Author's Note:
Thank you all for your feedback! I am delighted over every review, follower and favourite! I hope you have fun reading this. A little more action today!
"The letters have not been answered, Albus. Are you really sure I shouldn't check up on the boy myself?" Minerva McGonagall asked, an edge of worry in her voice. Her eyes were keenly focused on the person she was talking to. Albus Dumbledore, sitting comfortably behind is desk, his head resting on his folded hands, returned her gaze with twinkling eyes and calm demeanour.
"No, Minerva, I don't think that would be the best course of action. Hagrid wi-" the headmasters answer was interrupted by the fireplace suddenly flaring a bright green. A head appeared inside it and promptly began speaking in an urgent tone of voice: "Someone broke into Azkaban and attacked the ministry! Sirius Black escaped." As soon as the last word left the head's voice, it vanished again, leaving behind a concerned looking Albus Dumbledore and a shocked Minerva McGonagall.
A few seconds passed, while the headmaster supposedly pondered the news. Minerva knew not to interrupt his thinking, it tended to…disorient her old colleague and mentor for some reason. So she waited, and after what seemed to her like a few minutes, the old wizard began to speak again.
"Well, I will send Hagrid in the coming days, He will take young Harry to get his school supplies," Dumbledore continued their previous conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"But...-" Minerva didn't even know what she wanted to address. The recent breakout, or Hagrid's unsuitability to accompany the boy-who-lived. Sometimes, she wondered if Albus really was going mad. His peculiar behaviour had gotten much better since the end of the war, but the last few weeks it had started to intensify again.
"If you could please start preparing your classes. I have a few things that need to be taken care of." The headmaster fixated her with a small smile that clearly stated that this conversation was over.
"Of course," Minerva sighted, turning around and leaving behind a silent headmaster, who seemed to fall back into deep thought as soon as the door closed behind her.
-o-o-
5 hours earlier…
A strange sight would have greeted the passing muggles, if the carefully placed charms to hide one of the ministry entrances would have suddenly stopped working. Two men were standing inside a telephone booth, which barely had enough room for them. One of the two was in the process of opening a small suitcase, while the other was scanning the area around them carefully, one hand deep inside the pocket of his trench coat.
"You know you do not have to look out for anyone Remus? The illusion around us is failproof. Not even the strongest wards would detect, or disturb it. As long as we do not meet either Dumbledore or Voldemort on the way, nobody should be able to detect it." Harry said, while taking three stuffed animals out of the suitcase, slowly turning them around, as if inspecting their quality.
"You know, by now I have seen quite a lot of your illusions, but its still something else relying on them while walking into the ministry of magic to break into one of the best guarded places inside the country," Remus countered, looking at the stuffed animals with a mixture of curiosity and scepticism.
"Well, that's the advantage of learning obscure branches of magic that no one really knows anything about. First, nobody knows what to expect, and therefore nobody knows how to deal with it. And second, they are much more fun than ordinary spell work," Harry said with a grin on his face, "It's sad we won't have time to see this. You would enjoy the show."
"And why again, did you choose to study illusions and necromancy? I mean before I met you, I didn't even know illusions were an actual branch of magic, and necromancy…is just…I mean…come on, raising the undead?" Remus' face turned into a little grimace.
"Well, when you have to kill someone that primary focuses on trying to escape death, you tend to study death a lot. It just so happened that the study of life and death started to become quite interesting after the introductory bit… and really useful too! And necromancy is a field much larger than just raising the undead into soulless corpses. That is beginners' stuff," Harry paused for a few seconds, before continuing, "I was just incredibly lucky to get to learn illusions. It's really only practiced in Albania inside a magical city hidden so well, no living being could ever find it without knowing of its existence. It just so happened that good old half-ghost Voldemort wasn't actually alive, and upon finding the city, promptly pissed of their elders by trying to possess one of their children. They also just so happened to have an old seer among them, who told them that I was the one destined to destroy Voldemort. So, when I was visiting Albania in search for his Horcruxes, they approached me."
Remus chuckled. "You know, really unlikely coincidences really seem to shape your life."
Harry, in turn, didn't chuckle. "It would be nice if it would just be the good coincidences, sadly most of the time it's incredibly bad ones."
"Then let's hope this day stays coincidence free," Remus said, his face now serious.
"Well, one can always hope."
Harry handed one of the animals to Remus, then taking out two vials of potion out of the suitcase. They drowned the freshly brewed Polyjuice und therefore quickly added a new layer of security to their endeavour. Harry did not think that his glamour would fail, but if now somehow the image of the two Unspeakables they represented would fail, they would just look like two random ministry clerks.
