57
Regulus hadn't meant to stay with Sirius. Then again, he hadn't meant for the Dementors to recognize his treachery, either. He could feel their dark eagerness surrounding him, their clear understanding that, having forsaken his master's side, he was now at their mercy. The only thing between him and the Kiss was Sirius's Patronus, and that meant staying with Sirius – who, in any case, was still holding his wand.
It meant leaving the Dark Lord behind… for good.
Regulus had not intended for his impulsive act to result in this. Warning the Order of the Phoenix through the house-elf's coin had been only a mild risk. Breaking his brother out of Azkaban, leaving Bellatrix to die or worse – those had not been part of the plan, and Regulus was terrified of the consequences he might face.
And yet, seeing Sirius now, gaunt and haggard even after only a week or so in Azkaban, Regulus couldn't regret it. Even if it ended in his death.
"How do you get out of this bloody place?" Sirius muttered, looking this way and that like a dog sniffing the air.
"Down, from here," Regulus said. "There should be a stairway somewhere ahead."
There was, but it was blocked. It looked like half the ceiling had collapsed. Rubble and the bottom half of a man's body, partially buried beneath fallen stone, rendered the corridor and stairwell impassable.
"Prisoner," Sirius said, examining the dead man's legs and tattered robes by the light of his Patronus. "A Death Eater, maybe?"
"Or one of them," Regulus said, gesturing at the cells to either side, the bars of which had broken under the weight of the ceiling's collapse. "Could be anyone."
"Hopefully not one of ours," Sirius muttered.
Regulus knew, without Sirius saying it, that he himself was excluded from the ours in question. He was not one of them, not an Order member, not a Gryffindor, not a good person, by Sirius's standards.
"Back the way we came, then?" Sirius said, looking grim and almost angry about it. Regulus wondered if he was hoping for another shot at Bellatrix.
"If we can find a window, we can summon some brooms," Regulus said.
"From where, Scotland?"
"From the roof." Regulus resisted the urge to roll his eyes – a habit his mother had always despised. "We brought a dozen or so for the Death Eaters to escape. That was the plan – free them, get them to the roof, fly away." He glanced at the collapsed stone in front of them, and remembered all the hummingbird Patronuses he had seen. "Something's gone wrong, though. There are probably still broomsticks left."
Sirius was eyeing him with supreme distaste and something like disbelief. "'That was the plan'?" he mocked. "Rescue your murdering friends and fly off into the sunrise?"
Regulus glared at him, considered telling him about the warning he had sent through the coin, but decided against it. His brother probably wouldn't believe him anyway. "I saved you, didn't I?"
"Yes, wonderful job," Sirius sneered, gesturing at the blocked passageway. "Such a comfort to know my baby Death Eater brother has lured me into the depths of Azkaban –"
"I'm not luring you anywhere, you were in the lead –"
"– where his murdering scum of friends can find us –"
"No one's finding us, there's hardly any of us left –"
"Of us? Us? So you admit you're still one of them!"
"It was just habit, I didn't mean –"
"WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD BREAK THE HABIT!"
Regulus stared at Sirius, noting his panting breaths, his twisted expression, his snarling Patronus. He had seen his brother like this many times over the years (minus the Patronus), and it sent a nervous tremble through him, the same way it always had. Sirius was so like Bellatrix sometimes.
"If you don't want Death Eaters to find us, shouting probably isn't the best idea," Regulus said, managing to keep his tone cold.
"Let them find us!" Sirius snapped. "I don't care!"
"You'll care when they're using the Cruciat-"
"I DON'T CARE!" Sirius roared. "THEY MURDERED REMUS! I'LL MURDER THEM!"
Remus – that was Sirius's friend, the prefect, the werewolf, the one who –
Wait a moment… "Is he your Patronus?" Regulus asked, taken aback.
Sirius snarled at him, turned away, and didn't answer. Regulus, taking that as a yes, looked at the Patronus more closely than he had before.
Yes, he could see it now. It wasn't an ordinary wolf. There were the little signs they had learned in Defense… the shorter snout, the tufted tail… the almost human eyes…
Regulus considered this information in some astonishment. He himself could not cast a Patronus, but he understood the theory – that it represented either some aspect of the caster himself, or of the person with whom the caster felt safest, or bravest, or whom the caster loved the most.
He tried to imagine feeling that way about any of his friends, but couldn't. Then again, he didn't really have friends – not like Sirius had, friends he had often professed he would die for.
