58

Hermione's little otter Patronus bobbed uncertainly in the wake of Lily's doe, its silver tail little more than a wisp of unraveling magic. Her fingers felt numb around her wand, and her teeth were chattering despite the Patronuses' presence. She had never seen so many Dementors in her life. Not even during the Battle of Hogwarts.

"I thought you couldn't cast a Patronus?" Severus whispered. A whisper was all any of them had managed here; every time they heard someone shouting in the distance, they all flinched and pressed closer together, trembling, as if the mere echo of a far-off scream would be enough to blow away the fragile silver doe guarding them.

"Of c-course I can," Hermione whispered back, shivering but offended. "It's just that… it's not always v-very reliable…"

Like the day they'd broken into the Ministry, when her Patronus hadn't wanted to come. She could still remember the drop in her stomach when the Patronus didn't work, a feeling not only of fear but of failure, because she was supposed to be good at magic, but she wasn't really, was she, she was just a failure, at this, at everything…

"Hermione," Severus warned, as her otter started to disintegrate.

"S-sorry," Hermione breathed, struggling to get a grip. "The t-trouble is just that I s-start thinking -"

"Don't think," he advised, touching her arm. She might have been annoyed that he was giving her advice - after all, he couldn't cast a Patronus at all - but the pressure of his fingers on her arm, light though it was, made it much easier to just feel.

Though its edges were still a blur, the otter did shine a little brighter.

Lily's Patronus, on the other hand, was brilliantly clear, stepping delicately through the air ahead of them, turning its graceful head this way and that to glare at the Dementors until they retreated. Hermione was both relieved by its presence and deeply envious. Her Patronus had only ever been that clear when they had practiced in the Room of Requirement for the D.A., when there were no Dementors in sight.

Why couldn't she master this spell? Why was it so hard for her to make this magic, this bright, beautiful, loving magic, bend to her will? Shouldn't this magic be easiest for her? If she was really a good person, if she really -

"Hermione," Severus murmured again.

She took a deep breath, trying to fight down the panic and insecurity. Lily's Patronus was shielding her from the worst of the Dementors' effects, but her little otter still seemed pitifully inadequate - just like her.

It wasn't like she didn't know why they had given her the task of freeing the prisoners. It was because she could cast a Patronus, but not a strong Patronus; because she could duel, but was not a great duelist. Because she was mediocre, second-best, an insufferable know-it-all who couldn't actually do anything except trail after better, greater wizards -

"Hermione." Severus, though horribly pale, looked like he was trying for some weak amusement. "You're thinking again."

"Thinking is all I know how to do," she grumbled.

"Don't be stupid," he said immediately.

She glared at him.

His eyes seemed to flash in the light of the Patronuses. "You're -"

"I think this is the first one," Lily interrupted him.

At once, they all turned toward the cell she was indicating, Hermione glancing down at the diagram in her hand to check.

"Yes," she whispered, "yes, it definitely is. Er… Mr. Standerwick? Are you there?"

It was a stupid question. Where else would he be? But the cell was eerily silent. They crept closer, the otter Patronus weaving between the bars while the doe stood guard.

And yet, Hermione couldn't help noticing, there seemed to be fewer Dementors than before, far fewer than in the corridor they had just left. Why…?

"Oh!" Lily cried out, backing up so quickly she stepped on Hermione's foot. She was trembling all over, and for a terrifying moment, it looked like her doe Patronus was about to fade out.

"Lily!" Severus and Hermione said together.

Lily took a few frantic breaths, shutting her eyes tightly. The doe began to take on sharper definition again, and in its brighter light, Hermione saw what Lily had seen.

A man - Mr. Standerwick, no doubt - was lying on his back in the middle of the cell, gazing at nothing, with nothing in his eyes - nothing at all.

And Hermione knew, on a level deeper than logic and reason, that the man in front of her no longer had a soul.

She shuddered as Lily had; her Patronus vanished entirely. She thought she might throw up, or faint. She thought Lily's Patronus was dissolving as well, until she realized it was blurring because her eyes were full of tears.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no," she was whispering, only half-aware of what she was saying.

