The Greater Good
by Kiana Unei
Sorry I got you guys confused, you've been great to me! Well, I've learned my lessons: Never try to write something whist battling a fever. It's okay now, though- I'm well again. Basically what happened was that Sirius seems to have lost his mind, so the Minister of Defence decides to make Harry be the one to go fetch the Crest of Isis from the catacombs beneith Azkaban. The entrance to it was blocked by a riddle, which Harry managed to solve.
None of this is mine save the stupid summerys. Harry and his magical world belong to J K Rowling.
IX:
Decent, and Fractured Plans (con't)
If one understood Dementors, one could find ways to work around them. Dementors were like Muggle computer programs; they were quite predictable in their actions. The 'black ghouls' fed off emotions, and they devoured souls. They did not plot, nor cheat, nor- as far as he knew- do anything else. It was their so called 'handlers' what were the ones to worry about.
Humans were the most dangerous preditors ever to walk the Earth; mostly because their brains COULD comprehend the meaning of such things as betrayal, war, and deceit. They also carried an almost unbreakable set of prejudices, such as that if you went to Azkaban, then you went insane.
Sirius Black, thirty-four year-old wizard from Edtinburough, Scotland, had been the sole exception from that rule for twelve years. But in the end, the Azkaban prejudice had proved true once again.
Caught in a no-win sitiuation, he had worked into what action he could; found the so-called 'alternative path'. He was of no use to anybody as a psycotic, and thus freed from an untimely end. Plus, his godson would now have a chance at a real family, something he had lacked for many, many years.
His second escape from Azkaban would have been easy at that point; no security, no suspicious creeps like Wesson poking their noses into his buisness.
What he didn't count on was the possiblility of intrest in the phenomanon of his extended sanity.
If keeping his mind still had been hard, doing so physically was excruciating tourture. Sirius tried to concentrate on what the hell he was going to do now that he was stuck at the bloody Ministry of Magic, rather than his itching muscles, but found the task nearly impossible.
Through slitted eyes, he could dimly make out the painfully bright lights bobbing at regular intervals overhead, and a guard walking just before his streacher. If only he knew where they were taking him. . . .
And then they stopped. Sirius let his head flop limply to one side, giving himself a slight view of the surrounding area.
Directly in front of his face was a metal washbin, behind him was a wooden door. Someone grasped him by the chin and tilted his face back upward, ending his observations.
"Now?" a man's voice asked somewhere above Sirius' head.
"No- I don't quite fancy cleaning up a corpse," a female voice replied. Corpse?
"Aye," the man chuckled. "God, he is a mess, though."
The woman giggled, and Sirius felt a cold washcloth travel across the side of his face, over his forehead, and across the bridge of his nose. He struggled not to sneeze.
"How old do you think he was?"
"Dunno . . . fourty, I'd guess."
'Fourty'? Sirius fought off the urge to glare at the unseen speaker.
"No, look at his eyes. The lack of wrinkles. I'd put him in his mid- thirties." Her statement was punctuated by a shap, firey prick to the inside of his elbow.
By reflex, Sirius jerked awake, making both the guard and a female doctor jump back.
"He's awake!" she yelped.
Sirius glanced down at the long hypedermic needle embedded in the inside of his arm, slowly releasing a dark, gray-green liquid into his system. After Azkaban, he really, really hated shots. With a single deft motion he pried the needle out, trying to keep from winceing.
The guard went for his wand; Sirius jumped dizzily to his feet and jabbed the shot underneith the man's jaw.
"Put it down," he commanded, then added to the doctor, "and you. Both of you give me your wands." They complied, and Sirius quickley replaced needle with wand, glaring darkly in what he hoped was an excaped-murderish style.
He shook his head to clear away the fog threatening behind his eyes, apparently the effects of keeping still for so long. "Where are we?"
"Ministry of Magic, pre-op ward," the doctor replied in a crisp, strangely calm voice.
"Why?"
"Brainsurgery."
"WHAT?"
"To find out why you aren't insane," the guard put in.
"I'll tell you that right now!" Sirius stumbled slightly as the world tilted beneith his feet, and managed to regain his balance. "I didn't lose my mind in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent, and that's not a happy thought so the Dementors can't take it away from me!"
