Exiting King's Cross to feel the chill of winter wind buffeting him was an entirely novel experience for Lord Voldemort, just as getting off the Hogwarts Express to be greeted by somebody who cared for him was. Even in his seventh year as Tom Riddle, when he had acquainted himself with nearly every pureblood scion in the school and had standing invitations into their homes, his Christmas holidays had been spent holed up in the library at Hogwarts.
Lord Voldemort had at first thought it odd that wizards celebrated Christmas, even as they continued to resent muggles for burning witches hundreds of years ago. In his youth, it had been Christianity that had told him not to suffer a witch to live, after all. But he quickly realized that, to wizards and witches, as to an ever-increasing part of the muggle population, Christmas had little more meaning than its material reality; it was a day of celebration on which people could exchange gifts and a moneymaking opportunity for shopkeepers. Lord Voldemort doubted that, if asked, many wizards could even explain where the name "Christmas" had come from.
The idea of giving gifts was a quaint one, but in practice it was usually an annoying hassle. Having successfully managed to make friends with all of his Slytherin year-mates and about half of Ravenclaw, Lord Voldemort had had to put in the effort of getting them all gifts. Because he had been a penniless orphan in his youth, he had always crafted his gifts by hand using magical tricks. These gifts had never failed to impress—he had quickly learned that hand-made items, even if judged inferior in quality to purchased ones, always seemed more "thoughtful" to their recipients.
With that in mind, Lord Voldemort had made enchanted ornaments for all of his "friends," varying in complexity depending on how "close" they were to him. At his skill level, it had been easy to cast enchantments that might have been believably first year level.
Most of the gifts had been self-powering jars with simple animated objects inside them, for example a flower that might bloom and wither and then bloom again. Lord Voldemort had made certain to ask Professor Flitwick about power-storing enchantments and had had the professor cast one on all of his jars so that he would have an excuse for including such advanced magic in his gifts. There was no need to appear suspicious for something as inconsequential as Christmas presents.
Lord Voldemort remembered belatedly that he had not made a gift for Lily or Arabella yet. It was no matter; he could conjure and enchant something while at home, if necessary, although it seemed at the moment that he would not be returning to Arabella's house quite yet.
"Are we going somewhere?" he asked Lily as she led him down the street. At first, he had expected to apparate home. Then, they had walked out of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and he had expected to take another train. Finally, Lily had taken him outside to walk around in the frigid air, and he had no idea what to expect now.
"I thought we'd grab a bite to eat for dinner," she explained. "The Express hardly serves anything fit to call lunch."
"That's true," Lord Voldemort agreed, "Dinner sounds fine." The trolley of sweets might be a nice indulgence for young wizards and witches, but it was rather annoying that the train, which ran for six hours and straight through lunch time, did not sport a dining car.
They had dinner in a muggle restaurant and then stopped by a delicatessen in a department store to buy some expensive food items as a treat. Lord Voldemort found the experience of living with Lily Potter surprisingly pleasant, owing to her kindness and generosity, and he could see why Severus had taken a liking to her. Strangely, he could see some of her qualities in her son, Harry, which was ridiculous, as they had never even met.
When he and Lily returned to the house on Wisteria Walk, it was late evening, and Arabella had already retired. Lily confessed that the woman had been complaining of a headache all day. Lord Voldemort feigned exhaustion and hurried up to his room, in time to see a very familiar owl arrive at his window.
It was his own, and it was carrying a letter in its talons. How peculiar.
Lord Voldemort cast several cautious detection spells through the glass, but the owl was not deterred and only pecked several more times at it. Relenting, Voldemort opened the window and gingerly took the letter after casting another spell to detect dark magic and ascertaining that he did not feel any kind of irrational foreboding or pressure, the signal that a large amount of active magic was concentrated in the area.
Harry certainly couldn't be sending him a letter. For one, at this time, Harry could not possibly have returned yet. The Durmstrang ship set sail after dinner and took five hours to reach the shore where the designated portkeys had been set to leave off. There was a one hour time difference between Durmstrang and Lord Voldemort's current location in Little Whinging. That meant it would be at least an hour before Harry reached the cottage.
Also, the letter was sealed with the Dark Mark. Apart from being ominous, it was also the seal he put on his personal correspondence. Frowning, Lord Voldemort pried the wax off and opened the envelope, dumping the contents on his desk. It was one sheet of parchment, folded thrice.
Hesitantly, he unfolded the page and set a pair of paperweights on opposite corners. His eyes immediately caught on the familiar, wide and loopy script and the signature, not a name but a little picture. It was a rook, a chess piece, topped off by a misshapen ink blob with a trailing line that Lord Voldemort knew was supposed to represent a large, black bird, despite the artist's lack of talent.
He had a letter from Augustus Rookwood—his old spy in the Unspeakables, Augustus Rookwood, who, Lord Voldemort was almost entirely certain, was rotting away in the depths of Azkaban.
He would have dismissed it outright as false if all of the evidence hadn't been pointing to some kind of ridiculous plot. Carefully, Lord Voldemort looked back to his personal mail owl and then at the broken Dark Mark and finally to the handwriting and the signature.
It was feasible that somebody had figured out how he sealed his letters—Lord Voldemort wouldn't exactly call it subtle. Forging a Dark Mark was easy; the shape was probably imprinted in everybody's minds, and Voldemort had never put a magical component into his seal that would help him verify its authenticity. Perhaps he ought to do that at the next opportunity.