Still, if Sirius's Patronus had taken one of his friends' forms, surely it would have been Potter's? Wasn't he the best friend?
Was it just that Remus Lupin was dead?
"When did he die?" Regulus wondered.
It was evidently the wrong thing to say. Sirius rounded on him, teeth bared. "What, they didn't tell you? Or maybe Remus just wasn't important enough to mention in the death toll, is that it? Shouldn't you know, anyway? Weren't you there?"
He could only mean one thing. "The wedding?"
"Yes, the wedding!" Sirius almost growled. "The slaughter!"
Regulus resisted the urge to take a step back. "I wasn't there. I was at Hogwarts."
"Well, good for you, you perfect little prefect!" Sirius snapped. "While you were sticking your nose in a Dark Arts book and strutting around school like you were better than everyone else, my friends were massacred!"
Regulus, almost reflexively, became defensive. "Well, so were the Death Eat-"
Sirius grabbed him by the front of the robes and slammed him against the bars of a cell with such force that Regulus felt the wind knocked out of him. Above him, the Patronus flickered, in tune with Sirius's rage.
"How dare you?" he snarled. "How dare you! They attacked us! At a wedding! They murdered innocents – old people, kids, it didn't matter, they killed everyone! And you want me to feel sorry that we tried to defend ourselves?"
"That's not what I –"
"It's exactly what you meant!" Sirius spat. "Poor little Death Eaters, their victims didn't lie down and take it! If only we would all surrender to the murdering, raping blood supremacists, they wouldn't have to kill us!"
"They're not rapi-"
"DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THE MARRIAGE LAW IS?"
"It's not –"
"RAPE!" Sirius bellowed. "It's RAPE, you twisted little freak! Why do you think I didn't participate? Why do you think I spent the last four months as a bloody dog? It's DISGUSTING! You're disgusting! I HATE YOU!"
With each word, Sirius slammed Regulus against the bars. The Patronus was barely corporeal now, its silver teeth and tail mere blurs of light. The Dementors were drawing closer, and Regulus could feel their cold seeping through them, almost as powerful as the jolts of fear and shame Sirius's words sent surging through him.
"Sirius –"
"Just shut UP!" Sirius snapped, letting go of him and turning away again, his expression suddenly cold, his Patronus coming into focus again. "Let's just get out of here," his lip twisted, "so I don't have to keep looking at your face."
Regulus felt a terrible wash of shame and inadequacy and resentment, a feeling he knew well from his childhood. He had always been good enough for his mother, for his father, but for Sirius? No, never. He had always been the "twisted freak," always too ignorant, too obedient, too blind. He had been so determined to believe Sirius was wrong, but his brother's words left a sickening feeling in his gut.
He had never given much thought to the marriage law. He had fully expected his mother to make a match for him once she considered him old enough (as she had intended for Sirius, which had been the final straw, the fight that finally drove him to run away), and the marriage law had not seemed much different. Wizarding families – the oldest and the purest of them – had always accepted arranged marriage as a necessity, a way of life that ensured pure bloodlines would be preserved. In a world as small as theirs, it was highly unlikely that love would motivate pureblood matches – there were, after all, so few options. Purity came first; purity, and the power that could be gained from alliances. Why shouldn't the rest of Wizarding Britain follow suit?
What Sirius was suggesting was – terrible. He had never considered it in those terms at all. He himself had never expected marriage to be any particular source of pleasure. Of pride, yes, but pleasure would have been an unexpected surprise, a benefit that he did not consider necessary.
But here Sirius was, selfishly, as their mother would have said, insisting that personal desires should overrule the importance of blood – of perpetuating their dwindling kind. Indeed, that an arranged marriage might be as horrific as… well, as some Muggle scum getting his hands on a young witch, as had happened so often during the Burning Times.
Duty came first, for Regulus. There might be inconvenience in it, there might even be pain, but there was no horror to it. It was what it was.
Sirius's perspective was… perplexing.
Did other people feel this way? The rest of the Order, Dumbledore's followers, the unpatriotic traitors who had fled the country rather than be married sooner than their selfishness demanded? Was that really what they thought of the law, of the Death Eaters behind it – that they were arranging some kind of mass rape?
