Chapter Six: Escape from Azkaban
Author's Note: Based on works of J.K. Rowling. Thanks to Zsenya for beta-reading. Further acknowledgements at end of chapter.
* * *
"Ginny! Wh-- wha-- whryoudoinhere?" It was the first time Harry had used his voice in a long time except for a few strangled moans, and he broke off in a fit of coughing.
"I've come here on holiday. Seemed like a nice warm spot to spend the summer. No, come on, Harry, what did you think? Now hurry up, the Dementors won't wait all day."
Harry struggled to crawl to the window. Perhaps he should have eaten something after all. Ginny made an impatient noise in her throat. "Harry, we haven't got-- oh, bother this-- Alohomora!" The iron bars at the window swung open. "Ha! Guess they didn't think to charm-proof it. Wingardium Leviosa!" Harry was surprised to find himself levitated about five feet into the air, to the level of the window. "Accio Harry!" Ginny finished, and Harry involuntarily zoomed out the window to where Ginny was standing on the ground outside. She had to put her arms up to stop his momentum; if he hadn't spent the previous couple weeks on a near-starvation diet, he would likely have knocked her over. His arms and legs felt like spaghetti, and she had to hold him by his shoulders to keep him standing up.
Ginny laughed, although hurriedly. "Bet you didn't know I was so good at Summoning Charms. Most people can't do that with another person. Fortio." She pointed her wand at him again, and he felt a bit of strength entering his legs, just barely enough to stand up with. "Here, eat this." She stuffed a slab of Honeydukes' Extra-Luxurious Chocolate ("Melts in Your Mouth, Not All Over Your Face", said the wrapper) into Harry's mouth, and he swallowed it and felt stronger again. He nodded at her. "Okay, what now?"
"Now? Now we rejoin the others, of course."
"Others?"
Harry looked up-- and what he saw took his breath away.
He was near one end of an island, with about thirty feet of rocky ground on a descending slope between him and the sea.
Standing on a rock at the edge of the sea, some distance away, was a boy-- it was Neville Longbottom-- waving his wand at some sort of plants, which appeared to be spreading rapidly across the ground. At least three Dementors were on the ground, ensnared in the newly-formed undergrowth.
Further away, toward the opposite end of the island, there seemed to be a good deal of commotion. Three girls on broomsticks-- they looked like Angelina, Alicia, and Katie, the Chasers on Harry's house Quidditch team-- were swooping in toward a large group of Dementors and out to sea. There was also what looked like a white owl-- Hedwig!! Something more was happening on the ground at that end, but Harry couldn't tell what it was.
Meanwhile, something seemed to be repeatedly exploding and knocking down Dementors at that end of the island. Harry looked out to sea to see where the explosions were coming from-- and there were Fred and George Weasley, floating on a flying carpet and directing something with their wands also.
As Harry stood transfixed by the scene, Ginny prodded him. "Come on, we've got to hurry. The Dementors might come."
"All-- all right…"
They walked as quickly as Harry's weak legs could manage toward the water. "Neville!!!" Ginny screamed. "I've got him!" Neville turned and waved his arms frantically in the direction of Fred and George, signaling for them to come. "Hurry," Ginny reminded Harry again. (Harry didn't think he needed to be reminded again, but decided it would be ungrateful to say so.)
I can't believe this, thought Harry. We're going to escape. We're really going to escape. As long as no more Dementors--
Immediately he regretted thinking it. A group of five or six Dementors emerged from behind a large boulder ahead of them on the path. "Oh, no!!!" moaned Ginny. "I should have known this would happen!"
"Ginny. Your wand," demanded Harry. He knew what to do. There was no time for niceties. "Give me your wand. Please."
Ginny hesitated a moment, and then reached into her pocket for her wand and handed it to Harry. Harry thought of escaping Azkaban once and for all and celebrating at the Burrow with Ginny and all the others, and rejoining Ron and Hermione-- "Expecto Patronum!"
A great silvery something burst from Ginny's wand in Harry's hands. But something was wrong-- it wasn't the shape of the stag that Harry was used to producing in these cases. It appeared to have partly-formed wings, and its legs were too short. The awkward Patronus stumbled toward the cluster of Dementors, hesitated for a while, and disappeared.
