A Stormy Night
Roy stood in the long, torch-lit main corridor of Azkaban's first basement.
"Get them," he growled at the Dementor who had been cornered by his Patronus. He called the Patronus back to give some space to the Dementor, whose face was hidden under a hood. He pulled a bunch of keys from his black cloak, floated down the main corridor, guarded by the silver bear; then he disappeared into a side corridor. Roy heard keys rattling, then they were striding towards him: Julian, Ares, Orpheus, Harry and Ginny.
Arabella was missing.
"Get me the Dementor!" he shouted to the Patronus.
The bear disappeared with a powerful yet elegant leap and immediately returned, driving the Dementor ahead of him. Roy pulled the basilisk fang out of its sheath.
"Where is Arabella, you monster? I'll kill you if you don't tell me!"
He raised his poison fang, ready to stab him.
"You'll kill me if I do tell you either," the Dementor replied enigmatically in a hoarse, somehow empty voice. "She's in cell twenty-two."
"Take me there."
The Dementor walked ahead but became slower and slower.
"Hurry up!"
"You shouldn't be in a hurry," the Dementor spoke again in riddles. They stopped in front of a cell marked with a "XXII". The dementor fumbled awkwardly with his bunch of keys.
"Open the door!"
The Dementor let out a scornful laugh. "As you wish," he said, flunging the door open with a sudden swing and rasping:
"You're too late, Mudblood!"
On the crude plank, recognisable only by her blond hair, lay Arabella's half-decomposed corpse.
With a cry of agony, Roy awoke. It took him a moment to come back to reality. He wasn't in Azkaban; he was in Rockwood Castle. The feeling of relief you normally have after waking up from a nightmare still didn't want to rise.
He was in Rockwood Castle. Arabella was in Azkaban.
Ron looked at his watch. A little past two. It hadn't been the first nightmare of the night, but it was the worst. He wouldn't sleep again tonight.
Roy rose and went to the tiny window in the yard-thick castle wall. The window hinges protested with an ugly squeak against being opened for the first time in a long time. Roy sucked in the cold night air. The moon was alternately hidden and revealed by fast-moving clouds. It was a stormy night.
The Dementors have Arabella! The Dementors have Arabella! He had to do something, immediately and no matter what!
He dressed warmly. Was it possible to Disapparate from here? He would just try ...
One moment later he was standing at the pier of Branness. While it was stormy in Wales, where Rockwood Castle was located, here on the Scottish North Sea coast it was almost a gale, with downpours of rain!
Roy was all alone in the harbour. The fishing boats that were usually made ready to sail at this time violently yanked their ropes and anchor chains, as if they intended to use the absence of their masters to escape. The fishermen of Branness had apparently realised that this was not a night to be spent at sea.
Once again, Roy turned into a herring gull, pushed off and was immediately caught by the north-east storm. He headed against the wind and gained height. Since Azkaban lay in an eastern direction, he would have to fight against strong crosswinds and still be careful not to fly past the island. A Muggle prison with its floodlighting would have been as hard to miss as a packed football stadium at this time of night, but Azkaban, like almost all the buildings of the wizarding world, lay under torchlight at night. Roy silently performed the Calorate spell. Far out in the east, a spot, slightly brighter than the cold North Sea all around, was more to be guessed at than to be seen.
He tried desperately to fly towards the spot, visible to him only and not completely dark, without being blown away by the storm. Whereas on his first visit to Azkaban he had made the distance in barely a quarter of an hour on a friendly morning, this time he had to struggle forward every single foot. Of course, he knew that what he was doing was crazy, but the sheer power he had to exert scared away the feeling of impotent fear that had driven him out of his room at Rockwood.
After more than an hour, he had finally done it: In a final feat of strength, he flew over the prison courtyard and let himself plop into it rather than flying any more. He landed in a puddle.
Down here it was almost windless and the rain had decreased. Roy became aware that he was neither wet nor cold. The plumage of a seabird was truly a unique garment. I should develop a spell with which people can grow such plumage, then they won't need a cloak any more, he thought. But not until this is all over...
With or without the Calorate spell, it was impossible to see anything. Only far above his head were there at least a hint of clouds. Roy didn't need to see anything. He was close to Arabella.
"Arabella!" he cried as loudly as he could, though of course in Gullish, which to a human would only have sounded just like any seagull call, albeit a particularly desperate one.
"Arabella!"
Of course, she couldn't hear him, he himself had studied the floor plans of Azkaban – there was certainly no sound penetrating the cell wings.
"Arabella!"
He didn't care if the Aurors or Dementors were surprised that a seagull was screaming at this hour. If they registered it at all – and the local Aurors were not particularly bright, not to mention the Dementors – they would think they were hearing a herring gull that had broken its wing and was now screaming in pain.
And that's basically how it is, Roy thought.
"Arabella!" he continued to shout out into the night, over and over again.