Forging Augustus Rookwood's handwriting would also not have been difficult. All one needed was a sample of writing, and as Rookwood had gone to Hogwarts and had completed loads of pointless essays, it wasn't impossible that someone close to him could have got his hands on several. The unique signature was meant to be a secret, but anyone could have intercepted Rookwood's letters at some point during the war.
Stealing Lord Voldemort's owl was a bit of a stretch. Certainly, capturing the owl would not have been difficult while it was on a hunt, but how could anybody conceivably realize that it was Lord Voldemort's owl? Lord Voldemort had never told anybody its name—he didn't even know what it was supposed to be, but it had come with one at some point—and it looked just like any other common tawny owl. The only reason Lord Voldemort even recognized it was that he was its owner, which meant that he and the owl had had matching recognition charms placed on them at purchase. Nobody else should have been able to tell it apart from another owl.
And finally, there was the content of the letter.
"To the Dark Lord:
"The critical tool that aided my escape currently hangs from the neck of my former colleague, a man named Broderick Bode. Some time later, he will find himself bereft of everything he has and ever will have.
"As I write this letter, you are watching me, but you pay no mind to what I have written, for you know that it will suffice. You have already Seen it.
"Your Faithful Servant."
Clearly, if the letter was to be believed, Augustus Rookwood had escaped from Azkaban, using some item that was currently in the possession of an Unspeakable. Did that mean that Rookwood had foisted some piece of evidence onto a man he was planning to kill later, as had been detailed in the note?
But that did not make any sense. The entire letter was nonsensical, in fact. Lord Voldemort would have dismissed it for the ravings of a madman, had this cryptic form not been Rookwood's customary style. Any sufficiently clever person with time on his hands could easily figure out a letter's meaning, but Rookwood liked to keep it difficult for potential interceptors while the unfriendly potions he often soaked his parchments in did their work.
At that thought, Lord Voldemort brought out his wand and cast several more detection spells, but the letter came up clean.
He returned to the puzzle. Focusing on the second paragraph, he noted that Rookwood addressed him as if he were present at the drafting of the letter. The "S" in "Seen" was capitalized, as if to indicate the presence of some sort of Inner Eye or other divinatory power. Perhaps Rookwood referred to scrying?
But that was not possible, Lord Voldemort reminded himself. Rookwood must have written this letter some time ago for it to have reached his hands now. He certainly had not performed any kind of divination involving Rookwood lately, and Lord Voldemort did not have the natural power of the Sight. Scrying into the past was probably not relevant either, as Voldemort could see no reason why he would do such a thing. Anything Rookwood was doing at that moment could have simply gone in the letter, in lieu of a request for retroactive divination. Even an attached memory would have sufficed.
So Rookwood was implying that Voldemort would see him write the letter in the future; but that also seemed impossible. Lord Voldemort's eyes darted back to the first sentence—"hangs from the neck." It suddenly became obvious.
Lord Voldemort would, in short order, somehow get his hands on a Time Turner. Actually, the "somehow" was clear, as well. He would murder an Unspeakable named Broderick Bode and take the device from around his neck. All Senior Unspeakables were issued one.
How, exactly, he was supposed to find Broderick Bode was as of yet unclear. He had never heard of the man before, which was no surprise, as the identities of Unspeakables were usually kept secret from the general public because they researched sensitive topics. He could attempt to scry, but with the name given Lord Voldemort strongly suspected that there would be a middle name involved, one which he did not know of.
Unable to think of a suitable method, Lord Voldemort gave it up as a bad job and decided to go to bed. After all, if a Time Turner was involved, some intervention would eventually show up to make certain that the events he had already perceived ended up happening.
Several hours later, Lord Voldemort's eyes snapped open and he immediately recovered from his occluded stupor, having never actually fallen asleep. The first thing he saw was his own face, or rather, Harry Potter's face.
Logically, he assumed that his future self had come to tell him what to do. Still, it paid to be paranoid, and he knew that his future self (himself, after all) would understand, which was why his holly wand was now pointed at his other self's throat.
In short order, it was confirmed that the new arrival was his future self, and that he had not misinterpreted Rookwood's letter, unless the entire setup had been some kind of elaborate trap. How that was possible, given the level of knowledge that would have been required to set it up, was beyond him, and so Lord Voldemort chose to believe instead that the Time Turner business was the truth.
Broderick Bode would apparently be found at Charing Cross Road. What somebody would be doing there in the dead of night was questionable. Looking to get wasted at the Leaky Cauldron, perhaps, but most wizards would have taken the floo, especially as Bode was a Ministry worker and had free access to the public fireplaces in the atrium.
Lord Voldemort transfigured his usual transfiguration bases into appropriate clothing and equipment and flew out of the window. He had already settled on a knife; it was important that nobody identified who had killed the man once it was done by picking up wayward traces. Dark magic like the killing curse lingered, even if one got rid of the body.
Landing softly on a nearby roof, he ascertained that he was outside of the wards on Arabella's house and made to apparate. Then he remembered his appearance and quickly transfigured his hair so that it was shorter and a ginger colour before applying a small glamour to his eyes to darken them and pulling up his hood. He disapparated away silently.
This late at night, there was nobody at Diagon Alley's apparition point. Stepping away from the circle that had been cut into the ground to designate the opening in the wards, Lord Voldemort made his way briskly out of the shadow of Gringotts and into the moonlit alley. Just outside the Leaky Cauldron he encountered a pair of drunkards sprawled on the filthy cobblestones, but otherwise his passage was unremarked.