"Ginny!" Harry thrust the wand back into her hands. "It won't work right for me with someone else's wand. You do it. Think of something happy. 'Expecto Patronum.' "
"Expecto-- Expecto Patronum," said Ginny uncertainly. A small silver mist appeared from the wand, and disappeared. The Dementors were marching toward them again.
"Think of something happy. 'Expecto Patronum.' "
"Expecto Patronum," Ginny tried again, and this time the silver mist formed itself a little better before disappearing. The Dementors were getting closer. Harry looked up for the flying carpet, but Fred and George were still at the other end of the island doing something, he couldn't tell what. There wasn't much more time.
"Ginny. Think of the happiest thing you can possibly think of. Concentrate on it with all your mind. Then say, 'Expecto Patronum.' " This has to work, Harry thought, we really need help, we need some kind of help…
Ginny looked a bit flustered. Then she appeared to be setting her face in concentration. The Dementors were only a few feet away-- Harry tried to block out the sound of his mother's dying screams-- suddenly he heard something else, a wordless song that seemed to strengthen every cell in his body-- Ginny seemed to notice it too-- she took a deep breath-- a look of incredible blissful peace spread across her face-- she looked like an angel-- "Expecto Patronum!!!"
A great silvery-white bird burst from the end of Ginny's wand. It circled around the Dementors, driving them away from her. The Dementors moved away-- they moved in the direction of Neville, who had been clambering over the rocks at the water's edge toward Harry and Ginny-- and the Patronus soared in between, protecting Neville also. And then another bird appeared, and Harry knew where he had heard the wordless song before.
It was Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore's phoenix. And Ginny's Patronus was also a phoenix.
The two majestic birds, one real and one conjured, continued to circle around the pack of Dementors, driving them, driving them down, down into the water. With a Sploosh! Sploosh! Splooshshshsshsh! the Dementors disappeared below the surface of the icy waters and were never seen again.
Fawkes and Ginny's Patronus then flew back to her, where Neville had finally reached her and Harry. Ginny reached out her hand to touch the Patronus, and it disappeared. She looked a bit crestfallen. "Don't worry, that always happens," Harry reassured her.
But Fawkes was still very much real, and hovered by Harry as if making an offer. Harry and Ginny both remembered how this worked, and Harry grabbed Fawkes' tail feathers with one hand and Ginny's hand with the other. Ginny then offered her other hand to Neville, and a lightness spread through all three of them as they soared through the air-- Harry with a sudden and complete feeling of relief, Ginny with a look of thrilled excitement, and Neville apparently with stunned disbelief-- as they soared back out to meet Fred, George, and the others at the flying carpet. One last pack of Dementors had come back to the end of the island near Harry's cell, but they didn't come close to catching them. Harry Potter had escaped from Azkaban.
* * *
Harry, Ginny, and Neville tumbled onto the flying carpet as Fawkes set them down. Harry looked around and saw Fred, George, Alicia, Angelina, and Katie all grinning back at him, looking excited but exhausted. Fred turned and yanked on the edge of the carpet, sending it speeding up and away from the prison island on a homeward trajectory. Harry looked down from the other teenagers and saw, to his great surprise, a pair of house-elves-- Dobby and Winky!-- smiling and bowing to him. And then-- Crookshanks?-- an orange-colored cat whom Harry recognized as Hermione's leaped into Ginny's arms and looked at Harry. Harry felt something feathery in his arms, and looked down and recognized his own Hedwig, hooting affectionately at him. And rounding out the group was Ron's miniature owl Pidwidgeon, fluttering and hooting with his usual excitement. No-- not quite his usual excitement; he seemed more subdued than usual in the presence of the phoenix, while Hedwig kept looking at Fawkes, her usual pride replaced by bashfulness, as if looking for a sign of approval from the noble bird.