Beside her, Severus was silent but deathly white, his dark eyes fixed on the soulless man with some kind of fascinated horror.

It was Lily who pulled herself together enough to say, "We need to keep going. Find the others, before…"

That spurred them all into movement. Without ever agreeing to it, they were all half-running, terrified of what they might find. Hermione knew Lily was thinking about Sirius, and against her will she was thinking of him, too. He was here because she had said no to him - what if he lost his soul because of it? What would Harry say?

What if they were too late for everyone?

James stood outside the open door of what was supposed to be Sirius's cell, his heart twisting in his chest. The cell was empty, there were hex marks all over the walls, and the prisoners on either side had been Kissed. Sirius was gone.

Taken.

At least, James hoped he had been taken. He hoped Padfoot was alive somewhere, fighting and planning his escape, and not discarded in some dark corner of Azkaban, dead or soulless.

He tried to tell himself it didn't matter - that he would go back and change it, change all of it, and everything that was happening now would simply cease to be - but alarm was searing through his body, making his pulse race and his limbs shake.

What if Padfoot was dead? What if James was the only one left?

He turned to look around the corridor, searching for any sign of which way the Death Eaters might have taken him. His Patronus lit the corridor brightly, a silent, painful reminder of the friendship they had all shared, the discoveries they had made, the things they had accomplished. How had it all fallen apart?

With Peter, yes, but how? How could Peter do that to them? Why?

He still didn't understand. Maybe enough time had passed now that his sense of betrayed grief was greater than his sense of rage, or maybe it was just Azkaban, but the despair of it struck him harder now than it ever had before. Hadn't their friendship meant something? Hadn't it meant everything?

He gazed in anguished doubt at his Patronus, and it stirred uneasily. James shook himself. He couldn't let these thoughts get to him, not now, not when he was alone. One of the Prewetts was supposed to be with him, shielding him with his Patronus while James stayed ready to duel, but Prewett had gotten caught up in the battle on the roof, while James himself had as of yet not encountered a single Death Eater within Azkaban's walls.

He wondered how many of them had already escaped. Had Peter? Was it Peter who had come for Sirius? Surely not. Surely Peter wouldn't dare.

But James was all too aware that Sirius had been without a wand. So had Peter - but what if that had changed? James didn't trust Peter not to find a wand, even if he had to steal one from the fallen Aurors and Order members on the roof.

James knew he should have waited until Prewett could come with him, that he should, perhaps, have stayed on the roof where the action was thickest. But the thought of Sirius down here rotting away had been too much to bear, and he'd raced down here on his own, confident in his Patronus, confident in his ability to duel even while maintaining his Patronus.

After all, if Alice Longbottom could do it, he certainly could.

And he had been right - the empty cell proved it. Sirius needed his help.

Even if he could change everything. Even if none of this really mattered, and all these Kissed people could be safe and whole again. Even so, he needed to help Sirius now.

He took off down the corridor, picking a direction at random because the Death Eaters had left no trace. Every now and then, a little hummingbird Patronus flashed past him, but they were few and far between, and growing fainter. James didn't doubt that they had saved many lives (or souls, rather), but how many more had they failed to save? He had seen at least five prisoners who had been Kissed - there was no mistaking that soulless look in their eyes, that terrifying emptiness that he could feel, an absence where there should have been a presence. And if he had already seen five, that meant there must be a dozen at least.

A dozen souls lost. There would be no afterlife for them, no reincarnation, no whatever-came-next. They were just gone. Forever.

No. He would change it. He had to change it.

He was jogging down yet another corridor when he finally heard something - shouts from up ahead, blasting noises like spells. He raced toward the duel, only to come up short as the echoes shifted, disorienting him. Where was the noise coming from?

He tried one corridor, then another. A few prisoners cried out to him for help - good, they hadn't been Kissed, then. But the duel, which he could still hear, wasn't in either corridor. The first ended with a stairwell going up, probably toward the roof. The second ended in a stairwell leading down.