Inside, the air was clouded with noxious smoke from the ends of a dozen pipes and the late-night patrons were crowded around the bar, where a smiling blond witch served alcohol. At the corner table, a pair of wrinkled hags and a pallid man who was probably a vampire huddled intently over a newspaper. Beside them a tired wizard looked to be eating a late dinner.
Lord Voldemort made his way unobtrusively across the pub and slipped out into muggle London. He felt a mild sense of uninvited relief as he slipped out of the heavy wards that layered the entrance. A wave of his wand later and he was disillusioned, essentially invisible in dimness of night.
After at least five minutes had gone by, during which he had only seen muggle cars and no people, Lord Voldemort was wondering whether he ought to have asked his future self for a time estimate. Just as he began to have doubts, he heard the door to the Leaky Cauldron open and whirled around to see a wizard, the same one Voldemort had noticed before, exit the pub, looking around nervously. The man pulled out his wand and waved it. Suddenly, his eyes widened and he looked in Lord Voldemort's direction.
Wasting no time now that the man had probably cast homenum revelio, Lord Voldemort hit him in the forehead with a basic stunner before he could react. Unspeakable robes often had protective charms on them in case of explosive experimental accidents, but as the man's hood was down, his head made for a clear target. Of course, Lord Voldemort was uncertain yet whether this was Broderick Bode or not, though it was likely. No other wizards had come into Charing Cross Road so far.
It was still a mystery why the wizard had not flood away or apparated from the Diagon Alley apparition point instead, but that did not particularly concern Lord Voldemort. He quickly disillusioned the unconscious wizard and levitated him down the street until he found a sufficiently spacious and unoccupied back alley in which he could conduct his work. It would be sloppy of him to be noticed, and, alas, there did not yet exist a repelling spell that could reliably keep out all wizards, due to the fact that most wizards could sense large concentrations of activated magic.
Cancelling the disillusionment on the unconscious man, Lord Voldemort used his wand to pull down the collar of the man's robes. A golden chain glinted from around the wizard's neck, and Lord Voldemort reached down gingerly to grasp it and pull it out. From the chain hung a delicate metal disk encircling a tiny hourglass full of fine sand. As he tried to remove the Time Turner from the Unspeakable's neck, it grew hot in his hands and compelled him to drop it.
Chiding himself mentally for not checking for jinxes, Lord Voldemort did so now, waving his wand at the chain and casting a general detection spell. He knew better than to try something like that with the Time Turner itself; the feedback would probably confound him. He learned that the ownership jinx he had just triggered was the only magic on the chain. It prevented thieves from removing items from the caster's person.
Unfortunately for the Unspeakable—Bode, Lord Voldemort supposed, if Rookwood's letter was to be trusted—the ownership jinx only worked for living humans. Removing the transfigured knife from his pocket, Lord Voldemort levitated it with his wand, aimed, and then slashed downwards, plunging the blade into Bode's throat before he ripped it out again and transfigured the entire affair into a clean wooden block, which he slipped back into his pocket.
Bode's eyes snapped open in uncomprehending shock, the effects of the stunner broken by pain, and his arms twitched weakly. Quietly, he gurgled, as blood spurted from the very messy and fatal wound. Lord Voldemort watched impatiently as Bode's mouth opened and closed, before the consciousness finally faded from his eyes, which ceased to look about and only gazed unseeingly up at the sky.
Raising his wand, Lord Voldemort pulled Bode into a sitting position with a spell usually reserved for animating marionettes. The head lolled grotesquely, half-severed. Grimacing, Voldemort reached down and grasped a clean portion of the Time Turner's chain and pulled it free from the body, which he allowed to crumple down again. The top half of the golden chain was red and sticky with blood. He wasted no time in casting tergeo, siphoning it off into the air, before he slipped the Time Turner around his own neck.
Lord Voldemort turned back to Bode and remembered to summon the man's wand to him. He checked for tracking charms and found none, so he slipped it into his other pocket. It might be of use later.
Wasting no more time, Lord Voldemort vanished Bode's body. Vanishing was a very tricky bit of a transfiguration, especially for large or magical objects, but was very effective for hiding bodies. Unlike ordinary transfiguration, completed vanishing could not be reversed.
Vanished objects became "nothing," that was, they returned to "everything." Perhaps the vanishing spell could be better described as a disintegration spell, in that it broke the target into the smallest particles until its identity disappeared, though all of this occurred in void-space so that, to the caster, it did seem as if the target had simply gone away. One could see this effect easily when vanishing living beings unsuccessfully; part of the creature might be stuck inside void space, while the rest of it would continue to move about.
Casting the human revealing spell in an imitation of the late Bode's previous actions, Lord Voldemort ascertained that there was no one nearby before he took the little hourglass in hand and, decisively, gave it twelve, swift turns, until it would turn no more, hoping that it was a standard twelve-hour Turner. Then he let go, and the world flashed around him, giving the impression of receding into the distance. He closed his eyes so as not to get dizzy.
When the movement about him stopped, he found himself standing at the gates of Hogwarts. Apparently, the Time Turner deposited a person near the place they had been at the desired time. It was an interesting fact to know. Tucking the pendant under his robes, Lord Voldemort walked a short distance down the path to Hogsmeade before he apparated away to somewhere in the North Sea.