Harry found that his lungs were heaving, taking in great gasps of air. Not so much from the exertion of the escape, or from the excitement, as that it felt like he had never tasted fresh air before. He didn't know whether the air actually was poisoned in the island prison, or whether it just seemed that way because of the Dementors. Perhaps it didn't really make that much difference. In any case, Harry had never felt like this before. It was a little bit like when Hagrid came and told him that he was a wizard, and he found that he could escape the Dursleys and live in a world where he actually belonged. But no-- Azkaban had been far worse than Privet Drive before Hogwarts. At the Dursleys' he had never known that there was any other life than the one that he lived. But in Azkaban he had known joy before, and it had been taken from him and replaced with unending misery more intense than Privet Drive could ever have dreamed of being. And now, to have that back was the most wonderful thing in the world.
Harry looked around at his rescuers-- seven humans, two elves, and four animals. He couldn't-- he couldn't believe that they would do this for him. He had just spent some unknown number of days thinking of how everyone seemed to hate him, and now his friends-- and not even his best friends, either-- had risked their lives, or at least their sanity, to rescue him. "Wh-- why-- I don't understand," he choked out. "Why would you-- why would you do this for me?"
George's face broke into something between a grin and a smirk. "Well, Harry," he replied, "I think you'd better ask little sis about that one. This was all her idea, you ought to know."
Harry looked curiously, and a bit awkwardly, at Ginny, who blushed and didn't meet his eyes. "No," she said, "it's not-- it wasn't-- well, it was like this." She took a deep breath and began to tell her story.
* * *
"Well, you see, it started with Professor Dumbledore.
"After that-- that trial-- I guess-- well, I guess I was pretty mad at you for a while there. Not just about-- about Mr. Malfoy-- well, that too, but-- well, what you said, Harry…"
Harry thought for a moment. "You mean the letter?"
Ginny nodded unhappily. "Yes. That." She took a breath. "I mean-- I know you didn't mean it the way it came out, and it wasn't your fault that it got read up there in front of everybody, but--" Another breath. "Mum kept telling me that I shouldn't be angry with you, that you'd never had a father you could talk to, that you didn't have any other way of talking to someone about these things, that I wouldn't want some of the things I've talked ab--" She stopped. "Well-- anyway-- but I knew she was right, but I was still pretty angry. I mean, I hope you understand, but-- but that's how it was."
Harry felt awful. "Ginny-- I'm sorry-- I didn't mean--"
"Yes, I know you didn't mean it, I'm just saying, think of how some other people must have felt, okay?"
Harry nodded. He figured he already knew how quite a lot of people had felt about that stupid letter of his, but didn't want to argue the point.
"You should have heard her," Fred chimed in. "Why do boys always have to be such stupid gits?!?" he mimicked in a remarkably good imitation of Ginny's voice.
"Fred!" Ginny turned around to slap him, as Fred turned away and went back to steering the carpet. Harry shot Fred a brief warning look; Ginny hadn't sounded like she thought it was funny.
"So anyway--" Ginny stopped to regain her composure. "After a few days, Professor Dumbledore came to see my Mum and Dad at the Burrow. They were talking pretty late into the night, and I'd been shutting up in my room, but then I decided to come down for a drink of water.
"But when I got to the bottom of the staircase, I decided to stop and listen, because maybe it wasn't something I wanted to interrupt. And they were-- they were talking about-- about You-Know-Who. Only Dumbledore called him-- you know…"
"Voldemort," said Harry. Everyone else cringed, and Winky put her hands over as much of her ears as they would cover. "Ginny," he added and looked intently at her until she met his eyes. "I've met him and survived, and so have you, in the Chamber of Secrets. You can call him Voldemort."
"But Harry-- you don't understand--"
"I do understand. Dumbledore says being scared of saying it just makes us more scared of-- of him. That goes for all of you," he added, looking around at the others.
Ginny swallowed hard. Fawkes (how much did that bird understand, anyway?) flew over to Ginny and nestled against her, cooing softly. Ginny took a breath. "Okay-- Voldemort." She sat in silence for a moment, as if adjusting to the reality that she had actually said the name. George stared at his sister, his eyes almost as big as Dobby's.
"Right then-- go ahead," Harry nodded at Ginny. She swallowed again.
