Disclaimer: Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And JK Rowling is the sniper.


Chapter 4

Azkaban Prison was known for bad weather. With over a thousand dementors concentrated in the lowest pit of the fortress, the largest population in the world, they altered the weather patterns for miles around. Only an ICW-supported program to maintain the largest Expansion Charm in the history on the open waters around the island kept the muggles from noticing. The only way in was to enter an Unplottable patch of the North Sea that from the outside was smaller than the island itself.

But the bad weather around Azkaban was limited to perpetual heavy overcast conditions and nearly-perpetual rain—sometimes drizzling, sometimes pounding in torrents, but rarely accompanied by high winds and lightning. Wind and lightning required heavy storm clouds from outside to slip through the Expansion Charm to occur, which was rare.

So when a hurricane began forming directly over the prison, the Aurors guarding it were understandably wary. This sort of thing did happen occasionally, but they paid attention when it did. And this storm whipped up much faster than usual for the area. The clouds gathered from all directions overhead, and the waves, far higher than normal, all seemed to converge on the island, which wasn't normally possible given the wind patterns.

The Aurors surveyed the entire horizon, but they couldn't see anything suspicious—only a particular darkening of the sky in the direction of the mainland, but they were too far to away see anything definite.

Auror Li opened the window and looked over the side of the guardroom into the Pit. A catwalk that only the dementors could access ran down to the pit, the guardroom windows being too small for them to climb inside. (This prison was built to keep the dementors in almost as much as the prisoners.) Li spotted a dementor brooding on the level below him. Braving the cold and despair, he stepped in front of the Patronuses and called, "Hey! Hey, you!" The black hood tilted up towards him. "Something's wrong. Do you know what's going on?"

A pain shot through his forehead, and he saw images—horrible ones—but not from his own mind. Dementors couldn't speak. Experts debated whether they were even sentient, despite being able to understand spoken language. But they did have a way to communicate. While they normally made their victims relive their own worst memories, they could also show them other memories they had consumed. Li was assaulted by horrific images—images of swirling winds and waves that destroyed everything in their path, of men in black robes and white masks, an olive-skinned woman with a dagger, and a half-human demon with glowing red eyes surrounded by fire.

He reeled back from the window. "Crap! We've got company!"

"Who?" Auror Proudfoot said.

"You-Know-Who! He's coming!"

"What?! How?" cried Auror Savage.

"Hell if I know, but the dementor said he's coming. Plus a bunch of Death Eaters and that crazy Mexican lady."

"Then watch the sea and air!" Savage said. "There's no other way in." She waved her wand and duplicated her Patronus. "Go tell Amelia Bones that Azkaban is under attack." The second Patronus zipped through the wall, but then, she stopped and said, "What am I thinking? Dumbledore's the only one who can get here fast enough." She duplicated her Patronus a second time and sent a copy off to him.

Azkaban was a fortress: no fast ways in, no fast ways out. The only official contact was through a boat from shore. Apparition and Portkeys were blocked. There was no fireplace and no Floo powder. Normally, the quickest way in was to Apparate to the edge of the Extension Charm and fly a broom from there, which would take several minutes and would leave both attackers and reinforcements very exposed. Even owls were blocked. All correspondence had to go by boat, and the quickest way to get a message out was by Patronus, which also took several minutes. Only a phoenix could get in and out faster because, being an immortal fire spirit, very little could really stop it, but "trained" phoenixes were very rare, and only Dumbledore had one in Britain.

Unfortunately, Auror Savage's messages never reached their destinations. Patronus messages required the user to be conscious until they were delivered, and just moments later, the windows blew in. A piece of debris struck Savage in the head, knocking her out. By the time her comrades Rennervated her, her calls for help had died in mid-flight.

"What happened?" she shouted as she awoke to wind and rain swirling around her behind a wall of Shield Charms.

"The storm blew the windows in!" Li said.

"We're supposed to be able to handle storms."

"The fifteenth century fortress is. Not the guardroom."

"Where are the Hitwizards?"

"Securing the entrances," Proudfoot called. "We need to watch for aerial attacks. Shield Charms and Sticking Charms on your boots. You cover the south corner."