This sort of location was a rather annoying description for one's apparition destination, but there was nothing for it, seeing as Azkaban Fortress was unplottable. It also had anti-disapparition and anti-apparition jinxes layered all over it in the form of apparition wards, which meant that Lord Voldemort had had to come out in a very awkward place, several kilometres from the fortress and hanging in midair.
He began to drop as soon as he materialized in the air, and had to very quickly pick himself back up by concentrating on keeping himself still in his surroundings. Unsupported flight had been an excellent invention of his. It required a bit too much willpower and imagination for the ordinary wizard, but for somebody of Lord Voldemort's calibre it did not occupy too much of his mental capacity.
Turning his head about slowly in the air, Lord Voldemort managed to spot the ugly gray smudge in the distance that was the main tower of Azkaban. Surveying the sea carefully, he began to move through the air, gaining speed as his confidence increased.
Lord Voldemort was going to break someone—presumably several someones, in fact—out of Azkaban. This would be an unprecedented sort of achievement, but Lord Voldemort did not fear. After all, Augustus Rookwood had sent him a letter from outside of Azkaban, which meant that he was already destined to succeed.
The idea of "destiny" made Lord Voldemort rather uncomfortable, but he knew that the existence of time loops and Time Turners did not mean that the future was set in stone. All it meant was that anything he perceived was bound to happen so that he perceived it the way he did—an utterly redundant point when it came to the present, but less so when the future was involved.
This matter of perception was why Lord Voldemort hated divination, and hated prophecies. Of course prophecies weren't nearly as powerful as Time Turners, but that was only because they usually did not specify precise times. If a prophecy turned out completely untrue, it could easily be dismissed as twaddle spouted by a drunken idiot, whereas the probability of future events as delivered by a Time Turner being a hoax was significantly smaller.
At any rate, all of this theory pointed to a high likelihood of Lord Voldemort succeeding in breaking Augustus Rookwood out of prison without any kind of plan.
By the time Lord Voldemort reached the edge of the chunk of jagged rock that called itself AzkabanIsland, he was soaked with sea foam and freezing. A quick barrage of drying and warming charms solved that problem, and he continued on, electing to walk the rest of the way to the grim stone construct that towered above him.
Periodically, he checked for wards he might have tripped, but so far he had only discovered spells that prevented all manner of magical transport, as well as a spell that detected people leaving the island, but nothing for anybody arriving. Lord Voldemort supposed that the Ministry thought that nobody in his right mind would willingly go here.
The Ministry was mostly right, Voldemort acknowledged. Azkaban was hardly a great place to take a holiday. Nonetheless, he was here now, and he was certain he would be able to bypass the measly exit alarm when it came time to do so.
There were four large holes cut up the front of the stone structure, but Lord Voldemort was not particularly worried about somebody spotting him, seeing as he was approaching from the side, and once he got close enough to get inside, he would be out of the view of anybody looking down. At any rate, he doubted there was even a human presence watching over Azkaban. The Ministry had always left guard duty up to the dementors, and Lord Voldemort did not think that that policy had changed recently.
Fortunately for Lord Voldemort, dementors were natural allies of dark wizards. It helped that Lord Voldemort had made an extensive study of dementors during the war, when he had approached them for assistance.
It was erroneous to assume that dementors hungered for human souls. Dementors fed on magic through happy emotions, which meant that it was nearly impossible to have a pleasant thought while in their company, as it would be sucked up the moment it tried to surface. People who had been exposed to dementors for long periods of time grew depressed, no longer having happy thoughts at all, as their minds formed a dismal defence mechanism to prevent dementors from draining their magic further.
A soul, on the other hand, gave a dementor power and made it a king among other dementors. There could not be too many dementors with souls at a time, or, like human kings were wont to do, they would go to war until only one was left victorious. Since dementors were soulless creatures, the only place they might get one was from a human. Dementors weren't much interested in mutilated souls, so the darker a wizard was, the safer he was as well.
The upshot of it all was that Lord Voldemort had next to nothing to fear from the dementors of Azkaban Fortress. Occlumency would protect him from the worst effects; though it would not stop his happy thoughts from being drained, it would also stop him from becoming unduly miserable.
After walking around three-quarters of the fortress, Lord Voldemort finally found the entrance. It was a wooden door, and, as was typical of Ministry incompetence, it lacked wards entirely and wasn't even locked. Lord Voldemort pulled it open with distaste and entered.
As soon as he did so, a pair of dementor guards slid through the wide bars of the nearby hallway and floated up to him. Lord Voldemort felt the temperature drop and fear threaten to claim his mind, but retreated behind the dull concentration of his occlumency, staving off the invasive magic. He imagined reaching his presence out, and, immediately, both dementors stopped in their tracks, drawing back their own magic.
Since dementors had no eyes, making threatening gestures at them was an exercise in futility. Instead, one had to show them what they actually could sense, namely, magic. When a dementor breathed in, it tasted the magic in the air, and it knew to be cautious of aggressive sources.
The average dementor was about as intelligent as a dog, but all dementors who were part of the same "fold" were connected to their leader, and more loosely to all other dementors. Most of the time, the leader, too, was not much cleverer, but in the case of Azkaban, all of the folds likely had at least one dementor who had consumed a human soul and all of its contents. Seeing as Azkaban held English prisoners, that meant that these dementors also understood English.