"So anyway… so, Dumbledore was talking about-- about Voldemort" (she swallowed again), and he was saying about how Voldemort wants to recall the Dementors from Azkaban. And he said that he thought when he came with the Death Eaters, the Dementors would all go over to their side, and that he would kill Harry then. And when he said it-- he was the only one that I could see through the crack in the kitchen door, although I didn't think he'd seen me-- he gives me this look through the crack, almost like he was saying I was supposed to be doing something about it.
"After that, I-- I felt like I should go back to bed, like Dumbledore was saying I had heard everything I was supposed to hear. I couldn't get to sleep for hours, honestly, it was like all I could think about was how to get you out of there."
"And we know why that is," teased George. "She wanted to be the damsel in shining armor, coming to rescue the knight in distress."
"Hey, Gin!" added Fred. "That's what you can make when you open your fashion shop someday. Shining armor for damsels!" Everybody laughed except for Ginny, who buried her head in her hands.
"No, that's not why she did it. It's not what you're thinking," answered Harry. Everyone looked at him, puzzled.
"Dumbledore explained it to me once. It's like, when a witch or wizard saves another's life, it's like there's a connection between them. My father saved Snape's life once when they were students, and from what Dumbledore says, Snape's actually been protecting me even though he hates my guts. So it's probably like, because of what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, Ginny would have tried to rescue me no matter how much she hated me."
Ginny looked a bit embarrassed but nodded. "Well-- yeah. I guess…." She looked thoughtful. "I guess that must be why. I mean, I was still kind of mad at you even when I was planning the whole rescue thing."
"So how did you plan it?" Harry asked, curiously.
"Well, you know Fred and George have been doing that Weasley's Wizard Wheezes thing." Harry nodded. "Well, apparently some private investor was actually crazy enough to give them a whole sack of Galleons to get their joke shop going--" (Harry tried hard to keep his face expressionless, not wishing to let Ginny know that she was at that moment speaking to the "private investor" in question) "and they've been making a whole bunch of crazy stuff up in their room, and Mum doesn't even try to stop them anymore.
"So next morning, the first thing I did was ask them if there was anything they could do to defeat the Dementors and get Harry out of there, and they said they might have some ideas."
"Of course we had to tease her properly about it first," Fred called back over his shoulder from the driver's seat of the carpet.
"They were awful," muttered Ginny to no one in particular. And then she called back to Fred, a bit more brightly, "I should start teasing you about all those owls you've been sending to Angelina." Harry looked at Angelina, who was smiling and looking a bit flattered.
"Nothing to tease about there," Fred countered slyly. "Why would I be embarrassed about sending owls to Angelina, hmm?"
This time Angelina did look a bit bashful. Katie and Alicia giggled. With a sigh, Ginny gave up that line of reasoning and continued. "So then, they also said that Angelina, Alicia, and Katie had been taking Quidditch lessons from Troy, Mullet, and Moran-- you know, those witches that play Chaser for Ireland-- and might be able to help us out a bit."
"And then I owled a bunch of others, Harry, anybody that I thought might want to help you out. Of course Ron and Hermione couldn't, they don't get out till tomorrow. I sent one to your friend Seamus Finnigan, but he was staying with Dean Thomas, and they both wanted to come, but Dean's parents are Muggles and didn't understand. And Colin and Dennis Creevey so wanted to come, but their parents are Muggles too, and they're really worried about things, Colin even said he wasn't sure if they'd be allowed to come back to Hogwarts next year."
This felt a bit odd to Harry. Colin Creevey and his brother Dennis seemed to worship the ground Harry walked on, and he had always found the unwanted attention a bit annoying. But for them to not be allowed to come to Hogwarts anymore… Harry wasn't sure, but it almost felt like he'd miss them.
"And my Gran doesn't know I'm here," added Neville. "I was sure she'd say no. I just left her a note saying not to worry about me, I was with the Weasleys. I wasn't sure if I should really come or not, since I didn't think she'd want me to. But then I thought, Gran's always wanted me to uphold the family honor, and this was a chance to do it, and if I blew this chance I didn't know if I'd ever get another one." He said this with as firm a look of determination as Harry had ever seen on his face, more so even than the time in their first year when Neville had tried to stop Harry, Ron, and Hermione from trying to find the Philosopher's Stone beneath the third-floor corridor.