It was absurd. Marriage was the duty of every witch and wizard; producing children was their responsibility, was an absolute necessity for the survival of their kind. Muggles had killed too many of them, and too many others had died out, childless, either through infertility or selfish choice. Wizards were dying, as a people. A few hundred years more like this and wizards would be all but extinct.
Of course a marriage law had to be instituted. It had been done before, several times, in an effort to salvage their population. The previous laws had been largely ineffective – either because too many had fled the country, or because the law had been revoked before it had time to produce real results. But the purpose was legitimate. They needed to reproduce. This was no time for selfish squeamishness, for the sort of individualist independence Sirius had always pursued.
And yet… rape?
Was that really what he thought?
Sirius was walking away from him, the werewolf Patronus gliding after him in graceful, loping style. Regulus followed, still shaken from his brother's rage, still confused by his brother's incomprehensible perspective.
"It's not rape," he finally ventured.
Sirius gave him a dirty look. "No? You don't think shagging someone you don't want to shag is rape?"
"We're dying out," Regulus said. "It's our responsibility –"
"Don't give me that shite," Sirius snapped. "That's just what Mum would have said."
"Maybe she's right, Sirius. We're dying."
Sirius rolled his eyes. His careless attitude incensed Regulus.
"Maybe you haven't noticed, but Muggles have taken over the world! There's barely any of us left! We used to mean something –"
"– we used to rule, we used to shape human destiny – yeah, thanks, I've heard it all before, remember? Why are you lot always so obsessed with ruling the world?"
"Because it's our right," Regulus said fiercely.
"Your right to murder people, to force them to do things they don't want to do –"
"It's just marriage, Sirius, it's not an atrocity –"
"It is! You're too young –"
"I'm of age!"
"You're a stupid virgin who doesn't know what he's saying!"
"I know it's my duty –"
"You don't have any blood duty!" Sirius yelled. "You don't belong to anyone, not to Mum, not to Voldemort, not to bloody society!"
Regulus flinched as his Mark twinged at the use of Voldemort's name. Nervously, he looked around the corridor, empty except for a few Dementors that were resentfully eyeing Sirius's Patronus from a safe distance.
"Don't say his name," Regulus said.
"VOLDE-"
"Don't!" Regulus snapped. "He can feel it! Do you want him to find us?"
That brought Sirius up short. "What d'you mean, he can feel it?"
Regulus was suddenly hesitant to answer. The Mark on his arm had always been a source of pride for him – well, until the past few days – but he knew exactly how Sirius would react.
"He just does," he muttered.
Sirius was staring at him. "It's the Mark, isn't it?" he asked, looking disturbed. "Let me see it."
"No," Regulus said, jerking away, but his brother had already grabbed his arm and shoved the sleeve up.
Sirius's expression was one of supreme distaste. "Ugly."
"It wasn't supposed to be pretty," Regulus said, yanking his arm back.
"So now he can eavesdrop on you?"
"No," Regulus said. "He just knows when someone says his name."
Sirius snorted, as if he thought it unlikely that was all the Mark did. Regulus couldn't entirely blame him; he seriously doubted whether his own understanding of the Mark was complete.
Sirius started walking again, and they were both silent, though Regulus was embarrassed and seething after Sirius's reaction to the Mark.
Without looking at him, Sirius said, "Anyway, you missed my point."
"About what?"
"That you don't belong to anyone."
Regulus shot him a contemptuous look. "That's the way children look at things."
"No," Sirius countered, an unkind smile twisting his lips. "Quite the opposite, little brother. When you're little, you want to please everyone, obey everyone, let everyone else make decisions for you. Being a man means you are your master – your only master. Enslaving yourself to psychotic maniacs like Lord V and our dear mum doesn't make you a man. Doing anything because someone else thinks it's right doesn't make you a man. You're a child, Regulus."
"Or," Regulus said, offended, "maybe it shows a sense of responsibility, to understand that you and your selfish desires aren't the only things that matter."
"Of course they're not the only things that matter!" Sirius snapped. "D'you think I joined the Order of the Phoenix because I thought it would be fun?"
"Yes," Regulus answered promptly, and perhaps a little spitefully.
Sirius snorted again. "Sure, yeah, we thought it'd be an adventure, but it matters, you dolt. Protecting innocent people, saving the world –"
"That's what we are trying to do!"
Sirius gave him an incredulous look.