The human guard at Azkaban had been doubled for the war, although that only meant increasing from three to six. It was hard enough to find people willing to pull a shift there. The Hitwizards were trained for rapid response and heavy fighting, so they were down at the entrances of the prison. Aurors were just as well-trained to fight, but they had many more roles: detective work, undercover spying, tracking, strategy, and so on, so they needed to watch and guard against more elaborate attacks. For the public face of the DMLE, the difference was largely academic. Indeed, in peacetime, the Aurors filled most of those roles, and the Hitwizards were mostly a reserve force, but they had all been activated for the war.

"We need to get a message through to Dumbledore!" Savage yelled, but she could very well cast it from her post. She needed a strong Shield Charm to hold back the wind, and while she did have a holdout wand on her, the Patronus Charm wasn't exactly something you could cast whilst focusing on another spell.

The wind roared louder, blowing up debris and stripping the modern facade from the guardroom level, sending more debris flying through the air. Savage saw ocean spray rising from the water two hundred feet below. "I can't see anything! Where are they?" she called. There seemed to be no hope of getting a clear view of the outside. All she saw was water and debris blown sideways by the wind. All she could hear was the unrelenting howling—until she heard a sibilant, amplified voice sound through the prison from above.

"Denizens of Azkaban. I, Lord Voldemort, have returned."

"Bloody hell! They're on the roof!" she yelled.


A funnel cloud appeared directly over Azkaban prison. Rare in Europe and rarer still powerful enough to do heavy damage, plus normally being weaker over water, the tornado was breaking all kinds of laws of meteorology when it touched down onto the roof of the prison, extended downward just far enough to blow in the windows and strip off the facade on the guardroom level, and stopped there. The prison was solid. A strong enough tornado would rip almost any human-made structure to shreds, be it wood, stone, or steel, but the ten-foot-thick walls would stand up to anything short of months of bombardment by siege engines or generous quantities of high explosives. But that didn't matter if hostile wizards could just walk in from the roof.

The tornado swirled there for a minute, then widened to leave the fortress itself protected in its eye and descended to the ground. No broomstick on Earth was powerful enough to push through that storm. In the middle of the roof stood six robed figures and two very scary looking dark mages. One was a woman dressed as an Aztec priestess, holding up a spinning talisman of hair and feathers on a staff above her head—La Pantera with her latest ritual. The other was half-man, half-snake and struck terror into the hearts of all, but Lord Voldemort was not wearing his usual black robes. Instead, he wore a midnight-black sleeveless tunic—or rather, he had removed the sleeves and hood from his battle robes, leaving two bone-white arms bare as he wielded a wand in one hand and a fireball in the other.

Voldemort amplified his voice and called out to the prison: "Denizens of Azkaban. I, Lord Voldemort, have returned. I have come to liberate my loyal followers—and their dementor guards. For too long you have been confined here, penned in by Patronuses and fed on scraps. Join me, release the prisoners from their cells, and you will be free once more."

It was impossible to hear any response over the storm, but a strong feeling washed over the Death Eaters from below from the collective will of hundreds of dementors. It was a feeling that one rarely felt around the demons: triumph.

Voldemort smirked at his followers: "I think the dementors will cooperate. Quickly, now, the storm will last only an hour, and it will be much easier if we leave before reinforcements arrive." He reached the relatively-unprotected door into the prison from the roof, placed the fireball in his left hand against it, and melted through the lock.

Selecting two Death Eaters to send in front as cannon fodder—or scouts, officially—to walk in front, they descended the main spiral of stairs into the fortress. They didn't get far, however, before they began taking spellfire. Left with no way to escape through the storm, the Auror trio in the guardroom had set up a blind near the top of the spiral, in a section the dementors couldn't enter, to try to make up for their lack of numbers with a strong defensive position. It was a wise move, probably the best they had available to them, but it wouldn't be enough.

