The force of the waves threw him against the rocks battering his already bruised side. Harry shut his eyes at the pain and scratched and clawed at boulders dragging himself up slippery granite.
He felled several times and once plunged right back into the freezing depths of the North Sea. When he finally heaved himself onto the island he lay twisted and contorted on the rocks panting in relief. The surgical scar in his side throbbed painfully.
The smell hit him first, that putrid rotting stench of dementors that hung in the air and choked his throat. It could have only been made worse by a hundred prisoners locked up in their own filth.
A familiar coldness drifted over Harry as he pulled himself over the wet rocks and onto snow blanketed earth.
"Expecto Patronum" Harry gasped. A bright silver stag glided elegantly from the tip of his wand and proceeded to stand loyally by his prostrate side.
"Just...just a moment" Harry panted catching his breath and waiting for some strength to return to his limbs. He lay on the soft snow and stared up at the empty black sky. Even the stars and moon had hidden from the dementors.
His patronus had lit up the surrounding area in a swathe of ethereal silver light and Harry craned his neck looking around. He was in a graveyard.
The crumbling stones were not engraved and had been placed in the ground at awkward unaligned angles. Harry wondered if anyone had ever visited these graves, he wondered who dug them or if a dementor could even hold a spade. He thought morbidly of the centuries of dead prisoners who had died in misery and lay beneath him unmourned and forgotten.
Harry looked in the other direction and saw the looming spectre of the prison itself. Azkaban rose out of the rocks as a tall foreboding castle on the other side of the island. That was where Ron was.
Harry summoned all his strength and pushed himself to his knees before standing up.
He took a cursory glance around him. No dementors…yet.
"Come on" Harry whispered to his stag and cautiously they approached the prison.
oOoOoOo
"Ron!" Hermione cried in shock and dropped to her knees an instant. The poor enchantments that had disguised him in The Evening Prophet had worn off and he lay there pale, freckled, red haired and...Ron.
"Oh wake up" Hermione urged him, shaking his shoulders.
His eyes were closed and he was breathing labouredly as though every gulp of air was a struggle.
"Ron wake up!" Hermione ordered him looking around nervously. They were no doubt in Azkaban; she could feel the chill of the dementors and hear the crashing of waves below. She pointed her wand at her friend "Ennervate."
Ron gasped and his eyes flickered open weakly "Hermione?" he asked in confusion, frowning slightly as if he couldn't quite make her out.
The air around them closed, a great icy wind shook Hermione's body and she felt hope begin to suck out of her body.
"Not now" She muttered determinedly and spun round to face the two dementors at the bars. "Expecto Patronum!"
A glittery silver otter danced out the tip of her wand and bathed the cell in warm silver light. The dementors drifted away but they would be back in greater numbers.
"Hermione...what are you doing here? Ron murmured "Are you real?"
Are you real?
Hermione whipped round and stuck her wand at his chest as she remembered Malfoy's words. "What did you get me for Christmas in our fifth year?"
"I don't know; some book probably" Ron said, he appeared to be getting much better in the presence of the otter patronus.
Hermione glared and raised her wand "Petri..."
"No wait! It was...it was...the perfume." Ron snapped his fingers in remembrance "I got you that perfume, which you never wore." He added.
"Of course not, it was ghastly." Hermione replied and hoisted his arm around her shoulders "Come on, we don't have long before they come back. One patronus won't protect us from all the dementors of Azkaban."
"Oh my wand." Ron said as if he had suddenly remembered.
"Ron I'm sure they took that..." She stared in consternation and Ron proceeded to drop to his knees and scrabble around in the dirt of his cell. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for my wand" Ron said as though it was obvious as he ran fingers through cracks in the otherwise bare floor. Hermione remembered what Malfoy said about people in Azkaban going mad. Ron had only been in a day though!
"Found it" Ron jumped to his feet as though he hadn't been at death's door not two minutes ago. He held in his outstretched grubby palm a dull yellow hairclip.