"Innocent?" the doctor's eyebrows shot up.
"YES! YES! INNOCENT!" His words were comming out in a rush, and sounding very distant. Numbly, Sirius placed a hand on the streacher to steady himself.
"You didn't blow up that street?" the guard looked almost stricken.
"NO!! PETER Pettigreww dith. . ." He stumbled forward into the guard, unable to feel his legs. His left arm was throbbing almost painfully. The guard caught him around the waist, struggling against the unexpected weight.
He shifted so the unconscious convict was supported across his knees, then demanded, "Are you sure forced honesty is one of the effects of the drug you gave him?"
"Yes," the doctor answered, face white. Night's leaf was a powerful toxin, capable of only two effects: truth serum, and then a quick, painless death. Black had no choice but to tell the truth.
The guard stared down at the man's almost colourless face, slowly relaxing as life drained from his body. It was like watching the speeded-up recording of a flower closeing up for the night; the onset of death at an unnatural rate.
"Then get him an antidote. But don't tell anyone why you need it."
* * *
"AAARGHH!"
"Ron!" Mrs Weasley snaped at her youngest son.
"What, the Cannons lose again?" Fred joked, and tried to snatch the paper away from his brother.
"Nah, probably he just found out that they've been cut from the World Quidditch League 'cause they stink worse than he does." George reached across the table for a stack of buttered scones, and got an angry glare from his mother.
"Cannons don't stink!" Ron retorted, moveing the scones out of George's reach. Fred snatched a few up and tossed them to his twin.
"Boys! Behave yourselves!" Mrs Weasley scolded.
"I gotta owl Harry!" Ron yelped, and attempted to launch himself from the breakfast table.
"RON! Sit down!"
"Yeah," Fred added, "don't use Pig when there's food around; he'll land in it."
"He only did that once, stupid," Ron grumped.
"No name calling," his mother scolded.
"Yeah," George added, "it's not our fault you got a retarded owl what doesn't know his arse from his elbow."
"George!"
"Yeah, well Sirius didn't know he was retarded." Ron muttered, offended.
" 'Sirius'?" Fred and George chorused. "As in 'Sirius Bloody Black?"
"Boys!"
"Off course not!" Ron scoffed. "Why would he get me an owl?"
"I don't know." Fred and George exchanged identical glances. "But you DID come home with Pig after you ran into that maniac."
Now even Mrs Weasley was looking at him oddly. "Ron?"
"Erm . . . yes, Mum?"
"Where did Pig come from?"
"Well . . . when a guy owl really loves a girl owl-"
"MUM!" Fred interrupted, snatching up the paper his younger brother had discarded, "Look a' this!"
HARRY POTTER KIDNAPPED BY SIRIUS BLACK!
writes Natalie Newlingala, special correspondant.
Yesterday, Hogwarts' game keeper, the half-giant Rubeus Hagrid,
visited Mr Potter's home, apparently to check up on the boy's
well-being. He found Potter missing.
"I asked the Muggles (that he lives with) where (Harry) was, and
they told me his murdering godfather took him," says Hagrid.
"(Black) forced his way into my home five nights ago," explains Mr
Vernon Dursley, Harry's Muggle uncle. "He threatened to kill myself,
Petunia, and our son, Dudley, and told us he was taking (my nephew)."
"Filthy wretch he was, too," says Mrs Petunia Dursley. "Tall man, filthy
black hair, wearing some kind of a shabby grey (robe)."
"I wet my trowsers," complains Dudley, Harry's cousin. "I thought he was going to kill me."
The Ministry has been notified, and searches are in progress to recouver
the Boy Who Lived, and put Sirius Black to justice. Any information about
the whereabouts of either is greatly appriciated, and tips leading to the capture
of Black and/ or the rescue of Potter will be rewarded with as much as 10.000
galleons.
"Oh no!" Mrs Weasley gasped. She rushed to the fireplace, the boys right behind her.
Chapter X:
Of Retards and Renegades
" Od . . . e . . . ay?"
"I . . . ow . . . o. Do you kn . . . w . . . eans?"
"If . . . ives or . . . ies?"
