She hadn't even taken her robe off before a squirrel patronus dived through the open window to deliver an urgent summons to Azkaban. Not a second later, Kingsley's Lynx summoned her to help deal with a massive breakout.
She sent her own patronus to Harry and Ginny and pulled her cloak on again. They were both ready to go by the time she arrived and she grabbed their hands to side-along apparate them to the prison with little more than a nod of greeting.
Hermione had seen more warzones that anyone should have by her age but the scene at Azkaban was still a shock. The top had been blasted clean away, exposing the honeycomb of cells inside. Confused dementors drifted through the rubble that littered the small island, patronuses rounding them up like sheep.
A gaggle of wizards stood in the cavernous maw that had once been an entrance, brown auror robes mingled with purple ICW. Kingsley and Madam Bones stood out in black and Hermione headed for them, knowing that the command group would likely be around them.
'What happened?' Ginny asked as they came within speaking distance. The tight circle opened up to allow them in and the witch in the Hijab, Hermione recalled her name to be Haani, sighed before recounting the story again.
She'd disapparated with Gill from the site in Paris and visited the Bastille, she'd delivered her warning to the guards there, then headed to Azkaban. She'd arrived to find the prison ruined and the guards bound in their guard room. The attack had taken place early in the morning, well before the fire in Paris and one of the guards had witnessed Grindelwald storming the citadel.
Hermione requested the guards memories, a request which was quickly granted and a silvery vial of memories was passed to her. She stored it in her pockets as an Auror burst into their command circle to report who was missing.
The list was long and daunting; almost every death eater that they had captured in the final battle had escaped, a couple of petty criminals that had been close to the blast were either missing or dead and the rest were roaming the corridors and freeing those that had yet to escape. It would take days, if not weeks to reorganise the prisoners into repaired cells and reactivate the wards. The auror bemoaned the prospect of having to fight the death eaters rallied behind a leader as experienced as Grindelwald.
Something didn't feel right to Hermione again though. There was no denying that whomever had caused the explosion was immensely powerful and they had eye witnesses claiming to have seen Grindelwald in person. Both were compelling evidence against him, and even though he hated the death eaters he had as much as said to her that sometime you had to ally with your enemies. It was also hard to imagine the death eaters wanting to ally with Grindelwald after he had killed their last master, then again she was quoting Grindelwald by saying that "desperation can easily change people's minds". She would need to look through the memories closely to find any redeeming evidence.
She nodded her way through a tour of the guard house and an innocuous corridor that they believed to be where the blast had originated from. As soon as possible she left Ginny and Harry to help with the cleanup and apparated to Nurmengard.
The two Malfoys were enjoying lunch in the living area and they both looked up when she entered. Narcissa needed at her cordially over her cup and Malfoy greeted her politely. She realised that they deserved to be kept in the loop, especially considering that Lucius had been one of those to escape today. She sat down opposite them with a somber expression and they both immediately put down their utensils and gave her their full attention.
'I assume that you don't have good news.' Draco said dryly and Hermione snorted in an unladylike manner.
'Not particularly. Azkaban was broken into today and among those that escaped was Mr. Malfoy.' She kept it brief, not wanting to go into the turbulence of Grindelwald's involvement. It seemed her explanation more than enough because Narcissa went white as a sheet and Draco dropped his baguette into his soup.
'He'll come for us.' The elder lady whispered and Draco's knuckles went white. 'We're blood traitors now.'
'You're safe here. Gellert was nothing if not paranoid when he designed this castle. The wards are fully charged, it took an army with Dumbledore at the head weeks to bring it down last time.' She reassured them and Narcissa relaxed slightly. Draco, with personal experience of Grindelwald's aptitude with warding, didn't dispute her point but he seemed to relax very little.
Then, with the vial of memories seemingly burning a hole in her pocket, she left them to view the memories in Gellert's pensieve.
She appeared in a shabby yet comfortable room, worn furniture arranged around a blazing fire and a small kitchen area. Three massive wizards were crammed into the space, patronuses meandering around the room. One of them reached out to idly pat a silvery dog as it wandered between the couches, then all three silvery animals popped out of existence as an explosion shook the building.
For a second there was silence, then one of the men began shouting orders and calling for his peers. One man dived across the room and hit a large button, the other scrambled to pick up his dropped wand. The three formed a triangle and burst out of the room. Hermione's view was blocked but she saw the red flash that downed the lead man. She squeezed through the gap to see who had attacked and was shocked to see Grindelwald. He stood in the middle of the hallway, alone as he took out the second guard. The third, who's memory this must have been, ducked behind the doorway as dementors streamed down from the upper levels.
Hermione watched as Grindelwald turned to face the new threat, noticing as he did that he wasn't wearing his usual permanent shield. Then he waved his wand in a motion that was intimately familiar to her. A silvery animal that was something between a squirrel and a rat bounced from his wand to chase the beasts away.
As far as she remembered, Grindelwald couldn't cast a patronus and she'd seen the patronus shield repel him, which she counted as fairly solid evidence that as of a few weeks ago he still couldn't. The obvious conclusion was that this wasn't Grindelwald. Whoever it was was desperate for people to believe he was.