The harbor at Hengist was still and cold. Here and there, ice clung to posts and dripped from rooftops. The January winds were frigid here, salty-scented and wet from the spray of the ocean.
Percy and Perkins met up on an empty wooden pier that projected bleakly into the dark waters. With a glance and a nod, they each mounted their brooms and soared into the nighttime sky.
They went slowly at first, Percy struggling to get the feel of his broomstick. The Firebolt was excellent, no doubt about it -- but there was a certain power in the wood beneath his hands that he was afraid to try to control. When the wind hit his side he had to lay low and grip tightly to avoid teetering over the chilly waters.
A low cloud cover reflected the light from a lopsided moon. Percy didn't trust himself to look down at the churning unfriendly waves, but they were joined in flight by a few cormorants, then a flock of bats, and finally -- for one brief minute -- a glorious, enormous albatross, glinting white against the black sky.
Percy watched the albatross wheel off into the distance. He envied its fearless flight. There was a deep beauty in its size, its confidence, the smooth sweep of the vast white wingspan and the chilling cry that echoed hauntingly ...
"We're there," called Perkins.
Even if Percy had ever seen a photograph of the fortress, it couldn't prepare him for the sight of it. Solid stone walls towered four stories high in the center of a barren island barely larger than the prison itself. There were windows, but they were barred and black ... just one door, wide enough for three to walk abreast.
They flew closer, carefully now that the destination was in sight. Slowly it became clear that the outcropping was not as barren as it first seemed. Something more than rocky shores lined the edge of Azkaban island.
Boats.
Disapparation was impossible. Portkeys were illegal. Banishment spells were blocked. But the Ministry had failed to account for a simple truth: Once you had a boat on Azkaban, there was nothing to prevent it from leaving, regardless of passengers.
Perkins swore softly, the words swept away in the winds. "What fools! Why didn't anyone think ..."
"Hush!" They slowed and hovered a few hundred yards from the shore. "Something's moving."
The lone door in the center of the fortress creaked open.
Onto the empty sands staggered a man, or what had once been one -- his arms and legs were gaunt, his face drawn. He fell to his knees. Raising a head, he caught sight of the boats and began crawling towards them, fighting just to keep moving. Twice he collapsed and paused for long moments before moving on. He reached the first boat and threw himself over the stern, half in and half out, too spent to go on.
Another prisoner emerged -- no, two, a man and a woman, leaning on one another for support. They drank in the cool air with closed eyes and slowly began to walk toward the boats.
Then the beach was filled with people -- stumbling, crawling, grasping their faces or reaching toward the night sky -- half a dozen, even more. Slowly, pilgrim zombies, they made their way to the waiting promise of freedom.
Someone else emerged.
As the first dementor swept from the fortress, long cloak trailing, the prisoners grew still. A second, then a third, then a score of them oozed from the door and began to surround the fortress like eerie soldiers, long-dead watchmen. They barely looked at the dozen or so empty figures huddled on the sand and in the boats.
"Sentinels," said Percy. "How's your Patronus?"
"Better than yours," said Perkins. The two brooms were close together now, invisible at that distance to both human sight and the dementors' emotional sensors. "Let's not test it. Once the boats are adrift they're ours -- we can turn 'em around, freeze 'em or take 'em straight in to the Ministry -- what are you doing?"
"Stopping a breakout!" Percy called over his shoulder. He shot toward the fortress.
Too late, Perkins thrust out a hand. "Not so close!"
It was like running into an emotional brick wall. The full force of the dementors' power washed over him even as he hovered forty feet away. Icy emptiness, all the fear and sorrow in the world, came rushing around him. He wobbled on the broomstick, overcome.
Then he lost his grip.
Grasping in the air, finding no purchase, he teetered and fell through night and air. The stones rushed to meet him. He landed on his back -- the wind knocked out of him -- and his head fell back onto a jut of stone.
Darkness closed over his sight. He did not see the dementors that gathered around him like vultures.
And he dreamed.
Ginny was gone. Her skeleton would lie in the Chamber forever ... the bright life snuffed, the belle of the household silenced ... He was writing a letter to his parents that he should never have had to write, forcing himself to put down the words, making them as quick and brusque as possible so he wouldn't break down sobbing in the common room ... then locking himself up in the bedroom, seeking solace in loneliness and finding only grief ...
Your father, dear. He's been ... attacked ...
It's been over an hour and he's still under that lake. What's happening? Can't see a thing -- it's been too long, how can he still be all right? -- He could drown and we'd never know 'til it was too late ... it might be too late already ...
Penelope lay still and cold as wax. Sleeping Beauty ... but an empty kiss, stolen in the dark as Madam Pomfrey looked away, couldn't bring her back to life ...
Give it back, Marcus! All right, Weasel ... two days of pain, six months of broken glasses and five years of humiliation ...
I think I can be trusted to know -- I've worked for Mr. Crouch a full -- yes, I think six months is long enough to be able to -- I don't know where he is, will you stop asking me that!
You never cared about anyone but yourself. Everyone else has been able to see it ... I can't live with that ... Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye ...
Through his drowning misery Percy was conscious of a floating sensation -- weightlessness, to contrast the weight on his heart. I'm dying, he thought with some vague, weary relief. I've died ...
Then he knew absolutely nothing at all.
Percy awoke with a jolt.
At first there was nothing but skull-splitting pain. Then that subsided, and he noticed other things -- deep cold, penetrating damp. He realized that he was lying flat on his back, tried to rectify the situation, and quit when dizzily dancing stars skipped into his vision. He groaned.
"There you are."
Percy squinted. Everything was black. And very loud, he noticed with a wince -- a continual sort of roaring hung in the background, like the buzzing of enormous bees, or ...
He rolled his head to one side and opened his eyes.
Or waves on the shore.
That was inaccurate; the waves weren't licking a golden sandy shore, they were crashing on a thick wall of rocks, and every crest sprinkled him with droplets of salt water. He forced himself to sit upright. There was rock all around him, just a tiny outcropping surrounded by thunderous, churning, and limitless ocean. Nearby, Perkins sat restlessly on a flat stone. They were utterly alone.
"What ...?"
"Ten of 'em made it off the island, and you nearly got the last kiss of your life," said Perkins bitterly.
"How ...?"
"I dragged you on my broom and flew us here."
Percy clutched the side of his head and hoped that his eyeball wouldn't go through with its urge to explode. "Where ...?"
"A rock in the middle of the ocean, where does it look like?!?"
"No --" Percy steadied himself. "I meant ... where ... are the escapees?"
Perkins snorted and raised his hands in the air. "Who knows."
The full realization of what had passed sank into Percy's mind. He groaned again, this time more of mental anguish than physical pain. They had set off to do a great thing and completely, splendidly failed.
"I should've had more sense," Perkins said in disgust, face in his hands. "If there was ever a time to tell the Order, this was it. There's enough of them, they could've done something --" He slammed his hand onto the rock, yelped, and wrung it out in pain.
"It's not your fault," Percy said, leaning morosely against an outcropping. "You weren't the one out there falling off your broom."
"Well, that's true," said Perkins.
"You know, maybe you should have told the Order," said Percy irritably. He sighed. "Ten dangerous men on the loose ..."
"Nine," said Perkins glumly. "One's a woman."
"I'll bet she's the most dangerous," said Percy, thinking of Penelope. "The point is, though, Perkins, every one of them's capable of murder -- and worse." He looked bleakly across the vast and uncaring sea. "We've really got our work cut out for us now."
Far above, an albatross wheeled and cried.