"Maybe not in the short term –"
"Oh, in the short term you'll slaughter innocents, but once you've slaughtered everyone who fights back, you'll just sit back in benevolent mercy, is that it? Merlin, Regulus, when did you get so stupid? Volde-scum likes killing! He loves it! It's the only thing he loves! He's not going to stop when he wins, he's just going to do it for fun instead of strategy! Not that he's not more motivated by fun now…" Sirius trailed off bitterly.
"I know that," Regulus said, still defensive. "Why do you think I'm here? He was – wrong. The wrong leader, the wrong choice. But in principle –"
"Murdering innocent people isn't fine by any decent person's principles, Regulus!"
"What, because you've never tried to murder anyone?" Regulus snapped back. "What about Snape? I heard about what you did –"
"Snape's not an innocent," Sirius scoffed.
"He was underage! Shouldn't kids be innocent by your standards?"
"Not Snivellus," Sirius sneered.
"You're such a hypocrite!"
"And you're not?"
"I'm not a bully –"
"No, just a Death Eater –"
"I've never gone after kids!"
"Your friends bloody well have! They went after you, didn't they?"
"They didn't go after me, I wanted to join!"
"Because you were brainwashed, first by our lunatic mother, and then by your worthless Slytherin friends! You don't think they targeted you? You're a Black, you're a pureblood –"
"Of course they wanted me, but they didn't go after –"
"They did! They filled your head with all this disgusting rubbish and then –"
"It was my decision!"
"You're a kid!"
"What, and Snape wasn't?" Regulus asked, more to prove a point than anything – he didn't agree with Sirius, he hadn't been brainwashed, he had wanted this for as long as he could remember.
But Sirius looked like he was giving Regulus's words more thought than Regulus had expected.
"Snape's a git," he finally said, as if annoyed that he couldn't find a stronger argument.
"Something you and he have in common," Regulus snapped back.
"Who cares about Snape?" Sirius said. "We're talking about you."
"I noticed." Regulus scowled. "One moment you're accusing me of happily joining murderers and rapists, the next you're saying I was brainwashed into it. Make up your mind, won't you?"
"So you admit they're rapists!"
"I'm quoting you, you imbecile. We're not –"
"What about Lily?" Sirius asked. "What about what they were going to do to her?"
"What are you talking about?"
Sirius got that annoying, superior little smile again. "Didn't they tell you? How they wanted to kill James and give Lily to someone else? But maybe you don't think that's rape, either? Maybe you think Lily should have been happy if they murdered her husband and handed her off to some Death Eater?"
Regulus felt unsettled. "What, to Snape?"
Sirius looked disgruntled. "Initially. But he said no."
"Because she's a Mudbl-"
"Don't call her that!" Sirius snapped. "And no, I don't know. I don't think so." He sounded annoyed.
"Why else wouldn't he want to marry her?"
"I don't know, Reg, why don't you ask him? Maybe because he knew it was wrong?"
Regulus arched a brow. He hadn't been in the same year as Sirius and Snape, but he had witnessed enough incidents between them to know his brother's general attitude toward Snape. "You admit Snape knows right from wrong?"
"Shut up," Sirius snapped. "Where the bloody hell are we? Shouldn't we have found my cell by now?"
"Maybe we missed a turn?" Regulus asked. He hadn't exactly been paying attention, when they had first run from Bellatrix's Obliviated form and the Dementors gathering around it.
"Brilliant," Sirius muttered. "No, wait, here it is – but where is she?"
The floor beside the open cell door was empty. There was no sign of Bellatrix.
"You're sure this was your cell?" Regulus asked, severely unnerved.
Sirius shot him a look. "Of course I am. If you'd spent a few days in this wretched place, you'd remember it, believe me."
"Then she's not dead," Regulus said, both relieved and disturbed.
"Pity," Sirius muttered. He gestured down the corridor ahead of them. "This way, I'm guessing?"
Regulus hesitated, because it was the same way Bella must have gone. But they didn't have much choice, did they?
"We'll find a stairway down soon," he said, trying to sound less nervous than he felt. Sirius still had his wand, and there was worse than Bellatrix in the prison tonight. Regulus hadn't forgotten that the Dark Lord himself was somewhere in the fortress, conducting some business of his own. If they encountered him…
"Or a window," Sirius said. "You said we can summon brooms from a window, didn't you?"
Regulus nodded. He could see Sirius was anxious to get out from within these walls, and he felt the same. To fly out into the night, Sirius's Patronus protecting them… Regulus could think of nothing that would feel more comforting than a broom handle in his hand at this moment, except perhaps his wand.