Thus, Lord Voldemort turned to the dementor on the right and said, plainly, "I'm looking for your leader." He then stretched his magic a little more outside of his body, in case the dementors got the idea of attempting to overpower him anyway.
Fortunately, they seemed to understand, and, after taking another rattling breath in his direction, the dementor on the left floated off, and Lord Voldemort got the idea that he was meant to follow. The other dementor trailed closely behind him, but Voldemort did not let it bother him much.
The prison layout was not extremely complicated. As the fortress was square, it turned out that the cells were also arranged in square formations, with narrow corridors in between for the dementors to move about in. In the centre of the tower was a stairwell with a very square and very steep staircase. The prison was lit by dim light enchantments at intervals, likely for the benefit of any human guards who came around.
The dementor behind Lord Voldemort did not follow him up to the first floor. Lord Voldemort gathered that it was responsible for patrolling the ground floor, which held the low-security inmates, probably mostly thieves and two-bit dark wizards.
As they ascended, Lord Voldemort quickly discovered that the density of dementors grew exponentially higher the farther they went. It was easy to tell, because the oppressive coldness began taking a more noticeable toll on his mind, despite the occlumency, and he began to feel despondent to the point of wanting to do absolutely nothing. But he persevered, because his rationality, which came hand-in-hand with occlumency, told him to go on. At last, they exited the stairwell at the third floor landing, and the dementor in front of him led him through a veritable swarm of dementors and into a small alcove which was full of dark mist.
Lord Voldemort made sure that he kept his magic reaching out to repel the advances of the nearby dementors; he wasn't certain his occlumency would be able to stand up to the direct effect of dementor magic.
Looking around carefully, Lord Voldemort managed to pick out the fold leader from the rest, mainly because its hood was down in a gesture of trust—it was possible to kill a dementor whose face was exposed by spearing it through its head, whereas the hood would defend from such an attack. This dementor's face was very smooth, and its lipless mouth less like a gaping hole and more like something that had been gently opened in a shadow of a smile.
Voldemort waited for it to approach before he pulled out the wooden cube that had been—or would be—the weapon that had murdered Bode. He applied the thought-bubble charm on it and handed it over to the lead dementor. The thought-bubble charm was meant to allow mute people to speak to others, but it worked just as well for dementors, who had no human vocal cords.
"Lord Voldemort," greeted the dementor in the toneless voice characteristic of the charm. "We thought you were dead. We must have been misinformed."
Lord Voldemort was unsurprised that the dementors had recognized him. It was not as if he could change the feel of his magic. Also, he was certain he was the only one who had thought of using the thought-bubble charm to communicate with them.
"Indeed, Nathanial," Lord Voldemort replied. This particular dementor had, some decades ago, consumed the soul of Nathanial Urquhart, a rather unsuccessful experimental potioneer who had managed to kill off a dozen human test subjects before the aurors had caught up with him. As dementors did not practice giving names to each other, the fold leaders Voldemort had met had taken to going by the names of the souls they had consumed, though usually the name seemed to apply just as well to the entire fold.
"Oh!" the dementors shuddered as a wave, apparently amused. "We go by Irma now. Is it not a nice name? Our last acquisition."
Suddenly, Lord Voldemort felt the depressing pressure on his mind recede, and, recognizing the dementors' gesture of diplomacy as they reigned in their magic, drew back his own as well.
"Irma, then. I was not aware of anyone sentenced to death recently," Lord Voldemort replied. He had dealt with several dementor folds before, and they had all had different personalities. This one especially liked to gossip.
"Lord Voldemort, you won't tell, will you?" Irma said teasingly, though Voldemort had the idea that the dementors had illegally Kissed whoever this Irma was, a rather serious trespass against the Ministry.
Irma continued, "We knew she was going to die so we collected her. Irma Crouch. Perhaps you know her son."
Lord Voldemort froze, and the shudder of dementor laughter that passed around him informed him that Irma was quite aware that he knew her son. As far as he knew, however, Barty Crouch Jr. had died several years ago in Azkaban. And these dementors were claiming to have Kissed his mother, who by all rights should never have set foot on the island. Irma could not possibly be lying; it would have no conceivable reason to do so.
"I will admit that I find myself perplexed," Lord Voldemort said. Irma, the fold leader, drifted closer to him.
"She came here to die," Irma explained, "so that her son could live. We were pleased by it. Husband and son left the island, and we collected Irma."
What the dementor was implying, then, was that Barty Crouch Jr., one of Lord Voldemort's most competent and loyal followers, was still alive. He did not bother asking the dementor whether it knew where he was, however; it only had Irma Crouch's memories, after all.
Instead, he merely said, "Thank you for this information."
"We are pleased to assist. The Ministry of Magic has forbidden us from increasing, but Thaddeus has done so anyway. In retaliation, the Ministry of Magic has culled Irma's numbers, and we are most displeased," Irma explained.
"I see," Lord Voldemort said, snorting at this new example of Ministry incompetence. Ministry workers were afraid to get within twenty feet of dementors and always had patroni around whenever dealing with them, which meant that they had trouble distinguishing one fold of dementors from another and often made the extremely offensive mistake of getting different folds confused.
While the Ministry was aware that dementors understood English, they had never tried to have the dementors communicate in return. It was easy to erroneously assume that dementors could not communicate; it was true that they did not appear to ever speak to each other, but that was because they could simply share thoughts. As they had no language, the best way for them to speak was using a human language and some creative magic.