A few dials into the number pad later, the floor beneath them started to slowly sink into the ground. Shortly after that, Harry and Remus found themselves in the Atrium of the ministry of magic. Purposely, they strode forward, and when passing the fountain in the middle of the hall, Harry quickly deposited one of the animals inside it. It was a cute little giraffe, covered in a glamour which rendered it completely invisible. At least for the time being.
Harry took a look at his watch directly afterwards, noting the time in his head.
Nobody spared them any notice as they entered the next available lift. It was quite cramped inside, which suited them well. When it passed floor two, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Remus dropped his invisible stuffed monkey directly on the entrance to the department. Harry took another look at his watch. Good, the timing fit.
After a few other stops, the lift started heading towards the Department of Mysteries, where the only real entrance to Azkaban was located: A floo connection directly to the warden's office. Harry knew that Voldemort had sieged the wards from outside the island, but brooms just stopped working when heading towards it, and Harry had never been able to replicate Voldemort's ability of unaided flight. Remus and him both also lacked an Animagus form, so swimming or flying like that was out of the question too. That left only the floo. It was always guarded by at least one Auror, but even Harry alone should not have any problems overwhelming him. With Remus alongside him, that part would be child's play. The hard part wasn't getting into Azkaban, it was getting out. They could only use the same floo they came from, and the passage to Azkaban would immediately ring all kinds of alarms inside the Department of Law Enforcement. They needed to hurry, and they needed something to keep the Auror's busy long enough so that they could grab Sirius, head back to the floo, and out of the ministry undetected.
Harry smirked. His little friends should take care of that quite well.
When Harry and Remus entered the room that contained the floo to Azkaban, the Auror on duty wasn't even able to raise his wand arm, before two stunners dropped him to the floor. They always stationed the trainees here as a punishment. Nobody expected anyone actually trying to break into the wizarding prison.
Remus took a handful of floo powder and dropped it unceremoniously into the flames. Both of them took a step directly in front of the fireplace, but not before Harry had dropped the third animal (a quite plushie teddy bear). Harry carefully regarded his watch, waiting patiently for the designated time.
"The first one should be active now," he mumbled more to himself than to Remus.
"You are sure they won't seriously hurt anyone?" Remus asked, a tint of worry showing on his features.
"They follow my orders quite precisely, and their orders are to cause a ruckus without harm." Harry answered, trying to keep the slight tone of annoyance out of his voice. This was the third time he had to reassure the werewolf, and if he was completely honest with himself, he did not like people questioning his skills. Especially as these creations took him the better half of the year to create.
"Here goes number two," he informed Remus, before they took a step forward and chorused "Azkaban", vanishing in a bout of green flames.
-o-o-
"Attack inside the Atrium!"
The screaming Auror trainee, followed by the sound of a blaring siren, caught most of the Aurors currently inside their office by surprise. Kingsley Shacklebolt was one of the few that immediately jumped out of their seat, waiting for their boss, Rufus Scrimgeour, to bellow out commands.
The department head didn't waste much time and came running out of his office, wand positioned at his throat, speaking loud and clearly through his magically amplified voice: "Kingsley, Dawlish, Proudfoot! Take your teams and sort this out!"
Kingsley and Proudfoot both had the two Aurors stationed under their watch already beside them and started heading towards the lifts. Dawlish, still sitting at his desks looked confused, taking a few seconds to gather himself, before clumsily following the two, totally forgetting about his team. The two trainees followed him nonetheless, which left Scrimgeour with seven remaining Aurors inside the office. The rest of the magical equivalent of the police were currently outside the ministry building, but those were only a handful. Budget cuts left the department quite understaffed, especially considering the many Aurors that died during the last war.
As soon as Scrimgeour turned his back to the lifts, determined to sit down at his desk and wait for the interrogation of whichever idiot tried to fire spells inside the ministry, a scream of one of his Aurors startled him back into action. Whipping around, the seasoned Auror nearly tumbled back a few steps at the sight that greeted him.
In front of him stood a grotesque, monkey-like figure, towering over him. It was roughly the size of a troll, dead black eyes staring at him on a face that held a grimace which looked like someone had tried to reproduce a smile simply on instruction, but never having seen one before. Black goo leaked from his mouth and several cracks on the body, as if someone had blown the poor thing up from the inside, and glued it back together using that dark liquid.