"All right," Sirius said. "There has to be a turn somewhere."
Silent again, they moved forward, the great silver wolf gliding along with them. Regulus watched its glowing paws pad through the air, watched its fur ripple whenever it bared its teeth at a Dementor that ventured too close. Regulus had never been particularly bothered by the fact that he couldn't cast a Patronus, but in the protective glow of this one, he felt a pang of envy that Sirius had one.
"Has it always been a wolf?" he asked.
Sirius shot him an annoyed look, but Regulus thought there was something haunted in his eyes. "None of your business."
A few more seconds passed, then Regulus offered, "It's pretty."
"Would you shut up about it?" Sirius exclaimed. "Merlin, I'd forgotten what you're like."
"You forgot what I'm like?" Regulus echoed, both incredulous and hurt.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Annoying."
"It was just a compliment."
"I don't want you to tell me my Patronus is pretty!"
"Oh, sorry, didn't mean to offend your masculinity. It's very, er, intimidating. Sort of."
"Sort of?" Sirius echoed in irritation, before seeming to recognize that Regulus was purposefully goading him. "Shut up."
Regulus felt a little more at ease now, a little less terrified that they were going to run into the Dark Lord at any second. And, though they obviously couldn't be in each other's presence more than a minute or two without arguing, he was slowly beginning to realize that he actually had missed Sirius.
Slightly, at least.
Probably more than Sirius had missed him.
He still thought Sirius was wrong, immature, and hypocritical, but it was… reassuring, almost, to have his older brother acting like the idiot he was, getting defensive that his Patronus had taken the form of a boy.
A dead boy, though. Regulus couldn't help remembering that, remembering the pain in Sirius's eyes, the (understandable) hatred with which he spoke of the Death Eaters.
And really, Regulus wasn't even sure why he was defending them now. He wasn't one of them – saving Sirius had made sure of that once and for all. Even if Bellatrix couldn't remember what he had done, the Dementors knew, and they would tell the Dark Lord – might even be telling him now. Regulus was firmly on the enemy's side now, no matter how much he disagreed with their politics.
He wondered if this was how Snape had felt, once he'd switched sides. He couldn't have been thrilled to find himself fighting alongside Sirius Black and James Potter. And Regulus had heard Snape discuss Muggles with just as much disdain as Regulus ever had, perhaps more.
But now Snape was fighting for them – or against the Dark Lord, at least.
Just like Regulus.
More likely than not, they'd both end up dead.
"Do you hear that?" Sirius asked suddenly, as they finally came to a fork in the corridor.
"What?"
"Shh! Listen!"
Regulus did, and heard distant shouting, some loud cracks, and a scream. Sirius sprang toward it just as Regulus started in the opposite direction. They stared at each other.
"You don't even know –" Regulus began.
"It doesn't matter! They need help –"
"You have my wand, Sirius! I'm not going into a duel wandless!"
"Well, I can't give it back, the Patronus'll go out! I can't cast anything with Bella's wand – here, why don't you take –"
"I don't want it!"
"It's not going to bite, don't be a baby!"
"It's creepy, I don't want –"
"Regulus?"
The brothers froze, turning to stare at the wasted, ragged figure peering at them from the shadows of a cell. "Regulus?" she asked again.
Sirius flicked his wand – Regulus's wand – and his Patronus glided closer to the cell. The woman inside pressed against the bars, her gaze flickering from the Patronus to Regulus. In the silver light of the wolf, her tangled silver-blond hair gleamed dully.
"Narcissa?" Regulus asked, shocked.
Sirius made a disgusted noise.
Narcissa's gaze darted between them, returning every now and then to the Patronus, whose presence she clearly craved. She was filthy, far from the elegant, haughty figure Regulus knew. "They're letting Death Eaters out, aren't they?" she whispered. "Will you let me out? Where's Bella?"
Regulus took a step back. The last thing he wanted to explain to Narcissa in that moment was how he had left her sister to be devoured by Dementors… whether or not that had actually occurred.
Narcissa glanced at Sirius again. "You said something about Bella's wand," she said, her tired voice a little sharper. "Where's Bella?"
Sirius tilted his head defiantly. "No idea."
Regulus watched the struggle in Narcissa's eyes, her concern for Bella warring with her desire to persuade them to let her out of the cell. The latter seemed to win out. "Will you help me?"