"Err Ron..." Hermione didn't quite know how to tell him.
Ron rolled his eyes at her expression "I'm not a complete idiot you know" he said grabbing her wand and pointing it at the hairclip "Finite Incantartum."
Hermione stared as the hairclip transformed into Ron's fourteen inch willow wand.
"See I did have a plan" Ron said almost defensively "Even if it did involve me being a bit better at wandless magic."
"Oh Ron" Hermione said fondly "You idiot!" And she threw her arms around him and hugged him for all he was worth.
Ron hugged her back for a few seconds before a familiar chill entered the cell again. "Err Hermione..." He started.
Hermione noticed it too and let him go. "Right" She said taking back her wand.
"Expecto Patronum" Ron said clearly releasing his terrier patronus to float alongside Hermione's otter.
They look at each other in silent comradeship and then Hermione pointed her wand at the cell door and shouted "Confringo!"
oOoOoOo
The snow on the pathway from the graveyard to the prison was deeply compacted by scores of footprints that went in both directions. Weeds were able to poke out of the hard white surface although they had gone muddy and limp from being stepped on so many times. Past the graveyard the path looked like it led to some sort of shabby dock. Either way Harry could make out the silhouette of wooden platform in the distance that looked as though it could be used for mooring boats.
Some of the footprints on the pathway were large and deep as if made by particularly heavy wizards. Every few feet he would encounter long uneven channels as though someone had been dragged along the way, their toes hoeing the snow. He wondered how many people were brought here during the day.
Azkaban fortress was enclosed by an imposing black wall which must have been over sixty foot high. The stonework looked dense, almost volcanic like which was strange for a building in Britain and did not ease Harry's nerves. Every few meters along the wall's face were slit like windows, only just wide enough to shoot a spell or an arrow from. Harry felt as if somebody was watching him from those slits. He had had the horrible feeling of eyes on him ever since he had stood up in the graveyard.
An enormous iron portcullis with spikes the size of Harry's waist guarded the entrance to the prison. Harry gulped as he approached it. Two dementors stood behind the iron bars on sentry duty. The flapping of their black cloaks in the night air was the only sound on the island apart from the quiet treads of Harry's footsteps.
Harry's hearted thudded as he got closer and closer. He had never thought himself stupid enough to walk up to a dementor. Dementor's are blind. Ron's in there.
The dementors waited until he was only a few feet from the portcullis when they flew out of the tiny holes in the gate and straight at Harry with a suddenness that almost made him fall over. Harry's patronus cantered in front of him, it did not fight off the dementors as it normally would have done but just protected its master from the effects of their terrible beings.
The two guards floated in the air above Harry; the smell of rotting corpses wafting from them and echoing a sort of rattling sound. Harry felt the air suck in around him and although he did not hear it their presence brought back the memory of hearing his mother's screams, hearing her death.
"My…My name is John Dawlish" Harry shouted loudly. He knew dementors must understand English, they had communicated with Fudge after all and Fudge didn't seem like the type of wizard to learn a magical being's own language. "I have come from the Ministry. I am an auror"
The dementors hung in the air, their cloaks flapping and breath rattling. They made no other sign that they had heard or understood him.
Dementors are blind, he tried to reassure himself. Both Sirius and Barty Crouch Jr had told him that. Still he couldn't help but worry he was soon going to find out what a dementor's kiss was actually like.
"I need to question a prisoner urgently." Harry continued putting what he hoped into his voice was an air of authority and entitlement "I order you to grant entrance so I may conduct Ministry business."
There was a long pause and then a sudden swoosh as the dementors flew back towards the wall, through the portcullis and out of sight. Harry wondered if he had failed some sort of identity procedure, if they had gone to raise the alarm. His eyes darted around looking for movement and he began to fear that he should be running back to the sea, throwing himself into the depths away from a potential oncoming army of dementors.