During the war, the dementors had sided easily with Lord Voldemort because he allowed them to breed as much as they liked and generally left them to their own devices, which was all they really wanted, as he had discovered from speaking to them. Dementors did not have particularly great aspirations, but they did grow restless when subjected to restrictions.
Lord Voldemort noticed that the mass of dementors was shifting slightly. Irma drifted in front of him.
"Lord Voldemort is here for his servants, is he not? They are this way," it said, clearly leading the way. Voldemort followed quickly.
"Indeed. Astute as ever, Irma," he replied. The dementors laughed again.
"We are a fold with great experience. Lord Voldemort knows that. The only reasons he would come to Azkaban are to speak with us and to retrieve his friends," Irma said.
Suddenly, Lord Voldemort's somewhat pleasant mood disappeared and the world around him grew frigid. Images of a drunken Mrs. Cole from his childhood flashed across his mind, interspersed with vague nightmares of Dumbledore at last finding evidence to have him destroyed and imaginations of nothingness—death. Angrily, Lord Voldemort pulled himself together, blanking his mind and suffusing it with magic.
Anger was helpful; it was an emotion that was certainly not happy, and yet it helped one centre oneself so that the seeping depression of a dementor's aura did not become overwhelming.
The reason for the sudden influx of dementor magic was quickly made clear as a group of dementors moved against the ring that had been formed by Irma.
"Thaddeus?" Lord Voldemort presumed. A moment later, a very pale, almost white dementor floated up to the edge of Irma's fold. After a few awkward seconds, Irma passed the cube with the thought-bubble charm on it to the other dementor.
"Lord Voldemort," Thaddeus acknowledged, thin fingers curling around the cube, "I am at your service."
Unlike Irma, Thaddeus preferred to speak in the singular, and was arguably much more human-like. It had had a very long life and had consumed a large number of souls to continue prolonging its existence. Very strangely for a dementor, Thaddeus did not always travel with its fold, instead opting to operate alone sometimes, though it did have a sizeable number of compatriots, as was clear at the moment.
It was also clear that Irma and Thaddeus were still wary of each other, likely because of the grievous mistake the Ministry had made regarding their folds. Dementors did not feel more than fleeting emotions, at least, in the way humans felt them. Instead, they calculated losses and gains and acted in that respect, aided slightly by borrowed emotions from humans. It made them terribly indecisive when it came to difficult decisions. Lord Voldemort supposed Thaddeus was still waiting to see if Irma wanted some kind of compensation for the injustice that had been done.
"I am looking for my servants, in particular August Rookwood," Lord Voldemort informed Thaddeus.
"I know," Thaddeus replied, "I will take you from here. They are in my section, after all."
It was difficult to read expressions in dementors, but Lord Voldemort still got the idea that Irma was agitated, and supposed that he had missed some bit of mental communication between the dementors. Nonetheless, Irma quickly turned away, leaving Voldemort in Thaddeus's care.
Lord Voldemort and Thaddeus moved silently, side by side up the stairs.
"You have a Time Turner," was the first thing Thaddeus said to Voldemort.
Surprised, Lord Voldemort nonetheless replied, "Yes."
"Have you ever wondered how a Time Turner works?" Thaddeus asked. Before Lord Voldemort could answer, it continued, "Not how it turns time, but how it can give you the gift of information. Information out of nothing."
Information out of nothing; that was exactly what Lord Voldemort had got. Suddenly, he had received spontaneous knowledge and a spontaneous plan, all without ever doing anything.
"It seems strange, yes," Voldemort said, having not, in fact, thought about it before.
"It's a mystery," Thaddeus agreed. It then quickly inquired, "Do you know where dementors come from?"
"Of course," Lord Voldemort replied, "You come from dark emotions."
"Yes, dark emotions," repeated Thaddeus. "It is another mystery how dark emotions could have created living things like us. The mystery of life. I remember one life spent studying it with nothing to show for it but an execution for going too far. Thaddeus Throckmorton. I tell you that name because I want to remember it."
"I see," Voldemort said, uncertain how to respond.
They continued up two more flights of stairs in silence. Then, Thaddeus said, suddenly, "Do you think a dementor can become human?"
Lord Voldemort's first instinct was to laugh at the absurdity of the notion, but he paused to think. Why would it be impossible? A dementor was already alive. A human, too, was a living thing. It was still unknown how life and magic interacted. "I don't know," he finally said.
"Good answer," Thaddeus replied. "What am I, anyway? I think about it a lot. I started out like any other dementor, but then I obtained more and more human memories and lives. I would say I'm nine-tenths human. I know how to act like a human. But it isn't natural, is it?"
Lord Voldemort thought for a moment. "Does it matter?"
"Perhaps one day, humans will understand all of the mysteries," Thaddeus said. "Here we are. High-security."
There were no dementors in the vicinity, other than the fold leader Thaddeus, and Lord Voldemort supposed they had all left so as not to impede his movement.
"Thank you," he told Thaddeus.
"It is risky," it replied. "The Ministry may take notice if they all disappear."
"Who buries the dead?" Lord Voldemort asked.
"We do," Thaddeus replied. "You are suggesting we fake their deaths, then? That may also be suspicious."
"When was the last time there was an inspection?" Voldemort pressed.
"I understand," Thaddeus said. "It has been about two months. I can arrange the appropriate death dates."