"And then," said Ginny, nodding encouragingly at Neville, "we started trying to figure out what to do. I knew Azkaban was somethere in the North Sea and it was guarded by Dementors, but that was all I knew. Fortunately some people--" she indicated the older girls-- "were paying attention in fifth-year Defense Against the Dark Arts two years ago, when my stupid brothers were trying to figure out how to make things go bang."
"Hey!" said George, looking wounded. "Making things go bang was an important part of the plan, I'll have you know."
"Yes, but still," Ginny was replying, when Alicia cut in.
"What we learned about Dementors from Professor Lupin," explained Alicia as though detailing a Quidditch strategy, "was that they sense emotion. They can sort of sense animals, although they sense people better. So we had to find some way of making them sense emotion to draw them away from the cells."
"What Katie and Angelina and I did was to keep swooping through on our brooms, and then back out over the water again. That way, they'd sense us, but we'd be moving fast enough that they wouldn't be able to suck enough happiness to throw us off. And besides, flying in formation is enough of a thrill that we could kind of sustain ourselves in spite of what the Dementors were trying to do to us."
"Meanwhile," George continued with a grin, "My esteemed brother Frederick and I had been working on our all-new, amazing, stupendous Flying Firecrackers. Watch this." He picked up a firecracker from the surface of the carpet, and threw it out over the sea. Immediately it transformed into a pigeon, which kept flying slowly forward for about twenty yards before turning back into a firecracker and exploding into a large fireball.
"We made sure they didn't explode while they were still pigeons," Fred added. "That would have been inhumane." ("Like that's ever stopped them," muttered Ginny darkly.)
"So you see," concluded George, while it's a bird, it has enough emotion to draw a Dementor's attention. And then-- bang!-- no more pigeon… and no more Dementor."
"And what were you doing, Neville?" asked Harry curiously.
"Well, you see," explained Neville, "my Gran has this greenhouse out behind the estate, and I've been working in it over the summers developing different kinds of plants. This summer I'd figured out how to do this mutation of Devil's Snare, so it grows a lot faster and the vines are a lot tougher. Sort of a super-strength version of it. I call it Neville's Snare," he added, with an uncharacteristically devilish grin.
"And it was perfect for Azkaban," Ginny added, nodding encouragingly at Neville again, "because it's cold and damp to begin with, and that's what that kind of plant likes."
"Plus I also borrowed some mooncalf dung from the greenhouse," added Neville in a worried tone. "I hope Gran's not too mad when she finds out…."
"Neville," replied Harry thankfully, "after this… you can tell your Gran I'll buy her all the mooncalf dung she wants."
"And then," Ginny continued, "all of a sudden the house-elves showed up."
"Professor Dumbledore is sending us to see Miss Wheezy and see if she is needing Dobby's and Winky's help with anything," explained Dobby. "And she was! And Miss Wheezy said that Dobby and Winky could come to rescue the great Harry Potter from the terrible prison of Azkaban. Because house-elves is not affected by Dementors the way humans is."
"And you know that house-elves can do this magic thing where they point their finger and make a 'bang', and the person they're pointing at gets blasted back," Ginny added. "And it turns out that works pretty well on Dementors. So there we were: the twins with their firecrackers, the girls on their brooms, the house-elves blasting the dementors back, and the animals running and flying around confusing the Dementors, while Neville got his plants growing as a barrier to keep the Dementors away while I came and got you from your cell."
"Wow." That was all Harry could say after hearing the story. A bunch of kids, elves, and animals outwitting the most fearsome prison guards in the wizarding world. Who would have thought it?
Another question occurred to Harry. "By the way, how did you all get here?"
"On a muggle airplane, Harry," Fred called back, "what did you think?"
"No, that's not what I meant, I can see you're on a flying carpet… wait… How did you get a flying carpet? Isn't this against your dad's Muggle Protection Act?"
