban and they had defected to Voldemort's side, it had been decided by the Ministry that they would not be the only ones patrolling the fortress, experienced aurors were sent in shifts to patrol and run the prison, the dementors still got to feed off the fear and despair of the prisoners, while the prisoners themselves suffered terribly from the effects of them, but the Ministry were still in charge of the general running of the fortress. Harry was glad he had not been called in to work there yet, he knew it would happen one day but it would be a long way off, you needed to be strong to work in such close proximity to dementors and although a patronus would offer you some protection it would become difficult to conjure them after a few weeks. The only bonus to working a two month stint at Azkaban was being ordered to have a whole month off to recover.

Harry looked at the wizard in front of him, he was a tall, dark haired man who he did not recognise, the haggard look on his face told Harry that he was probably near the end of his shift at Azkaban, he had a patronus walking in front of him which resembled a donkey but was rather defeated looking, Harry could feel that it was only emmiting limited protection and decided to cast his own patronus to intensify the guard. "Expecto patronum," he shouted, concentrating intently on the image of marrying Ginny, and his stag erupted from the end of his wand and cantered to catch up with the failing donkey.

"Thanks," the watchwizard mumbled, "Get's hard to conjure one properly after a while, not easy to think of something happy when you've been here for seven weeks, even the thought of being home with the family for Christmas doesn't cheer me up, I can hardly wait to get away. I'm just glad the shifts are only twelve hours a day, it is a small relief to apparate to the mainland once a day, I heard what happened last night absolute chaos when I arrived this morning!" he even sounded defeated and Harry had a deep empathy for him. "Name's Joseph by the way, Joseph Aborstein, been an auror for seventeen years now, never thought it'd come to guarding Azkaban but I suppose someone's got to do it."

"Good to meet you, Joseph," Harry said quietly, he was beginning to feel a little despair already, even with his stag to protect him. He thought about Ginny again, waiting in bed for him, and began to perk up slightly as they entered the general office of the Chief of Staff at Azkaban. Another haggard looking man rose from a chair in a dull, grey room; papers were strewn across a hard, gunmetal grey desk in the middle of the room, in the corner was a window looking out on the rough sea outside and on the other wall was row upon row of dirty, grey filing cabinets. Harry shook the hand of the man behind the desk who had proffered his own hand when Harry had entered and then they both sat down. He looked around the room and realised just how awful this place really was, he could feel the constant coldness and was glad he still had his patronus, a small, whispy squirrel was curled up on the desk amidst the pile of papers emitting some kind of protection from the gloom, but Harry did not find its presence comforting.

"Mr Potter, I am Pious Gorge, the Governor and Chief of Staff for the winter A shift, I am deeply sorry that you have had to be called out over this and cannot express how mortified I feel that the prisoner was able to escape on our watch. I can assure you that the dementors have not defected again but they have been unable to offer any explanation as to what happened last night, they just became aware that there was one less person feeling despair and assumed that one of the prisoners had died, they went in to check all the prisoners this morning and found Mr Lestrange's cell was empty. We have conducted a thorough search of the cell and the area around it both inside and out and can find no explanation as to how he escaped, the door of the cell was locked and the window bars are too high and too thin for anyone to escape through. I am also sure you are aware that no-one can apparate from inside the prison and definitely not without a wand, there have been no visitors in the prison since the last shift change over when the Minister came so he could not have been passed anything that may have enabled him to escape. The prisoners have access to nothing in here they are simply left to their feelings of hopelessness and despair so there was no reading material or magic of any kind that he could have used. We still have the broken pieces of his wand," he reached into a drawer in the desk and removed a fading plastic bag containing a broken wand, the name Rodolphus Lestrange was written on a label stuck to the outside of the bag, "We removed this from our storage facilities as soon as we realised that he was missing to check he hadn't somhow gotten his hands on it. The only clue or anything of any kind that we have is a carving on the floor that we found in his cell this morning, it looks like an ancient rune and he has obviously been carving it for a long time with a small piece of rock or something, the grooves are well worn. It was hidden beneath his bed and we only discovered it this morning when we conducted a thorough search of his cell."

"May I see the cell?" Harry asked gulping as he thought about getting nearer to the dementors, "And the rune."

"Of course Mr Potter, Joseph will take you," he gestured towards Joseph who grimaced as the same thought that Harry had just had flashed through his mind. Harry stood up to leave the room, "I will return to this office before I leave Mr Gorge, Thank you for your time so far." Harry nodded his head in the direction of the governor and then left the office after Joseph, his patronus cantered up ahead once more to join the donkey which seemed to be deflating by the minute. He followed his guide up a flight of rough, stone steps, the walls were made of stone and the air felt damp, the stench of rotting seaweed filled his nostrils as he climbed higher up the steps. It was dark in the passage and Harry instinctively reached for his wand and whispered "Lumos," the tip of his wand cast a green glow through the passageway which made it seem eerier still.