A few seconds later there was a loud screeching noise and the portcullis was slowly raised.
oOoOoOo
The passageways of the prison were built like a dark labyrinth that they moved through slowly.
"Wait." Ron whispered pulling her back round the corner. They peered into the next passageway and saw a dementor floating past the cells. The dementors were blind so they could not see the silver light cast from the patronuses but they could sense the presence of humans.
"It's getting too close" Hermione whispered "It'll smell us. Come on." She tugged him back the way they had come. It felt like they had been wandering the prison for hours but had barely left the vicinity of Ron's cell. It was hard to tell however, all the corridors looked alike. The same long stone passageways shrouded in darkness and every few feet a doorway of iron bars that concealed prostrate prisoner either groaning and moaning in derangement or who had lost consciousness altogether. It seemed as if almost every passageway was guarded by at least one if not two dementors.
Hermione was beginning to worry that they were going round in circles when she noticed a small window blocked by a rusty grate at the end of a passageway. She left Ron, who kept peering into cells for some reason, and jogged towards the window. They were not that far up, she saw looking down at the foam as the waves crashed against the rocks below, only a couple of floors.
"If we could somehow get down…" She murmured to Ron who had joined her "There must be a boat somewhere on this island…but then how would we find our way to the mainland?"
She bit her lip thoughtfully and thought aloud"Maybe we don't have to. If we just drifted enough until we were past the wards then maybe we could Apparate…Ron?"
Ron was looking back down the corridor as though he was barely paying attention. For a startling moment Hermione feared he had spotted another dementor but he looked strange…almost mournful.
"Luna's in here." Ron said quietly staring off into the distance.
"Luna Lovegood?" Hermione asked as if she knew another Luna.
Ron nodded and he turned to her "It's my fault she's in here. She was helping me."
"So that's why you were in Knockturn Alley." Hermione said slowly as she began to understand "Why you transfigured your wand, you wanted to get caught."
"We have to get her out Hermione." Ron said and to Hermione's surprise there was a note of desperation in his voice "You saw what I was like after only a day. We can't leave her here."
"But…" Hermione spluttered, it seemed unconscionable to leave Luna at the mercy of the dementors but they were lucky enough not to have been caught as it was. To look for her now seemed almost suicidal "But…we don't know where she is. There must be over a hundred cells in this place, how are we supposed to find her?"
Ron thought for a while "There must be a way." He said "Maybe there's a record office or something. How did you find me?"
"Dumbledore." Hermione replied and then to answer his confused frown "It's a complicated story; I'll tell you later."
"Hermione?" Ron looked at her pleadingly. He almost looked as though he was ready to fall to his knees and beg and she was worried if he would even listen to her if she said 'no'.
"Oh..I don't…" Hermione bit her lip again in worry. The longer they stayed here the more certain it was they would be caught. Then she thought of Luna who had always been so strange, so small…she had always had a serenity and a smile.
They really couldn't leave her here.
"OK" She said decisively addressing Ron "If they do have a records office it will be on the ground floor where they bring in the prisoners. That makes the most sense logistically."
Ron grinned "You're brilliant." He said and off they went.
oOoOoOo
The hairs on the back of Harry's neck prickled with every step he took down the arched narrow corridors of Azkaban. There were no torches, no light but for the silver glow of his stag. The dementors at the entrance had been replaced by two new guards, one floated in front of him leading the way and the other behind. The dementor behind him kept creeping closer every now and then and sucking the air in around him before being pushed back by his patronus.
Harry had asked to be taken to the cell of the truant arrested in Knockturn Alley. He was not entirely sure whether the dementors believed his story or whether they were just drawing him deeper into their lair.
They passed silent cells of prisoners moaning in their sleep or convulsing on bare dirty floors next to buckets of their own filth. At one cell they passed a woman with brittle white hair, sallow skin and sunken eyes leapt up and clutched the iron bars desperately as Harry walked by.
