Disclaimers: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter universe and no money is being made from this story.

Getting Back to Azkaban

A/N # 1: Obviously I write AU. If you want canon turn back now because you are going to be severely disappointed.

Chapter 21: Get the Party Started

For the first time since the Prison was built there were no dementors drifting though the halls or congregating in the hive room. The walls were actually starting to feel warmer. It was not a feeling of 'wrongness', but a feeling more of 'rightness' about the place. When Salazar had originally cursed the ladies as soul sucking old hags he had been speaking metaphorically; it had been the Ministry of Magic that caused the dementors to actually suck a person's soul from their body.

The guards who worked there looked around and never noticed the filth and abject poverty of the place. None of them liked being there although they were paid extra hazard pay for working around the dementors. They all conveniently forgot that Azkaban Prison was supposed to be maintained to a certain standard and it had been part of their duties to maintain the facility. Cleanliness, like the dining facility program, had fallen away from the intended target over the years and the money to keep up programs had found its way into several pockets not designated as part of the 'intended recipients'.

The guards, used to sitting on their arses when they were not doing the bare minimum, reckoned that they might as well wait until shift change before going up to the castle to inform the new Duke that there was a problem. Or, failing that, maybe the shift after theirs could tell him. It really was not their job to worry about it so long as the prisoners did not escape. What they did not realize was that as soon as the dementors left the building Harry had directed the Overseer to send his staff and the local aurors into the prison to document the condition of the place.

The Fact Finding Commission was to make a full report on the facilities, personnel, and all the prisoners. The first step in proving that Azkaban Prison needed to be demolished was to prove that the Ministry of Magic had violated the treaty with Azkaban Island. The first violation they found was the Warden sleeping on the job, his sleeping was also the least important of the violations.

They let him to sleep while they completely ransacked the whole office. When they finished there they went on to investigate and inventory the rest of the prison. They were not stopped, challenged, or acknowledged by the prison guards at any time as they made their way through the prison. It might as well have been empty for all the protection the guards were providing.

The Fact Finding Commission returned to the castle late that evening and was able to brief Harry about most of the violations before everyone retired to bed. The fact that the dementors had disappeared from Azkaban Prison was not actually mentioned to Minister Fudge until some days later when he was hand delivered a large package by Messers Remus Lupin and Vernon Dursley. It was their last stop before heading back to the island.

Remus had a grand time showing Vernon around the magical community. They had owled off all the invitations for the garden party, went shopping to procure several items deemed necessary for the ladies of Azkaban in order to bring them up to standard and generally had fun. They also dined out a few times while Vernon worked out a contract with Grunnings for Gringotts Bank and London Warren for drilling equipment.

Vernon also hand delivered an invitation to Grimtooth and the rest of Harry's goblin family to spend a few days on the island before dropping the Azkaban Prison Violations package off with Fudge's secretary.

Percy waited to open the package until after Remus and Vernon left and immediately regretted that he had not let them deliver the package themselves. Fudge was going to do his usual bit of overreacting and would probably make the situation worse than it already was. From the list of violations he was holding, labeling the situation as 'bad' was glossing things over.

Harry Potter, Duke of Azkaban, also wanted a reckoning for why prison guards were allowed to enter Azkaban Castle and give orders to the house elves. Percy shuddered and gulped a few times before managing to compose himself enough to tap on the door. Fudge would not go docilely.

Back on Azkaban Island things were going along swimmingly. Marge and Petunia had the ladies sorted in no time. Petunia, as the mother of the current Duke was the senior ranking Lady of the castle. Marge as her Lady-in-waiting would be next in line. The other ladies decided to carry on with the same pecking order they had as dementors.

All thirty-two women who had been changed back into humans had been wives of a Duke of Azkaban and all of them had spent at least eight hundred years working through exactly what it was they had done wrong to end up in such dire straits. Over that period of time they had all learned a few lessons regarding dignity, humility, integrity… They had also done some serious growing up mentally.

It was now time for the lot of them to put their new ideology into practice. They had all agreed to attend the functions planned for the garden party: there would be picnics, dance lessons, at least one hunt complete with horses, hounds, and fox.

None of the ladies were under the impression that they were once again safe and sound with a clean bill of health and the wealth to do what they wanted. The whole family had sat down with each lady individually and had a discussion on what she intended to do with her life now that she had it back. Surprisingly, most of the ladies intended to marry and produce as many children as they could.

Harry and Draco were the ones to figure out why the ex-dementors were so adamant that they wanted marriage and a family. None of the ladies who regained their forms had stolen a person's soul, and they theorized that the women had recognized the disastrous effects stealing memories and souls were having on the others.

There had been so many shocks to the system by the time the thirty-two ladies had been interviewed that the only thing that everyone could agree on was that life was going to be very interesting for everyone involved for quite some time. Surprisingly, all thirty-two were intelligent, articulate ladies; most of them were just so young… They gave a haunting new meaning to Shakespeare's line in Romeo and Juliet when he wrote, "Girls younger than she often marry and become happy mothers. 15 20 25, CAPULET. And too soon marred are those so early made."

The first shock had been dealing with girls as young as fourteen when they became dementors. The second shock had been dealing with the first two girls interviewed- The sixteen year old identical twins, Elora and Freida Potter.

Both of the women Dudley had escorted back to the castle from the prison announced that they wanted to marry him at the earliest convenience if Lady Petunia would grant them their freedom. Further discussion involved learning that the girls were identical twins and they were full blood sisters to the original Geoffrey Potter who married Goldie Gryffindor, the only daughter of Godric Gryffindor.

The next bit of excitement had been Gertrude Ravenclaw, a black haired, golden-eyed beauty who announced that since she was the ripe old age of twenty-four that she would require an older bride-groom and would petition her liege for the hand of his bondman, Remus Lupin, since he was a werewolf like her. She even smirked at Remus as she announced that her sister, Rowena, had left her a sizable fortune along with a small manor house that was under stasis charms and protection wards…

With the futures of the first three ladies settled to the satisfaction of the entire congress, the week was bound to be great fun. The garden party was officially begun with the arrival of Lady Longbottom and her ward, Neville, just after lunch the afternoon of the twenty-sixth. The party would end the afternoon of the 2nd of September, but Marge insisted that it would not be a complete fiasco since the 1st of September was a Friday and everyone would have been on the train all day anyway.

From that point forward the floo room was kept busy as ladies and gentlemen appeared and were either escorted to rooms or were dumped unceremoniously into a cesspool that had mysteriously appeared in the middle of Diagon Alley.