Dress Rehearsal
It was Tuesday, 28th February; the liberators were sitting at dinner in Rockwood Castle.
For three weeks they had trained every detail of their action over and over again until they mastered every manoeuvre, every move in a flash. For tonight, Roy had scheduled the big dress rehearsal. Tomorrow the trial against Harry would start. Even if Hermione were to sentence him to death on the same day: They would be ready for action! Everyone was excited with anticipation.
As they finished dinner, Blubber entered the knight's hall and, with an elegant Charm, distributed the evening edition of the Daily Prophet, bringing the lively conversations at the table to an abrupt silence:
REFORM OF THE WIZENGAMOT
Minister Granger appoints new members
London, 28 February. Minister for Magic Hermione Granger has reformed the Wizengamot by Emergency decree, increasing its membership from 78 to 234. The Minister justified her long-awaited, but at this stage surprising, move by citing the need to modernise and adapt to new realities the supreme decision-making and adjudicating body of Britain's wizarding world, whose last reform dates back 228 years, in particular to allow for a broader representation of the wizarding community.
As the Minister pointed out, the Gamot, which has so far co-opted new members, i.e., selected them itself, has developed into an elitist body from which large parts of the wizarding society are in fact excluded. In this respect, the appointment of 156 new members from all classes of the wizarding community was in line with the democratic idea guiding the Ministry.
In future, according to the new law, two-thirds of all Gamot members are to be appointed by the Ministry, while the remaining third will continue to be nominated by the Gamot itself. The law enters into force immediately and the Gamot therefore will meet in its new composition as of 1 March.
"With this," said Victoire, who was one of the first to regain her composure, "the new Gamot is also in charge of Harry's trial, and Greengrass' defence strategy is up in the air! Hermione just pulled the rug out from under it! And of course, the Daily Prophet pretends not to be aware of this context!"
Roy smiled bitterly. "Did you expect anything but Hermione to pull an ace out of her sleeve at the very last moment? The justification is also very much her style: She's talking about democracy but meaning that she herself has everything under control! And as for the Daily Prophet: Are you still surprised?"
"And I guess she doesn't want to be called Weasley any longer," Rose said piqued. "Is that still my own name, or am I supposed to change my name into 'Granger'?"
"Don't worry, Rose, that's not legally possible," Victoire tried to reassure her, but Rose replied with a contemptuous snort:
"By Emergency decree, anything seems to be possible in this country."
"Why do you care, Rose?" interjected James, who even now couldn't resist teasing his little brother, in his nonchalant manner. "In a few years your name will be Potter anyway, won't it?"
While Rose's face turned to a colour that was actually quite close to that of a rose, Albus scowled at his brother: "Provided my mother-in-law leaves me my head."
James grinned even broader: "Your mother-in-law?"
Now Albus was also blushing. What had he done to deserve this brother?
"Anyway," Roy choked off the banter, "dealing with the new Gamot is the lawyer's job. We are planning on the assumption of a death sentence anyway, so for us nothing changes, except that now no one can have any illusion that Harry's, Arabella's, Julian's, Orpheus's and Ares's lives depend on our success. For all of us, this should be reason enough to give our best at today's dress rehearsal. It's now half past seven. The youngest take their ageing potions now, we'll meet in the courtyard in exactly one hour."
So far, Albus, James, Rose, Scorpius and Bernie had done without an ageing potion, but Roy had decided that for the real attack on Azkaban, they had to be physically stronger than normal – they had to be prepared for anything, even for the case that the action didn't go according to plan. Therefore, they had to make themselves seven years older than they actually were for the dress rehearsal.
They took the ageing potions in their rooms. When Albus stepped out to the corridor, he saw James, Scorpius and Bernie turning like peacocks in front of mirrors that they must have conjured especially for themselves, under Roy's amused grin.
"Wow, that feels good!" said Bernie in a bass voice while feeling his upper arms.
Scorpius, too, was visibly satisfied with his six feet three inches, although he was still slim to gaunt and didn't have Bernie's muscle packs.
James, however, was really in love with his mirror image, posing enraptured and hardly able to get enough of himself (He really looks bloody good, though!, Albus admitted to himself.) until James remembered the most important thing. He gave his mirror image another self-satisfied grin and said: "So, now I'm going to Victoire!"
Albus laughed with the others until he happened to turn around and find himself face to face with Rose, who had just come out of her room.
She was beautiful.
Albus felt himself go weak at the knees and hardly noticed that Rose was staring at him with at least as much fascination as he was at her. He, who had apparently inherited the Weasley men's tendency to tall stature, still looked like his father, but stronger and more strikingly masculine than Harry.
When Rose noticed that James', Scorpius' and Bernie's eyes were also on her and wandering down her body, she flushed, turned on her heel and ran back to her room.
"Why did you stare at her like that?", Roy bawled them out. "Can't you see she's embarrassed?"
"She needn't," said James, "she looks great!"
"She's only eleven!" snapped Roy. "Victoire can deal with that, but Rose can't yet! In future you'll behave like gentlemen!"
Somewhat sheepishly, they trotted off.
"Set your clocks for midnight sharp," Roy commanded at half past eight as they all stood in the courtyard of the castle. Macnair had brought back a set of mechanical wristwatches from his trip to the Muggle world, electronics could easily have been magically disturbed. "Now start your watches and get ready to Disapparate."
Bernie held on to Roy, Scorpius to Albus, Rose to Victoire, James to Draco.
"Disapparate to the meeting point!" commanded Roy, and they all Disapparated to reappear fifteen miles to the west at a location that was supposed to represent a cliff just north of Branness.