"I confess" She screeched baring yellow crooked teeth "I confess."
Harry stumbled away from her wild expression and held his wand tighter as the rear dementor edged even closer. "Expecto Patronum" he whispered and his stag patronus brightened.
They approached a spiral staircase when something caught Harry's eye and he stopped dead. "Wait." He ordered and peered into a nearby cell.
Against the wall on a pile of straw a small witch with dirty blonde hair hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. Her skin was almost translucent and her skinny arms were almost swallowed by the large coarse prison robes. She blinked rapidly as Harry and the bright silver light of the patronus drew closer to her. Slowly she turned her head and revealed silvery grey eyes and a dazed expression.
"Luna." He whispered.
Luna frowned in puzzlement as if he was a clue she could not quite work out "Harry?"
Both dementors drifted closer to him. Harry drew himself up and said more bravely than he felt "Open the door." He said with false authority "I need to speak with her as well."
In an instant the dementors swept in on him rattling and piercing his veins with ice. Harry's patronus was ready for them though; his stag charged knocking both dementors down the corridor in different directions and encircling Harry with protective silver whispy vapours.
"Alohomora" Harry said pointing his wand at Luna's cell door but nothing happened "Stand back"
Luna scrambled to the corner furthest away from the door and brought her arms up to shield her head.
"Confringo!" Harry cried and the door exploded to dust and rubble. He darted into the cell and pulled Luna up from the floor.
"Can you cast a patronus?" He asked quickly.
"I…I'm not sure" Luna whispered, she seemed to be drawing strength from Harry's patronus but was still very weak.
"Try" Harry urged helping her over the rubble and out of the cell "We need to find Ron."
Luna who had been making silver whisps with his wand snapped her head up "Ronald is here?"
"Yes" Harry nodded "At least I think so…" If it wasn't all a trap and he confessed "I don't know where he is and all these corridors look alike"
Luna looked frightened for a moment but then she suddenly smiled and said "Maybe Dean will know."
oOoOoOo
Something odd that struck Hermione was how lifeless the corridors of Azkaban were. There were groans and screams in the cells of course but outside nothing. Not a rat, not a mouse, nor a spider.
At Crabbe Castle she had listened at night to the scuttling of rats and squeaking of mice in the dungeons. At Hogwarts and Cathrack Tor no matter how hard the house elves worked spiders webs would invariably find their way into dark corners. At Azkaban however there was nothing, it was if the dementors destroyed anything living.
"So how's Malfoy?" Ron muttered as they crept down a thousandth passageway
Hermione was startled by the question "How do you know about Malfoy?"
"Dumbledore" Ron said echoing her previously confusing explanation "So what's going on, is he on our side now or..."
"Ron..."
"You know he's always wanted to get into your knickers right?"
"Ron do you really want to do this now?" Hermione hissed. Then as if to demonstrate her point they heard the clear swoosh of a dementor's cloak up ahead and so doubled back.
They carried on walking for a few moments in strained silence before Hermione finally couldn't help herself.
"So did Luna know you where you were for all these months?" she asked.
"Well yeah" Ron shrugged "I mean her and Neville."
Hermione snorted "I cannot believe her. We all thought you were dead. You know your family's been distraught."
"Look, I told them not to say anything, it was too dangerous..." Ron said with a slightly raised voice.
"Oh there was me thinking you trusted me..." Hermione argued back "After everything..."
"Yeah but you weren't there were you? I thought you had been captured, that they were keeping you prisoner when all the time you were plotting with Malfoy." Ron shot back.
"I was taken prisoner" Hermione countered "Don't you dare..."
"Sna.. I was told you knew exactly what you were doing, that you could escape anytime you wanted to." Ron batted back; their voices were quite raised now "How exactly was I supposed to contact you when you've been palling around with Death Eaters?" He challenged, too annoyed to recognise the hypocrisy of his own words.