Even as the Death Eaters began casting back, Voldemort sheathed his wand and blasted two columns of fire forward, forcing the Aurors back. However, they were undeterred and kept casting. He motioned to La Pantera to help him, and he threw another blast of fire, which she followed up by waving her staff and creating a gust of wind. The fire blew into the alcoves where the Aurors were hiding, taking them by surprise and setting their robes ablaze. The Death Eaters advanced, and two of the Aurors were killed in seconds. The third ran for it. Voldemort motioned for two Death Eaters to follow her while he continued down.

They came to the first section of the fortress where the dementors were allowed. The demons immediately formed a path in the corridor and bowed to him like a king returning to his court. He pointed at one at random and said, "You. Come with me. You will be my guide. I seek my followers who have been chained here."

Dementors had no social structure nor hierarchy nor even names that wizards could identify, so it didn't matter which dementor he picked. The tall, cloaked figure fell into stride beside him and led the group down to the lower levels. The low-security and short-term prisoners were higher up, but Voldemort ignored them for now. He would give them a closer look on the way back up if he had time. Even though the dementors had unlocked many of the cell doors, these softer, less violent criminals had little will to walk out of them on their own, and most of them recoiled and wailed in terror upon seeing his face.

The worst of the worst prisoners were deep in the Pit, close to the dementors' nest. These prisoners were too depraved to be rendered catatonic by their dementors' presence. Insanity was their preferred malady, but not so insane that they were unable to help themselves when the opportunity arose.

In the second-lowest cell block (for the lowest cell block was filled with long-forgotten skeletons of spies and traitors from Grindelwald's War), Voldemort's followers had helped each other from their cells and were staggering towards the feeble light. The rejoiced to see him and fell down on their knees before him.

One of the pale, dirty figures was thinner than the others, with a gaunt look that left her prison clothes hanging off her like rags, but she still had a full head of curly black hair and a wild look in her eyes. Bellatrix Lestrange crawled forward and kissed his feet.

"My Lord, my Lord," she said in a raspy voice. "You came for us. We knew you had returned when we felt our Marks burn. We knew you would come for us."

"I have," Voldemort said in an approximation of tenderness. "It is good to see you again, my dear Bella—and all of my loyal followers. Not many stood by my name when I was weakened, but you would not renounce me. For this, you will be greatly rewarded. Rise, now, for we must be quick."

They stood and staggered towards the door. "My Lord," an emaciated man with a curly beard approached him. "My Lord, how is it that you have come to us in person," Augustus Rookwood said. "I know all the enchantments on this fortress. Reinforcements from the Ministry should have met any attackers in the air."

Voldemort smiled: "It seems the Ministry guarded only against forms of travel that are common in Europe, Rookwood. And my new…associate devised a way to block the reinforcements…Your spell was a great help, Lady Pantera. It seems Azkaban cannot stand up to a frontal assault without a proper warning."

"Nothing can stand up to three hundred mile-per-hour winds, Voldemort," she corrected. "We Aztecs know how to use the power of nature to our advantage."

"You dare speak his name—!" Bellatrix lunged forward.

"Peace, Bella," Voldemort held her back. "Save your strength. Lady Pantera has earned the right to familiarity as a fellow Dark Mage in her own right." He looked her in the eye and sent the addendum by Legilimency, For now.

Bellatrix backed off and nodded submissively, regarding the newcomer. Face to face, it was even clearer that they would look strikingly similar had Bellatrix been healthy, despite the difference in her heritage. La Pantera was taller, but she had the same dark hair and eyes and the same imperious demeanour. Bellatrix seemed not quite sure what to make of her.

Meanwhile, Voldemort got to work as they trudged back to the surface. "Dolohov, come to me," he said.

The old Russian, one of Voldemort's original Knights of Walpurgis, pushed himself to come to his side. "Yes, my Lord."

"The Ministry is moving faster than I anticipated. We must take decisive action. For now, you will rest. As soon as you are well enough, I want you to join the search for Karkaroff."

The ragged man hissed in anger: "I will make him pay, Master."

"Not yet, my friend," Voldemort said. "The man is a traitor and a coward, but circumstances have changed. I do not want you to kill him…I want you to Imperius him—so that he may still be of some use."

Dolohov looked surprised, but he said, "As you wish, Master."

"Dementor, which other prisoners will be sympathetic to my cause?" Voldemort asked.