Lord Voldemort nodded, and then remembered that Thaddeus had no eyes. "Good. I will take Rookwood, Dolohov, and Rabastan with me and come for the rest later." These were, incidentally, the only three who were awake and looked remotely sane.
"That is agreeable. We will also vacate this floor. There are plenty of prisoners below," Thaddeus said.
Recognizing the overture for what it was, Lord Voldemort replied, "Thank you. I will do my best to overthrow the Ministry quickly."
Thaddeus gave a shuddering rasp of laughter. "You make refreshing company, Lord Voldemort. You must visit again soon."
"I will," Lord Voldemort promised. He moved to the appropriate cells and partially vanished the bars, sending them into void-space but not destroying them, before extracting the selected Death Eaters.
"My loyal followers. I have come for you," he declared.
"Who…" whispered Rabastan Lestrange.
"Pay no mind to the disguise," Lord Voldemort said impatiently.
"My Lord?" Rabastan choked out.
"Indeed. Surely you did not believe the rumours of my demise?" Lord Voldemort murmured, though he knew for a fact that Rabastan had. It was no matter.
"Of course not, my Lord," Rabastan quickly denied, as expected. Then he deflated slightly, as if exhausted by the effort of speaking. He likely was.
Still, after some coaxing and a few cheering charms, which, although overpowered, had little effect, all three Death Eaters were able to stand, and Lord Voldemort led them down the stairs carefully after he replaced the prison bars. Thaddeus had returned the cube to him and elected not to follow.
Lord Voldemort took the same route out of the fortress as he had going in, which was to say, he walked out the front door with the three prisoners and edged around the perimeter before making his way down the rocky beach.
Security, he reflected, was actually rather terrible, though he supposed the help of the dementors did count for quite a bit. The reason nobody had escaped from Azkaban before was probably because escape was the operative word—the people imprisoned there did not need bars or the sea to keep them in, for they were trapped inside their own minds. On the other hand, breaking prisoners out was a much simpler task.
At the shore, Lord Voldemort picked a large rock at random and transfigured it into a boat, which he spelled with the impervius charm. He then assisted the three Death Eaters inside before he cast a movement spell that took them quickly away from Azkaban.
Near the edge of the wards, Lord Voldemort began casting until he managed to put a hole in the exit alarm. Satisfied, he steered the boat through and into the open sea, which remained fairly calm and glittered in the afternoon sunlight.
"Rookwood, take off your shirt," Voldemort told the man. Why had he involved Rookwood in the first place? As a Death Eater, he had been most valuable because of his position in the Department of Mysteries. Now that he was a convict, Voldemort was uncertain how he might be useful, except in sending the letter as Lord Voldemort had read it.
Weakly, Rookwood struggled with his garment, but eventually managed to pull it over his head.
Lord Voldemort took it and touched his wand to it. "Portus," he said, linking the new portkey to his cottage. Contrary to common belief, a portkey could not be created to go just anywhere. In order for a location to be a valid portkey destination, it needed to have enchantments in place, usually on some present object called a "portstone," whether or not it was actually a stone, which would then be tied to a certain person's wand so that that person would be able to make portkeys there. One wand could therefore only make portkeys to one location.
Theoretically, it was possible for somebody with enough motivation and imagination to simply enchant an item to transport somebody to some desired location, but nobody had ever successfully managed it without any serious mishaps, such as missing body parts that had really been torn off, and not just splinched.
Therefore, the Ministry felt that it regulated portkeys quite well by issuing permits for owning portstones and requiring experts to connect Ministry portstones to approved wands.
Unfortunately for the Ministry, Lord Voldemort was a genius. After having analysed the Malfoy Manor portstone thoroughly, he had simply recreated all of the spells and made his own stone, which he had then connected to his wand. Originally, he had kept the portstone in his pocket so that he could enchant their Dark Marks to take them directly to his location, but now he left it in his cottage.
He held out Rookwood's filthy prison garment and the three prisoners each took a handful of fabric. Then Lord Voldemort tapped it with his wand. Suddenly, he felt as if he was thrown through the air, dragged along by a hook behind his navel. They collapsed in an ungainly heap in the sitting room, whereupon Lord Voldemort quickly extricated himself and took a step back.
"You need to bathe," he told the Death Eaters. "The bathroom is in that hall, on the left. Rookwood, stay behind."
Rabastan Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov hobbled out of the room while Rookwood arranged himself into a kneeling position.
"You may rise, and sit there," Lord Voldemort said. Rookwood scrambled to his feet and then slumped onto the nearby couch. Voldemort took a seat on the opposite armchair.
He looked at the gaunt, shrivelled form of Rookwood and asked, "What do you know about Time Turners?"
To Lord Voldemort's surprise, Rookwood did not begin explaining the function of a Time Turner. Instead, he said, with admiration, "It worked." Then, as if coming to his senses, he went on, "My Lord, I don't mean to presume, but I must ask; did you come for us," he paused, coughing wetly, "because of Time Turner information?"
Lord Voldemort scrutinized the former Unspeakable's sickly form. "Time Turner information. If you refer to knowledge granted to me by my future self, information with no origin, then yes."
"That's right. Why did you come for me, my Lord? I am useless to you," Rookwood rasped. Lord Voldemort began to wonder whether Rookwood did know something in particular about the situation.
"You delivered this… Time Turner information," he informed the man.
"So it did work. My Lord, I imagined you would be able to do anything if you had a Time Turner, using its information. Even the impossible. You have broken us out of Azkaban!" Rookwood said exultantly, ending in a fit of coughing.