Hermione slapped him and the ringing sound echoed in the corridors "I've been back in touch with the Order for weeks so don't..."
She stopped; her face went pale as she stared at something behind Ron's shoulder. Ron turned around and saw a wall of dementors swooping their way. Their patronuses had dimmed to a soft shimmer.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" They both shouted together. Otter and Terrier glowed back to life and propelled the first six dementors backwards but there were still many others still behind.
"Run!" Ron cried grabbing Hermione's hand and proceeded to do just that.
oOoOoOo
Dean was in a much worse state than Luna. His lips were cracked and bloodied as though he was dehydrated, his eyes drooped and he clutched at his left side at some unknown pain. Whilst Luna had quickly recovered in the presence of Harry's patronus, Dean needed to be supported by both Harry and Luna out of his cell.
"Harry." He murmured weakly squinting at his friend "Are you real?"
"He's been here much longer than I have." Luna explained as she once again tried to produce a patronus with Harry's wand and failed "I saw him when they brought me in."
Harry nodded as he quickly tried to work out what to do - he was supposed to be looking for Ron but Dean was clearly in no fit state to be exploring Azkaban and then there were the dementors.
After attacking he had expected them to return in greater numbers. They had however seen no other dementors on their way to Dean's cell and Harry was beginning to worry something was seriously wrong. Surely the dreaded guards to Azkaban would try to stop him stealing two of their prey.
"Expecto Patronum...I did it." Luna whispered happily as a silver hare leapt from the tip of Harry's wand and floated alongside his stag.
"Brilliant" Harry said feeling only a little better from the extra patronus "Give the wand to Dean."
"Don't know how much good I'll be" Dean admitted as they supported him slowly down the passageway. Unlike Luna he could not even produce whisps of vapour at first. "I can barely hold the thing."
"Just think happy thoughts" Harry encouraged "You've done it before, I've seen you."
"Harry's rescuing us" Luna said happily "That's a happy thought."
"I need to get you out of here." Harry said "The entrance isn't far, Luna if you take Dean and hide and then I can get Ron and..."
Luna's head whipped around so fast that her tangled hair hit her in the eyes "I'm going with you." She said firmly "I can find Ronald too."
"But...No." Harry spluttered, didn't she understand how ridiculous that was "You need to look after Dean, he can barely walk and..."
He stopped at this point but the other two didn't notice. There was a faint sound of rumbling like the floors upstairs was shaking...or somebody was running.
They craned their necks upwards to the noise and then to Harry's horror the pounding became louder as if people were running downstairs.
"Hide!" He cried but Dean was too weak and they could barely drag him along any faster.
"Leave me." Dean insisted as the pounding became louder.
"Fat chance" Harry snorted "You've still got my wand."
Dean returned his grim smile.
The thudding of feet on stone echoed nearby, their pursuers were on the same floor. A gentle whisp of silver came out of Harry's wand.
He and Dan faced each other and each came to a silent decision. The three of them stopped. The thudding got louder. Dean passed Harry his wand. Harry held it preparing to duel.
"Right Luna take Dean, I can probably slow them enough to..."
"No bloody way!" Dean interrupted angrily.
Thud, thud, thud.
"We're staying with you." Luna echoed.
"Don't be stupid..." Harry argued but trailed off as the thudding got even louder. Then he saw something which made him very much question his own sanity.
Ron and Hermione were running down the corridor heading straight towards them with what looked like most of Azkaban's dementors chasing them.
Harry blinked in wide eyes astonishment unable to quite believe his eyes. Was it a hallucination or a trick?
But there were their patronuses, a silver otter and terrier behind them slowing down the dementors.
"What are you standing there for you morons!" Ron shouted as they barrelled towards them. "RUN!"
Without thinking Harry pointed his wand at Dean and cried "Levicorpus."