"The Death Eater's wife? I don't think so," Sirius sneered.
"Please," Narcissa whispered. "Please, I can't stay here –"
"Save your breath," Sirius said. "I don't care if –"
"I'm pregnant!"
Sirius and Regulus looked at each other quickly, alarmed. Narcissa's eyes had grown desperate. She pulled at her robes, and the brothers both flinched as her emaciated, but weirdly swollen belly came into view.
"You shouldn't be here," Sirius said immediately, horrified. "They should have let you out, pregnant women aren't supposed to be in Azkaban."
"I tried – they wouldn't see me, they wouldn't speak to me!"
"We have to let her out," Regulus said at once. "Sirius, you have to."
"Yeah – yeah, all right – Merlin, a bloody Death Eater baby –"
"It's just a baby!" Regulus snapped.
"Yeah – fine – ugh, stand back, cousin."
Narcissa vanished into the depths of the cell. Sirius aimed his wand at the lock, but Regulus said, "No, you have to get the wall beside the bars – the locks are all warded."
Sirius cast him an impatient look, but obeyed, aiming for the stone wall instead.
"Confringo!"
The first blast didn't open a hole big enough for Narcissa, but Sirius cast the hex twice more, and the stone crumbled away. Immediately, Narcissa climbed out, scraping her fingers on the rough rock and almost collapsing into Regulus's arms once she was out.
He could feel her trembling, though she straightened almost immediately, clearly too proud to accept more help than absolutely necessary despite her appalling condition. Her face was pale and drawn, her hair and robes filthy, the small swell of her growing child concealed once more.
"I can't believe it's even alive," Sirius muttered. "They barely even feed us in here."
"Us?" Narcissa asked, frowning at him.
"Yeah, I've been a prisoner, too. Not as long as you…" His gaze trailed over her haggard form.
"Let's go," Regulus said. "Find a window, Summon the brooms…"
"Brooms?" Narcissa whispered.
"Yeah," Sirius said, glancing down the corridor he had been so eager to follow. There was only silence from that direction now. He looked disturbed.
"This way," Regulus suggested, pointing down the other corridor. "The air smells fresher."
Sirius nodded, flicking his wand at his Patronus again. "Yeah. C'mon, Cousin Cissy."
"Don't call me that," she said, but her voice was weak, and when Regulus offered her his arm to lean on, she grudgingly accepted.
Sirius grimaced. "Aren't we just a happy family?"
The sky above Azkaban was a flashing nightmare of wraithlike shadows and cornered silver animals that flickered wildly with the presence of so many Dementors. Harry had thought the hundred or so Dementors gliding toward him that night at the end of his third year had been terrifying; here, there were thousands, literally thousands of the soul-sucking horrors swarming the air, shielding the fleeing Death Eaters from pursuit and feasting on the rest of the humans – or trying to, at least.
Harry's Patronus was one of the strongest, galloping along beside Ginny's horse with a force of hope the Dementors could not withstand. A handful of other Patronuses were holding strong – a massive tiger, a sparking fire crab, a soaring crane, a charging bear – while many of the smaller Patronuses stayed close to their casters, biting and pecking and scratching at the inhuman hands that reached toward them.
The fight was nothing but chaos at this point, Order member and Auror alike struggling more to withstand the Dementors than to prevent the Death Eaters from escaping. It was abundantly clear – to everyone, probably – that coming here, trying to stop Voldemort's prison break and use it to their advantage, had been a mistake. In Harry's world, neither the Aurors nor the Order had been present when Voldemort had finally persuaded the Dementors to set the Death Eaters free. Harry had often wondered why the Order hadn't tried to intervene – now he understood.
They could have beaten the Death Eaters, easily. But the Dementors? In such numbers, here in the malevolent presence of their fortress?
"Where the hell is Dumbledore?" Ginny shouted, whizzing past him on her broom and firing a spell down at the roof, where a Death Eater was trying to mount one of the brooms that had been left there.
Harry had wondered the same. Dumbledore had been with them when they first Apparated, mid-flight, to the outer rim of Azkaban's wards, hovering over the windy black sea. But almost as soon as they had passed within the wards, Dumbledore had been swarmed by Dementors – hundreds of them – and though the Order had tried to intervene, they had ultimately abandoned him to fly to Azkaban, where wizards far more defenseless than Dumbledore were likely suffering the same fate.