"Either way."
"No."
"Shut . . . it. Please." Sirius grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut against the worst headache he'd had since the morning after James' last birthday.
"Herr Black?" a male voice inquired.
Sirius growled a reply, afraid he'd be sick.
"I think he will live." the same heavily German voice stated.
"Good." The guard let out a sigh of relief. "Good. If he'd died it'd really have hit the fan."
Sirius forced an eye open, taking in the two men over him, and a white-washed room he wasn't framiliar with. "What happened?" he croaked.
"That's what I'd like to know!" A man in red, green, and black robes stormed over, banging the door shut behind him. "What's so important that it can't wait for a conferance with- SIRIUS BLACK!"
"Precisely." the guard said. "Sir, I'd like to show you something . . ." He ripped Sirius' left sleeve off at the shoulder, making him protest loudly and discriptivly.
In a fluid motion, the guard tapped his wand against Sirius' forearm. Nothing happened.
"What . . ?" The newcommer knelt down beside them, staring from the guard to Sirius and back.
"Sirius Black," the guard stated, "is not a Death Eater. He has no Dark Mark, and thus is not part of the Dark Lord's alligiance."
The other stared wordlessly at the blank spot on Sirius' arm, then slowly met his gaze. "How?"
"I was framed," he said, slightly tired of telling the story, "by Pettigrew. I stayed sane in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent."
"Give him a trial," the man ordered. Startled, Sirius gaped at him, and slowly felt the ice in his spine melt, erodeing away the years of touture from the halls of Azkaban that left him hard-spirited and empty.
"Yes, Minister Reiton," the guard saluted.
"'Reiton'?" Sirius snaped, glancing at the man who was, most deffinatly, not the Minister of Deffence.
"Yes?"
"You- you're not Minister Reiton," he accused. "Or did you take Polyjuice Potion? Where's that NeruoTech ice witch, anyway?"
The man looked confused, and slightly irritated. "I can assure you that I am who I say I am, and that I would never stoop to aiding those NeruoTech feinds."
"Huh?"
"NeruoTech," the man continued darkly, "is responsible for more wizard and Muggle deaths than the bloody Dark Lord. They tamper with the human mind, making people into nothing more than lab experiments. We cut off funding for them last year."
"I- I don't . . ." If this was the real Minister of Defence, and the other was a fake, maybe working for NeuroTech . . . if they needed some way to fund their work . . .
And then it clicked. They were going to use him to retrieve a 'valuable Egyptian artifact' because he could survive Azkaban. They couldn't use anyone else, especially and Auror, because what they were doing was illigal.
"Something wrong?" Minister Reiton asked.
Sirius ignored him. Why pretend to be the Minister of Defence, though? Power? Power to be in charge of prisoners . . . like him. No one would question if the Minister of Defence took Sirius Black from the Ministery to Azkaban.
But their plan failed. He was, as far as they knew, insane. So they had no one to get their stupi- HARRY!
"Herr Black?" the German officer snapped his fingers before Sirius' face.
"Take me to Azkaban," he snapped at Reiton, scarecly believing what he had said. "I think Harry's in trouble."
* * *
The tunnel curved steadily downward, deeper into the heart of the Island Fortress. Harry held his light high over his head, attempting to illuminate as much of his surroundings as he could.
Great pillars of rock bit through both floor and ceiling of the passage, forming natural teeth on either side of him; Harry felt like he were decending into the jaws of some primordial beast. Crystals hued in glassy green, yellow, and pink decourated the mineral pools between the stalagmites, glittering like gems under the light.
He shivered, eyes combing the rocky walls for any signs of traps. If the Ministry people didn't want to use Sirius because of the threat of Dementors sencing him, why not just tell those monsters that he was being released? So many things didn't make sence to him.
Harry shook his head, deciding to focus on the task at hand. The tunnel appared to have no dangers, and no subpassages- easy enough, for now. When he got back to the dungeon, though, what then? Maybe he could offer the Crest in return of them letting his godfather go; threaten to distroy it if they didn't. Yes. That was it.
Plan fully settled, Harry picked up his feet to avoid making that irritating scratching sound that'd been unconsiously bothering him for the past few minutes.