Scrimgeour quickly composed himself, his hand moving forward, wand snapping out of his robes inside it. A silent diffindo started racing towards the creature's neck, followed by four cutting spells to the creature's appendages in quick succession. When those didn't seem to cause any harm to the monkey, the department head tried a darker variant of the cutting spell, while shouting at the Auror's behind him. "Don't just stand there! Move! Savage, we are going to lure it into the middle of the room."
At that moment, another blaring alarm echoed through the room, slightly different from the first one. Everyone recognized its meaning in an instant: The floo to Azkaban had been used. "Shit!" Scrimgeour cursed, "It's a distraction! We need to finish this thing fast!"
-o-o-
Harry and Remus were purposefully striding through the wizarding prison. In front of them a white stag and a wolf lead the way, holding the dementors at bay. There were no human guards inside the prison. Anyone taking that shift for more than a few days would need to recover for weeks, and as the only entrance to the island was the floo, no human guards were needed on this side.
They needed to hurry, as Harry wasn't sure how long his creations could hold off the Aurors. As soon as they realised that Necromancy was used, fire might quickly reduce his little friends to ash.
"Oh god…" Remus mumbled, as he spotted the familiar form of a dog inside the next cell. It looked worse than the most mistreated street dog he had ever seen. So skinny, every rib was painfully visible, spots of fur were missing all over. Remus didn't want to imagine how Sirius looked in human form right now. With a quick wave of his knife, the door swung open, a second later a stunner shot from Harry's hands, making sure Sirius would not be awake for their journey back. Remus hurried forward taking the dog into his arms.
"I need a few minutes to weave an adequate illusion around him," Harry said, already waving his hands around Sirius. Remus just stood there, speechless at the state of his friend. He had known Azkaban was bad; he had known most prisoners went insane in the span of a few years but seeing it with his own eyes was insanely disturbing.
After what felt like hours to Remus, Harry had his Patronus back up next to his wolf, and the two of them quickly made their way back towards the floo, hoping there wouldn't be a welcoming team of Aurors on the other side.
-o-o-
Scrimgeour was running out of ideas and more importantly, out of time. He had tried nearly every spell in his arsenal, even curses more than a little over the edge to the dark arts, but the thing in front of him either just shrugged off the curse, or regenerated within seconds, the black goo filling any hole or cut he had been able to inflict on it.
"What is this thing?!" one of the Aurors screamed, frustrated, scared and angry at the same time. He was new to the corps, just finishing his apprenticeship a few months ago. "Fuck you and your overgrown ass smile, go back to where you came from and burn in hell!"
At that statement, a lightbulb inside Scrimgeour's head seemed to ignite. "Fire!", he shouted, "Try fire! Incendio on the count of three! One, two, three!"
A chorus of Incendios echoed through the Department of Law Enforcement and the monkey erupted into a ball of flames. It started screaming and trashing, and the Auror's needed to take quick steps to the edges of the room to escape its swinging arms.
"Good. Keep it up!" Scrimgeour ordered, adding a stronger version of the fire spell into the mix. It took minutes of focused shellfire, but what remained of the intruder was only a puddle of ash and goo!
"Move! All of you to the Azkaban floo! Savage, you go to the Atrium and if it's the same kind of monster there, tell them to use fire!" Scrimgeour shouted, his face twisted into an angry visage.
When Scrimgeour and his team of Aurors arrived in front of the Azkaban floo, a smiling goo bear made him use a string of curse words he hadn't used in years.
-o-o-
When Harry and Remus stepped out of the floo, the room was still empty beside of Harry's creation. Swiftly, they stepped around it and through the door, heading towards the lift. As soon as they stepped inside it and it started moving upwards, they could see Scrimgeour and around six Aurors stepping out of the lift next to them, sparing them a short glance, before quickly moving towards Harry's little friend.
"It's a good thing Unspeakables have that much authority nobody dares questioning them," Harry murmured. Remus nodded, his whole body tensed up from that encounter, still holding the unconscious dog in his arm.
When the lift stopped inside the Atrium, they could see three teams of Auror's starting to shoot fire at the giraffe towering over them. It was more than luck when nobody noticed them heading for the guest exits, as the Atrium was completely void of people, but the giraffe fulfilled its purpose and kept all eyes on itself.
As they left the telephone booth, a few quick chain-apparations left them safe inside the wards of the Potter home, and Remus nearly had his legs give away as the adrenaline left his body. Gathering himself, he gently put Sirius' frail form onto the couch, before sitting on a chair next to him.
"I can't believe it worked," he sighed looking at Sirius, "welcome home my friend." Harry just silently stood next to him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
"We will get him back into shape. Give him a few months, and he will be back to cracking jokes all day." Harry reassured Remus, who just nodded solemnly.