Harry had expected Dumbledore to break through the horde of Dementors in five seconds flat, but it had been at least ten minutes, and Dumbledore was still nowhere to be seen. The idea that the Dementors could have overpowered him was ludicrous; this was Dumbledore, after all. But something had delayed him, and Harry was just as desperate as Ginny to know what.
"Should we go – hey!" he shouted. "Look, there, the brooms!"
Ginny wheeled around, red braid flying, to see what Harry was yelling about. Three brooms had suddenly lifted themselves off the rooftop and were soaring, riderless, away from the roof – and downward.
"Someone's Summoning them!" Ginny shouted, just as Harry came to the same realization.
"C'mon!" he yelled back.
They dove around the edge of the fortress, following the brooms from a distance and watching as they shakily hurtled toward a window on one of the mid-levels. A hole had been blasted out of the side of the fortress there.
"Ready?" Ginny asked, before swooping down ahead of him.
Not bothering to answer, Harry leaned forward, urging his broom to catch up to hers. The cold wind whipped his hair back, the light of his Patronus filling the fog with an eerie, frozen glow.
From the hole in the fortress wall, he saw an answering gleam of silver light.
"Hold on – Ginny!" Harry bellowed, just as she fired off a spell. "WAIT!"
An answering spell blasted out of the fortress toward them, and they both dodged.
"WHAT, HARRY?" Ginny shouted, exasperated.
"They have a Patronus!"
He saw her direct her broom to the side, in the line of fire of the window, so she could look. "Oh. Oops."
The people inside seemed to realize the same thing at the same moment they had. "PRONGS?" someone shouted. "IS THAT YOU?"
Harry cringed. Great, just what he needed – yet another reason for people to realize he was James's son.
Harry and Ginny dove down toward the hole together, pulling up to hover when they were level with the people inside.
Those people being Sirius Black, Regulus Black, and Narcissa Malfoy. An unlikely trio if Harry ever saw one, and the wolf Patronus raised a number of questions as well.
"Prongs, mate, I –" Sirius stopped suddenly. "Wait." He squinted. "You're not James, you're that bloke from the wedding – the one who was yelling about the Portkey before Volde-"
"Don't say the name!" Regulus snapped.
"You let them in!" Sirius exclaimed, starting to point his wand at Harry.
"Don't be stupid, Wormtail let them in," Ginny said, raising her wand as well.
"He did," Regulus confirmed.
"But then who're –"
"We're friends!" Harry said impatiently. "Listen, it's a disaster up on the roof, the Dementors are beating us – we need all the help we can get –"
"Who's 'we'?"
"The Order! The Aurors!"
Sirius still looked suspicious. Regulus, eyeing Harry curiously, said, "We don't have wands – she and I – my brother has mine –"
Harry absorbed that all, but it was Ginny who looked at Sirius and asked curiously, "Your Patronus is a wolf?"
It was Remus, of course. Harry recognized that at once. He felt a deep pang of compassion for Sirius, and remembered both of them dying, Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, Remus in the Battle of Hogwarts. He thought of Teddy, and felt a sickening sense of guilt.
"What does it matter?" Sirius was saying.
"We can't fight," Regulus said, "we need to get her out of here –"
"What's she doing here, anyway?" Ginny asked.
"She's a Death Eater's wife," Sirius said darkly.
"Yes, I know that, dolt, I meant why is she with you? Are you taking hostages now?"
"She's pregnant," Regulus explained.
Harry and Ginny glanced at each other, probably thinking the same thing: was this world going to have that annoying little slimeball Draco Malfoy in it, too?
"It's not safe for her here, we have to get her away from the Dementors," Regulus said. "It's a miracle the baby's survived this long –"
"Assuming it is alive," Sirius muttered.
"But we can't fight with you, we need to get away!" Regulus finished.
Narcissa had said nothing this whole time, but Harry could see her gaze flickering between him and Ginny, wondering what they were going to do to her, if they were going to leave her here to rot or toss her into the North Sea. Ginny gave Harry a look that was equal parts exasperated, annoyed, and resigned.
"Guess we're saving baby Malfoy," she said, her nose twisted up in distaste in remarkable imitation of the Narcissa Malfoy of their own world.
Harry couldn't argue. He knew how desperately they (and their Patronuses) were needed on the roof, but leaving a pregnant woman to be Kissed? Even with Sirius and his Remus Patronus as a guard, there was no guarantee she'd reach the edge of the Anti-Apparation wards safely.