The scratching continued.
Harry froze, listening as the bass rumble slowly increased in volume. Apprehensively, he turned around, casting the light into the shadows behind him.
At first he didn't see it, but then a massive block of stone as wide and high as the tunnel crawled into the light, inching its way along the floor towards him. Harry stumbled back, then broke into a run.
The passageway ended just up ahead, the far wall scared with the blacked residue of ineffective spell blasts, and deep scratches carved into the rock by fingernails. The skeletal remains of human beings, crushed into a white powder, lay scattered across the wall and floor like ash.
Harry turned and darted back the other way, running his hands over the walls in hopes of finding a trick lever, or more writing, anything. He pushed up against the deadly block, wondering where he could find the answer. Why couldn't the ancients ever make it easy for grave robbers?
The wall at the end was most likely of no help; the white dust pushed into cracks within it was proof enough of the futility of trying there.
Ten metres away.
THINK! Harry smacked himself on the head, trying to ignore the fact that he was close to becoming very thin. There had to be a way out.
Or did there? Why hide a priceless treasure someplace where it could be taken?
Nine metres.
Harry sprinted back to the wall, then dropped to his hands and knees, scrabbling at the floor in desperation.
A notch!
Shaking, he clawed at the tiny crack with his nails, watching as the rock broke away with agonizing slowness. A seam.
Eight.
"Ouch!" he shoved the finger into his mouth, and continued working with his other hand.
Six.
Six? Harry glanced back over his shoulder. Six? What happend to seven?
Five.
Nevermind seven! He turned quickly back to what was now becoming the outling of a trap door.
Four.
Harry seized the edges of it, pulling upwards with all his might.
Three.
Dust and flakes of rock broke off from the sides as the slab slowly rose to the surface.
Two.
Harry shoved the tablet back, then cried out as it struck the front of the crushing block, rebounded, and caught him in the stomach. Furiously, he tossed it aside and sliped into the narrow opening.
A/N: We lost the internet connection for a while there, so that's why this was so late. Hopefully the next part will be up tomarrow.
by Kiana Unei
Sorry I got you guys confused, you've been great to me! Well, I've learned my lessons: Never try to write something whist battling a fever. It's okay now, though- I'm well again. Basically what happened was that Sirius seems to have lost his mind, so the Minister of Defence decides to make Harry be the one to go fetch the Crest of Isis from the catacombs beneith Azkaban. The entrance to it was blocked by a riddle, which Harry managed to solve.
None of this is mine save the stupid summerys. Harry and his magical world belong to J K Rowling.
IX:
Decent, and Fractured Plans (con't)
If one understood Dementors, one could find ways to work around them. Dementors were like Muggle computer programs; they were quite predictable in their actions. The 'black ghouls' fed off emotions, and they devoured souls. They did not plot, nor cheat, nor- as far as he knew- do anything else. It was their so called 'handlers' what were the ones to worry about.
Humans were the most dangerous preditors ever to walk the Earth; mostly because their brains COULD comprehend the meaning of such things as betrayal, war, and deceit. They also carried an almost unbreakable set of prejudices, such as that if you went to Azkaban, then you went insane.
Sirius Black, thirty-four year-old wizard from Edtinburough, Scotland, had been the sole exception from that rule for twelve years. But in the end, the Azkaban prejudice had proved true once again.
Caught in a no-win sitiuation, he had worked into what action he could; found the so-called 'alternative path'. He was of no use to anybody as a psycotic, and thus freed from an untimely end. Plus, his godson would now have a chance at a real family, something he had lacked for many, many years.
His second escape from Azkaban would have been easy at that point; no security, no suspicious creeps like Wesson poking their noses into his buisness.
What he didn't count on was the possiblility of intrest in the phenomanon of his extended sanity.
If keeping his mind still had been hard, doing so physically was excruciating tourture. Sirius tried to concentrate on what the hell he was going to do now that he was stuck at the bloody Ministry of Magic, rather than his itching muscles, but found the task nearly impossible.
Through slitted eyes, he could dimly make out the painfully bright lights bobbing at regular intervals overhead, and a guard walking just before his streacher. If only he knew where they were taking him. . . .