"Ali Bashir," explained George. "Our contact in Saudi Arabia. Rented it from him in exchange for some free test-marketing samples of our stuff for Arabia. After all the grief Dad's given him, he was happy to see he could do business with us after all. And besides, as long as we don't touch down on English soil, we haven't broken the law, right?"
"He even threw in an Arabian lamp for us to experiement with," Fred added.
"They tried to get me to let them shrink me into it," complained Ginny.
"You could have been the Ginny in the magic lamp!" George insisted. "So anyway, like I was saying, that's how we got the magic carpet. Smashing, eh?"
"Wow. That's… that's cool." Harry grinned. Just like Fred and George to pull off something like that. "But what I meant was, how did you know where Azkaban was?"
"Piece of cake," George replied. "Sent Hedwig with a letter to Harry Potter. Guess they didn't bother to make it unplottable. Just followed her right on in, and then caught up with her, took her over to help us, there you were." He held up a parchment envelope with Harry's name on it.
"Wow. That's… that's all I can say. I can't believe that… that you'd actually do this for me."
"Harry," replied Neville, looking a bit hurt. "Ron and Hermione aren't your only friends."
Harry felt wounded. Of course Neville was right. Harry had spent so much of his free time with Ron and Hermione that he tended to forget that other people cared about him too. Especially Neville. Harry had only found out at the end of last year that Neville's parents were in the insanity ward of St. Mungo's after having been tortured by Death Eaters, and felt awful that he hadn't gotten to know Neville enough to even find out about his family. He was sure he didn't want to make that mistake again.
"What's that?" interrupted Fred, pointing at something in the distance. Something appeared to be flying toward them. It seemed to be some sort of large flying creature. Too small for a dragon, definitely. A winged horse, perhaps? Or was it a hippogriff?
It was a hippogriff.
It was a black dog riding on a hippogriff.
* * *
"Sirius!!!" called Harry, standing up and waving his arms. The others were looking up at him, a bit shocked. "Trust me," he explained, "he really is innocent. Even Dumbledore believes it."
As Buckbeak the hippogriff flew up alongside the flying carpet, the black dog transformed into Sirius Black, Harry's godfather. "Sirius!" shouted Harry happily. It was the first time he had seen his godfather in several weeks.
"Sorry, no time to chat. Wish I could," he added with a regretful look at Harry. He drew out a small wooden box from his robes and handed it across the gap to Harry on the flying carpet. It had a bronze key in it.
"The key is a Portkey," Sirius explained. "It will take you to the Burrow. You will be safe there. You are not safe here. Death Eaters are coming. Everyone join hands, and make sure somebody's holding Crookshanks and the owls. Harry, take the key when everyone's ready. It's the only way."
The others looked at Harry, who nodded at them, assuring them that, yes, this would be safe, they could trust Sirius. "Ready?" he asked them all. "One… two… three."
And on three, Harry took the bronze key, and the all-too-familiar jerk behind his navel brought him through swirling winds and colors into the front yard of the Weasley family home, the Burrow.
"Harry!"
Arthur and Molly Weasley were running out from the front door. Arthur threw his arm around Harry's shoulders in welcome, before his wife caught up and seized Harry into a motherly embrace lasting several seconds. Arthur meanwhile was hugging Ginny, Fred, and George in turn. And standing in the background, looking on with a knowing smile, was Albus Dumbledore.
"Come inside, Harry. You poor thing, you look like you're starving, come inside, you must eat, dinner's almost ready," rattled Molly so fast Harry could barely make out the words.
But as Harry and his friends followed Mr. and Mrs. Weasley inside for dinner, he saw a soft couch in their living room. And all of a sudden, the whole exhaustion of everything that had happen broke upon him, and he collapsed on it, fast asleep.
Additional A/N: This is not the end… not yet. There will be two more chapters. And don't worry, I haven't forgotten-- we will see Ron and Hermione again before it's over!
Further acknowledgments: The idea of Neville's Gran's greenhouse was borrowed from Karina's "An Uninvited Guest"; the fact that everybody had something to contribute was perhaps also indirectly inspired by the "gifts" scene in that story. Also, the reference to Ginny's hypothetical future fashion shop was inspired by Anne's stories ("Nobody Likes You When You're 23" and its sequels.)