"All right," Harry said, suppressing a sigh, "you have the brooms? Good, let's go. Just to the edge of the wards, mind you. We're losing up there."
Dumbledore searched the seemingly endless churning mass of Dementors with the light of his three phoenix Patronuses, their silver wings spread wide as they swept in and out of the hungry mass, dipping and diving, illuminating the folds of darkness surrounding him.
Dumbledore could have easily broken through – easily. But Tom had laid his trap well, in evident preparation for the possibility of Dumbledore's arrival and interference. The Dementors, almost immediately after enclosing Dumbledore in what had seemed a foolish attempt to contain him, had produced a pair of hostage children, unconscious and deathly white, but still clearly ensouled. The Dementors had then withdrawn the innocents into the shifting mass of their army, hidden from Dumbledore's view.
Scattering the Dementors was easy, with Patronuses as powerful as Dumbledore's, but, even as they retreated, the Dementors swarmed around each other, concealing the children, keeping them out of reach. Dumbledore had penetrated their ranks once, and retrieved one of the children, who now sat slumped in front of him on his broom. The other child – a girl, Dumbledore thought, smaller than the boy he had rescued – was still lost.
Dumbledore knew the futility of what he was attempting. Even if he managed to save both children, countless others were likely being Kissed at this very moment, in Azkaban. Voldemort had obviously been better prepared for their attack than they had anticipated. Dumbledore was needed in the fortress, and logic dictated he abandon this child and fly to the prison immediately.
Yet he didn't. Tom had, indeed, chosen his ploy well. Dumbledore told himself the Order and the Aurors would protect the innocents in Azkaban, while this child had no one to protect her but him. To abandon her now – to allow this precious soul to be stolen and devoured – would have been hideous.
And so he strove against the Dementors, his will bent against them even as his Patronuses sifted through the seething shadows that slid in receding waves from their light. He could feel the child – she was a witch, he was sure of it – could feel her bright little soul, still intact, still untouched. Of course, Tom would have known that Dumbledore (like Tom himself) could sense whether a soul had been removed. He would have ordered the Dementors to keep the child whole while they delayed him.
Clever, Dumbledore acknowledged. Much cleverer than some of Tom's schemes. There was an evil elegance to it that, frankly, reminded Dumbledore of Gellert – something Tom had rarely managed before. But Dumbledore's confidence, which had been so shaken during Gellert's wars, was immune to any influence of Tom's.
Yet his phoenixes, determined as they were, could only drive the Dementors away; they could not force them to separate, no matter which angles of attack Dumbledore chose, nor could they discover the child as Fawkes could have done.
"But of course," Dumbledore murmured. "Why didn't I think…?" He did not bother to finish the thought, already reaching out, with his heart and soul, to his dearest friend. Fawkes, I have need of you.
The phoenix appeared in a burst of scarlet flame, his blazing light mingling with that of the silver Patronuses to illuminate the sea and fog. Only seconds later, Fawkes cried out, a low, mournful sound that had the Dementors turning their heads, not in dread so much as in hunger.
Dumbledore followed his phoenixes – physical and ethereal – into the gliding army of wraiths. The Dementors were as drawn to Fawkes as they were repelled by the Patronuses, and Dumbledore took advantage of their confusion, already beginning to see where the child must be hidden, where their ranks were still resolutely shielding something from his eyes. They tried to flee, and he surrounded them – his Patronuses diving with outstretched talons and beaks, his familiar luring them with a siren song of grief. They broke apart; Dumbledore saw the child. One Dementor still clung to her, holding her effortlessly above the sea. Dumbledore watched the cold fingers loosen, watched the child begin to drop –
– and caught her, with a smooth dive that would have left Mr. Potter delighted.
It was then, when there was no chance that he might startle the Dementors into Kissing her, that he allowed his full power to manifest.
His Patronuses began to glow brighter, shining clearer and clearer until the very sight of them was a sharp agony, an agony the Dementors could feel, an agony they shied away from even as their hooded heads followed Fawkes's burning path across the night sky. White light burst from the Patronus feathers, splitting the gloom and terror with glorious, deadly hope.
The Dementors fled, flowing back toward their holdfast in a tide of hatred and resentment.
Barely burdened by the two unconscious children, Dumbledore followed them, streaking through the fog and darkness toward the fortress, his gold and silver companions lighting the way.