And then they stopped. Sirius let his head flop limply to one side, giving himself a slight view of the surrounding area.
Directly in front of his face was a metal washbin, behind him was a wooden door. Someone grasped him by the chin and tilted his face back upward, ending his observations.
"Now?" a man's voice asked somewhere above Sirius' head.
"No- I don't quite fancy cleaning up a corpse," a female voice replied. Corpse?
"Aye," the man chuckled. "God, he is a mess, though."
The woman giggled, and Sirius felt a cold washcloth travel across the side of his face, over his forehead, and across the bridge of his nose. He struggled not to sneeze.
"How old do you think he was?"
"Dunno . . . fourty, I'd guess."
'Fourty'? Sirius fought off the urge to glare at the unseen speaker.
"No, look at his eyes. The lack of wrinkles. I'd put him in his mid- thirties." Her statement was punctuated by a shap, firey prick to the inside of his elbow.
By reflex, Sirius jerked awake, making both the guard and a female doctor jump back.
"He's awake!" she yelped.
Sirius glanced down at the long hypedermic needle embedded in the inside of his arm, slowly releasing a dark, gray-green liquid into his system. After Azkaban, he really, really hated shots. With a single deft motion he pried the needle out, trying to keep from winceing.
The guard went for his wand; Sirius jumped dizzily to his feet and jabbed the shot underneith the man's jaw.
"Put it down," he commanded, then added to the doctor, "and you. Both of you give me your wands." They complied, and Sirius quickley replaced needle with wand, glaring darkly in what he hoped was an excaped-murderish style.
He shook his head to clear away the fog threatening behind his eyes, apparently the effects of keeping still for so long. "Where are we?"
"Ministry of Magic, pre-op ward," the doctor replied in a crisp, strangely calm voice.
"Why?"
"Brainsurgery."
"WHAT?"
"To find out why you aren't insane," the guard put in.
"I'll tell you that right now!" Sirius stumbled slightly as the world tilted beneith his feet, and managed to regain his balance. "I didn't lose my mind in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent, and that's not a happy thought so the Dementors can't take it away from me!"
"Innocent?" the doctor's eyebrows shot up.
"YES! YES! INNOCENT!" His words were comming out in a rush, and sounding very distant. Numbly, Sirius placed a hand on the streacher to steady himself.
"You didn't blow up that street?" the guard looked almost stricken.
"NO!! PETER Pettigreww dith. . ." He stumbled forward into the guard, unable to feel his legs. His left arm was throbbing almost painfully. The guard caught him around the waist, struggling against the unexpected weight.
He shifted so the unconscious convict was supported across his knees, then demanded, "Are you sure forced honesty is one of the effects of the drug you gave him?"
"Yes," the doctor answered, face white. Night's leaf was a powerful toxin, capable of only two effects: truth serum, and then a quick, painless death. Black had no choice but to tell the truth.
The guard stared down at the man's almost colourless face, slowly relaxing as life drained from his body. It was like watching the speeded-up recording of a flower closeing up for the night; the onset of death at an unnatural rate.
"Then get him an antidote. But don't tell anyone why you need it."
* * *
"AAARGHH!"
"Ron!" Mrs Weasley snaped at her youngest son.
"What, the Cannons lose again?" Fred joked, and tried to snatch the paper away from his brother.
"Nah, probably he just found out that they've been cut from the World Quidditch League 'cause they stink worse than he does." George reached across the table for a stack of buttered scones, and got an angry glare from his mother.
"Cannons don't stink!" Ron retorted, moveing the scones out of George's reach. Fred snatched a few up and tossed them to his twin.
"Boys! Behave yourselves!" Mrs Weasley scolded.
"I gotta owl Harry!" Ron yelped, and attempted to launch himself from the breakfast table.
"RON! Sit down!"
"Yeah," Fred added, "don't use Pig when there's food around; he'll land in it."
"He only did that once, stupid," Ron grumped.
"No name calling," his mother scolded.
"Yeah," George added, "it's not our fault you got a retarded owl what doesn't know his arse from his elbow."
"George!"
"Yeah, well Sirius didn't know he was retarded." Ron muttered, offended.