James turned back, listening hard, wishing he had taken a closer look at Moody's map. He had memorized the route to Sirius's cell, but nothing else, and at this point he had no idea where he was, or how to get to the duel he was hearing.

And he could still hear it, but it was fainter now, more distant. The corridor behind him was empty save for a pair of Dementors that glided away when he sent his Patronus racing after them.

It was then that he heard another noise, not back the way he had come, but below him - in the stairwell.

Footfalls. Light, barely audible, but still echoing from the dank stone walls.

James listened for a moment, holding his breath. The steps were unhurried, slow almost, and something about them made his skin crawl, made him want to cringe and cower. For several seconds he hesitated, hating the idea of hiding, but certain, in every fiber of his being, that he had to. His Patronus was still at the other end of the corridor where he had sent it after the two Dementors, and he didn't think its light would have been visible to someone climbing the stairs yet, but it soon would be, even if only as a faint glow.

It was insane, but James did the only thing he could think of. He crept back along the corridor until he found an empty cell, slipped inside it, and let his Patronus die.

Utter black surrounded him, along with utter cold. In one of the other cells, a prisoner cried out at the sudden loss of the Patronus, and James heard him reach through the bars, heard his desperate breaths.

He heard his own desperate breaths as well, and forced himself to be quiet even as memories began flooding his head.

His parents, dead. Remus, dead. All burned, all unrecognizable except those little tiny traits that he knew, because he knew them, because he loved them.

They were never coming back.

He pressed his palms to his eyes. They were coming back. He would change it.

Cold swept toward him, icy despair. They were not coming back.

It was over, everything was over. Everything he had hoped for, everything he had loved. He had married Lily, but it wasn't right - they both knew it wasn't right, that something had broken between them, because of his lies, because of the law, because of Snape and the wedding and most of all because of him, because she had seen something in him she didn't like, something she would have walked away from if she could have.

He knew it, though she'd never said it. He knew that she would have called the engagement off if she'd had a choice. He knew this was all an obligation, that no matter how much she cared for him, she didn't want this, not anymore.

They should have been here together, their matching Patronuses side by side, James her protector, she his light and happiness. Instead she was with Granger and Snape, because she had volunteered, because she had known full well the alternative was coming here with him.

This marriage was lost, even before it had begun. Lily was lost, Moony was lost, Peter and Padfoot and his parents and so many of his friends and family, lost. Everything lost.

And he couldn't change it.

James wanted to scream as the conviction seized him, as the losses crushed him in a way he hadn't allowed them to before. He wanted to cry out in rage and helpless grief, to tear this building, this whole world apart. He had lost everything.

It was too much. Too painful. He needed his Patronus, but if he couldn't have that, he could at least have Prongs.

He transformed, his hooves scraping lightly against the stone floor, his antlers almost touching the ceiling. He huffed out a breath, relieved as his despair was quieted, as his panicked grief faded to a dull ache.

Then he heard the footsteps again, and remembered that he needed to be silent.

Standing motionless in the darkness, he waited. The darkness was not so complete now. A strange violet glow had begun to suffuse the corridor, casting disturbing shadows across the walls.

But no, those weren't shadows: they were Dementors, gliding from cell to cell, searching for something.

For him.

He knew it instinctively, even as a dark, gliding figure paused before the bars of the cell where he was hiding. It hovered there for a moment, its dark hood obscuring whatever perversion of a face it might have. Its head turned to either side, back and forth in a slow, disturbing movement, a rattling sound emerging from its throat.

James held perfectly still, knowing it couldn't see him, but not at all certain it couldn't sense him, stag or not.

It could sense something, that was clear. But it seemed confused by it. James supposed it had not had many opportunities to encounter stags here in the middle of the North Sea. Could it sense his soul? Concealed within the breast of a deer, did his soul feel the same?

Apparently not. The Dementor retreated, presumably to search the next cell. James resisted the urge to let out a relieved huff of air, and held still. The violet light was much closer now, and he could hear those creepy footfalls.