It hit him when he reached the top of the flight of stairs, all hope and happiness burst out of him like a dam bursting its banks, he began to hear the familiar screams which he associated with dementors, the screams of his mother as she died at the hand of Lord Voldemort, he concentrated with all his might on the memory of laying in bed with Ginny earlier in the morning, he imagined the feel of her skin as he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck, trying to cling on to the last vestiges of sleep, his stag seemed to glow brighter and as he turned the corner at the top of the stairs it stood guard between him and the three dementors patrolling the corridor, he walked past them with his protection around him and continued with Joseph down a long, dark corridor. It was as drab and depressing as the stairwell they had just climbed, except that there were high, barred windows just below the ceiling which afforded some natural light to the area.

They stopped outside a heavy metal door, years of damp had corroded the door so it looked rusty, parts of the door were coming away but it was so thick that no-one would have been able to use it as a means of escape, Joseph swung the it open with a great effort and the putrid stench which filled Harry's nostrils made him reel backwards on his heels. The smell of rotting flesh still hung in the air, years of the same person living in the room with no means of washing or cleaning themselves, even though the cell was currently vacated of a living being the smell had seeped into every corner of the room. There was a small, metal framed bed in the corner and a dirty, almost unrecognisable toilet in the opposite corner, these were the only two items in the room and Harry realised once more what a truly terrible place this was. The walls were no different to the corridors and stairwell they had already encountered, moss was growing on the inside of the cell, spurred on around the barred window where the only form of light entered the room.

Harry explored the walls of the room looking for any place where a prisoner may have escaped but they were so thick that it would be impossible to penetrate them in any way, he searched the floor but came to the same conclusion, the only way to leave the room was through the door or the window, and as the doors were kept locked shut all day and night and the windows were barely wide enough for a small mammal to slip through the bars, Harry could find no explanation for how the prisoner had escaped. His only frame of reference was that of his godfather, Sirius Black, he had once escaped from this place, he had been an animagus and had transformed into his alias, a black shaggy dog, before leaving the room when a dementor had entered, as dementors could not see, they fed off feelings, he had passed by them undetected as they did not feed off animals in the same way. If indeed Lestrange was an animagus this form of escape was impossible now that the aurors were on guard with the dementors, they could see perfectly well and people, animals and anything else going into the building were recorded carefully as they entered and left. Harry could find no explanation at all, "Where is the symbol?" he asked Joseph, shivering form the inescapable cold of the prison.

"Under the bed," he replied, they walked over to it and Harry pointed his wand, "Wigardium Leviosa," he rattled off and moved his wand sideways as the bed raised itself, he moved it to the opposite corner of the room, dropping it carelessly and looking at the space where the bed had been. "He must have been carving it for some time," Joseph said, "It's deeply engraved." Harry looked and saw that the runic symbol was indeed deeply engraved into the floor it was about two foot square and about an inch deep into the stone, the rune was a triangle shape each line intersected and continued for another few inches, at the end of each line was a smaller triangle divided into two and in the centre of the large triangle was a square and a cross. Harry had never studied ancient runes and wished that Hermione was with him at that moment as she would probably have translated it immediately, he conjured a parchment and quill and copied the shape onto it quickly he would take it back to the office and have it translated as soon as possible.

He shivered and looked at his stag it was beginning to wilt and Harry realised he would need to concentrate if he was to make it back past the dementors. The image of him and Ginny play fighting over the wedding details brought a sudden warmth to his heart and the stag seemed to perk up immediately. He and Joseph left the room and returned to the governors office quickly, Harry was losing his resolve rapidly and he knew he needed to get away from this place as fast as he could. He informed the governor that he would be in touch once he had had the rune translated and swiftly exited the building almost running to the spot high on a rock where he could apparate back to the ministry.

He arrived back around lunchtime and disappeared into his office, the staff in the main room ignored his unusually curt greetings as they were well aware that he had been to Azkaban and did not envy his state of mind. He sat back in his chair and looked at the photograph on his desk, it was one Luna had given him from Ginny's Christmas party the year before, a joyful looking Harry and Ginny were staring intently into each others eyes and twirling and dancing around the dance floor smiling and laughing gleefully at each other. It immediately warmed Harry and the feeling stayed with him now that he was far away from the dementors, the feelings of happiness and hope flooded back into him as he thought about the upcoming wedding, glancing at the clock he thought to himself, this time next week we'll be married. With this thought in his head he reached into his drawer for some chocolate, the best remedy for an encounter with dementors, and sat back in his chair removing the parchment showing the runic symbol. He called for his secretary and asked her to take it for translation before getting out his own quill and some parchment to make notes for his upcoming press conference.

There you go, hope you enjoyed it and are starting to form some ideas about what might happen next! I'll update soon when I've had some ideas from you!