" 'Sirius'?" Fred and George chorused. "As in 'Sirius Bloody Black?"
"Boys!"
"Off course not!" Ron scoffed. "Why would he get me an owl?"
"I don't know." Fred and George exchanged identical glances. "But you DID come home with Pig after you ran into that maniac."
Now even Mrs Weasley was looking at him oddly. "Ron?"
"Erm . . . yes, Mum?"
"Where did Pig come from?"
"Well . . . when a guy owl really loves a girl owl-"
"MUM!" Fred interrupted, snatching up the paper his younger brother had discarded, "Look a' this!"
HARRY POTTER KIDNAPPED BY SIRIUS BLACK!
writes Natalie Newlingala, special correspondant.
Yesterday, Hogwarts' game keeper, the half-giant Rubeus Hagrid,
visited Mr Potter's home, apparently to check up on the boy's
well-being. He found Potter missing.
"I asked the Muggles (that he lives with) where (Harry) was, and
they told me his murdering godfather took him," says Hagrid.
"(Black) forced his way into my home five nights ago," explains Mr
Vernon Dursley, Harry's Muggle uncle. "He threatened to kill myself,
Petunia, and our son, Dudley, and told us he was taking (my nephew)."
"Filthy wretch he was, too," says Mrs Petunia Dursley. "Tall man, filthy
black hair, wearing some kind of a shabby grey (robe)."
"I wet my trowsers," complains Dudley, Harry's cousin. "I thought he was going to kill me."
The Ministry has been notified, and searches are in progress to recouver
the Boy Who Lived, and put Sirius Black to justice. Any information about
the whereabouts of either is greatly appriciated, and tips leading to the capture
of Black and/ or the rescue of Potter will be rewarded with as much as 10.000
galleons.
"Oh no!" Mrs Weasley gasped. She rushed to the fireplace, the boys right behind her.
Chapter X:
Of Retards and Renegades
" Od . . . e . . . ay?"
"I . . . ow . . . o. Do you kn . . . w . . . eans?"
"If . . . ives or . . . ies?"
"Either way."
"No."
"Shut . . . it. Please." Sirius grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut against the worst headache he'd had since the morning after James' last birthday.
"Herr Black?" a male voice inquired.
Sirius growled a reply, afraid he'd be sick.
"I think he will live." the same heavily German voice stated.
"Good." The guard let out a sigh of relief. "Good. If he'd died it'd really have hit the fan."
Sirius forced an eye open, taking in the two men over him, and a white-washed room he wasn't framiliar with. "What happened?" he croaked.
"That's what I'd like to know!" A man in red, green, and black robes stormed over, banging the door shut behind him. "What's so important that it can't wait for a conferance with- SIRIUS BLACK!"
"Precisely." the guard said. "Sir, I'd like to show you something . . ." He ripped Sirius' left sleeve off at the shoulder, making him protest loudly and discriptivly.
In a fluid motion, the guard tapped his wand against Sirius' forearm. Nothing happened.
"What . . ?" The newcommer knelt down beside them, staring from the guard to Sirius and back.
"Sirius Black," the guard stated, "is not a Death Eater. He has no Dark Mark, and thus is not part of the Dark Lord's alligiance."
The other stared wordlessly at the blank spot on Sirius' arm, then slowly met his gaze. "How?"
"I was framed," he said, slightly tired of telling the story, "by Pettigrew. I stayed sane in Azkaban because I knew I was innocent."
"Give him a trial," the man ordered. Startled, Sirius gaped at him, and slowly felt the ice in his spine melt, erodeing away the years of touture from the halls of Azkaban that left him hard-spirited and empty.
"Yes, Minister Reiton," the guard saluted.
"'Reiton'?" Sirius snaped, glancing at the man who was, most deffinatly, not the Minister of Deffence.
"Yes?"
"You- you're not Minister Reiton," he accused. "Or did you take Polyjuice Potion? Where's that NeruoTech ice witch, anyway?"
The man looked confused, and slightly irritated. "I can assure you that I am who I say I am, and that I would never stoop to aiding those NeruoTech feinds."
"Huh?"