Creepy, because they were barefoot. James saw the white feet before his gaze slid up the shadowed robes to a spiderlike white hand, an even whiter face.

And those eyes - gleaming red, with a glint of malevolent violet from the tinted Lumos spell he seemed to have cast.

Yet there was something wrong with his eyes - with his entire face. Veinlike tendrils of wounded flesh webbed out from his eyes, though whether of burns or venom or some unknown curse, James couldn't tell. James had not seen the wizard this closely when he had sent his Inferi tumbling over the cliff to the cave. He had not seen just how terrible Voldemort's face really was.

He held still, praying the purple light would not cast stag-shaped shadows across the walls of his cell. Voldemort was moving slowly, casually, as if he hadn't a care in the world. Each step he took made James's entire body quiver with animal hatred and fear. Each step seemed to take an eternity.

Then he was past, his soft footfalls fainter and fainter against the cold stone floor. James waited until the sound was gone, until utter darkness had fallen again. Then, with a jerk of his antlers, he caught the edge of the cell door and swung it open so he could emerge.

A hummingbird Patronus chose that moment to flit down the corridor, jabbing at the Dementors and driving them away from the cells, back the way Voldemort had gone. They reached out scabby, clammy hands to try to brush the bird out of the air, almost clawing at it as if they longed to catch and crush it, but in the end the little light was too much for them, and they retreated, radiating resentment.

In the hummingbird's pale light, James could see the corridor again. He stepped out of his cell, then stopped short as the prisoner in the cell across from him let out a frightened shriek.

It took him a few seconds to realize the source of the prisoner's alarm was him - the tall, dark, shadowy stag that had just emerged from an even darker cell, illuminated only by the unearthly light of the Patronus.

"It's not real," the prisoner muttered, "not real, not real…"

Marginally cheered, James stepped fully out into the corridor, glancing the way Voldemort had gone, debating whether to follow him.

But then he glanced the other way, toward the stairway Voldemort had just ascended. What had Voldemort been doing down there? He hadn't emerged with any prisoners, so he hadn't been freeing anyone. And there had been a sense of purpose, of malicious intent, in every one of his movements. He had done something. James could feel it.

His hooves clopped lightly against the stone as he made his way to the stairwell, gazing down into its quickly darkening depths. The hummingbird was departing; the light was fading. James transformed again, thought of his plan to change everything, and tried to cast his Patronus.

Nothing happened.

It was the Dementors, he knew. They had gotten to him. All the doubts and fears he had never permitted to gain purchase in his mind had gained plenty of purchase now, and then some. Gritting his teeth, he tried to think of his friends, the Marauders - but that wouldn't do, Peter was a traitor, Moony was dead, and Padfoot was probably the Death Eaters' prisoner. Lily? Lily didn't even want to be his wife…

And his parents were dead. Everyone was dead.

James gritted his teeth, muttered, "Lumos," instead, and watched as a not-very-comforting light appeared at the end of his wand.

Quickly, he began descending the stairs, hoping Voldemort's presence had kept the Dementors away from this particular stairwell, at least for now - until James could get a grip. The stairwell was narrow, cold, but cold in a different way than the corridor he had just left. Indeed, there was something almost wholesome about it. No, not wholesome, exactly, but - neutral. That was it. It was a neutral cold. Like the cold of a winter's night, of the stars or the sea.

James felt certain, suddenly, that he would find no Dementors here.

At first there were cells on either side, carved out of the stone. Then those ceased, and he was descending alone, his footsteps echoing around him, the taste of salt in the air and ice glinting on the walls. The feeling of neutrality, of a natural rather than an evil cold, remained, and James found himself relaxing into it, breathing more deeply than he had allowed himself in the Dementor-tainted air, his wandlight brightening in tune to his relief.

This wasn't a bad place, wasn't an evil place. It wasn't a good place, necessarily, but there was something compelling about it, something safe.