The dementor flashed a series of images through his mind of various prisoners and the locations of the cells.

"Interesting," he said, noting one in particular. In the next cell block up, one of the prisoners, a short, prematurely grey man who still had a hint of fat around his face had slept through the recent events. After his years as a lazy rat, sleeping was still a viable defence for him from the dementors. It wasn't as if his dreams were worse than his waking life—although they did seem to contain an inordinate number of cats.

A loud bang awoke him. He fell off his cot painfully, rolled over, and looked up in horror to see a snakelike face. For a moment, he was sure he was still dreaming, but then, pain shot through his Mark, and he knew it was real.

"M-M-M-Master…" he whispered.

"Peter Pettigrew," Lord Voldemort looked down at him like something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. "The coward who spent a decade hiding as a family pet."

"M-Master, f-forgive me," he stammered. "I can explain. I w-was afraid, yes, b-but I could not account for my actions th-that night to the others…"

"Enough," he was cut off. "We will discuss your loyalty later, Pettigrew. For now, we are pressed for time. Come with me."

"Y-yes, Master." He pulled himself to his feet and followed the growing collection of Death Eaters. And that woman with the Aztec headdress—he had no idea what was going on there, but he had a feeling it wasn't good.

One cell in particular had very deliberately not been unlocked. Even the dementors had the sense not to let this one out. The man looked only half human, with a hairy face, and yellow fangs. He had one animalistic, blue-inside-black eye with the other covered by an eyepatch. He lunged at the bars and snarled as the wizards approached.

Voldemort radiated heat around him as an aura of power, and the man instinctively backed away from the more powerful challenger. "Fenrir Greyback," Voledmort said. "How the mighty have fallen."

The werewolf snarled again.

"Thirteen werewolves and a clear path into Hogwarts. You should be ruling Britain by now. Instead, you're sitting in their prison."

"And what are you going to do about it, Voldemort?" Greyback shouted. Bellatrix lunged again, but Voldemort held her back. "What good did you ever do us?"

"I welcomed you into my camp," he hissed back, flaring the heat around him again. "I fed and clothed you when no one else would. I organised you into an army. Look what you've done without me. Wolfsbane was the greatest weapon you've received in a hundred years, and you squandered it. You allowed the enemy to gain the upper hand with it. My offer is still open to you: serve me, and I will ensure you are treated with respect. I will make you into an army again. I will show you the proper way to use Wolfsbane to your full advantage."

"Ha! And where will you get it? It took us years to find a supply, and we could use only once."

"I happen to have a potions master in my employ. Severus Snape brews the potion for the werewolves at Hogwarts. With a little effort, you will have a ready supply. Will you join me then?"

Greyback huffed once. "If you can, I will…my Lord." The sarcasm was still noticeable, but Voldemort ignored it as he opened the cell door.

Having freed everyone he deemed of value, they hurried back to the surface, but Barty Crouch Jr, having had access to the records for months while he was impersonating David Monroe, still pointed out the other prisoners to him in case they found someone useful.

"Willy Widdershins," he said, pointing to one. "Three months for muggle-baiting."

Voldemort examined the memory of the incident supplied by the dementor. Regurgitating toilets. "Uninspired."

"Mundungus Fletcher. He—" Barty stopped and looked into the cell. It was empty. "Hmm. I thought he was here. Dumbledore must have let him out. Anyway, let's see…aha! My Lord, you might want to take a closer look at this one."

"Who is it?"

"Gilderoy Lockhart. Once the bestselling author in Britain and the world's most famed dark creature hunter—until they found out he was making it all up and stealing other wizards' stories. They threw him in here two years ago for illegal use of memory charms, fraud, and sexual misconduct with his students at Hogwarts," he finished with a sneer.

Lockhart stumbled towards the bars: "Those girls were all of—EEK!" he squeaked as he saw who was standing outside. "…age," he finished with a whimper.

"I see," Voldemort said. He already knew about this one, but he took pleasure in examining the memory anyway. "Perhaps you could be of some use to me," he mused.

"What?" Lockhart said.