"NeruoTech," the man continued darkly, "is responsible for more wizard and Muggle deaths than the bloody Dark Lord. They tamper with the human mind, making people into nothing more than lab experiments. We cut off funding for them last year."
"I- I don't . . ." If this was the real Minister of Defence, and the other was a fake, maybe working for NeuroTech . . . if they needed some way to fund their work . . .
And then it clicked. They were going to use him to retrieve a 'valuable Egyptian artifact' because he could survive Azkaban. They couldn't use anyone else, especially and Auror, because what they were doing was illigal.
"Something wrong?" Minister Reiton asked.
Sirius ignored him. Why pretend to be the Minister of Defence, though? Power? Power to be in charge of prisoners . . . like him. No one would question if the Minister of Defence took Sirius Black from the Ministery to Azkaban.
But their plan failed. He was, as far as they knew, insane. So they had no one to get their stupi- HARRY!
"Herr Black?" the German officer snapped his fingers before Sirius' face.
"Take me to Azkaban," he snapped at Reiton, scarecly believing what he had said. "I think Harry's in trouble."
* * *
The tunnel curved steadily downward, deeper into the heart of the Island Fortress. Harry held his light high over his head, attempting to illuminate as much of his surroundings as he could.
Great pillars of rock bit through both floor and ceiling of the passage, forming natural teeth on either side of him; Harry felt like he were decending into the jaws of some primordial beast. Crystals hued in glassy green, yellow, and pink decourated the mineral pools between the stalagmites, glittering like gems under the light.
He shivered, eyes combing the rocky walls for any signs of traps. If the Ministry people didn't want to use Sirius because of the threat of Dementors sencing him, why not just tell those monsters that he was being released? So many things didn't make sence to him.
Harry shook his head, deciding to focus on the task at hand. The tunnel appared to have no dangers, and no subpassages- easy enough, for now. When he got back to the dungeon, though, what then? Maybe he could offer the Crest in return of them letting his godfather go; threaten to distroy it if they didn't. Yes. That was it.
Plan fully settled, Harry picked up his feet to avoid making that irritating scratching sound that'd been unconsiously bothering him for the past few minutes.
The scratching continued.
Harry froze, listening as the bass rumble slowly increased in volume. Apprehensively, he turned around, casting the light into the shadows behind him.
At first he didn't see it, but then a massive block of stone as wide and high as the tunnel crawled into the light, inching its way along the floor towards him. Harry stumbled back, then broke into a run.
The passageway ended just up ahead, the far wall scared with the blacked residue of ineffective spell blasts, and deep scratches carved into the rock by fingernails. The skeletal remains of human beings, crushed into a white powder, lay scattered across the wall and floor like ash.
Harry turned and darted back the other way, running his hands over the walls in hopes of finding a trick lever, or more writing, anything. He pushed up against the deadly block, wondering where he could find the answer. Why couldn't the ancients ever make it easy for grave robbers?
The wall at the end was most likely of no help; the white dust pushed into cracks within it was proof enough of the futility of trying there.
Ten metres away.
THINK! Harry smacked himself on the head, trying to ignore the fact that he was close to becoming very thin. There had to be a way out.
Or did there? Why hide a priceless treasure someplace where it could be taken?
Nine metres.
Harry sprinted back to the wall, then dropped to his hands and knees, scrabbling at the floor in desperation.
A notch!
Shaking, he clawed at the tiny crack with his nails, watching as the rock broke away with agonizing slowness. A seam.
Eight.
"Ouch!" he shoved the finger into his mouth, and continued working with his other hand.
Six.
Six? Harry glanced back over his shoulder. Six? What happend to seven?
Five.
Nevermind seven! He turned quickly back to what was now becoming the outling of a trap door.
Four.
Harry seized the edges of it, pulling upwards with all his might.
Three.
Dust and flakes of rock broke off from the sides as the slab slowly rose to the surface.
Two.
Harry shoved the tablet back, then cried out as it struck the front of the crushing block, rebounded, and caught him in the stomach. Furiously, he tossed it aside and sliped into the narrow opening.
A/N: We lost the internet connection for a while there, so that's why this was so late. Hopefully the next part will be up tomarrow.