What in Merlin's name had Voldemort been doing here, then?

That gave him pause, made his shoulders tense. Something wasn't right. What would Voldemort want in a place like this? What would Voldemort be doing here at all, when there were Aurors and Order members wiping out his few remaining Death Eaters upstairs? And what was this place? James had never heard of Azkaban having a secret, comfortable dungeon. He'd never heard of Azkaban being anything but a prison.

He stopped dead. That wasn't true - he had heard something else. What was it? When was it? He racked his brains, trying to remember.

It had been Dumbledore, hadn't it? Dumbledore had been talking about the Dementors, about how they'd come from somewhere else, about how that Ekrizdis git had somehow let them in to this reality.

James teetered on the edge of something, his mind reaching out for something just beyond his grasp. It all meant something - it had to. But what?

And why would Voldemort be here? Was he planning to bring in new horrors from some other dimension? Something worse than Dementors?

But if this passageway led to some breach in the fabric of reality, some chasm opening into the Dementors' world, then why did it feel so… serene?

More slowly now, James followed the last few winding steps down to a narrow, almost natural-looking tunnel. The walls here looked more like cavern walls than walls built by man, and James found that, too, to be comforting. This place was older, older than Azkaban, older than Dementors, maybe. And there was something in the air, some sense of mystery or allure, some sense of belonging.

James felt an indescribable pull toward the tunnel, toward whatever lay beyond. It was like waking up from a nightmare and longing, almost instinctively, for his mother; like hearing a knock on the door and irrationally expecting it to be his father; like trying to conjure a Patronus, and thinking without remembering of the Marauders and all the happy memories they'd shared.

It was a feeling of something lost, that shouldn't have been lost. Something that was so close, but infinitely out of reach.

The battle raging on the rooftop above, the Dementors stalking the corridors, the Death Eaters and Aurors and friends he had left behind, all seemed to vanish into total inconsequence. He wanted to enter that tunnel, to leave everything, and a part of him suspected he would never return.

I could change everything, he reminded himself.

And then, with a dawning sense of wonder, he realized: this was how they had done it. Ekrizdis had messed around with time, hadn't he? Hadn't Dumbledore said so? And James knew his future son couldn't have used a Time-Turner. Was this it? The answer? That longing he felt, was it for the possibility that lay ahead of him, the possibility to change it all?

Burning with excitement now, he started forward - only to stop again as a distant, piercing scream echoed down the stairwell from above.

Lily.

He couldn't have said how he knew it was her, from that one scream alone, but he did. Then she screamed again, and he thought somewhere in the indistinct echoes scattering down to him, he heard the word, "Help!"

She needed him.

But the answer was right there.

She needed help!

But if he changed everything -

James let out a cry of desperate frustration, took another step down the tunnel, then abruptly turned on his heel and raced up the stairs.

"Lily!" he yelled. "Lily!"

It was stupid to yell, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He thought he heard her scream his name, and then the screams stopped, and his heart seemed to stop, too, before exploding with rage.

"Lily!"

He tripped on the stairs, smashed his chin on the cold stone, got up and kept running. There was silence above now, terrifying silence, and that icy, evil cold had begun to sweep down on him again.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" he shouted, full of fear, but full of love, too. His stag burst out of his wand, galloping ahead of him, and by the time he burst into the corridor where he'd seen Voldemort, the Dementors were gone, while James's stag waited impatiently for him to catch up.

"Where is she?" he yelled, as if the Patronus could somehow know.

And maybe it did. It turned and galloped forward, driving the Dementors out of its way, while James, panting and bleeding from his chin, dashed after it. There were no Death Eaters, no Order members, no one to fight or help, no one to explain what had happened. Ahead, James could see what looked like crumbling stone, could feel a blast of cold, salty air.

The wind, sweeping in from the sea. Someone had blasted apart the fortress walls, leaving the wind and fog to pour in through the gaping hole.

And his Patronus leapt straight through it, out into the air, shining fainter and fainter as it galloped into the fog, into the wind, into the night.