A shocked and unsuspecting Dean yelped as he was yanked into the air by his ankle dangling upside down. Luna and Harry each grabbed onto one of his hanging hands and ran dragging him along in the air behind them. Ron and Hermione followed shortly afterwards.
"What are you doing here?" Harry and Ron yelled at each other at the same time.
"Rescuing Ron!" Harry and Hermione answered.
"Let's leave the chit chat till later shall we?" Dean suggested "Bloody hell... Duck!"
A low hanging archway was straight ahead. At the last minute Luna and Harry ducked pulling Dean down lower in the air. A second later and his feet would have smashed against the stone arch.
"This way" Harry called as they sped along more passageways towards the entrance. They hurtled out of the prison onto the cracked paved courtyard where they were being waited for.
There were dementors in such numbers that they blocked the sky. Everywhere Harry looked was a sea of black tattered cloaks, rattling reeking breath and the icy chill that echoed from them and pierced into his veins. He began to feel lightheaded and the sound in his ears became muffled.
The dementors that had been chasing them closed in behind them. There must have been over a thousand in all. Harry felt Hermione hold his wrist.
"What are we going to do?" Luna whispered. The silver stag, otter, terrier and hare were circling them, protecting them but four patronuses could not defeat all the dementors of Azkaban.
"I don't know" Harry admitted horribly.
On the other side of him was Ron who looked sick. Harry wanted to tell him that it wasn't his fault, that he had made his peace and if he was going to die it might as well be with his affairs in order and Ron and Hermione by his side.
His wand suddenly jerked out of his fingers and Harry realised it had been snatched by Dean.
Dean muttered in grim determination "They're not getting me now...EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
Maybe it was Dean's certainty, determination or something else but instead of nothing or a whisp of smoke, a great silver ram with large spiralled horns barrelled out of Harry's wand and charged at the dementors.
The ram barrelled through the dementors leaving the remnants of a tunnel in its wake. Harry saw what Dean was trying to do.
"Go!" He ordered and they ran through the makeshift tunnel.
Harry's stag followed Dean's ram in clearing the way, its head bent and antlers out it sent anything in its way into the mass of swirling deathly creatures. The other patronuses worked together swooping around the group to protect them.
They ran through the mass barely holding their breaths when up ahead Harry saw the ram had reached a stone wall.
"Confringo!" Ron yelled blasting the stone slabs which exploded out into dust and rubble exposing snow covered grass and the smell of the sea. "Come on!"
They scrambled out of the hole in the wall and outside the prison. The dementors followed them, flying through the hole and over the fortress battlements.
They kept running, stag and ram leading the way along the island and past the sea crashing against the rocks. Harry was just wondering how long they could continue running for when he saw something that made his heart flip.
The silhouette of The Floating Cavalier sailing towards them.
"Make for the dock." He cried and he and Dean redirected their patronuses outwards towards the shore.
The Cavalier disappeared for a second and then reappeared right next to rickety dock, bobbing precariously in the shallower rock water.
He and the others ran through the snow towards the dock. Luna stumbled and almost fell but Ron and Harry caught her. He accidentally let go of Dean in the process but Hermione jumped up and grabbed Dean at the last second before he floated away.
"Kreacher is here for Master" Harry heard a weak squeaky voice call in the distance and saw Kreacher on deck holding his wrinkled hands out over the boat.
They pounded onto the dock which shook and threatened to break under their weight and then threw themselves onto the deck of the boat.
A thousand dementors swooped in from all sides.
The next second there was a loud CRACK and they disappeared.
.
So the trio is now reunited and they have a lot of catching up to do which will be explored in the next chapters when they are not being chased by dementors.
Just to note I couldn't find Dean's patronus listed anywhere so I chose a ram because it could charge, seems good for Dean and rhymes with his football team West Ham. I'd be interested if anybody knows Dean's actual patronus.
Please let me know what you think of this chapter and the story so far (all criticism and feedback welcome)