After a while he gave up. Either Arabella had been able to hear him – against all odds – in which case, unlike the Aurors, she would know what the call of a herring gull in the middle of the night meant. Or she wasn't, in which case there was no point in wasting any more energy. His wings ached from the exhausting flight. I have to leave her some kind of sign, but for that I have to see something. The best thing is to rest a little. He put his head in his feathers and fell asleep.
It was not a long sleep, but when he awoke he felt a little refreshed. The sky above him was a little brighter now, although it was not yet day. When he could make out the outline of a stone in the dim twilight, an idea came to him. He lifted the stone with his beak and carried it to the foot of the wall ledge where he had been sitting when Harry was doing his rounds in the courtyard. Then he plucked out five of his silvery wing feathers, laid them slightly fan-shaped next to each other and weighed down their quills with the stone, which was lighter than the background. With a little imagination, one could interpret the structure as a representation of a bear's paw. Dementors saw badly, Aurors would only enter the courtyard in an emergency and even then would hardly draw the right conclusions. But the prisoners had to pass it on their way through the yard. Arabella, Julian, Orpheus, Ares – they would all know what a bear's paw, represented with the help of seagull feathers, meant. He was a little ashamed that he had hardly thought of the other three Incorruptibles all this time, let alone the Potters and Weasleys, but his worry about Arabella had pushed everything else aside. Now they too would be able to recognise that he had been here.
He had to get back, for they would be worried at Rockwood Castle if he wasn't there for breakfast. He spread his wings and flew off. The storm had calmed down a bit; he now had better sight and was not necessarily dependent on landing in Branness, so he was able to let himself drift a bit more with the wind than on the outward flight, but it was still exhausting. After about half an hour's flight, he landed on a rock a few miles south of the fishing village. It was no longer stormy but raining so hard that he was soaked to the skin in the few seconds between his transformation back into a human and his Disapparating.
Immediately, he was back in his room at Rockwood Castle. It was half past six and he was ravenously hungry. The others would still be asleep, but the house elves were certainly already at work in the castle kitchen. Without changing his clothes, he slipped out of his room – and ran straight into Albus.
"Roy!" Albus was horrified when he saw his friend standing in front of him: soaking wet, pale, bleary-eyed and shaking with exhaustion. "Where are you coming from? Where have you been?"
"In Azkaban," grumbled Roy, trying to squeeze past Albus, but he held him.
"What for?"
"To be close to her."
"Roy, that's useless, she can't have seen you or heard you!" cried Albus, slightly exasperated.
"She couldn't, but I had to try."
"Roy!" Fear trembled in Albus' voice. "You mustn't lose your head now! My parents' lives depend on you keeping cool, and Arabella's and our friends' lives, too! Do what you do best: Think! You're helping no one by wasting your strength in useless and dangerous actions and hanging around Azkaban!"
"I left a sign in the courtyard that only the prisoners can understand. I want them to know that I will free them!"
"But Roy! Arabella knows it anyway, and so do the others!"
"How can they know I'm at large?" asked Roy in a sudden flash of inspiration. "You heard what Julian said, they have no contact with each other, and since they were taken out of Hogwarts unconscious, they can't know I'm free, I might as well be sitting in Azkaban like them without them ever getting to see me. It was important to tell them that this is not the case and that I am working to free them, to instil confidence in them."
"Ah, I see!" Albus breathed a sigh of relief. "Why didn't you tell me that right away? That's how I understand it, and now that you explain it that way, I think you're right. Excuse me for thinking for a moment that you had completely lost your head."
"Never mind. Are you coming with me to the kitchen? I'm hungry."
"Sure. But first ... do you mind?" Albus drew his wand to magically dry Roy and give him a Pep spell. Then they went downstairs towards the kitchen.
On their way to the kitchen, Roy silently told himself off. It was true that it had made sense to leave a sign, but it had only occurred to him during the conversation with Albus, actually it was a cop-out. Albus had been right, he had completely lost his head! Roy was ashamed to have unsettled Albus, who needed him, admired him and relied on him. When Harry was arrested, he himself had told him: We are Slytherins! If we have to take a hit, we keep our heads and faces straight, stay on both feet and don't let anything or anyone knock us down, understand? And now he himself was fluttering around with the panic of a scared chicken! That wouldn't happen twice!
They didn't even need to go all the way to the kitchen: No sooner had the elves noticed that two of their guests were already up and about than they conjured a sumptuous breakfast buffet in the knights' hall. The two friends sat down, and while Albus was content with toast and scrambled eggs, Roy wolfed his way through the buffet, drinking several cups of extra strong coffee – at least by British standards.
One by one, the others, who also couldn't stay in bed any longer, were pouring in. Roy told about his night trip and presented it as if it had been a well-planned action from the very start. Since no one expected anything from him but well-planned actions, they believed him.
"Very good," agreed Macnair. "This way you let them know without waiting for days or weeks for every single prisoner to do their yard walk. If you had, even those dim-witted Dementors would have realised that something was wrong with this seagull. Besides, you are needed here."
"I know," Roy said, avoiding looking up from his plate.