"I know about your case, Mr. Lockhart. I take some pleasure in seeing how my curse has ensnared its victims over the years, and your tenure as Defence Professor was especially entertaining. Though your ways are fraudulent and your magic narrow-minded, you are a very good writer with a gift for embellishment."

"Well, when you p-put it th-that way…but…"

"Potter has made great inroads in the media because of his fame. He is now a bestselling author himself. It is time someone stepped up to oppose him."

"Are you…are you offering me a job?" Lockhart said, more bewildered than anything else.

"I think the benefits would be to your liking."

"Excuse me?" Lockhart was pretty sure the next words would be, I'll let you live, but he was surprised.

"It seems that you have a fondness for attractive young witches. They are not something I have a taste for, myself, but I understand the preference is quite common," Voldemort said with a smirk. "Such creatures are not hard to acquire for a Death Eater—and easier still if you will stoop to using muggles. You may convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty. We have willing dames enough."

His eyes widened. That sounded too good to be true, especially coming from the Dark Lord. "But…what could I do?" he asked.

"Taking over the Ministry is one thing, Mr. Lockhart," Voldermort said. "Running it is quite another. There will be so many things to keep operating smoothly. I will need credible and experienced workers in all fields to legitimise my regime. For example…I find that I will soon be in need of a Minister for Propaganda."

In spite of all sanity, Gilderoy Lockhart smiled.


Lutetia Savage ran through the corridors of Azkaban. She could hear two Death Eaters racing behind her, their spells crashing on the walls. She tried to find a place to hide. She had to stay hidden for probably five minutes to get a Patronus through to Dumbledore. Unfortunately, Azkaban was specifically designed to have very few places to hide. She could hear the heavy footsteps coming closer, and she realised there was only one chance. She was probably going to be fired for this, but she looped around to get back to the guardroom. Hurrying to get out before the Death Eaters caught her, she unlocked the broom cupboard, pulled out a Cleansweep Seven, and jumped out the window.

Spells shot from the window. She dodged and started flying. There was no help of getting through the tornado. She could see that the winds were much faster than even a Firebolt. Instead, she went the only way she could: straight up.

She didn't know how tall tornadoes were, but she flew higher and higher until the air started getting thin. The broom was shaking. She must be near its service ceiling, but to the vortex above her there was no end in sight. She cast another Patronus message: "Dumbledore, You-Know-Who's in Azkaban. Brooms can't get in or out. We need help."


Three Hitwizards running up from below caught Voldemort as he neared the roof again. They didn't stand a chance. However, when he actually reached the roof, the cavalry finally arrived in a pillar of fire.

"Dumbledore!" he hissed.

The old man took in the scene at a glance, standing firm against the howling wind that blew his beard over his shoulder and his hat clear away. "I cannot let you do this, Tom," he called.

"You are too late, Dumbledore." Voldemort motioned the Death Eaters and freed prisoners out onto the roof.

"I will stop you." He raised his wand.

"I am not here to fight today, old man. Pantera! Time to go!"

La Pantera waved her staff in one hand and her knife in the other. The tornado constricted, collapsing onto the roof, but leaving a bubble of calm that housed the escapees and lifted into the air. Dumbledore did the only thing he could and ran and dove into the wind.

He found himself tumbling through the air as the tornado moved back towards the mainland at high speeds. It wasn't like travelling with Fawkes. He lost all sense of gravity and direction instantly. The only way he could orient himself was by Voldemort's movement. Neither of them was used to fighting in these conditions, but Voldemort didn't let that slow him down. He threw columns of fire at Dumbledore, not bothering with his wand—something Dumbledore noted for later. Dumbledore tried to strike back, directing the water from the tornado inward at the flames. Forcing Voldemort back. He waved his wand and fired powerful curses at the Death Eaters, but Voldemort conjured a silver shield to block them.

La Pantera struck out with her seemingly superhuman control of the wind and nearly blew Dumbledore away. He quickly realised that she was the one in the position of power here. That talisman she was wielding must be part of some powerful ritual. He sent a curse of fire to destroy it, but she shielded with her dagger. This put him in a pinch. With the Elder Wand, he knew he could overpower her in a head-on duel, but focusing on her left him vulnerable to Voldemort's fire attacks. Worse, his strength was in manipulating the terrain to his advantage, and La Pantera had near-total control of the terrain here in the air.

There was one thing he could think of to do. Dumbledore quickly shielded, then spun in the air and cast a complex series of spells that caused the driving rain to turn into hail, which he hurled at the enemy. Fire would vapourise rain, but hail would punch right through. Voldemort, taken by surprise, was knocked back, tumbling head over heel, taking a few bruises. The Death Eaters barely had time to shield the prisoners.

Dumbledore then swung the cloud of hail around to strike La Pantera and her talisman in particular, but unfortunately, she was ready. She had somehow pulled a live axolotl salamander from her robes and set it drifting in the air in front of her. She mumbled a few words, and with a lightning-fast swipe, she sliced its head off with her knife.

The hailstones froze as quickly as if they'd hit a wall. She pointed her knife, and they accelerated towards Dumbledore, propelled by a powerful blast of wind. The force was so great that he was blown clear out of the tornado to fall thousands of feet to the North Sea below.

He called for Fawkes, and seconds later, he fell in heap, battered and sopping wet, on the floor of Amelia Bones's office.

"Amelia, we have a problem," he told the alarmed woman.


Auror Savage clung to her broom against the freezing wind. It was dead in her hands, too high to function properly in the thin air. She barely managed to grip it, struggling to cling to consciousness, in hopes that it would function again when she fell from the cloud. The normal Bubblehead Charm didn't work at this altitude, and she couldn't remember the one to deliver extra oxygen in her present state. When the tornado had lifted from Azkaban, she'd lifted with it, with nowhere to go. Now she was at the mercy of this freak storm until it dissipated, praying the wind wouldn't loft her any higher.

The storm finally did vanish over York, the clouds clearing up and burning away impossibly in seconds. She fell, then. After a terrifying plummet that felt like a lifetime, but which her Quidditch player friends calculated later couldn't have been more than two minutes, her broom sprang to life again. She pulled herself onto it, took control, and dove to the earth. She kissed the ground when she landed, and it took her some time to comport herself enough to Apparate to the Ministry.


"I told you we should be using Protean Charms for communication, not Patronuses," Sirius growled. As Harry's godfather, he could get into Ministry meetings well above his nominal rank as a Hitwizard.

"Protean Charms are one-to-many," Amelia Bones said. "They're very limited use, and it wasn't considered worth the trouble. And besides, it wouldn't have made a difference in this case. No reinforcements could have got through that storm."

"Dumbledore did."

"And wasn't enough to stop them escaping. And besides, if we have to rely on one old man for everything, it's just as useless—no offence, Albus."

"None taken, Amelia." Dumbledore said sullenly office. He couldn't help blaming himself for failing. He thought he could take Voldemort on his own, but he hadn't anticipated La Pantera's mastery of the wind and storm. He would have to ask the other Grand Sorcerers if they knew what ritual that was.

"This is bad," Amelia said. "All eleven of our top Death Eater prisoners broken out. Plus Greyback and his pack. And Lockhart, for some reason. Not to nitpick, but does anyone know why that idiot would be worth two knuts to You-Know-Who?"

"I'm afraid not," Dumbledore replied. "Voldemort does not need an Obliviator, and I fail to see how any of Lockhart's other talents benefit him."

"Well, anyway…The fact is we didn't have the resources in place to stop the breakout, Black, and that puts us in a very bad position…We'll add the Protean Charms. You're right. They might help. I'll talk to Croaker about other modes of transport that could have worked. We obviously missed something there. Albus, if you can, petition the ICW for direct help."

"Ah, on that we may have better fortune. The ICW is anticipating trouble in apprehending La Pantera. The police mission they are sending is, in fact, a coalition force for forward presence in all but name."

"That's good, but warn them they may have to escalate quickly." Amelia sighed heavily. "And I think we can all agree the dementors are worse than useless at this point."

"Then get them out of there," Sirius said.

"We can't move them from Azkaban, Black. There are too many of them. And if You-Know-Who can get in there, where could we put the prisoners that he can't?"

"In the ground, I say. Bring back the death penalty."

Amelia shot Sirius a stern look. "We might be able to, but remember ex post facto. We can't execute anyone unless we catch them and can tie them specifically to a new murder. We don't want a repeat of your case. But the escapees are already subject to the Dementor's Kiss, so we're clear there. In the meantime, we need someplace to put prisoners who are too dangerous to keep in Ministry holding cells."

"Convert one of the abandoned castles in the Shetland Islands," Dumbledore said. "Move the prisoners there and seal Azkaban with as many physical protections as you can. I will see if I can find a way to prevent this jailbreak from being repeated."

"That'll be expensive," she said. "And guarding the new prison will take a lot of manpower."

"Booby traps," Sirius said with a snap of his fingers. "Rig the whole place with them, inside and out. That'll cut down on the amount of guards you need. Remus and I can think of some—probably hire a couple of cursebreakers, too."

Amelia nodded slowly as she considered this. "That's not a bad idea, Black," she said. "I know some high-security muggle prisons have lethal countermeasures against escape. And Azkaban had the dementors. I think I can sell it to the Minister. That's what we'll do. Grab a couple Aurors and go scout out some locations as soon as you can."

"Yes, ma'am."


"Three dead. Two seriously injured. And one collapsed face-down, soaked to the bone, and half-frozen in the Atrium of the Ministry. So much for our vanguard at Azkaban." Amelia was already dealing with the disaster at Azkaban, but Auror Savage didn't know that yet. Savage had been showing herself to be one of the best on the force, so Amelia was going to hold her to a high standard. She'd let her stew through her other meetings and took her properly to task when she was done.

For her part, Lutetia Savage stood resolutely at attention. "I undertook the action I thought was most likely to prevent the prisoners from escaping, ma'am," she said. "I stand by that, and I'm willing to accept any punishment you deem fit for abandoning my post."

"I see…" she said sternly. "In that case, I want a full accounting of the events that led up to that decision."

Amelia indeed interrogated Savage in exacting detail about the breakout—as much because she was the only witness in a condition to report about it as to account for her own actions, and she was relieved to find herself satisfied with the answer.

"Very well, Savage," she concluded. "Your punishment is the night shift in Diagon Alley for the next week."

"The…Excuse me, ma'am?" Savage said. She was sure she would be dismissed for this.

"I'm not paying you to walk into a death trap, Savage. I'm paying you to use your head. Your team mounted the best defence you could. You could've done more to get a hold of Dumbledore, but that wasn't standard procedure anyway. You risked your life for a plan that had a better chance of stopping You-Know-Who than anything else when you could've just run for the boathouse. That's the kind of thinking we need on the force…That, and with losing Proudfoot and Li, we're understaffed."

"Er, yes, ma'am," Savage said with relief.


"No! No! Get it away from me!" Peter Pettigrew cried. "Shoo! Shoo! Woof woof woof!"

Meow.

The conjured black cat paced back and forth in front of the wizard who was cowering, curled up in the corner as Voldemort watched with amusement.

"Interesting reaction," the dark lord said. "How were you captured again, Pettigrew?"

"I t-told you, Master. The squib's cat attacked me. Potter and his sister saved me because they thought I was their friend's pet, but they n-noticed I wasn't reacting n-normally—oh, Merlin, get it away from me!" he cried as the cat came closer. "I tried to get away, but they were suspicious. They c-captured me with a Levitation Charm and took me to McGonagall."

"And the fact that Potter is a cat animagus had nothing to do with it?" Voldemort asked.

"N-no, Master. M-Master, please—!"

Voldemort flicked his wand, and the cat vanished. He stalked closer to Pettigrew. Something about this story didn't add up. This called for a deeper look. He pointed his wand and verbally cast, "Legilimens." Soon enough, the answer was clear. "It seems your memory has been modified, Pettigrew. I think you'll find that will explain your phobia. Too bad for you. I was considering letting you off more leniently for your time in Azkaban, but tampered memories can be very difficult to recover."

Pettigrew's screams reverberated throughout Riddle Manor.