Scorpius watched Albus turn into a fly and crawl into Roy's seagull's beak. Then he raised his thumb. "He's in." Roy closed his beak. Victoire cast a spell to make everyone invisible and then performed the Calorate spell so they could see each other.
The seagull took off. Since the Firebolts were clearly faster than them, those who stayed behind gave the advance team a ten-minute head start. Then they hopped onto their brooms and headed towards Rockwood Castle, which had been provided by the elves with a protective bell similar to the one over Azkaban.
Circling at an altitude of just over a mile above the castle were Lucius, Astoria and Narcissa Malfoy, representing the Auror patrol over Azkaban. Roy and Rodolphus had studied the behaviour of the real Azkaban patrol a few nights before and found out that the Aurors didn't use a Calorate spell, otherwise they would have had to see Rodolphus despite his Invisibility spell – Roy had accompanied him as a seagull for cover.
They knew that the relief took place every two hours, including at midnight. At this time, therefore – according to the training scenario – the current patrol had gone up. The three Malfoys were invisible and could not see each other. They were flying at different heights to avoid colliding and called watchwords to each other at regular intervals, just like the real Aurors did.
Two of the pursuers placed themselves invisibly behind each of the Auror players. Then Macnair gave the starting signal with a wave of his hand. The Malfoys were paralysed with a Petrificus and held in the air with a Levitation Charm; their brooms stopped.
Then they magically tied them together and hung them on Bernie's Firebolt, converted into a muggle broom. Macnair looked at his watch. Half past twelve. He pulled out his magic mirror.
By this time, Roy had long since landed on the window ledge in front of the spacious "dining room" of the barracks, which had been prepared by the elves as "Auror accommodation". The seagull was now visible because it was inside the protective bell. Roy opened the window with a silent Alohomora and hopped into the dark room. He let Albus out and they both transformed themselves back into humans. Everything happened as they had practised it dozens of times: Roy conjured a snake and duplicated it ten times: two snakes, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and fifty-six, five hundred and twelve, one thousand and twenty-four.
After each doubling, Albus commanded the new snakes on Parsel: "Lie still, don't move, and don't make a sound!" During the exercises before, he had asked the snakes at first if they could understand him, and both of them – especially Roy, who did not understand any parseltongue – had flinched, so deafening had been the affirmative hissing of over a thousand snakes at once. That would have woken up the whole of Azkaban, they had to stay quiet. Roy waved his wand over the snakes several times to magically warm them up. Snakes have a variable body temperature; they were not to get too cold.
"Listen," Albus hissed at Parsel. "We will have some of you flying through the air and landing on towers in a moment. There is one elf on each of them. Don't harm them but take away their brooms and the wands they are holding, then snuggle up to them and warm yourselves against them. If they try to escape, wrap yourselves around their legs. The other snakes that we don't levitate crawl through the door as soon as I open it. Spread out all over the barracks and do the same to the elves there as you did to those on the towers."
For their training purpose, it was good that the elves who were to represent the Aurors were by nature not afraid of snakes – with their magic powers they could have made them vanish at any time. The training exercise wasn't entirely hands-on, because the Malfoys employed far less elves than there were Aurors and Dementors in Azkaban, but enough to train the procedures.
"You're about to see things differently than before," Albus continued. "Everything you see bright is warm. That's where you're supposed to snuggle up, just not with us. – Calorate."
A moment later Roy felt the magic mirror vibrate on his right wrist.
"Yeah?"
"Ready," he heard Macnair whisper.
"Prepare to dive!" replied Roy. Above, Macnair raised his hand. Roy counted down:
"Ten – nine – eight – seven – six," – above Macnair spread his right hand and then made one finger disappear with each number -, "five – four – three – two – one – go!" Macnair lowered his thumb, signalling Draco and the Black Snakes to dive.
Now Lestrange also spread his right hand and counted down five seconds. His squad, consisting of himself, James and Victoire, also dove.
Meanwhile Roy and Albus had plunged the towers into darkness and were now throwing snakes at them. They had practised it so often that it hardly took them longer than the two squads needed for their swoop. Finally, Albus opened the door to the Auror dormitories, fired Darkness powder inside and sent out the remaining snakes. He and Roy jumped out of the window, where Draco met them with two brooms, and dashed up to the castle.
The first alarm call from the Aurors sounded at the same moment as Rodolphus shattered the door to the cell wing with a blasting spell, Roy and Albus landed in the courtyard, all five conjured their Patroni and entered the cell wing after them. The Dementor elves were driven into the deepest basement, except for two of them who were kept in check by the Patroni and now, following a list of names, had to open the doors to the prisoners' cells. Due to a lack of training personnel, the prisoners had to be represented by puppets. When all the freed persons had gathered in the courtyard, Macnair's Death Eaters came down from the tower to join them, and Roy signalled Rose and Scorpius via magic mirror to leave their observation post high above the castle. Each of them took a prisoner on his broom and they flew westwards into the night until they left the protected zone and became invisible again, then they turned northwards. They magically froze the water of a pond (representing the North Sea), to have a firm stand on the ice, and Disapparated back to Rockwood Castle. Roy stayed behind for a moment to wait for Bernie, who had safely and gently dropped the Malfoys in the castle grounds and arrived after a minute.
When Roy and Bernie were the last to Apparate in Rockwood and Roy, with his thumb raised, shouted "End of manoeuvre!", they all cheered in relief, hugged and high-fived each other – even the Gryffindors and the Black Snakes! – and even the elves had to struggle hard to maintain their distanced attitude.
"This is exactly how it's to work!" exclaimed Roy. "Enough for today. Now for a nightcap and then off to bed! From tomorrow, we've to be ready to move out at any time!"