"Clarify," Lord Voldemort ordered.
Rookwood looked somewhat uncomfortable, but he continued, "I imagined you would come for us, your faithful servants, if only you believed there would be no risk. If it had already succeeded, there could not be any risk, my Lord."
Lord Voldemort narrowed his eyes. "What you mean to say is that the Time Turner information originated from you," he said. But there was no way Rookwood had sent a letter from Azkaban with such an elaborate ruse—of course he hadn't. They were still in the past, and Rookwood would be sending the letter soon. It was all real. The reality, then, was worse; Rookwood had imagined the information, and it had somehow become true.
"Can any wizard do this? Imagine information into reality?" Lord Voldemort demanded. Rookwood shook his head.
"No, my Lord. I do not believe so. Only those who have come in close contact with a Time Turner or," he was seized by another fit of coughing, "or the sand within."
This calmed Lord Voldemort slightly. "Go on. What other pertinent information is there about Time Turners?"
"That's all, my Lord. The rest is confirmed knowledge. I could copy the Time Turner use manual for you if I had a wand," Rookwood said. Lord Voldemort supposed that something like that would be helpful. He took Bode's wand out of his pocket and handed it to Rookwood, who took it. Some recognition lit up in his eyes.
"This belongs to Broderick Bode, it does," he murmured. Lord Voldemort conjured a piece of parchment for Rookwood, who tapped Bode's wand to it. Nothing happened. Frowning, Rookwood mumbled under his breath a few more times before finally, words blossomed on the page.
Lord Voldemort took the parchment and the wand and nodded. "You are dismissed. Take a bath and find somewhere to rest," he told Rookwood.
The man gave an awkward bow and murmured, "my Lord," before he pushed himself to his feet and limped out of the room.
Rookwood, at least, seemed mostly sane. All people dealt differently with dementors. Occlumency training helped, but long-term exposure would still erode magical power. It would take at least some months of recovery before any of the rescued Death Eaters were fit to cast spells regularly. Lord Voldemort did not doubt that the copying spell Rookwood had cast on the parchment had taxed him greatly.
Skipping over the section about rules and regulations, Lord Voldemort read over the warnings and limitations of a Time Turner. Apparently, one was advised not to let one's future self be seen directly, as it had been known to cause insanity and even unfortunate situations such as being killed by one's past self. Lord Voldemort snorted at this recommendation; it was too late for that now, at any rate.
The standard-issue Unspeakable Time Turners had twelve hours worth of sand in them, which made for twelve turns, as Lord Voldemort had assumed upon obtaining his. Each turn was one hour, and it was not possible to activate the Time Turner with fractional turns. The device would remain active for the duration of time spent in the past, and it was not possible to use it again while it was still active, which meant that going back three hours and then attempting to add two more would not work. Using another Time Turner while already in a time loop was also not advised, as there was a high chance of twisting oneself up in void-time, similar to splinching oneself in void-space during apparition, but irreversible.
Additionally, the sand required real time to pass to recharge, which meant that if he used all of the time on the Time Turner, he would have to wait at least one more real hour in order to turn it again, or twelve hours to fully recharge it. Lord Voldemort realized suddenly that this meant that he would not be able to use the Time Turner again for nearly another whole day. But in just a few more hours, he would arrive again at Lily Potter's home to explain to his past self what to do.
That was ridiculous, however, because he needed to deal with the Death Eaters he had just retrieved from Azkaban. Leaving them alone in the house for more than a day was out of the question, especially when he had not yet ascertained how sane they were and whether a stint in Azkaban had eroded any of their loyalty to him.
Lord Voldemort had expected to be able to use the Time Turner again to send another version of himself to stay with Lily Potter, but clearly that would no longer be an option. Where would he get a substitute Harry Potter?
Suddenly, an obvious idea occurred to him. The real Harry Potter would be home in a few hours. Perhaps he would do, with some coaching. Lily Potter wasn't Dumbledore, after all, and it would not be too risky.
Actually, Lord Voldemort amended, the real Harry Potter would most certainly do just fine. After all, had it not already happened that a Harry Potter had gone to Lily Potter's home and given Lord Voldemort instructions regarding the location of Broderick Bode? He'd naturally assumed that it had been himself, but what if it had not been?
A plan began to coalesce in Lord Voldemort's mind.
A/N: Thanks to everybody who read and reviewed!
I hope nobody is too offended by the liberties I took with dementors. I figured they weren't super intelligent, since they acted like animals when it came to swarming the Quidditch pitch and they're classified as non-beings. However, they also must have some way of associating with humans on an intelligent level, otherwise they couldn't have meaningfully betrayed the Ministry to ally with Voldemort. They need to be able to understand complex human ideas in order to make negotiations. Also, it is stated that dementors feed on happy emotions, not that they need human souls to survive or that souls are better than emotions. If they did, they would be better off going on a soul-sucking rampage. After all, not many wizards and witches have the ability to cast a patronus charm. So I had to figure out why they have the ability to suck out souls, and what it's for.
On the subject of Time Turner information: In PoA Harry gave himself Time Turner information in the form of the knowledge that his patronus was a stag (he cast it earlier in the book but didn't see what form it takes at that time). Even though he thought he was his father, by the time he actually needed to cast it he realized that it was himself. So he already expected to see his patronus, a stag, come out succesfully. That information came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell.